The Painting of Porcupine City (47 page)

She’s surprised, looks down at her basket and purses her lips. “Write down your phone number,” she says finally. And this makes me feel stupid—it’s a brush-off, I’m sure. She isn’t giving me hers.

But I tell her OK and pull a corner off the circular in the seat of the cart. She’s digging in her purse and hands me a pen. I hand pen and paper back with my number on it. She tucks it in her wallet, with the kind of care that makes me suddenly sure she will use it.

When I get home I

park on the street and go around to dig the groceries out of the trunk. While I’m closing the trunk with my chin Jamar pulls up in front of me, gets out, holds out his hand and I give him half of the bags.

“I accidentally went through a red light on my way home,” he says. He looks good. He wears a suit to work now, suits that have to be tailored special because of his height.

“Was it because you were in such a hurry to help with the groceries?”

“Sure. Hey, how was your thing with Lou?”

“They want more fucking and they don’t like the ending.”

“What do you mean they don’t like the ending?” We squeeze through the front door and at the bottom of the stairs I rearrange my grip on the bags. Our apartment’s on the top floor.

“They don’t get it. What happens to him.”

“What’s to get? Your Carioca surfer boy melds with his heaven wave, Tom Joad–style. Even Caleb gets it.”

“But our son’s a genius.” I follow him up the stairs, bags scraping the scuffed green walls. The truth is, Caleb is not a genius. He seems, so far, to our huge relief, almost totally normal.

“Well I guess you have to admit,” Jamar says, “we’ve kind of been primed to go along with that sort of thing.”

“True.”

“But if they don’t like it, you should keep looking. Don’t change anything.”

“Yeah. Hey, I ran into Mateo’s old landlady at the market.”

“Oh,” he says, “you did?” He glances down at me from the first landing with a look of vague worry so familiar on both of our faces when Caleb was younger but which has been in hibernation a long time. The fear eased when I co-adopted Caleb and it’s eased even more with the passage of years. But in the beginning, when we were still hashing things out, making our big reveals—to Cara’s parents and then Mateo’s—we shared a constant fear—a terror—that one of these people would present a stronger claim to Caleb than we could, and would try to take him from us. Cara’s parents posed the most credible threat, at least from a legal standpoint, but they trusted Jamar and had no desire, in their middle sixties, to begin raising another child. The bigger threat came from Mateo’s side, though not necessarily from his parents: If you couldn’t be an astronaut, and if your son couldn’t be an astronaut, then maybe your grandson can be an astronaut. No, the biggest threat is the unknown: Mateo himself was such an unknown quantity, there’s no telling when someone associated with him, however loosely, might pop up and cause trouble for us. “Like, to talk to?” Jamar says.

“Don’t worry, she’s got nothin’,” I tell him, using our old shorthand for describing threat levels. “She knew him, that’s all. When he was young. When he was new here. I’m going to get together with her sometime. Hear some stories. They’ll be good to know.”

“OK.”

“Still get a chill, huh?”

“Heh.”

“Michaela home?”

“On her way,” he says.

“So who’s got our kid?”

“Mr. Wade. Speaking of whom, do you think he’d look at my car tonight? My rear wheel’s making a worrisome noise.”

We reach the top of the stairs. The door is unlocked and we enter into the living room. The TV is showing a cartoon but there’s no one watching it.

“Is that how you ran the red light?”

“Probably. I was listening to it. Hey.” He splays the groceries on the kitchen table and an orange rolls out of a bag. “I need to go get my stuff.”

He leaves and our apartment is quiet except for the TV.

“Where is everybody?” I say. I drop my messenger bag on a chair and my keys in a bowl on the window sill beside a picture of Cara and me. That picture was taken soon after we moved in together that year; in the photo we’re cooking. I don’t remember what we were cooking, and the only visible ingredients—tomatoes and a carton of oatmeal—offer confusing clues. But I do remember her smile.

“I think I just heard somebody sneeze!” I call down the hall.

There are tons of photos around and a lot of them are of Cara. Jamar wasn’t sure how much Michaela would go for that, how much his new girlfriend would appreciate being surrounded by reminders of his first wife. But she didn’t mind, and it wasn’t too long after he found her re-hanging one that he’d taken down, that he asked her to marry him.

That’s when our little foursome grew to a fivesome. We live in Jamaica Plain now, not far from where Marjorie used to live, actually. I don’t know who lives in her old place; sometimes I look up at the windows that once were Mateo’s and wonder who that attic bedroom belongs to now, and whether when they look up at the ceiling they see the horse with the elephant trunk. Sometimes I wonder, but not often. It’s busy having a kid.

I put the blueberries in the fridge; the yellowed domestic partnership certificate signed by Jamar and me flutters on the door. Legally speaking, it was voided first by my marriage and then again by his—but still it endures.

It’s grown too, to contain us all. All of the many of us. At times the apartment gets crowded. At times it gets
too
crowded. At times there are too many voices—music, video games, laughter, the robotic chirps of Caleb’s toys. Some nights after he’s in bed I do slip away, out into the night for a bit of quiet freedom. In the trunk of my car I keep a backpack that clinks metallic when I slip it on. I never go far; there are enough of Mateo’s pieces around our neighborhood. I paint on top of his paintings, sometimes my own designs, sometimes I just trace over his lines. It feels like spending time with him. My paint holds for a little while but always by the next morning it’s nothing but flakes on the ground. Maybe there’s some metaphor to be found in Mateo’s paint and mine never sticking, but I don’t need metaphors. I know he and I wanted two different things, that we had two different heaven spots. It didn’t take me long to begin thinking of Mateo not as a missed chance but as a bridge from one life to another. If that was all he could be to me, it’s come to feel like everything. That year with him was the most significant relationship of my life—for without it there would not be these others. Without Mateo I may never have found this intersection of these rooms and these lives.

“There’s a sneezer in this house!” I call again.

I put away the milk and ice cream and check the rooms—the little bedroom between the two larger bedrooms is occupied. I walk in and sit down on the cartoon bedspread.

“Oi Caleb,” I say.

“Oi Papa.” The boy is standing in front of a big splattery mural on the wall, examining it intently, squiggling his bare toes in the thick green carpet as he ponders. He turns. His hair is strawberry blond, like Cara’s, but has the loops and curls of his father’s side. When he was younger he’d often been mistaken for a girl, and Jamar pushed hard to shave it off, but I resisted. Now he’s starting to fill into his features.

“Who picked you up from school today?” I say, though I know the answer. He can be a little aloof at times, like Cara and Mateo both, and I like to make sure he is paying attention. “Daddy?”

“Nope. Ollie.”

“Ah. Where is Ollie?”

Caleb looks around the room. “He was right here.”

Then we both hear a toilet flush and we giggle.

“What do you want for supper?” I say. “And don’t say macaroni and cheese.”

“
Don’t say macaroni and cheese
.”

“Fine, but you’ll have to eat some cut-up veggies too. Boys cannot live on mac and cheese alone.”

“All right.”

“All right.” I get up and rub the boy’s hair as I walk by.

“Papa,” Caleb says, holding out both arms. “Watch me.”

“I’m watching, filhinho.”

Where I’m standing in the doorway I feel Ollie’s fingers slide across the small of my back.

“Hey babe,” he says.

“Ol, come watch this,” I say, and he stops and stands in the doorway beside me.

“Watching?” Caleb says.

“We’re watching,” Ollie says.

Caleb turns away from us back to the mural and scrunches his face in concentration. His body grows tense, as though he is waiting for a whistle-blow to start a race. He holds out his hands, little hands I’ve spent so much time holding. His fingertips begin running with paint—green from the left hand, blue from the right. He presses his dripping fingers against the wall, and with a smile that always reminds me of Mateo, Caleb begins to paint.

T H E

E N D

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Before starting this book in 2008 I knew very little about graffiti art or São Paulo; anything I’ve gotten right about either of them is the result of research and (more likely) good luck. Still, I purposely went light on descriptions of the graffiti of Mateo and his SP crew because some things are too big and bright to be captured in words (at least by me). Readers interested in knowing more about what their work looks like are encouraged to check out the magnificent book,
Graffiti Brasil
, by Tristan Manco, Lost Art and Caleb Neelon.

SPECIAL THANKS

To my crew, Heather Allison, Maggie Locher and Josh Hockenberry, for their endless support and encouragement. To Tom Hardej, for always giving his honest opinion. To Ethan Brown, just because. To all of the readers who embraced
The Cranberry Hush
. And to my family, for everything.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Monopoli lives in Boston with his husband, Chris. He blogs at benmonopoli.blogspot.com.

THE CRANBERRY HUSH: A NOVEL

by Ben Monopoli

EXCERPT

PART ONE

Friday

I had a feeling when I looked outside that morning that something cool was going to happen. Maybe it was the snow, so clean and blank and ready for anything—and still coming down. Through the night the wind howled and slammed against my windows and the clanking storm door in the garage. Now it was windless and quiet—flakes came straight down, thick and heavy, making the backyard sparkle in the weak morning sun. Judging by the vague white hump I knew to be the picnic table, there was well over a foot already, maybe even closer to two.

Something cool was definitely going to happen. How could it not? Maybe today was the day I’d tell Zane I loved him. Maybe I’d just get a snow-day.

I heard a voice mumbling out of the phone so I put it back to my ear.

“—ince. You there?” The voice belonged to Simon, my boss at Golden Age Comics. He’d scrambled away mid-conversation to let in his new wife’s yipping dog.

“Get her?” I said.

“I had to go way the hell out. She sunk in a drift.” He chuckled, or maybe he was huffing a bit. “I swear—that dog.”

“Pretty deep, huh?”

“I’ll say. You don’t have a yardstick nearby, do you?”

“A yardstick? Out in the garage, I think. Why?”

“Would you do me a favor, Vince, and measure it so we can get something official? I like to have accurate information before I make any decisions.”

“Oh, sure. Hold on. I’ll go get it.”

“Thanks.”

I put the phone down on the kitchen counter, rinsed and filled the kettle, put it on the stove and turned on the burner. After making some door sounds with the cupboards I picked up the phone. “OK Simon.”

“How much are we looking at?”

I looked through the sliding door at the buried deck, at the covered shrubs, at tree limbs bent under the weight of the snow. “Hold on,” I said. “It’s really cold. I’m just in my pajamas.” In a patch of fog growing on the glass I drew a Superman
S
symbol. “Jeez Simon, I’m showing eighteen inches so far.”

“Wow!”

“Uh. But there’s some drifting on my deck, so it could be a little less?”

“That’s fine, that’s fine. Get back inside, Vince. I don’t want you to freeze. I could never run the store without you.”

“Whew, my hands are all tingly now.” The water was starting to boil; I took it off the burner before it had a chance to whistle. “So what do you think, Simon? Eighteen inches. I could probably make it in...”

“Hmm.” From the other end came pensive breathing, as though Simon was savoring having to make this executive decision. “Stay home,” he said finally. “People can live without their comics for a day—never thought I’d say that! Don’t you think?”

“I totally agree.” I held the phone with my shoulder and dumped some coffee into the French press. “Has Golden Age ever closed before?”

“I’m sure we have. Well. Who’s on the schedule with you today? Zane?”

“Marissa.”

“I’ll give her a call, let her know. Go make a snowman!” He hung up.

“Oh yeah,” I said to myself. I knew today was going to be cool.

My coffee wasn’t quite hot enough but I carried it down the hall. I stepped up onto my bed, walked across the mattress in my boxer shorts and thick blue socks and put the coffee on the nightstand. I stood there a minute, my buzzed hair grazing the ceiling, pulling absentmindedly at the waistband of my boxers, and then I said “Ha!” and collapsed into the warm, disheveled sheets.

The thing about snow days is that they’re blissful in theory but always kind of intimidating when they actually happen. The day loomed as blank and white as my backyard. I pulled the blankets up to my chin and rubbed the sateen hem against my lips. I figured I’d just sleep through a few more of the daylight hours ahead—no reason to call Zane just yet. There was plenty of time on a day like today. I pulled my legs up into a ball to stay warm on my usual side of the double bed, rubbed my face into the pillow.

When I was a kid, like elementary school age, I used to tape notes to the headboard of my bed on the nights before forecasted storms. In block letters I‘d write SNOW DAY or NO SCHOOL TOMORROW—little affirmations, little prayers to the weather gods and the superintendent. Now that I was twenty-four there was still something romantic about snow. The excitement of snow-days never really went away—in college, in the hands of hundreds of teenagers faced with unexpected idleness, they’d even grown more magical. When I remembered this I had the sudden desire to be out in it, to be buried in it, to feel it all around me. Maybe even, as Simon recommended, to build a snowman.