We went back to the bedroom to get dressed so I could drive her home. I didn’t know if she’d seen Nicky’s picture on the TV. And if she had, I wasn’t sure she’d remember he was the same guy who’d yelled at me that night we were in the car. I stuffed my muddy clothes into the back of the bathroom hamper. There was still sand in my socks from chasing Nick under the Boardwalk. I was so nervous puttingon a new shirt that I could barely get the buttons through the holes.
“You had better watch it with that drinking,” Rosemary said. “I don’t think you’re cut out for it.”
Downstairs, I had trouble starting the car. The engine bucked and whined three times before it finally turned over. And then once we got into traffic, I heard a strange rattling in the glove compartment. It occurred to me that I might have stashed the gun there in a drunken stupor.
Rosemary took a cigarette out of her pocketbook and rolled down the passenger side window. “So why’d you kill him?”
Her voice was so calm I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly at first. “Why’d I kill who?”
“That guy on television. The one they found under the Boardwalk.”
“What makes you think I had anything to do with that?” I gripped the steering wheel and saw my knuckles turn white.
She lit her cigarette and blew smoke out the window. We were stuck behind a line of cars trying to make a left onto Atlantic Avenue.
“Do I look stupid?” she asked. “Because if I do, go ahead and tell me what you’ve been telling me. I saw you come into the club last night, roaring drunk, with your clothes all muddy. And I saw the way you acted when we got home. So do not tell me any more lies. Was this some kind of Mafia hit?”
“I’m not in the mob,” I said dully.
“I know you’re in the mob, like I know my daughter is having her breakfast now.”
I checked the dashboard clock and saw it was ten after nine. I wondered what my own kids were doing.
“Well you’re under a misapprehension.”
“I know what a misapprehension is, Anthony,” she said in the arch formal voice she used when she was mad. “And this is not one of them.”
I was quiet for a few minutes as we finally inched into the left lane going north on Atlantic Avenue. One car after another was passing me on the right. But there wasn’t enough room to switch over and join them.
“Listen,” I said finally. “You asked me a question before, about whether I was in with the mob. And I told you the truth, that I wasn’t.”
Her lips rubbed together, like sticks about to start a campfire. “So how come that guy wound up dead after you had an argument with him?”
A spasm in my neck drew my head back. I put on my right hand signal trying to switch lanes again, but there still wasn’t enough room. I was stuck. The signal made a tick-tock sound on the dashboard, like an old clock running down.
“All right,” I said. “I’m going to tell you something and it’s not something I ever talked about with anybody else.” I stopped and took a deep breath. “Some of the people in my family, they’re, you know, they’re in with the mob.” My teeth were chattering just from talking about it. “And sometimes, they get into certain situations like, like the kind with this Nicky. The guy you saw on television. But that’s not me. I’m not a killer.”
I realized I was saying it as much for my benefit as for hers. Rosemary stared at the side of my head.
“You see, that’s why I’ve been struggling so hard to get away from that life. There’s more to me than that.”
“I don’t know if I should believe you,” she said quietly.
“Then believe what you want,” I snapped. “It’s the truth. I know who I am.”
She took a long drag on her cigarette and began to laugh softly to herself.
“What’s so funny?”
“You know, when I was growing up I used to watch the Miss America Pageant with my mother and carry around the broomstick like it was a scepter. Really. I used to pretend that I was Miss New Jersey. I’d perform all the different parts for my mother in the living room. The talent competition. Miss Congeniality. The swimsuit bit. It was just me and her, pretending.”
“I still don’t get it. Why’s that so amusing?”
“Because now I’m driving around with a married man whose father is one of the heads of the Mafia.”
“He’s not one of the heads.” I pumped my foot up and down on the brake. “He’s just an old guy who should retireto Florida. Besides, I already told you I’m trying to get beyond all that. I’m this close”—I showed her with my fingers—“to being able to raise all the money for this boxing thing.”
Actually I wasn’t any closer at all. That was the second weight pressing down on me today. I still owed fifty thousand dollars for training expenses and sanctioning fees, plus the ten thousand the shakedown artists at the boxing federation wanted.
Rosemary folded her arms and crossed her legs. “Well, if you’re so anxious to get away from the mob, why are you going into a sleazy business like boxing?”
“Let me tell you something.” I finally saw an opening between two cars on the right and slipped into it, following the flow of traffic downtown. “I can’t afford to be a snob about where I came from or how I’m getting out of it.” The wind ran through my hair. “And frankly, Rosemary, neither can you.”
24
THE STATION WAGON PULLED up in front of a brownish red-brick housing project on Virginia Avenue. Rosemary climbed out and kissed Anthony once on the lips.
“Call me,” she said.
She walked across the sidewalk and in through the steel gate entrance. The project was four square buildings arranged around a vast open courtyard. Drug dealers lingered in doorways along the inner periphery, hidden from the street and passing police cars. When cops did bother stopping by, tenants rained garbage and beer cans down on them.
As Rosemary took out her keys and headed for her building on the north side, she passed a young black man by the sprinkler wearing a gray Georgetown T-shirt and a beeper on the waistband of his jeans.
“All right, I like them titties!!” he called out.
She flipped him the finger and prayed for the day she could move out of this hellhole with her daughter. She entered her building, leaving the awful wavering heat of the afternoon outside. The elevator was broken again and she began to climb up through the steep, graffiti-smeared stairwell.
It was all a matter of what you were willing to accept, she reminded herself. If you could turn tricks for your junkie husband and wrestle other women to support your daughter, what was the big deal about going for a ride with a mob guy’s son? After all, it wasn’t like Anthony was really a killer. Hadn’t he just got through telling her that? He was too gentle and solicitous to hurt anybody. The wild-man act last night was a fluke, she told herself. He was probably upset after hearing that someone else in his family had bumped off that chinless man.
It wasn’t that she was one of these women who always made excuses for her man. She was just trying to get aheadand find a safe haven. She could do worse than to hitch her star to Anthony’s wagon, she reasoned. So what if he was already married and would never be serious about her? She was getting something out of it too. If he did make this boxing promotion come off, maybe there’d be a little money in it for her. Perhaps she could go back to school and get a teacher’s degree. Even if it was just to be a phys ed instructor, at least she could make a living with her clothes on. What was a little sacrifice and discomfort? It was all a matter of what you could endure to change your life.
Anyway, she was in control. That’s what she reminded herself. Now all she had to do was ignore that flashing signal warning her that she’d always been attracted to men who were no good.
She paused on the second-floor landing to massage her sore back and listen to the sound of children laughing down the hall. Through the grimy stairwell window, she could see the gleaming casino towers rising above the low-slung tenements and shacks.
