This was a couch we were talking about. The whole thing was crazy. We both knew we were broke because I wouldn’t go work for her uncle full-time. So she went and bought a couch that we couldn’t afford. In retrospect, I think this was what’s called a cry for attention.
“You don’t make no fuckin’ time for me anymore,” she said. “Oh, ‘Go right ahead, Carla. Get whatever you want. Anything you want is fine. Just don’t bother me.’”
“Yeah . . . but I didn’t want . . .
I was looking at this couch. In that moment, it became a symbol for everything that had gone wrong in my life. A fat, lumpy, lifeless hulk. It made me think of her uncle and my father and Larry lying there in the alley and us in this house that smelled like a cat even though we didn’t have a cat and how I felt hemmed in by everything. If I’d had a gun right then, I would’ve shot that couch.
Meanwhile, my two kids playing with the computer in the other room were yelling at us to keep our voices down.
I realized I hadn’t been in to see them since I got home. So I gave Carla the time-out sign and stuck my head in. The two of them were sprawled out in front of the Macintosh, for which I was already paying a hundred fifty dollars a month on an installment plan. Rachel with her long black hair and her sallow face, looking as mournful as the Madonna at the age of seven. I could already tell she was going to grow up to be a worrier. Always concerned that everybodyelse is okay. Little Anthony, who was five, was more like me. A hustler, a fast-talker, constantly looking for an angle to beat the odds. His big drawback in life was that he was born deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other. But instead of giving up, he went along with all the special classes and hearing aids, and basically he was going to be fine, except for occasionally mispronouncing words.
They were playing a game called Sim City that allowed you to create an entire planet on the computer screen. With a keystroke, you could build a neighborhood or start a natural disaster.
“Daddy, Anthony’s wrecking the economy again,” Rachel complained.
I still don’t know how I got lucky enough to have two kids who were so much smarter than me. “Come on,” I said “Enough of this bullshit. Let’s play The Dirty Dozen.”
“The Dirty Dozen” was just an excuse to wrestle the way I used to with Vin in the backyard. My kids forgot the computer and jumped on me. Rachel got me on the floor and started slapping my stomach. Anthony climbed onto my head and tried shoving one of those miniature Ninja Turtle dolls up my nose. Probably the same one he’d been keeping in the neighbor’s cat’s litter box.
“Sm-ELL Mich-EL-ange-LO!!” he yelled with that way he has of overenunciating. “Smell Michelangelo!!”
I think, looking back on it, that was the happiest I was ever going to be. Only I didn’t know it at the time.
But then I heard my wife’s voice calling.
“Anthony, come out here again. We were discussing something.”
I hugged the kids and went back out, noticing a little rust-colored stain on the back of my left pant leg. I hoped it wasn’t from Larry. Glancing back at little Anthony, I realized he had the same kind of Bell Tone hearing aid that fell out of Larry’s ear.
“You don’t like this couch—tough shit,” Carla was saying with her arms folded over her chest. “Next time you come with me when I’m gonna get something for the house, instead of hanging out at the club.”
“What do you think? I like being there? It’s my business.”
I thought of Larry lying there with his wig and his jacket unbuttoned.
“Oh yeah, what about all them girls you’re bringing there? You think I don’t know about that?”
“The live entertainment’s all your uncle’s idea. I just help count the money until we get some concrete work coming in. In case you hadn’t noticed, there hasn’t been a crane up in this town in a year.”
And then there were all the bills to think about. In the next few years, there’d be more special schools for Anthony and probably psychiatrists for Rachel with the way she was going. Plus the fifty-five thousand dollars we owed on the mortgage and the sixty thousand I owed her uncle. I looked at the couch and the rust stain on my pants and I shuddered a little inside.
“Listen, Carla, I just gotta get out of here awhile, get some air.”
“We are discussing something.”
“I know, but I just have to get out.”
It was all starting to get to me. The couch. The baby in her stomach. Larry in the Dumpster. I felt like the walls were closing in on me.
I looked around for the hundred-dollar khaki windbreaker I picked up from Macy’s last year at the Hamilton Mall. I found it under little Anthony’s toy helicopter with a yellow crayon mashed into the back.
“I’ll be back in a little bit,” I said, putting the jacket on over my suit pants.
Carla’s eyes never left my face. “Anthony,” she said in a high quavery voice. “I know you. And I know your mind hasn’t been in this house for a long time.”
“Carla, honey, that’s not true. Everything’s going to be fine. We can talk about it when I come back.”
But the truth was that I’d been feeling trapped for years and now I was beginning to think there might be no way out.
I saw Carla looking down at the Disney World ashtray onthe table like she had an idea about throwing it at me again. It already had two chips in it.
“Shut up, will you?!” I heard little Anthony yelling in the other room. “I can’t hear myself think.” He must’ve had the hearing aid turned up too loud.
“But where you going?” Carla asked. “I wanna talk to you.”
“I’m going to see my father.” I almost tore the zipper off my jacket as I was raising it.
“I thought you already saw your goddamn father tonight,” she said. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?”
“Well, I’m seeing him again. I’d rather be with him than take this kind of abuse from my own family.”
Carla’s cheeks were all red and her nose was swelling. “You better be going to see your father. Otherwise I’m gonna go over to Uncle Teddy’s house, borrow his Ruger and you’ll find something else waiting for you when you get home besides a fucking couch.”
“Oh yeah? You’re gonna shoot me when I come in the door? Very nice. Who’s going to look after the kids when they take you away?”
“Anthony, don’t go,” she said, crying so hard it sounded like water rushing into a cove. “I feel like I don’t know you no more.”
For a second, I stopped by the door and looked at her. I was thinking about the way it used to be too. How we met on the Boardwalk one night in the summer after we’d both had fights with our parents. I remembered how we took off our clothes and went swimming in the shallow part of the ocean. Carla had long black hair then and it just kind of floated on top of the water. You could see the moonlight in the little ripples and once in a while, one of Carla’s breasts would break to the surface like the sea was offering up something good to the sky. We were playing a game. Seeing which of us had the nerve to go further out. But each time the tide pulled away, we’d hold hands so one of us wouldn’t get taken off to drown alone in the middle of the ocean.That was a long time ago, though.
“I’m sorry, Carla,” I said. “Don’t wait up for me.”
It turned out I didn’t go see my father again that night. Instead I went where I always go when I don’t know what else to do. To the Boardwalk. It was a nice night. If I’d had my jogging clothes with me, I would’ve gone for a run. Instead I sat on a bench outside the Golden Doubloon Hotel and Casino, watching the lights go on and off on the TAKE A CHANCE sign over the entrance while the tide pulled the sand from the shore behind me.
Sometimes it seemed this was where I ended up whenever anything important happened. There are whole parts of my childhood that I don’t remember, but I can still picture my real father Michael taking me for a long walk when I was seven. He was a tall, good-looking guy who always wore the best French shirts, Italian suits, and English loafers, even when he couldn’t afford them. I’d hold his hand and think the Boardwalk would go forever if we could just keep walking. It was right around this spot that he pointed out a vacant lot and said that was where the two of us would build a castle one day.
About a year later he disappeared and it was Vin taking me for a walk down the Boardwalk. I can see myself pointing to that vacant lot again and asking what happened to Mike and the plans we’d made.
“I guess he made a mistake,” Vin said.
The Boardwalk was empty in those days. A bunch of half-demolished hotels and broken storefronts. I
