Connections (19 page)

A two-day growth of fuzz spread across his face like a stain. His thin, tawny hair separated from the oil that had not been washed out and hung in clumps over his eyes. His jeans were so worn at the knees that there was no trace of blue or denim thread. His sneakers were filthy, and bare skin showed through the large hole in the canvas of the right one. He crouched against the back of the newsstand. His sign, printed with a heavy marker on the bottom of a carton and leaning against his legs—I AM HOMELESS. PLEASE HELP—hadn’t encouraged any more than the six quarters and five nickels he occasionally jingled in the coffee container, most of which he had contributed himself. He tried to keep his hands tucked in his armpits behind the sign, so they wouldn’t give him away.

Christopher Barrett never took his eyes off the street, off the doors of the supermarket just down the block. He was glad he had saved his “painting pants.” He had rolled them up and put them into the garbage when they were finished with the apartment. Then, impulsively, he had taken them out again and stuffed them between the broom and mop handles in the small closet in the kitchen. Jason had yelled, “Don’t be ridiculous! They stink and have spots all over them. By the time we’re ready for another paint job, you’ll have another pair of pants ready to donate to the cause.”

It must be a good half hour since Jason had come out of the store and another half hour since Chris had posted himself here. After being chased from his ideal vantage point in the recessed garage entrance directly across the street from Gristede’s by the doorman of the adjoining apartment house, he had squatted in front of the TD bank center, until the guard came out and swaggered in front of him menacingly. He had deliberately left his watch at home, to fit with his disguise. But now he wished he knew how long he had been here. His behind hurt from sitting in one position for so long; his cheeks started to tingle from numbness.

His original plan had been to wait inside the supermarket where he’d have a perfect view. He had even brought all their empty bottles with him, so he could stand in front of the redemption machine. But whether the machine was legitimately out of order, or they had turned it off to discourage that clientele, or they just didn’t allow that on the Upper East Side, he didn’t know. The manager counted his stash, gave him a credit to bring to the cash register, and then escorted him out.

A truck pulled into the service area right next to Gristede’s. The driver and his helper began stacking plastic crates, obstructing Christopher’s view. As he stood to peer over them, remembering to stoop slightly, someone stopped at the newsstand just behind him to buy cigarettes. He thought he recognized one of his writers. His stomach tightened. “See what happens,” he wanted to shout, “to editors whose authors don’t meet their deadlines?”

Kola lay on her side, her paw resting across Clifford’s shoulder. His arm stretched over her, fingers caressing her. “He doesn’t even come home every night anymore,” he whispered to Kola. “It’s better when he’s not here anyhow. ’Member all the fighting? They kept yelling at each other. ’Member? Now when he’s here, they don’t fight. They don’t do nothin’. Not even talk. I liked it better when they made a lot of noise. Didn’t you? What if he never comes back? Oh, Kola, what’ll we do? Maybe they’ll get divorced, and I’ll never see him again. Or they’ll make me go live with him half the time. We’ll have to leave here and go to a new place. What if they don’t have TV? What if there’s no video games? What if I can’t carry all my things? Or they won’t let me take my cowboy hat?”

He moved closer until their bellies were touching, pressing, arms and paws and legs entwined. Their bodies were braided like lovers. Clifford wept into her chest. “I hate him. Why can’t they just be like always? Suppose when I start school, I come home one day, and she’s not here? Maybe if I have to go live with him sometimes, he won’t let you come.” Clifford raised his head, startled at the thought. “He didn’t really want you in the beginning. Did you know that?” He lay down again and hugged her tighter. “But don’t worry, Kola. I won’t go without you. Never. We’ll go away somewhere. Just the two of us. So we can always be together. And I’ll take care of you. Forever and ever.”

Kola’s thick fur muffled his sobs, her whimpers harmonizing with his.

Every day, 9,000 healthy dogs and cats are put to death. A great reduction from the 45,000 it was thirty years ago. Estimates are that eight to ten million dogs are destroyed annually, three to five million cats. Less than ten percent of the dogs get adopted, five percent of the cats:

• 9,000 killed every day, three-and-a-quarter million every year
  
• 500 million dollars, in private and public funds, is spent on animal control
  
• But nobody has an accurate record of the number of killings
  
• 9,000 killed every day
  

Animal Care & Control in New York City is only one of almost 14,000 shelters in the country. It gets around 30,000 animals a year. Just about half are adopted. The other half are destroyed.

9,000 are killed every day.

The cursor throbbed on the screen. It seemed to beat faster, as if in a frenzy of perverted excitement, keeping in time to the bile-filled balloon floating up and down Laurie’s esophagus.

Louise shoved the night table closer to her bed to make more room on the floor. She hated to exercise. Walking was one thing but now that she stopped doing it every morning because of the heat, she was afraid she’d get lazy and her body soft if she didn’t do something. It was difficult with Honda standing over her, poking his face between her up-and-down strokes, wanting her to stop or make him part of the game.

“And four and five.” She raised and lowered her legs, grunting between the numbers. “So what do you want from him?” she asked herself, in response to her decision not to see Ken so much because it was getting serious. “Here you are, like everyone else, on the lookout for a guy you can have a future with. You find a perfectly sensible man you really might make it with. And what do you want to do? Give him up. Fourteen, fifteen. Because you like him. I ask you, girl, are you crazy? Nineteen, twenty.” She turned on her side, reaching her right toe to her outstretched left arm. “So you’re afraid to get hurt. Why do you think you’re going to get hurt? Six, seven. Because, sooner or later, he’ll dump you. Why will he dump you? Who knows? So, suppose he does? What’s the worst that could happen? You’ll be upset. But you’ll be upset if you stop seeing him now. So why not enjoy him as long as you can and get upset later? Eleven, twelve. Suppose he doesn’t dump you? So? So what? So it will go on. Maybe even marriage and the whole bit. Naw, that’s not your thing. Then he’ll be the one to get hurt, not you. But you don’t want to hurt him. Sixteen. Miss Wonderful, how thoughtful of you. Trying to save him the pain of your leaving him. Twenty!”

She switched sides and rolled over Honda, who had quietly crawled behind her to watch the strange ritual. She screamed, “Hey, you wanna get flattened out, dopey?” Then she hugged him. “Huh? What do you think? Should we keep him? Oh, why am I asking you. If it were up to you, he’d move in tomorrow, wouldn’t he?” She scratched the inside of his ear, watching him luxuriate in the sensation from her perch on her elbow. “If only we could find something wrong with him. Besides his long nose. And being so skinny. I don’t know any men like that, do you? Maybe he’s got his last girlfriend’s body buried in the backyard or packed in his trunk. Maybe he’s another Norman Bates, and he’s got his mother’s skeleton all dressed up, sitting in the attic. Or stuffed in a closet.” She dropped her voice an octave to imitate Ken Hollis, saying, “Hello. Mom. Look, I’ve brought you a visitor. Come meet Louise.” Then she squeaked his little old mother’s reply: “Okay, dear, bring her up to see me.”

When Honda started barking at her weird voices, she said, “All right, all right, scaredy-cat. I’ll go back to just being me. You know—that’s it, Honda. I’m not used to being me. Except with you.”

She collapsed flat on her back to think about this revelation. She was always so busy trying to be funny or trying to act like she didn’t care that she wasn’t used to not doing anything. Not trying. Just being. She curled the fur from the thickness of the dog’s neck halfway round her finger. “Suppose I’m not afraid of getting hurt. Maybe what I’m afraid of is that when he sees the real me, he won’t want me anymore.”

The old Yellow Pages and White Pages for Manhattan each stood four and seven-eighths inches high and formed the pedestal for Rosa’s files. She had to move eight shoe boxes of papers, receipts, and bank statements off the top before she could get them out of the hall closet.

After backing out of the closet on her knees, she smoothed the top of her hair where the plastic bags over her winter clothes had brushed her head and then bent again to pick up the Classified. It weighed five pounds, two ounces. As Rosa carried it into the kitchen and hefted it onto the table, she tried to remember how thin the entire phone directory for her hometown had been. ’Course, in those days, how many people in the Italian countryside even had phones? And now, the Yellow Pages—or YP, as they called it—was not even half the size, so she had thrown it out.

She put on her glasses and unconsciously slid them down on her nose so she could peer over the top of them. Where did she put his card? Why didn’t she leave it next to the phone? Finally, she recognized the long listing for Photography under “Equipment & Supplies—Retail.”

“If I let my fingers do the walking more often, I be crippled by now,” she mumbled as she glanced at the ads for the section. Nothing seemed familiar. Anyway, it was a small place; he probably wouldn’t have a big ad. Why hadn’t she written it down as soon as he told her? Or put the card in her little leather address book?

She started at the beginning, pushed her glasses up so she could see through the lenses, and went down the list. Damn, it was a weird name; why couldn’t she remember? Rosa turned the page angrily, almost pulling it out of the binding. Of course the book was old, and he didn’t have the store when it came out. But it had been another camera store, she felt sure. She went to the top again and used a pencil point to guide her eyes down the addresses. She read “461 W. 72” and looked to the left at the name. Clear Shot Camera. That wasn’t it, but the address seemed right.
The F-Stop. That’s it!
Now it came back to her. When he had told her the name of his shop, she roared and said, “I cannot believe you tella everybody off. You use the ‘f-word’ in your store. Good; good for you.”

He had laughed and explained that the “F” had something to do with light and openings and lenses…things she didn’t understand. It was a good thing she remembered.

“Hey, bambina, we find Sabrina’s daddy. He help us get a Brownie!”

The neckline of her dress narrowed to a V, deepening the cleft between her breasts. It would not have been so alluring if it weren’t so inconsistent with the very plain style and simple print of the cotton outfit. Or the plain, simple prettiness of her face. It was the surprise that was appealing—lustful naiveté. Jessica turned slightly, knowing the candlelight flickering on her chest would be even more beguiling. Yet why would she want to seduce him?

It was a date, but it wasn’t a date. How could desire build up for a man she had listened to gargling every night before he came to bed? Listened to him passing wind that traveled like a muffled echo from his side of the mattress to hers; listened to his coughing mucous out of his throat every morning and cracking his knuckles in front of the TV? Of course she couldn’t have been much of a bargain either over the past fifteen years—the periods when she wore her hair very long and slept in rollers; when her skin would break out every month and she’d paste brown gobs of Clearasil on her pimples. Then there was the afternoon he came home early and walked in on her douching. God, he must have been turned off a million times too.

“It’s just that I’ve been unhappy for a long time.” Lenny’s words squirmed out of his mouth.

“I know you have,” Jessica responded, “but I have too.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Because you’re his
mother
.”

“Yes, but you’re his father.”

“It’s different, Jess. It’s like…like you’re an animal when it comes—”

“An animal?”

“Lemme finish. I mean a jungle animal, doing anything to protect her young. I meant it nice. Like you’d do anything, lay down your life. That’s the way it is with mothers. Your devotion was—I don’t know—fulfilling to you. It was like having a cause or a career.”

“That’s what you think? That I got all my satisfaction from having a handicapped child?” Jessica’s voice screeched. She glanced at the next table, defying the couple sitting there to listen. They ignored her, but she moved the candle away from the center of the table so she could lean over anyway. Lenny automatically bent his head toward her. “You think I
enjoyed
it?” Her whisper was like a hiss.

“No, no. Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t mean that. It’s like he was yours. I was just an outsider. Taking care of him kept you busy. No, I don’t mean it was fulfilling, maybe just filling. It occupied you. Your life revolved around him. I think I…I don’t know what I think.”

“C’mon, tell me. It’s about time you opened up and said. I thought that was the whole point of this.” Jessica motioned to their drinks, reminding him that he had suggested the cocktails—to talk. “You’re finally getting it off your chest. Don’t stop now.”

“Okay. What I was going to say, what just came to my mind was that, well, that I felt left out. That’s right—left out. Like I wasn’t part of my own family. I was a bystander.” Saying it aloud, finally, voicing it, made him acknowledge it.

His declaration unlocked all the thoughts he could not think before, the feelings he dared not feel. He sniveled as he revealed them to his wife and to himself.

Jessica was relieved by his outburst, at his trying, as Dr. Kravitz would say, to be in touch with himself. She was also angry at him, at his self-pity—a luxury she could never afford. Then, as she listened to him struggling with his emotions, an incredible tenderness softened her. She reached for his hand and held it; it pulled her heart. Maybe it was sexy to know somebody so well. To be witness to all the worst in a person you’ve been with for a long time.

“You didn’t include me,” Lenny went on. “It was you and Clifford. You taking Clifford to this doctor; you trying a new medicine on Clifford or Dr. Kravitz suggesting different therapy for Clifford; you deciding to do this or that for Clifford…put him in a school, take him out of the school, change doctors, get a dog. And what was I? I was only good to work and bring home the money to pay for it. I missed having a son I could do things with, take to a ballgame now and then, have a pizza with while you were cleaning house. Oh, what the hell difference does it make now? What I’m saying is you wanted to be the one in charge of what happened to Clifford, to us.”

“Well, you didn’t participate, so I had to do it myself. Don’t you realize how immature you’re being? You resent that your son isn’t normal enough to be pals with, to show off to the guys. I can understand that you were jealous—”

“What? Oh, come on.”

“Yes, jealous. That’s what you’re really saying. I spent all my time with Clifford and didn’t save any for you. You’re right about that. Maybe I was over-zealous. I was disappointed too, you know, that he wasn’t what I wanted. Oh, God, forgive me for saying that. He was what I wanted, but maybe not what I expected.”

“You never asked me. You made the decisions and then told me about them. You never wanted my opinion, never asked for it. You never gave me any responsibility in his life, in our lives.”

“Don’t you see? Responsibility wasn’t—isn’t—mine to give you. To dole out. It’s something you have to have on your own. It’s like freedom, Len. You have it or you don’t have it. You can’t ask somebody for it. It’s not somebody else’s to give you. It’s within you.”

“How’d you know that was going to be next, Jess?”

“What?”

“Asking you for my freedom.”