Five Boroughs 01 - Sutphin Boulevard (17 page)

He shrugged. “This day just needs to end.”

I nodded in agreement. “Are you heading out?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you come with me? Get some dinner.” His hand moved to my shoulder and rubbed out the tension. I made an appreciative sound. “We could order something or whatever.”

“I should go home and make sure no one has died today.”

Nunzio pulled away. “Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately.” I shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I feel sorry for you, not me.” Nunzio crossed his arms over his chest, the leather of his jacket creaking. “What are you doing next week?”

“What’s next week?”

“Thanksgiving, man. Are you doing shit with the fam?”

I’d forgotten all about the upcoming holidays. Either that, or I’d buried them in my alcohol-saturated brain, since it was the first holiday season since my mother’s death. Just the thought tightened my chest, and I wanted to go back to burying my face in my arms.

“Either my aunt will invite us over, or they’ll ask to do dinner at the house.”

Nunzio grabbed a student chair and straddled it. “They’re still gonna do all that even now?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it, but no one has said otherwise, so I’m going to assume they have the same plan. It’s not like there is anywhere better to have a get-together. Both my aunt and uncle have small apartments.”

He continued to stare at me, so I pushed on, desperate to change the topic. If someone had told me adulthood was equal parts being broke, depressed, and taking care of my family financially, I would have opted out and tried to find a one-way ticket to Neverland.

“What about you? Your parents doing anything?”

“No,” Nunzio scoffed. “Apparently they don’t celebrate holidays anymore. Besides, I haven’t seen them in almost a year.”

I remembered that—the past Christmas, Nunzio had wound up having his own family drama when he’d walked out on them in the middle of Christmas Eve dinner and fucked and drank his way through New Year’s. He’d never given me the details about what had happened, but I suspected it had a lot to do with his parents coming down on everything he did. It had been that way for as long as I remembered, and watching him grow up being rejected for not being the perfect Italian son had played a large part in my own decision to stay closeted.

As much as Nunzio said he didn’t care about having the approval of his parents, I knew it hurt him to be considered a disappointment, and that had been the Medicis’ consensus, even before they’d walked in on him railing some frail blond boy in high school. His gayness wasn’t the root of the problem, but it had been the final nail in the coffin of their relationship.

“You can come over and spend it with us. My aunt will cook a pernil and pasteles. You can chill and watch football with Raymond and keep him entertained while I try to talk my dad out of drinking himself to death. Sounds like a blast, right?”

It sounded like a goddamned tragedy, but Nunzio grinned like I’d just offered him a gold bar.

“You sure? Because I’m gonna come. Don’t offer if you’re not sure.”

“Of course I’m sure. I can have something normal to look at when everyone else starts driving me insane.”

“If I’m the only piece of normalcy you got, then you’re up shit creek without a paddle.”

“I think I’m there anyway.” I forced myself to stand, arching back in a stretch. I wished I could teleport back to Queens. I could take a cab, but I didn’t feel like shelling out forty bucks because I was too lazy to sit my ass on the train for an hour. “So you going out or going home?”

“I wanted to go with you,” he pointed out. “You don’t even want to grab something before getting on the train?”

“Nah, I don’t want to spend the money.”

“It’s okay, I got you.”

“Nunzio, stop asking me.”

He scowled. “Fine. I’ll just go to the gym since you want to be a fucking lame ass.”

“I’m fine with being a lame ass.”

Nunzio picked up a piece of student work. His mouth crooked up in a half smile, and I wondered if he’d grabbed the essay in which one of my kids had referred to Marie Antoinette as a thot—“that ho over there.”

“David was lurking around and waiting for you,” he said. “He made tracks when he saw me, though. I think I still make him nervous.”

“Maybe because you’re really aggressive.”

Nunzio dropped the paper on the desk while I packed up. “Oh please. I haven’t even looked twice at his prepubescent ass since that night at the happy hour. He’s lucky he got to touch my dick the one time that he did.”

“You seemed into it at the time.”

“Yeah, because I was drunk at the time.”

I avoided his gaze and stuffed folders of ungraded work into my backpack. Whenever David came up, the intensity of the conversation took on a vibe I wasn’t altogether comfortable with. It was in the way Nunzio’s voice sharpened, the way his eyes narrowed and mouth pursed into a slash.

“Why? Are you still into him?”

“No. He’s a good-looking dude, though.”

“If you say so.”

I met his gaze. “I already told you I have no interest because he has a boyfriend.”

“I heard they broke up.”

“Did they?”

“Yup. You could jump on that now if you wanted, and your morals wouldn’t be corrupted. I bet that’s what he was coming to tell you—that his ass is now free to be claimed by random dudes at the club, but he’d rather be full of your dick since you turned him out so good last time.”

“Wow, you really went in with that scenario.”

“Shut up.”

I jerked the zipper around my bag, but it was a tight fit with the amount of folders and papers. I hadn’t graded in two weeks, and I was two major assignments behind. It seemed like I’d been playing catch up since the first week of school.

“He didn’t want to bring himself in here to say whatever he had to say, so I’m going,” I said.

“You sure you don’t want to wait around and make sure he isn’t going to offer up his hole?”

“You’re obsessed.”

“No, I’m not.”

He was, but I let the issue drop and grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair. “Walk me to the train. Maybe David will show up so you can make fun of him some more.”

“If only.”

We left the building and parted ways. I spent my subway ride slumped in the seat, nearly dozing off twice before I was disrupted by an overexcited religious zealot preaching about hell and damnation. She was followed by a guy who was panhandling while wearing a brand-new pair of Jordans. By the time I was in Queens and getting off the train at Sutphin Boulevard, I was done with people for the day.

I made the walk from the train to my house without looking up, pretending not to hear the voices of numerous people calling out to me as I crossed the avenues and wound my way through the park. Living in the same neighborhood I’d grown up in was a pain in the ass primarily because I knew everyone, from the crackheads who hung out by the LIRR to the guy in the bodega who used to sell me loose cigarettes back when I’d been too broke to buy a pack.

Running into old high school friends wasn’t exactly a blast either, unless it was one of the curious guys I’d brought over to the gay side for twenty minutes in heaven on one of the rooftops. They always wanted to relive those old times, but I wasn’t even in the mood for that these days.

The grit and grime of South Jamaica didn’t make me reminisce about running through the streets with Nunzio back when the subway had taken tokens, Mister Softee had been seventy-five cents, and we’d been just fine sweating it out on the pavement as long as we could do it with a bag of chips and a quarter water. All I could see were the same sorry-ass bums hanging out on the corner, the avenue filled with litter, and the loitering undercover cops who still thought folks in the neighborhood were too oblivious to spot a DT.

Morale sank to an all-time low and deteriorated further once I turned onto my block. The house my mother had worked her ass off to pay for was starting to match my dismal perception of the entire neighborhood. I couldn’t tell if our lack of attentiveness was finally setting in, or if the depressing reality of the holidays was casting everything in shades of gray.

It was hard not to think I had let her down. Try as I might to convince them, Raymond wouldn’t get a job, my father wouldn’t stop drinking, and my childhood home was all but falling apart. The fact was cemented by the handful of bills in the mailbox—one was a cut-off notice for the electricity, another was a letter from the bank reminding me I was late paying the mortgage.

I crumpled the envelopes in my hand, shame warring with frustration after I stepped into the house. The heat was cranked up so high it was oppressive, and I caught a whiff of stale beer.

Dropping my backpack by the door, I kicked it shut and strode through the house. Each room was messier than the last, and every light was burning. The kitchen counter was littered with dirty dishes and glasses, the garbage was overflowing, and there was an array of laundry tossed here and there in different rooms.

I stomped up the stairs, ready to unleash my rage on Raymond or my father, but stopped dead at the unmistakable sound of bedsprings creaking. For one horrifying moment, I thought it was coming from my mother’s bedroom—the bedroom my father now occupied—but then female moans emanated from Raymond’s side of the hallway.

My relief was mirrored by revulsion, and I clenched my jaw. Great. Now I would have to listen to him fuck all night.

More aggravated than ever and spoiling for a fight, I peeked into the master bedroom. Joseph was sprawled on the bed, snoring and nearly sliding off the edge of the bed. He was drunk again.

I deflated.

Moving farther into the room, I examined the man who had been in and out of my life without ever pausing to stay for more than a moment at a time. Beneath the haggard face and unkempt appearance, he looked like me and Raymond. He was tall and lean, had once been attractive and strong, and I knew him to be far more intelligent than anyone would ever assume. But he’d wasted all of the things that should have made him successful.

Even now with his barely functioning liver, even after my mother had died so abruptly and so young, he was still knocked out and reeking of booze. Sometimes I wondered what had happened to make him give up. I’d asked him those questions for years and had never received an answer more substantial than, “I’m just no good. It’s not in me.”

For reasons beyond the realm of my comprehension, I tugged off his tan boots one by one. They thudded to the floor, but he didn’t even twitch at the sound. Shaking my head, I removed his jacket and wrenched off a scarf twisted around his neck. It seemed like he’d stumbled in after a bender and keeled over right after stepping into the room.

“C’mon, Pops,” I muttered and guided his limbs to coax him beneath the blankets. “Get in before you get cold.”

Joseph mumbled something unintelligible, but didn’t protest when I covered him up. His mouth shifted into a brief, tired smile before he began to snore once again.

I almost backed away, but something caught my eye. On the floor by his now discarded boots was an old picture of my parents. They couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen, were grinning at the camera with big white smiles, and were wearing New Year’s party hats.

The anger that had sluiced through me in hot, violent waves transformed into a depression that sank into my bones like lead. I placed the picture on the bedside table next to him, careful not to set it in the sticky spot that had gathered from a long-dirty glass, and hurried from the room.

The sound of my father’s deep breathing, my brother and his girl, and the more distant laughing and music emanating from the neighbors culminated in my mind until all I wanted was to go upstairs and figure out which bottle to open first.

Thanksgiving

“A
RE
YOU
sure this is a good idea?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? It’s not like they don’t know you or something.”

Nunzio shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket as we walked. The day was bitterly cold, the sky an oppressive gray, but even a promise of snow on Thanksgiving wasn’t enough to make me feel more festive. Being around Nunzio helped, but his pinched, worried face and lip-biting paranoia was catching.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But your mom was always there in the past. You know your dad hates me. Always has.”

It was true. Something about me and Nunzio as a unit had put my father off since the very beginning. It was like he could smell our impending gayness, even though I’d never come out.

“And,” Nunzio added when I failed to respond, “your uncle vocally hates gay people. At least Joseph shuts up about it around me.”

That was also true.

“Just chill out. If anyone gets out of line, I’ll straighten them out.”

“Mikey, no. The last thing I want is for you to be fighting with your fam because of me. I should have stood my ass home.”

The wind gusted, blowing my scarf to the side. I grabbed the end before it unraveled, and swore when I lost my grip on the twelve-pack I’d just bought from the bodega.

“Just calm down. You’re acting like it’s a big deal when nothing has happened yet. I told my pops you’re coming by, and he didn’t flip out about it.”

Nunzio fixed my scarf, handsome face creased with worry. His hair was smashed down by a knit hat, and unruly strands escaped the sides.

“I just feel weird without your mom. She’s the only one who was okay with me being around so much.”

His hands fell away, and a fierce protective streak shot through me.

“It is okay. It’s my house and I invited you.”

Nunzio didn’t reply. I stalked off again, and he trudged after me. He’d been going back and forth with this ever since I’d met him at the train station a half hour ago, and hadn’t stopped even as I went from store to store looking for some aluminum pans I’d apparently neglected to get enough of, according to my aunt.

We entered the house, but Nunzio hung back and watched me wipe my boots on the mat. I rolled my eyes, and he followed my lead, removing his jacket and scarf while peering through the archway like he was expecting a guerrilla attack.