An Infatuation (8 page)

“Your uncle committed suicide?”

“Evidently.”

“Why did your father tell you this now?”

He rested his forearm over his eyes. “Because he found a letter that I wrote.”

“So?”

“To another guy?”

“To me?”

“You always were an A student, Harold.”

I moved his arm away from his eyes. “What did the letter say?”

“It doesn’t make any difference.”

“It does to me.”

Mario sat up on one elbow. “I apologized to you for being such a dick with Barbara. I asked if we could study together again.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. Nothing is wrong with that.” Another tear escaped. “It was the part I wrote about missing you, and the part about the good times we had in your bedroom. Something is wrong with that. Something is
very
wrong with that.”

“I’m sorry about your father, Mario. But it’s good that you got everything out into the open. Now we can go back to being friends and to studying together.”

“No we can’t, Harold.”

“Why not?”

He looked at me as if I didn’t speak English. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand?”

“No, explain it to me.”

“My father told me tonight that if I’m a faggot I shouldn’t come home. I should kill myself in my car, like my uncle.”

“Mario….”

“And when I called him a son of a bitch, he took off his belt and beat the shit out of me. When I called out to my mother for help, she left the room.”

Mario’s tears flowed freely. I held him in my arms and he winced from the pain. I took off his T-shirt and gasped at the welts on his shoulders and back.

“Oh, God, Mario, you have to tell someone about this.”

“Who?”

“Tell the police.”

“No.”

“Someone at school.”

“No.”

“We can tell my parents.”

“Stop, Harold. I don’t want to tell anybody. This is
my
problem.”

I examined his bruises closer. “Let me put some cream on them.”

“Harold, please stop.”

“You really should—”

“That’s not what I want.”

We were lying on our sides, facing one another. “What do you want, Mario?”

Mario looked at me like someone dying of thirst facing a gallon of water. He kissed me hard on the mouth. I tasted the alcohol. He kissed me again even harder, and the stubble on his face rubbed against my skin like sandpaper. He practically ripped off my shirt and pants, kicked off his jeans, and lay on top of me.

“Mario, what are you doing?”

“What you want me to do.”

He yanked down my underpants, then threw off his own. Next, he pushed me down onto my back, and forcefully lifted my legs into the air.

I experienced flashbacks from Tommy and Keith. “Mario, no, stop!”

Mario looked down at me as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “Stop? Isn’t this what you wanted, what you’ve been begging for, ever since I first came here? Don’t you want to play George and Emily, or Tennessee Williams and Alexander the Great?”

“Please, Mario. Not like
this
.”

“Isn’t
this
what gay people do? I thought you and Kinsey wanted me to be gay? Am I the wrong number on the scale, Harold?”

I started to cry. He released my legs, and they fell to the bed.

“I can’t make anybody happy, my father, my mother, Barbara, or even
you
.”

I continued to cry. As if a comatose man becoming conscious, Mario took me in and cradled me in his arms.

“Harold, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I can’t believe I did that. Please forgive me.”

“It’s okay.” I couldn’t stop crying.

“No, it’s not okay. Harold, my little Harold. How could I hurt you?” He kissed away my tears and held me close into his chest. “How could I hurt
you
?”

Then he got up abruptly, vomited in my bathroom, put his clothes back on, and left.

During the next few months, I went to school, club meetings, and work. When I ran into Mario at school, he apologized for his behavior at my house, blaming it all on the alcohol. I knew better. Though we spoke occasionally at school, Mario never visited me at home again. He spent most of his time with his football friends and, of course, with Barbara. His father must have been proud.

While Mario made arrangements for Ivy League college life the following year, I worked at the fruit market. My part-time job consisted of lugging boxes of fruit from a truck into the store, unpacking it, washing it, killing any bugs on it, and turning it so the bruised sections were not visible to the customers. The customers complained about the prices, the manager complained about the customers, and I thought about Mario.

CHAPTER FIVE/20 YEARS AGO

O
NE
SPRING
Saturday after a long day at the fruit market, I came home to find Mario’s little brother, Vincenzo, sitting on the sofa in our living room. He resembled a pubescent Mario, surrounded by baby fat. Afraid to leave Vincenzo with his father, Mario had brought him over on a number of our past tutoring sessions. While I tutored Mario, in the good old days, his brother would read one of my old books or play one of my old games. His little brother was so quiet that Mario and I often forgot he was there. That Saturday my mother had let Vincenzo in to wait for me before she left for her breathing and chanting class. She had evidently given him a piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk before she left, the remnants of which adorned his chubby cheeks. As I stood over Mario’s brother, I also noticed a purple mark between his right eye and cheekbone.

“Is Mario okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s fine. I thought he might be here.” He looked out the bay window.

“He’s not. What happened to your face?”

He continued to avert his eyes. “I got into a fight.”

“With who?”

“Some kid.”

I sat next to him on the sofa. “Vinnie….”

“Mario’s the only one who calls me that.”

“Sorry.”

He smiled for the first time and unveiled two adorable dimples. “No, I like it.”

I returned the smile. “Okay. Vinnie, why are you looking for Mario?”

He looked down at his worn sneakers. “I can’t go home right now.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

I sat at the edge of the sofa, feeling like a therapist. “Vinnie, Mario told me about the… problems at home… with your father.”

“I figured.”

“Did your father
hit
you?”

Vinnie looked out the window again, and a tear fell down his pudgy cheek.

“Is your mother home?”

He nodded.

“Can’t she help?”

He shook his head, and the tear landed on his sweatshirt.

I felt a connection with this kid. Perhaps it was because I’m also a younger brother, or maybe it was because he shares Mario’s genes. “Vinnie, you know it’s not right for your father to hit you?”

He nodded.

“And you know you should tell your mother.”

“She knows. She don’t care.”

Italian tempers and bad grammar must run in the family.

“What about your brother?”

“He takes care of me, but he ain’t around so much no more.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Vinnie, Mario’s not coming here tonight. We don’t study together anymore. He’s probably at Barbara’s.”

His lower lip doubled in size. “I hate that bitch. She treats me… and Mario like shit.”

He’s obviously smarter than his brother.

“Do you want me to call Mario at Barbara’s house?”

He shook his head vehemently. “She won’t let him come home.”

“Is there somebody else I can call? A relative, a teacher, a friend?”

“I ain’t got nobody else.” Another tear appeared. “I didn’t even do nothin’.”

Let’s fit in a grammar lesson while you’re here.

He looked at me sadly. “I don’t get why he hates me.”

Your father is a real piece of work, kid.
“Vinnie, sometimes the people we love can hurt us the most. They don’t mean to, but they do.”

“But why?” He looked up at me as if I was a wise guru.

“Maybe they find out something about someone they love, or about themselves, that scares them. Maybe they realize that what they always thought was true… isn’t. They get so frightened that they might lose the people they love that, without knowing it, they push those same people away.”

Vinnie hunched his back into the sofa. “I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I.”

“Some people are nuts.”

I laughed. “Vinnie, I totally agree with you there.”

To my surprise Vinnie rested his head on my shoulder. I instinctively put my arm around him and rocked him back and forth. After sitting like that for a while and telling him that everything will work out, he got up and walked to the front door. Once there he stopped, looked back at me, and said, “Mario shouldn’t be with Barbara. He should be here with you.” With that he walked out.

The next evening, after reading a
Wonder Woman
comic book, I summoned up the courage to call Mario. Happily he answered the phone on the first ring. Unhappily he thought it was Barbara. She had given him instructions to wait by the phone that night for her call. I begrudgingly offered to hang up, but Mario seemed to want to talk.

I asked, “Is your brother all right?”

“Oh, yeah, he told me he was looking for me at your house. Sorry he bothered you.”

“It wasn’t a bother, Mario. Vinnie’s a sweet kid.”

“Thanks for looking after him, Harold.”

I asked, tentatively, “Why did your father hit him?”

He sighed. “Who knows why he does anything? Vinnie might have done or not done something around the house, my mother could have burnt the dinner, the mail might have come late. It could be anything to set him off.”

“Can’t you call the police?”

“Right. Then he’d kill us.”

Uh-oh.
“Mario, I have to confess something.”

His voice tightened. “What?”

“I was worried about you… and about your brother. So I told Hannah… about your father.”

“And?”

“And she told her mother.”

“Holy shit.”

“And her mother might have called some agency.”

“Damn. Harold, why the hell can’t you mind your own business?”

“I was worried.”

“Well now
I’m
worried.”

“It’s not right what your father does, Mario.”

“Well, it’s not right that some nosy social worker will come here and ask us questions, then leave my father to kick our asses worse than before.”

“Hannah said the woman from the agency will talk to you and your brother.”

“Good. We’ll tell her that everything is fine, and that she should leave us alone.”

“Your brother is just a kid.”

“I protect my brother, Harold.”

“Obviously not enough.”

“I take care of things.”

“Right, Mario. By trying to be the son your father wants you to be.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“Mario, when he was here, Vinnie said something.”

“What?”

“That you should be at my house, not at Barbara’s.”

“So? He hates her guts.”

I was on a roll. “I think Vinnie meant more than that.” After a pause I finally said it. “I’ve missed you.”

After a long exhale, he said, “Harold, please don’t start this again.”

“Do you want to cram together for finals?”

“Harold, I’ve been really busy finishing up the school year and planning for college.”

“I can help you with that.”

“I’ve… rather, Barbara has been writing my speech for graduation.”

“I can help you with that too.”

Mario sounded like Pinocchio. “Harold, you have to understand. I can’t spend as much time with my guy friends as I did before Barbara and I got together. She’s really a handful.” He added, “In more ways than one.”

I blurted out, “I’ve been going to the YA meetings. There’s a guy there who likes me.”

After a tense pause, Mario asked, “Who?”

“A new kid. You don’t’ know him.”
Mission accomplished. He’s jealous.

Mario cleared his throat and talked like a used car salesman with a lemon. “That’s good, Harold. You deserve somebody nice.”

I’d finally had enough. “Stop it!”

“What?”

“I can’t listen to this shit anymore.”

“Did you curse? You never curse.”

“Mario, we are both lying, and for what? Because of something a priest said to you? Or something your father, who let his own brother die, supposedly believes?”
It’s now or never.
“I love you. I thought you loved me too.”

After a lengthy inhale, he asked, “What do you want from me, Harold?”

To go back to the way things were.
“Tell me something, Mario. Honestly. Did you ever care about me? Do you now?”

“I can’t do this, Harold.”

“Please. Mario. I want to know. I think you owe me at least that much.”

After a long pause, he asked, “Will you let this go if I tell you the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’m not bi like your Kinsey thinks. I understand that you are gay, and I accept you for who you are. But you have to accept me for who I am too. And you have to accept that Barbara is my girlfriend. And you’re my friend.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re saying this due to internalized homophobia.”

“Harold, this has to stop.”

“Then you’ll have to stop it, Mario.”

“All right. You want the truth? I’ll give you the truth, Harold.” Mario’s voice was thin and quivering. “I never had romantic feelings for you. I knew you were gay. I played up to you so you would help me get good grades and get into a top college, and you did both.”

“I don’t believe you.” My voice broke.

So did Mario’s. “I’m sorry, Harold. You wanted the truth. That’s it.”

I hung up the phone and wept into my pillow for what seemed like hours, but was only fifteen minutes. When my sobs became heaves, I looked up and saw my mother standing over me.

“I miss your sister too. She’ll be home from college for break soon.”