If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go (6 page)

So they became ours, the way the stray dogs and cats became ours after the summer people left them behind and moved back to the city. Now when the man wearing the safari helmet stood in front of the Episcopal church, screaming, “Jesus didn’t tell you dick, motherfucker,” over and over, instead of calling the cops, Reverend Denton led him inside the rectory and had the housekeeper serve him hot chocolate and Entenmann’s donuts. When our neighbor Mr. Zinc passed one of them crying in the rain, he offered her a ride and brought her right inside the old Prince Albert Hotel to make sure she was in the right place. When the woman with jelly rolls of fat dripping from her body performed a frenzied frug in front of Leo’s Luncheonette, instead of pointing and laughing, people applauded. And when Raven and Rita found a young guy wandering down Starfish Avenue, crying, they brought him back to Comanche Street, where they made him smoke a joint to calm down, then fed him scrambled eggs with Wonder Bread toast. They put him to sleep on the enclosed porch, and in the morning he left a note on a paper
napkin that read “What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” and signed it Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Because of Hunker Moran’s editorial, things began improving at the residencies as well. They were quickly staffed with shrinks and doctors and health aides who made sure the ghost people took their medication and ate regular meals and went to sleep on time. There was less mumbling, less weeping, less of them wandering around town looking lost and bewildered. The drugs took the great haunted staring out of their eyes so that now, if you passed them on the street, you’d think they were just like everyone else. Oh, there were still some standouts among them, but they were harmless, like the characters you find in fading small towns everywhere: the wizened old woman in the sky-blue ski hat, who sailed down Buoy Boulevard telling anyone who would listen, “Anita D’Arcy is my name, perhaps you’ve heard of me? I was a star of the stage and screen, you know”; the tall, distinguished-looking black man with salt-and-pepper hair who stood in front of the Elephant Beach Savings and Loan, tipping his chauffeur’s cap and saying, “Where to, Captain?” while opening an imaginary car door; the coffee-colored woman with the most startling sea-green eyes who met all the trains at the railroad station, asking passengers, “Are you from New York? Do you know my husband?” And there was Ruby, who wasn’t really crazy, just old and down on her luck.

Ruby was short and wide and wore lavender lipstick and rouge to match, and would come into the A&P where I worked, every Saturday night before closing, the hem of her flowered housedress dragging beneath her long wool coat, her stockings sagging around her ankles. She took forever to pay for her groceries, because she always had a hundred coupons and her money was hidden all over her body: a dollar in her coat pocket. Fifty cents in a change purse pinned to her brassiere. A half-dollar in the heel of her stout, stubby shoe. “Please, Ruby, can’t you see there’s a line behind you,” we’d beg her, watching the big clock above the
glass windows, knowing it would be past closing when we finally cashed out. Sometimes we were sharp with her, sometimes downright rude, but how rude could you be to a woman who was like your grandmother would be if your mother and aunts weren’t around to look after her? Nothing rattled her; no matter what we said, she just kept smiling, digging, turning herself inside out until she found every last cent. Then she’d sigh and say brightly, “There! That’s done. Darling, give me double bags, will you, so they don’t break on my way home?” And she’d put the bags in her old lady cart and go sit on the ledge by the windows facing the street, with her old lady scarf tied in a knot under her chin, take a blurry compact from her handbag and freshen her lipstick, lean her head against the glass and rest until the bus came. At Christmas time, she’d come in with a brand-new roll of freshly minted pennies from the Elephant Beach Savings and Loan and hand them out to all the checkout girls and stock boys and managers. “Please, darling, take it,” she’d say, curling our fingers around the shiny new pennies with her own. You’d think her hands would be gnarled and rough and covered with spots, but they were soft and smooth, as if she applied lotion every night from a bottle she kept on the windowsill of her room at the Moonlight Manor. “Take it,” she’d urge us, “because you never know. You never know.”

my country right or wrong

S
tep into my office,” Mitch said, slinging the door open wide, so that one minute we were blinded by sunlight and the next cratered in darkness. I had never been in the lounge at The Starlight Hotel during daytime, and for a minute I felt disoriented; I wasn’t used to seeing the ocean so sparkling blue outside the windows, or the sun spots on the wooden floor made from the same planks they’d used to build the boardwalk. Len, the bartender, looked paler than he did at night, his stubble more pronounced, and even the smell was worse, because the stench of ammonia mixed with beer foam that clung to most bars in Elephant Beach was like smelling an antiseptic hangover. I felt a gag rising at the back of my throat as Len set my ginger ale in front of me. I would have left, but I’d been wanting to talk to Mitch, and had run into him at Eddy’s, buying cigarettes, and since he didn’t love going to the beach (“Hard to stump around in the sand, man”) and he tended to shun bright sunlight for long periods (“The glare! The glare!”), we’d ended up in the lounge at The Starlight Hotel.

Mitch wasn’t a local like the rest of us; he was originally from
San Francisco. When Billy asked him once why he didn’t go back to California, why anyone would choose Elephant Beach over San Francisco, he said, “Because all that hippie dippy candles-in-the-park, strung-out-in-the-Haight bullshit ruined it for me, that’s why. Since when is watching a thirteen-year-old runaway freak out on acid a Goddamned tourist attraction? Peace, love and happiness, my ass. Bunch of con artists is all they are, man, picking your fucking pocket with a smile.”

Mitch was twenty-nine; his beard was threaded with gray and even though he rarely sat in the sun, his face was dark and weathered, which made his eyes all the more startling. They were this really intense blue-green, the color of Caribbean water, and they blazed out of his face like bullets. I wanted to talk to him because he was older and he’d been in the same war as Luke and he knew things that might help me to understand Luke better. I had to talk quickly, though, because once Mitch reached a certain point in his drinking it would be useless to try and get his opinion on anything. The good thing was, the drunker he got, the less likely he would be to remember what we’d talked about and repeat it to anyone else we knew. The trick was to get his wisdom on the subject before he reached “the click,” “that place between the last drink you should have had and the last drink you actually drank. You know, the one you’re still tasting the next morning, while your head’s exploding and you’re sitting around waiting for the room to blow up,” he once explained to me.

We were sitting in the same corner that he’d been sitting in with Luke when Luke had first come out that night a week ago. Mitch’s cane was hooked over the back of the barstool; it was made out of bloodwood, reddish-brown, with a silver dragon’s head that fit the curl of his fingers perfectly. He’d bought it at a pawnshop next door to the VA hospital in Manhattan, “like it was right there waiting for me, right in the fucking window, man,” and the pawnbroker had given him a discount because he was a veteran. Sometimes, when Mitch was really lit, he left the cane in the bar and stumped up the stairs to his room without it, but there was
never any danger of it getting lost or stolen. Everyone knew the cane was his, and Len would just keep it behind the bar until Mitch stumbled downstairs the next day or whenever, ready to begin all over again.

Mitch eyed my ginger ale with disgust. “That all you’re having?” he said. “Bah! C’mon, have a real drink. Disability check came today, so the sky’s the limit.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I have to be at work by three.”

“It’s only eleven thirty,” Mitch said. “Plenty of time to sober up by then.”

“I’m fine,” I said. Sitting in a bar at this hour was bad enough, but drinking at this hour would make me as bad as the women that hung around the boardwalk bars, those women with sunken eyes and sagging faces and puckered cleavage you’d see whenever you went into places like the Shipwreck Tavern to buy cigarettes or use the bathroom.

Mitch shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. He lit a cigarette, then held the match out to me, cupped in his hands. He took a long pull on his drink. Then he leaned forward and I could smell yesterday’s sweat and the taste of gin on his breath. I could see the pint bottle of Gordon’s sticking out of the brown paper bag in his jacket pocket. His fingernails were dirty, the cuticles crusted. But Liz was right. There was something sexy about Mitch, about the way his fingers cupped the flame, the way he looked at you with those piercing eyes.

He blew out the match and caught me watching him. “What?” he asked.

“Liz is right,” I said. “You do have sexy wrists.”

Mitch smiled, then winked at me. “Yeah,” he drawled. “But not as sexy as—what’s that cat’s name? The one just got back from Nam?”

I startled, looking around to make sure nobody had heard him. All I could see were shadows against the bar.

“Relax,” Mitch said. “I mean, shit, I can’t even remember his name.”

“How’d you know that—”

“Happened before the click,” he said. “I saw you lingering by the
jukebox, trying to scope us out. Plus, I saw how you were looking at him when you thought no one else was looking, and besides, I knew you weren’t biding your time for Mitchell J. Ronkowski, the one-legged wonder, whose romantic aspirations are confined to the five fingers of love.” He leaned back and laughed uproariously, banging his drink on the bar. He began coughing as if he would choke to death. Len poured a glass of water and came and set it down in front of Mitch. “Take it easy,” he said. Mitch guzzled the water, then pushed his liquor glass out for a refill. He turned back to me and said, “As you were saying, my dear.”

I drew a short breath. “A couple things.”

“I’m at your disposal,” Mitch said. “For as long as you need me, or until the booze renders me unconscious, whichever comes first.”

“First, you think guys really like virgins better?” I asked.

“Better than what?” Mitch said.

“Better than chicks who sleep with other guys,” I said. “Who sleep around.”

Mitch’s face looked pained. “Not that Madonna-whore crap,” he said. “Didn’t all that free love bullshit put an end to that nonsense?”

“Not around here it didn’t,” I said.

“Bah!” Mitch scoffed. “Around here? I’d say the priority around these parts is catching a buzz. Half the cats around here are too stiff to get stiff, you dig my meaning. They may be thinking about it, and they may be talking about it, but I’d bet my next disability check there’s a lot more talk than action.” Above us, we heard Roof Dog howling, the German shepherd that lived on the roof of The Starlight Hotel. “See there, even that Goddamned dog agrees with me,” he said.

Mitch did have a point. That night that me and Bennie had walked down to the abandoned lifeguard chair, I was after experience; seeing if I could feel something for another guy even while I was so into Luke. We’d climbed up on the chair and had gotten all cozy and I was actually a little turned on. Bennie had a great body for a junkie, and those beautiful eyes. But it turned out he hadn’t gotten his stash until late in the
evening, so he’d taken his nightly dosage of ludes later than usual, and as a result, it was like his tongue went to sleep in my mouth. I’d left him sprawled and snoring in the moonlight, alerted Voodoo and Billy so they could find him and carry him to his aunt’s house on Sister Street, and caught the last bus home. By the time I was in my room smoking my last cigarette before going to sleep, I was more relieved than anything else.

“Some guys are always going to go for that pure-as-the-driven-snow stuff,” Mitch was saying. “But there are others, more enlightened, shall we say, who prefer someone knows her way around the sheets just a little.” He took another cigarette from the pack of Camels in his shirt pocket, lit it, and exhaled, long and slow. The smoke mingled with the dusty sunlight slanting through the porthole windows behind the bar. “Six of one, half dozen of the other, really,” he said, squinting through the smoke. “But Goddamn, where do all these myths come from? Like women being the weaker sex. Bah! That’s a good one. Think the Pill liberated you, and that had nothing to do with it.” He took the cigarette from his mouth and pointed it toward me, the ashes falling on the bar. “Women always got the power, they just don’t know how to use it. Too ready to hand over the reins to any asshole with a pecker. Shit, all the scars I carry inside me—and a few on the outside, come to think of it—I got from a woman. Lot of truth to that old saying, ‘One hair off a pussy can pull a freight train.’” He raised his glass and drained it. I stared into Mitch’s face. His eyes still looked okay. I was about to ask another question, but then he said, “Besides, virginity is the least of your problems with that cat—what’s his name again?”

“Luke?” I asked.

“Yeah, him,” Mitch said. “I don’t know, darlin’. You might want to shine it on with that enterprise, maybe reconsider.”

I felt cold inside, like a piece of ice was rubbing against my bones. “Why do you say that?” I asked.

Mitch shrugged. “At the very least, you got to give it time,” he said. “He’s back, what? A month, maybe?”

“How much time?” I asked, and even I could hear the anxiety in my voice.

Mitch looked at me sharply. “What’s the rush?”

“No rush,” I said. “It’s just that—” I closed up. I didn’t want to tell him about the years of waiting, the years of watching Luke like I was watching a movie over and over, hoping the ending would be different.

“Listen, things happen over there,” Mitch said. His voice dipped a shade, as though something was weighing it down. “War does things to a cat.”

“Like what things?” I asked. “I mean, I know it must have been horrible, but—”

“Darlin’,” Mitch said gently, “you’re a beautiful kid, but you don’t know shit. Now, don’t take it personally. Because neither does anyone else who hasn’t had the pleasure.”

“I read the papers,” I said, though this was only partially true. “And I saw on TV—”

“Doesn’t mean shit,” he said. “Don’t mean shit to a tree. There’s shit over there, is what I’m saying. Bad shit. Scary shit. And the Vietcong are the least of it. At least you know they’re the enemy.” Mitch drank long and greedily. “Minefields everywhere you look. Tiny little whores, so beautiful they could make your heart stop, packing razor blades. Vietnamese birth control, cut you right where it hurts. Had a buddy killed one of ’em for what she done to him.”

I shuddered just thinking about it. I had enough trouble shaving my legs, trying not to cut my shinbone to ribbons with the razor. “But how does that even work?”

“No fucking idea, but the damage is done,” Mitch said. He licked the dregs of his glass and signaled to Len for another.

“And then you come back,” he said. “To this fucking sinkhole. All that Stars and Stripes forever crap. And instead of a ticker-tape parade—though you ask me, who needs that bullshit—you get some sixteen-year-old twat—sorry, sweetheart, but that’s what she was—whose dress
doesn’t even cover her ass, asking are you proud of yourself, killing all those babies. And nobody wants to hire you because all they remember out of the whole fucking war is the My Lai massacre and they think you’re some kind of monster. But no one ever talks about the four-year-olds with dynamite strapped all over ’em, walking at you, waving, ‘Hey, GI! Okay, GI!’ Putting their arms out for you to pick ’em up and hug ’em so you could blow the fuck up.”

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to ask what Luke had told him, but I knew that even if Mitch remembered the conversation, he wouldn’t tell me.

“And then, when you can’t take it anymore, you turn to Uncle Sam for help, and look at what happens.” Mitch shook his head and made the sign of the cross with his middle finger. “Those poor bastards.” He was talking about the Veteran’s Hospital in St. Cecily’s Parish, over in Suffolk County. It had been in all the papers, the news stations, everywhere. They had a weekly support group for Vietnam veterans having a hard time adjusting to life back in the States. The group had nine men in it, plus the psychologist who ran it. On a rainy Thursday, while they were all sitting around talking about whatever people in support groups talk about, one of the veterans took out a .22 pistol and shot up the men in the group. He killed five of them, including the psychologist, and most of the others were critically injured. Afterward, he just sat there until the cops came and arrested him. When they asked him why, he just kept saying,
“Dung lye, dung lye,”
over and over again.
Newsday
said
dung lye
means “no more” in Vietnamese.

“Excuse me, pal.” A voice came down from the end of the bar, hidden by the dust motes dancing through the streaming sunlight. It came from the group of construction workers sitting at the other end of the bar. “Some of us don’t appreciate hearing this country being referred to as ‘a fucking sinkhole.’”

“Is that so?” Mitch asked, like he was really interested.

“Yeah, it’s so,” another voice said.

“What company you fight in?” Mitch asked quietly. “Where were you, ’68, ’69? Da Nang? Saigon? Mekong Delta?”

“I was in Korea,” the voice said. It was a fat man’s voice. I couldn’t make out faces or features in their sunlit silhouettes, but their asses were crowding their barstools, hanging over the sides.

“Korea? You mean that pussy war, lasted about two minutes?” Mitch asked, like he was making polite conversation.

I heard the stools swivel and shift, heard the creaking as someone stood up, his work boots hitting the floor.

“I’d watch my mouth, I was you, pal,” the voice said.

“There’s some of us here still believe that America is the greatest country on earth,” someone else said.

“Then some of us must be real fucking assholes,” Mitch said, blowing smoke rings. They rose up to the ceiling.

Len was looking back and forth between Mitch and the construction workers. “Let’s take it easy,” he said, his fingers curling around the brass rungs behind the bar.

“You don’t like it here, why don’t you move to Russia?” one of the construction workers asked.