Little Boy (18 page)

I started thinking of what my friend Kyle
would do in the same situation. When I’d told him about Lynn and
what happened in the mall, and then about how I broke up with her,
he didn’t react as I’d hoped. I really thought that, of all people,
Kyle was the one who’d slap me five and say, “Way to go,
Gahdfaddah.”

But when I told him about what happened with
Lynn, he just looked at me grimly and responded: “Hey, boss—better
judgment.” He’d never said that to me before, but it wouldn’t be
the last time. It would’ve been a slap in the face had he said that
in front of Paul or Mike. But, as usual, Kyle was a cool
consigliere
, and he advised discreetly. I didn’t really know
what the hell he meant when he said it. But I guess what he was
trying to say was that using Lynn and then dumping her was
wrong.

Well, I wanted to use good judgment with
Maria. As a matter of fact, I wanted to end the spat as swiftly as
possible. When she returned from the kitchen, and sat on the other
side of the sofa from me, I reached over and rubbed her thigh
gently.

“Is it okay to rub your thigh?” I asked.

“Don’t be a fucking dick,” she said, angrily.
I don’t know why, but it was always sexy to hear her use
profanity.

“Oh, come on, Maria. I’m sorry. I didn’t
realize you weren’t ready. But you shouldn’t go around telling me
that you’re prepared to do something you’re not.”

“Go around? Huh? Are you saying it’s my
fault?” I didn’t say a word. “Because I thought I could trust you
enough to tell you what I was thinking. And just because I was
thinking about something, that doesn’t mean I’ll do it.”

“I really thought you meant you wanted to do
it. Maybe I misunderstood—or you didn’t explain it well
enough.”

“Most of the guys I’ve known are too dumb to
understand the difference between thinking and doing. I thought you
were different.” She hit me right where it hurt with that comment;
I loathed being compared to the loser guys she’d dated.

“I’m different!” I insisted. No response.
“Really, I am. And I’m sorry. From now on I’ll listen to you more
intently. And I won’t assume anything. Because you know what
happens when you assume—you make as
ass
out of
you
and
me
.” Finally, she laughed.

“I’ve never heard that before,” she said. I
didn’t tell her that it was Sister Domenica from St. Ann’s who told
me that to my face when I announced sarcastically that I assumed I
could shout in the school library.

I took Maria’s hand in mine. “Listen, let’s
just forget this altogether, okay? You tell me when you’re ready to
go further than kissing. The ball’s in your court.”

Smiling, Maria looked up at me, scooted down
the couch, and leaned her head against my shoulder. I could tell
that she was still somewhat skeptical. She didn’t know if she
should remain angry with me or not. And, to be honest, neither did
I. Finally, it was just as the disagreement hadn’t even happened.
The hostility simply dissipated.

We were huddled together on the couch, much
closer than we usually were on the blanket in Central Park. I heard
birds chirping outside, and the cool early summer breeze whirled
through her window.

Maria closed her eyes for a moment and didn’t
notice as I crooked my neck and pressed my head against the inch of
painted wall between the two mirrors directly behind me. The left
half of my face was divided from my right. It’s weird when you do
that, because you can see how different one side of your face is
from the other. Actually, it looked sort of scary, so I quickly
pulled back and returned to staring at Maria, smelling her sweet
black, syrupy hair.

At last, she reopened her dark little eyes
and looked up at me. “Thank you,” she said with a sigh. “For a
minute there I thought you were like that guy in the park, or all
the other guys I’ve met.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I promise, baby.”

Kyle would’ve been proud.

***

Several days later, when I saw Maria again, I
gave her the following poem that I’d written about her:

It’s so easy to hurt the one that you
love—you don’t even have to try.

Without second thoughts or serious doubts,
you’ll place a tear in her eye.

Testing her love must be done, though you
know it’s not the right way.

But when it happens you simply must hope
she’ll love you again the next day.

I wrote the poem because, more and more, I
was falling in love with Maria, and I knew that she felt the same
way. But I had two problems. First, I was getting more and more
jealous of her, and I was beginning to not be able to stop myself
from testing her, questioning her. It’s hard to describe.
Strangely, I still feel the same way even though I know she’s not
around.

The second problem I had was getting her to
say “I love you” first. I don’t know why I wanted it that way. I
just did.

She read the poem and nearly cried. I knew
that by the end of our conversation, she’d say I love you to me,
and I’d say it back. But the conversation was tough. It was
difficult to get it out of her. She implied that she wanted to say
it, though. In fact, I remember her saying, “A.J., there’s
something I want to tell you,” at least two or three times. I asked
her if it was a good thing, and she said that it was. I couldn’t
wait to hear her say it.

“Has anyone ever told you that she loved
you?” she asked.

“No,” I responded. “Nobody has ever said that
before.”

“Have you ever told anyone that you loved
them?”

I hesitated. “No.”

I lied. I’d told Rachel that I loved her
about a year before. But I was only fifteen back then, and now I
was seventeen, and I really did love Maria. I didn’t want to break
her heart by telling her the truth.

“Has anyone ever said they loved you, or
vice-versa?” I asked.

“Nobody,” she said. “I wouldn’t let them, and
I wouldn’t let myself. It’s immature to say it unless you mean
it.”

Again, I hesitated. “Were you surprised that
I used the word ‘love’ in my poem?”

“I was, but I was happy that you used that
word. Did you mean it?”

I was going to respond, but she interrupted
before I had the chance.

“A.J., there’s something I have to tell you.”
All at once, I was nervous and excited. Just hearing those words—I
love you—from a girl like Maria was all I could ever ask for. She
was so beautiful. And she’d never had a boyfriend before. I knew
she’d had a hard life.
It must be so difficult for her to trust
anyone, to express love
, I thought.

“You know,” she said, “my mom always tells me
that I don’t hug people enough—that I never hug anyone.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I continued to
listen.

“But it’s not that I don’t want to hug her or
my father or my friends, it’s just that I don’t want to get that
close to anyone. You know what I mean?”

“Sure,” I said. I should’ve stopped there,
but I didn’t.

“But what’s the big deal about hugging
someone?” I asked. I was so immature.

“
What’s the big deal?
A.J., hugging a
person is an act of love, of caring. You’re placing your entire
body within another’s arms, and theirs within yours. You’re saying,
‘I trust you.’ You’re saying to that person, ‘If I fall, please
catch me, because I trust you enough to place not only my body, but
my heart and mind under your care.’”

“That’s very eloquent,” I said. And it was.
Maria didn’t usually speak that way. She lived in Ridgewood, along
Fresh Pond Road, a working class neighborhood where kids still
played stickball in the streets, and hung out on in front of
bodegas all hours of the night. Often, she spoke like a girl who
spent a lot of her time hanging out on those corners for most of
her young life. So, naturally, she began to speak like the people
she hung out with. Instead of saying “these,” she sometimes said
“dese”; she often replaced “talk” with “tawk”; she referred to her
dog as a “dawg.” I guess I did it a little too, because I’m also
from New York, but Maria took it to another level. Her Brooklynese
was exotic. It was like listening to a very intelligent woman with
a foreign accent, but that accent is from your own city. It sort of
turned me on.

But Maria had a way of wiping away that
accent when she needed to—especially when she spoke with me. I
don’t know whether it was conscious or not. It might’ve been
totally offhand. Either way, when she dropped her Brooklyn accent,
her voice was like a mature woman’s, even though she was only
sixteen. And her words were, too. But most importantly, her
feelings
were mature. There was no doubt in my mind that
night that when she said “A.J., I think I’m falling in love with
you,” she meant it. No matter the accent, Maria would never say
anything that she didn’t mean.

“A.J.,” she said, “I think I’m falling in
love with you.”

“Why don’t you say it, then?” I think that
came out a little harsh, and I didn’t intend it to sound that way.
But Maria knew what I meant.

“A.J., I love you.”

Pause. Dead silence. I didn’t say a word for
what seemed like five minutes. Then I responded:

“Maria, that was a very tough thing for you
to say, I’m sure. After all that you’ve told me about yourself—and
I’m sure I don’t even know half of everything there is to know—I’m,
well, impressed that you had the guts to say what you just said.
And flattered. It’s difficult to tell someone you love them when
you’re unsure about how they feel about you. And it seems to me
that we are each in search of someone special, someone to confide
in. I think that both of us have been screwed a lot in the past. I
think that, finally, we’ve each found in the other someone that we
think we can trust.” I grinned in delight. Maria grinned back.
“Most importantly, we’ve each found someone to hug, because we both
know that the other will be there in case the other falls.”

No response. I think I was a little
long-winded, but I wanted to get a lot of stuff through to her
before I expressed my love.

“Thank you for saying that, Maria. I can’t
tell you how much it means to me to hear you express such a
powerful emotion. I can’t thank you enough. But I guess a good
start might be saying “I love you,” as well, because I really do
love you, Maria.”

For a split second, Maria and I shared a
silent but mature bliss. It was as mystical a moment as two
teenagers could have.

We continued to talk for a little while
longer. It was almost as if what was just said hadn’t even been
said—but in a good way.

Before I left that day, I said that we should
celebrate that day, June 14, 1992, forever and ever, because that
was the day that we expressed feelings we’d had for each other for
so long.

“Happy June Fourteenth,” she said. “Have a
good night, A.J. I love you, hopeful.”

“I love you, too,” I said. I flew home in the
Skylark, happy as could be. When I got home, I wrote the following
line in my journal:

“I love Maria. Need I say more?”

I’m glad I was alone, because I was
speechless. I never felt so speechless again until today when I was
in Central Park with Megan.

***

It’s funny, because even though I started
losing knowledge right around the time I met Maria, that was also
the time when I really broke out of my shell, and really started
talking a lot more. I hadn’t always been a talker. Mom, ever since
I was a little kid my you’d always tried to get me to play with and
talk to my classmates. You would pick me up after elementary
school, and before we went home you’d ask some kid I knew if he
wanted to come over my house and play with me. It sounds stupid, I
know; but it always bothered me. I never wanted to get involved
with most people. And now once again I prefer hanging out alone in
my room and watching late-night TV movies. Everyone else I know
goes to bars or goes dancing. I hate that shit. I’d rather be alone
in my room.

But for a brief time after I met Maria, I
could be pretetty witty and gregarious. And, of course, I really
like talking about jets and the Air Force, but other than Maria, it
was always hard to find girls that like to talk about that stuff.
With Maria, instead of talking about what I was into, I tried to
discuss what I think she was interested in. But I was never
interested in the same things that others were. Which is why, until
Maria, and after Maria, I never really could stand being with a
girl—or anyone, really—for more than just a little while.

My relationships with girls never lasted for
more than a few months. I suppose that’s natural for a teenager.
While my behavior was common, my reasons were not. At some point in
each relationship, when I grew bored with the girl, I’d become
really obnoxious. I did it by choice, though. I did it so that the
girls would become disgusted with me, leaving them no choice but to
dump me. I never, ever could break up with a girl. Lynn was the
closest I’d ever come, and even that was forced by me. I just
couldn’t bring myself to say, “I think we should just be friends”
because that was a big lie. I didn’t want to be friends. And while
so many other guys didn’t want to either, I couldn’t bring myself
to say it.