Pins: A Novel (32 page)

“I don’t believe you! I leave you for one minute!”

“But, Ma. I didn’t–”

“Give her to me.”

He stood over his crouching mother while Sophia bawled, a loud piercing scream. Her face was a red mushy bump, tears dribbling down with her drool. Joseph stood, tried to reach out his hand, but his mother stormed up the stairs, carrying his sister away.

He didn’t turn the movie off, but his mother did a while later.

“She wanted to watch this,” he said.

She said each word carefully, as if picking up glass. “Don’t…do that…ever again.”

As if called by the banging pots, his father popped his head through the kitchen door. “Hey, Marie. You comin’ back or what?”

“Get in here.”

No trip to Chez DeStefano. Burnt ziti again.

19

“What I’m saying is,” Miss Pooley explained during what she called his Final Report, since he was no longer considered a PINS. “You’re a very smart kid. Your aptitude tests are well above average. I know you’ve had problems in school, but believe me, it’ll pass. And since you have no previous record, you’re very lucky, and very fortunate things turned out the way they have.”

Terrific, then how come I acquired the habit of chewing my fingernails?

“How is your family doing?”

My mother keeps waiting for the Virgin Mary to appear over the dining room table and convert me to a heterosexual. My dad’s smoking again. My brother thinks I’m an alien. Sophia still likes me, but that’s only because I can imitate Grover. “Fine.”

“Now, do you have any plans for a summer job?”

“Yeah, making johns.”

“Excuse me?”

“Plumbing. Ceramics department.”

“Oh, well, that sounds like an…interesting choice.”

“Yeah, but I think the word is ‘appropriate.’“

“Why’s that?”

“Because my life’s in the terlet.”

Miss Pooley sighed.

“That’s a joke.”

“I’m laughing inside,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Joseph, let me remind you of a few things. You have two parents, a very rare thing with the kids I see. You have a home. You have a brain. You aren’t strung out on drugs. I hope.”

Joseph rolled his eyes, told himself an inside joke about being piss-approved.

“On top of that, you’re white.”

“I’m Italian.”

“Okay, European-American, but that’s white to a judge and a potential employer.
 
You have it easier.”

“I guess.”

“Are you sexually active?”

“What?”

“Your father told me you had a sexual relationship.”

“Oh jeez, whad he say?”

“There are services available. Do you know how to use a condom?”

“I think that’s a personal question.”

“I’m sorry. I just want you to be careful.”

All the guys I want to make out with locked up or shipped away. How more careful could I be? “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Did you read those pamphlets I gave you?”

“Yes. My parents gave me. Yes. Yes.”

“All right.”

“And no, even though it’s none of your business. I’m…I haven’t done that.” He figured she didn’t understand specifically what he meant, but he wasn’t going to explain.

“Well, you want to make sure it’s someone you love, that you’re careful.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“How about we just finish these annoying little forms and call it a day so you can get out of here. I’m sure your father’s very tired of the selection from our candy machine.”

“Okay, but, um. . .”

“Yes?”

“This is gonna sound kinda sick, but, I don’t know what it was, but, I miss them.”

“Who?”

“Bennie and Hunter. Dink especially.
 
Once, I had just ridden shotgun with Bennie, because, you know, me and Dink always sat in the back, but even so, that one time, Bennie was cool to me, and there were so many good times we had together.”

“Yes, I’m sure there were good times.”

“It was weird, I felt…like finally I belonged, like they weren’t gonna tease me anymore. Before all this, it was something good, ya know? I was really never a part of the group. Does that sound weird to you?”

Miss Pooley walked him to the door. “Lemme tell you about a few cases I worked on. Ten years ago in Middlesex, a bomb blew up a house and killed two people. The bomber was their son. Now, don’t get any ideas. Coupla years ago in Rahway an escaped juvenile lived for two years in a PATH station before being discovered. A month ago in Camden a baby was found on the highway, alive. The mother is a crack addict who thinks the child is possessed. Last week in Jersey City a woman was attacked by a herd of rats outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

“Wow.”

“Well, I didn’t work on that one. I read that in the newspaper.”

“Oh.”

“That’s a joke, Joseph. You can laugh.”

“I’m laughing inside.”

Riding home from Miss Pooley’s office for the last time, Joseph felt an odd familiarity with a certain corner, then noticed in just a flash a wall he’d painted.

Awesome.

The wedge of brick disappeared.

His father said, “What?”

“Huh?”

“You see something?”

“No.”

His dad was supposed to be fixing the garage door, but he kept putting it off, enjoying his Saturday. Ever since the funeral and everything, Dino decided he ought to “spend more quality time at home.” Babysit the PINS was more like it.

Some baseball highlights game rambled on and on. Commercials alternately blasted beer, trucks, beer, trucks. Joseph fidgeted in his seat, fighting off the urge to just lay on top of his dad like he had done when he was little. As if he sensed Joseph’s thought, his father got up. “You want a soda?”

He shook his head.

“This is boring.” His father flicked off the box. The room was silent.

“What, are we doing some grief counseling now?”

“I just want to talk.”

“So Mom clears out so we can shout, or me bawl my eyes out, is that it?”

Marie had taken the kids down to Newark for the weekend to visit Grandmama, she said, who wasn’t feeling well, she said.
 
Just a visit, good for the kids, good for Grandmama, good for something, but Joseph knew.

She didn’t trust him alone with his own brother or sister. It was up to his father to deal with him, talk to him, maybe get him to straighten up.

“Whyncha go pick a record?”

“What, from your stuff?”

“Yeah, I think there’s something there you like.”

He went into the dining room, crouched down to open the cabinet, flipped through the Springsteens, Madonnas, Crosby, Stills, Nashes, picked out a Beatles album with all the funeral flowers on it. He put it on, sat on the dining room floor, looking at the record cover, listening to the music. He could feel it coming, another “chat,” wanted to avoid it by not returning to the living room, but then his dad parked himself down on the dining room floor next to him, said, “That’s the second one of those I got. The first one had all these posters and stuff. Shoulda saved ‘em. Coulda made a lot of money selling those old records.”

“What, like how much?”

“Oh, vintage, hundred-fifty dollars, maybe more.”

“For an old record?”

“People put a lot of value in old things. I know you don’t get that, but it’s true.”

“Did you ever see them?” He held the album.

“Oh no, they broke up when I was about ten years old. Used to watch them on
Ed Sullivan
when I was about Soph’s age.”

“Did you get stoned?”

“Not at her age!” His father’s eyes sort of bugged out jokingly. He covered his mouth with his hand while stroking his mustache. “Well, kids were doin’ a lot of stuff in those days. It wasn’t such a big deal then, to get it, and . . .”

“So did you?”

“Yeah.”

“Did Ma?”

“A few times, with me, but she didn’t like it. It messes with your head.
 
It…I mean, she would be asleep and I’d wanna go out dancing or …get romantic. We always ended up on opposite sides.”

“Like now?”

His dad’s forced grin dropped. “Look. She is having a hard time with all this.”

“She hates me.”

“She does not hate you.”

“Some kid in school said people who do drugs have babies that come out deformed.”

“That is not why you are…Look, your mother loves you. Actually, she’s afraid of you. For you.”

“Me? What, does she think I’m just gonna… Doesn’t she believe I didn’t do anything?”

“Your…You have really gotten angry all of a sudden and I know it’s from all…the trial and Anthony but don’t take it out on her okay?”

It was funny seeing his father sitting on the floor. Joseph imagined him at a party, young as himself, sharing a joint, being stupid. Under that mustache, Dino was just a big boy, a boy-man.

Joseph looked at the record again, at the picture of the Beatles. “The one that died, John Lennon.”

“Yayugh.”

Joseph looked up at that sound.
 
“Why are you crying?”

“That puts me in another place that was very sad, when they shot him. Your grandfather got sick, although you were a baby at the time. Grampa spent his first time in the hospital and I was very sad. We went to the city, to Strawberry Fields in Central Park. We were doing some Christmas shopping and I said ‘Come on, let’s go,’ and she understood, I think.”

“Did you take me?” Joseph remembered the trip to New York to see big balloons on Thanksgiving. He’d sat on his father’s shoulders all afternoon, watched his breath fly up to meet the Spider-Man balloon.

“Oh yeah, had the little backpack, the papoose.” It lay stored up in the attic, along with a lot of other baby stuff they’d used for him, then Mike and Sophia.

He saw his father’s squinted eyes tear. Joseph stood transfixed a moment, felt a longing for his father, but at the same time wondered why such a happy memory for him was so upsetting.

“You’re not…smokin’ pot, are ya?”

“No, Da. Just used to get drunk with the guys, go out beating up homos, just good all-American fun.”

His dad sighed. “I only wish you’d come to me before things got out of hand.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Just, just talk to me, about anything, anytime, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, how ‘bout helping me with that garage door?”

“That’s okay.”

“How ‘bout we toss a football.”

“Dad. I don’t do football.”

“Awright. You don’t ‘do’ football.” He stood, then crouched. “Rassle?”

“No. I don’t…I’m totally outta shape.”

“I’ll go easy on ya.” Dino went for Joseph’s head, but he ducked his father’s swat. Then he stood to go, but as his dad wrapped his arms around him, banged his hip against the dining room table trying to escape.