“NOT PREGNANT!”
“Hallelujah!”
“What?!” She laughed.
“Nothing. That’s great, Rie. You took a test?”
“Yup. Bled right on the stick.”
“Jesus.”
“Already thanked him.”
“Let’s celebrate tonight.”
“Definitely. But you’re wrapping it up twice. Where are you, by the way?”
“Tank’s.”
“Who’s there?”
“Ya know, the guys. Tank, Jabie, Joey, Sonny.”
“I’m not hanging with Joey and Sonny. Can’t stand those two. Is Carina there?”
“Yup.”
“That’s it?”
“… That’s it.”
When I took Maria’s virginity, I felt like a great conqueror; I wanted to take out my father’s atlas (the internet was very much up and running at this point in my life, but clicking little boxes didn’t carry that… that umph! of slamming a thick atlas on the coffee table) and run my hand across the continents, like Attila the Hun, like Alaric the Visigoth, like Charlemagne or Cortés, and cry out, “All of this is mine! King Ferraro, defeater of point guards, masturbator of the mid-Atlantic, took the virginities of each a faire maiden in his kingdom that stretched from West Road to the faraway lands of Mendham, up to the mountains and lakes of Kittatinny and down to the shores of Ocean City!”
I had believed that I had entered manhood when I plunged into Diana to the lights and screams of Roman candles, but I was mistaken. I became a man when an olive-skinned, almond-eyed brunette stood in front of me in brand-spanking-new black lingerie, with so many bells and whistles (more like snaps and straps) that my hand would get caught and tangled in the lace—especially those two straps bisecting each of her high, tight butt cheeks and connecting to a thigh-high stocking; oh what a flutter those two little straps could bring.
Maria spoiled me, not in the way every single teacher told us we were spoiled growing up in Short Hills, but in the way that made me feel Achillean. On Fridays she would bring me succulent, dripping sandwiches from the Millburn Deli or Oscar’s Sandwich Barn, and we’d scarf them down in front of the freshmen munching on their bologna on rye—Maria did this, foregoing her senior lunch free from the confines of the high school.
We walked right down the middle of the hallway, and sometimes I’d grab a cheek and squeeze, especially if it was a So Lows day and I wouldn’t be seeing her until that night. We kissed before class and we kissed after class and she wore my varsity jacket—with “Ferraro” written in royal blue script on the cream collar—to any and all functions. We left lovely little graphics on each other’s Facebook pages, with hearts and kisses and anything else mushy before big games or weekends away at camps or clinics. We’d wave to each other from our team benches, and sometimes she’d blow me a kiss.
On Saturday nights she wore new lingerie or costumes from Spencer’s, each one with more straps, snaps, and webs of tantalizing lace than the last, and modeled them for me as I lay parallel on the couch like a Roman senator. Everything I said was hyperbolically brilliant or hilarious or adorable. And not in a patronizing sort of way, but in the sort of way that love, like a filter, just made everything so damn exquisite—I almost wanted to dig up my old epics of yore, the ones I used to hide in my desk at Glenwood, and have her read them aloud, swooning over every description of a decapitation and shattered shield. During weekday nights, she brought me Dunkin’ Donuts hot chocolate when it was cold or Dunkin’ Donuts freezes when it was hot and the lightning bugs were out and about—sometimes we’d fool around in her brand-new massive SUV parked right there in my driveway.
My favorite place on Earth was the postcoital pullout bed in my basement as we lay panting and catching our breath, serenaded by Nick at Nite or a thunderous sermon of Tom Jones Cleaver.
“I can’t believe you put this guy on,” Maria said one October night, arms twisted behind her back as she snapped on her red bra.
“I find it entertaining.”
“Hey, you didn’t say ‘I love you’ back during.”
“During what? Doggy? I’m sorry, sweetheart, but…”
“No, you jerk,” she smacked me on the arm and then pounced on my exposed chest and stomach. “When you were on top of me kissing my neck.”
“I didn’t, huh?”
“Nope.”
“I said it earlier when we were in the car.”
“Yeah.”
“With a rage hotter than the deepest fires of Hell!” Tom Jones Cleaver’s voice sonic-boomed from the surround sound my father had recently installed.
“I said it before your game against Nutley, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Oh! And I know I texted it to you between third and fourth period because we wouldn’t be walking to class together.”
“So what, Victor…”—I kinda liked when she called me Victor—“it’s important that you say it when we’re making love.”
“To kill a child! My lovelies, to kill a child is the worst sin on Earth!”
“Hey, what if you were pregnant? Like, what the crap would we do?”
“We? You, my friend…”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Okay, you, my love, would be on the run from my uncle.”
“The Dentist,” I said under my breath.
“And my dad. He’d be on the first flight from California.”
“I’d need witness protection.”
“You’d need an army.”
“Abortion! My flock! We cannot stand for this senseless murder!”
“Would we keep it?” I asked.
“I… yeah… I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You wouldn’t leave for Arizona.”
“Don’t say that! You know I hate thinking about it.”
“Baby, I’m only kidding. You’re going to be a superstar out there. I’ll get shirts and hats and follow you on TV and everything. Go Sun Devils!”
Maria had accepted a softball scholarship to Arizona State last month—we had a framed newspaper cutout of her signing the “Letter of Intent” hanging in my basement over near the list of Prominent Italians.
’Zona State was a perennial softball powerhouse obsessed with Maria’s speed and arm. She was basically guaranteed the start at center field as
