After Maria and I broke up, I texted Karl and told him that I loved him. He had been checking up on me periodically ever since.
Text from Karl: Want to hang tonight?
I deactivated my Facebook and maybe that was the tell, or maybe it was some other force that perpetuates rumors and gossip throughout the halls of high schools, but I was immediately peppered with questions of “What happened?” followed by “You guys were, like, perfect for each other. I thought you’d get married.”
“She cheated on me!” I wanted to announce over the loudspeaker. “That’s right! She… she fucked her way through the Sun Devil roster”—football or baseball, I wouldn’t need to specify—“and got… got choked out of her mind!”
But I didn’t have anything juicy or scandalous as ammunition to demonize Maria, so I fell back on old reliable, that artfully crafted excuse: “Oh, she just went crazy.” And the conversation would end.
The pattern of noises—electric garage door open, humming humming humming of a V8 engine, door squeeeeak open, bump bump bump bump bump bump bump up the basement steps, knock, knock: “Victor, honey, you in there? Can I come in?” Swish. “How are you feeling, my prince?”
“Victor.” Britney nestled her way around my mother in the doorway without skipping a beat. “Mom says that you and Maria broke up. I’m so sorry!”
“Britney, go give your big brother a hug.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered in my ear as she hugged me in my desk chair.
“Thank you, Brit.”
“Awww. Okay, how are you doing?” my mother asked, trying to find her ringing phone in her pocketbook.
“I puked.”
“Where, at school?” asked Mom.
“At lunch.”
“Where did you go to lunch?”
“The Deli.”
“You make it to a bathroom?”
“Barely.”
“Okay, honey, want some soup? Go take a hot shower and I’ll make you some soup.”
My phone rang emitting the high-pitched vocals of the Four Seasons’ December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).
Click. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hey pal, heard you got a little sick at lunch?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, take the day off from lifting. Or maybe go back and get a lift in. It might be just what you need. What’s that? Hold on, my friend. Who? Okay, well tell him I’ll call him back, but my hands are tied here. Okay, well tell him I’m in a meeting. Sorry, pal. Hey, we’ll hang and watch the game tonight.” He didn’t specify which one. “Nana made some manigawt (translation: manicotti). I’m gonna pick it up after work. Maybe I’ll swing by and get you. She’d love to see ya. What? Ahh, maanuggia! Okay okay. Hey Vito, I gotta run and deal with this. Ciao.”
I started to feel better after my shower, uplifted even, like Maria had done me a favor by breaking up with me: Now I’ll be free to fuck my way through college and I even have a few months left to scum. Until I checked my phone.
Text from 973-555-7767
I was, once again, the cockroach.
The towel dropped from my waist as I rushed to open the message: How are you doing? I sat on the toilet, already beginning to sweat from the steam, and I was mush, cockroach and mush, as I slid off the porcelain and back to the floor where I belonged.
I eventually got to my feet as if re-learning to walk and click-clacked on my RAZR.
Text to 973-555-7767: I’ve decided I want you back.
I said it as if this entire schism had been in my control. As if I had, in fact, parted ways with her.
Text from 973-555-7767: Please don’t, Victor.
I threw on a pair of sweatpants and a grease-stained Star Tavern t-shirt and left for the kitchen to retrieve my soup and retreat back to my room or the depths of the basement. But as I approached the hall, I could hear my mother sniffling and see her wipe away tears.
I knew she liked Maria, but I didn’t think it would…
“Oh, hello, my prince. Your soup is in the microwave. Maybe nuke it for another minute if it isn’t warm enough.”
“You okay, Ma?”
“It’s just these bastards.” She shook her head as she looked at the television mounted on the wall. “These sick fucks.” She naturally lowered her voice to swear. “They’re already getting out. These sick… could you imagine? They only served a few years in juvie and now they’re back on the streets. Do you remember what they did to that girl? That could’ve been… I can’t even say it, Victor.”
I walked over to the microwave and watched as she wiped away a tear. I looked up at the television—MEMBERS OF “SUMMIT SEVEN” RELEASED TODAY—and curled my hands around the rim of the bowl.
You’d think a few years in the pen, the can, the big stink, would’ve taken their toll on the boys, beaten ’em up a little, like an old catcher’s mitt. But they looked as squeaky-clean as the day they appeared on the news back in 2002, bursting with big-toothed, radiant WASPiness.
“Look at how smug they are. This one, this one—Harrington, I think—his father still has the fuckin’ nerve to get in front of the camera and claim his son was a product of some system or part of some conspiracy. I honestly can’t keep up, Victor. I just can’t.” She turned off the TV and sat across from me at the kitchen table. “Hey, everything is going to be fine—stop playing with your hair—I know it doesn’t seem that way right now. Here, ya know what? This is just a chapter in your life. Actually, it’s like a book. You ever finish a really good book and wish it wasn’t over? Well, that’s what relationships are like sometimes. They end, but you need to look back on the good times and be happy that you had them, that you experienced it and enjoyed it while you could. But guess what? Victor, look at me, this is important. Guess what, my son? There are other really good books.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
I retreated to the depths of the basement balancing my soup in one hand and
