I had grown so accustomed to the pastor and his histrionic tirades that the roar of his flock and the screech of his microphone soothed me to sleep, and I could hear his voice in my dreams.
My father didn’t care that I continued to sleep in the basement, as long as I started working out again and took phone calls from the football recruiters at small schools from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Mom would check to make sure I wasn’t hanging from a belt—I was surprised she didn’t go down to the train station and nab one of those “Don’t Kill Yourself” signs off the platform to hang in my room.
Text from Tony: Yo yo what you doin this wknd?
Text to Tony: idk
Tony’s ringtone was the chorus to the Millburn Hockey team’s song, “That Was a Crazy Game of Poker” by O.A.R.
“Hey Tony.”
“Hey man, listen. You gotta get out there. I know it sucks right now, I’ve been there. But you gotta get back out there.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re a senior, ya know? Ya know, like, you’re never gonna have this year again.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t have your eye on any underclassmen?”
“No. I mean, yeah. I have, but…”
“Get on it. Think of this as a… a… a liberation! Ya know?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright then. Go enjoy yourself and keep me posted. Love ya, buddy.”
“You too, Tony.” Click.
As if my brother’s words were the breakers of chains, I flipped open my RAZR and began to mish-mash, mish-mash, click-clack, click.
Text to Ivanka: Hey :) what are you doing this weekend?
My father was renowned throughout the Garden State for the intricate, Arabesque doodles he drew on whatever piece of loose scratch paper he could find while he sat on the phone mhmm-ing and ahaa-ing while the speaker on the other end prated on.
“Mhmm. Well… mhmm, I don’t know what to tell you, Mark. The coach and I don’t really have any other choice.”
The pencil-gray mosaic cascaded down the left-side column of the high school basketball scores and updates in the Star-Ledger. My father rushed off the phone when he saw me coming down the hallway.
“Alright, Mark, I gotta run. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I’ll tell him. Ciao.” Click. “Buon giorno (translation: good morning), my friend!”
“Buon giorno.”
“You want eggs or pancakes? Sunny-side up? Over easy? Scrambled? Hey, you want toast? Oh, Vito, I got some real good Italian bread. Have it with your eggs. It’s excellent.”
“Okay. Dad, I’m gonna have a friend over tonight.”
His phone went off. He picked it up and shook his head. “Maanuggia. Hold on, pal, I gotta get this. Athletics. Yes. Hi, Larry. Mhmm. Uh-huhhh.” Robotically he sat back at the table, located the pencil, and began where he left off with the mosaic web. “No, the coach and I are still deciding. It is his team in the end. Pardon? Well, they got caught. I don’t know what to tell you. Mhmm. Okay, we will let the parents know. I know Jeremy wasn’t there. Uh-huhh. Well, then he has no need to worry. Okay. Mhmm. Ciao.”
“Jeremy Finklestein?”
“Yes. If you haven’t heard, the soccer team had a party and the police showed up. It’s been a whole thing. A real pain in my you-know-what. The coach and I are deciding what we want to do. It’s the off-season, so he isn’t sure. I had parents say it’s nothing and everyone does it. I tell them, I tell them, ‘What do you want me to do?’ Someone’s dad… Greenberg? Greenfeld? Something Jewish. He compared it to those Summit kids who raped that girl. Like, this is nothing compared to that. Well, they’re still underage! Hey pal, you want ketchup? The salt and pepper is already on the table.”
“Dad, I said I’m going to have a friend over tonight.”
“A girl?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s greaaaaaat, pal,” he said, swinging away from the stovetop, smiling from ear to ear.
“So…”
“Oh, we’ll make sure to leave and be out of your hair. We’ll go out for dinner. I’ll call your mother after breakfast. Who is she? A Millburn girl? She play any sports? Okay, you don’t have to tell me. Maybe you’ll take her to prom? Okay, okay, we’ll see. But I think that’s just great, pal.”
I picked up Ivanka in the Little Moscow parking lot. Her electric-blonde ponytail exposed skin so white it glowed a pale purple in the February darkness; the rest of her was covered in black. She spoke perfect English but had just enough of an accent to let me know it wasn’t her first language.
We exchanged greetings and sat in awkward silence until I took the right at Saint Rose of Lima church and accelerated up Short Hills Avenue.
“Wait, I brought this,” she said, pulling out a crinkling plastic water bottle from her purse. “Oh, it’s vodka. I took it from my brother. It’s from Ukraine.”
We went into the basement through the garage. I took the plastic bottle of vodka and poured it over ice and mixed it with cranberry cocktail that had been sitting in the basement refrigerator since Christmas—a cultural violation I completely overlooked, but the freshman didn’t give me any grief for my sin.
“I don’t know how you guys drink it without a mixer,” I said, turning the whole of Eastern Europe into one united bloc.
She stood and scanned the framed All-Division, All-Conference, and All-Area cutouts that hung above the couch. “I still do not understand American football.” She tapped on the glass of the recruitment letter from the University of Hawaii I had meant to take down when that dream crashed after a lackluster junior season. “Wow. Are you gonna go there?”
“Not sure yet,” I said, lying to her face.
She sat back on the couch, a little closer this time, and I offered to fix her a new
