Chapter 1
Ron was riding shotgun in the pink Cadillac. It was dark and he was trying to see in back of him. Quimpy was driving. It was the beginning of July. Quimpy was calculating how long it would take to empty his apartment and wipe down every piece so that he was sure there were no cockroaches. In the back seat, Angel was almost asleep, and Celeste was sitting still and hoping that meant that Angel would sleep through the night.
Ron cast a sidelong glance at Quimpy, who was on cruise control and heading for the end of the night. Ron wanted to look into Celeste’s eyes. He wanted to see her baby’s eyes again. He was confused. Maybe he should have just gone home at the end of the day. He was helping Quimpy to move one antique piece of furniture at a time from one end of Paterson to the other in a pink Cadillac convertible. It occurred to Ron that if he ever had to live out of a car, a Cadillac would be an excellent choice. He wanted to see her face. He wanted her to look at him. He wanted the baby to open her eyes and gaze into his soul again.
The Caddy rolled to a stop in front of Celeste’s home. She gathered Angel into her arms. Ron wanted her to turn around. He told himself that if she was interested, she would look back at him. He watched the roll of her hips disappear as she walked up the stairs and into the small, brick Cape Cod. The baby was asleep and Celeste did not look back.
Quimpy said, “Too bad about her, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said Ron.
“That big guinea family, married twice, already popped out a kid. It’s over,” said Quimpy.
Ron was silent. He wondered if that was why she hadn’t turned around.
The next day Ron was back at Quimpy’s place. The move was in its second week. They took two or three wooden pieces at a time. They made at least three trips a day. There was a lot more to go. Quimpy was a collector and he liked spindly-legged oak. Ron’s summer checks were coming in. He was working out on the track. Quimpy was an old friend and Ron didn’t mind doing him a favor. Besides, Quimpy was giving him excellent pot.
Celeste startled them both when she appeared. Ron stood but seemed paralyzed. She kissed Quimpy on the cheek and moved towards Ron.
“You were talking about going on vacation last night,” she said.
Ron was confused. “I was?”
“I think that you should consider Arcosanti. It’s a great place to think about.” She extended her right hand and presented a stapled collection of copied library research pages to him.
Ron looked over at Quimpy and then into her eyes. “I’m not sure that I know what you mean.”
Celeste said, “If you have any questions about this or anything else, I put my phone number right here.” She pointed to the hand written number at the top of one of the photocopied pages. Ron looked down at it. He was pretty sure that his mouth had dropped open, but then she was turning and leaving.
She had been wearing jeans and a white cotton top. Ron was stunned. Quimpy wasn’t saying anything. She didn’t make eye contact with Quimpy on the way out. Quimpy felt strangely dismissed.
“Do you think she just gave me her phone number?”
“Looks that way,” said Quimpy.
Ron said, “I don’t know what to do about that.”
` “Give her a call,” said Quimpy.
Remembering Celeste, Ron agonized. They had spent a day together in Quimpy’s old converted garage. Then she was living in the City and drove a red Italian sports car. Ron felt lucky that he had transportation. She was tan and beautiful and the way the she laughed made him feel warm and excited at the same time. But she was talking about clubbing in New York and making that scene or a different scene. Ron knew that he did not have anything that interested her but his smile. He smiled for her as much as he could and the next thing he heard, she was gone and married.
A few weeks ago, Quimpy had brought her up again. She was now twice divorced and living back home with a baby. “Imagine your life just being over and settled that way,” said Quimpy.
Ron had felt a pang of sadness when Quimpy had said that. “So are you gonna start seeing her again?” he’d asked.
“Too many guineas and with that kid they will be all over her. But if she wants to drop over and get laid it will be ok.”
Ron replayed that conversation in his head. He wondered if that was why she had come to see Quimpy. He tried to read the stuff she had given him about Arcosanti, but he couldn’t understand why she thought he would have been at all interested in it.
As they packed Quimpy’s huge collection of clothing into the back of the Caddy, Ron wondered if they should check those things for roaches too. Maybe roaches didn’t like clothing. “So you’re sure that it’s ok if I call her?” he said to Quimpy.
“Sure,” said Quimpy smiling. “Why would you want to call her?”
“She gave me her phone number,” said Ron.
“You know she’s a crazy bitch, right?”
“I don’t know. I remember liking her a lot when I spent that day with her in your garage.”
Quimpy was scratching his beard. He wasn’t really paying attention to Ron. He didn’t know why Celeste had done the stupid thing with the phone number, but he was pretty sure that he didn’t care.
Quimpy’s old place was going into foreclosure. The landlord was in jail and his wife had not been able to afford to heat it last winter. He wasn’t spending another winter with his balls clinking together like ice cubes. When he had bought her a tank of oil, she had turned the heat way up and used it all as fast as she could. Quimpy didn’t like moving. It was a project that required help and took time and threw him out of his routines. Ron was alright, but Quimpy didn’t like seeing anyone every day. His new place was an ethnic mixture of Blacks, Arabs, and Hispanics. It was actually closer to his school. It was an easier shot to the bowling alley. The move was going to be a good thing. Then he saw Ron’s lips moving and realized that Ron had been talking to him. He tuned back in.
“You’re sure you don’t mind if I call her?” Ron was asking again.
“I’m sure,” said Quimpy, telegraphing his exasperation. “I just mind that you keep asking me about it.”
That Sunday morning Ron stayed in bed and read the newspaper. Then he drove over to the track and ran. He started calling Celeste about three o’clock in the afternoon. There was no answer. He played his guitar. He called again. Still no answer. He went for a walk. He called again. He considered ditching the whole idea. He smoked a joint and played his guitar again. He listened to some music. He took a shower. He watched the Yankees lose to the Angels and go into the All Star break two games under .500. He went out and brought home some Chinese food. By ten o’clock, he was sure that this was just a stupid idea, but he had called so many times that day and he couldn’t let it go.
When she picked up the phone and said “hello” he began to sweat. He looked down to see that he his body had jerked in the bed at the sound of her voice and brown sauce from his order of hot spiced shredded beef was leaking onto his sheets. He pulled back the corner of the sheet and covered it so that he didn’t have to look at it or get distracted.
“Hi, it’s Ron Tuck.”
“Oh, hi,” she said brightly.
Ron felt himself smiling. She was happy to hear from him. “I was just calling to tell you that I finished that article about Arcosanti.”
“Yes,” she said. “What did you think of it?”
“I think I need to talk to you about it some.”
“Why don’t you come over now,” she said.
Chapter 2
Ron tugged the splattered sheet from the bed …balled it and through it into the corner of his closet. Then he slipped on a pair of fresh jeans and a dark blue, button down shirt. He combed his hair looking in the mirror. He brushed his teeth. Then he was out the door and into his car.
The summer night was warm and the breeze from the open windows of the moving car cooled him down. He felt his hands sweating and rubbed them on his jeans. Jesus, he was acting like a school boy. The drive was smooth. On Sunday nights most of the world was home, or headed there, and thinking about Monday morning work. Ron smiled and thought about how much he loved having the summers off. The parkway lights glowed yellowish, soft, and hazy. Ron glanced down at his hastily written directions. He couldn’t see them. He paid the toll and pulled the car off to the side of the road. He tried to read his scribble and cursed his handwriting. He couldn’t make it out. She’d never understand if he didn’t get there. He thought this was the right exit. He’d pulled off the parkway and looked for a phone booth. It was then that he realized that he hadn’t taken her number with him. Ron said, “I’m too stupid to live.”
He did have the address and so he decided that he would let his instincts take over. He drove towards his school. She did say that it was close to there in Fair Lawn, the next town over. He stopped at a light on Paramus Road and made a left. It felt right. The streets were dark. The road was wide and silent and winding
The he came to another light. Instinct told him to turn left. And there was something that he recognized. He knew where he was! Ron looked up at the twinkle of stars and smiled to them. They seemed to be giggling. He felt himself concentrating. He turned the Ford to the right, the springs squeaked. He hated that the springs squeaked so much. It felt like people could tell that he was coming and would refer to him as Squeaky. Ron saw the circle and knew it was her house. He felt his body begin to relax. At least he had gotten here. When he got out, he looked up and thanked the giggling stars.
Celeste came out of the door just as he moved towards her house. She looked gorgeous. She was wearing a long, flowing ankle length skirt and a white cotton top. He brown hair was below her shoulders and bounced as she walked. She took his hand quickly and turned him around. “Let’s go for a drink,” she said. “It will be easier to talk.”
They got into Ron’s car and he winced each time the springs squeaked. She didn’t seem to notice. He had the sense that he could feel her smiling next to him as they drove to the bar.
When the waitress came over to their booth, Ron really didn’t know what to order. Other than having naked women gyrating in front of him, his time in bars had been negligible. He always blamed it on the dives that his dad had taken him to when he was a kid, when his dad was fixing juke boxes and pinball machines and pool tables in Newark. A thought that the business for which his dad worked must have been connected to organized crime struck him, and for a second he fixated on it and then he pushed it away and grinned his best dimpled grin for her. She returned the smile.
“I don’t think that I’m much of an Arcosanti type,” said Ron.
“I really didn’t think that you were either,” said Celeste with a mischievous grin.
“Really, the reason that I was calling was that I wanted to see you and talk with you and the Arcosanti thing gave me an excuse.”
“Let’s forget about Arcosanti,” she said. “It was a pretty thin reason for giving you my phone number but it was all that I had.”
Ron felt his heart begin to pound. “You wanted to see me too?”
“Yes,” said Celeste. “I don’t know why but it feels like I know you.”
“We did meet a long time ago,” said Ron. “I mean, really a long time ago.”
Celeste said, “Quimpy told me that we had, but I must have had you mixed up with someone else. I thought you had thick glasses and blondish, curly hair.”
Ron was confused. She didn’t remember him. She was describing his friend Hank. Would she have been happier if it had been Hank who showed up?
“That was an old friend of mine. His name is Hank. I’m not sure what he’s doing these days, but I think Quimpy told me that he is a golf pro.”
Two glasses of wine appeared at their table and Ron reached into his pants and pulled out a wad of bills. He never had his money neatly arranged. He felt his cheeks redden as he fished for something other than a single. He wondered if all the singles would let on to her that he went to go-go bars and wondered if she would be disgusted by that and just want him to take her home. Then he sighed visibly with relief and saw a ten dollar ball and slipped it onto the waitress’s tray.
“But we did spend an afternoon talking at Quimpy’s garage,” he said.
She turned her eyes towards him and shifted her body so that it was angled to face him. He felt her foot touch his leg and then move away. “What did we do?” she asked lightly. She was still smiling. She had a great smile that spread from her mouth up to her eyes. They were large and brown and searching his face in the most delightfully teasing way.
Ron swallowed. “Um, we got high. We talked about politics. You told me that you were working on the Underground Railroad and helping guys to get to Canada. You told me that you were also writing to guys who were in Viet Nam because you didn’t think that it was their fault that they were there, and that you hoped that it helped that they had someone to write to.”
Celeste felt a jolt race through her body. He wasn’t fooling. He did remember her and he remembered details. That was such a long time ago. How could he possibly remember that?
“That must have been me,” she said.
Ron grinned to himself. He loved his memory. He could just picture things and bring back those pictures and his mind would move like a camera through the recollections and he could see himself and he could hear what people were saying to him. It didn’t happen all the time, but it happened often enough. He had decided a while back that he remembered the things that were important to him, even if he didn’t know why they had been important. It was like his memory was his guardian angel.
“You drove a red sports car,” Ron continued. “And you were working at this food company.”
“Nabisco,” she said. She wondered if she should feel uneasy, but she didn’t. She felt complimented. “How do you remember all that?”
Ron grinned again and put his head down. “I don’t know. Sometimes things just stick in my head.”
She smiled. “And I stuck in your head?”
“I guess so,” said Ron. He paused thoughtfully. “Well you did and then you didn’t. I’ve been thinking about you since we saw each other last and I guess that’s when I remembered those things.”
Celeste sipped at her wine. “Maybe Quimpy helped you fill in the details.”
Ron laughed. “Not exactly. He just got tired of me asking if it was ok for me to call you.”
Her eyebrows gathered. “Why did you ask?”
Ron was silent. He wasn’t sure how he should say this. How did he explain that in the code she still belonged to Quimpy? “I just felt like I should,” he said.
“Quimpy knows that I’m not going to go out with him under any circumstances. I made that clear from the start,” said Celeste.
“Your daughter is beautiful,” said Ron. “She looks at you and you know that she understands everything that is happening around her.”
Celeste offered another of those smiles that made him want to gaze into her eyes and bask in their light. “Of course I think she’s very special but I’m prejudiced.”
“Does she see her father much?”
“He’s allowed to visit in our living room. He stays a while and then he loses interest and wants to talk with me or my family, but no one is really interested in talking to him.”
“Was he abusive to you?”
“Not physically, but emotionally he was. He called me every day and asked me to have an abortion and then he had his father call and ask me to have an abortion and I wasn’t doing that again.” Celeste stared into Ron’s green eyes and wondered if she had said too much. She was more of a private person than this, but the way that he made her feel just put her at ease and caused her to want to open herself and answer honestly. She wanted him to know what he was getting into. Celeste was sure that this was going to be a summer fling, but from the time that he walked into her parents’ house with Quimpy, she had known that she wanted to sleep with him. It was really the first time she’d felt a strong sexual urge in a long time, and she knew that she didn’t deserve this but she wanted it. She knew that was not part of the deal that she made with her parents when she left Peter and came back home then found out that she was pregnant. They had been very clear. It was time for her to stop running around and start thinking of this child before herself. She had her fun, now it was time to settle into becoming a good mother. They would accept the humiliation of her dissolving another marriage but this was it. This was the end.
Ron let her words sink in. He waited for the alarm to go off in his head. It didn’t ring. He waited to feel the urge to get away. It didn’t come. He said, “We all say things that we don’t mean. I’m sure that he’s happy now. Is there any chance of reconciliation?”
Celeste’s face hardened. “No, not even a slight chance.”
Her mind flashed on her wedding day. Her cousin Janine was saying, “We can just walk out the back door and get into the car. You don’t have to go through with this.” If there had been a time when she should have rebelled that was it. Of all the times to pick to be the good girl and do what was expected of her, she picked that one.
She tried to see what was going on in back of his eyes. When she looked into them, it was as if she could see his mind working.
“Well, she’s a beautiful girl and you should be very proud of her.”
“I am. We all are. My whole family is. She is our princess.”
Ron smiled but he was sure that he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“So tell me about you,” she said.
“Not much to tell,” said Ron. He folded his hands on the table in front of his wine glass. “I live alone in a small apartment in Bloomfield. I’m off this summer. This school that I teach at now gives us 26 pay checks year round and so I’m not really looking for work. Quimpy was agonizing about how he was ever going to get this move done, so I offered to help him. He’s done a lot in the past to help me. This fall, I start my second year as a football coach. I’m not very political any more. There just doesn’t seem to be anything to be political about. I’m pretty certain that there isn’t anything that I can do to change anything anymore. But I can work with kids and try to help them to see the value of literature and being about to write and speak their minds in an articulate way. I’m thirty-two but it feels like I should be younger.”
As she listened, she thought that he sounded very free of entanglements. It frightened her that they would have this glass of wine and that he would promise to call and that she would never hear from him again. She knew that she could not bring herself to really chase after him.
“Do you enjoy your teaching?” she asked.
“More than I ever thought that I would. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left college. I wanted to be a poet.” He looked at her with a reflection of that grin in his eyes. “It didn’t take long to find out that there isn’t much work for poets.”
They both laughed. They both sipped from their wine. She slid a little closer to him and he found that he had reached for her hand and now they were holding hands. He hadn’t thought about doing it. How did that happen?
She said, “I’m not sure that I get poetry. I think it sounds beautiful but I’m never sure what it’s supposed to mean.”
Ron blushed. “I used to try to tell people what my poems meant. I even corrected them if the poem meant something different to them. How stupid was that?”
Celeste smiled. He felt himself melting. “It probably didn’t go over really well with them and they probably didn’t want to talk with you about your poetry after that.”
Ron grinned broadly. “You are a mind reader.”
They finished the wine and were back in his car. Ron didn’t wince at the squeaks. They didn’t say anything. The night seemed soft. Ron thought about John Keats calling the night “tender” and he felt that he knew what the poet meant.
They pulled up in front of her house. Ron said, “I’m really not ready for this conversation to be over but I understand if you’re tired.”
Celeste said, “Would you like to see my basement.”
The ceiling was low, the walls were paneled. The floor was carpeted. They embraced as soon as they entered the room. The kiss was a marathon of lips and tongues. Their sense of time disappeared. The tactile exchange became their language and they communicated longing and passion and although their minds could not quite fathom it, their bodies were in love.
They did not have sex or undress. They did not touch each other’s genitals. They hardly breathed. It was a slow, undulating dance and they felt revealed to each other. After endless kisses, they went outside and sat on her porch, so that they could talk again. The visibility to the community allowed them to keep their hands off of each other. It was about 4am when Ron said, “Do you think that we should get married?”
Celeste felt her head began to spin. The tightness in her belly threatened to double her over. She could see his eyes though the darkness and they were like searchlights that had found her in the night and would not release her. She was too frightened to speak. Then she said, “Don’t say that.”
“I think we should,” said Ron. He knew it with certainty that allowed for no doubts.
Celeste hoped that he couldn’t see her hands shaking.
Chapter 3
Ron was walking back from Branch Brook Park. It was cold. The sky was dark. Along Broadway, a steady line of car lights headed in both directions. The streetlights illuminated the side walk. He was trying to keep his jacket closed, but he was sweating underneath and the urge to pull it open was strong. His cheeks were flushed red. There was a friendly ache in his shoulders. It had been a great game, probably the last one of the season. They had worn the grass away and the ground was hard dirt. He could still see the play in back of his eyes.
Joey Pena had the ball curled into the crook of his left arm and when Ron put his shoulder into him, Joey left his feet and the ball bounced with the crazy agitation that only a football had. Ron rolled and was up and he had it in his hands and he was running. All around him the shadows of kids were changing direction and running after him. He smiled now, reliving the way that they had bounced off of him as he charged towards the goal line. He had been unstoppable. He pulled open his jacket and breathed deeply. The cold air dried the sweat on his body but he felt too good to shiver.
He turned into his alley way and smelled the aromas of cooking meat that filtered through the open kitchen windows. They always kept the apartments very warm. He burst into their basement apartment and Marjorie was sitting at the kitchenette table that was part of their living room, bedroom combination. When she saw him, she said, “You’d better not get sick.”
“I feel fine, Mom. I’m just going to go and clean up.”
While he was in the bathroom washing his face and trying to clean the cut on his elbow, he heard voices in the other room. He recognized Rocky’s voice but there were two others. He turned off the water and held some toilet tissue to his elbow. He watched it begin to turn crimson as he listened to what the voices were saying. It was then that he heard his mother begin to sob.
“Rocky, don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to us.”
“Marjorie, there is no more us and I’m doing this so that you know it and have no doubts or think that there is any chance that I will come back to you.”
His mother cried harder. “But I love you. You have your clothes here. We made plans. We have the bank that we were using to save for vacation.”
Donna said, “Can’t you see that he doesn’t want you anymore?”
Donna’s mother Clara said to Rocky, “This little run down hole in the ground is where you spent the last ten years? You’d better not think that my daughter will be willing to live like this.”
Marjorie looked up and said, “Did you know that he was here last weekend, and that we went away and that we made love.”
Rocky said, “Margi, don’t lie like that. No one is going to believe you.”
Ron bit into his finger. But his mother was telling the truth. They had all been together last weekend. He heard his mother cry harder.
“Well, “said Donna, “there really isn’t much more to say is there?”
“There is one more thing,” said Clara. “Tell her that you don’t love her and that you don’t want her to call you anymore and that you don’t want to ever see her. Tell her that you will have someone pick up your things.”
Ron heard Rocky say the unthinkable. “I don’t love you Margi. I haven’t loved you for a long time. I have my divorce now and I’m going to marry Donna.”
His mother’s voice was small and pathetic. “I know that you still love me,” she said. “And I want you to know that I love you and that I always will love you.”
Ron’s eyes were filled with tears. They had lived with Rocky since he was two years old. Next to his father, Rocky was the man that he admired most in his life. Rocky’s family had told him that he was one of them and that they loved him. They told him that he was family.
“I’m not staying to hear anymore of this nonsense,” said Clara.
Donna added, “Tell her that you don’t want to see her anymore.”
Rocky said, “We had some good times Marjorie, but I don’t want to see you anymore and I don’t want to hear from you.”
Marjorie cried very hard. She sounded like a wounded animal. Rocky turned to Donna, “Are you satisfied now?”
Donna smirked, “Yes.”
Rocky turned to Clara, “Are you satisfied?”
“For now I am,” said Clara.
Ron burst out of the bathroom and into the room. His eyes were streaming tears.
“Ronald,” wailed his mother. “I forgot that you were back there.”
Ron glared at Rocky, hot hatred mixing with confused love. “Tell me you don’t love me anymore.”
Rocky’s mouth dropped open at the sight of him. “Go on!” screamed Ron. “Tell me, I want to hear you say it.”
“This is no place for children,” said Clara.
Ron wheeled on her. “Shut up lady, or I will smack you. Shut up!” he screamed. His voice was deafening and shook the room.
Rocky took Donna by the arm and turned to leave. Ron ran up in back of him and pushed him as hard as he could. Rocky stumbled against the wall and whirled in surprise. Ron snarled, “She may love you, but not me. I’ll hate you forever. I want you to die.”
Then we went to his mother and stood there holding her as she sat bent over in the chair. “Get out,” he screamed. “Get out. Your clothes will be in the garbage, pick them out of the cans.”
“Ronald, you don’t understand this,” said Rocky.
Ron started to cry at the sound of Rocky speaking his name. “You’re nothing. Get out!”
As they went through the door, he yelled, “I was there last weekend too, wasn’t I, Rocky?”
No one said anything else and he held his mother as she cried for a very long time.
Chapter 4
When school was out, Ron walked along Summer Avenue to Grafton and then down Grafton to Broadway. He avoided friends and took streets where he knew no one he knew would be. The American Legion Hospital was at the corner of Grafton and Broadway. Her room was in the front, and if she was sitting up, she would wave to him. They said that she needed rest. He wasn’t allowed to visit her there. He stood at the chain link fence and smiled and waved. Sometimes he called out, but they didn’t like him doing that, and a nurse had come to the window and put her finger to her lips to quiet him. Ron saw the street sign that read, “Quiet, Hospital Zone” and put his head down. He stood with his fingers curled into the chain link fence that surrounded the very small hospital. He always waited a few minutes if she wasn’t at the window. Then he walked to his aunt’s house where he was staying until she got home.
Rocky’s friend Ray owned the Esso station that he passed, but Ray never seemed to be looking at the street when Ron walked passed, but he slammed his heels down on the pavement and balled his fists as he went by anyway.
Sometimes he went to their apartment and let himself in. It seemed lonely and happy to see him. It was as if the place knew something was wrong. Ron felt badly that his home had been called a hole in the ground. He would sit at the table for a few minutes and be very quiet. He didn’t want anyone knowing that he was there. He didn’t know how to answer questions from the neighbors about what he was doing there. Giving his aunt’s phone number to the school had been bad enough.
When he got to Aunt Dottie’s building, he always felt better. She always greeted him with a smile and a plate of cookies and some milk from one the tin cups that he liked because they kept the milk so cold.
“When do you think she’s coming home?” said Ron.
“Maybe next week, Ronald,” said his Aunt. Some women wore Rhinestones in the upper part of the frames of their glasses. His Aunt had real diamond chips embedded in hers and they sparkled in the light in a real and classy way.
“Do you think that she’s going to be ok?”
“Of course she is. She gets nervous and we both know that she’s a big baby, Ronald.”
“I hate him. I want to find him and do something really bad to him, Aunt Dot.”
“I know that you do. People will tell you that it’s wrong to feel that way. That it’s better to let go of bad feelings. I say don’t let go of them. Use them to make sure that you don’t ever get suckered again.”
Ron met her eyes. “You’re right.”
“That’s between us, Ronald. Don’t tell anyone that I told you that. They’ll just think that I’m being a bitter old woman, but the way this world is, whenever you let your guard down, you are one step closer to being a fool. Keep your private thoughts to yourself. Sometimes that’s the best way to be.”
When Marjorie came home, things were rough. She cried all the time and went to a bar every night. She played sad songs on the hi-fi and never laughed or smiled. They had no money and she was not able to work. There was only the $20 that came from his father each week.
Ron rang the doorbell to the landlady’s apartment. Mrs. Cody was a short, squat woman who wore her glasses on a chain around her neck. “Hello, Ronald.”
“Mrs. Cody, I’m here with the rent.”
“All of it, this time?”
“No Ma’am. We only have $50, but I’ll be back with the other $15 on Sunday, after I see my father.”
She reached for the envelope. “Alright, Ronnie. Please tell your mother that I hope that she’s feeling better.”
“Mrs. Cody, is there anything that I could do around here to earn some of that money?”
“I’m afraid that we aren’t allowed to do that with tenants, Ronnie, but if you get here very early when it snows, I’m sure that Mr. Cody could pay you to help shovel and…” The woman thought for a moment and then called over her shoulder, back into the apartment, “Could you use any help tying up newspapers and getting the garbage cans out, Dennis?”
“Who wants to know?” called a gruff voice that coughed after it spoke.
“Ronnie Tuck, Marjorie’s kid.”
“They ain’t got the rent again, huh?”
“Could you use the help?”
“Not really.”
Mrs. Cody turned back to Ronald. “Come and see me when it snows,” she said and shut the door.
Ron trailed his fingers along the rough plaster wall as he went back to their apartment, but instead of turning right to go in, he turned left and went to the washing machine room. He knew a trick, and sometimes it was worth thirty-five cents.
Chapter 5
As the pink Cadillac made its way across Paterson carrying a load of books, magazines and vinyl records, Ron told Quimpy that he was in love. Quimpy laughed at the impulsivity of his fucked-up friend. “Are you paying attention to yourself at all?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you know how stupid you sound, right?”
“Why?”
Quimpy’s sardonic grin stayed on his face as he formed his phrasing. “Let’s see, you know nothing about her. She has a kid. You’re barely able to take care of yourself. You’re a pothead. You’re thinking with your cock and you really don’t know how she feels. That’s just for starters.”
“It’s how I feel,” said Ron. “I’m not thinking with my cock. I’m thinking with my heart.”
“That might even be worse than thinking with your cock!” Quimpy laughed.
Inwardly, Ron smiled as Quimpy’s ridicule slid off of him like water on glass. Was this what it felt like when someone was jealous of you? Maybe Quimpy wasn’t jealous. He’d had his chance with Celeste. Ron had asked him enough times if it was ok if he called her. Maybe Quimpy thought he was looking out for him and that he was being a good friend. Ron didn’t care. What Quimpy thought about this was no longer a concern.
“When are you going to see her again?” said Quimpy.
“As soon as we’re done for the day.”
“I’m not saying that she isn’t ok, but I’m saying that you better think about the baggage that comes along with her.”
“Quimpy, we all have baggage.”
“Not her kind,” said Quimpy definitively.
Celeste was conflicted. She wanted to tell someone about Ron but she wasn’t sure who she could trust to keep her secret. It was definitely too soon to say anything at home. Last night had been magical but like many magic things, maybe it was an illusion. There was risk involved. Her sister was out of the question. Number one, she wouldn’t approve. Sure she paid lip service to wanting to see Celeste happy, but Celeste really believed that she gloried in the status quo where she was the good daughter, the one who had a husband who was a truck driver and worked at the same plant as her father. She had a son and she didn’t need any help raising him. Secondly, it would take her about ten minutes to find some excuse to put their mother on to Celeste’s latest folly. She definitely wasn’t ready for that war.
She did have friends that she could talk to. There was Barbara from across the street and Jane from around the other side of the circle, but they weren’t family. When it all came down to it, she had been raised to be closest to her family. They were the ones who accepted you. They were the ones who you should be able to tell anything, except of course her mother and her sister. Really there were two choices: Cynthia and Janine.
Cynthia had been divorced and had gone through the added humiliation of everyone finding out that her husband liked to wear women’s clothes and probably was gay. Janine, had kept her marriage a secret for months. It was true that she was older and had two great kids, both of whom loved Angel, but she was also enough of a screwball so that Celeste felt comfortable talking with her. It was Janine that suggested that she slip out the back door a few minutes before she married her second husband. She dialed the phone.
“Hello,” said a low hard edged voice that paradoxically also sounded warm
Celeste responded in her Jersey Twang, “Janine.”
“What’s the matter?”
“He’s gorgeous.”
“He called?”
“Last night. We went for a drink after the baby was asleep and then we talked till five this morning.”
“You’re shittin’ me.”
“No, it might one of the best conversations that I ever had with a guy and when we kissed it was, you know, Janine it was great.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I wanted to.”
“In your mother’s basement?”
They both laughed. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Celeste, feeling better and thinking that she’d made the right choice by calling Janine.
“Janine, I don’t know. I don’t think he wants a fling.”
“What’s wrong with him?” said Janine.
“I don’t know, but what we talked about was serious.”
“Serious how?” Janine was starting to sound frightened.
“Scary serious.”
There was a silence on the other end. Celeste could hear Janine lighting a cigarette. As she exhaled she said, “You know that you’re out of your fucking mind right?”
“There’s a way that I feel around him. I haven’t felt that way since Matt.”
Janine blew out smoke hard into the receiver. “Look you got a right to get laid and god knows you need to get laid, but please don’t go off the deep end.”
“I know what you mean, but suppose it’s the right guy. The one that I was sure was never gonna come along?”
“Do you want to come over and I’ll read your cards? Bring the baby. Stay for dinner.”
“I can’t, said Celeste. “I’m waiting for him to call.”
“Holy shit,” said Janine.