I went to Anthony’s every night that week, telling him Gretchen had fired me. Anthony couldn’t understand why I was so devastated over losing a babysitting job, but I told him it wasn’t just that: Gretchen and I had been best friends since we were kids. I didn’t return Peter’s calls for four or five days, but then I finally called him from a tele-phone booth at the university. I sat on the floor hunched in the corner of the booth, hugging my legs. For about a minute, there was just breathing on the phone. I felt like I was nine years old again, calling him to talk about the Story. At twenty-one, I felt nine. I felt eight. I felt seven. I felt like a little girl. The next day, he was picking me up again, at the usual time, and we were heading out for our afternoon ride.
F
or my twenty-second birthday that April we went to the Red Lobster in Wayne. It was karaoke night, and Peter got up and sang “Leroy Brown” as well as any lounge singer could have, inciting loud hoots and cheers from the crowd when it was done. After that, he sang “Nights in White Satin,” dedicating it to me. When he came back to our table, he clutched my hand.
“Twenty-two,” he whispered, squeezing it. “I’m so far from twenty-two, it’s incredible. Can you believe how much time has passed?” He continued, “Our bond has lasted fourteen years. People tried, but they couldn’t break it. It was too strong.”
He started crying silently and the tears got stuck in the many jigsaw runnels of his face. “You’re so beautiful, sweetheart, so beautiful and grown-up. All grown-up.”
I bit into a now cold cheddar bay biscuit. Red Lobster’s lighting was low and golden and there was nautical art everywhere, which soothed me. I was tipsy on two piña coladas, but not drunk enough to get up and sing karaoke. Peter was brave about things like that, and for the first time in years, I’d felt proud to be seen in public with him.
“I was singing ‘Nights in White Satin’ and I got to the line about truth,” he continued. “Truth and how no one can ever be sure of the truth . . . Well, there’s something I’ve been holding back, and we don’t keep any secrets, but I was afraid you’d be angry. The Escort’s clutch is going. I’m worried because that Escort is all I have to get me around now. That car’s my legs . . .”
“I can’t go to my father if that’s what you’re getting at.” He had suggested it before, getting a loan from Poppa. “Why don’t you ask Inès?”
“I can’t . . . I’ve borrowed a lot from Inès in the past and haven’t been able to pay her back everything yet.” I hadn’t known anything about him owing Inès money.
He looked away. “You know, it seems I’m so emotional lately, maybe it’s my age . . . men get more sentimental as they get older . . . I could barely keep from crying while I was up there singing, because it seems that song is about us, our drives are like a carousel and we go around and around, never getting to the end. Anyway, I’ve been dishonest with you. I secretly withdrew funds from the account to pay for something I didn’t want to tell you about. I was hoping I could sneak back the money over time, but then the clutch started to go and I knew I’d have to tell you . . . I’m a thief, I stole from you . . .”
“How much, Peter?” I crossed my arms. I should’ve listened to Anthony; I’d mentioned once that I kept money in Peter’s account and he’d urged me to get it out, saying that it wasn’t that he didn’t trust my uncle; it was just better to have my own account. I’d just never gotten around to it. Like a complete idiot, I’d trusted Peter, and now he’d stolen from me.
He began to cry. “Four hundred dollars.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I was hoping I’d never have to tell you about this.”
Peter took a biscuit, the last one, and started squeezing it like a stress ball. The karaoke was still going on, which was good, because it was loud enough to drown out our conversation. Still, Peter seemed to be keeping a vigilant watch to make sure that no one overheard. “It’s Gretchen, that witch. God I hate her, she’s out to destroy everyone. She’ll take you down with me; she won’t hesitate to ruin your life along with mine. She’s evil. They’re making these accusations; well,
she’s
made an accusation . . . I really think it’s all her, not him. Ricky is a good kid. I raised him. I’ve never done anything to hurt him. He knows that.”
“Are they saying you . . . touched him?” I had almost used the word “molested” but caught myself in time.
“Yes, they told Inès that. I spent four hundred dollars on a polygraph test. I showed Inès the results. Now maybe this whole thing will blow over. I can only hope.”
“You passed it?”
“I’m innocent. I never did anything with Ricky. I don’t like boys, you know that.”
“Oh, I thought maybe . . .” I thought back to his story about the man sodomizing him as a boy. He’d always referred to the incident as a rape even though he’d “consented” in order to buy the B.B. gun. He’d seemed so outraged that a grown man could do a thing like that to a little boy. It wasn’t that he was homophobic. In Palisades Park, he’d admired the gay men who had the guts to hold hands in public and he’d always said that love between gay men meant no less.
As though he’d read my mind, Peter said, “I told you that when I was ten a man hurt me. I didn’t enjoy what he did because I’m not gay. If I was gay, it would have been fine. Besides, what he did to me wasn’t loving. He didn’t care that he was hurting me. He picked me off the street . . . he was a predator. You and I were in love. Believe me, before you came along, there was no one. I tried to be normal.”
“Why would Ricky accuse you, though? Why would he make this up?”
“I don’t know. I’m still thinking about that. Maybe he really thinks something happened. For some reason, he wants to believe it’s true. Maybe he was secretly jealous of you all these years. Or maybe Gretchen’s just got him so wrapped around her little finger that he’ll do anything to please her, even destroy our lives.”
“But what would Gretchen have against us?”
“It’s not personal. She’s probably jealous of anybody who might stand in the way of her and Ricky. Remember she cut him?”
“That wasn’t Gretchen; that was Audra,” I said.
“Well, whatever. They’re all nuts, if you ask me. You just take one look at that Gretchen and know instantly that she’s not the least bit credible. She’s got so many piercings that I’m surprised she doesn’t sprout a leak. When she stopped by, she was wearing a lace corset with her cleavage hanging out, with a wig of purple dreadlocks, half-moons painted by her eyes, and black lipstick. Imagine if she walked into a courtroom looking like that . . . they’d laugh her out of there. You know what gets me? Inès still believed her. She asked me to leave without any proof at all. I have nowhere to go! My little room is all I have, that and my car. I got down on my knees and begged her to give me time to prove the accusations false. And even though I passed the lie detector test, I still have a feeling that she wants me gone. Miguel gave me the nastiest look the other day. Just stared and stared until I turned away. Can’t blame him. He has to believe his own brother. If Inès throws me out, I don’t know what to do. How am I going to afford an apartment on a six-hundred-dollar-a-month income?”
I did wonder: where would he go, old and sick and poor as he was? Then I thought of my money and I was angry again. I didn’t want to think about Ricky and the possibility that Peter had done something. What a strange balancing act it was, this trying not to think of one thing, because to allow one thought was to let them all in.
“And, you know something, I’ve become so dependent on that veterans’ hospital that I could never leave this area. I’ve thought of going to Florida or Vegas, someplace warm. It’s gone through my mind that whenever you start working full-time and maybe move in with Anthony, we’ll barely see each other. No more afternoon rides. So I thought maybe I should try to start over, but I can’t move too far away from that damn veterans’ hospital. I’m too old to be moving anyway. You get to be a certain age and you find you don’t want change. It’s too scary.”
I was scared, too. Every once in a while, I’d found myself fantasizing that he’d die of a heart attack. I couldn’t imagine starting a new life with him always in the background, getting older, even more dependent and desperate. If I ever had kids, I couldn’t even bring them anywhere near him. Just like Gretchen couldn’t bring her child around him even though he’d passed the lie detector test.
A few days after our dinner, the clutch finally died on the Escort. Peter begged me to ask Poppa to lend him five hundred dollars since he was too nervous to ask him directly. I said he’d better pay us both back and he promised he would, even if it meant quitting smoking in order to save money. At least he was saving me a few hundred a year by insuring my car; because of his advanced age and clean driving record he paid only six hundred a year, low for New Jersey. I decided to ask on a day when Poppa was in great spirits because he’d just gotten a hefty tax return. He was in the kitchen stirring rice, humming the Beatles’ “Across the Universe.”
I was surprised when Poppa agreed to the loan, saying, “Tell you what, I am in a good mood. I will lend him the money to get a decent car, he can sell that lemon he has now and pay me back in increments. But the deal is I will pick out the car. And it will definitely not be a Ford!”
Poppa took us to used-car lots, where he would talk to the salesmen in Spanish; he insisted that there was no way a person could possibly get a good car around here without speaking Spanish. But we got nowhere with Poppa and so Peter finally told me to ask my boyfriend, the car expert. Anthony had a friend who was selling a black Mazda for fourteen hundred dollars, but he ended up letting Peter have it for a thousand. Peter agreed to pay Poppa a hundred dollars a month. But for some reason, he could never get an entire hundred together by the end of the month.
So, as expected, Poppa finally blew up one Sunday morning, after a few months of saying nothing. “That man swindled me! He took advantage of my good nature! He has deceived me! And you were his coconspirator! The two of you deceived me! I should have known better! You people live in your own world, driving around aimlessly for what purpose I can never fathom. I saw the mileage on that Escort; it was off the charts! Anyone would assume you people had driven to the ends of the earth and back again! He has no sense of responsibility and neither do you. You two live in a fantasy! And, let me tell you something, for your own sake, listen up! That man does not look good! Every time I see him he looks worse! He can barely walk! You hear me? You get my drift? You had better open your eyes!”
Every Thursday, we drove fifty miles up to Bear Mountain to sit on the large rocks, staring down at what Peter termed “the eternity fields.” Hair grass, pitch pine, cow wheat. Black cherry and witch hazel. Oaks and tulip trees. Occasionally, white-tailed deer appeared, standing as erect as goose bumps. Another summer had passed, uneasily for Peter, darkened by Gretchen’s accusations. Another autumn was upon us.
“Inès confronted me again last night,” Peter said, as we sat on a white rock with the earth spread out full below and the seven p.m. sky streaked with pink. “She said she finally met with Gretchen at a café and showed her the results of the polygraph test. Gretchen still insisted Ricky had told her he was molested. She said, ‘What are you going to believe—some test or your own son?’ I told Inès that the only way to get the truth was to ask Ricky.”
“Will she?”
“Inès has this irrational fear of confrontations. She’d rather let things go unresolved than deal with anything head-on. I told her she’d have to just ask him face-to-face. It’s Gretchen, not Ricky. I’m convinced of that.”
“What if it is him, though? Why would he say that?”
“I’ve thought about it. I’ve racked my brain and I think I’ve come up with a theory. For years, everyone has known about you and me, at the very least on a subconscious level. They’ve seen us alone in the room together; they’ve overheard our fights. They know, of course they know.”
I felt a burst of shame so strong it was like sickness. I was aware that they knew but I couldn’t stand to think about it.
“They know, and they don’t understand because nobody does. Inès might understand a little, because she’s in love with a drug addict. For years they’ve seen you slipping in and out of my room, staying for hours. Then there was that social worker . . .”
“Everybody protected us, though. If they knew, wouldn’t they have said something?”
“You know, I was thinking . . . Gretchen brought her little boy here a few times to play in the yard, remember, and Inès used to babysit sometimes. Maybe Ricky, having seen us together all these years, thought that I would do something to Gretchen’s kid. But he didn’t want to say he’d stood by and watched us for years without saying anything. Gretchen would think he was a coward. She might even wonder if he’d be safe around her kid. But if Ricky made himself look like a victim, it would have the effect of keeping her son away from me without him looking suspicious or guilty. Anyway, I don’t think it’s him. He wouldn’t lie like this.”
“But what if he said it? Do you think Inès will really put you out?”
“I don’t know.”
“I remember you said once she would never make you leave. No matter what the circumstance.”
“This is about her son. Miguel, too, could be pushing for me to go, for all we know. One of the things Inès said was ‘I trust my son.’ You know, in the days when we were fighting a lot, I used to be so afraid of you. I knew you held the power to destroy me. But you never did, you never would. It’s this stranger . . . she doesn’t even know any of us . . .” He paused to light a cigarette; it took him three tries to get the lighter to work because his hands were so shaky.
He went on: “Even if Ricky did say those things, it’s her who’s keeping Inès out of their house. Do you know what she told Inès? She came banging on the door one night, must have been about ten—Inès told me she was there in that black costume of hers with a crazy wig on—and she told Inès, ‘As long as you’re with him, we want nothing to do with you.’ Then she left. Anyway, it will take time, but eventually, Inès will confront Ricky. Inès will hide from things as long as she can but, in this case, they’re pushing her into a corner. If Ricky says I did it, I’m out. I know it.”