How Long Has This Been Going On (34 page)

Andy said, "You forced me into that job, remember? I wanted to—"

"Never mind what you want. When it's time for you to move, your mama and papa will find the right place for you, here in the neighborhood."

Andy looked beseechingly at Cecilia, who set down the salad bowl and turned to her mother.

"You shut up, Cecilia," said her daughter Tina, age nine, deftly beating Nonna to the punch.

"Eh, the kid can move if he wants to," said Sal. "Right, kid?"

"Look who's talking," said Andy's mother. "The big-shot auto mechanic."

"If Cecilia ain't complaining—"

"Everything
he got to fight about," Andy's mother declared. "He don't like the
soup,
he don't like the
talk,
and now he's telling Adreiano to turn against his own mama!"

Andy said, "I'm not turning against anyone. But I'm old enough to make these decisions for myself, and I'm going—"

"You're old enough to take Rose Annette to her dance, and that's all we're gonna to say!"

"Mom," Andy pleaded, starting to lose control, "when are you going to stop throwing these girls at me? I've told you and told you that I can run my own—"

"You
told
me?
You
told me?
Vergogna! Pazzìa!
A snotnose like you is gonna
tell
? Carlone, speak to him!"

"Eat your salad, Adreiano."

Andy's mother had become so exercised at the general air of mutiny that she began to weep, wiping the corner of her eyes with her apron.

"'Now see what you did,'" said Cecilia ironically, citing a family cliché. "'You made your mama cry.'"

Roused, Andy's mother gave Cecilia a whopping cuff at the nape of the neck and a good, solid, deeply satisfying "
Shut up!,"
and Cecilia, rising, said, "Sal," and gathered up the kids to shove them into their coats, punctuating the operation with "Sal!" and
"Sal!,"
because he wasn't moving fast enough.

"What?"
Mr. Del Vecchio kept saying.
"What?
Cecilia! What's she so hot about?
Luisa!
Make her sit! What is this?"

"She can go, it's fine with me," said Andy's mother.

This was a routine as central to the Del Vecchio Sunday dinner as
The Ed Sullivan Show.
If it wasn't Cecilia, it was Gianna. If Mama didn't start roaring about something, Papa did, especially at Sal. (Stan, Gianna's husband, was half Polish and therefore beneath Carlo's contempt.) The only one who virtually never made or took part in trouble was Andy, the exceptional event being the four months just after his twenty-second birthday, during which he first announced that he had to have a place of his own, and insisted on this, and finally—with an astonishing show of will—did indeed move out, although he abided by the conditions that he let his mother select an apartment within screaming distance of his parents, that he bring his laundry over every Friday, and that he always remain within telephone reach, no matter what he was doing. At that, he was summoned to the Del Vecchios' so constantly that his mother could justify his little place on Grove Street as vaguely unreal, like a lease's no-sublet clause that you have every intention of ignoring. If Andy happened to be unavailable when she called his place of business, she would leave the message "Call home." To her mind, a home is not something you establish. Home is where your mother lives.

Sunday dinner eventually dwindled into Sunday television, with everyone fighting over what to watch, and Andy on the rug playing with his two-year-old nephew. The toys were generic, basic: the simple oval of a wooden train set, a tiny one-octave piano, alphabet blocks. They were bruised but whole, for they had been manufactured at a time when things were built to last. Mr. Del Vecchio had played with them, then Andy, and now baby Keith. A horizon seemed to stretch out to the view as Andy and Keith played, but it lay not before Andy but behind him.

And he
was
going to move, he told himself, as he tossed in bed that night on Grove Street. I already paid the deposit and signed the lease. Besides, this place is much too small. Andy's mother had chosen it precisely to discourage him. She had even chosen the decor, collecting his furniture from various family members; and one day, shortly after Andy had moved in, his mother showed up with a shopping bag full of wall hangings—two paint-by-numbers views of Venice executed by his Cousin Lina, a dynastic family photograph, and a poster for Club Med of some girl in a bikini that she had cadged from his Uncle Ferruccio, who ran a travel agency. Andy tolerated everything but the poster. He pulled it down as soon as his mother left, and replaced it with a group shot of the Rolling Stones. The next time Andy's mother visited, she ripped it off the wall, as she did with each succeeding poster on each successive visit.

In my new apartment, Andy promised himself, everything will be new. The furniture, the stuff on the walls... He fell asleep and dreamed that he was being shown a series of homes that became ever larger and more glamorous, till finally he was being toured around a palace: and the realtor was Henry.

Jezebel generally had to step over bodies to get home—drunks, bums, and the various forget-me-nots of the deep East Village, including people conked out in the stairwell of his building. By the time he reached his tinybox, fourth floor rear, he was exhausted with contempt for the world and its inmates. Why don't they get a job and a decent place to sleep? was half his cry; Why aren't job and place provided when so obviously necessary? was the other half.

Grumbling, Jezebel invaded his space, spicy and bitter. No wonder he's always changing voices, personae: Any life would be easier than this life. Anyone else would have more room, that's for sure. Shit, they didn't have any more room uptown, where Jezebel... Howard Tynes... grew up. Yet, uptown, there was no sense of being caved in on. No sense of your life being measured in inches.

That was maybe because of his family, for they knew how to spread themselves out in limited space. This included such little miracles as Grandma Maggie's giving you change to take your sisters downstairs for ice cream cones when the population count was about to tell on your father.

Grandma Maggie was something. Christmas Eve, she would marshal the crew—her daughter and her daughter's children, Deneera, Howard, and Maureen—and squire them to the toy store to pick out their presents. Grandma Maggie was strict: You were allowed three silly little things and one main thing. Jezebel's sisters would fritter their rights away on trifles and some idiotic doll; Jezebel ran to the forts and gas stations. Grandma Maggie was a grumbler, too, and she deeply resented having to have the kids out so late—past nine or ten or even eleven. But that's when Harlem did its Christmas shopping.

Jezebel greatly missed those days, because Grandma Maggie's thorny wisdom helped him make sense of the absurd white view of the world. When the rules are all aligned against you, it eases the oppression if someone smart and loving is close by, telling you that the rales are stupid. But "Don't break the rales," Grandma Maggie warned. "Walk aroundside of them. You break the whites' rules, they going to break you."

Trouble is, there is no aroundside of the rules. They're everywhere-—where you school, where you work, where you just stand around waiting for a bus. Even if there isn't a white within a mile's radius, his rales are still in force. Money? That's white rales. Television? Cops? You name it, it's white or it's something nobody wants.

Another bit of wisdom that Jezebel learned from Grandma Maggie was the therapeutic effect of a bath before bedtime. "Water's about the one thing whites don't attach a penalty to," she observed, "so use plenty of it." But she mainly thought it a necessity for one's well-being, to rest at the end of a day all nice and clean, lay one's troubles aside, and commune with the inner self. "Don't even have to wash, if you don't feel you need to," said Grandma Maggie. "Just float and think."

Toweling off in front of the full-length mirror on the closet door, Jezebel admired himself, ran his hands over his huge muscles, and gloated.

One thing I got they can't penalize, he thought, is this
heavy
gym on me. Whites, gaze and wish.

Jezebel habitually intoned a litany while getting into bed. He'd say, "Hate my job, hate my poverty, hate most of the people I know. But I am
never
giving up."

Frank, so amiable when on the job behind the Hero's bar, goes sad when he trudges home. He can get through the empty hours before work well enough, listening to the radio or taking walks; and tending bar does keep one busy. But once he locks up and heads downtown to West Tenth Street, he starts wondering about what chances he missed.

I blew it, he keeps thinking. Everything just came to me, right? Jobs, friends, sex. I never needed anything, so I didn't work for anything. Now I have nothing.

What am I? I've been a cop, a mover, a movie extra. I acted off-Broadway now and again, when they needed a guy with a build. I had a shot at fashion modeling and I hustled when I had to. I'm a solo kind of guy, I guess, though I had Larken, didn't I? There was a good man. A man who knew what was right—except, mostly, in boy friends. Where did he find all those schmucks? It finally drove me away, fighting with them on the phone all the time. But I never could replace Larken. I've tried to. You meet some guy who seems more special than the others, get him to stay over, and make him breakfast, smiling at him, trying to get to know him. But you can see him fading out pn you even before the toast is browned. Everyone wants to get in my bed but nobody wants to
talk
to me.

I blew it
is a rough thing to face at forty-one, but is Frank the best possible Frank he could have been? Or is he a gorgeous hunk of waste?

Eric is sitting on Frank's stoop, shivering in the cold, as Frank arrives.

"They throw you out again?" asks Frank, coming up the steps. Eric rises, nodding, and as he turns to come inside, Frank puts an arm on the kid's shoulder.

"Wait a minute," says Frank. "You hungry?"

Eric nods again.

"Let's stop at the deli."

A bit later, Frank is cooking bacon and eggs in his kitchenette—half-size fridge, one cabinet, no counter space. Eric is sitting in the armchair, silent and upset. Like all teenagers, he dresses total slob: T-shirt hanging out, holes in the sweatshirt, a jacket he must have found in Mammy Yokum's garbage can. It's one of the many things his parents don't like about him. Every now and then they give him a lecture on what a disgrace he is, and they get so impressed with their grief that they kick him out. A pretty teenager walking Village streets at night can usually find some obliging stranger hoping to trade favors: my bed, your body. But Frank knows that this is not good. Besides, as far as Frank can make out, Eric is straight.

The kid is ravenous, scarfing down everything on his plate plus three apples for dessert. The phone rings, and Eric glances quizzically at the clock on the night table: 3:27. But many a New York phone rings that late, especially when the guy you need to speak to works till 2:30
A.M
.

Frank picks up with "Yo," a usefully neutral greeting, fit for everyone from a long-lost boy friend to an anonymous fan who wants to close down his day with a jack-off session.

The caller, Bart Stokes, is something between a colleague and a pardner, an old trick Frank occasionally bumps into along the bar, street, and beach circuit.

"Hey, Bart."

"Frank, this is a business proposition."

"Shoot."

"Okay, this guy I know. He's got a loft and a camera and some lighting equipment. He's a commercial photographer or something, but now he's branching out. He wants to make a sexy movie."

"Stag films, you mean?"

"For
our
kind, yes sir. And
real
sex, he says—not that Athletic Model Guild stuff where they just stand around."

"What for?"

"Seems he's going to show them. In a
theatre
, pal."

"You're kidding."

"This place on Eighth Avenue in the Forties. He's run three of them already. Claims to be cleaning up."

"Bart, I'm nuts even to ask this, but where do I fit in?"

"Looks like it's your big showbiz break, my friend. You ready to turn pro?"

"What do I have to do and how much?"

"It's good bread—three hundred smackers for four or five afternoons' work. Three, maybe, the way you heat up a room. What you do... Well, you show up, I show up, Phil Neil shows up—"

"The blond with the..."

"That's the one. Guy's shooting silent, so there's no script to worry about. There's a story line, but it's... you know, some bunch of excuses to get two guys together and then the next two guys. So on, so forth. Like, I'm the plumber working in Phil's apartment and my clothes get all wet, so..." Bart chuckled.

"Who am I?" Frank asked.

"You play a cop."

Silence.

"Frank, you there?"

"Yeah, I'm there."

"So are you in or out? He's shooting this week, so I've got to... See, he's kind of unhappy with the quality of the talent he's been using. I promised to assemble a more, uh—"

"What the hell."

"That's yes?"

"Sure. Yeah."

"Great. Keep your afternoons open. I'll get back to you with the details."

"I could be crazy."

"Way I see it is, it's nothing you wouldn't be doing anyway. And think of how you'll brighten the dreary lives of our less distinguished cousins. Seeing us in action will inspire and bless them."

"Phil, you are a gentleman and a slut."

"Too kind of you, too kind. See you, Frank."

As Frank pensively put down the phone, Eric asked, "What was that all about?"

"Bedtime for you, youngster."

A typical New York walk-up, the apartment is cold by now, with the radiators dead till dawn. But Frank has stripped and now he peels Eric to the skin and steers him to the shower.

"I'm already clean," Eric complains. But when Frank holds him, under the running water, the boy leans back into the embrace, whimpering for affection—and later, in bed, he says it's Frank's choice, anything he wants.