To Die For (2 page)

By the time they got engaged, Suzanne and Larry had saved enough to put a down payment on a cute little condominium. They picked out furniture, carpeting, dishes, you name it. If you want to know how much Larry loved Suzanne, let me tell you: His wedding present to her was a Datsun 280 ZX. Suzanne said that was the same kind of car this reporter drives that’s on Channel 4 all the time. I forget her name.

They went to the Bahamas on their honeymoon. We all got postcards, how beautiful it was, how happy they were. That was June. July 1, Suzanne started her new job and I guess she was a little let down. Her boss had promised her that she’d get a crack at some on-camera work, but it turned out what she did was more in the secretarial line. But Suzanne’s not the kind to give up easily, as you might guess. So when it turned out what they had in mind was not in the reporting line, exactly, Suzanne just took it upon herself to make something of her position. She asked the station manager if she could produce a documentary, on her own time, about the lives of a group of local teenagers—the kind of problems and pressures young people confront these days. Follow them around for a couple months, get to know them, and get to where they trusted her enough to bare their souls, if you will. It was going to be an expose of teen lifestyles, sex, drugs, the whole shooting match. And that’s how it all started. This giant mess.

I
WAS SUPPOSED TO
have an abortion. Sixteen years old, Eddy off to Woodbury with no forwarding address two days after he got the news, my mother and dad on unemployment, calling me a whore. No way I was going to get to keep this baby. I had the appointment all set up. I even got a ride over to the clinic that morning. “Don’t come home without blood in your underpants,” my mom told me. A real softie, that one.

We got there early, so I told Patty, my friend that drove me, to drop me off a couple blocks away. I’d walk the rest. It was May. A real sunny day and the black flies hadn’t come out yet. I stopped at a park—not even a park, just a playing field—where this Little League team was practicing. A bunch of little squirt boys and a coach that looked like he was somebody’s dad. And over on this bench a little ways away, the moms sitting by a cooler, handing out Hi-C and calling out to their kid when it was his turn at bat. Some of them had littler kids too, playing in the dirt. This one mother was pregnant, only not like me. She was showing. Wearing this shirt with an arrow pointing down at her stomach that said
FUTURE ALL-STAR.
They were all laughing and talking. One had a baby in her lap and it looked like she was nursing him. I guess she was married to the coach, because he came over to her one time, when the kids were taking a break, and gave her a kiss. Not a french kiss or anything, like Eddy used to. This was the type kiss a husband and wife give each other. Just a peck on the cheek, but I saw that and I thought to myself: He doesn’t just want sex out of her. He loves her. They’re a family.

I knew it wasn’t likely that this little amoeba or whatever that I had in my stomach was going to be some big baseball player, or some guy that discovers the cure for cancer. But one thing was for sure. He was my best shot at somebody that would always love me. And he’d be all mine.

There I am. A total fuckup at school. My parents hate me and you know Eddy wishes I’d jump off a bridge. I’m not smart and I’m not pretty, and I’ll never get further than sponging ketchup off the tables at some fast-food restaurant. This baby I got is the most precious thing I ever had, and I’m going to let somebody stick a tube in that sucks it out of me and flush it down the toilet? I must be an even bigger idiot than my father tells me.

I tell myself there are people that have a million dollars, but they can’t have a baby. They fly all over the country having operations, getting sperm donors, hiring women to have one for them, getting doctors to try and fertilize their eggs in a test tube. And here I am, I pulled it off without even trying. It’s the most important thing I ever did or ever will do, most likely.

I sat down on the bench, behind the mothers. I guess I sat there a long time. Thinking about all the same stuff I’d been over a million times already: How am I supposed to pay for the diapers and stuff? How will I ever get another boyfriend if I have a baby? What happens if my dad kicks me out of the house? It’s not like I’m going to be driving some station wagon and talking about trips to Disney World like these mothers. I don’t even have the money to buy my kid a baseball glove. Who am I kidding, thinking I could be someone’s mother?

This little guy with real thick glasses comes up to bat. He’s a shrimp. The batting helmet keeps falling down over his face and he’s all choked up on the bat. Then I see something’s wrong with one of his arms. It’s shriveled up and it looks like some of the fingers are missing. You can tell the kids on the team aren’t that wild about him either. The mother that’s keeping score or whatever mutters something about how his father was drunk when he dropped this kid off. One of the others says he’s always sticking his hands down his pants and she wouldn’t make any bets on him wearing underwear. Lucky her son wears a batting glove. “You’d think it was enough we had him for soccer,” she says.

Frankie, his name was. A little guy that had less than nothing going for him.

OK, I say to myself. It’s up to you, Frankie. Strike out, I’m heading straight over to that clinic to plunk down my two hundred dollars. Get on base and I’m having the baby.

First pitch they throw him, Frankie swings and misses. Second pitch, same thing. Then he lets maybe a dozen good pitches go by. Just stands there grinning, while you can see the dad that’s pitching getting pretty fed up. “Come on now, Frankie,” he says. “Other kids need to get a turn.”

It’s like he doesn’t hear. He keeps waiting as one perfectly good ball after another sails across the plate. Nice easy balls. Ten, maybe fifteen more pitches.

The kids are yelling at him now. “Funky,” they call him. Mothers shaking their heads, looking at their watches. Me, I’m barely breathing.

“OK, Frankie,” says the coach. “This is your last shot.” He releases the ball. Not even a good pitch like those others. It’s way outside. No way is Funky connecting with this one. In my head I’m already climbing up on the table, putting my feet in the stirrups.

He does this little dance, and then he swings like no swing you ever saw, dips the bat low. Taps the ball. Just barely, mind you. You figured the pitcher had to get it, the way the ball wobbled over to him, only it bounced off his glove and past him. Fell to the ground and rolled right between the second baseman’s legs.

So I skipped my appointment at the clinic. Decided then and there to have my baby. And that was my son Jimmy.

But here’s the trick life hands you. You get this kid all right. You love him to death. And just like you figured, he loves you too. You weren’t wrong when you figured this child was going to be the most precious thing you’d ever be handed in your life.

But the joke’s on you. Because once you get this child, what can you do about it but wake up every morning, waiting to see what dreams won’t come true today? Before long, you stop having the dreams altogether. If you’re smart you do.

Jimmy was three weeks old before I could bring him home from the hospital on account of how little he was. Four pounds, two ounces, when he was born. They had him in an incubator.

I’d stand there in the nursery, holding him in my hands, him with this little shirt on that came off my old Tiny Tears doll. His skin was almost transparent, with these blue veins showing through. Legs like chicken wings. No hair, no eyelashes. Fingernails barely sprouted. He was so little he couldn’t even cry. Just made these little squeaking sounds, more like a puppy than a kid.

It was no picnic. My folks wouldn’t let me come back home, so I moved in at Patty’s, put Jimmy in day care when he was five weeks old, got my job at Wendy’s, the three-to-eleven shift.

You think about all this stuff you’ll do when you have a kid. Taking them to the carnival to ride in those little boats. Get their picture taken with Santa, make sand castles at the beach. You picture yourself being one of those mothers pushing the stroller down the street, pushing your kid on the swings. Passing out the Hi-C at baseball games. It never works out like how you pictured. You only have enough tickets for him to ride the little boats four times, and then you got to take him home only he’s crying for another turn. He’s scared of Santa. Your one afternoon off all week to take him to the beach it rains. Or you’re just so tired by the time you get home, you got barely enough energy to stick the frozen pizza in the microwave and turn on the TV.

He was always a good boy, Jimmy. Nights I’d be at work, he’d fix himself supper, get himself to bed even. He learned pretty young not to ask for much, so I hardly ever had to say no. I mean he always loved dogs, but he always knew we couldn’t have a puppy.

Third grade, he wanted to join Little League. Not that he knew the first thing about baseball. It’s not like this was a boy that got to play catch with his dad every night after supper. He just watched games on TV and got the idea in his head that this was his sport. What could be so tricky about running around the bases, you know?

So we signed up for the league. I paid my registration money. We bought him a glove and a bat and I even took him down to this field near our apartment to throw him some balls. Not that I could throw worth beans. But you did the best you could.

Comes the Saturday morning of the tryouts, he takes a bath, wets his hair down, changes his T-shirt three times, he’s so excited. Down at the field, when I fill out the papers on him, and they ask who he played for last year, I write down “Never been on a team before.” The guy in charge looks surprised. “Most boys his age already have some experience,” he says.

“Well this one doesn’t,” I say. You got to start somewhere.

I see a couple of the mothers rolling their eyes, like “What kind of people are these?” and you know they take one look at me and figure out my whole story: She got knocked up when she was a teenager. No dad in the picture. Kid’s a loser.

When Jimmy’s turn comes to bat, they throw him all these pitches, and he never manages to hit one. Finally they set up the T for him, and he kind of taps it. They tag him out. One of the mothers on the bench that doesn’t know this is my son says, “Jesus, let’s hope the Orioles don’t get that one.”

Jimmy stuck it out that season, but he never signed up for a sport again, and we never discussed it.

I should’ve known, that day on the ballpark, heading over to the abortion clinic. Frankie got on base all right. But what happened next was the real story. Next batter up hits a single, and Frankie’s an easy out at second. No way that kid was ever going to score in baseball or in life.

The game’s rigged. Doesn’t everybody know that yet?

I
REMEMBER
C
AROL AND
myself bringing her home from the hospital, in this little pink dress and booties, and Carol saying to me, “You’ll be walking this little girl down the aisle someday.”

“Who’s ever going to be good enough for her?” I said. I guess every father thinks that.

Back when the kids were still in high school and junior high, even, we started putting money aside for their wedding day. Faye too, of course, although she hasn’t found Mr. Right yet. But you knew with Susie it was only a matter of time, and probably not a lot of time either. She isn’t the kind you’d ever want to see in some bargain basement gown either. Suzanne always went for quality.

The things you think of, when the day actually comes. I mean, here you’ve been dreaming and planning for this moment, and now it’s finally there. You’re walking in the church and it’s like it was just yesterday she was up on that stage singing “High Hopes.” You remember the time she had scarlet fever and you stayed up with her all night, trying to bring the fever down by putting her in the tub every couple hours. Family trip to Washington, D.C. Her twirling her baton in the Fourth of July parade, and this friend of mine leaning over to me and saying, “Watch out for that daughter of yours, Earl. She’s going to be a heartbreaker.”

She never gave us a minute’s worry. Never the drugs. Never the late nights staying up waiting for her to come home, and she’s past curfew. Only worry she gave us was that she pushed herself too hard. “Ease up a little, Susie,” we’d say. “It’s not the end of the world if you get a B. Nobody’s going to die if you don’t make captain of the cheering squad.” But of course, she always did make it. Every goal she set herself, she attained it.

Do I need to tell you her mother bawled like a baby, watching her come down the aisle? It’s the day we’d looked forward to all our lives. I never felt such pride. And her, she’s got that ten-million-dollar smile. We never even needed to get her braces.

As she gets to the pew where her mother’s standing, she turns to Carol and blows her a kiss. “Thanks, Dad,” she says to me. I want to tell you. It was too much.

And there’s Larry, standing there at the altar, waiting for her, looking like he’s about to bust himself. And Faye of course, the maid of honor. Always so proud of her little sister.

When the priest asked, “Who gives this woman to marry this man?” Carol squeezes my hand tight and we both say, “We do.” Just like we’re one person, one voice. That’s how we felt.

There was kind of a funny moment there when the priest said to Larry, “You may kiss the bride.” And of course she still had the veil partly covering her face, so he had to lift it up and push it back over her face. Only he had a little trouble finding the edge. You know how it is when you keep trying to get one of those Glad bags open, and you just can’t get the edges separated? Of course after a few seconds he got it and everyone laughed and he kissed her.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says the priest. “May I introduce to you Mr. and Mrs. Larry Maretto.” Everyone clapped. The two of them just stood there for a minute or two, just to give everyone a photo opportunity.

Have you ever seen a nicer-looking couple? Wouldn’t you just think, to look at them, they were headed for a wonderful life?