Family Matters Read online

  I grabbed her arm. “Leave him.”

  She shook me off and stepped toward him, moving into a circle of lamplight shining through a ground floor window. I could see past the bruises starting to swell on her cheeks and looked right into the determination in her eyes. “Help me get him up to bed. He has to go to work tomorrow. Otherwise how do I pay the rent, smart guy? What do I do when Lenny needs shoes?”

  I went and got Lenny, and the three of us half-carried, half-dragged Pop into the building and up three long flights of marble stairs. A couple of times he went limp. I kept wishing he’d fall and crack his skull. Then we’d be done with him.

  The old man managed to get up for work the next day but he was on the fritz for nearly a week after. If he wasn’t the cause of all our misery, I might have felt sorry when his retching woke us up in the middle of the night. Mostly I just rolled over, grateful that he was sick and not drunk so we could all go back to sleep. He still drank four or five beers every night, but for a while, he stayed close to sober.

  Three days before Thanksgiving, I got a part time job stocking shelves for the Christmas season in the Alexander’s up on Fordham Road. Mama was so proud that she told Pop, something I wouldn’t have done.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “Think you’re a big man, gonna bring home your weekly pay.” He tightened his grip ’til we both knew I’d have bruises. “See that your mother gets every penny.”

  Right. So he could spend more money at the grubby saloon down on Burnside Avenue.

  For the next few days it was constant. “Big man, get me a beer.” “Big man, put the garbage on the dumbwaiter.” I could feel trouble brewing. Soon, might even be the next time he was ossified, he’d come after me. We both knew some day I’d be ready for him. I wasn’t sure which of us would welcome the matchup more, but I knew my time to take him hadn’t yet come.

  That Thanksgiving morning, when I was fifteen, Mama made an apple pie. After it cooled a little, she wrapped it in a couple of thick dishtowels and slid it into a paper bag from the A&P. She sealed the bag with tape.

  “There.” She surveyed her work with a sigh of satisfaction. “Don’t want any of the juices leaking in your father’s car.”

  Lenny licked his lips. “You do make the juiciest pies, Ma.”

  We were all settled in the car. Parents in the front seat. Me and Lenny in the back. We hadn’t even pulled away from the curb when Pop started.

  “Hey,” he turned and looked me square in the eye. “You should sit up front, big man. Wage earner.”

  Mama put her hand on his arm and whispered. “No, Charlie. I like sitting here.” But everyone in the car knew she was just trying to protect me from whatever he had in mind. He leaned past her and pushed the passenger door open. Mama and I switched seats, and I sat scrunched as close to the door as I could. I looked over the headrest, glad to see Lenny was happily reading the Hardy Boys, his feet nowhere near the Rheingold.

  Traffic was heavy, but moving, until all of a sudden it wasn’t. Dad muttered under his breath and took a hard right, heading over to Westchester Avenue, but it was just as crowded as Tremont. Cars crawling along, bumpers nearly touching. We went south again to Gleason, and that got us as far east as Castle Hill Avenue. After that, every street was clogged with cars heading for the Throgs Neck Bridge.

  Mom hesitantly pointed out a sign for the Whitestone Bridge, the one we’d always taken, but Pop wasn’t interested.

  “The new bridge will be faster. Once we get across, we’ll be closer to Mineola. That’s why they built the damn thing.” And he pressed his hand on the horn loud and hard, as if the noise could make hundreds of cars disappear and clear the path between us and Grandma’s.

  “And grab me a cold one,” he ordered. “You, big man, church key.”

  Mama handed him the beer, and I dug the beer can opener out of the glove compartment. By the time we’d moved four or five car lengths, he’d guzzled the first beer, demanded a second. That was my clue to keep the opener in my lap. It would get a lot more use before we hit Mineola.

  We inched forward block by block, beer by beer. At the base of the bridge, we passed the first cop, and every fifty or so car lengths, we’d pass another, waving us along as if we could actually go anywhere until the thousand cars in front of us made their way. But at least we were finally on the Throgs Neck Bridge. The sidewalls seemed lower than the Whitestone, and I had a panicky thought that Pop would just drive off the bridge and into the water below. Maybe sitting in the suicide seat made me extra nervous. I started to pitch the can opener hand to hand, back and forth, mostly for something to do. Then on one throw, I stabbed my palm with the sharp point and brought a rush of blood. I pressed my thumb against the cut to stop the bleeding and then wiped the opener on the inside of my jacket. The fresh blood came right off, taking some of the old beer gunk with it.

  It was when Pop asked for the next beer that the trouble started.

  We all knew he’d had more than enough.

  Mama said, “The first six-pack is empty. Don’t you want to save a few for the ride home?”

  Pop’s voice lowered to the threat level that comes right before the screaming and hitting.

  “I said give me a beer. Now.”

  Mama picked up the cardboard carton and started to rip it open, but it slipped from her hands, rolled off her lap and wedged in the space between our seatback and her knees. Lenny dropped his book and tried to help her guess which can got the smallest jolt, was least likely to explode when opened. Keeping two fingers of his left hand on the steering wheel, my father twisted, reached across the seat back and began punching my mother. Every second or third wallop, he’d glance through the windshield at the line of cars snaking across the bridge but they still weren’t moving.

  Whump. Whump. Whump. He kept hitting her. I prayed for traffic to open up and distract him. But it didn’t. So I grabbed his arm. I don’t know which of us was more shocked.

  “Hey, big man. You think you can stop me? You big enough to get in between a man and his wife?” He turned his attention away from Mama, who saw it coming.

  “Charlie! No!”

  The first backhand to my face bloodied my nose and the sight of the blood seemed to spur him on like a rabid dog. He let go of the steering wheel and put both hands around my neck squeezing slowly, methodically. The look in his eyes demanded I concede that he was the only big man in this family. I felt the metal of the can opener in my hand and pushed the sharp triangle pointing outward between the index and middle fingers of my right hand. Then I closed my fist and with no real weight behind it, I threw a roundhouse, aiming straight for his jaw. But he saw the motion and lifted his chin, while tightening his grip on me. He didn’t move far enough. My fist smashed into the side of his neck. It took us all a few seconds to realize what happened. Blood sprayed the windshield and kept on spurting just below his jawline. His hands slid off my throat and his foot slid off the brake. We rolled into the car in front of us.

  Mama tore at the A&P bag and pulled out the dishtowels, upending the pie. Pop’s head was leaning against the seatback. Not sure exactly where I cut him, she pressed the towels on his neck.

  “Help me. Push. Hard.”

  When the blood slowed to a trickle, we were still taking turns pressing, not knowing Pop’s heart was no longer pumping, or that the thump, thump we heard was the sound of a cop banging his stick on the car door.

  WE ALL HAVE BAGGAGE

  Lindsay A. Curcio

  HARRIET was packing. She admired her new bag. Plenty of pockets to carry anything she could need on a plane and so stylish. She congratulated herself once again for purchasing it. The bag’s pattern, Cheerful Sunrise, was just that and it would be easy to keep in sight when it went through the security X-ray at JFK. Harriet had been looking forward to the conference at the university in Calgary for weeks. Bogdan, her husband of just one year, would be presenting a paper on hacking, security, and banks, something relating to his Ph.D. program in computer
science.

  They had met at the college’s fitness center when she was on a self-improvement kick. Harriet was an associate professor in the geography department in the city university system. She taught at the college in Staten Island. Her colleagues respected Harriet for her research and publications, but could not get over the fact that she was a living breathing oxymoron, a geography professor who never once traveled outside the United States. She hardly traveled within the United States. Just thinking about getting on a plane made Harriet woozy. She would get motion sickness riding the Number 93 bus from Bay Ridge, her neighborhood in Brooklyn, to the school. She rode with closed eyes as the bus crossed the Verrazano Bridge at a dizzying height. The bridge was so long the engineers had to consider the curvature of the earth when designing it. Harriet would mention this fact in class, but did not tell her students she had never seen the view of the Narrows leading to the Atlantic Ocean.

  But Harriet was not going to let a potential inner ear imbalance spoil her trip to Canada. She really wanted to accompany Bogdan. She had heard of the trouble a husband could get into on a business trip. She’d bought every motion sickness remedy that Duane Reade had.

  Bogdan was studying through the university’s graduate center. He was the tall, dark, and handsome Harriet read about in the romance novels that used to keep her company on Saturday nights. Harriet was not very tall, a little pale from working too much, and probably no one would call her a handsome woman. Growing up, family friends would remark on her younger sister Pamela’s beauty and Harriet’s good grades. Harriet also was fifteen years older than Bogdan.

  When they first met, Bogdan was new to the outer boroughs. Initially, she found all his questions a little irritating while she was trying to walk at an incline on the treadmill. Was there really a ghost from the Revolutionary War at the Conference House in Tottenville? Which pizza was better: Joe and Pat’s or Goodfella’s? What was the best way to conduct a job search? Had she changed her hair? Could she recommend some resources about immigration? Which visa allowed employment? Had she lost weight? How could a person sponsor a sibling for a visit to the United States?

  Soon, Harriet found herself looking forward to her workouts. Bogdan began to bring little gifts to thank her for her help: a bookmark, a map of old Staten Island that he found in a thrift store, some truffles from Jacques Torres in Dumbo when she commented that she had seen an interview with the chocolate maker on a food channel. “No really, I shouldn’t. My diet,” she’d said, but Harriet enjoyed the entire contents of the brown and orange box when she was alone in her apartment.

  As they got to know each other better, Bogdan began to tell her more about his family. He was the only boy in a family with three daughters. No one else had been to the United States. The U.S. Consulate denied a visitor visa to his younger sister, Sabeen, so she could not come to see him during summer break. He was lonely.

  They began spending their weekends together. They would have dinner at the local Mexican restaurants in St. George. One time they went to a flamenco performance at the college’s performing arts center. As they stood in the lobby with Harriet’s colleagues at intermission, Harriet saw the other professors exchange puzzled glances. Harriet realized they had never seen her with a date. She was startled to see a reflection in the big plate glass windows of Bogdan with the group, and an older woman she did not initially recognize. When she saw herself, she thought they made a handsome couple, and even let herself believe that perhaps her colleagues were jealous. Eventually, Harriet and Bogdan spent one cold, rainy weekend at a bed-and-breakfast at the end of Long Island in Montauk. Harriet realized how companionable they were. She liked holding Bogdan’s hand as they walked through town stopping at antique stores and bakeries. She enjoyed waking up with him in the overstuffed bed at the inn.

  Harriet was impressed by Bogdan’s initiative. He had his whole course of study and career planned out. He had a job offer and the company was sponsoring him for a special type of visa. An H-1B, he said. Until the company wasn’t sponsoring him, and the job offer disappeared. Apparently, there were only so many of these visas each year and now they had run out. Bogdan told Harriet he would miss her, but he would have to leave the United States unless . . .

  When he came to the department office and asked her to marry him, her answer came easily, although some of her colleagues were surprised to see Harriet with someone so young. Well, so young and handsome. But he seemed very attentive to her, they said, and he certainly had a promising future.

  They had a small ceremony at City Hall in Manhattan. Harriet was insistent that they be married in Manhattan, very “Sex and the City,” she thought, as she briefly envisioned herself as the Samantha character with her younger groom. A few of Bogdan’s friends joined them as witnesses, and then they all had lunch at an overpriced restaurant in Tribeca. Harriet thought the young tattooed waiter looked surprised when he learned she and Bogdan were a couple. After lunch, Bogdan and Harriet went to see a lawyer in a small office near the immigration building to start Bogdan’s application for the green card.

  NOW Harriet put another blouse in her suitcase and zipped it shut. She would check that bag. She took her passport out of her dresser drawer and put it in the travel wallet she had bought a few weeks ago. It was bright blue and had a design of vintage travel stickers like one might find on an old suitcase. She slipped it in the zippered pocket of her cloth travel bag, again admiring the lively, bright design. Harriet added two paperback books and three magazines for the trip just in case. Bogdan walked into their bedroom.

  “Do you have one of those clear plastic bags for toiletries?” asked Bogdan. “I was going to put everything in my checked bag, but my allergies are acting up so I’ll bring some eye drops. I don’t want my eyes to be all red and watery on the plane. I don’t want people to think I’m crying because I’ve been reading one of your sad romance novels.” Bogdan smiled.

  He didn’t want people to think he’d been crying! Did he care how many times Harriet had locked herself in their bathroom so she could cry alone after she found the shoebox in the top of the closet in their bedroom last Saturday?

  Bogdan had been at the gym, and she’d been home looking for some shoes she thought would be good for traveling. They slipped right on, no buckles or laces. Shoes like that would make it easy to get through security at the airport and they would be comfortable on the plane if her feet began to swell.

  She was on her tiptoes reaching for the Comfort-Pups shoe box when she knocked over another shoe box on the high shelf. The box fell off the shelf, nearly hitting Harriet on the head. It was held shut with a rubber band. She did not recognize the box, so she opened it. Inside, she found some old school ID cards from Bogdan’s home country, a small blue box holding something that might be medicine with a label not written in English, and a packet of letters on rose-colored paper in a flowery handwriting. These letters were all addressed to Bogdan at his work address. “I miss you Bogdan,” the letters read. “I can’t stand to be apart from you.” “How much longer must I wait until you can apply for me?” “Tell me you’ll be coming back soon to take me with you.” There was a photo of Bogdan looking serious and handsome in a brown suit as he stood with his arms clasped around a young, slim dark-haired beauty wearing a simple white dress and holding a bouquet of big yellow gerbera daisies. A man’s thin, gold wedding band rolled around in the cardboard box. The ring was a very yellow gold, not like her plain 14-karat gold band. Harriet remembered the 18- and 24-karat gold rings in the jewelry stores in her Brooklyn neighborhood and the women she saw shopping there, girls with long black hair who wore gauzy garments and many delicate bangle bracelets on their slender arms.

  Harriet looked at herself in the bedroom mirror. The word “delicate” did not come to mind.

  She thought back to last year. They had been so happy when the immigration officer granted Bogdan his residence. She did not think it was strange at all that Bogdan immediately asked their lawyer how long he had to w
ait to get U.S. citizenship. A comment Harriet overheard when her faculty assistant did not realize she was in the office popped into her head. Would he still love her once he was a citizen?

  Harriet read the rest of the letters that day. “Use this watch to count the hours until we’re together again,” one letter said. A simple sports watch with a yellow silicone band was in the box. The watch had some features on it. You could time laps with it, or count for how long you could hold your breath.

  To Harriet, the moment seemed like an eternity. Now she exhaled and remembered she and Bogdan were preparing to leave on their trip.

  Bogdan smiled. “You’re bringing a lot of books on the plane. What are you reading this time, something about cowboys and farm wives or medieval princesses and rogues?”

  Who even said “rogue?” Her husband had a quaint knowledge of the English language. She snapped back to the urgency of the situation.

  “It’s such a hassle to fly these days,” said Harriet. “Just give me the eye drops. I’ll put them in my purse with my Dramamine pills.” He handed her a small bottle of eye drops, some generic brand he must have found in her bathroom medicine cabinet.

  Good recovery, thought Harriet. Faithful wives always carried items like eye drops, tissues and mints for their husbands when traveling. The last thing she needed was for Bogdan to look in his backpack. An hour ago, he said he was all packed and his things were by the front door.

  Harriet had had no trouble placing one more item in Bogdan’s backpack. It was nothing really. A battery, cables, some other things sort of casually thrown together. The instructions on the Internet said you needed a timer. You could find anything on the Internet. The timer was important. When Bogdan saw later that she’d used the watch with the yellow band as a timer, he’d know that she’d found out about Sabeen.