Before My Life Began Read online

  “So say something,” she said suddenly, turning to me, winking at the pharmacist.

  “Is he your son?”

  “Oh yeah. This here is my silent one, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’m only thankful I never gave these things to him, you know what I mean? When he was a baby I was very careful. They say that’s when they’re most catching, when your baby is just born and nursing, so I was always careful not to kiss this one—”

  She bent down and took me by the cheeks, squeezing so that my lips puffed forward.

  “See?” she asked. “Is that a gorgeous mouth or is it a gorgeous mouth?”

  “Come on,” I said. “It’s too hot in here.”

  “Listen—he got a voice too,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you?” She took the brown jar out of the bag and with a Q-tip from her purse she began applying the tincture of nicotine to her lip. I imagined her embarrassing me at Abe’s party by telling about what was happening now. And what if Abe asked me what we were doing downtown, I wondered, and why I hadn’t been in school? Could I keep from telling him that we’d gone to visit his father? Could I lie to him if I had to, about how much his father hated him?

  My mother was telling me to say goodbye to the pharmacist.

  “He’s a good boy,” she said, roughing up my hair. “I can take him anywhere with me and he’s never any trouble. He was always this way. At home is another story, if you know what I mean. But look at that mouth and that little nose, would you? Take a good look,” she went on, and I knew what was coming next, the way it always did. “See those curls and those tiny little ears—wouldn’t you say sometimes that it was a waste on a boy? Give me your honest opinion, mister. Wouldn’t you agree about what a beautiful girl he would of made?”

  I sat on the floor in front of the wardrobe closet, reading comics, while my father kept at me, demanding that I tell him why he knew he was the smartest man in the world. He had come to Abe’s party the night before and now, a day later, Abe was coming to dinner at our house. I tried to see Abe’s face, to remember how surprised he was when he said goodbye to me and noticed my folder for the first time. He’d gotten down next to me then, in a deep-knee bend position, and touched my folder very gently, telling me that he didn’t want to look at my drawings while there were so many people around.

  I saw a picture in my head of Little Benny and Spanish Louie clinking glasses with Tony Cremona’s father after they’d frisked him and escorted him into the living room. I saw Tony’s father, in his long black overcoat—a messenger—embracing Abe, giving him greetings from Mr. Fasalino, Abe and Tony’s father patting each other on the back with both hands as if they were long-lost relatives.

  Abe didn’t trust any of them, though, and when I saw the others again, in my head—Louie Newman and Monk Solloway and Waxey Shreibman and Avie Gornik and Big Jap Willer and the rest—all the warmth and happiness I’d been feeling about Abe coming to dinner washed out of me. I looked down, almost as if I expected to see warm water come leaking out of my shoes, onto the carpet. I thought of my uncle’s cronies walking around his apartment, eating and drinking and laughing, and of how I’d looked hard at each of them, trying to see through their jackets to tell if they had guns or blackjacks or knives underneath. I remembered how raucous they’d all been and how they’d spent so much of their time flattering Abe the way my father did.

  “Come on,” my father insisted. “Answer the question—do you know how come I know I’m the smartest man in the world?”

  He’d asked me the same question dozens of times before and I stayed quiet because I knew that he liked to be the one to give the answer.

  “Because I married your mother!” he said. “That’s how come!”

  My mother waved a hand at him but I could tell that she was pleased. I wanted to get away from them so I could prepare my room for Abe’s visit. If I tried to leave while my father was putting on one of his routines about how much he loved my mother, though, I knew he’d get angry with me. My mother was in her panties and brassiere. When she sat down at her vanity table, my father put his arms around her, from behind. I looked away. I didn’t want to see my mother smiling at me as if she wished I would give her the kind of affection my father was trying to give her.

  “Hey—cut it out. I gotta concentrate.”

  “What I think,” my father said, “is that you’re still ten times more beautiful when you got your little things than most women are the rest of the time. Tell your mother, Davey—isn’t she as beautiful as a movie star? Couldn’t she of been a movie star if she wanted to?”

  My mother put her lipstick on, very carefully, and then, with her index finger, some cake makeup, but you could still tell that her upper lip was swollen to almost twice its size, and you could see the tiny rows of blisters through the makeup.

  The church bells sounded, through the window, six times.

  “Oh shit,” my mother said. “Just shit. Sure. They’ll be here any minute and I ain’t even ready yet. Look at this face, will you? Will you just look at it?”

  My father took my mother by the chin and turned her around to make her face him.

  “So I’m looking and you still look terrific. That’s all I got to say. Do you think I care about a few little pimples? I’ll show you how much I care.”

  He tried to kiss her on the lips. I imagined Abe walking up the staircase, smiling, taking the steps two at a time. All afternoon I’d tried to be alone so I could sort out my drawings and baseball cards and comic books and sports magazines, but my mother kept interrupting me, saying she was too excited about Abe coming, that she needed me to keep her company.

  “Jesus,” she said, looking at the smear of red on my father’s mouth and chin. “I didn’t even blot myself yet and look what he’s doing. What are you, crazy or something?”

  “Yeah. I’m still crazy in love with you. Wouldn’t you be crazy in love, Davey, if you were lucky enough to have a wife like I got?”

  “But he’s gonna be here in a second,” I said. “Jesus Christ! What’s the matter with you two—don’t you got ears? Didn’t you hear the bells?”

  “Oooh—has that one got a temper,” my mother said. “Only don’t you curse in my room, mister. You wanna curse, you go into the alleys with your friends.” She turned to my father. “Thanks for coming home early like I asked. And for last night. Did I remember to tell you how much that meant to me?”

  “Family is still family,” he said. “And I’ll tell you the truth, Evie. Abe seemed different. I honestly think Abe is gonna be okay. And if Fasalino starts up with him, Abe’s the one who can handle things. I mean, did we beat the Germans over there so that the Italians could kill us here?”

  My mother never reacted when my father talked about Abe’s business. She reached up, as if to wipe the lipstick from his chin, but instead she took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it in her own. The makeup was already cracking, the skin above her lips looking the way dirt did after heavy rains, when the rains had all dried up. She drew in on my father’s cigarette, leaning backwards so that her skin, between the top of her panties and her brassiere, stretched flat.

  “You really think I’m still beautiful, even when I got these things all over my face?”

  “I honestly do, Evie.”

  “Ah,” my mother said, and she smiled now, the way my father liked. “You’re really cockeyed, Sol, do you know that?”

  “Sure,” he said. He took his glasses off, set them down on the night table and began walking around the room, his hands out in front of him, feeling his way like a blind man. “Yeah, me, I’m the original cockeyed wonder, right?”

  My mother laughed. With his glasses off, my father could hardly see anything, not even the big lettering on signs in store windows.

  The buzzer went off in the kitchen, from downstairs.

  “It’s him,” I said. “He’s here.”

  My mother backed up to the dresser and my father kept walking toward her.

  “He’s here!” I said.
“Didn’t you hear?”

  The buzzer went off a second time.

  “See—?” I said. “Now do you see?”

  “Now do I see what?” my father asked. “The trouble is that I don’t see.

  “If we don’t let him in he’ll go away! Come on! Please!”

  “So go let him in,” my father said. “Who’s stopping you?”

  I ran to the kitchen and, just as the buzzer sounded a third time, pressed on the button that clicked open the downstairs door. Then I went to our front door and listened for the sound of Abe coming into the lobby. I heard Kate barking, and I heard Abe’s voice, and then Kate was quiet. It made me feel warm inside to think of Abe petting her. I looked down the staircase, through the crisscrossing of the banisters, and when I saw the top of Abe’s head I pulled back quickly so he wouldn’t think I was spying on him.

  My Aunt Lillian reached me first. She bent down, grabbed me behind the ears, pulled me up to her. She wore her long fur coat with the fox heads around the collar, a coat Abe had bought her before he went overseas—not a coat my grandfather had made.

  “So come on and give your Aunt Lillian a big kiss,” she said, “and tell me where your mother’s hiding.”

  “In the bedroom.”

  “Oh yeah?” She laughed and moved past me, into the apartment, calling out my mother’s name. “And give your cousin Sheila a kiss too,” she called back. “You’re not too old for that yet, are you?”

  “Oh come on, Ma,” Sheila said. “He’s just a baby.”

  I pressed my back to the wall and didn’t look into Sheila’s face. Sheila was fifteen years old and until about two years ago she baby-sat for me whenever my parents went out. At night sometimes now, if I was allowed out after supper, I’d see her hanging around in the doorways of the stores on Rogers Avenue with her girlfriends, or with some of the older guys from the neighborhood.

  “Wanna kiss me?” she asked.

  She smelled like soap and when I peeked upwards I could see that she was wearing bright orange-red lipstick. I kept quiet. She laughed at me the way her mother did and walked off. I didn’t feel well. I’d forgotten that Abe wasn’t coming by himself.

  “Hello Davey.”

  I looked up into Abe’s face then. He was looking down at me with a smile that seemed half happy and half sad. He touched my hair gently and when he did I felt that he knew exactly what I was feeling.

  “Hi,” I said, and I looked down again.

  “It’s okay to give me a kiss—or we can just shake. Whatever you want.”

  I put my hand into his and shook it, trying to give him my best grip, and then he was carrying me into the apartment and lifting me up toward the ceiling so that my head nearly scraped the light fixture. I looked down into his face and laughed with him. His eyes were shining.

  “Are you still my boy?” he asked. “Answer me that—are you still my favorite little guy?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Sure you are.” He let me down a little so that my face was level with his. He held me in front of him for a second, staring at me—his eyes didn’t blink or move sideways—and then he pressed me to him so that our cheeks touched. His skin was smooth and warm.

  “Come on, you two guys,” my mother said, pulling us apart. She put her arms around Abe’s neck but warned him not to kiss her on the mouth. They walked to the living room, their arms around each other’s waists. My mother looked back at me. “So come on already. What are you waiting for—a royal invitation?”

  After supper we sat in the living room and I was scared Abe might leave without asking to see my drawings. My father stayed close to Abe, patting him on the back a lot and telling him how terrific he looked, and I just stared at my uncle and tried to imagine what he was thinking. I wondered about what he’d thought of on all those dark nights when he was out on patrol and his life could have ended in the next instant. I wondered how he felt to have to be living with Lillian and Sheila again. I wondered if he was worried about Fasalino’s men crossing over borders and ambushing Avie or Benny or Spanish Louie or my father, forcing them to betray him.

  Abe hardly said a word, and this made me feel that he could tell how two-faced my father was—how quickly my father would change his opinion just so he could get Abe or my mother to like him. I stood with my back against the door to my bedroom, feeling very small, and what I wanted to do was to tear my father’s fingers from Abe’s shoulder—to shove him up against a wall and force him to tell Abe the truth of how he felt.

  But there was nothing I could do, I knew, except to wait and hope. I was almost happy when Sheila interrupted to say she needed to leave to do her homework. Lillian told her that her homework could wait—since when was she such a perfect student?—and then she said that if we were boring her so much she should go into my room with me and we should play something together.

  “Oh Ma, he’s just a baby,” she said, but even while she said it she walked past me, opened the door to my room, and went in. “Come on,” she said. “As long as we got to.”

  I followed her, and Lillian laughed while my mother said what she always did whenever Sheila visited me—about how when I was a baby she used to put Sheila into the bathtub with me, and about how Sheila had liked to help bathe my ducky-wucky.

  “Do you wanna play Monopoly?” I asked.

  Sheila looked at the magazines on my bed.

  “Is all you guys ever think about sports?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll be the same as all the rest. Sports, sports, sports—it’s the only thing that ever fills up your head.” Then she giggled. “Except for one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re too young.”

  “I’m past eleven,” I said. “I’ll be twelve next September.”

  She went to the window, turned around, leaned backwards and arched her back so that her breasts stood out inside her sweater. Her sweater was a pale yellow-pink, the color of peaches.

  “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “People say I’m gonna look like my mother when I grow up, but I think I got my father’s eyes and smile more.” She came closer so that her breasts almost touched my chest. She wore the kind of brassiere that made me think of the nose cones on dive-bombers. “My mother was real pretty when my father married her. Not all fat the way she is now, with too much makeup.”

  I looked into her face quickly and saw that she was right, that she had Abe’s soft brown eyes.

  “You wanna play something else?” she asked. “I got a new game.”

  “Okay.”

  “You ever play ‘Radio’?”

  “No.”

  “You wanna learn?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You sit down on the bed,” she said, “and I sit next to you.”

  I sat on the bed and she sat next to me. Then she smiled—her gums showed above her teeth the way Abe’s did—and twisted herself around so that she was almost on top of me and I could smell her again, the way I could in the foyer. She closed her eyes. I waited. I heard my mother and Lillian laughing. Sheila opened her eyes and pushed her chest toward me.

  “How you play radio is that you turn my knobs and your antenna goes up.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “What knobs?”

  But as soon as I said it, she jiggled herself from side to side so that her breasts rubbed against me, and then she started laughing, forcing herself at first, then lying back on the bed and covering her mouth and getting hysterical and pointing at me and making fun of how red my face was getting.

  “You’re an idiot,” I said, standing. “I don’t gotta play with you. You’re crazy.”

  “Oh yeah?” she said, and she clapped her hand over her mouth again, to keep from laughing too loud. “Wanna hear another game?”

  I stood by the window, looking out into the courtyard, wondering if Kate and Beau Jack were nice and warm together in
their apartment. I heard Sheila come up behind me and when she touched my back I twisted away and shoved past her to the door.

  “You leave off me, do you hear? Do you hear?”

  “What’re you scared of? Don’t you like girls?”

  “I don’t like you and your stupid games.”

  She came closer but she didn’t touch me.

  “So here’s the other game,” she said. “It’s called ‘Crazy,’ and in this game I get to put my hands in your pockets, see, and then you ask me if I’m feeling crazy and when I say yes, you say, ‘Well, you put your hands in a little bit further and you’ll feel nuts!’”

  She lay down on my bed again, laughing and rolling from side to side and pointing at me. I wanted to smash her face in, but instead I just went back into the living room.

  “Hey,” my mother said. “You two sound like you’re having one swell time in there.”

  “My Sheila knows how to have a good time,” Lillian said. “She’s just like I was. Didn’t I always like a good time, Abie? Didn’t we have fun?”

  “Can we go home now?” Sheila asked, coming into the room and smoothing down her hair.

  “You stop pouting,” Lillian said. She turned to my mother. “Don’t she look gorgeous when she’s mad?”

  “Sheila’s a pretty girl,” my mother said. “I always said so. She’ll hook a guy before you know it.”

  “Be a good girl, I keep telling her,” Lillian said. “And if you can’t be good, be careful, right?”

  “Stop,” Abe said. His voice was hard.

  “Yeah, Ma,” Sheila said, smiling at her father. “You make me embarrassed.”

  “Since he’s back it’s like instead of a sergeant in the Army he’s Holy Joe from Holy Cross or something. All he does all day is tell us to stop talking the way we talk.” She stopped. Her eyes flickered. “I was good enough for you before the war, so what’s the matter with me now? You get used to them high-class French broads or something?”