“I DON’T WANT to go home,” Maggie says when the party winds down.
“Well, take the car, I’ll call me a cab,” I say.
“Hey, Joe, you got two bits, Joe?”
“Maggie, don’t start . . .”
“Buy me a cup of Java, Joe. Come on, Joe.”
It’s a cool night, by L.A. standards. Maggie’s dress is on the skimpy side. I give her my jacket. I drive. Maggie turns on the radio. Pirates of the Mississippi, k. d. lang, Patsy Cline. “Who is Bambi Ann Sligo?” she asks. I tell her. Maggie slides close, puts her head on my shoulder. “Won’t you tell me about yourself, some,” she says. The top is down. One time I went home. On leave after my first hitch. Joey’s dad said Joey’d done his duty, it was time to go home. Joey said he was going to re-up. Like me. With me. His dad, Pasquale, owns a grocery, has four kids, three girls and Joey, so, you know how it is, his son is what matters to him. Anyway, he has some money. Tells Joey if he come home, stays home, he’ll buy him a convertible. We went down to the Chevy dealer, test-drove one, top down, me and him and his sister, Annette. Pasquale, he comes to me, says, “Tell Joey, stay home. He listen to you, Joe.” I owed him, owed him a lot. So I should’ve done it. But I didn’t.
“What you see is what you get,” I say. “Where we going?”
“Venice,” she says. “There’s an all-night place on Pico. I’m hungry.”
“You’re hungry?” There had been plenty of food at the party, nouvelle southwestern cuisine. That’s the Hollywood version of Mexican food, less fat and fart-free beans because there’s nothing worse than a room full of movie stars all stressed and contorted trying not to pass gas.
“I can’t eat at those things. I get afraid someone is going to see me eat. Once they see you eat, they look for signs of fat. Then they decide not to even call you because they don’t want to have to tell you to your face that you have to lose four pounds before the start of shooting or they can’t get a completion bond.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Of course it is. But it happens. So sometimes I don’t eat at those things. Let ’em think I live on air.”
When we get to the restaurant, Maggie goes into the bathroom, right away. I get us a booth. It’s one of those places that could only be L.A., imitating a place that’s just like America was supposed to be, back between Buddy Holly and going to Vietnam. Maggie washes her face, takes off all the makeup, and pulls her hair back into a ponytail. Our waitress recognizes her anyway. But she doesn’t fuss about it. Maybe she’s good about that sort of thing, the celebrity thing, or just tired.
Maggie orders a stack of pancakes, some sausage—which most of the time she wouldn’t approve of—and coffee. I get a couple of eggs and toast. There’s a bunch of musicians in back. Everything black and lots of leather.
“He was a drunk,” I tell her. Why shouldn’t she know about my father. “When he got drunk, he used to whale on me some. Not like on the movie of the week, where he’s breaking my ribs and sending me to the hospital and such. Just beating on me.”
“I’m sorry, Joe,” she says, full of sympathy.
“Don’t be. You say shit like that, I won’t tell you nothin’.”
“I’m sorry. That I was sorry.”
“I’ll tell you a story. How I come out on top. First off, you gotta understand, you got an old man like that, it teaches you you can take it, makes you tough.” She still looks at me with sympathy. Which makes me angry. “You don’t get it.” She doesn’t.
“OK, tell me.”
“Kids used to brag about how hard their old man hit them.”
“Men are such assholes,” she says.
“Yeah, men are assholes. No question about it. Why don’t you get yourself a girl. Maybe that’s what you should do. Maybe that’s what you really want.”
“How tough was your old man?”
“He worked a foundry most of his life. Ever been in a foundry?”
“No.”
“They make molds. They pour molten metal in the molds. Most of the molds are made out of sand. Plain old wet sand. Like at the beach. So the man spent his life carrying around boxes of wet sand, buckets of molten metal. Hundred pounds, two hundred pounds, five hundred, whatever. All day long. And it’s hot. The metal splatters. It finds any bare skin you got. You can’t drop what you’re doing, because what you’re doing is carrying one side of a hundred-pound bucket of liquid aluminum, so hot it flows like your morning coffee. So that’s how tough my old man was.”
“Pretty tough.”
“Pretty tough. Man’s work. Good work for a man. Anyway, problem was, problem was, he drank. So we weren’t living too good, between him missing work and spending his money down in the bar. It was mostly when he got drunk that he’d get angry and beat the shit out of me, or take a couple of swipes at me, anyway. It was just a matter of surviving until he thought he’d done enough or he went to sleep. I’m not bitching about it. That’s the way it is, until a boy grows big enough to go out and make his own place or big enough to stand up for himself and say ‘No more.’ That’s the way it is in nature, you know that.”
“If you had a son, is that the way you would raise him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, would you beat him until he was big enough to beat you back?”
I have to stop and think about that. Funny, you would think that I would’ve thought about it before, lots of times. But I never put it to myself and nobody else did, that simple and straightforward. I didn’t grow up thinking, the way kids do, If I ever grow up, I won’t treat my children that way, I’ll always let them stay up late and eat candy or whatever it is that kids think that parents do wrong. Oh yeah, and I’ll always be fair and never punish them unjustly. Stuff like that. “I always said I would never be a drunk like my old man. And I never have been. I guess, I guess I sort of intended to have a woman around. A mother. A man alone, raising a kid, it’s hard. Especially with no other women, no grandmothers or aunts or nothing, around. It was the luck of the draw, bad luck of the draw, that my mother didn’t leave anybody around to take her place, raising me. So, no, I guess not. Not with a woman around. It wouldn’t have to be that way. There are other ways a boy can turn into a man besides getting beat up all the time. Maybe not as effective,” I say, as a joke, “but there are other ways. Of course there are other ways.”
“You were going to tell me, about the last time, how you made him stop.”
“I was about fifteen. Almost fifteen, anyway. He comes home, drunk again. Which means no money. We start to arguing. I should know better, but I don’t. ’Cause even stumblin’ drunk, he’s a damn sight bigger and stronger than me. A damn sight. He starts up to beat on me. I tell him, ‘No more. Not this time.’ He swings at me. I duck. That makes him madder. Then he comes at me for real, big right hand, in a fist. I don’t run. I don’t hide. I step in and take it right here,” I point to my forehead. “He busts his hand. Drunk as he is, he feels it. He just sits right down and stares at it. At his hand. He holds it and cradles it and he hurts too much to hit me anymore.
“I didn’t beat him, but I beat him. I walked out. I never went back.”
The waitress is behind the counter, having a smoke. She sees Maggie finish her coffee and comes over with a pot, gives us refills.
“Pardon me, do you have an extra cigarette?” Maggie asks her.
“Sure, hon,” she says. She gives Maggie one. Hands me a pack of matches. There’s a silhouette of a girl with a pony tail on the cover. Underneath, it says, “Can you draw this?” I light Maggie’s cigarette. I give the matches back to the waitress and she walks away. Maggie looks at me through the smoke. She’s playing some kind of scene, I guess. That’s OK. A woman thing or an actress thing.
“Do you love me, Joe?”
“Yes, I guess I do,” I say.
“Then you better take me home,” she says, “and make love to me, Joe.”