| |
During my junior year in college I was in what you’d call fuck-up mode. I had pretty good grades as a freshman and sophomore so I thought it was time to coast a little bit. Professor Grossburg from my English literature class thought differently. He knew my capabilities from classes I’d had before with him. My going through the motions and copping some Z’s while he droned on with his lessons about farty old authors was something he was not going to tolerate.
By that time, I had won the position as the starting second baseman on the Hunter College baseball team. And when our games ended, win or lose, some of our team members would wind down with a little vodka and orange juice before going home. But unlike some of my teammates, I never had to worry about tiptoeing past parents to hide my alcohol-soaked breath, so I started enjoying it a little bit too much and a little too often.
Something had to give.
I decided it would be Grossburg’s 8:00 a.m. Chaucer class which, even without a six screwdriver hangover, would have been impossible to stay awake through. His monotone voice knocked me out quicker than a bottle of Sominex.
All that old English crap with Chaucer looked more like French to me and since I didn’t sign up to learn a new language, I especially resented that we were not allowed to read a modernized translation. We had to read it as it was originally written. Well fuck that! Fuck Chaucer! Fuck the Wyfe of Bathe and fuck the Miller with his farts out the window!
“Young man, you are on a runaway train headed towards failure,” said Grossburg. “To get you back on track I’m going to recommend you meet Miss Stefania Torres. She is a senior and one of my top former students. If I’m not mistaken, I think you have time to go introduce yourself to her now. She works at the college library over at the other building. Tell her that I’m sending you over for tutoring.”
“What! I don’t need no tutoring.”
“Well spoken, Mr. Negrón, but I’m not asking.” For a tweedy old bookworm, he had a surprisingly intimidating way about him. I decided not to challenge him.
In those days, the Hunter College library had the aristocratic, architectural ambience that inferred to me that I was not smart enough to be in there. The open contempt from the scowling silver-haired lady at the circulation desk asserted that as well.
“May I help you?” She sneered, fighting her urge to roll her eyes behind her cat-woman glasses.
“I’m looking for Stefania,” I said, halfway expecting her to shush me.
Her air of superiority suggested you’re not good enough for her, spic boy, but whenever I came across someone like that, I stepped my game up. Behind her, unloading a push cart full of books, was a slender-framed, dark-haired student in a yellow silk blouse and a suffocating pair of jeans. “Is that her?”
Cat Lady paused at first as if she was deciding before calling her over. “Miss Torres.”
Miss Torres turned. Her eyes were warm and friendly, with a hint of playfulness. I was already thinking dirty thoughts.
“This young,” Cat Lady paused with disdain, “man wants to see you.” Her face suggested that the words tasted bad.
Fuck you, Cat Lady. Watch me work my shit.
I straightened up as Stefania approached, trying to look as cool as some clod that’s flunking English could possibly manage. Taking into account my damaged past it wouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone if it had taken a negative toll on my appearance. Instead, being on my own steered me towards taking better care of myself and seeking to accomplish everything I possibly could without resorting to any excuses. So Cat Lady notwithstanding, I wasn’t unpleasant to look at. I also had a tangible air of confidence that came from being my own person. After Mami’s untimely passing, I stayed in the apartment and took a full-time job at a tax preparer’s office while also going to school full time. I had taken control. The rent was never late and I never missed a day of work or school. No one in that college was self-sufficient like that. I would have put money on it. Which made it all the more humbling to have to admit to this captivating senior that I was needing help to keep from failing English.
Stefania had an approachable smile. “Hi!”
“Hello Stefania, I’m Nicky. Professor Grossburg said I should come see you.”
“Call me Stefanie,” she said. “Everyone calls me that.”
“Okay, Stefanie,” I paused trying to find the least embarrassing way to admit why I was there.
Sensing my discomfort, Stefanie cushioned the words for me. “Professor Grossburg already told me. You’re having a little trouble with Chaucer.”
I shrugged. “Well, it takes me about twenty minutes to try and interpret each sentence. I really don’t have that kind of time between school, work, the baseball team... could the English language really have changed that much?”
Her eyes lit up. “You’re on the baseball team?”
Being that I was five inches shorter and about thirty pounds lighter than everyone on my team (and every other college team in the city), many reacted with surprise that I was Hunter College’s starting second baseman. I wasn’t sure if Stefanie’s reaction was surprise or excitement, but it looked like I found a hot button and I wasn’t about to let go. “I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow we play Bronx Community. Come to the game and afterwards we can go to the diner at Kingsbridge. Maybe there you can help me get started with this foreign language everyone calls Chaucer.”
I hadn’t really dated that much. Who had the time? It wasn’t that I was uninterested. I had taken a couple of girls out here and there, I even banged the super’s wife like everyone else in my building, but outside of that I just never had the time for a steady girlfriend.
Stefanie sized up the cocky Boricua before her—the one that was failing English. It was only a couple of seconds but it felt like an eternity. “Okay,” she said with a shrug. “Why not?”
See that, Cat Lady? That’s how it done.
#
When I was in elementary school Papi loved helping me with my math homework. He’d teach me shortcuts towards solving problems in my head and he’d show me how math would apply in things like life and sports. He was a big Mets fan (which I also unfortunately inherited) and he would talk about batting averages against right-handed pitchers and left-handed pitchers while watching the games on Channel Nine, long before those ESPN analysts started coming up with minutia stats like how a batter hits on natural grass against sinker ballers on Tuesday afternoons. “You see this fucking guy? I don’t know why he’s a switch hitter. He can’t bat lefty. I’ve seen him bat twenty-five times lefty and he’s got two hits. That’s an .087 batting average. So why is he batting lefty?”
“I don’t know, Papi,” I’d say while reaching for the pretzels on the folding table next to his can of Schaefer. But along with his foul mouth, I also inherited Papi’s mathematical skills and put them to good use at the tax preparer’s office where I worked on Jerome Avenue.
Not the afternoon I met Stefanie.
That afternoon, I had no focus at all and completed only half of the tax forms I normally would have.
I was smitten.
When I got home that night I was in a complete fog while trying to watch an episode of Columbo. At the library, Stefanie had given me her number and, in my mind, I was desperately running in circles searching for an excuse to call her.
But what if I were to embarrass myself? What if she had a boyfriend—one that could read Chaucer? Maybe she was just being nice. Maybe all she cared about was helping me pass my class.
Peter Falk’s voice echoed from the TV and bounced off the walls inside the apartment. I was more alone than ever. School and work were good distractions that kept me from dwelling on the harsh realities of my past. But as the rumpled inspector interrogated his suspect on television, I looked towards the kitchen where Mami used to prepare dinner. The front door where Papi came home from work with the newspaper he read on the subway tucked under his arm. Dani’s bedroom down the hallway, where she used to play with her dolls.
Even with me being on my own, my upkeep of the apartment never downgraded to the level where it could have been considered a dump. Yet with the lack of everyday conversation, errands and the presence of life in general, the air inside was overcast with forlorn shadows.
At first, when Mami passed, I had given thought to moving, but if I did that I would have thrown away a considerable advantage. Our family moved into that apartment in the early ‘60’s. That made it rent-controlled. With the little life insurance policy from Mami’s job and my modest part-time earnings while I was going to school, the monthly payment remained manageable enough for me not to have to make any additional changes in my life (although it might have been advisable). Was it hard living with the ghosts and memories within those walls? Yes. But there was also a comfort of familiarity which brought about a crazy notion that maybe someday, if I met the right girl, I could bring back the happiness that was once there.
I picked up the phone and dialed without knowing what the hell I was going to say. After the fourth ring, a soft hello cooed from the other end.
“Hello, Stefanie? It’s Nicky.”
“Hi!” She actually sounded happy to hear from me.
“Uh, yeah, I was thinking. Do you need a ride to the game? I mean, uh, how’re you getting there?”
She sensed my awkwardness. How could she not? “I’m only two stops away on the subway. I was going to meet you there. I figured you have to warm up before the game, right?”
“Uh, yeah, I suppose. But I was thinking, like, later that night, uh, I could drop you off at home so you don’t have to take the train at night. So maybe I should pick you up, too.” Of course that sentence made absolutely no sense whatsoever. I could still take her home even if she took the subway there. But I was reaching (and suddenly finding myself to be a stumbling idiot).
There was an awkward silence over the telephone. She was probably trying to make sense of the babble I’d sputtered (she probably never did). But then she caught me off guard. “Where do you live?”
Columbo was catching his suspect in a lie on TV (man, he was good). Stefanie probably sensed I was full of shit, too, knowing that all I wanted to do was talk to her.
I always kept the TV on in the apartment because of the painful silence, and especially to drown out the persistent chorus of Los Ruidos. But now there was another living, breathing voice, talking to me at the other end of the phone.
I answered her question about where I lived and proceeded to tell her how long I had been there and the events that led towards my living alone. It all just spilled out; the loss of Dani, Papi, and then Mami.
There was quiet on the other end.
“Are you there?” I asked.
There was a sniffle. “Yes, I’m here,” she replied with a slight crack in her voice. Never had I gone that deep into my past with anyone. Not family, friends, counselors, no one.
The Nicky bio continued—total diarrhea of the mouth with her patiently listening. Before I knew it, two hours had passed. Johnny Carson was doing his monologue. We both had school the next day (and I had to be at that damn Chaucer class at 8:00 a.m.). We said good night. I hadn’t said good night to anyone in years. But it was. It was a very good night.
Now I definitely had to pass that class.