Knucklehead Page 3

  “Marcus! Hey!” Luis smiled and waved from the mailbox area with his free hand. He balanced three packages on the other. The consistently best-dressed man in my building was the doorman. Today Luis was rocking a beige three-button I’d never seen before, complete with the Puerto Rico flag lapel pin I’d seen most of my life.

  “Luis! How you been?”

  He shrugged. “You know. Runnin’ shit.” The little old Jewish lady getting her mail six feet away pretended not to hear. Because, in my building, Luis Ruiz ran shit.

  “Cool. Would you let her know I’m on my way up, please?”

  “No prob.”

  Mom opened the door while I was unlocking it. “Honey, you know you don’t have to buzz up. This is still your home, baby.”

  I hugged Mom, arms set to that familiar power level, As Hard As I Can Without Hurting Her. She sighed.

  I dumped my duffel. “You mind if I take a quick shower?”

  “This. Is. Still. Your. Home.”

  “A’ite, a’ite.” I glanced around. “Where do you keep the towels now?”

  “Same place they were when you lived here, fifteen minutes ago.”

  I took a long, hot shower. Buildings have no water pressure anymore. Probably to conserve water. I get that. I also get that a long, hot shower after a workout is one of the things I am going to miss most about life on Earth after I am dead.

  A half hour later I went into the kitchen, wearing sweats I got from a bedroom that admittedly still looked a lot like it did when I lived there. A feast waited for me at the table, along with my smiling mother.

  “Whoa. Hey, you didn’t have to—”

  “My son is home! I just heated up some leftovers.”

  Even more than hot showers, one day I will miss my mom’s cooking. Collards. Wings. Corn on the cob. I sat down and got to grubbin’.

  “Where are you coming from all sweaty?”

  “Dojo. Karate school.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s new. Kind of a condition of my probation.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Amalia.” I was distracted by the comfort food; the information was coming out in a way that was neither helpful nor politic. I stopped eating. “That woman I’ve been telling you about. Amalia Stewart. She kind of ordered me to take up a martial art.”

  “And you’re going to tell me a good reason why she would do that, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” I ate a forkful of collards for strength. “’Cause I almost got us killed. She says I need ‘an outlet.’”

  “Hmm.” Mom sat, hands on the table, and waited for me to figure out how much to tell her.

  I told her everything: the date, The Door, the bump, the gun. Amalia’s reaction. I wish I had been paying closer attention to Mom’s reaction; I was sitting there, bascially telling her, Hey, the other night while you were watching Murder, She Wrote the phone was supposed to ring and regret to inform you that the rest of your family was gone now too. But she took it well. At least, she didn’t freak out. Mom wasn’t the freakout type. I think that with me she always knew to act like whatever I was saying was normal. It kept me talking. She’d have made an excellent lawyer.

  I was done. She gave me another minute to make sure I had nothing to add. Then, “And how do you like karate?”

  “Mom. I love it. Did you know, the whole time we’ve been living here, one of the greatest martial artists of our lifetime has had a dojo not 10 blocks from here? On West End, near 72nd. Yan Su Academy. Sensei, the founder, still teaches there. Akira Tanizaki. Back in the day, in the golden age of modern martial arts, you know, in the early seventies, when countries used to challenge each other in tournaments, Sensei was the cat Japan used to send to kick other country’s dude in his—the butt. When he was 19, he knocked Thailand’s best fighter out.” I showed her my fist. “Out.”

  Mom seemed less impressed than she should have been. “And what are you getting out of it?”

  “Well, I just started a month ago. They don’t let the white belts fight or anything. Mostly push-ups and crunches some days, then they’ll show us a little something. But I’ve been going three or four times a week, and I’m getting kind of hooked. It’s fun, and, I think I feel . . . better. Even after I’m not tired anymore. Just, you know . . . calm, I guess.”

  She patted my hand. “Calm is good, baby. So when am I going to meet your friend?”

  “We could do it this weekend, if you want. Mom, you’re gonna love her. She’s wicked smart.”

  “Of course she’s smart. She picked you.”

  “Pretty sure that I picked her, Mom.”

  Mom just smiled.

  The D-word.

  Thursday, April 6, 1989

  “There are inherent limitations in the state’s power to regulate private conduct,” Amalia said. Professor Lohmann urged her to continue with a raising of his bushy eyebrows.

  We were in Constitutional Law. Our assignment had been to read Bowers v. Hardwick, which the United States Supreme Court had handed down three years earlier. I can sum up the facts and the holding of Bowers with this popular paraphrase of the majority opinion: “There is no constitutional right to sodomy.” Even for a periodically corrupt body like the Supremes it was unprofessional, at best.

  Gay folks around school were pretty militant. No surprise there. In New York in the eighties, everybody was militant. Even the capitalists were militant. And Bowers had, understandably, pissed the gay militants the fuck off.

  “There are limitations in theory, and there are even more in practice,” she went on. “Sexual activity is inherently private. Any attempt by the state to regulate deviance . . .”

  The room got frantic. All over, people began to flutter. Classmates—the gay ones—started wagging their fingers at her. “Don’t say ‘deviance’! Don’t say ‘deviance’!” they cried.

  I was amazed. Don’t say? In a Con Law class about civil liberties? Really? The irony was lost on them. They were literally hopping mad—some had left their seats and were jumping a little, like they had to pee.

  We were sitting in the front row. Amalia turned fully around in her chair. She swept those eyes over the would-be correctors behind her. They stopped hopping.

  “You don’t have the market cornered on deviance,” she said softly.

  The activists contemplated this statement. And, almost in unison, all the faces turned slightly and regarded me. Everybody knew we were a couple.

  And I nodded at them. Slowly. Gravely. I considered saying, And how! or something like that, but I thought I might laugh. This was serious theater. Little preppie sister had just blown the minds of folks who were used to blowing other people’s minds. So I nodded, and we let the silence grow. Rachel sat all the way in the back; she was hiding her face behind her awesome curtain of curls but her shoulders were shaking. Really glad we didn’t make eye contact. I’d have lost it.

  Professor Lohmann, the only openly gay member of the faculty at that time, savored the tension. Those eyebrows waggled obscenely. He couldn’t have been happier. I had to crack a little smile at that. Man, we were doing those people’s jobs for them. The university should have been cutting us a check.

  For me, the funniest part was that we hadn’t even made love that many times yet, let alone gotten freaky. I knew that, going forward, the whole school would now assume that Amalia was making me eat dog food and slamming me nightly with a strap-on. They were mistaken, but still I made a mental note to have us agree on a safe word the very next time we were alone.

  Mongoose.

  Saturday, June 24, 1989

  I swear to God, we’d been discussing whether to go to antiquing. That’s how much we were minding our own business. That’s how innocent I was. Antiquing.

  We were driving around Berkeley, California in a rental car. Rather than work summer jobs, we had both opted to live off of student loans. Next year, the summer job we got would likely be the same job we took when we graduated, thus plotting our course for the remainder of our careers. We’d agreed to have some fun while we still could.

  And now she was showing me Berkeley, the place of her birth, for a week. Amalia’s memories were organized around fashion the way history books are organized around wars, so the tour through her childhood had turned into a buying trip. We were getting clothes and knickknacks and shipping them home. That way, she explained, if anybody asked where we got something, we could just say “California” instead of actually answering.

  It was a sunny, beautiful day and we were cruising up Telegraph Avenue, near the university, gabbing. I was driving and Amalia was navigating.

  “Ooh—make this right,” she said as we came up on Parker.

  I made the right. Safely. I did not cut those boys off. I signaled, got over to the right-hand lane, signaled again, and made the turn. I did notice that, when I first signaled, a car behind me sped up, as if to prevent me from getting in front of them. But it was too far back to catch up and I got over easily, with plenty of room between us.

  But it was 70 or 80 degrees in Berkeley that day. The streets were clogged with young women wearing very little clothing. And whenever the streets are clogged with young women in very little clothing, the streets are also clogged with packs of young men half out of their minds. I understood. I’d been one of them, seemed like yesterday.

  The response by the driver of that car was completely out of line. The honking, sure. Once, twice. OK. I ignored it at first. Then, when it kept up, I waved—an insincere, Queen Elizabeth on parade–type wave that was just going to have to do. But it didn’t. Still behind us, he started doing this weird thing with the gas and brake like he was going to rear-end us but would stop inches away. The passenger in the car was making a gesture I did not understand. I was getting annoyed.

  Then they cut left into the oncoming lane, zoomed past us, shot back into our lane, and came to a tire-screaming stop just in front of us. A roadblock.

  I now considered rear-ending them. I could say it was an accident. But returning a damaged rental car would be a hassle, and the insurance company might tell those boys where we lived. So I decided to get out and beat their ass instead.

  I put the car in park and glanced at Amalia. She was staring ahead at their car. “I’ll be right back.” She did not respond. I unfastened my seat belt and got out.

  Both of the guys in the car had already gotten out and were waving their arms at me like young gorillas in mating season. They were maybe 20. That age is strong enough, and stupid fast, and invincible. At 25 I was probably stronger, but also a little less fast and a lot less invincible. One of them, the Asian dude, was my size. The brother was bigger. Both looked like jocks, puffed up and fake angry; my mom would have said that they were “smelling themselves.”

  Hurt the big one, fast; get rid of the other one for good; then take your time with the big one. It was doable.

  I closed my door and began to walk toward them. And the young men jumped back into their car and peeled out.

  I waited a minute. They weren’t circling around the block or making a U to run me over. They were in the wind.

  I looked around at the dazed bystanders on the sidewalk. “Did you see that?” I yelled at a couple who were pretending that that had not just happened. “They blocked our car like they all wanted to fight but when I got out to fight they ran away! Ah-hahahahahahahaha!” Neither responded. Sheep.

  I got back in the car, still pumped. I had been happy to pound those dudes, but watching them run was even better. I gave Amalia a big smile and reached past her to our glove box and pulled out my little pad. I was going to cross out the 119 that I’d written there yesterday and put down a 0. Which was fine. It was worth it. But Amalia put her soft little hand on mine and said, “You did not do that. They did that.”

  I stared at her for a long time, to make sure I understood. I wasn’t smiling anymore, but I still felt good. I put the pad back in the glove box.

  “I don’t even know why you still carry that thing around,” she said as I started the car.

  We went antiquing.

  Dr. and Dr. Stewart.

  Sunday, June 25, 1989

  Because we were “back home,” as Amalia called it, like we were in Alabama or something, I had to meet the parents. We’d had very few conversations about us but that was only because we didn’t need to.

  We parked in the driveway. It was where she’d grown up—a big Victorian in North Berkeley. We had just rung the doorbell when Amalia turned to me and said, “Address them each as ‘Doctor Stewart.’”

  “What?” The door opened and a woman who could only have been her mom stood there smiling at us. Behind her the place looked like the set of the Pat Boone Christmas Special, only with black people, which I guess means it didn’t look like the Pat Boone set at all. Also it was summer. But there was a very fancy light fixture, almost a chandelier, hanging above our hostess, and a wide staircase to the right. Behind her was a long, bright hallway lined with paintings and photographs, leading to what appeared to be a large living room. The kitchen was to our left. I could only glimpse a corner of it from outside but it looked big and professional, and when the smells coming from there hit me in the face I had to work not to drool. And in front of it all, smiling, was Amalia in 30 years. A little heavier than her daughter, but that only brought out her dimples and her boobs. Party dress. Pearls. Heels. Beaming. Mom was killing it, and I knew that she knew it, because she just stood there smiling at us for at least five seconds while I was properly bowled over and maybe a little bit intimidated.

  Amalia stepped forward and clutched her mother and squeezed. Her mom closed her eyes and let go of the door and squeezed back harder. I silently rehearsed my introduction while they hugged. It didn’t sound right in my head. Too “Dr. Livingston.” The Stewart women released their grips at the same time and Amalia slipped past and inside, leaving me alone. I felt a whiff of panic coming on, until Dr. Stewart turned her warmness to me and extended a bejeweled hand. “Marcus,” she said. That’s all.

  I took that beautiful hand and we gazed at each other. It was pretty intense. It should have felt phony—we were, after all, strangers—but it didn’t. “Doctor Stewart.” Not like how I’d planned, but OK. More than OK.

  I offered her the bouquet of flowers in my other hand as if I were courting her. Which I was. Mothers are easy. You woo them in much the same way you wooed their daughter. If it works, they approve. It’s like an audition, or a sample.

  “Dinner is almost ready. Harold is setting the table.”

  “Cool.” Oops. I should have said Lovely or something. But she didn’t seem to notice.

  Amalia had only gotten a 30-second head start on us, but by the time we walked into the kitchen she was already working, setting a covered dish onto the dining room table. Amalia’s mom gave me a little pat on the arm and walked away, picking up one of those long lighters and heading over to three candlesticks waiting on a counter. They were all busy, and kind of ignoring me.

  I scooted past Amalia to the kitchen sink and washed my hands and dried them with a paper towel from the roll hanging nearby. Everyone hides their garbage can someplace different so I stuck the wet paper towel in my pocket. Then I walked over to Amalia’s father, who was on a step stool taking a stack of heavy-looking plates down from a cupboard. “I’ll take that.”

  He handed me the plates and went back for a gravy boat on the top shelf. He didn’t respond—he barely acknowledged me. But it seemed efficient, not rude. The man was, after all, a surgeon. They are not known for saying, “Scalpel, please.”

  I wanted to rinse the plates. That’s what we do at my house, but it occurred to me that it might offend them if they took it to mean that I thought the plates were dirty. I knew that the plates weren’t dirty. You rinse the plates before you use them because you do, that’s all. So I rinsed each plate and gently shook it dry, and then I dealt them all around the table. I turned back toward the kitchen and saw Amalia’s mom heading to the table with a big bird on a platter. I took it from her and put it down in the middle of the table.

  It went like that for maybe ten minutes. No Oh, you must be Mr. Stewart or Marcus I’ve heard so much about you or any of that crap. Maybe it was because I knew and loved Amalia, but it felt like I knew her parents. Maybe that’s what it was like for them. Everyone else’s family is a little creepy, like a weird parallel-universe version of your own. Everyone else’s family smells a little funny. But these people hardly smelled funny at all. And it wasn’t superficial familiarity, either—I was upper-middle class too, but that looked different in Manhattan than it did here. They just smelled right.

  When our team-building exercise was over we sat down to a large formal dinner. I knew we would say grace—the female Dr. Stewart was the pastor of a large AME in Oakland—so I had sense enough not to just dig in. But I did get a little blindsided when she asked, “Marcus? Would you like to do the honors for us?”

  “I’d love to,” I lied.

  I thought on it a bit, and ended up going the same route I had when I rinsed the plates: I did what I felt.

  I glanced around the table. “Would you all mind if we prayed silently? To be honest, I don’t really need another person to talk to God for me, and I wouldn’t presume to do it for anyone else.” None of them seemed particularly rocked by this, but father and daughter did turn to Pastor Stewart. She said, “I wish more people felt that way. Yes. Let’s.”

  Although that food merited serious, single-minded eating, we got to the Twenty Questions part of the evening as we were starting to tuck into our seconds. Nobody was fat, but these people could eat.

  “Amalia says you are an only child?” Mr.—I mean, Dr.—Stewart asked.

  “Yes sir. Just me and my mom.”

  “What happened to your father?” Too often that question has sounded to me like an accusation, but this time it felt like a good and natural question. I didn’t know if Amalia really hadn’t told them much about me or if he was playing dumb to be polite.

  “He died before I was born.” Nobody responded, so I added, “He was killed.”