Chapter 14

XIV

L’Enfant Reformation II

About halfway through my senior year of high school, I began to sleep more often than I used to.

In between my naps, I would ruffle through the Air Force Academy brochure and application, and contemplate how exciting it would be to finish it up and finally get in. The application was large and complex. I had to write two 500-word essays, secure recommendations from both my Congressman and my teachers, and provide the Academy with tons of detailed personal information.

Among my many after-school and evening naps, I recall one in particular that truly rattled my soul. One afternoon, I dreamt that I was drifting along a neighborhood block in Queens that looked similar to my own, holding my arms close to my body to protect myself from the chilly wind. Cigarette smoke, along with my frozen breath, blew from my lips and created a cloud tailing behind me down the desolate street. It was the only moving body beside myself—and the trees.

The trees above swayed with the wind. Their colors were changing right before me. A season of nature’s work was compressed into only a few minutes as a kaleidoscope of vibrant shades and tones appeared above—red, yellow, orange, brown—each brighter and livelier than the next. The colors turned as the wind blew stronger.

One by on, each leaf dropped. Within moments the street was paved with a mattress of leaves and twigs. I wanted to tumble to the floor and roll among the foliage.

I picked a large leaf. It was golden yellow with brown specks on the surface of its blades. Its texture felt cold and leathery; I admired its three pointed spears.

And then, suddenly, somehow, a wooden ladder appeared before me. It was leaning against the trunk of a tree like the one in front of my house growing up—one of those trees whose bark peels off in shards of gray and tan and yellow, as if it’s growing so rapidly that its shell can’t contain the insides. The ladder itself was old and splintery. It dared me to ascend.

So I did. Though I didn’t realize just why at first.

After reaching the top of the ladder—it was only about five or six steps tall—I began to comprehend my mission. Without a second thought, I pulled from my coat pocket a roll of tape that I didn’t know was there until that moment. It surprised me only for a second.

I glanced at the yellow leaf with brown specks before my eyes. I tore a piece of the tape off, lifted the leaf to the barren branch above, and stuck it on a limb. Then I climbed down the ladder, grabbed another leaf, climbed back up the ladder, and reattached it. I did this over and over again, tree after tree, for what seemed like days, until the carpet of leaves below had disappeared completely, and the trees were brimming with colorful life once again.

After descending the ladder for the final time, I began walking down the street, proud of my accomplishment. I had saved the trees.

But, as I reached the corner of the block, I turned my head back one last time and admired my work. And that very first yellow and brown leaf fell to the ground once again. All the rest followed. I don’t know just why, but when I ran back to the first tree I’d climbed, the ladder was gone. And I began to cry.

***

It was almost Thanksgiving; I had only spoken to Maria a few times since she admitted to her lie. Each time I called her I became angry and hung up. Then I would call back again, and hang up again.

I bought a forty ounce bottle of Wild Thing malt liquor at the bodega near my house, the same brand I’d seen the hoods drink on street corners in Maria’s neighborhood. One night in my room, I consumed every last drop in under an hour. I was drunk.

Sitting on my bed, gazing at the Air Force flag, as well as the World War II poster and my favorite photo, I thought about the Academy. I’d already gotten all of the major paperwork done. But I still needed a testimonial from someone in the military, someone not related to me.

All I thought of that was Maria’s father. The evening was approaching; the fall brought on darkness sooner than it had for the last four or five months. To funnel the breeze through my room, so that the smoke from my cigarette would quickly disappear, I kept my window wide open. But there was no wind. A wall of chilly air adjoined my room, and reminded me that I was sane, that my bones still had life. I could have sworn that I heard crickets outside, but it felt too cold for there to be crickets.

Luckily, my grades were great. Instead of speaking with Maria on the phone for hours, night after night, I did all my homework and studied for the SATs, striving for a 1300. I’d been getting along with you better than ever, dad, especially since we visited Colorado. And even you, mom, were not so bad all of a sudden. Not speaking made me love you more than ever before.

Thinking about all of this in my drunken trance, I felt lonely. I felt as I’d felt before Maria and I ever met. It was dreadful. I was so goddamn lonely that I actually called a phone sex number advertised in a porno magazine I’d bought

I still remember the woman’s name—Natasha. She said she had big tits and a tight, shaved pussy. She moaned like a whore and begged me to fuck her hard and come on her ass. I listened, silently, without a clue, without an erection. A few minutes into the conversation, if you can call it that, I said to Natasha: “You’re a fucking skank,” rather politely, actually. Then I hung up, and was as lonely as I was before.

My life is really pathetic, I thought. I hadn’t kissed or dated a girl since Maria, and I didn’t want to. Anger filled my heart and soul as I envisioned her getting wasted Upstate. But I still longed to talk to he…to, maybe, apologize.

It’s a strange emotion when you hate a girl, but also want to apologize to her. I guess I hated her because I wanted to apologize. I can’t explain it. But those two notions swirled within my head like two twisters, each fighting the other.

I could easily nap like a baby each afternoon. But I couldn’t sleep through the night without being awoken by the twisters, always sweating hard, yet shivering.

Should I call Maria, and ask her to be my girlfriend again?

I asked Kyle. “Call her,” he said. “Boss, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, you she didn’t do nothing’ wrong.” He feigned a Brooklyn Mafioso accent like he always did.

“Call her,” Rick advised me. “If you didn’t love her so much, you wouldn’t be thinking about it.” Interesting point, I thought.

“Do you love her?” asked Paul. “Do you really love her?” Somehow Paul had a knack for making a tough situation worse. Where does he come up with questions like that?

I was so confused. Stretched out on my bed, filling the still air with warm, swirling cigarette smoke, I began to cry. My friends were right. Why, then, was it so difficult to listen to them?

All I wanted from life was to grow old with The One. But in order to do that, I had to accept Maria’s situation for what it was: a minor indiscretion committed by an otherwise wholesome and genuine person.

Am I a man? If so, what kind of fucking man am I? Why won’t I listen to my friends? What would my father do in a similar situation? I mulled these questions over until, exhausted by deliberation and reflection, I fell asleep.

My slumbering rationalism woke with me early the next morning.

It’s time for L’Enfant Reformation II, I thought. It’s finally time to ‘get my act together,’ as my mother always said.

I stood up, walked over to the Air Force flag, knelt down, and stroked my nose on its velvety fabric. It smelled new and fresh. I sensed a new me. I will call Maria up, and I will forgive her.