Chapter 5

V

Zenith

Not one week after the dance, Maria called me. What a spectacular conversation! I remember the feeling like it happened five minutes ago. I was so fucking cool it was unbelievable. I can't even remember most of the shit I said. Had it gone awry, believe me, I would have etched every painful detail into my brain. But that's not the case; I don't remember or give a shit about any of the particulars. That's how awesome the phone call went. I only recollect being cloaked by a refreshing sensation, a feeling of invincibility, an awareness that until that moment had eluded me.

We must have spoken for two or three hours. We went on talking like that almost every night for another week or so. From that point on, I’d miss my favorite TV shows to talk to Maria; I’d cancel study sessions; I’d drop a Playboy just to hear her voice. Occasionally, I’d call her right back after we’d already spoken for hours, just to ask her what she was thinking about, just to here her recite my name. I never stopped smiling when I spoke to her, and I could feel her smile back at me over the phone. We had so much in common, much more than she'd like to admit these days.

We continued our phone dating for two or three months. Meanwhile, Lynn and I kept dating for real—sort of. I called her less and less often, and went out with her so infrequently that I could hardly believe she still seemed to like me. We were still an item, so to speak—that was our public image. But privately I was planning a break-up. I had to take it slowly, of course. After all, Lynn and Maria were great friends, and I didn’t want to get Maria in trouble by forcing her to steal Lynn’s boyfriend. At the same time, I didn't want them to be fucking friends anymore at all. Breaking my relationship off with Lynn and simultaneously enticing Maria would be difficult. Patiently, I waited. Timeliness was the key to victory.

Occasionally, at school dances and parties, Maria and I would see one another other. Talk about awkward! We never, of course, gave the public the impression that we liked each other. But that was easier said than done. Standing next to her at a party, I'd beam a "Please fuck me" look," while she'd emit a "Please hug me" gaze. Actually, I wanted to embrace her as badly as I wanted to screw her—that’s how I knew I was in love. Given the choice between only hugging Maria for eternity, or only fucking Maria for eternity, I would’ve chosen the former.

We exchanged all sorts of looks and exchanges that would've made Jeff and Lynn shit their pants. Especially Lynn. Jeff and his sister and their new crowd were obviously suspicious.

This was the status quo until one night when Maria called me up and asked me out. I couldn’t believe it! We’d been talking since January, and now it was April, just after Easter. I'd waited too long, she'd beaten me to the punch. Thing is, I still hadn’t broken it off with Lynn yet. Maria didn't care. Truthfully, neither did I. By then, there was no escaping the fact that we were in love.

She was smart, though. She didn't exactly ask me out on a date, but she’s the one who got us to hang out, even though I was still technically dating Lynn. I had been telling her for weeks about how beautiful Central Park was. I told her all about Strawberry Fields and the ponds and Cleopatra’s Needle. So her invitation was a "Let's have a picnic in Central Park" sort of thing. Hey, she'd tell Lynn, it's the 'nineties. A girl can hang out with her best friend’s boyfriend—as long as it’s platonic.

You can’t blame Maria. I'd built up to her asking me out. But the fact is that it was her idea to have a picnic there, to actually do something that I'd only dreamed of. We made plans for the following Saturday afternoon. We lived somewhat far apart, she in Ridgewood, me in Fresh Meadows, considering I didn’t have a car. So, instead of getting our parents involved, we each took the bus and met at the Queens Center Mall at eleven in the morning, roughly halfway between our neighborhoods.

Eager to begin the picnic as soon as possible, Maria and I ignored the stream of shoppers entering the mall and descended into the subway. The Woodhaven Boulevard-Slattery Plaza train station was always so was filthy and eerily quiet. The moment we descended the stairs, the stench of urine overpowered us. Despite the popularity of the mall, the subway always seemed to be empty. I handed the clerk $5.00 for four tokens and led Maria down yet another staircase and on to the platform. It was warm and humid on the platform, and black rats scurried along the tracks searching for scraps of food. The tiles lining the walls were covered with grime. A long, long time ago, it seemed, those tiles were white. Now they were the color of shit.

These weren’t exactly romantic surroundings, I admit. But when I was with Maria the environment never mattered. Whether in a subway platform or a mall, it always felt like we were surrounded by a palace. While waiting for the R train, I grew lost in thought. In my crazy, mixed-up mind, I developed a plan. I’m still dating Lynn, so I have to take it easy with Maria. But I have to show her a spectacular time, or else she’ll never see me again after I dump Lynn.

The silver subway rumbled into the station, we boarded, and it rumbled away. In a flash, the G train pulled into the 59^th Street Station. Maria and I crossed Fifth Avenue and entered the park at the corner of Central Park South. We strolled around Central Park for a while talking and laughing. I had a warm feeling inside. The best word to describe our dispositions that day is relaxed. Completely at ease, we talked about every topic known to a pair of adolescents, like movies and sports, but also delved into politics, literature, and art.

We sat down by the pond near Central Park South, across from Wollman Rink. I laid down on a blanket flat on my back, and Maria sat Indian-style right night to me. Her knee brushed against my thigh and it felt wonderful. It was a warm day—New York Aprils can be really nice—and an occasional breeze blew the scent of blooming flowers and fresh-cut grass in our direction.

I glared at Maria’s beautiful face, glowing despite the shade beneath the trees. Her wonderful perfume—she was wearing it again—delicately blended with the surrounding spring air. She was wearing little blue corduroy short-shorts and a blue and white vertical-striped top. I studied her arms and legs as though that was all I would ever see of her body. Her arms were like ivory, her thighs stubby little white pillows. I couldn’t help but smile in admiration. She noticed but didn’t say anything. She just smiled back—not so much a smile, but a grin—and ran her fingers through my hair. Her attitude was modest, even though she knew I was admiring every inch of her body. I think she was just happy like I was. I wanted to grab her right then and there, just throw her on the ground and kiss her passionately. But I didn’t. There will be time, I thought. There will be time.

“There will be time,” I said to her, nonchalantly.

“Time for what?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about how I’d like to kiss you.” And I smiled. She didn’t respond, opting to smile back at me.

I didn’t know what else to say, really. We’d been talking for several hours, but I was stuck for a moment, and I had to think of something quick. I wanted to know so much about her. Her hopes, her dreams, her fears. Everything. I wanted to be an expert on Maria, earn a doctorate of her mind. And I wanted her to love me for my curiosity.

“So tell me about your boyfriends,” I asked her.

“What boyfriends?” she said with a contempt for the question. But we had talked so much that day, and revealed so much, that I couldn’t help but press on. I needed to know more.

“You know, tell me, have you had a lot of boyfriends?”

“Well, not really,” she said. “I’ve never really had a boyfriend.”

My eyes almost popped out of my head. A beautiful girl like that had never had a boyfriend! I was in heaven.

“What I mean is,” she continued, “I’ve dated guys and stuff, but I’ve never actually had a boyfriend. No one was ever worth my time.”

That sounded arrogant at first, but then I realized that she wasn’t being conceited at all. She genuinely felt that her time was important, and that most of the losers out there, like the hoods at the dances, weren’t good enough for her.

“So, you mean you’ve never kissed a guy?” I couldn’t believe I asked her that.

Squinting her eyes again, and grinning: “Uh, I didn’t say that”—

—that was enough for me to feel my first bit of hatred for Maria—

“ I’ve kissed some guys.”

I saw red. “How many?” I asked.

“What do you care?” I felt the happiness drain from my body. At the time, I had only kissed about six or seven girls. I really wanted to know how many guys she’d been with.

“It’s no big deal!” I insisted.

“Fine.” She finally gave in. Then she started counting the boys on each finger, mouthing their names in a voice just above a whisper.

“You don’t have to say their goddamn names!” I yelled. Bad move, I thought. “What I mean is, just give me an estimate.”

“Ten.”

“Ten! I thought you never had a boyfriend!” I was really pissed off that she even told me. But I didn’t want to start a fight. We weren’t even dating yet.

“I’m just kidding,” I said. “Ten’s not bad at all. I’ve kissed eleven myself.”

“I didn’t ask,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“You ask too many questions,” she said. She then began running her fingers through the grass rather than my hair, like a cat clawing at its litter. Sensing her discomfort, I remained silent for a few minutes. I was angry at myself for questioning her, but equally angry at her answers.

Then Maria started telling me about something that happened to her one day with one of the boys she kissed. She said that she was hanging out in the playground near her house and this guy came up behind her and tried to grab her ass. “Then, I grabbed a stickball bat and threatened to whack him in the balls if he tried that again. I fucking hate it when guys touch me.”

I didn’t know what to make of this. I hadn’t even touched her. In a weird way, I felt relieved, because what I’d said wasn’t nearly as bad as grabbing her ass. But then I thought: Is this a sign that I shouldn’t bother kissing her? I tried not to think about it, and calmed down a bit. Thankfully, we drifted to another topic.

I remember lying there, gazing up at the green and yellow canopy of budding trees above. The sun was poking through, providing a bespeckled spotlight for us. I was happy, but knew it wasn’t a perfect day. Our blanket was close to the pathway that the skaters and joggers were using. As they zipped by my head, I could feel the breeze graze my hair. I didn’t see any of the runners, just their shadows whizzing over me one by one. I started thinking about the hunter, the one that I always felt was chasing me up the staircase in my house. I thought about telling Maria, but I didn’t. This might sound cheesy, but that that day I felt like I didn’t have a shadow. Maria made everything glow around me. She was like the sun at the center of my universe, at high noon. And at high noon, there are no shadows.

After laying in the park for about three hours, we got up, stretched, and walked around for a while. I didn’t put my arm around her, but we did hold hands. We talked about ourselves a lot, about our mutual interests, mostly. And, as usual, I talked about the bridges. Whenever I went to Central Park with someone, I told them about those bridges. There are dozens of pedestrian bridges in Central Park. I read somewhere that the guy who designed the park made sure that no two bridges were exactly alike. So I told Maria this, and she was impressed that I knew something about the park.

She’d been to Central Park only a few times before, once on a class trip in elementary school, and twice with her grandfather years before. No guy she’d ever gone out with had ever thought of taking her to anything more than the playground near her house, never mind Central Park or Manhattan. That’s why I liked showing her the bridges that day, because I knew she’d never seen them before. Next to Rockaway Beach, Central Park was my favorite place in New York. And to be honest, I’d brought other girls there, too, and told them all about the bridges. But I told Maria that I’d never been to Central Park with a girl before. She didn’t even ask me, I just told her. I was so caught up in the excitement of being with her that it just slipped out.

We walked all the way up to the obelisk in the park, somewhere around eighty-second street, right above the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I decided it would be a good time to impress Maria with my vast knowledge of Central Park again, so I told her that the obelisk was called Cleopatra’s Needle, that there was one just like it in London, and that I’d seen it in pictures. Her eyes glowed and she looked at me like I’d actually been to London. “Wow! She said, genuinely. “You’re like a Renassiance Man.” She tugged at my shirt and smiled.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you know a lot about so many things. You’re on the debate team at school. You’re into sports. You know all about New York City.” And you’re cute, she said with her eyes.

I didn’t know what to say. “Um, there hundreds of engravings on the obelisk,” I said, pointing at Cleopatra’s Needle, hoping what I saw matched what I said. “But a lot of them have been worn away by the weather and the pollution. The one in London is nicer than the one in Central Park, even though I wasn’t really sure if it was. She was so sweet that she thanked me right then and there for bringing her to see a part of the park she’d never seen before. And then the weirdest thing happened. Suddenly, Maria really started to open up to me.

“You know, I’m really having a nice time,” she said.

“That’s great. So am I.” I was so happy to hear her say that.

“But I can’t help but be a little bit suspicious of you.”

“Suspicious? Why suspicious?”

“Well, you’re treating me a lot better than all of the other guys I know treat me. Remember when I told you about the guy that tried to grab me in the playground? Well, that’s the way most guys are. But you’re really not like that at all.”

I didn’t know how to respond. If I said something like, “Oh, I know, I’m much better than all those guys,” it would sound really conceited. But before I could think of what to say, she continued.

“What I’m saying, Joel, is that I feel like I can trust you. I mean, I feel like I can tell you anything. Anything at all.”

“But you can,” I said.

“But that’s the thing. I can’t. I mean, I hardly know you, and it just wouldn’t be right.”

“You shouldn’t be afraid. I wouldn’t think less of you if you opened up to me.” That’s where I really put my foot in my mouth, because Maria didn’t mean it that way at all.

“No, no,” she said, “it’s not that. I’m just afraid that the more I tell you, the more vulnerable I am, and the more you have to use against me. What if this doesn’t work out? What if we wind up never going out again? Or if we only date for a while? How do you think I’d feel if we started dating and I told you about my life and my family, and then you just left me, or, even worse, hurt me and made me leave you. That would kill me, Joel. That would kill me more than it would if a guy raped me.”

I felt like I was having a hear tattack, but I had to keep my cool. “I understand,” I said. She continued as if I hadn’t even interrupted.

“I told you before that my father’s Italian, right? Well, he’s one of those really strict Italian fathers. Real old-world, ya know? He got his citizenship when he was young, because he wanted to be an American very badly. He actually wanted to be in the military”—this comment piqued my interest but I didn’t want to interrupt—“but he never lost his old world ruggedness or whatever, ya know? Still, even though he’s strict, I love him, because I’m his little girl. And that’s what he calls me to this day—his little girl.

Well, one day, in the seventh grade, I came home from school crying, because all the kids in my class had stood up in front of everyone and read poems. But when it was my turn to read my poem, I got so nervous that I just ran out of the room crying.

“But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was after school all of my friends made fun of me. Even my best friend Rosie said, ‘You can’t read, Maria.’ And she laughed at me. And that wasn’t the last time she laughed at me, either.

“I got left back a whole year because I was so afraid of speaking in front of the class.” She paused and gathered her thoughts. Again, I was dying to interrupt, but thought better of it, and encouraged her to continue. “I never told anyone this before. But that’s the thing, Joel: I want to tell you. I really do. I want to tell you all of my secrets. But I keep thinking about what my father said to me that day when I came home from school crying. He said, ‘Maria, no matter what happens, always remember that your only true friends are your family. You can’t rely on anyone else but your family. Me and mommy will help you read better, okay? And you’ll be the best reader in the school.’ But I was still sad. I kept thinking, Rosie and I are friends, so why did she make fun of me? And then my father pulled me close and looked right in my eyes—I will never forget how serious he was—and he said to me, ‘Always remember: Amici con tutti, confidenza con nessuno.’ I didn’t speak Italian back then, so I asked him what that meant. ‘It means,’ he said, ‘friends with everyone, confidence with nobody. Just remember that, my little girl. Remember that you should always be polite and friendly to everybody; but the moment you tell someone outside your family—even a close, close friend—a secret, the moment you let them see the weakness within you—that’s the moment that you give them power over you.’”

I was dumfounded, so I let her keep talking.

“Amici con tutti, confidenza con nessuno,” she said, in the most perfect and beautiful Italian I’d ever heard. “And that’s why I’m suspicious of you. That’s why I’m afraid. I’m afraid you’re like Rosie, and that guy in the playground, and all the people my dad warned me about. I’m afraid that the moment I allow you to get close to me, you’ll turn your back on me. But not before you plunge a dagger into my heart.”

I wasn’t just dumfounded. In shock. I pride myself on being able to communicate pretty well in all situations, but I had no idea how to respond to Maria’s revelations. She seemed so serious, so ominous. She stared at me intently, anticipating a response, I think. At first I thought that the date was simply shot to hell, that we’d never, ever go out again. But then I realized that she was trying to send me a message. That the words she’d just used were very important. I think it was the first time a girl had said something to me like an adult, and the first time I’d ever understood something like that. It was pretty amazing.

“Maria,” I said, “I’ll never hurt you in any way. Trust me, there will be time, and in that time you’ll learn that even your father can be wrong, and that there is someone out there you can trust and believe in.” I didn’t say that that person was me, but I sort of implied it, I guess.

She took a deep breath and paused for a minute. “I’m really happy to be here with you,” she said with a huge smile.

“I’m happy to be here with you, too,” I said, and then took a deep breath. And then I did the strangest thing. I grabbed her hand and placed her palm against my face. I felt like I’d just gotten off a roller-coaster and needed the reassurance, I guess.

Suddenly, it was six o’clock. The air cooled, as the sun began to set in the orange sky above the pond. We sat in silence for a few moments, and then held each others hands on the walk back to the subway.

On the ride back to Queens I was exhausted, even though I’d spent so much time laying down by the pond. So I asked her if I could lean my head against her shoulder and close my eyes, and she said yes. It was beautiful. The ride was bumpy and noisy, and the subway had its usual stench of urine and garbage, but I didn’t mind. As corny as it sounds, I felt like an angel nestled on a cloud in the sky and quickly fell asleep on her shoulder.

She woke me as the train pulled into our stop. I decided to be a gentleman and take her all the way back to her house, instead of just letting her get on the bus by herself. As we walked up her block toward her house, I leaned forward like I was going to kiss her, and she poked her little head up, ready to kiss me back. Then I sort of dodged her head and whispered into her ear: “I want to kiss you, but I won’t until I break up with Lynn. There will be time.”

Gracefully, she smiled and said thank you and then walked up to her door and went inside. I must have stood there for twenty minutes or so before I actually left. I didn’t want the moment to end because, deep down inside, I guess I knew that our relationship had reached its zenith.