But, the thing is, if Maria had waited just a minute longer to answer that question—if I’d had the time to thoroughly taste the bile of shame swelling within my gut—I still would’ve said what I wound up saying anyway. I couldn’t help it.
“Please just tell me if you think he’s cute.”
“No,” she answered, lifelessly.
January is the worst of all the months of the year. Not only does it begin after a week-long Christmas vacation which makes school all the more difficult to get used to, but it’s also fucking freezing. The January of my senior year was especially bad because of all the goddamn snow we got in New York. A few inches would’ve been acceptable, we got twenty inches in January alone. It was so bad that for a three-day stretch end of the month, all the schools in the city had off.
Everyone in my family was home those days. The snow began on a Tuesday evening. Spending the next five days in a cozy-warm house watching rented movies and TV provided a welcome relief to frigid air outside.
I’d always liked blizzards. Not being in them, but watching them. Slowly, but deliberately, each square inch of terrain gets covered with these mysterious white particles called snowflakes. Watching those snowflakes fall, I thought of good old Mr. Dick. Attempting to jolt some interest into his ordinarily mundane class, Mr. Dick used to wave his arms and say that we were pummeled daily with “billions and billions” of different wavelengths of all sorts, from ultraviolet to cosmic waves. He squealed it, in a high-pitched voice. Mike and I used to laugh about it during class. As I walked home from the grocery store, I kept thinking about the billions and billions of snowflakes that fell to earth and covered up everything that was familiar to me. All of the dirt and shit on the streets was gone. Old and new cars, Cadillacs and Fords, were identical beneath sheets of snowdrift. Children on my block burrowed through snow dunes and raced down their front lawns in garbage can covers.
A part of me hated those kids for upsetting the equality and peacefulness that immediately followed the blizzard. When my father asked me to clear the driveway and sidewalk, I balked at first not because I hated shoveling, but because, somehow, the snow looked like it belonged there, at least for a while. It concealed the city’s stains, and I liked that. Removing it was like waking a little baby when he’s asleep.
After a snowstorm, the sun is always so bright white and the sky so azure. I guess I just felt that the snow should naturally melt away as the sun glistened through the great blue sky and melted it, snowflake by snowflake. And then, within a few weeks, barring further snowfall, the neighborhood would return to its old self again. You always knew that sooner or later you’d see again what you’d seen before.
I thought of all this as I shoveled the sidewalk and steps in front of my house. As I did that, the mailman trudged up the street toward my stoop with a fistful of envelopes. I wondered why he was forced to go to work on a day when everyone else off. And I sort of felt bad for the guy.
To every guy in Queens, and all across America, February 14, 1993 was Friday. For women, however, it was Valentine’s Day, the most meaningful day of the year.
In light of this, I was determined to give Maria my best and most unexpected present yet. I would cook her dinner that night, that much was sure. But I had to do more than that.
I sat at my bedroom desk a few days before Valentine’s Day with one thought in mind: I won’t leave this back-breaking chair until I have written a poem about Maria. Three hours and a hand cramp later, I’d churned out the most truthful, accurate poem of my life:
I didn’t read this poem to Maria. I didn’t give it to her in a typical off-white envelope. Instead, I had it published in New York Newsday. Each February 14th, Newsday published a special classified section devoted not to used cars and help wanted ads, but to romantic blurbs sent in by readers, one buck per line.
So, after cooking Maria breaded veal cutlets, curry rice, and fresh cauliflower, I gazed across the twin candles on the table and into her fiery eyes.
“I have another present for you,” I said, smiling.
“A.J., you don’t have to give me anything. What you’ve done for me tonight is more than I expected. In fact, it’s wonderful.” She walked over to my chair, grabbed my hand, and led me downstairs to her bedroom.
Standing beside her bed, she spoke softly, as if she had just made an important but pleasant position. “I want to thank you for your gift, and show you how much I love you.” She unbuttoned her blouse, exposing a transparent, lacy pink bra. She began to unzip her jeans when I stopped her.
I was horny as hell. But I had to stick to the plan. “Wait a second. I have another present for you.”
“You’re amazing, A.J. You really are. Whatever it is, I don’t deserve it.” She was half-naked and looked so goddamn hot.
“Yes you do.” My voice trembled with nerves and hormones. But before we do anything physical, I want you to open my last gift.” With that, I handed her a copy of the morning edition of Newsday.
Confused, she smiled, politely. “Is there an editorial in here that you want me to read?”
“Actually, yes there is. It’s on page C-23, in the upper left hand corner.”
She opened the paper up to C-23 and began to read the poem. She mouthed each word as if she was in church reciting prayer. Then she placed the paper on her bed and jumped into my arms, legs and all.
“Oh, A.J.!” she exclaimed. “How did you know all of this, how did you know?” She was thrilled beyond my wildest expectations, wrought with rapture and nostalgic reflection.
“So, I guess what I wrote is true?”
She started to cry. “Absolutely. And, without you, I would’ve never found my real smile, or the real me. Thank you so much, hopeful. I love you so much.”
I heard a door slam upstairs. Her parents had just returned from an AA meeting.
“Do you mind if I show my parents this poem?” she asked. “It would help me explain so much to them.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
She galloped up the stairs and I sat, satisfied with my triumph, anticipating the passionate sex to come. Not that I’d written the poem to get great sex. I wrote it because I loved her and believed my words to be authentic. But hell, if hot sex was a consequence, who was I to complain?