But I liked it like this even more.
The Boy
by Karen E. Olson
Fair Haven
While they wait, she gives the boy a glass of milk.His hand shakes, almost spilling it, and she indicates he should sit. So he does. His eyes flitter around the room, and she positions herself between him and the back door. She knows what he’s considering, and she’ll have none of it. He drinks the milk in three gulps without breathing in between, and she marvels at that. It’s as though his thirst is unquenchable. She wonders when he last had milk. His lanky build is almost anorexic, but it could just be that he is at that age where he is growing into himself. She remembers that, how awkward and uncomfortable it is as your body molds and stretches into what it will eventually become. He is a good-looking boy, maybe twelve, thirteen. His face is long, his cheekbones high, his nose wide, his skin swarthy. His ears stick out a little from beneath the close-cropped hair. His eyes are full of fear.
She puts a cannoli from Rocco’s on a plate and shoves it across the table. He gives her a wary look before scooping it up and putting half of it in his mouth at once, seemingly swallowing it whole. She hands him another glass of milk.
Taking a cannoli herself, she nibbles it slowly. Her tea went cold awhile ago, but she drinks it anyway. This was her after-dinner treat, the one that reminds her of her mother and how they’d pick out their Sunday pastries together, her mother wistfully reminding her that they would never be as good as the ones back home in Italy.
He drums his fingers nervously on the top of his leg, almost as though he is playing it like a piano. She glances toward the living room, where the baby grand sits. No one has played it in years, not since Frank died. Christmases were full of soft candlelight and the scent of pine needles and music. She wants to ask the boy if he can play, but it might embarrass him if he doesn’t.
She is pretty sure it was him she saw last week downtown with a group of boys on bicycles that were from another decade, small with long seats and high handlebars. Her son used to call it a banana bike, because of the seat, and he pinned playing cards to the spokes of the back wheel and it made a flip-flip-flip sound as he pedaled. Those boys downtown, though, didn’t want to make any noise. They pedaled past a woman with a large handbag slung over her shoulder; she was talking animatedly into her cell phone, not paying attention. It was easy for one of the boys — was it this one? — to pull the bag off the woman’s shoulder as he rode past. She marveled at his swift, smooth movement, not even hesitating. It was almost as if she were watching a dance, like that show on TV with the celebrities and the judges, what was the name of it? She can’t remember things anymore, not like she used to. She used to dance herself, gliding along the floor in Frank’s arms, her skirt fluttering around her calves, her thin heels barely making a sound against the wood, the music swirling around them. It used to be like magic.
The boy shifts a little, his eyes taking in the kitchen. For a moment, she sees what he sees: dark wooden cabinets full of nicks, worn laminate countertops, a bright red cookie jar shaped like an apple with a broken green stem, delicate china teacups on the shelf over the table, the cross over the small calendar where she writes all her appointments. It’s probably better than what he’s used to.
She doesn’t know what she’s going to do with him until they come. She’s already fed and watered him; he hasn’t spoken, just stares at her with those large dark eyes. He hasn’t tried to leave; it’s almost as though he’s relieved that it ended this way. Maybe she reminds him of his own grandmother. Maybe he was brought up right and just got in with the wrong crowd. She knows what can happen with that. She’s known her share of boys who went bad.
Those boys from her past grew up over near James, off Grand. When they started their families, they moved to the other side of Blatchley near Ferry, a better area, even though they weren’t but a few blocks from where they started. Grand Avenue was their Main Street; they were separate from the rest of the city on their patch of land: a peninsula surrounded by the East and Quinnipiac rivers and a swamp on the other side.
She doesn’t like what Grand has become, all those shops and restaurants with Spanish signs owned by the Mexicans. Or are they Ecuadoreans? It doesn’t really matter, because they don’t speak English and she’s willing to bet that most of them are illegal anyway. When her people came, when Frank’s came, they were all legal. They were proud to become Americans and live in tidy houses and take advantage of the opportunities. Now she passes the old wooden houses in decline, three or four families living inside, maybe more, piles of junk in the backyards: rusted cars and bikes, dirty plastic toys, stained mattresses, old furniture. Does this boy live like that? Is that how he grew up?
The boy is fidgety. She doesn’t have any more cannoli, and he’s finished up the last of the milk. She’s only got a little half-and-half left, and she wants that for her morning coffee. She’s got to keep something for herself. There might be a little bread in the box, it’s from Apicella’s, which is still on Grand after all these years. When she’s out doing her shopping, she always stops in for a loaf of bread, the scent bringing her back to her childhood. She walks all the way to Ferraro’s for everything else; she won’t set foot into that C-Town ever since that one time when she saw those kids with the knife. It’s cheap, though, and sometimes she’s tempted because she always likes a bargain.
It’s not as though she doesn’t have money. She’s got enough to live on, what with the Social Security and Frank’s insurance. She doesn’t need much. The house was paid off a long time ago. Her son wants her to move to East Haven, near him. She and Frank decided to stay here in Fair Haven back when everyone else was going to East Haven or the East Shore, and she thinks if she moves now it would be a betrayal of Frank. Her son doesn’t understand, tells her how unsafe the neighborhood is now, it’s not like in the old days when everyone had protection. He wants to take care of her. She told him maybe she’d consider one of those new condos along the river, but it was really only to keep him quiet. If she lived there, she wouldn’t be able to have her vegetable garden anymore. It’s not what it used to be, only a few tomatoes, some green beans, zucchini, garlic, and onions, but she likes to work the small plot, get her hands dirty. What would she do without it? She doesn’t want to plant in the community garden, that sad little patch of land that’s overgrown, showing how no one really cares.
She worries, however, that her son will put her in the Mary Wade Home over on Clinton at some point if her memory keeps failing. Agnes and Emelia ended up there, forced to leave their homes by their children, and they didn’t last long. Once you go to a place like that, it’s over pretty quick because you know it’s the last stop and who wants to keep living with the smell of urine and disinfectant in the air all the time?
The boy shifts in his seat, and she holds up her hand. He catches his breath, stops moving, obedient. She wants to ask him about himself, where does he live, how did he end up here like that, but she isn’t sure she should invest that much in him. One of the things about getting older is that you suddenly stop caring what people think or what other people’s lives might be like. She lives with her memories, wraps them around her while she sips her sherry, watching the world go by from her front window.
There’s the young woman who jogs in the early evenings with those wires in her ears and the young families who walk on weekends with their strollers and designer coffees as though the neighborhood is gentrifying rather than deteriorating. It’s just less expensive than anywhere else, which is how they can afford to live here, making it easier to pretend that it will turn around. They close their eyes to the little ones, their eyes wide, their bellies growling with hunger, only half dressed even in the winter, leaning against the rickety railings on the decrepit front porches.