Benjamin Markovits - You Don't Have to Live Like This

I told him about Gloria, but the first time we appeared in public together was Jimmy’s baptism. Cris had had her baby, another son, and Tony asked me to be his godfather. This surprised me. I didn’t think we got along very well anymore. But Tony was one of those confident abusive types who act that way only in front of people they like. He could be pretty quiet with strangers. It’s also possible that his best friends got pissed off with him after a while, so he had to keep making new ones.

Walter came, too. We put on our jackets and ties, and Gloria met us at the house, wearing a cream-colored dress and a cream-colored hat with black spots, and a rose on top. Her overcoat was a hand-me-down from her mother, with a black fur trim. She looked great. Going to church was one of the things she really dressed up for.

I couldn’t tell what impression she made on Walter. He had a funny way with women he didn’t know. He simpered and half shut his eyes; he talked very gently. And Gloria made a real effort. “This is what happens when a man dresses himself,” she said, and tightened the knot of my tie. Then she offered to straighten out Walter’s. I could feel her hands on his shirt, my first little flare-up of sexual jealousy. It wasn’t till we pulled up outside the church, which had a parking lot big enough for a football field, that I realized how painful the whole business must be for him.

There was a sign fronting the road, like a football scoreboard, which read:

ST BARNABAS WELCOMES INTO CHRIST

JAMES CARNESECCA

WILLIAM HOFSTEDTER

LUCY TEMPLETON

Underneath that it said:

SPAGHETTI DINNER

JAN 20 7 P.M.

Gloria knew about Susie but wasn’t supposed to. She was the only black person in the church and I walked in holding her arm and feeling self-conscious. Everybody would assume we were sleeping together, but the truth is we weren’t.

On the second night I spent with her, Gloria explained to me what the deal was. She wasn’t a virgin, but the two or three times she’d had sex with her boyfriends she ended up regretting it afterwards, when the relationship ended. It seemed to make ending it more painful. So I was going to have to take it slow. It was early days so I didn’t argue with her. But even though we started spending many of our weekends together, nothing changed. I called what we did the hug-and-spoon race, which nobody won. She liked the phrase and I was stuck with that, too. On nights she stayed over I got very little sleep — I couldn’t sleep. We fooled around a little and did other stuff. Her thighs were like a strong boy’s, muscular and warm brown and totally smooth. She had these short little powerful legs. Her body was longer; her breasts sat up high on her chest; her nipples were rough and large. Once she took pity on me (the whole thing seemed to amuse her somehow) and gave me a hand job, but I didn’t like that much. It made a mess and left messy feelings, too. I felt kind of sticky all over, and she seemed to resent it afterwards. So we had a fight later about something else. I didn’t ask her again, but whenever she stayed over I couldn’t sleep. Sleeplessness makes me obsessive; I lay there next to her body all night obsessing.

Church was a funny place to have these thoughts. Two other kids were being baptized that day — all the parents sat together in the front row. Mostly it was just a normal service, but then Cris and Tony walked up with baby James, and I walked up, too, in front of everybody. The priest had black hair, combed up at the front like Elvis’s. His skin was very pink, though he probably had to shave a lot, because the black hairs came through darkly. He wasn’t very tall. Then he took the baby and dipped his head and Jimmy didn’t do anything but just lay there stupidly with a wet head. He cried when Cris took him. Cris and Tony said their bits, and I had to cast out the devil. Then we walked back and sat down. But the devil felt real to me then, I must say.

The priest, whose name was McAndrew, read out: “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

For some reason Brad wasn’t baptized but I was. My mother must have insisted, and for the second-born son my dad didn’t put up a fight. So I was once a baby with a wet head. Tony and Cris were sitting in front of me, and I could see Jimmy trying to push his nose into her breast. Cris had on a dress you can’t lift up, and he was crying and butting his nose against her. I remember thinking, Don’t be greedy.

Afterwards we all filed out. The Carneseccas had invited everyone back to their place. For once it wasn’t snowing. The sun shone bright enough the snow hurt your eyes, and most of the guests wore sunglasses as they walked to their cars. We were all dressed up and out of the house early on a Sunday morning, and people had a relaxed easy air, like it’s time to get drunk. Gloria said to me, “I been to church twice today already. Aren’t I a good little girl?”

“A very good girl.”

She said, “You know, you don’t have to hold my arm all the time. I’m okay.”

Then Walter caught up with us and drove us to Tony’s.

Everybody arrived at more or less the same time, but Tony had paid for caterers. Pretty soon the house was full of people and it wasn’t a big house. I ran into Mel Hauser.

“I didn’t see you in church,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know. When are you and me going to hit the range again?”

I introduced him to Gloria, but he wandered off to get another drink. He seemed a little drunk already.

There were flowers all over the house. Cris had banged in nails and hung flowers over the front door and the kitchen door, and by the stairs. The television set was hung with ivy.

Robert James was there. So were Clay Greene and his wife. Their kids were there, too, and one of them said to Helen, “May we go outside?” He looked tall for his age and well brought up — he had short dark brown hair, parted in the middle. It looked recently cut. Afterwards I noticed him alone in the garden, rolling a snowball down the snowy slide. But it was only the angle of the window. Another kid, maybe his brother, rolled it back up again.

Cris sat in the kitchen, nursing Jimmy. “Wasn’t he a good boy?” she said to me.

“I’ve never been a godfather before,” I said. “What do I do?”

“Just pay a little extra attention, that’s all I ask. It doesn’t matter so much now but later on. You’re a good influence on Tony. The boys could use a man in their life who isn’t their father.”

“I find it hard to imagine my life more than a couple of months in advance.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” she said.

A waitress in a short black dress squeezed her way around, filling up wineglasses. I asked her name. Desiree, she said; she was a student at Wayne State. “What are you studying?” I asked, but she didn’t hear me. There was also a bar set up in Tony’s study, which is where I found him, talking to Mel Hauser. Mel said to me, “Do you want a cigar?” They were both smoking.

“I’ve never had one of these before. What do they do to you?”

“They make you feel sick,” Tony said. “Don’t tell Cris. She doesn’t like it in the house.”

But I lit one anyway. “What are you drinking?” I said.

“Scotch.”

Mel poured me a glass. “Hey,” he said. “I may have heard something about that girl you asked me to look into.”

“What girl?”

“The German kid, the one who got raped.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Come out to the range and I’ll tell you. I want to get my facts straight.”

Something about his tone got on my nerves. “What happened earlier?” I said. “You disappeared pretty quick.”