Christopher Prato - Little Boy or, Enola Gay

As I said, mission accomplished.

We traveled into Manhattan a few days after Christmas. A fresh sheet snow covered the sidewalks and store canopies. Even rat-infested bodegas looked charming after a recent snowfall. It was a magnificent New York winter day. The sky was a crisp sapphire and the sun was particularly radiant; it shone almost as brightly as it did when Maria and I went to Central Park during the spring. Skyscrapers sparkled. Blissfully gripping Maria’s hand, strolling down Broadway, I tried my damnedest to forget the drudgery of Thanksgiving. We skipped and joked and kissed as if we’d just fallen in love the day before.

So, listen,” I said, “halfway through the show, they’ll have an intermission. And then, right before the show begins again, they’ll flick the lights on and off, so everyone knows to go back into the theater.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Did your mother tell you, or something?”

“No,” she said, “I’ve been to the opera before. Just once when I was a kid.”

Burning with jealousy, sweat accumulated on my palm, allowing our hands to slip apart. She said it as if it weren’t a big deal, as if it didn’t mean a goddamn thing. That’s what made me even angrier than I already was.

Destiny handed me a choice: grab Maria’s hand, kiss her, and continue walking, or grill her like a cop would a thug. A millisecond later, the choice was made. “What the hell do you mean?” I blared. My voice echoed down the corridor of skyscrapers as if I was yelling into the Grand Canyon. “You said you’d never been to the Met before!”

“I never said that! Oh, A.J., please don’t start up again.” Her voice spoke for her eyes which spoke for her heart. She began to weep. But I couldn’t resist; in a sick sort of way, I was like a kid in a candy store, aching to grab every opportunity to question her.

But I was an angry kid. Eyeing the golden metal dangling from Maria’s neck, I saw my breath before my face, jetting rapidly in and out of my nose in columns like the smoke from a dragon’s nostrils. I hated Maria at that moment. She was Satan.

“Oh, great,” I said, “just great. Now what’s the fucking point of even going to see this thing?”

“I’ve never seen this opera before. I went to another one with my seventh-grade class over four years ago. I don’t even remember the name of it.”

“Don’t you understand? I wanted to show you something new today. I wanted you to experience something you’d never had before.”

She looked at me with this face that had “fuck you” written all over it. “You want to show me something I’ve never seen before, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, hesitating. “Don’t you understand?”

“Well then why don’t you act like an adult? Stop acting like a fucking child! I’ve never seen that before!” She said it so smugly, and that’s what killed me so much. She didn’t have to say that, or say it in that way. She didn’t understand, and that’s all that mattered. I started envisioning her little goddamn elementary school friends, laughing at some goddamn opera, wondering what the fuck it was. I hated the opera already. And I hated every one of her goddamn little friends.

Well, as they say, the show must go on. And so did we. I dragged Maria down Broadway and entered the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center between 62 ndand 66 thstreets. The beauty of the Opera House calmed me. A giant structure of glass and marble, it sat amidst the mammoth apartment buildings of the Upper West Side. I remember thinking that it looked like a jail for the rich, a massive marble jail with a colonnaded facade. Yellow flames of light were piercing the bars from within, beaming onto the elevated plaza, reflecting in a rectangular pool of water in the center. Standing not twenty yards from the front door, on the Broadway edge of the concrete common, listening to the din of the traffic behind me, I squinted intensely, striving to see what was inside.

Nothing.

The jail is flanked by two equally impressive buildings that didn’t look at all like jails, Avery Fisher Hall and the New York State Theater. As large as the plaza between them was, I felt ominously trapped, almost as if I were in an elevator stuck on the 13 thfloor.

Once inside, we quietly settled into our seats in the balcony and the opera commenced. I was so lost in confusion and despair and nausea, that the actual show is a blur. Nothing induces nausea more than knowing exactly how much you’ve fucked up, and precisely what you’ve done wrong, but being absolutely unable to reverse the inertia of your sin.

Fifty-nine bucks a ticket—a lot of money for a seventeen-year-old—and I have no fucking idea what The Barber of Seville was about. Based on the audience’s reaction—whistles, applause, cheers—the story line was gripping, the singing superb, Rossini’s music exhilarating. I don’t remember, however, whether Maria enjoyed it or not.

What do I recall vividly is the emotion I felt, sitting on the edge of the balcony section, way up high over the stage. It must have been five stories up, at least. Peering over the railing, I was as close to plummeting to the ground as I’d ever been. My mind and body separated and drifted through the air and left all reason behind. I ached to pull myself together, to tear my ass of the seat, and take a nose dive over the balcony, smashing head first into the expensive seats like a B-52 whose engine had failed. For the briefest of moments, as Maria watched the stage and as the thunderous orchestra synchronized with my drumming heartbeat, suicide at the opera was my perfect wish. For the briefest of moments, I’d be flying… flying… flying… feeling the greatest rush imaginable… unstoppable and purely free.

But I could hardly stand up. Perhaps it was the sheer brevity of that kind of moment which prevented me from fulfilling my craving. Or perhaps a real man would have faced the inevitable despondent reality of his existence and leapt over the side, putting an end to his misery.

Not me, though. Back then, I wasn’t a real man.

I started to cry. I didn’t have to cry, but I just forced myself to do it. When Maria didn’t notice, I cried a little louder. Then she noticed, I know she did, but she didn’t respond. What a bitch , I thought. What kind of person doesn’t feel sympathy when someone she loves cries?

Halfway through the intermission, standing in a broad, fancy room in front of a bar hocking champagne for seven bucks a glass in dead silence, I told her I was going outside, and that I didn’t want to see the rest of the show. I got outside and smoked cigarette after cigarette, all alone on Broadway. People kept looking at me as they walked by the theater. Maybe they were wondering what the hell a teary-eyed, disheveled teenager was doing smoking butts in front of the grandest jailhouse in America. I know what I was wondering. Hell, I was freezing my ass off out there, and she was in the theater, protected and warm, and she didn’t even bother to come outside and check up on me. Fucking bitch! Lonely on Broadway—that’s where I was until the opera ended. I figured if I looked really cold and depressed when Maria finally came out, she’d feel some goddamn sympathy. But she didn’t.

She met me outside; her stare was as icy as the air. “You missed a beautiful opera, A.J.,” she said. We rode the R train back to Long Island City silence. I dropped her off at her house, got back into my car, and revved the engine. As she sprinted toward the door, frantically looking for her keys, I peeled out away from the curb. A worried neighbor peered out the window to see where all the noise came from.

I didn’t understand exactly why Maria had acted that way. Sure, I made a mistake, but why didn’t she empathize with my sadness? It was obvious , I thought. It was so obvious that it sickened me to think of her. She’s just like my mother , I thought. Driving along, down the jam-packed Grand Central Parkway toward Fresh Meadows, I realized that Maria could be a real goddamn bitch sometimes. Shit, she didn’t even bother to thank me for bringing her to the opera.