Christopher Prato - Little Boy or, Enola Gay

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 14 th, 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?

I couldn’t hear their exact words through the floor, but the happy sounds indicated Maria was making a hubbub of my poem.

I sat on her bed, silently awaiting the bliss to come. I was, for that moment, happy. Even doubts about her past could not penetrate my concentration. Smiling, I looked around her room. On the wall across from her bed I noticed something I’d never noticed before: a window frame. It wasn’t a window opened up to the outside. In fact, Maria’s little basement hideout had no real windows whatsoever. The window I noticed that night was a simple, glassless, mahogany frame adorned with a pair of silky yellow drapes which opened up to the cinder block wall.

Before I had another second to ponder my discovery, Maria fluttered back down the stairs, poem in hand.

“So, did they like it?” I asked.

Maria beamed. Tears rolled down her eyes as we embraced.

“Maria, I was just wondering what that was,” I said, pointing to the non-window.

“Oh, I guess you never noticed that before, huh? Well, in case you didn’t realize, I don’t have any real windows down here. Long story short, there’s a second-floor apartment upstairs above my parents’ place. When I was a little girl, I used to live there. Back then, I had two real windows in my room and both allowed the sunlight to stream in all day. But when my father lost his job and my family was short on money, we had to rent out that floor. So me and my sister moved down here, to the basement.”

“Where’s your sister’s room?” I asked.

“It’s back there,” she said, pointing to a splintery wooden door leading to what I thought was the boiler room. “But she’s never home. She’s always at her boyfriend’s house around the corner. She sleeps there all the time. So I have this little basement all to myself. And we have it to ourselves.”

“But what about the window?” I asked.

“Oh yea, the window. Anyway, when I was about nine years old, I begged my mother to let me move back upstairs. I didn’t understand why we had to give up the second floor. I told her, ‘Mommy, I want to look out my window again.’ Sympathetically, she said I couldn’t have my old room and old window back, but she’d give me the next best thing: my very own special window, one that I could look through and see whatever I wanted, not just Ridgewood.” She chuckled and then continued. “My mother always promised that someday I’d have a real window to look through. But it’s been seven years and, well, you know the rest.”

“Maria, that’s the most touching story I’ve ever heard. If I could buy you a house with a big bay window I would. Maybe next Valentine’s Day.” I smiled.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I don’t need a real window anymore. Until tonight, I’d never realized just how much you understood me or my life. Your poem has opened up a window to my heart tonight. And only you and I have the privilege to gaze through it, to see what’s inside.

“I love you, A.J.”

“I love you, too, baby.”

I should have made every day thereafter like Valentine’s Day.

Instead, weeks passed, more snowfall came, and I couldn’t stop worrying. Don’t you know , I asked the snow one day while shoveling, that Maria is lying to me? But the snow didn’t respond. It just melted, slowly, day after day, ultimately revealing the old neighborhood once again. Shoveling the snow each week, I thought of a zillion creative ways that Maria could lie to me. It’s all I could think about.

Images of her laughing and joking with her old friends and boyfriends struck me like lightening each moment I was awake. As I lay in bed each night, aching to fall asleep in peace, elaborate conspiracy theories involving Maria bounced like racquetballs within my head.

Each morning I woke charged with jealousy. Wicked thoughts began to dance and play within my mind before my first cigarette, teasing and taunting me like little children with BB guns. The thoughts knew who was boss. I could fight like hell each day, and occasionally win a battle against my own shame, but it would eventually win the war. Burglars can’t help but rob a home when the door is left wide open with nobody home.

My days went something like this: One moment I’d be in school, doing math or history, and then—wham!—a thought would whack me with a punch in the jaw. With each thought, the swelling and stinging intensified in the form of more thoughts; the pain and thoughts grew exponentially. More images of Maria kissing some faceless boy I’d never met; more pictures of her smiling little face laughing at another guy’s joke; more fear and hatred for people long gone from her mind.

Sick thoughts. Crazy thoughts.

These thoughts were more intense when I was with her. When I gazed into her eyes, memories of times of which I wasn’t part of multiplied like amoeba, first two, then four, then eight. And then, within minutes, a thousand crazy thoughts would permeate my mind, forcing me to stop whatever I was doing and obey their lead. After being bombarded by these thoughts, my heart would feel empty and weak, and soon be overcome by resentment.