Christopher Prato - Little Boy or, Enola Gay

No, not resentment. Hatred .

I hated Maria for her past. Not because her past was particularly despicable, but because she had a past, period. There was a time before me, A.J. L’Enfant, and I couldn’t bear to think of it. And yet I thought about it all the time.

Laying nude on Maria’s bed, wrapped in her soft arms, it would begin oh-so-innocently. Amidst a beautiful conversation with Maria following sex, or a snowball fight, or whatever, that little devil would appear on my shoulder and whisper, “Ask her, A.J. Ask her.” The devil knew precisely what particular worry was rupturing my head at the moment: ex-boyfriends, alcohol, whatever. Seldom did I subtly introduce my fears to her as a best friend should feel comfortable doing. Usually, I’d accuse her, out of the blue, of drinking again. She’d always deny it, of course. But I’d persist. I wouldn’t—no, I couldn’t—let her forget about what she did with her cousin Upstate the previous summer. It was tattooed on my brain. Occasionally, during one of Maria’s moments of rebellion, she’d say something like, “Yea, well you drank, too.” Then she’d fold her arms and smirk, seemingly victorious. But the little devil would remind me to remind her that I drank primarily because of her, because she’d upset me so much, even though that was the furthest thing from the truth.

One day—I think it was in mid-March, right before Easter—Maria and I went shopping at Queens Center Mall. What followed was a typical scenario from that period in my life. We were in Stern’s looking for an Easter dress, but Maria couldn’t find anything she liked. I admit I was getting a little frustrated, because she’d already tried on a dozen dresses and I just wanted to go back to her place and relax. “Let’s try The Limited,” I suggested. As we entered the store, a fat guidette tapped her on the shoulder and started screaming happily.

“Is this the infamous A.J.?” she asked. “The greatest boy alive you’re always talking about?”

Maria smiled. “Yep,” she said, locking her right arm around my left. “This is my lover boy.” She gently brushed the back of her hand against my forehead and pushed the hair out of my eyes, just like mommy used to do.

“Maria’s always talking about you,” the girl said. “It’s always ‘A.J. this and A.J. that.’ I never hear anything else! You’re one lucky guy to have a girlfriend like Maria. She’s so proud of you going into the Air Force and everything. She says you’re going to take her up in a jet and make out with her in the sky.” She giggled and looked for Maria’s approval.

“We’re going to do more than make out up there,” she said, giggling back at her friend, tugging me closer. My face turned tomato-red. I’d never heard Maria talk that way to a friend before. True, I hadn’t realized how much she really admired and loved me. But I also had never heard Maria talk to anyone that way before.

Sensing my discomfort, Maria quickly changed the subject. The girl left five minutes later. As if to say, Relax, A.J. , Maria pinched my butt and smiled up at me. “Sorry you had to hear all that,” she said. “But you see, you don’t have to worry, because I talk about you with my friends all the time.”

I ignored her compliment. “Who was that?” I asked.

“That was Cindy. She’s in my history class.” Wide-eyed, Maria cupped her hands over her mouth in embarrassment. “Oh my God, I didn’t introduce you, I’m so sorry.” She said it strangely, as if she was muffling a chuckling, but not a humorous chuckle, more of a nervous one, a reaction to fear. She seemed afraid of me.

Looking back on it now, it’s pretty obvious that I should’ve put my arm around Maria, smelled her luxuriant hair, and not said a thing. But in that mall on that day for whatever reason I chose manipulation. It was business as usual. I hadn’t realized that she didn’t introduce me to her friend. So now I had two things to be pissed about.

“You seem pretty chummy with Cindy, don’t you?”

“What—well, she’s my frie—.”

“I’ve never heard you mention her before. When did you meet her?”

“What difference—?”

“And you didn’t even introduce me to her.”

“But I already apolo—”

I stared at her intently.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, “but I swear I talk about you all the time.

“When did you meet her?” I repeated, blandly.

“At a school dance, during my freshman year.”

“You danced with her?”

“No. I mean I was there with friends and they introduced me to her, and we became friendly.” Maria was perplexed. I wasn’t sure where I was going with my questions. But then the lightning struck: “Did you dance with any boys at the dance?”

“God, A.J., please don’t do this.”

“Answer the question, please. Did you dance with any boys at the dance?”

“A.J., this was like two years ago. Who remembers?”

“Please stop bullshitting me, Maria.”

“Okay, all right, I danced with a boy that night. Just a few times. Happy?”

“Who was he?” I could tell that Maria was exasperated with my line of questioning. I could also tell that she’d already given up, and was willing to toss any answers out there, hoping to shut me up with one of them at random.

“I don’t know. Some kid. He was in my eighth grade class.”

That she’d met this boy in elementary school, not even in high school, meant nothing to me. “Was he cute?”

She looked suddenly as if she’d found the answer she was looking for: Just praise him and he’ll stop. “I don’t know. Not as cute as you, baby,” she said, gently placing her fingertips on my cheek.

“But he was cute, right?”

“Can we please stop talking about him? Jesus Christ! I don’t even remember his name!”

“I bet you do. What was it?”

“I told you, I don’t remember!” she shouted, nervously. Passers-by, shopping bags in hand, slowed down to stare at us. At me .

“Think hard.”

Tapping her foot on the floor, she thought for a while, in desperation, and then said: “Donald.”

“So you do remember his name. You were lying before, weren’t you? Why did you lie to me?”

By this point in the argument, one watching from afar might have assumed that I was an attorney and Maria my hostile witness. The issue at hand was trivial, and yet I pursued it doggedly. The end justified the means. She could have been arguing her preference for catsup over mustard, or her passion for Shakespeare over Austin. But invariably, in the dark corners of my mind, I felt she was lying about whatever topic was at hand. And catsup v. mustard might seem like a silly comparison, but my distrust was just that juvenile. It was an eerie and bizarre suspicion of even the tiniest details.

Occasionally, I’d catch her in a lie. In all probability, she didn’t intend to lie in the first place, just like that day in the mall. But I guess sometimes she was so nervous when I questioned her that she forgot her own goddamn name. I was a pretty tough inquisitor. I could have been a great lawyer, I’m sure.

“Well!” I shouted. “Looks like we have a liar here, folks!” People looked at me.

Maria ran.

Through the mall’s tall revolving glass doors she dashed, out on to bustling Queens Boulevard. I gave chase in hot pursuit, my arms and legs chugging like a locomotive. Shoppers became spectators as I pushed the door open and searched for Maria outside. I quickly spotted her little puffy winter coat bouncing down the street in a whirlwind. Three blocks and one thousand pants later I finally caught up with her, clasped her shoulder, and whipped her around to face me.

“Let’s just end this, A.J.,” she said, with a hint of a tear in her eye. “I just can’t take you anymore.”