Nadi begins screaming at my back, screaming in Farsi that I am a beast, leave her alone, velashkon!But my wife’s yelling is no louder than the blood in my head. I order the whore to ignite her engine and never return. “And you tell to your friend his superior officers know everything. You tell to him that.” I grasp the whore’s chin and force her to view me directly. There is fear in the moisture of her eyes, and Nadi begins to hit my back with her small fists but they are no more than the flap of a bird’s wings. “You tell to him that. This is our home. Ourhome.”
The gendeh pulls her head away, engages the gearshift, and speeds her auto to the top of the hill. She maneuvers around, and I push Nadi back as the woman passes closely by. She is looking directly ahead, both hands upon the steering wheel, a strand of her long hair sticking upon her face. My wife has become quiet. I hear only her breathing, and mine as well.
M Y UPPER ARMS WERE BRUISED, THE BACK OF MY HEAD STUNG, ANDI was so angry I started to cry, and I kept on in ragged spurts all the way through San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge, through Sausalito and Marin City, past signs for Mill Valley, Corte Madera, and Larkspur. At Route 580, up in the hills, I could see the sandstone walls of San Quentin prison, just the beginning of a guard tower, and I cut east onto the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge. San Pablo Bay lay stretched out under me in the sun. There were dozens of white sails, and the glare hurt my eyes. I wiped the stolen eyeliner off my cheeks, avoided looking in the mirror, and the bridge seemed to go on for miles.
In El Cerrito I stopped at a 7-Eleven to buy a box of tissues. I wanted bottled water too but didn’t see any with the soft drinks, and I didn’t want to ask, so I bought an ice cream sandwich. I knew I looked bad, but the Asian woman behind the counter was nice enough not to keep her eyes on my face. On the way back to the Bonneville I passed a pay phone bolted into the side of the building and before I knew it I was calling my brother Frank collect at his car dealership in Revere. It was almost one here, four o’clock there. Frank’s partner Rudy Capolupo answered, his voice always low and wheezy, like he was being forced to talk with someone stepping on his throat. He asked the operator to repeat my name twice, then he paused and accepted the charges.
“Sorry to call collect, Rudy.”
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll take it out of Frank’s wallet at lunch. Hey, how’s sunny California anyways? I might retire out there, you know. Marina Del Rey. You been down there yet?” Without waiting for my answer, he said: “Hold on, sweets, your brother will want to talk to you.”
It took a while for Frank to come to the phone. My hands shook as I opened the ice cream sandwich and took a bite. But I could hardly taste it and when it got to my empty stomach it was too cold and almost hurt. A bright purple jacked-up Chevy Malibu pulled up to the 7-Eleven. Three Chicano boys were inside. The driver went into the store, but the other two, both in flannel shirts buttoned up to their necks, one in a tight hair net, gave me the look from head to toe. I wanted to ask them what they thought they were staring at. Did they want their teeth kicked down their throat? But then Frank’s voice came on the line, and I turned my back to the boys and slouched over the phone.
“K?Is that you?” He sounded so much like himself, his voice deep and peppy, the Saugus accent stronger than ever, that I started crying even before I could talk. I dropped my ice cream, covered my mouth, and twisted the receiver away from my face.
“Kath?”
“Wait.” I pulled out a tissue and blew my nose, then got a fresh one, wiped under my eyes, and took a deep, shaky breath. “It’s me, Franky. I’m sorry.”
He said it was okay, no problem, but his voice wasn’t peppy anymore.
“What’s wrong, K? Is everything all right? Nick all right?”
I ran my finger over a number scratched into the phone. I began to turn from side to side.
“Kath?”
“Nick’s gone, Frank.”
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“He left.”
My brother was quiet a second. I pictured him standing in his office in a monogrammed dress shirt, Hugo Boss pants, Johnston & Murphy shoes, a bright pastel tie, his hand on his hip.
“When, K?” Now his voice sounded testy, and I heard everything in it: my whole life, his opinion of it, his opinion of my marriage, which he really thought was doomed from the beginning. And now I knew Nick hadn’t gone back home either, or else Frank would’ve heard.
“A while ago.”
“Did he take the Pontiac?”
“No he didn’t take the Pontiac.Christ, is that all you careabout, Frank? The fucking caryou gave us?”
“Hey, calm down, it was just a question.” My brother blew his breath out into the phone. I could picture him shaking his head and I wished I hadn’t called.
He was quiet a few seconds, then said: “Is this why you haven’t been calling Ma, K?”
His tone was gentle now, but why did he have to ask me this? “Yeah, that’s why. Frank, listen. I just—” The tears came with no warning. I saw again the colonel’s raging face as he pushed me across the yard, his breath bad, like meat left out in the sun, his eyes wide and brown, the whites yellowed as he spit his words at me and pushed me farther and farther away from my house, mine and Frank’s. “Frank?”
“K?”
“Yeah?”
“You still, you know, dope-free?”
“Please don’t talk to me like this, Frank.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a fuckup.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Lookit, just come home. The hell with Lazaro. Come back East, K.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?
“I have a business.”
“Cleaning?”
“Yeah.” I blew my nose. He was quiet again, just long enough for me to imagine him rolling his eyes to himself.
“You can do that anywhere, K. Listen, Ma and the aunts are flying out there Labor Day weekend. They want to stay at the house anyway, so why don’t you let ’em help you pack? If you want, I’ll even fly out with them and drive back with you. Jeannie won’t mind. How’s that sound? You and me driving coast-to-coast together? By the time we get back to Mass., you’ll be ready to start out with a brand-new sheet.” He was about to say more, but then I heard Rudy grunt from a few feet away that Frank was going to blow a sale if he didn’t get back out on the floor. “Kath, I gotta go. Think about it. I’ll call you later.”
I wasn’t even mad anymore; I didn’t feel anything really, just dried up and hollow, like I’d run out of something important. “Frank?”
“Yeah?”
I was past telling him about the house, past asking for any real help from him, but I could ask him this: “You can’t call me, I’m going on a trip. I planned it a long time ago and I’m having some friends watch the house while I’m gone. Could you tell Ma that? Apologize for me? Tell her if I’d known earlier, I—”
“Okay, Kath, anything to help. Look, I gotta go. Chin up, hon. Call me.”
I held on to the receiver until the dial tone came and listened to it awhile before I hung up. That old dark feeling started to open up inside me, like I was in the basement of a house I couldn’t escape. I knew my brother would tell Jeannie about me and Nick, that she would tell my mother and then everyone would know the truth, that Kathy Nicolo hasn’t changed; two steps forward and four steps back, and I knew as soon as I heard my brother’s voice I couldn’t tell him about Dad’s house anyway. Not Frank, always looking out for himself first, keeping his clothes clean and his hair parted straight, only at his best when your problems don’t have anything to do with him at all, when he can sit back in his expensive clothes at the lunch he’s buying you and give cool, practical advice, show how much he believes in you by giving you and your new husband a brand-new Bonneville to drive west.