After a moment, Paulie opens up. “I don’t understand it,” he admits. “When I was with my counselor or with Father O’Neill, it always seemed easy. Turn my back, start over, there’s a new life right around the corner. But at night, after the final count, Joanna would march into my brain like a storm trooper. It was an invasion, Jill. I’d try to throw her out, think about something else, but she stuck to me like a leech. You ever get so mad you felt as if you were gonna fly apart?”
“Recently, Paulie. In fact, just this afternoon, when I saw what you did to Joanna’s face.”
He pulls the T-shirt away from his mouth and stares down at his own blood. “Something’s wrong with me,” he says, “and I can’t fix it. When I think about losing Joanna, I feel like my heart’s gonna fall out.” He probes his ribs, as if checking for leaks. “I came here yesterday sure that Joanna really wanted me back. I thought she was gonna give me another chance. When she wouldn’t let me in the house, I was just blown out of the water. I asked her about the letters, what she’d written, and she told me she wrote them because she was bored. She said, ‘I shouldn’t have done it. Like I’m sorry, all right?’ Jill, I went nuts. I couldn’t help it.”
Any sympathy I might have felt dropped away with the last bit: I couldn’t help it. That’s what all the wife beaters say. I couldn’t help it. She made me do it. It’s not my fault.
“There’s still a way out, Paulie. Go to your parole officer, tell him what you just told me, get yourself violated. That way you’ll have some time to think it over.” I’m wasting my breath. I can see it in his eyes, see the pain marching back through a hundred lifetimes.
After a struggle, Paulie manages to stand upright. He limps across the yard, through the gate, and out into the street. When he releases the gate, it snaps back into place so hard the fence quivers on either side. “I came,” he calls back over his shoulder, “to tell Joanna how sorry I am. I came to make it up to her.”
Joanna comes down at 6 o’clock to throw a pair of frozen dinners into the oven. She’s wearing navy slacks over a pale blue top, an outfit that not only complements her jewelry and her eyes, but the sheen in her inky-black hair. She keeps her back to me as she unwraps the dinners and sets the timer on the stove. “You want a drink?” she asks.
“I want,” I tell her, “to get so drunk I aspirate my own vomit.”
“Does that mean yes?”
“It means no.”
She fixes herself a stiff one, three fingers of Wild Turkey and a splash of ginger ale. “Are you gonna tell Uncle Mike about the letters?”
“He doesn’t know?” It’s the first time Joanna has ever surprised me. Before this moment, I’d always assumed that her brain and body were equally free of angles.
“Uh-uh.”
“Tell me why you wrote him, Joanna, if Uncle Mike didn’t ask you to. Make me understand.”
“I don’t know. Paulie sent me a couple of letters and, like, I was bored.”
“Then why’d Uncle Mike secure the house? If he didn’t know about the letters?”
“Uncle Mike knows about some of Paulie’s letters because I showed them to him.”
“But not all of them?”
“Not the ones that said about me writing back.”
“And if he finds out, he’ll make you wish you were still living with Paulie. That about right?”
Joanna’s crimson lips fold into a childish pout. The effect is nearly pornographic. “I’m not like you, Jill. You can’t expect other women to be like you.”
“Yeah? Well, answer me this, Joanna. How come Uncle Mike didn’t arrange for your protection before Paulie knocked on the door yesterday? How come he waited until after you took a beating? You think maybe he used you to set Paulie up? Or do you think he forgot to check his calendar?”
That night, long after Joanna has gone to bed, I’m lying awake on the living room couch. I’m not worried about Paulie getting past me. By the time he breaks through the door, I’ll be ready. No, it’s Joanna who keeps me awake, Joanna and Michael Xavier Kelly.
I slip into a T-shirt and jeans, then walk out onto the porch. The quiet eases over me, comfortable as an old sweater, the one you only wear in the house. A few fireflies, the first of the year, dance above the lawn, and I can smell, very faintly, the lilacs blooming in a neighbor’s yard. There are no nightclubs in College Point, no theaters, no after-hours bars. The locals are committed to work and church, to the small, neat yards that surround their small, carefully maintained homes. There’s not a lit window anywhere.
A few blocks away, MacNeil Park leans out into the East River. I ate more than a few meals in the park when I was stationed at the 109. I liked the sullen odor of the sea on summer nights and the slap of the waves against the bulkhead. The view, on the other hand, is less than spectacular. No glittering skyline. No ladder of bridges. Across the river, the South Bronx is a jumble of low-rise warehouses and isolated tenements. To the left, the many jails of Rikers Island rise into the night. They do glitter, those jails, because the lights are on 24/7. But they somehow lack the panache of Manhattan.
Suddenly I find myself wondering what, if anything, Joanna feels when she undresses for Uncle Mike. Does she pretend she’s somewhere else? With someone else? Uncle Mike is past sixty and Joanna’s still four years short of thirty.
Maybe, I think, I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe she basks in his approval. Maybe she can see it all in his eyes: admiration, gratitude, even worship. Maybe she likes what she sees.
But what I can’t imagine is Joanna being aroused in any way, and I know that sex is a chore that brings out the actress in her. I know that she squeals in the right places, urges him on, groans with delight, screams when he comes. And then she defends herself by saying, I can’t be like you, Jill.
So what am I gonna do? I’m as bad as Paulie now. I can’t get Joanna Kelly out of my mind.
I fall asleep somewhere in the early morning hours and wake up at 8 o’clock when Joanna comes down. She’s wearing a gray terry cloth robe and plaid, down-at-the-heels slippers. No makeup, no jewelry. Maybe this means she’s in a sober mood. For her sake, I hope so.
Without a word, I rise, head upstairs to the bathroom. When I come back down, Joanna’s sitting with her elbows on the table and her chin cupped in her palms. Her eyes flick toward me, then back to the tabletop. “What a mess,” she announces.
The coffeemaker emits a final burst of steam, then goes quiet. I fumble through the cabinets until I find cups and saucers, spoons, and sugar, then set the table. Joanna leans back in the chair and crosses her legs.
“You think about what I told you last night?” I ask as I fill the cups. “That Uncle Mike’s risking your life? Because one of these times, Paulie’s gonna come to kill you. It’s just pure luck that it didn’t happen the last time.”
“Well, that’s what I mean,” Joanna explains, “it’s gotta stop.”
“Maybe it’s gotta stop,” I say, letting the words drop like wet sponges into a dirty sink, “but I’m not gonna be the one to stop it.”
Joanna nods, as if at something she figured out a long time ago. “Tell me what to do.”
I reach down into my pocket for Uncle Mike’s throwaway and Joanna’s .32. I put the throwaway on the table, then eject the .32’s magazine and the round in the chamber. Finally, I hold up the .32.
“Did Uncle Mike give you this weapon?”
“Yeah, for protection.”
“He show you how to use it?”
She takes the .32 from my hand, grasping the butt with two fingers like the weapon is a shit-filled diaper she wants to be rid of in a hurry. “First, you push this thingy here...”