Marble Show Box

by Sarah Cavallaro

                Tonight is typical for a New York Thursday night. Happy hour passed and the streets are still crawling with humans mostly laughing drunk ones, an old man with a bald head and thin ponytail wearing a tight powder blue silk suit leans on his high heeled, young babe's shoulder and licks her ear lobe, groups of guys in their late twenties give each other headlocks, and pat each other's butts. Single women, all ages, hanging around walk slowly, mostly in two's, stop at the four corners. Some cross, some look around others wait around. Chinese men deliver dinner to the locals on their rickety bikes, they peddle fast across the street, noticing no one. Carried on rushed tired men's shoulders are stacks of dresses, white shirts, and suit jackets, wrapped in plastic dry cleaning bags as they make the last delivery of the night. I hear muffled voices. I can't hear their words but I can see feelings on faces, sparkles in eyes, frowns, full smiles, lie smiles, eyebrows raised, cheeks flushed, tears being held in. Taxi's screech to a halt as hairy arms, fat arms, thin arms, short arms hail their attention. Yellow beasts weave in and out like serpents squirming to their prey.

              My fancy high rise with the driveway and a fountain in the front, the one that Angelo says "Mickey Mouse stands guard at the door" is located in midtown nestled in between corporate office buildings, other high rise's, mostly blue blood co-op's who won't sell to Jews, Italians or blacks, restaurants and many many bars. My building walls are thin because it was built as fast and cheap as possible. I can hear hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of car and truck tires screech each time they bounce over the steel plates that cover the holes the con ed worker's dug after the city water pipes exploded a month ago. The plates grind into the cement and give off a jarring sound that wakes the dead.

              My apartment faces south which is downtown toward the World trade center and ask any New Yorker how valuable all day sunlight is in your cramped box. My bedroom faces some television addict�s living room and I have to keep my blinds closed, but the sunlight still creeps in between the metal slates and baths my two cactus plants. My son's bedroom was the dinning room and has an open view of hundreds of buildings. Overlooking these monoliths from the seventh floor, they remind me of grave stone markers in a cemetery. Grey toned, lined up and clustered together the markers speak of our past creations. Father of so and so, son of so and so. Mother, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, husband, wife, daughter but no lover or mistress. Buildings are given identity too. The Mondrian, the Dakota, the Bristol. My building is the Bristol.

              I hear my neighbor's life through these paper thin walls. She's ranting again. She is a fifty-three year old former network executive and has been living here since the building was built seventeen years ago. When I moved in five years ago she came in for a moment and walked through, "we have the same size apartment" said she and walked directly to my bedroom. I didn't know at the time that our bedrooms shared the same wall. She said she had a big job once and made a lot of money, but there was a management change and they let her go so she retired after suing them for age discrimination. Her hacking coughs, exasperated yawns and loud flem laughs as she complains about everything on the phone until three in the morning, squeals like a pig as she cries, and blows her nose for what seems to be an eternity makes me re-think Jesus words "Love thy neighbor as you would yourself." I'd be dead if I followed his advice. She is a blamer and lets it hang out, screams hysterically in a high pitched tone at her old mother when she calls "No Mother. You�re a liar. You have been a liar for ninety years. No. No. I didn't say that, listen, listen, you never listen." If I hear her one more time I'm going to buy a Saturday night special and shoot two shots right through the wall at her head.

              Maybe two days will pass and the police will knock on my door and ask if I know anything. I'll act innocent and tell them a fairy tale.

              So I spit my poison at the wall and say over and over "don't even think about opening your insensitive middle aged... middle class piece of shit mouth, sleep on the floor if you have to but don't let me hear your headboard hit the wall again." Finally, I'm sitting down to write. A page I'm begging for a page of silence. I want to hear my heart beat.

              Last night her being, this stranger who I have said all of ten words to when I moved in after my mid life divorce kept me hating her all night. I hear her making another sound. I'm going to gas this bitch.

              I'm 45 years old, and I cry the same "life sucks" tears as when I was thirteen. I don't want to be like my neighbor. My anger gets fatter. I'll start to destroy if I don't change. Like my mother.

              The doorman with the white gloves in the beige marble lobby rings up to my box. Buzz. Buzz Buzz. Wow, what does he think I'm deaf. My heart races. It's late who could that be? For a minute I think it's the neighbor feeling my vibes through the wall. Oh shit. Not even my thoughts are private here. Thankfully, he announces "Angelo." That's my thirty seven year old boyfriend.

              I open the door, "Bella." He says.

              Deep sparkling brown eyes smile at me. He kisses me on my uptight dry lips. He's holding his helmet, his leather jacket is unzipped, his long black hair is windswept from the Harley barely touching his wide shoulders and he's standing so firm like he owns the earth underneath. His lips are full, moist, lush. His greying beard is soft. I sniff his cheek, he smells sweet.

              "What are you, a dog?"

              "A pug."

              Holding my shoulders he looks deeply into my eyes and searches for a clue about what's inside.

              "I can see there's been a lot happening upstairs." He points to my head.

              I start to spill:"My mother was a depressed pill popper."

              He says:"Wow..slow down the ants are swinging too fast."

              "Finally I can say it, really she was a druggie and didn't give a shit about any of us."

              "What the fuck... how did this all come up?" He pauses. "Better yet." He takes a breath. "Start from the beginning. What happened tonight?"

              "I'm sick of living here. I'm sick of listening to this fucked up woman next door. I'm sick of the noise, I hate it here."

              He says:"Maybe you�re sick of yourself."

              "Then what do I do... leave myself? I don't want to end up like my mother."

              "You've trained yourself more like your father, at least in the survival way, in business you're like him."

              "My sanity...my value is always measured with what I can do for everyone around me, how much money can I make and spend. I'm okay because I support others. Is that it?"

              "Hey...I'm not your ex-husband and your not supporting me so don't think I'm saying this to keep you putting money in the meter. You learned discipline from your father. Relax baby."

              "Yeah... okay I got it and my mother... what did I get from her?

              The trick question. He stopped dead, didn't have a word to say. Got him, which is rare because he has a philosophy about everything.

              "Class, grace."

              "How would you know, you never met her."

              "Her photos."

              He walked over to the coffee table and picked up a photo of her. She wore a tailored black crepe dress, a bit low cut, a strand of pearls around her thin neck and satin high heels. Her long blond strawberry hair was tucked in a neat bun. She was smiling and holding a scotch. But the other hand was tucked behind her. Like she was hiding a part of herself. She was thirty - four.

              That's all I needed and I was off rambling. He stood holding her photo in the broken frame.
 
              "She was beautiful. Did I ever tell you she called us her four precious gems. That's why I named my production company Emerald. I still can't believe she left us, just like that. One night you have a mother and the next day you're alone. You just don't understand because you have a mother that adores you. I see her smile with every word that come out of your mouth."

              "Yeah... because she doesn't listen."

              He smiles.

              "Very funny. You're not hearing me. I was thirteen when it happened. Why did I have to grow up so unprotected?"

              "My mother lost her mother at 12. She suffered too. Others have lived this too, Linda. I think she has similar hang up's to you. She doesn't trust. Never will."

              He takes off his leather jacket and puts it on the back of my chair.
  
              "I trusted that my mother would be there every morning. Like every kid does. Like my son does. Well she just thought of her own pain. Kind of selfish when I really look at it. And to top it off she didn't have to do it in the garage so we would find her in the station wagon the next morning. I think my brother found her, I'm not sure it's kind of a blank but I remember seeing my father getting a wire clothes hanger, and calmly bending it to open up the locked car door. I waited. Why did she lock the door? Why didn't he break the window? Didn't he hear the car on all night? The garage was below their bedroom window. That always bothered me. Maybe he knew she was in there and figured, fuck let her do it. This will end her misery. I'd be better with out her. I'll ship the kids off to private schools. I bet you she thought my father would save her before the carbon monoxide strangled her?"
 
              I'm pacing around the living room, lighting candles. He's standing, watching and listening. Normally he tries to interject his opinion but this time he didn't. I'm glad he left his therapist Mrs. G or we wouldn't have reached here. I'll tell that story later on.

              "Was she pretending, kind of playing a game to get his attention after a fight? I'll never know the truth except I could make it up like I used to but that doesn't help anymore."

              He sat on the couch. He held out his hand for me to sit down and hold his. I did. He moved a bit to get comfortable.

              "The springs are coming through."

              "I'm not getting a new one at this point. We'll use yours when we move to the building. Does your friend, Carlo want this one?"

              "Ask him."

              "If he doesn't I'll give it to the salvation army."

              He looked at me like who cares what you do with this old piece of shit.

              "Afterwards he carried her into the living room in his arms and placed her on the couch. Kind of like sleeping beauty.  I kissed her, he didn't. He put a mirror under her nose to see if she was breathing. No breath. Her pink and white bathrobe had a huge yellow stain on the front and I was embarrassed at her hair wrapped in those tacky pink spongy curlers. She didn't have underwear on either. I saw her pubic hair. I don't think she expected to die looking like that. It wasn't her style. I stood over my father watching. Then my father screamed in an authoritative, harsh voice, which I've tried to forget "go next door and tell the Cohn's "your mother is dead." I walked barefoot in the snow to the neighbors house to tell this shameful story. They asked me if I wanted to come in I nodded no and ran back to the house and waited for the police. The ambulance came and took her away with a sheet covering her face. They knew she was dead. I still thought she'd make it. The phone rang, it was my grandmother. My father�s mother. I told her how much I hated her son.

              Angelo looked perplexed. "Her son?" Sometimes he still doesn't listen very well.

              "My father." The conversation went like that for about another fifteen minutes while Angelo pulled off his boots and unbuckled his tight black jeans.

              Then it went back to the subject of should we buy the building in Williamsburg? Or buy a loft in Tribeca. Will the real estate appreciate faster in Manhattan? Is Williamsburg out of the loop? Are we settling for less in Williamsburg? He bantered back and forth the pros and cons. He's always changing his mind. One day he likes Williamsburg because it's like Soho was twenty years ago with all the artists and small gallery's moving in and the next he thinks it's not good enough. We had finally found a building that when we walked in we both looked at each other and nodded "Bingo." In order to live together we would need lots of space for his art studio, my office, lots of bedrooms, and a courtyard. We walked in and out of stranger�s homes in Tribeca, West side, East side, Soho, Noho, for three years. Most of the places needed tons of work, were small, dark, and they wanted plenty of cash. I'd ask myself "who could afford this? and why?" Depression set in each and every time as the brokers bragged about how beautiful the space was. What did they see that I missed? We put bids on a couple of lofts and were out bid by others more desperate and blind then us. We even went into contract on a warehouse on the lower east side next to a housing project and a heroin den. Rats scurried from the front door. Nothing connected. We weren't even sure if we could live together. And then we gave up looking for months. One Sunday morning over eggs and bagels we decided to open up the real estate section that was left on the bench by another and there it was an ad for a building in Williamsburg. And here we are going again into contract.

              He moves closer to me and whispers, "Would you suck me?"

              He asks in a seductive, sweet way, almost like a child. I'm cold, indifferent, trying to be pleasant, trying to not feel the hardness inside.

              "Is your son going to come in the morning?" My son is seventeen. His father, David lives a block away on East 55th street.

              "He doesn't always come by. Only when he forgets his books."

              "You should show him some discipline and tell him when he's with his father for the week he should bring everything with him."

              "I like to see him when it's not my week."

              "So you like to take advantage of his disorganization. How cruel."

              I�ve thought of myself as many things but not cruel. The word crushes me with it's unfairness. I moved to the end of the world. He hung around hoping I'd open my mouth to kiss or blow.  I�m thinking: ride the Harley back to your loft before it rains. I can't give you anything tonight. You�ve killed me. �It�s going to rain, maybe you should go.� After I say it he agreed it was time to leave and so he did, quietly not looking back.

              I sat staring at the sky. The thunder smashed the roof and  the lightening flashed across the Persian rug. The phone rang.
 
              "Are you feeling better?"
 
              �I feel great. It�s raining. I�m dry - what more can I ask for."

              "Move in with me. But I�ll never let you sleep on the couch in my house and me alone in my bed." He announces.

              His house. His house. His bed. I ask myself the question can WE make it? This question that I�ve asked in two other relationships could be verging on biblical. I take a deep breath and out of some place that only junkies understand I say �sounds good to me.� 

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