The Town of Babylon Read online

  Rosario couldn’t think of anyone in her life who had ever called her Rosie. She didn’t like the nickname, but hearing it made her feel American, just as she did whenever she said “you guys” or “the fridge” or “bucks” instead of “dollars.”

  * * *

  He’s on the verge of failing. If you want our advice, there’s no point in paying all of this tuition. It’s clear he doesn’t want to be here.”

  By the time the nuns called Rosario, at the end of his junior year, Henry had been truant for nearly a quarter of the semester.

  “Thank you for letting me know. But please don’t concern yourself with what we do with our money,” Rosario sniped, like a carnivorous plant. She’d taken the call in an empty conference room at work. Rosario didn’t care for Sister so-and-so’s advice. Nuns were bitter, intransigent devils who’d been responsible for much of her adolescent unhappiness. To complicate matters, Rosario had been, for years, encountering old white women who told her what not to do and how not to say things and how much things cost. She no longer possessed the goodwill and benefit of the doubt that once made these moments bearable.

  After every recriminating call or letter from the school, Rosario and Álvaro unleashed a torrent of frustration that produced no ostensible reaction from Henry. They were genuinely worried about his future, but Rosario was also mortified at the attention, at the thought of a roomful of nuns and priests thinking poorly of her son and her family.

  “I think it’s time for public school!” Álvaro shouted to no one in particular but loud enough for everyone to be imperiled. He, Rosario, and Henry were in the living room, in a triangulated tribunal formation, the threat of taxpayer-funded education now an errant bullet ricocheting, as if in a steel-plated room.

  “Maybe you want to go live with your grandparents in El Salvador?” Rosario shouted. This line of rhetorical inquiry, often reserved for the most dismal of report cards, was even less likely to end in action.

  Henry remained stone-faced, like a spy trained never to give his captors a moment of satisfaction, focusing instead on small imperfections on the wall ahead.

  “How do you expect to find a job without a degree?”

  Henry raised and dropped both shoulders in one fluid motion.

  “Do you want to live paycheck to paycheck? Do you want to serve people, or do you want them to serve you?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care? ¡Mierda!” Álvaro whacked the side of his own short leg, as if to call a mischievous dog. “You better care because you won’t live here forever.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care? You’ll live on the street, then?”

  “I’ll join the army.”

  “The army?” cried Rosario. “Do you know what happens to people who join the army?”

  Henry shifted his gaze toward the living room’s lifeless orange carpet and away from the chipped paint where Andrés had once thrown a Thundercats doll at him and missed. Henry was rightfully wary of eye contact with the woman who’d compelled him, countless times, to watch The Deer Hunter, Platoon, and Jacob’s Ladder, in the hopes of simulating a fear that she’d developed in her youth by simply living through proxy battles of the Cold War.

  “If they come back,” Rosario shouted, “they come back without legs and arms! They come back crazy. And this country won’t do a damn thing to help you. Do you hear me? Nothing! You’ll end up on the street begging. Is that what you want?”

  Henry uttered another fearless “I don’t care.”

  Conversations like these typically climaxed with the sound of frustration, failure, and anger: a calloused hand’s whack on intransigent youth. On those occasions, Henry, who was an otherwise stoic teenager, would surrender a few tears. One time, he mumbled “I hate you” under his breath, and Álvaro responded by taking off his belt and chasing him up the stairs. Andrés remained, in all of those instances, within earshot but out of sight, angry that Henry couldn’t make even the simplest of efforts to comply or to merely keep quiet.

  After each of these blowups, Andrés would offer to help Henry with his homework or to prepare for a test. It helped, for a few days, but Henry inevitably gave up. “I just don’t like it. I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be around all those fake people. I want this part to be over.”

  5

  OPEN BAR

  The music stops, momentarily revealing the overlapping conversations, all of them drawn in tightly and indistinguishable from one another, as if cinched by one large belt. Reverb jolts the gathered crowd; disgruntled yelps follow before a brief silence serves as a prelude.

  “Hello—this on? Yeah? Oh—Class of 1997, I hope you’re enjoying the night! We have a couple of hours left here at Joe’s.” Nicole strains to make her meager voice heard as the collective murmuring resumes. “But remember! We have tables reserved at McClain’s for those of you partiers who want to continue the reunion after this! Class of 1997, we have another classmate here. A regular. He’s one of only thirty-two gold-star alumni who’ve been to every single reunion since graduation. Welcome Jeremy Pugliese! Go Tigers!”

  Jeremy.

  No sooner does she say his name than I feel the blood recede from my face and hands. The ligaments in my jaw steel, and a ghost-like essence passes over my knees, leaving them wobbly. I turn away from the entrance.

  Jeremy.

  I don’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t live here anymore. A few years back, curiosity got the better of me, and I searched for him online. I found a record of him living north, at least four hours away. I also learned that he’d been arrested for drug possession a decade earlier. The charges were unspecific, but since white people don’t get arrested for minor drugs, I assume it was heroin.

  Jeremy. Incredible.

  It crosses my mind to hide in the bathroom. Just long enough for him to work his way into the room so that I can then sneak out the front door.

  What would Marco do? I often ask myself this when I get anxious. Certainly, he’d tell me to relax. Chill, babe, he’d say. In fact, he’s always telling me to relax. I attribute his placid demeanor to his bedside manner; he’s a doctor—a general surgeon who removes the obsolete parts: appendixes, tonsils, gallbladders. And also to his upbringing; he was raised in a large, proud Dominican family within a larger, proud Dominican community.

  Marco thinks I’m damaged from having grown up in the only non-white family in a white neighborhood. “You didn’t have enough role models or affirmation,” he’s said blithely, many times. I hate it when he spits public health research findings back at me; I’m the public health researcher in the family. I know he’s right, but I somehow can’t assimilate into my own experience what I know to be a universal truth.

  I rest an elbow on the bar.

  “Another gin martini?” asks the aspiring doctor.

  “No. A beer. A pilsner, if you have it.”

  In these sorts of situations, the transition from social cocktail to binge drinking can be seamless. I already sense tomorrow’s headache. There was talk, too, of an after-party at someone’s house: counter programming to McClain’s, with plenty of opportunities for regrets and humiliation to haunt me for years to come. I should slow down.

  Doogie Howser hands me a Stella.

  “Andy?” It’s the silty voice of a much older person, of aged or damaged vocal cords, but it’s unmistakably him. “Andy, it’s me, Jeremy.”

  The sweat of my palms mixes with the beer bottle’s condensation; I grip the glass firmly. I feel as if I were catching a basketball with my chest. I can’t pretend not to hear him; he’s standing too close, almost on me. A faster, remixed version of Keith Sweat’s “Twisted” fills the room. I’m tempted to walk away, out of Joe’s, across the Formula One racetrack, and back to my parents, but I know he’ll follow me. Jeremy twenty years ago certainly would have. I can’t vouch for this version, but surely, he remembers where my parents live.

  Jeremy steps between the bar
and me. He’s unmistakably an adult. There are shadows tucked between the lines on his face, and the gray strands of his hair are almost in equal proportion to the dirty blonds, all of it dark and shiny with gel. This Francis Bacon portrait of a skid row survivor will replace the ephebe-like Flandrin sketches that have lived in my mind all these years. Coming here has robbed me of something.

  “Hey, man,” I say unnaturally, “What’s up?”

  Jeremy pauses to stare through me. The skin around his eyes is sunken and haloed with a faint purple. His lips pull apart, but a small eternity passes before the words sluice out. “It’s good to see you. Wasn’t sure if you’d ever come to one of these things.”

  His voice is choppy, nervous. We’re like two adjacent earthquakes out of sync, the combined effect of which is a corrective turbulence that cancels out our anxieties.

  “I don’t think the reunions have ever been so conveniently located,” I say.

  “True. They’re usually south, near St. Iggy’s. One year it was out east. By the water. At a fancy place.”

  “It was a last-minute decision. My dad’s sick, and I—”

  “I’m sorry, man.” Jeremy’s face widens. It’s a familiar, chivalrous warmth.

  I shrug and bite softly at the inside of my lips, as if to communicate, That’s life or Thank you.

  “My mom’s laid up. Back surgery. Plus arthritis,” he says. “I guess it’s that time.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I respond, but what I’d like to say is that according to the health data, it’s too early for our parents to be so sick. Mine are only in their sixties, and it’s the twenty-first century. Three of my four grandparents, across two countries, lived into their nineties, one past one hundred. All of them died healthy, but my brother couldn’t make it to forty. Each generation in this country exhibits poorer health outcomes than the previous generation—the fallout from decades of growing economic inequality. In fact, life expectancy in Ireland is higher than it is here for Irish Americans. Same goes for Italian Americans.

  “Yeah, I guess they’re getting older,” I say.

  Jeremy slides both hands into his dark jeans, and just like that, he’s eighteen again. Despite the wrinkles around his eyes, lips, and forehead, he’s a teenager, a malnourished one. Or a man in recovery. Whatever the case, he’s no longer the most beautiful boy I’d ever known.

  We nod at one another. Or maybe we’re nodding at the circumstances. We remain quiet.

  As I study his face, I feel something akin to disappointment. What he’s done to himself in the last twenty years is a stain on his family tree. His parents exuded an easy, self-possessed pulchritude that drew stares. His mother was wide-faced and blue-eyed with strawberry blond hair. His father was burly and perennially Mediterranean-skinned, like a bygone movie star or a European who vacations often. Jeremy has fallen into disrepair by comparison. He’s a cautionary tale, a lottery winner who files for bankruptcy.

  Jeremy presses his hand onto my back, nudging me away from the bar. We’re standing in the way of drink traffic.

  “You look good,” he says. “Like you’re in good shape. Not as scrawny as you used to be.”

  “Shut up.”

  Jeremy laughs. “Kidding.”

  “You look like you did in high school,” I say, somewhat illogically.

  “No, I don’t. I can’t.”

  “I mean, I’d recognize you anywhere.”

  Jeremy’s eyes are dim, no longer an egress for electricity, but they manage still to glimmer. The Italian kid with blond hair and blue eyes was a rare bird back then. Most of the other Italians were dark haired and dark eyed and could, in other contexts, be mistaken for Latinx. But Jeremy was white, golden really. I’ve wondered if north-south dichotomies that affect the world over also existed in Italy. The country, after all, was a collection of city-states with distinct cultures and histories, which didn’t coalesce into the American idea of Italy until after World War I. And yet, the Italians in this town cling uniformly and with the zealotry of the Taliban to chicken parm and Columbus Day.

  “I’d recognize you too. Those huge ears,” he says.

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m just playing. Can I buy you a drink?”

  “It’s an open bar.”

  “Damn.” Jeremy reels his hand in from his back pocket before snapping his fingers. He knew it was an open bar. He breaks into a grin for the first time in twenty years.

  “A glass of water,” I say. “I’ve had plenty to drink. Actually, I was getting ready to leave when you got here.”

  “What were you going to do with that?” Jeremy points to the half-full beer in my hand.

  “Yeah, well, I meant after this one.”

  “Can we sit while you finish it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jeremy’s jaw tightens, squaring his face. Not anger, but confusion.

  “There are a ton of people I haven’t talked to yet. And it is getting late,” I explain, hoping to atone for any perceived hostility.

  “Andy, I haven’t seen you in twenty years.”

  “Wow. Has it been that long?”

  Both of us are aware of how hollow and petty I sound.

  Jeremy casts his arm out into a gentle sweep—the short-sleeve button-down burnishes his strapping forearms. He signals toward a bench. “Sit with me for a minute.”

  I hesitate, and he adds, “C’mon, man.”

  I’m a stew of emotions; pity is the broth. He’s not worth getting upset over, I tell myself. He’s not the same person. His sinewy, spiritless frame stands in stark contrast to the body-obsessed adolescent who never missed an opportunity to do shirtless push-ups, who taught me, with whimsy and pride, how to tune up my ten-speed, who walked around my room in a handstand while I attempted to do my homework, who forced me to dance with him in his basement. This wretched man could never have been that boy.

  The bench is small and recently painted. The strobe lighting above shimmers on the imperfect, streaky black. I set my beer on the floor between my shoes and rest my head on the wall behind us. I’m drunk, legally and viscerally, but still clear minded. And yet, we can’t sustain a conversation because of the ghosts who fleet over, around, and between us: “Andy, is that you? Holy shit! How long has it been?” They greet Jeremy, too, but with less élan. A few of them take jabs at my absence: “Well, look who decided to bless us with his presence.” “Too good for us, eh?” All of the encounters end with smiles and laughter and clinking glass. The goodwill in the room is palpable and fills all of the empty spaces.

  During a lull, I ask Jeremy what he’s been up to.

  “Construction from May to October. UPS year-round. Nothing fancy,” he explains.

  Fancy. I’ve heard this word several times already tonight and throughout most of my youth. It’s a catchall. A compliment and a cutdown. A multipurpose assignation that captures well the tension between aspiration and mistrust, between optimism and pessimism. It permeates everything around here, and possibly everywhere in this country.

  “Union jobs?”

  “No fucking way. If you have a record, the union won’t take you,” Jeremy says without explanation, without shame. “But I can do tiles pretty good. I got a reputation. A few contractors keep me in mind when jobs come up.” There’s a touch of hubris in his manner, a harmless brass. His shoulders swell. “But UPS is a total sham. They make us wear the uniforms, but we’re all third-party. They won’t hire any more people direct. Crap pay, crap benefits.”

  I think of my UPS guy, a cute Croatian with a broad chest and scrawny legs. I’d assumed all these years that he had a good job, but maybe he’s only dressing the part. Union drag.

  “No joke. My back is all fucked up, and my deductible is off the charts. That Obama mess.”

  “Well, health insurance has to cost something. No one wants their taxes raised, but then they want everything state of the art and subsidized.” My voice is raised. I realize I feel more affinity for Obama’s woefully inadequa
te health plan than for any of the people in this room.

  “Whoa,” he says, “I’m not bashing the guy. I voted for him. I just think he coulda gone farther. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I wasn’t defending Obama. I was—”

  “What about you?” Jeremy skillfully pivots away from the incendiary. “I bet you got a good job.”

  “I teach.”

  “What grade? High school?”

  “Graduate school. Public health.”

  “Like med school?”

  “Not really. Medicine treats individuals, and public health is about populations.”

  Jeremy squints with purpose, but there’s vacuousness too. He nods slowly, like an old computer booting up.

  “Fuck, man. A professor. I knew it.”

  His legs are spread wide; his forearms rest on his knees, hands together, fingers interlaced. He looks at me with a mixture of confusion and happiness. It’s pride, I think, but not for anything I might have accomplished, instead for him having been right about something.

  “I bet that pays pretty good, huh?”

  “Not as much as you’d think.”

  “Enough to get by in the city.”

  “I have a second job too.”

  “Really? A professor?”

  Truth is, the university pays enough, but only because I’m full-time and tenured.

  “As a side gig, I help grassroots groups make connections between their work and public health outcomes. Most of it is pro bono, but some of the bigger orgs pay well.”

  Jeremy continues squinting and nodding. I stop rambling and let the quiet take over. I look around. I had forgotten where I was, for a moment. “I can’t believe it,” I say to myself.

  “Believe what?”

  “What? Nothing.”

  Jeremy looks at his hands: long, weathered fingers and bulging knuckles. He’s somehow damaged and sexy. I’m watching some sort of working-class porn. Wait. All porn is working class. On his left hand is a thin silver ring.

  “Married?” Again, I speak without meaning to. It’s the martinis.