Page 94 of We Could Be So Good
“He doesn’t hit me,” Sal went on. “He never has. He doesn’t hit the girls or Mom, either.” His voice is awfully gentle, like he’s reassuring Nick, when really it ought to be the other way around.
Shit. Sal had been maybe three years old when Nick hit his growth spurt and nobody—at home or at school—wanted to smack him around anymore. Nick hates to think of Sal—fat-cheeked baby Sal—remembering that.
“I’m glad, kid. I just needed to make sure, you know? I’m not trying to turn you against your father.” Nick’s glad Michael has his act together. “But who messed your face up?”
“Assholes at the bus stop.”
“And so you came here after?”
Sal scowls. “The other day, Dad said that if those kids went after me again, he was showing up at their houses in a patrol car. So I couldn’t go to school after that, obviously.”
Nick almost laughs, because as far as he can tell this is Michael being something like a decent parent. Something in that ballpark, at least. Go fucking figure. “I guess cops are good for something,” he says, and Sal snorts.
Sometimes, when Nick is feeling charitable, he remembers that Michael came home from war to four people who depended on him. He had been twenty-two and had spent his entire adult life in the Pacific Theater. The fact that he came home and took some of his anger out on his kid brother was—it wasn’t okay, it might not even be forgivable, but Nick could hope that maybe the person Michael had been in 1945 wasn’t around anymore.
When he’s feeling less charitable, Nick is pretty sure that now his brother just smacks people around at work. Cops have all kinds of ways to vent their anger.
“Sometimes he calls me names,” Sal says, “but nothing like what he called you.”
A familiar swirl of panic begins to take root in Nick’s gut, the feeling of having been caught, of having been seen for what he is. He can’t fill his lungs with air.
Nick is twenty-six. There’s no reason in the world why he should be so fucking rattled by memories of being smacked around and called names over ten years ago. Since the night of his arrest, Nick’s been telling himself that he shouldn’t hold a grudge anymore. The slate is clean between them. Michael’s an asshole, sure; but then, Michael saved Nick’s future and never so much as mentioned it to Nick or anyone else. That was decent, right?
Except he does sort of mention it. Every time Nick sees his brother, there are sly comments and insinuations. As far as Nick knows, Michael’s never told anyone else about Nick’s arrest, but those comments make it so the arrest is hanging over Nick’s head anyway.
And it’s not as if what Michael did for him actually erased the smacking around. So now Nick can’t speak, because all he’s thinking about is his brother hitting him a dozen years ago and his brother—maybe—tacitly threatening to tell their mother, maybe even threatening to do worse. He thinks again of that envelope of photos, and how easy it would be for someone on the force to unravel Nick’s life.
“Uncle Nick?”
“People shouldn’t call you names,” Nick says uselessly.
Sal snorts and looks at him like he’s crazy. “It doesn’tmeananything. Knowing that my dad called you those things sort oftakes the sting out when kids at school say all that stuff to me. Because you’re—” He makes a sweeping gesture at Nick.
Nick stares into his half-empty glass. “Kid, the reason it’s wrong to call people names is because it’s a shitty thing to do, not because it’s inaccurate.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I mean, do you think I’m not any of those things?” Nick wants to go back in time and talk to himself when he was Sal’s age, when he was realizing that all the schoolyard taunts actually applied to him. He wants to see that kid and—and what? What can he possibly tell that kid?
Sal stares at him.
“All those insults do is convince everyone that being, I don’t know, sensitive or queer or skinny are the worst things a man can be. And what fucking good does that do anybody? It doesn’t matter whether the person being insulted actually is any of those things, but I can tell you that it feels a hell of a lot worse when it’s true.”
Nick’s mouth is dry and his collar feels too tight. He feels exposed. In danger. As if having said that much to his own nephew could come back to haunt him. Sal could tell anyone. Word could get around.
But for the first time, anger outweighs the fear. It’s not that the fear is less, only that the anger is more, tipping the scales decisively. All he wants to do is be himself, do his job, and love his boyfriend, and instead he’s ready to black out from nerves in his own goddamn apartment.
When Sal turns his attention back to the television, Nick sits next to him, trying to act like the music on this show isn’t making him suffer. He keeps thinking of how miserable his fourteen-year-old self would be if he had known that this was his future—afraidin his own home, afraid of his own family, which was pretty much exactly how he’d felt at fourteen.
Sticking out from between the couch cushions, he sees a corner of white linen. It’s one of Andy’s handkerchiefs. He wonders how many others are in there. Is that where they all go? If Nick took the cushions off, would he find two hundred linen handkerchiefs? Suddenly, he knows exactly what he’d tell his fourteen-year-old self:You’ll be loved by the best person you know. And that’s—Christ, it’s not enough, but it’s enough to start with.
He goes to the bathroom and splashes some water on his face. When he comes out, he finds Sal standing in front of the refrigerator, the television still playing in the background, the worst music in the world sounding tinnily through the apartment.
“Help yourself to whatever you find in there,” Nick says. “I made pork chops last night and there should be a couple left. It’s the dish covered in foil.”
Sal gets the dish out and puts it on the table. He already has half a slice of pizza in his hand.
“Want me to warm it up?” Nick asks.
