Little Village vs. NaNoWriMo: Day 17

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Sitting on the floor after Rosso left I started thinking about my life. Around me the rug was melted and burned from the fiery expression of my anger. Now, the anger was gone, Johnny was gone, and a few of the 200 animals weaved in 50 colors, including gold, that, along with the unprecedentedly high number of double knots, made our rug so valuable, were singed and missing parts, halfway gone. Near my left ankle an antelope had lost its horns. Under my right knee an elephant was hollowed out in the middle as if a cannon ball had blasted through his side. With the drapes down– once I’d lit them Johnny had ripped them down and stomped out the flames– the light in the room was harsh and suddenly ugly, falling clinically on the Italian leather sofa, the dark oak dining table, the heavy silver candelabra in the shape of a magnificent life-sized turkey, mid-trot, feathers fanned, head raised, waddle prominent and boldly dangling in all its turkey-specific glory, as if to say “I am a turkey and I am not afraid and I am proud”– this turkey candelabra which had given me a large amount of hope when I first saw it in the downtown artisan’s gallery, a ridiculous and gaudy holiday decoration so garish it somehow transcended the category of holiday decoration and became a loud and bold proclamation of shamelessness, and which I, who had felt ashamed, had become suddenly empowered and emboldened, and bought the turkey candelabra without a second thought, and sweated as I lugged the heavy thing out of the store and sat it next to me in the taxi and returned home with it and dropped it with a resounding thud onto the table, and was full of determination as I eyed Johnny’s young upturned face regarding and laughing at the ridiculous turkey. Benjamin Franklin called the turkey “a little vain and silly, but a Bird of Courage,” and I was ready to be the turkey, to, in all my vanity and silliness, lift my head and show my waddle: I was ready to tell Johnny that it was time for us to start a family. But now the turkey was resting in shards of glass and plaster after I’d lobbed it shot put style into the Ed Paschke canvas of a boxer with butterfly wings, from which it had fallen into the coffee table, shattering it.

In the bright, clear light of the November afternoon, the apartment didn’t look like a ruined home, but a crime scene. I hated the place. I thought of finishing the job and locking myself in, finishing it all. But Johnny had taken my lighter, because after all these years he knew better than to let me keep anything.

I knew that he wasn’t coming back.

I don’t like women and, because they grow up to be women, I don’t like girls. And now, after that Thanksgiving, I like them even less. Sitting on the floor then in the silence after Rosso stormed out, I didn’t know why I was doing any of the things I was doing, why I’d let myself into any kind of situation that could result in a tweenaged prostitute knocking on my door in the middle of a tense discussion with my young, handsome partner about how great it could be for us to raise a son together, how fulfilling to let go of all of our fears and secrets and embrace our life together in the most literal sense, by taking a new life in our arms and into our home, and instead of steering him into the role of a new parent, instead of taking then the next step in our life together, accidentally revealing to him in that crucial moment one of the low things I’d started to do for money by opening our front door and finding a 13 year old with a bruise covering half her face sobbing into a torn dress so tight she looked like a half-opened Christmas present.

He raised a good question, Johnny did, when he asked me how I could think of becoming a parent while I was trafficking children for sex. I didn’t have an answer, though I’d had plenty of self-righteous rage when I saw that he was going to go for good and began showing him just how worthless the life inside that apartment was to me, too, then, when I started trashing the place. And I didn’t have an answer in those moments after, sitting on the floor surrounded by the wreckage.

So I quit. Mostly quit. You can’t just walk out of these things. But I passed on what I could pass on, I stood out of the way of my new competitors, and eventually I was phased out. I left the Chicago apartment that night and Chicago the next day, shacked up in the little house I’d been keeping for business visits in Iowa City permanently, I got a legit job as a dentist, went through all the schooling that, yeah, okay, was a little advantageous to my first career, but still I kept turning down opportunities, kept my eyes fixed on the teeth and gums in front of me, and told myself that if I turned everything around, if I distanced myself from the drugs and the girls and became someone more resembling the person I’d wanted to be with Johnny, a responsible parent out to the community, that maybe he would come back.

He didn’t come back. Thanksgiving came around for the twentieth time since the one of our split. For two days the traditional bird had been thawing in my fridge, edging out the wild burgundy snails, caper fruits and smoky roasted vegetable cavatappi that I have mailed every Tuesday from Dean and Deluca. I’d gotten up at 6 a.m. and chopped the carrots and celery to stuff inside my holiday turkey. I’d trussed its appendages with a trussing needle and twine, pulling it through its wings and thighs and into its breast tip and watched the loose, rubbery fowl become miraculously taught, its wings and thighs hugging itself attractively. I’d tenderly basted it every twenty minutes all morning long while the Macy’s parade played on mute and I caught up on the Rilke I’d been saving for the holidays and, when the thermometer read 160 and its skin was deep golden brown and crackling and the whole house smelled of a feast, I waited as my turkey rested for twenty minutes, absorbing the juices that would be lost by cutting prematurely. I had waiting down to an art.

The first part to remove is the legs. Holding the rest of the turkey still, I cut through the skin where the leg attached and pushed it until the thighbone popped out of its socket.

I had then the thought that Johnny had never even considered coming back.

I scraped the oysters free. I removed the drumstick by cutting through the ball joint.

I thought, maybe Johnny had never actually been anywhere close to considering starting a family with me.

I pulled the turkey’s wing until the joint was exposed. I cut through it.

I thought, probably Johnny had never really loved me.

By the time I was slicing through the breast and Takashi Murakami’s weird pink three-eyed creature was looming over New York’s Upper West Side I realized I was old and alone, carving a whole turkey just to freeze it and reheat it for turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey hash, turkey tacos, turkey curry, turkey tetrazzini, turkey parmesan, turkey congee, turkey divan, turkey pot pie, turkey broccoli quiche, turkey and mashed potato croquettes, turkey a la king…and stuff down turkey on a daily basis for almost two months because I was still carrying out a tradition made for families when I was never going to have one.

The way this made me feel was mad. Very mad.

Who was Johnny Rosso to forget me so easily? Why had I given up everything for nothing?

My life, I realized, was like the empty turkey carcass in front of me.

I knew one way to get Johnny Rosso’s attention.

It was time to get back in the game.

I did and it worked.

A few kidnappings and one murder later, from an outdoor table in the far corner of the patio outside an organic grocery store, I finally saw Johnny Rosso again. He was leaning back contentedly on a bench facing a play structure crawling with small happy children like those I’d imagined we’d raise together, surveying it all like the lion king of the prideland, and an adoring young kid in his early 20s was leaning in to hang on his every word, lovesick and oblivious as they come. Johnny was older and he looked it, just as I’d expected, but even though he was still mostly handsome, he was a little worse for wear: a little broader than could really be considered attractive, a little paunchy, a little too ruddy in the face where his nose, which had once seemed proud and distinctive, now struck me as slightly bulbous. His charming smile had been soured by success into an arrogant sneer. He had become a greasier, puffier version of himself, engorged with vice.

I realized I was not in love with him any more.

I sipped my cappuccino and regarded his no longer adored form as he chatted familiarly with the kid. He hadn’t even thought to look for me.

That, it turned out, was a big mistake.