Jersey Angel (3 page)

I fake a gasp. “What kind of Italian are you, Joey Sardone?”

“The fancy-cheese-eating kind.”

“I had no idea.”

“And my mom doesn’t want to know about fancy cheese. So I have to hoof over to the deli to buy my own. You’ve never had stilton?”

I shake my head.

“Just wait.” And for the first time that night he smiles at me.

He disappears, and in the dark of his room I can make out his rumpled blanket and his lone pillow and the fan ruffling the edge of his sheet. I know that pillow—too flat—but how I’d like to lay my head on it now.

He comes back with a wedge of stilton on a cutting board and lifts the screen and makes a table out of the sill. He serves me a slice on the edge of the knife.

“Wow,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” I say again.

“I know.” We laugh with glee.

I pop another piece in my mouth. “Zingy for sure. I bet we stink.” I breathe on him.

“Well, I’m not kissing anyone,” he says.

“I guess I’m not either.” I try to catch his eye, but he won’t look at me. “You know, I wouldn’t mind some horndog with my cheese.”

He tries hard not to smile, but it doesn’t exactly work, and a slow one creeps onto his face before he can pull it back in. “See, I don’t like that,” he finally says with a straight face. “And I’m going to tell you why.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I don’t want to sleep around. I want to sleep with my
girlfriend
.”

“What? You’re a good Catholic now?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t even go to Mass anymore, so don’t give me that.” He thumps his chest. “I’m speaking from here, from what I know to be right.”

“Um, what about Alyssa?” I remind him.

“Live and learn, Angel. Live and learn.”

I broke up with Joe in the spring and he briefly hooked up with Alyssa, a pretty, tiny girl on the cheerleading squad who we always put on top of the pyramid when we’re ambitious enough to make one. Mostly we’re too lazy, but when we do, Alyssa climbs up and stands shakily with one foot on my back and the other on Carmella’s. And before she pitches forward into a perfect somersault she always makes the sign of the cross. Mostly she gets caught at the bottom. So Joey had a fling with her while I was having my own adventures; then Joey and I missed each other too much and patched things up.

“Well,” I say, smoothing down my hair. “For the record, I like sleeping with you, and I’m not going to feel bad about it.”

“But why don’t you want to
be
with me?” he asks, putting down the knife. “I don’t understand you. Why don’t you want a boyfriend?”

“But I do,” I say quietly.

“Until you don’t. I don’t understand you at all.”

“You’re one of my favorite people.”

“That’s no help.” And all our cheese happiness is suddenly gone.

He won’t look at me as we finish off the wedge of stilton. I see the price on the plastic—$7.99 for a dinky square that’s about four bites’ worth. “I thought you were saving for a car,” I say.

“I am, but now that I know about fancy cheese … what can I do?”

“Then there’s the cracker issue,” I joke. “If you’re going to have fancy cheese you can’t slap it on some cheapo cracker. So that means fancy crackers, right?”

But he’s not listening to me. He picks up the cutting board and starts to lower the screen.

“Hey, I can take a hint,” I say. “And for the record, you are an excellent boyfriend.”

“Don’t kiss my ass, all right?”

“Angel, how about a grilled soy cheese?” TB says. It’s his night to take the kids, but here he is, hovering over our stove with a spatula.

“Have you ever known me to eat a grilled soy?” I say.

“It’s nice with tomato, but suit yourself. So where is that mother of yours?” His cheeks are flushed and he is clearly a man with hope in his heart, even if he is barking up the wrong tree.

“Out and about.” I reach for a handful of grapes. Here we go. We’re about thirty seconds from him grilling me about her online adventures, when the screen door creaks open and Mom pads in, in her flip-flops with cotton between her freshly painted pink toenails.

“Hello there.” TB flips the sandwich in the skillet.

“Oh, it’s you. Are you messing up my kitchen?”

“I’m feeding the kids. You want one?”

“Move it,” she says, sliding around him to get in a
drawer. “And for the tenth time, I’m on a diet. Do you ever listen to what I say?”

Well, that’s my cue, and I am outta there. In the backyard, Mimi comes charging up to me in a polka-dotted bikini.

“What did one saggy tit say to the other saggy tit?”

“I have no clue.”

“If we don’t get some support soon, people will think we’re nuts.”

I giggle.

“I don’t get it,” she says. “Mossy gets it but he won’t explain.”

“I didn’t say I get it or not,” he says.

“Liar!” she yells.

To stop the titty talk, Mossy comes after us with the hose and sprays our legs. He chases us down the length of the yards as we duck under the rows of benny beach towels flapping on the clotheslines. At the Corner House, I stop and peer in the back door, wanting to get a good look at who’s living in my house.

“Nosy!” Mimi says.

“Shush,” I say. Just then Bart calls the kids in for their sandwiches and they take off. What can I say—the tofu gene is in their blood.

The house is empty, as far as I can tell, so I slip inside, where it feels and smells like a completely different place. Funny how the bennies can completely make a house a
home, even when they’re here for only a week. Strewn around the kitchen are some mangoes,
Sun and Sand: A Complete Guide to the Jersey Shore
(the benny bible), a neon Frisbee, hot dog buns, a package of Dentyne, and bottles of root beer. I take a handful of barbecue chips from a bag on the counter and head up to the roof deck, where I sprawl out on the chaise, half hidden by the ficus in case I have to make a quick escape. I love this spot. There’s a nice breeze coming off the bay, and the late-afternoon sun blazes low in the sky.

The chaise—fifteen bucks at a yard sale—has a leopard print and it’s threadbare in places, but it’s awfully comfy. With my late nights these days, I yawn and feel myself drifting off. Luckily I hear the squeaky wheels of a benny cart coming down the street. The cart is pushed by a beleaguered benny guy flanked on one side by the wife, I’m guessing, in a visor, bathing suit, socks, and sneakers, and on the other side by two whining kids, pink as raw meat. I’m pretty sure they’re my bennies, so I flee out the back.

Since TB’s still at the house, I ride over to my dad’s marina, where I have a part-time job pumping gas, which is kind of the ideal job. I love the smell of gasoline and I get to be outside, and there are lulls when there’s no boat traffic, so I can sprawl out on the dock with a magazine or hang out with the marina dog, a two-hundred-pound English bull mastiff named Joop (short for Jupiter).

Dad’s sitting at his messy desk surrounded by mounds of
paper. He’s cute, my dad. When he started going bald in the worst way—bald top, ring of hair around the sides—he smartly shaved it all off. He’s got a goatee and nice dark eyes, gentle eyes. “Hey, sweetheart.” He looks up at me. “You’re not on the schedule, are you?”

“Just visiting. I thought we could get something to eat.” I kind of hope we can do something—the two of us—which never happens, but I’ll settle for an invite to his house.

“Aw, Angel, both kids are sick. They were throwing up last night.”

“Yeah? Okay.” As if I haven’t been around a sick kid.

“Here, sit a minute,” he says, jumping up and moving papers from the plastic chair. My dad’s basically a nice guy, but he’s remarried, with two little girls, and the truth is I don’t quite fit in. I mean, he’s my dad and he loves me, but Ginger, the wife, doesn’t exactly like the fact of me. Oh, she’s nice enough, but it’s like I’m a guest in that house. I mean, I can’t hang out, plop on the couch, pour myself a soda. She hovers, all polite. Wouldn’t you think politeness like that would wear off, say, after a couple of weeks? It’s been years. A real cool cucumber, she is. And my dad is overworked. He made some bad financial deal, and the poor guy has debt up the wazoo.

So I hang out and we talk, during which time Ginger calls twice. When Dad gets up to leave for the day, he
jingles his car keys and says, “Look, it’s okay about the kids. Why don’t you come over for dinner.”

“You sure?”

“Well …” He sighs.

“Next time,” I say, quick. All he needed to say was
yes, come
and I would have.

As I’m leaving, Rob, who works in the yard, asks me if I want to put in a couple of hours, because the marina’s gotten busy. So I pump gas, and he tosses me a few White Castle burgers from a gigantic bag. Joop hangs out with me on the dock as the boats pull in and out. He’s a gentle giant, a real lovey boy. I lie in front of him and take his big old head in my hands and look into his soulful eyes.

“How’s it going, Joopy boy?” He licks me. “I have boy trouble, if you can believe it,” I tell him. “But I’m practicing the art of patience. You know about patience, don’t you?” He yawns and settles his head between his paws.

Then a very cute guy who graduated a few years ago pulls up in a Boston Whaler and swings himself onto the dock. “Long time no see.” He has shaggy blond hair and his madras shorts hang low, showing his briefs.

“Hey there.” I hand him the pump.

“When am I gonna take you for a ride?”

“I’m ready whenever,” I tell him with a smile.

“So come on.”

“As you can see, I’m working.”

“Next time.”

As the sun sets and the marina quiets down, I decide to visit Joey on the boardwalk, where he works his dad’s stand.

I spy on him from the Kohr’s stand. “Come on over. Check it out. A prize every time,” he calls to people strolling along with their slices and cones. What is his life like these days? I know he’s working a lot, and football practice starts in late July. After a long night at the stand he probably goes home and makes himself comfy on the couch with a nice plate of fancy cheese and maybe thinks about finding himself a girlfriend. I wonder. How much does he really miss me? Does he want to give it another go? Underneath it all I think he does. The prospect of a ride with the very cute guy with the madras shorts just isn’t as appealing to me as hanging out on Joey’s couch with a plate of cheese, fancy or not.

Not much action tonight at the water balloon stand. Joey sits on a stool, props his feet up on the ledge, and yawns. Just then Carmella walks over and starts talking. She tilts her head, tosses her long, glossy hair, and laughs. She’s a big flirt, a little bit stuck up too, but we’re friends. Cheerleaders. She’s all right. She has the most amazing bag. At the right moment she can whip out just what you need—a tampon, a spritz of perfume, a string of dental floss, a chocolate Kiss, a Band-Aid, a dousing of Off.

So I bide my time and visit my friend Vic, who’s working the Ferris wheel. We were never an item, but we fool around now and then. I sit with him for a while as the bennies climb in and out of the cars. We play a few rounds of rummy and yak. When I know Joe will be getting ready to close up, I head back.

“Hey there,” I say, walking slowly over to the stand.

“Well, look who it is.” Joey glances at me. A couple of stuffed Bart Simpsons have tipped over on the shelf, and he sets them neatly in a row.

“You want to hang out?” I say.

“Hang out?”

“Yeah.” I pick up a leaky gun and point it at a clown head. Joey flips the switch, and I aim the stream of water into the mouth, making the blue balloon grow bigger and bigger until it bursts with a satisfying pop. “Let’s hang out on the beach.”

He looks down to the water, deep in thought. “Yeah, okay,” he says finally, taking a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Why don’t you go buy us zeppoles while I finish closing down. I’m kind of hungry.”

“No cheese?”

“Maybe later.”

“All right.”

I hurry off to the zeppole stand, which is a ways down the boardwalk, where I get us two hot zeppoles right out of the deep fryer and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Then I
hurry back, and what do I find? The stand is closed up, the gate is lowered and locked, and Joey’s nowhere in sight. Ditched. Even so, I walk down to the beach on the minuscule chance that he’s sitting on the sand, waiting for me, which of course he isn’t.

How do you like that. I mean,
damn
. I park myself on the sand and eat my zeppole, licking my fingers clean of grease and sugar. This isn’t like him. Not at all. Where’d he go, my Joey? The guy who gives me a ride on his handlebars, calls me to say good night, whispers into my hair when he tells me I’m pretty, trails his fingers down my bare back when we’re in bed?

I ride over to his place and park myself outside his window. “So what do you have to say for yourself?” But there’s no answer, and as my eyes adjust to the dark inside I can see his bed’s empty. Double ditched. I pry open the screen and toss the powdery zeppole onto his rumpled sheets. “Have that with your cheese.”

How I miss Inggy. On my way home, I ride by her place, and to my surprise the Olofsson car is in the drive, and Ing’s window is lit. I climb the sycamore—an easy climb—up to the roof deck and see her hunched over her desk, tapping her lip. I scramble through the window.

“Hey, you!” she says, spinning around in her seat. “We’re back early. I called you a couple of times from the car, then
called the House and Meems said you were nowhere to be found.”

“I’m found!” I say happily, reaching for my phone. Forgot to charge it. We hug. I kick off my flip-flops and lie across one of her twin beds, and she lies across the other, facing me.

Let me tell you about Inggy: the O’s moved from Sweden to the island when we were in second grade. There was Inggy, the color of milk, with long white ponytails jutting out over her ears and spilling down her arms. She was the size of a toothpick, and she’d brought some kind of smelly fish in her lunch box. And she came right up to me at the lunch table, big blue eyes, her face merry. “I can sit here?”