Much to my surprise, my prison cell at Magnolia Towne Courte seems larger, not smaller, when he takes up residence. It’s strange, how much we have to talk about, this eighteen-year-old kid and me. He wants to know everything about me. No, not everything. He’s not interested in my life with Alice. He’s only curious about the life he and I share. He assumes I was always what I am today. Which I was. Only I didn’t know it. No, more accurately, I didn’t want to know it. He wants to know about my first time. What did he look like? Was he nice? Did you love him? No, I certainly wasn’t in love with a long red snake. But I don’t share that with Robert. He’s still a boy, impressionable, and, after Cary, his faith in his fellow travelers is too precarious to withstand the sordid little tale of my rape by a nicotine-stained stranger in the cab of a tractor trailer. So, instead, he’s enthralled by the tall tale of the First Time I wished I’d had. Like Baron Frankenstein, I assemble this chimera from bits and pieces-part Randy T, part Brian Wilkins, a dash of the Rocket Boy, a bit of Steve, even a trace of Douglas. I christen my fantasy first love “Nick,” inspired by the Beach Boys Christmas song on the radio. Surely, you’ve got a picture of him? Somewhere, I lie, I’ll look around. I dig out an old photo album I hadn’t put in storage and chose some long-forgotten young Nocera Heat and Air technician captured for posterity at the annual summer picnic to cast in the role of Nick.
He uses me as his sounding board for his theories and opinions about everything and anything. The debate between genetics and environment. The theory of dominant mother/absent father. Why Lou Reed, despite overwhelming evidence of his heterosexuality, is a better role model for gays than Elton John. I make mental notes, checklists, of all the things I want to tell him in our short time together. Soon enough, it will be time for him to be thrown back into the harsh world. He puts up a good show of bravado, but I know he’s afraid to venture out there alone. He reminds me of a boy I once knew, a kid who dreamed of conquering the world, but chose safety and security over Chicago. I don’t want Robert to retreat like I had; I want him to be strong and fearless.
Gina calls on Christmas Eve to wish me a Merry Christmas and to inflict a ration of guilt for declining her invitation to spend the holidays in Boca Raton. The family’s making progress, she reports. Dustin’s father got him the Original Cast Recordings of Annie and Rent for Christmas, and Dustin is over the moon about the Stowe father-and-son ski trip the two of them are planning. She wants to talk about our mother, to rhapsodize about our last tortuous Noel, remembering it as a glorious Technicolor MGM musical. You really are a selfish bastard, she says, do you know how much it would have meant to me to spend this first Christmas without her together? That goddamn minimum-wage job is a pretty lame excuse. We both knew I hardly need the money now. But she says all of this affectionately, without rancor.
I tell her it would have been impossible anyway. I have a houseguest. I can’t really talk. He’s sitting a few feet away. Robert. JR. You know, I say, Bobby’s kid. No, he’s eighteen now. Yeah, how time flies. Stop being so suspicious. He got into a little trouble and needed a place to stay. No, not that kind of trouble. Of course his mother knows he’s here. She’s the one who asked me to help. Look, I said, I’ll tell you about it later. Merry Christmas. I love you too. Yes, I got it. Yes, I love it. No, I haven’t read it yet. But Robert has spent hours poring over the Beatles coffee table book she sent me for Christmas.
Christmas is a clear, sunny day. The forecast is calling for a high in the upper sixties, chance of precipitation nil. I let the kid sleep in the morning; it’s almost noon before the smell of brewing coffee, my second pot of the day, lures him off the couch. He chews on a Pop-Tart, crumbs falling to the floor, and asks what we’re doing to celebrate. I invite him to take a ride with me. Sure, he says, not asking where we were going. A couple miles from home I curse myself for forgetting my sunglasses. He insists I borrow his.
The gas tank is nearly empty as I pull into a station-We Never Close-just over the Gastonia city limits. I pump while Robert, always hungry, goes in search of a bean burrito and a microwave oven. As I wait to pay, I realize I’m going empty-handed. I grab a pale, wilted poinsettia on the counter and ask the Pakistani behind the register to add it to the bill. Take it, take it, no charge, free, Merry Christmas, mister, he says, bobbing his head and smiling like a lunatic.
The cemetery isn’t far, another mile or two. We pass the crumbling headstones and the granite pylon dedicated by the Daughters of the Confederacy and drive up the hill where the grave markers are flat and the lawn kept neat and trim with riding mowers. I set the flowerpot on a small pink slab that marks the final resting spot of Anthony (Nunzio) and Ruth Calhoun Nocera. Later that night, the weather will turn more seasonable and a strong wind will tip the pot, mercifully finishing off the already half-dead flower. Robert takes pity on me and stares at his feet when I start to cry.
The temperature plummets as soon as the sun goes down. Robert and I, neither of us wearing coats, make a quick dash through the truck stop parking lot. The waitress is in a good mood, dropping quarters in the jukebox, playing Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” six times in a row. Robert, a smudge of yellow omelet on his chin, calls out the chord progression. Wrong, I say, correcting a major to a minor chord. Right, perfect, we really need to play together, as soon as these are off, he says, waving his bandaged wrists. The waitress brings refills, wincing and trying not to stare. Sure, I say, we’ll play some day.
Eleven O’clock Number
What goes around comes around?
Things have come full circle?
There must be a one-size-fits-all cliché for this final chapter of my belated bildungsroman.
A leopard doesn’t change its spots?
When all is said and done, it’s been easier to embrace my new “lifestyle” than to accept the fact that I’m a natural born salesman. After all, my style of life seems remarkably unchanged. I live in a brand-spanking-new town house that, except for a difference of, say, a thousand square feet, could be mistaken for 12 Virginia Dare Court-not surprising since the elves in the Toll Brothers workshop are more renowned for their productivity than their originality. The Toyota’s been upgraded to an SUV, same make, later model year, same color as the vehicle I’d signed over to Alice. Maybe I dress a little better. No, not really, but my clothes fit better because I hit the pool five mornings a week, determined not to concede to the full-frontal assault of early middle age. Then I guzzle a cup of coffee, premium blend of course, and resist (usually) the Krispy Kremes, fortifying myself for another day on the front lines. You could say I’m an evangelist of sorts, spreading the Gospel of Nocera/Olsson Climate Control Systems, formerly known by the more quotidian moniker Nocera Heat and Air. What could have persuaded me to walk away from the promising career opportunities at Barnes and Noble? Randy T had been running the business since the old man died. My mother had been generous, paying him a substantial salary and a hefty percentage of the ever-increasing construction boomtown revenues. He’d lost his hair, but still had his athlete’s body and charm and animal magnetism, expanding Nocera Heat and Air into commercial construction and exclusive distribution rights. After years of being unfettered by our mother and anticipating a future under the scrutiny of the ungrateful heirs, he was about to accept an offer to jump to a competitor. Regina and I engaged a broker to value the business and summoned Randy T to Boca Raton. He left Florida an equal partner, owner of one-third equity interest with the title of President and CEO.