Angelo DiMarza's been painting the house down the block,
The big white one, he tells me, Dr. Alba and his wife,
you know them? Except I know he means her, so I smile,
give him a little shrug, like I'm Italian. I love it
when Angelo drops over. Like today,
he's no sooner in the house than he's telling me,
You know that house on Longboat, the big pink one
that needs repainting, I'm out there yesterday and I
swear to God this woman had breasts
and she's telling me, No, she hadn't been thinking
about painting, but how much would it cost anyway?
and then he gets this incredibly helpless expression on his face
and falls down in front of me, crawling on the floor
with his hands over his head moaning,
Jesus, how can I afford a job like that?
Somewhere
along the line, I started to do what Angelo does,
step into my own stories and then free-fall
right through them, but I've never told him
because he'd be pecking me on the head all day.
Like yesterday, we're sitting in my garden
doing our usual bit about how grim
our marriages are, God, the two of us
should have been actors the way
we're going on, but when I say maybe
some of it is our fault, he looks at me
like he always does, like I was an altar boy
for too long and for the wrong reasons, not like him,
Angelo DiMarza, who'd stalk into the sacristy
every Sunday like he was doing time.
I had
a lot of respect for Angelo because of that,
but even more after I met his mother.
A hard, boney crow was all I could think
after I opened the sacristy door one Sunday,
saw her standing in the snow waiting for Angelo
to make a break for it, which he would have
if she’d fallen down, broken both legs,
but outside of that he wasn't going anywhere,
and he knew it because he told me years later
how she had slapped him, bit the back of her hand
like it was his neck when he told her, No, he wouldn't be
no altar boy,, never, not for nobody, that it was only for Micks,
but he didn't say Micks to me, he said kids.
Ah,
what to do about these Sins of Omission
the two of us are so addicted to. Like now, we're still
going on about our marriages, but neither of us
is really telling the other the whole story, so we're getting
more and more depressed until Angelo stoops down,
moves in real close, like we were kids again, says to me, Listen,
how can I be married? I'm seventeen, hung over, lying
in my bed, but I should be in school, they're looking
for me, I know they are, up and down the halls,
but you know what, I don't give a shit so I call down,
Hey Ma, get me my cigarettes please,
can you imagine me saying that
and then I hear those black shoes of hers
climbing up the stairs, and she looks in,
takes the pack off my bureau, says to me, Oh, Angie,
look at you, you must-a been dancing,
Oh I hope you had a good time.
Now how can I be married after that?