CuppaGemma

Bedford and Avenue H,
schoolbooks riding unbelted shotgun
cross to Ocean Avenue, not Bay Parkway
weaving with buses, sanitation
trucks, cement mixers and straight
backed brick apartment buildings
in red with attached fire escapes
and retirees in folding chairs

Green means go, and the kid
whose radio outprices his car
can certainly plow ahead while
I pull over at the fruit shop
when the long gray curb smiles
“space”, popping my quarter in
leaving like Santa smiling with
bagged nectarines, plums, hot bread

Then take the alphabet
down past Avenue Z to Voohires
by Lundy’s once again
merge on the Belt,
under the “El”, for a moment,
beside the ocean, for a few more
till I hit the bridge winding
up Verrazano’s approach…

Take the top level
to feel the wind, and
merge across impatient lines
to toss out my token,
now an electric pass
raising that orange arm
with a startled jerk
to cross more lanes for

Father Capadano Boulevard
South Beach, the Basillio Inn
and Sand Lane, (which lost its carousel
for condominiums
and a dolphin fountain)
as the boardwalk lines the drive
and the marsh brush still waves
bending with green and tan

One last turn
down on Slater
with its evolution
of tract houses
taking me back
through decades
till I hit  my parents’ home

John sat with her furniture and his arms folded. The house, like his beer was finished.

He was on a sofa that was too stiff to be comfortable, not allowed to place his feet up on the table and surrounded by walls in several colors he was told to remember were “coordinates”.

She was no longer home to order a pepperoni pie like they used to share. When they ate together it tended to be odd food with long names. It was not delivered by the guy down on the corner. John wanted to know what was so wrong with the guy on the corner, a couple of beers between them and some old sitcoms on a Friday night?

That had worked quite nicely for a long time. He liked his arm around her and the way she would tuck herself beside him eating the pepperoni first and the pizza second. It was what a Friday should be.

He was trying to forget how they would leave the bed covers sloppy because they spent a Saturday morning enjoying each other and then buttered toast in bed. Their bed now had eleven pillows, nine of which didn’t need to be there but had silk covers, tassels and had to be placed neatly on the chair. Except it wasn’t a chair, it was a chaise lounge. He was reprimanded like a toddler who said psaghetti if he called it as he saw it.

An afternoon nap together on a quiet Sunday like they had when they first got together was as unthinkable a sin as the paneling in the basement which she helped him put up and men with tweezed eyebrows and spray on tans tore down.

There were events she had to attend now. Ones to which he was not invited as her guest. She hardly wore jeans, even when she went to get her nails done. She did that regularly now too. The bathroom cabinet had exploded into The Body Shop versus Clinque. Or at least they seemed to be the main two occupants.

She wouldn’t buy instant coffee anymore. He had to boil the water and use some Danish press thing that always made little black messes in his cup. She stocked hand ground flavors like mocha raspberry for nine dollars a pound.

He wanted the Maxwell House back.

He was stuck with a walk to Dunkin Donuts for a real cup. But that was no longer the pleasant line of stools and basic coffee and a jelly. Now even they had the flavored coffees. He watched women with striped hair colors and plastic claw nails come in and walk out with 16oz of vanilla something or other. They looked like tigers pacing with their cigarettes outside.

After her father passed away Linda was awarded a large promotion by her office and a much larger amount of cash from his estate. Now, she could fix the house and herself as much as she pleased.

This was her dream. She wanted the showplace home and then too much to do to ever get the cushions dented. She waited a long time for it. She had silently tolerated Kmart clothes, 10 dollar pies and canned domestic beer long enough. Finally she could step up to the next level with new fieldstone on the house and real marble in the kitchen. There would be a Vulcan stove and a hot tub.

She threw all her clothes out and spent eight thousand dollars at big name outlet stores. It was several weekends and lots of bags. She stopped showing him when his face took on the level of confusion someone wears when they do not understand the language being spoken. He would never understand why she needed MaxMara. John only remembered their first two cars combined did not cost as much as the all-up bill from these store excursions.

But Linda liked to have a weekly dry cleaning bill and cite her suits by the designer to the staff. As to why there needed to be oak cabinets and a built in ironing board in the laundry room given that his clothes and her underwear were the only visitors, John decided not to ask. This was her money.

Unfortunately, despite her new financial prowess, Linda found her husband could not be updated. He would sit there in his faded sweatpants with ragged edges like a lawn ornament eyesore.

He insisted on things like going to the old barber shop because a cut there was still only nine dollars. He would buy the same kind of shoes and wear them all the time. He didn’t like to wear ties or try new restaurants. He used terribly common words like macaroni with gravy and never said penne marinara like the rest of civilized world.

Their satin sheets stayed cold while they stared at opposite walls in the dark at night wondering what to do now that the other person didn’t fit.

Her mother decided from the first that he was more than wonderful. Sasha knew better than to disagree. It was an fast way out of the tiny apartment with broken furniture and nothing she wanted to remember. It was a way away from soup for dinner that was really only made with onions, celery leaves and two day old bread that she often ate in the winter when she was small. It was a way to grow out from sleeves that hit too far above her wrists and coats with worn elbows.

He had begun by buying her father a new television and her mother a microwave. He gave Sasha a bracelet with stones in several colors. He took her to the shop to buy dresses for when they went to dinner. He replaced her things which he did not like. She did not comment because it happened each time. Her mother liked to taste the end of their dinners and the touch the fabrics on new clothes. Sasha learned Sunday was for arguing with the televised football game, not long talks at the table.

She did not like his hands. Sasha had stood silent and white while he shook her father’s hand for the first time. Papa had thick warm hands because he used them. This man had pale soft ones that often felt cold. But each of these men seemed happy that Sasha had stumbled into this. Papa looked like a coarse little elf standing beside him. Mama just refolded her hands in quick prayers that this American boy would take her daughter.

She was a pretty girl with long hair. She worked hard in school. She wanted to be somewhere else and not need the sorts of checks and coupons that her parents depended on. She had met him at the coffee shop and he liked the way she served him. He was different than the man she used to know.

Her Sergei would always bring her to the sea. “We don’t need anywhere else.” His car was loud and made lots of smoke so everyone knew when he was coming down the street. It had rusted parts and no air conditioning. “It goes.” He would open the door for her and laugh from the pit of his belly, “My princess, let me take you away.” He would fetch her no matter the hour after her shift at the diner. He would not want her to go home alone and not to spend some time with him.

Along the shore on Fridays and Saturdays, he would sing, he would run, he would take her in his arms and dance. He had great strong arms and would lift her and say he was going to run toward the sea until she kissed him. Then he would walk with her slowly and tell her old poems while he pointed her hand to the stars. He had put the tired of his long week away like tools locked in the trunk. Things he would need later, not now. They would laugh and mix languages. He would tell her they should kiss in the rain and pull back both their hoods to do it. He was as unkempt as his hair.

And how they would talk. Through the whole night, unless she was tired, then he would just hold her and hum her old songs until she slept and couldn’t hear them any longer. He would pull her beside him with two blankets around because he wanted her to watch the dawn later and not be cold.

He would bring her take-out Chinese food, spare ribs and egg rolls usually. Or they would share two hamburgers back and forth. They would have them in the car before their walks. When they went back in the morning the seats smelled like an old kitchen because he kept what was extra for his Monday breakfast.

He always stamped on the fortune cookies in the parking lot because he did not believe in luck. He wanted the stars, the sea and the weekend not to have to work. He did not dream of things like a house or a car. He was content that his work was steady and he had his own apartment. He did not understand Sasha’s shame about not having many things. That was their only disagreement. Sasha decided he was too simple.

She discovered the credit card husband was like a white shirt still in the plastic package. Flat and wrinkled, kept in place with pins. Three hundred thread count perhaps, but not from a country that actually paid attention to what it was looming. He needed things. The import car, the brick front house in the up and coming area of Brooklyn, and a quiet girl to wear his name and make him a proper dinner.

Sasha sat blankly staring out the window of his car. A four door with fifteen airbags so she would be swallowed whole by instant inflation of the equivalent of Michelin Man if she decided to slam into a wall without her seatbelt.