Remembering That Overcast Afternoon
Isabella LoRusso
- For the First Time, When he is Dad and I am Ten
My dad was sunshine. He looked like Danny Zucko from Grease even though he was 49 and never made it to his senior year of high school. Passion burst out of him in invisible rays, piercing the air endlessly, and stopping only when they landed on something. Dad named his restaurant Isabella’s, meaning there was a big sign on the front of the building with my name on it. Dad was the most talented man I knew—I ate five-star dinners every night. All of our pride was in one another.
When I was ten I remembered an overcast afternoon from that year. I’m sitting on the edge of the rickety grey futon in our one bedroom apartment. Dad is standing in front of me in his white t-shirt and jeans—he’s one leather jacket away from singing “Grease Lightning.” At this point I’m in the four foot range, my hair still blonde, skin marshmallow soft, and I don’t need glasses. Good thing, because now I’m crying.
With tiny soft thumbs I wipe my eyes, mewling, “I feel sad.” Dad gently pulls me into a hug; my arms are caught bent against my chest as he presses me closer. But I don’t need them anymore to wipe away my tears. His sunshine keeps me warm and dries them all up.
- For the Second Time, When he is Antonio and I am Fourteen
Antonio, on the other hand, looked less like Danny Zucko and more like My Cousin Vinny. Antonio built a cheese factory in his 24-square-foot kitchen. Antonio once tried to use Elmer’s School Glue to hang a fifteen pound whiteboard. Antonio had a few screws loose.
When I was fourteen I remembered that overcast afternoon again; I’m sitting on the edge of the rickety grey futon in our one bedroom apartment. My eyes are dry when I mutter, “I want to die.”
Without moving forward or backward, Antonio just kind of stands there with his arms hanging.
After a while a soft gust of voice blows my way: “I had a friend once who wanted to die.” I am crawling my way out of a broiling desert, aching for another breeze of his voice to cool me down. But the air is stagnant.
I’m not used to the sting of disappointment yet. Immunity takes a long time to build up. Personally, it took four years for my sunshine to become my toddler-on-a-leash, my patient, my sign-language-speaking gorilla. Four years of, “You can’t go into the restricted section, Antonio,” and, “I’m not pretending to be eight for a discount, Antonio, it’s Golden Corral,” and, “Antonio, stop taking pictures of random kindergarteners, you pedophile.”
Maybe if I cry he will hug me, I think. And his sunshine will keep me warm, and dry up all my tears.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have expected a toddler or a patient or a gorilla to start parenting or healing or speaking to me.
He waddles back into the kitchen. My eyes are no longer dry.
III. For the Last Time, When he is Anthony and I am Eighteen
Everyone calls him Antonio, but his real name is Anthony.
I don’t know anything about Anthony.
When I was eighteen I remembered that overcast afternoon; I’m sitting on the edge of the rickety grey futon in our one bedroom apartment. Anthony is so old now. His skin hangs in bags under his chin and eyes and cheeks. He doesn’t look like anyone. Too shabby to be Vito Corleone, too hollow to be Geppetto. This is the clearest this memory has ever been, yet I know that shouldn’t be possible.
My back is haunched—I’m trying to hold back the floodgates in my eyes with my palms. Until a sentence my lips were virgin to slops its way out of my mouth: “I want to kill myself.”
If there is someone clawing at the other side of Anthony’s stonewalled face, I can’t tell. He marches around the corner to the closet—the only corner of the apartment I can’t see from the edge of the futon.
When he comes back, his right hand is clenching a silver and black handgun and his left palm is sliding the clip into it until it clicks.
By the time he stops in front of me, Anthony is holding the gun in one clutch from the barrel, presenting the handle toward me.
The weight of that gun is exactly the same as one jug of chocolate milk or half a watermelon. That’s what I calculated ten months before this overcast afternoon, after the first five or six times he wrenched my tiny fists open to wrap my fingers around it.
For the first time voluntarily, I take the gun.
No, no. He misunderstood. I howl again, but louder, “I want to kill myself.”
When he finally speaks, he says every word the way he spits on the sidewalk, “Huh- I had a friend who wanted to kill himself…he wanted to kill himself- wanted to shoot his brains out! But you’ve got nothing to be crying about- You’re spoiled!…
So here—take it—blow your brains out! Do it…You wanna do it?- Do it.”
The best grip my tender fingers can make is shaky and awkward; keeping my finger on the trigger is hard to do without squeezing it; I try to keep it a quarter inch away from my skin, but every time I cry it bumps into my skull. It is ice cold and getting tangled in my thin, blonde hair. “I’m gonna do it!…I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna kill myself!”
The cancerous feeling, the reason I’m saying these things, is rooting deeper into my stomach. It scares me to not know what it is. I wanted to ask him. I wanted to stop crying. I wanted him to be sunshine. Unfortunately, there’s a hereditary element to depression.
Anthony strolls back to the kitchen where I can still see a sliver of him in the dark behind hanging pots and pans. My arm is aching from the weight of the gun—the cycle of rapid debate on whether or not I should do it is ricocheting off the inside of my skull; it’s a tornado in a hamster wheel of incoherent thought; in my mind I pull the trigger: my brains are shot out my left ear, across the futon, across the dark hardwood floors, across the brown comforter on the bed, and then. I feel too nauseated from the spinning to kill myself. And lower the gun.
After finishing his last batch of cheese Anthony makes his way back to snatch the gun from me. Soggy drips from my nose and drool in my mouth are all that’s left of my sobbing. I inform him, almost asking, “You gave me a loaded gun.”
Anthony’s face curls up like he bit into a lemon before he uses his are-you-stupid voice on me. “Ta! Nooo. Are you kidding me? I would never give you a loaded gun.” He shakes his head, disappointed that I assumed he would be that crazy. He tells me he took out the bullets when I wasn’t looking.
I’ve stopped crying. The gun is back on the easy-to-reach shelf in the unlocked closet. Anthony walks back into the kitchen to cook us a five-star dinner.