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Vinny
Was it the richly appointed sitting room of a Florentine palazzo? Or the 'greeting' room of a Sicilian bordello?
I remember the drive over to Medford with the real estate agent the first time: it felt interminable, as if we were going into uncharted alien territory. The agent was gushing over the place we were about to see -- something that made me suspicious. (Memo 1 to real estate agents: your taste may not correspond to someone else's. Memo 2: The fact that you get a commission if you rent the place renders everything you say -- even "Excuse me while I use the restroom" -- immediately suspect. Memo 3: We all know that the intensity of your effusions is inversely proportional to the quality of the property being effused about. For example, if you were about to show us Versailles, would you rave, "Wait until you see this next place -- it's a real beauty! And they did a good job on the landscaping too!" So stop the effusions -- they only make us nauseous. Memo 4: When you tell us to look at something (Example: "Nice ceilings!"), we will know that it is a diversionary tactic to keep us from looking at everything else.)(Unfortunately, we tend to behave like lemmings and so we will probably dutifully gaze up at the ceilings.)
The house was a brick duplex, one of those pseudo-Tudor designs with a peak over each door. Actually, it could've been quite appealing, except for the fact that there was nothing living above thigh level in height within 100 feet of the house. (Note 1 to homeowners: it is desirable to have a mature tree or two on the sunny side of a house upon which the sun relentlessly beats, heating it up to 120° inside. Note 2: Bark mulch is organic but not living. It is a cheap way of preventing weeds -- and every other living thing -- from growing around a bush, a sort of benign Agent Orange. It is ugly and dull. Note 3: How can you own a house so much lacking architectural unity that its so-called designer felt compelled to stick a pointy-thing over each door?)
The agent was continuing to emote over the interior appointments we were about to behold. (Yet another memo to real estate agents: saying that something's true doesn't make it so. I suggest you enter politics.) We stepped over the threshold and entered the living room.
We were struck dumb by the sheer audacity of it all. Quite literally, it took our breath away.
There was a deep funereal twilight created by at least two sets of thick opaque draperies -- one set to block out virtually all the light, the other to be tied back from the first to give it contrast and depth. There were tufted chairs and love seats upholstered in matching pastel silks. A palm tree stood in the corner. We had the strange sensation of opulence multiplied incessantly by itself, an effect due to one-foot-square mirrors covered with gold specks affixed to every wall.
The whole effect, in fact, was of something balanced precariously between elegance and kitsch -- with a decided leaning towards the latter. It seemed like a first tentative approximation to Citizen Kane's Xanadu.
In the dining room were two huge hutches that appeared to have been carved out of solid marble. You could see the pink grain suffusing the sturdy columns on either side. I wondered at how such massive constructions could have been gotten into the house. (Positive note to homeowner: nice job hiding the use of railway sidings to get marble monuments into house.)
Covering every square inch of those two rooms was a baby blue carpet. Perhaps this was meant to suggest the pure sparkling azure of the Adriatic Sea, mirrored by the sky-blue ceilings up above.
The kitchen and bathroom were both decorated in black-and-white: this included wallpaper extending onto and covering the ceilings, and shag rugs covering the floors. There was even a black wall phone in each room. Oh yes -- the kitchen counters were black bathroom tiles. (Important note to homeowners: it is potentially very dangerous to mix up kitchen and bathroom!)
As we prepared to go upstairs, we noticed that what we assumed had been a fine gumwood banister had been replaced by a white wrought-iron one. So one could stand halfway up the stairs, lean over this romantic balustrade, and admire the sumptuous room below.
The master bedroom contained a large round bed with a custom-made round red velvet spread. And yes, above the bed on the ceiling were pasted more mirrors.
We were, as I've said, stunned by all that we saw and beheld there. It was so unlike our taste, so contrary to any way that we thought we wanted to live. So for several minutes, we were rendered speechless. No doubt we were ashen in countenance, for the real estate agent began a sort of filibuster as we were leaving. (Aside to real estate agents: if you say it enough times, we may finally start to believe it. But in some cases you're going to have to say it a huge number of times!)
So the logorrheal agent drove our silent selves back to our apartment in Arlington (that is, civilization) and we told him that we would call him "if we are interested" -- almost always a bad sign. As soon as he left, my wife and I looked at one another and laughed out loud. Of course the place was absurdly impossible and impossibly absurd! And we promptly forgot all about it.
Well, not quite. Over the next couple of weeks, as our search for another place grew cold, little facts that we had ignored began to gradually seep into our consciousness. For one thing, that apartment was essentially a two-story three-bedroom house, well built of brick and with gumwood woodwork. What had offended us were superficial furnishings and doodads that were not part of the essential house itself. I began to fantasize about what we could do with them: drear drapes could be ripped down from the windows, and rugs torn up from the floors; a tacky wrought-iron railing could be wrenched unceremoniously from its moorings on the staircase, and gold-spattered mirrors scraped from the walls.
Then too, a map showed us that the house, far from being 'out of it', was very near Medford Square -- a quick walk for a glass of wine in the evening.
Finally, the rent was very reasonable compared to Arlington.
So when that hapless real estate agent called back in two or three weeks and asked in the forlorn tone of the hopeless case whether we had any interest in the Medford apartment, I'm sure that he was as shocked as we would have been a few weeks before if we could've heard our reply: "Yes we are very interested -- in fact, we'd like to take it!" (Aside to real estate agents: you might think from this case that once in a while it pays to sound forlorn. You would be wrong: the pathetic never sells, except in bad dramatic productions.)
I met the vacating resident of our new abode on moving day: he was a little behind schedule and so there were still some of his things in the house. I encountered him in the sunroom, with its garish red rug (he had used the room as a den; it would become my study.) He was a bit frantic and apologized for the delay (I told him it was okay; but I was careful not to say "Take your time"!) He told me his name was 'Vinny', that his wife had gone back to live with her mother, and that as a result "things are all haywire." (I wondered whether she was in rebellion against his bizarre decorating ideas; but I finally realized that this (the decorating) had to have been a joint venture -- it was too perfect to have been erected in conflict; and that thus the breakup must have come for other reasons.)
I wandered out into the living room. The lush drapes had already been taken down, and I saw how much it had helped the zealous real estate agent for us to see this rug in that hushed twilit gloom: too late the harsh light of day revealed many stains and spots -- and, no doubt, a multitude of unseen hairs -- left by recalcitrant pets. Like the Adriatic, this rug was polluted.
Two of Vinny's friends were carrying out some of the larger pieces from the house. At one point I saw them lugging one of the marble hutches from the dining room. I shook my head with disbelief at their strength -- until I saw the piece from the back and realized that those huge edifices were empty shells, constructed of cheap light wood painted to resemble marble and weighing next to nothing.
My second (and last) encounter with Vinny occurred in the basement. There he was supervising the unhooking of the washer and dryer by two of his cronies. We didn't have a dryer; and I noticed that his was essentially new. I casually asked him what he planned to do with it. He shrugged:
"Oh, put it in storage along with all the other stuff." It did not escape me that Vinny had lumped all of his elegant furnishings under the catchall word 'stuff'.
I asked whether he was willing to sell it. He said maybe -- "for the right price". I asked what that might be. He replied with flat finality: "Sixty bucks".
I could not quite believe my ears. Here was a brand-new dryer hooked up to the gas, and he wanted that paltry sum? I was so happy with his reply that I felt I just had to negotiate:
"How does forty dollars sound to you?"
Vinny: "Keep unhookin' it guys!"
I gave in, of course. "Okay, that's fine. To whom should I make out the check?"
Vinny: "Uh -- cash."
And with that one word I saw in a flash that those hollow faux-marble hunches were metaphors for Vinny's world. Indeed, in the coming weeks we would find out, from the various creditors appearing at our door looking for him, that Vinny's whole lifestyle was in all likelihood a façade built on debts he could not pay.
The owner permitted us to take down the mirrors from the walls and the wallpaper and mirrors from the ceilings. But we had to live with the rug and the white wrought-iron banister. And when we asked him whether we could plant a tree or two on the hot sunny side of the house, he thought for a moment before he replied: "Well, maybe a dwarf tree..."
Richie
A few short years after we moved into our rented faux-Tudor duplex, my brother-in-law bought the house five doors down the street from us. Living next door was a man named Richie, his wife, and their young son Little Richie.
The previous owner had made the front of the house open and inviting, with a quaint flagstone path meandering up to the door. But then one day Richie had a brick wall topped by thick iron spikes built around the front yard, with iron gates for both the walkway and the driveway. By dint of a subtle narrowing and the placement of a step at the beginning of the walkway, the house became psychologically as well as physically intimidating for any would-be visitor.
At that moment my brother-in-law conceived his first inkling about Richie. But he shook it off as a sort of prejudice.
But there were no walls or definite boundary lines in the backyards. And, as it turned out, Richie was a very expansive and generous sort of fellow when it came to his neighbor. Often when my brother-in-law would be working in his yard, Richie would come over, throw his arm around his shoulder, and ask if his sons or nieces would be interested in something he had in his garage. He would roll up the door and reveal a building chock full of something or other. One time it was comforters (my nephews didn't have much use for those; but my daughters each picked out one); another time it was major league baseball hats -- hats from every conceivable team in both leagues, boxes upon boxes piled from floor to ceiling with nothing but hats. On still another occasion he invited my brother-in-law into his kitchen, where the latter saw four or five microwave ovens stacked up (he was not offered one of those.)
What sort of cook needs five microwave ovens? What sort of hat-wearer needs a crate full of hats from each major league team? My brother-in-law, who was an enterprising cook as well as a sometime hat-wearer (though not, I hasten to add, of the Major league variety) did not know the answers to those questions. Should I add that another inkling about Richie entered his subconscious? This was not so easy to brush aside as the first had been; but he finally concluded that the man was in some kind of wholesale business, and was using his garage and even parts of his house as warehouse space.
One morning when I was on my way to a temporary teaching position in Winthrop, I inadvertently found myself following Richie to (assumedly) his place of work. He was picked up in front of his house by a stunningly beautiful black Mercedes-Benz. It was one of those automobiles that you know just by looking that it is custom-made; for it was a little longer and a little sleeker (while paradoxically at the same time being understated) than your average run-of-the-mill Mercedes. And so I 'followed' them quite a way toward the coast north of Boston. We only parted ways when Richie's driver turned off for Revere.
When I told the gist of this to my brother-in-law, I saw a slight suggestion of a shrug of his shoulders, as if to say (as I would): "Some of my best friends -- musicians and teachers -- live in Revere." Yes, he would shrug it off, even as he was thinking: "But how many of them work there?" And inwardly he would feel too many inklings now fast morphing into a sort of hunch.
Richie would sometimes say strange things to my brother-in-law. One day he took him aside and said in a conspiratorial undertone, "We're goin' away on vacation for a week. If someone comes up to you and asks whether he can go up to your second floor and watch my house, tell him he can't -- okay?"
The dominoes were falling faster now. My brother-in-law found his hunch rapidly becoming a suspicion.
One early fall day just before lunch, my brother-in-law got a call from the school. They told him that there had been an injury to his older son: he had been hit in the head with a baseball. The father picked the boy up and brought him home. The lad was weeping profusely and was nearly inconsolable.
A nasty goose egg was already manifesting itself on the boy's forehead. My brother-in-law first made up an ice pack and applied it to the welt. He then gave his son a perfectly ripe peach which he had been saving for his own lunch. Finally, he carried his son into his bedroom for a nap.
My poor little nephew was lying sprawled on his bed, his shoulders heaving with sobs. His father was rubbing his back and singing to him:
"Baby's boat a silver moon
Sailing in the sky..."
The lulling of his singing and the softness of his caresses were having an effect: the sobs were slowing down.
"Sail, baby, sail
O'er the deep blue sea;
Only don't forget to sail
Back again to me."
Then from deep down in the pillow he heard his son murmur, "I love you Daddy."
This is it, my brother-in-law thought, this is what makes life worth living! Is there strife and hunger in most parts of the world? Of course. Did strong powerful men prey upon those who were weak and powerless? To be sure. But right at that sublime moment he was willing to suspend disbelief and think that all mankind was in perfect harmony, that the world was one big beautiful whole.
He was moved almost to tears by his own thoughts and feelings. He raised his glazed eyes to gaze out the window in order to confirm for himself that the world outside was imbued with the self-same harmony as he felt within himself, that that world was as good and fresh and pure as he instinctively knew it to be.
Two men were standing next to the open trunk of a Cadillac in Richie's driveway only a few feet from the window. One was Richie, and his suit jacket was off. He was wearing a shoulder holster with a gun in it.
My brother-in-law asked himself: What kind of man who is not a police officer or a detective would be carrying a gun? His mind raced over all the professions he could think of -- until he alighted on one that beggared the very use of the term "profession". For a moment his body became tense, as what had been but a suspicion in his mind became all but a certainty. He felt his vision of a harmonious world beginning to crumble around him.
But then he relaxed as he recalled the famous words of the poet:
"Good fences make good neighbors."
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