WINTER ' FOURTEEN
drinking in Nicky’s scheme of things. In Nicky’s world, teenagers drank beer and took to the streets, something
that repulsed and fascinated me.
A dog barked across the street, and a man in the kitchen told a joke, something about Nixon. A woman
shushed him repeatedly. The wind was picking up, and a distant plane light glowed across the horizon,
heading for some hidden, wonderful place. I wondered where Nicky came from originally, what he knew of
life here. He seemed different somehow from people here. People who made you feel like you were their most
intimate friend, even though they were withdrawn and evasive when it came to what mattered.
“You know your mother and I used to date?” he said. “Back in Philadelphia. We used to be quite the
couple. I wanted to marry her, but she kept going on about seeing the world, doing things on her time.”
“What about now?” I’d never thought of my mother having a lover. It hadn’t seemed to fit. I wondered
what she’d told him of our lives. About me.
“I’m not one for labels,” he said, lighting a cigarette. He blew a cloud of smoke in my face. “It’s complicated.
You tie yourself down that way.”
“Life’s an odd lot,” he added. “I ran into your mother in a bar a few years ago. It was pretty damned
funny, because she didn’t recognize me. Your mother knows what she wants out of things, at least. More than
I can say for myself and I fought in Normandy.”
“I don’t know. My father left, you know.”
“They’re all leaving now,” Nicky said, looking toward the door, as though he himself wanted to leave,
but didn’t know where.
A young flaxen-haired woman in a lavender party dress slipped past, smiling at me. I felt a quick flash,
and part of me wanted to ask her on a date. I pictured us among the warm scent of butter, tucked away in
the theater. I pictured the closeness between our bodies, the unspoken commonalities in our lives. We’d
watch something forgettable. The Attack Of The Crab Monsters or An Affair To Remember.
“So you were a war hero?” I said. He looked at me in a funny way, as though he were angry. I was glad.
“Did you kill some Krauts? I’m sure you did. Big war hero.”
“Not particularly,” he said. “Not more than the rest of the fellows. Let me tell you something, buddy.
Every goddamned move we made, we didn’t know whether it would kill us. We tiptoed around Death, literally.”
“What a hero,” I said. “My father was a labor leader. He got his schooling in orphanages, on the street.
He was always on the run from the police, like a stranger.”
It felt good somehow to lie, or at least to tell something that was not a certain truth. I felt a certain power
over Nicky just then, even if Sylvia wouldn’t appreciate it. I needed it.
“And look where he is now,” Nicky said, adjusting his collar, making an odd growling sound. “It’s a
wonder how your mother lasted as long as she did. Good thing she decided to get that divorce. It’s all too
easy getting into these things, but hard as hell to get out.”
He looked straight at me, his brow furrowed. He shook his head. I felt a certain distance from it all, the
voices around me distant. I felt as though we were entirely alone. I wanted to ask him another question, but
didn’t know what. About my father. About my mother.
“Of course, some people can’t handle the whole marriage business,” he said. “They want the easy path
out. They don’t give a thought to the moral obligations. Young men, especially.”
He smiled, a thin smirk, and shook his head. I could tell that he didn’t like my father. I wondered how
much Sylvia had told him, and what, exactly. It seemed wrong to me, to judge a man whom he knew nothing
The Linnet's Wings