Chapter 26

January was mostly the same. School was the same. Hanging out with Debbie and Gina was the same. Even making love to Mr. Russo was the same. That didn’t mean boring. Sex with Mr. Russo was never boring. Sometimes more intense than at other times, but definitely not boring. And the bigger Mrs. Russo got, the more back pains she had, and the less sex she had. That left Mr. Russo horny all the time and the sex he gave me was some of the best in my life.

Albert Russo was born toward the end of January. Mrs. Russo had predicted correctly when she had said it must be a boy because of all the trouble he was giving her. And he was a big one. Almost nine pounds. No wonder she had been in so much pain carrying him.

One night in early February, Mr. Russo and I made love in the master bedroom while Mrs. Russo breast fed the new baby next to us in the big bed. Suzy was already asleep. Afterward, I stood next to Mr. Russo, both of us naked and sweaty from the sex, as he changed little Albert’s diaper. I thought back to when I had envied Gina for having seen her little brother’s thingie. That’s what I had called a cock back then. A thingie. In those days, I had been so inexperienced, just a naïve teenage girl wondering what a boy’s dick looked like. Now, not even a year later, I had not only seen a dick, but held one and sucked one and had one inside my pussy. Two dicks, in fact, Mr. Russo’s and Joey’s. Not that I’d seen Joey’s in a while. Joey had been my first, but Mr. Russo, along with Mrs. Russo, had taught me about sex. I was blessed to have the Russos as tenants.

And then...

It was at the end of May. We were finishing dinner when my father said to my mother, “We’re going to have to advertise for new tenants.”

I hadn’t been paying attention to what the two were talking about until that comment piqued my interest. I looked up from my food.

“What new tenants?” I asked.

Wanda and Don are leaving,” my mother said.

It took a second for that to register. Then I shoved my chair back and jumped out of it. My mother screamed at me to finish eating while I ran to the front door, but I wouldn’t have stopped for anything. I shoved the door open, ran down the cement steps in front of my house, and didn’t stop until I was at the front door to the apartment below my house. Panting and wheezing, I pressed the doorbell, again and again until the door opened. Mrs. Russo stood there wiping her hands with a dishtowel.

“Are you moving?” I shouted with tears streaming down my cheeks.

“Julie, come in.”

I didn’t move, other than folding my arms across my chest. “Are you?”

“Yes, dear, we have—”

“Why? Why do you have to go?”

Mrs. Russo grabbed my arm. I shrugged her hand off, but she latched onto me again, this time with a more secure grip, and tugged me into the apartment. I was still stumbling when she slammed the door shut. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me to her body. I tried to break free, but she held me in a stranglehold embrace. I stopped struggling and wilted, bawling with my chin on her shoulder and my limp arms hanging at my sides.

I heard footsteps and turned to see Mr. Russo walking toward us.

“Don’t leave me,” I shouted at him.

When Mr. Russo cupped the back of my head, I found the strength to break free, placing both hands on Mrs. Russo’s shoulders and pushing so hard that she banged against the wall. I lunged at him, wrapping my arms around him and holding him tight. He patted my back while Mrs. Russo stood silent.

Mr. Russo placed both hands under my butt and lifted me straight up. I locked my arms around his neck as he carried me with my feet dangling near his shins. I thought he was taking me to the bedroom, hoping he would, but he kept going until we were in the living room where he sat on the couch and swung me sidesaddle onto his lap. I was still hugging him around the neck, sobbing into his chest. Mrs. Russo sat down next to us.

“We have to move,” Mrs. Russo said.

I looked at her through tear-blurred eyes. “Why? Why do you have to go?”

“Now that we have Albert, the apartment is too small for us. We need a larger place.”

“Suzy and Albert can share a bedroom. You have room.”

“Julie, hon, they will get older and that won’t work. Don found a good job that pays more. It’s a great opportunity. And with the extra money we can afford a larger place.”

“Where? How far?” I asked.

Mrs. Russo was silent for a moment. She and Mr. Russo made eye contact and then she looked back at me.

He got a job with Ford. It’s in Dearborn.”

“Where’s that?”

“Outside of Detroit.”

My jaw dropped. That was far. Another state. And not a close state like New Jersey. They might as well be moving to the moon. I was devastated.

RING. RING.

Mrs. Russo leapt from the couch and dashed to answer the telephone hanging on the wall in the kitchen. I only heard snippets of what she said.

“ ... is here ... upset ... I don’t know.”

Mrs. Russo held her hand over the mouthpiece and looked at me. “Julie, your mother wants you to come home.”

I shook my head violently and buried my face back into Mr. Russo’s chest.

“She’s upset,” Mrs. Russo said into the telephone and then, “No ... Yes ... Okay.”

There was more conversation, but too hushed for me to hear what Mrs. Russo was saying. Maybe I had tuned her out. I never wanted to leave them. She was my best friend and Mr. Russo was my lover.

Mrs. Russo returned to the couch and sat down next to us. She patted my leg above the top of my knee-high sock and below the bottom of the skirt I had worn to school.

“Your mother is worried about you,” Mrs. Russo said. “She wants you to come home.”

I clutched Mr. Russo tighter around his neck and pressed my body to his. “I don’t want to. I want to be with you.”

“I know. We’re going to miss you, too. Very much.”

My head shot up. “Don’t lie! If that was true you wouldn’t leave.”

“It is true. Don and I will be leaving a lot of friends who we will miss, but none as much as we’ll miss you.”

“Then don’t go!”

“Did you think we would be living here forever? In this small apartment?”

I shrugged.

“And what about you?” Mrs. Russo asked. “One day you’ll move out of this house.”

“But not so far away.” Tears once again flowed down my cheeks.

“That’s where the job Don got is. We didn’t have a choice. It’s a great opportunity for Don. He’ll be working on designing new cars, not just fixing old ones.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

Mrs. Russo leaned forward and kissed my forehead. She cupped the side of my head, covering my ear, and brushed the tears off my cheek with her thumb as she stared into my eyes. Then she leaned in again and kissed my lips. Just a quick, loving peck.

Mrs. Russo sighed. “You have no idea how much I’ll miss you. You’re a wonderful friend. More than a friend. I love you dearly.”

“But you’re going anyway?”

“When you’re older you’ll understand that sometimes you have to make choices that you don’t like. I’m sorry, but that’s how life is. If Don’s new job was in Brooklyn, we’d stay in Brooklyn, but it’s not, so we have to move.”

Of course she was right, but—I’ll say it again—I was a teenager.

I didn’t make love to Mr. Russo then. I hugged him, put his arms around me so that he would hug me back, and cried. I didn’t want sex. I just wanted to hold him and never let him go. It was Mrs. Russo who finally sent me home. I argued with her, but when Mr. Russo took her side I gave in and left. And by the look on my mother’s face when I entered the house, probably not soon enough. But whatever Mrs. Russo had said to my mother earlier when they spoke on the telephone probably saved me. That, and when my mother saw my red puffy eyes, she bit her tongue and let me go to my bedroom where I cried myself to sleep.

My mother was extra nice to me after that and sometimes even allowed me to visit Mrs. Russo after dinner on a school night as long as I had finished my homework. Of course it was Mr. Russo who I spent more time with, but my mother didn’t need to know that.

It was the middle of June when I went downstairs to visit the Russos. I hadn’t been allowed for over a week because I was studying for finals. I had thought midterms were gruesome, but finals were worse. Final exams had much more impact on my final grade. But the moving van was coming the next day while I was at school so that night would be the last time I would see Mr. and Mrs. Russo.

The apartment was filled with boxes. All labeled to indicate their contents. It was hard to move around the small apartment with the stacks of boxes everywhere. Some boxes were piled up as tall as me. Suzy and Albert were in a peaceful sleep, not knowing that when they went to bed the next night it would be far away. But I knew that and it was heavy on my heart.

I stared down at the two babies in their cribs. It would be the last time I saw them. Suzy had a cute red crease on her cheek where she had been lying before rolling onto her back. I couldn’t resist and brushed loose hairs off her sweet face. I jumped back when her arms reached for me, but they soon settled back at her sides. Her eyes had never opened and her breathing remained steady. A pang filled my heart. I had thought I would watch her grow up and be a big sister to her.