Chapter 36

The cemetery where Gina was buried was way out in Long Island. It was the first funeral I had ever gone to. I hated it. The ride took hours and I missed Gina every minute of it. I didn’t speak at all in the car and sniffled in the chapel where I kept staring at Gina’s coffin. Her lifeless body was inside it with her hands folded across her chest. I would never see her again. Never speak to her again. The sniffles increased. I couldn’t help it. And at the gravesite, I bawled. I couldn’t hold it back. When they lowered Gina’s coffin into the frozen ground, I got dizzy. When Gina’s father dumped a shovelful of dirt onto the coffin, my legs turned to rubber. My father caught me and held me up.

The next day I was sulking in my bedroom when someone knocked on my door.

“May I come in?” my mother asked.

“I want to be alone.”

The door opened anyway. I was about to yell at my mother when I saw Gina’s parents. I snapped my mouth shut and stared at them.

“Julie,” Gina’s mother asked, “did you know Gina was using drugs?”

“No.”

Of course I had known, but not until the day before she hanged herself so it wasn’t that big of a lie.

“How could you not know?” her mother asked.

“She never did it when I was around. I had no idea.”

“Who’d she do it with?”

“I don’t know. Because me and Debbie were dating and Gina wasn’t allowed to, she found new friends. It must have been with them.”

I saw the pain on Gina mother’s face. That was spiteful of me, but I was getting mad. It was true to some extent, but it still wasn’t fair to blame Gina’s parents, or worse, have them blame themselves.

“Who were they?” Gina’s mother asked.

“I don’t know them. I didn’t even know she had new friends until recently.”

Gina’s father stepped around his wife. “How’d you find out?” he asked.

Shit! Shit, shit, shit. Now what?

“Um, she, uh, she sort of told me. It was one time when me and Debbie were going on a double date. I told Gina I was sorry to leave her alone. She said, ‘Don’t worry, I have new friends.’ When I asked her who they were she just told me that I didn’t know them.”

Lying was coming so easy to me.

“Gina didn’t leave a note,” Gina’s mother said. And then she said in a shaky voice, “Do you know why she did it?”

Tears flowed down her cheeks. She was in so much agony. I’m sure she thought she had failed as a parent. I knew why Gina had killed herself, but I had promised that I would never tell a soul what she had told me in confidence. I would keep that promise. It was the least I could do for my best friend. I would let everyone, especially her parents, remember Gina as a sweet innocent girl. Why should they know what Gina had done and how much she had suffered?

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know why. I’m so sorry.”

Now tears streamed down my cheeks as well. Gina’s mother rushed up to me and hugged me tight, probably giving her daughter the hug she would never be able to give her again. And then they left me alone to sulk some more.

Christmas break was ending in a couple of days so Debbie was due home tomorrow, but right now I was all alone. Debbie had missed the funeral. I wondered if anyone had called her. When she came home, I found out no one had and we cried together for hours. But she wasn’t coming home until tomorrow and I needed consoling now so I took the bus to Mr. Roman’s apartment, something I had never done before.

I stood outside the door to Mr. Roman’s apartment, rang the doorbell, and waited. And waited. Rang the bell again and waited some more. I pounded on the door with the side of my fist thinking the doorbell might not be working. Still no one came. I had never considered him not to be home. I felt stupid standing there. Dejected, I trudged to the elevator, pressed the down button, and waited with my head hung. The elevator door opened. When I saw someone’s feet, I automatically stepped aside with my head still lowered to allow the person to get out.

“Julie!”

My head shot up. It was Mr. Roman. I lunged at him and flung my arms around his neck and buried my face in his chest. The tears flowed instantly.

“Julie, what’s the matter?”

I tilted my head back and said, “My friend died.”

“Oh god, that’s awful. Come into my pad.”

Mr. Roman led me into the living room where we sat on the couch with his arm around me and my face in the crook of his neck. For the first time since I had found Gina hanging, I felt that someone cared about me. Mr. Roman was my strength. He was how I was going to survive this cruel world.

“Was it some kind of accident?” Mr. Roman asked.

I shook my head without speaking.

“You mean she was killed?” Mr. Roman said, incredulously.

“She killed herself,” I said into his neck.

Mr. Roman’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “Do you know why?”

I had no secrets from Mr. Roman. We were soulmates who were going to spend our lives together.

“I promised her I would never tell.”

“You mean you knew she was going to kill herself?”

My head shot back. “No! It’s just that she told me stuff the day before and that’s why I think she did it.”

Mr. Roman kissed my forehead. “Oh, okay.”

That’s all he said. He didn’t grill me like Gina’s parents. He simply accepted it. I loved him so much.

I shifted on the couch so that I was lying on my back with my head in Mr. Roman’s lap. He stroked my hair and face. He didn’t talk. I guess he was giving me time to grieve. His caresses felt good so I pulled his hand to my cheek and pressed it there. And that’s how we remained for a long time, me holding his hand on my cheek and us gazing into each other’s eyes.

“Do you believe in hell?” I asked.

“How can I believe in hell if I don’t believe in God?”

“The priests tell us that if you commit suicide you won’t go to heaven.”

“Priests are assholes.”

I let that sink in for a few moments before bursting out laughing. When I calmed down, I pulled Mr. Roman’s head down so that our lips were touching. He hesitated, but when my tongue poked his lips his tongue slid alongside it into my mouth. We kissed passionately with both my hands holding his head. I finally broke the kiss.

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For being you. For being here for me.”

Mr. Roman brushed some loose hairs off my forehead and leaned down and kissed it. I will always be here for you.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

Mr. Roman crossed his heart like I had for Gina and said the words. It was sealed. He would always be there for me. I knew one doesn’t go back on that kind of promise. I felt peace for the first time since seeing Gina dumped out of the red Bel Air.

Mr. Roman and I didn’t make love that day. He held me the whole time. We didn’t talk much. I simply wanted to be with him, in his arms, and he accepted that. When it was time for me to leave, he drove me home. Not my house, of course, but to our drop-off place. I watched him pull away from the curb and then started walking home, but I stopped. I didn’t want to walk where I had seen Gina dumped from the car. I turned and walked around the block the longer way.

The next day, Debbie came home. As soon as she found out about Gina, she rushed over to my house and the two of us cried and held each other in my bedroom. She kept asking why Gina had done it. I simply shrugged. I had promised not to tell.

Debbie and I had plans to go to a New Years Eve party with Paul Nimo and Wally Lugo. It was our first New Years Eve party and both of us had been excited. But with Gina’s death, neither of us was in the mood and we were going to cancel. It was my mother, of all people, who insisted that I go. She said that it was sad about Gina, but life goes on. We fought over it, but when my mother said that Gina would have wanted us to go, I gave in. When Gina had been alive she probably would not have wanted me and Debbie to go to a party without her, but I believed now that she was dead she would want us to be happy and to go. Debbie’s mother also convinced her that she should go. Probably after talking to my mother. So we did not cancel.

However, the day of the party, Wally called Debbie and told her that Paul was sick and couldn’t go. I told her that I didn’t want to be a third wheel and that she should go with Wally and I would stay home. She told me that not everyone was going as couples and, after she begged, I relented. Not that I was pleased about it. I would rather have been with Mr. Roman, but he had told me that he was going to a party in the Village and it wasn’t the kind of party I should be at. I thought he was telling me I was too young and that hurt so I decided to go with Debbie and Wally to the other party. If that’s what Mr. Roman thought, I’d show him.

When I dressed for the party in pants and a sweater, my mother exploded. She said that girls didn’t wear pants to parties. Especially a special one like New Years Eve. We argued until it was almost time to leave so I surrendered. I changed my pants to a skirt. I was actually glad I had because Debbie was wearing a dress and when we got to the party all the girls were wearing skirts or dresses. Sometimes my mother was right.

The party was at the house of one of Wally and Paul’s friends. Debbie and I didn’t really know their friends. They went to a different high school. Debbie had met Wally at a football game when our high school played theirs. I hadn’t been there so I didn’t know how that happened. Debbie had said they just met and she liked him. Then, before I knew it, I was double dating with them and Paul.

There were around twenty people at the New Years Eve party. Half of them were couples like Debbie and Wally, but the rest were single like me. I felt like a third wheel anyway, especially when Debbie and Wally got up to dance and left me alone on the couch.

One of those times, a boy with black hair came up to me. “Hi, I’m George Papadopoulos,” he said. “This is my house.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It’s Greek. What’s your name?”

“Julie Marino.”

“Italian.” He didn’t say it as a question.

I furrowed my eyebrows and crossed my arms over my chest. “Is that a problem?”

“Not for me. We’re both Mediterranean. And I love Italian food.” He paused and then said, “And Italian girls. Wanna dance?”

He held his hand out and I took it. We moved to where some of the others were dancing and he took me in his arms. His body felt firm as we danced to the slow song. I was surprised to find out that his parents went to a New Years Eve party and allowed him to have a party in the house. But I didn’t care as our bodies swayed to the music. When the song ended, we danced to the next song, also a slow one.

“You’re a good dancer,” George said when the song ended.

I blushed. “No I’m not.”

“I think you are. Hey, did you ever eat Greek food?”

“Like what?”

“Well, moussaka or stifado or souvlaki.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Wanna try a Greek drink? It tastes like black licorice.”

“No way.”

“It does. Wanna try it? It’s really good.”

“I guess,” I said.

I looked around. Not seeing Debbie, I followed George into the kitchen where he took a bottle out of one cabinet. For a moment I panicked because the liquid was clear and I thought he was giving me vodka. I remembered Butch had gotten me drunk on vodka. But the label on the bottle didn’t say vodka so I relaxed. Anyway, I wanted to tell George, “I told you so,” because there was no way a drink could taste like black licorice. He put ice cubes in two glasses and then poured the clear liquid into the glasses. Thoughts of a witch making a potion filled my mind as the clear liquid turned cloudy when hitting the ice. I expected smoke to come out of the glass, but none did. George handed me one of the glasses.

I sipped the drink and my eyes opened wide.

George smiled and said, “I told you so.”

It did taste like black licorice so he was the one who got to say those four words. But I liked black licorice so I wasn’t complaining. I continued to drink.

“What’s it called?” I asked.

“Ouzo.”

“Is that a Greek word?”

“I guess.”

“What does it mean?”

George shrugged. “Have no idea. I don’t speak Greek. I was born in Brooklyn.”

“It’s good,” I said.

“Yeah, I like it, too.”

We finished our drinks so George re-filled the glasses. When my glass was half empty, I felt a little wobbly.

“I’m kind of dizzy or something,” I said.

“That’s the ouzo. It’s because you never had it before. Let’s go sit someplace quiet. Come with me.”

George took me upstairs. I paused at the top. Like my house, that’s where the bedrooms were.

“Come on, we can talk in my room,” George said. “Too noisy downstairs. Come on.”

George led me to a bedroom with posters of race cars and New York Yankee baseball players hanging on the walls. I noticed one of the cars was a Corvette. There was a bed, a desk and chair, and a chest with five drawers. Two baseball bats were leaning against the wall in one corner. The strap of his baseball mitt was looped around the top of one of the bats and hung there. George sat on the chair and told me to sit on the side of the bed. I did and he slid the chair closer.