The Painting of Porcupine City: A Novel Read online

  She had pressed DELETE without listening to the full message, hoping the woman would not call back. What could she possibly want that would cross all those years and all those miles? Her thoughts jumped first to motives of retaliation, then leapfrogged to fear: Had something happened to Renaldo?

  Two days later Sabina’s second call caught Marjorie on her way out the door, and Marjorie, after the greeting, was going to use that as an excuse.

  “I’m about to go out,” she was going to say. “Could we talk later?” Later, of course, as in never.

  But before she had a chance, Sabina, swallowing every ounce of her considerable pride, told Marjorie, “I need your help. For my son.”

  At the end of a terrible, wonderful hour, there was a deal, much more than the simple advice Sabina had intended to ask for, or ever imagined, much more than she thought she could accept from this woman of all people—much more than Marjorie had ever intended to offer.

  Marjorie questioned her motives in offering it. What business did she have opening her home to Renaldo’s teenage son? What did she hope to gain? Did she hope to see shades of Renaldo in the boy? Did she hope to pretend the boy was their own son, a surprise relic of their brief time together?

  It felt dangerous, too. She knew nothing about this Mateo Vinicius Armstrong Amaral, who was apparently truant, prone to—what had Sabina called them?—fugues. She couldn’t expose her young daughter Phoebe to something like that.

  It was when, at last, Sabina revealed why Mateo was truant that it all seemed to open up and become justified and right and obvious. It wasn’t drugs or theft or gangs or violence. Mateo was an artist. An art student. Just like the ones Marjorie spent all day teaching, encouraging, pushing and helping. An art student. And probably a good one. At the very least a dedicated one. It clicked. And at the end of a terrible, wonderful hour, there was a deal.

  That same long night Sabina had lain in bed. Sending her son to live with her husband’s old mistress? Insane. Totally, utterly insane. The woman was her arch enemy. She hated her and hated her for years with a passion conjurable only by a woman from the land of the harsh São Paulo sun. She’d changed continents to get away from her. And now she was going to, basically, invite her to shelter her only son?

  Sabina felt sick. In bed she rolled against Renaldo. He didn’t sleep well anymore, was plagued by constant pain, and as she stroked his belly and side (tickling distracted him from the pain), her fingertips found the thick cord of scar that seemed to tunnel through him like a worm.

  In the morning she informed Renaldo of her decision—somehow it had always been her decision. And Renaldo, with much sadness, agreed. Sadness because he understood that, in some way, he was losing his son. Mateo was going to a place Renaldo would never be allowed to follow.

  Mateo stood at the top

  of the stairs in Marjorie’s old Jamaica Plain house, listening, listening. He tilted his head and bent his brow. He heard a car go by outside; the mutt a few houses down barked twice. But from this house there was only silence. Silence and the last few drips from the faucet behind me.

  He turned when I opened the bathroom door the rest of the way. We’d run the water cold against the morning heat and there wasn’t much steam. I wore a towel around my waist.

  “Clean?” he said.

  I nodded. “What are you doing?”

  “Listening. They’re out.”

  “How’d you get dressed so fast?” I walked down the hall leaving footprints on the wood.

  “We should go get your car,” he said, following me into his room. Stepping into my underwear, I modestly turned to cover myself, stopped, we both laughed.

  “Nudity is so situational,” I said.

  “It looks good on you.”

  I pulled up my boxers. “I hope I didn’t get a ticket.”

  “I’ll pay it if you did. It’s my fault we left it.”

  “Fault is hardly the right word.”

  We had breakfast and took the T to Charlestown and walked and found the car mercifully free of orange parking tickets.

  “Can I get a ride home?” he said as I unlocked the door.

  “No,” I smirked, and he got in.

  For shits and giggles we drove to the street with the construction, where last night, when things were so much different—was that really only twelve hours ago?—we’d painted on the plywood wall. I drove by slowly.

  “Would you look at that,” I said.

  “I know, right?” He clicked his tongue. “What is this neighborhood coming to? Such riff-raff running free.”

  “Running free and defacing private property.”

  “A shame, really.”

  “Such a shame.”

  “Reminds me,” he said, snapping a Polaroid of our graffiti, “I need more yellow.”

  He bought his supplies

  after work, he told me, because a guy in slacks and an ironed button-down got less hassle buying spraypaint than a guy wearing jeans and a hoodie.

  What did he need today? He thought about which holes in his trunk compartment needed filling. He needed some blue and some lime. He also, as usual, needed more yellow. All Mateo’s people were yellow, a yellow the color of honey that sufficed to imply the skin-tone of anyone from a Fletcher to a Jamar to a copper-skinned brasileiro. Meant he had to carry fewer shades, which made his backpack lighter.

  He was pretty sure the MBTA ripped off his style for Charlie, the cartoon commuter of ambiguous honey-colored ethnicity, who starred in advertisements for the T and on his namesake, the Charlie Card subway pass. But Mateo didn’t mind. He himself had lifted the yellow from Os Gemeos—The Twins—a pair of brothers, two of the biggest names in Brazilian graffiti. Not all of their people were yellow but a lot were, and those were the ones Mateo liked best.

  He put the cans and a few fat-tipped markers on the counter, paid with cash, stuffed the change and the receipt in his pocket.

  In the parking lot of the hardware store (one of the many he frequented on a rotating schedule; there were art-supply stores for the exotic colors, but art stores tended to get to know their clientele, and he didn’t like people asking questions) he stashed the cans in the trunk, dropping them into the plywood shelves. And when he parked outside his house he left them there, bringing in only the markers.

  Marjorie and her daughter Phoebe were eating dinner—hot dogs and mac and cheese by the looks of it—on the stools at the kitchen counter, watching Wheel of Fortune on the little TV by the fridge. The kitchen table was overwhelmed by one of Marjorie’s huge puzzles, a half-finished Taj Mahal, which she spent Saturday and Sunday mornings piecing together while consuming cigarettes and English muffins.

  “Hello,” Mateo said, shutting the door behind him. By the edge of the puzzle sat a couple of pieces of mail addressed to him—a credit card bill and a renewal notice for Rolling Stone. Also a thin square package, obviously a CD, wrapped in brown paper, bearing colorful stamps from Brazil. He picked them up.

  “There’s a couple of hotdogs left, if you’re hungry,” Marjorie told him. She wore her graying brown hair always in a loose bun, and the paintbrushes she stabbed through it on school days were there. Usually too she had on an old flannel shirt, her getting-messy shirt, but that was gone for this weather and she wore only a pinkish t-shirt. Her skirt was paint-splotched tan cotton and on her feet she wore clogs.

  “Hello Mateo,” Phoebe said, clippy, as though to catch him and keep him from leaving. She was working her way down off the stool.

  “Hello Miss,” he said, lifting his arms and then putting them on her back when she collided with him and squeezed him around his middle. He stepped back to steady himself. She looked up, her chin just above his belly, and grinned; there was a blob of cheese on the corner of her mouth and a twinkle in her eye. She was only a couple of years younger than Mateo.

  “You missed dinner!” she said, imperatively, the way she said most everything.

  “I had to run some errands! I’m going to steal a wi
ener, though. Then I need to get to sleep!”

  “Will you watch the dancing show?”

  “Hmm. The dancing show isn’t on tonight. But I’ll watch it with you when it’s on, OK?”

  “OK.”

  He helped himself to two hotdogs and a scoop of mac and cheese, banging the spoon against the plate to get it off.

  “How you doing, Marjorie? You look dressed for school.”

  “Today was the first day of Art Camp,” she said, waving a fork with a chunk of hot-dog stabbed on the end.

  “You go, Phoebe?”

  She was climbing back onto the stool beside her mother. She nodded.

  “Fun?”

  “I asked mom if next time we can bring you!”

  “And what did your mom say to that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Haha. Oh she did, huh? But I don’t know if my boss, Mr. Larry Bassett, would let me go. I’ll have to ask.”

  “Tell him Phoebe says he has to!” she shouted, angry for an instant, then smiling again.

  He opened the fridge and from the shelf marked MATEO he grabbed a bottle of water.

  “Thanks for the food. Now I’m out like the fat kid in dodgeball. That’s a simile.”

  Phoebe laughed hysterically.

  He took the plate upstairs to the room he rented from Marjorie, set it on his door-desk, and scattered the contents of his pockets across the door: the markers, his keys and wallet and phone, the mail.

  He set aside the bill and opened the CD. He chuckled at the name of the album, by a band called Numismata. There was a note, written in English in his mother’s hand:

  Mateo— Saw V. with this the other day and I had to buy one for you. “Brazilians On The Moon”! Someday. Maybe it will be you! I hope you are doing well. Please think about a visit soon... it has been too long! Pai sends his hello. —Mamãe

  He smiled, folded the note, tucked it under his copy of Porcupine City. He popped the CD into his laptop. He liked the sound but it struck him as surprisingly low-key for his cousin, who last Mateo knew was in the throes of a hip-hop phase.

  He logged on to chat but Vinicius wasn’t online.

  He ate the hotdogs slowly while checking the weather forecast and perusing graffiti message boards to see what people were saying about him today. When he was done he got out of his clothes, did a hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups, and went to shower and shave in the floral bathroom. Marjorie had told him a million times he could tear down the wallpaper and paint it however he liked, perhaps as a way to coax him into doing renovations, but the flowers didn’t bother him, and anyway he had more important things to paint than bathrooms. After drying off he put on some shorts and walked barefoot back to his room. It was almost 7:30.

  He lay down on the floor and pulled himself head-first under the bed. It was no small procedure to remove his black book, and his night with me had shifted it around, but when he’d fished it out of the panel cut into the box-spring, he sat up and slapped dust off his back. He opened the book on his lap. It was now almost four inches thick and running out of blank pages—he’d have to start a third volume soon. (Or he could finally begin the transition to digital, but old habits die hard.)

  This evening, as on most evenings, he succumbed to the desire to look through his old work, and when he reached the first blank page he got up and pulled from his office pants a few Polaroids taken last night, and the one from the night before in Charlestown, with me. None of his Dedinhos stuff appeared in this book—this book was for the special stuff he did on his own—but this one, with my drippy ARROWMAN beside it, made him smile. He glued them in, and with a fine-tipped Sharpie began noting the location of the piece, and the date.

  A knock on the door made him streak ink across one of the photos. He flung the black book under the bed, jammed his toes between the mattress and box-spring, flopped backward, put his hands behind his head and said, “Come in.”

  Marjorie opened the door. “Didn’t mean to disturb.”

  “It’s OK, I was just working out.” He sat up. He felt funny to be shirtless in front of her and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Muscle man,” she said, and he blushed. “I just wanted to let you know, Mateo, that—well, I noticed you had a boy over the other night, and—”

  Suddenly shirtlessness was the least of his embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I was sure we were quiet.”

  “Oh— I heard you come in, is all I meant.” She looked down at her clogs. “Going up the stairs. That’s all I—” She took a breath. “Anyway. What I wanted to say is that you don’t have to sneak him around. You’re welcome to have him over any time. You know that. Or anyone special.”

  “Thank you. That’s nice.”

  “Have him over for dinner. I could make something. Or to watch TV. Phoebe loves meeting new people.”

  “I know.” He stood up and sat on the bed.

  “I would make one request, though,” she said. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully, and that made him nervous. “I don’t think Phoebe needs to know exactly who he is. Does that make sense? I think it’s enough for her to know he’s your friend. I think it would be confusing for her.”

  “Confusing?”

  “I don’t think she’d understand very well, that’s all.”

  He wanted to say, What’s to understand? He knew I would’ve said that, knew I would’ve made a sarcastic promise not to blow any guys in front of her daughter. But instead he said, “Sure. And he really is only my friend. He’s just a guy from work. We’ve only—” Spent one night together, he almost said. “He’s just an amigo.”

  “Well.” She nodded. “Now that I’ve made myself look like a total homophobe— How do you say homophobe in Portuguese?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Inimigos dos gays, I guess?”

  She repeated it carefully, and sighed, and seemed to regret the whole thing. “Anyway, I’ll let you get back to your exercise.”

  He lay in bed, the windows turning dark, and looked up at the ceiling at the horse with the elephant trunk. In the whole weird exchange with Marjorie the thing that bothered him most had been something he himself had said: that I was just a guy from work. It seemed right and yet not. Factual but not true.

  He tried to put it out of his mind. He rolled over and smelled the other pillow but the smell of me was gone by then. He needed to get to sleep. His day started at 2:00 a.m.

  “When do Jamar and I

  get to meet this special boy of yours?” Cara pleaded. “It’s been like a month, mister!” She had her back against the arm of the couch. Her feet were wedged under my thigh. Every once in a while I’d feel her toes wiggle through my shorts. She held out a half-full joint and I took it. “Assuming he exists. Jamar thinks this Mateo person might actually be a composite character you’ve created out of a ginormous number of tricks. Mike, Arthur, Tom, Eddie, and Omar.”

  “I’ve never dated an Arthur. And it hasn’t been a month! It’s been like ten days. And jeez, Cara, we’re just knocking boots.”

  “No, you and the Warcraft kid just knock boots.”

  “...”

  “So when, huh?”

  “Assuming he’s real?”

  “Assuming he’s real.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Soon. I promise.” She reached for the joint and I waved her away and put it between my lips again, inhaling as deep as I could. “He’s a busy guy. He keeps weird hours.”

  “I can’t believe you’re dating someone you work with,” she said. “It’s so scandalous. Do your other coworkers know?”

  They did not know, and although I called Cara a prude for saying it was a scandal to sleep with a coworker, I was delighted to be someone who was doing it. At work I couldn’t help but snicker every time I realized I knew what the I.T. guy looked like naked. The people who passed my cube did not know about the line of freckles across his left shoulder blade, were not familiar with the spray of hairs at the small of his back. Probably had never seen his tattoos. A
nd certainly had no inkling of a thing far more intimate than any of those others: the knowledge of how the I.T. guy spent his nights.

  “It’s really not that scandalous,” I told Cara. “He’s not exactly president of the company. He just installs RAM all day.”

  “I bet he prefers to install his RAM in you.”

  “Touché.”

  “You haven’t said much about this one.”

  “I never kiss and tell.”

  “Mmhm. You kiss and write whole books.”

  “Hah.”

  “How is he? Big? Long?” She laughed. “You’ve turned me into such a gay man.”

  “He’s just right. He’s perfect.”

  “How many times total?”

  “A couple. I told you, he’s busy. You’re nosy when you’re stoned, aren’t you?”

  “Too busy for sex, and you’re hanging out with him anyway?” She leaned forward, withdrawing her feet and circling her arms around her knees. “I think I was right in the beginning: you’re in looove.” Her face was high and earnest. “And why, because I’m so happy for you, Fletcher. It’s so great that you have someone. Even if part of me has always wished it could be me.” She made a fist and socked me in the shoulder.

  “Ow!” I took another drag on the joint and passed it back. I made a sneaky look. “I would’ve moved in on that when Jamar was in Denver. I would’ve made my move. Swoop!”

  “Like how again?”

  “Like swoop!”

  We finished the joint and then lay on the couch through the rest of an episode of Law & Order, and when it was over I dragged myself up.

  “I’m going to go write for a while,” I told her. “I always seem to get interesting things stoned.”

  “Don’t leave me.”

  “Gotta, princess.”

  Right away I noticed Mateo’s

  sneakers on the floor by my bed, and that gave him away. But he was too asleep to notice. He was facing away from the door, moppy hair splayed over my pillow. I closed the door and tip-toed to the bed and lifted the sheet.