To die for, p.5
To Die For, page 5
He buys her a dog—a puppy, don’t ask me what kind. Alls I know is, the goddam mutt never shuts up. She names it Walter, after Walter Cronkite. She had a thing about anchormen she told me. Get this: anchormen and heavy metal stars. “One thing I know,” he says. “If Peter Jennings or David Lee Roth ever called up Suzanne and asked her to meet them at their hotel or someplace, she’d be out of here.” Well, my girlfriend’s pretty crazy about Axl Rose. But I don’t know. You like to think you can count on a person. To hang around.
Anyways. Come April, maybe, Jeannie and me cook up this plan of driving down to Florida. Don’t laugh, but Jeannie wants to see Disney World. Larry hears about it and says how about if him and Suzanne come along, they both got vacations coming. So the four of us take off for Orlando, drive all night, make the trip in two days, that’s how crazy we were.
Most of that trip we took to Florida is kind of a blur. We worked our way through a lot of six-packs on that trip. All except Larry, actually. Who was never that big of a drinker.
Suzanne on the other hand. She was a real maniac on the trip. I’d never seen her like that before—and never did again, I can tell you. From the minute we left town and hit the highway, it was like she was let out of jail. She wanted to play this Aerosmith tape over and over, super loud. Every other word out of her mouth was fuck. Fucking drivers, fucking traffic, fucking New York Thruway. In the middle of the night one time, somewhere in Pennsylvania, she actually mooned a toll booth operator. You wondered if she was on drugs only she wasn’t. Larry hated that stuff. Even grass.
He was so much in love with Suzanne though, I don’t think he cared how dumb she was acting. He just kept trying to kiss her, make out with her. We took turns but mostly they sat in the front seat on account of he was in the best shape for driving. One time she actually had her face in his lap, if you know what I mean, while he was in real bad traffic. You could tell he was embarrassed. “Not now, Susie,” he’d say to her. “Wait till the motel.” She just laughed. Come to think of it, that trip was about the only time I ever heard her laugh.
Once we get there, we do the whole bit. Ride those little boats where they keep singing “It’s a Small World.” The teacups, the pirate ships, this 3D Michael Jackson movie they got. Suzanne gets her picture taken with Mickey Mouse. Larry buys one of these Goofy hats with the ears flopping down. Suzanne kids him about it, but you can also tell she doesn’t like it. She keeps trying to get him to take off the damn hat. He doesn’t want to. “You look stupid,” she says. “You look like a nerd.” He takes off the hat. But right then I remember thinking it was like we’re back in third grade and he’s this little boy again.
We stayed at this nice hotel, the four of us. Larry was making real good money at the restaurant at this point, so he said, It’s on me. Room service, Jacuzzi, cable in the room. The works. Sirloin steak for dinner. Banana daiquiris like they’re going out of style. I mean, we were going strictly first class.
Our last night in Orlando, Larry buys Suzanne these two stuffed dogs, and they’re hugging each other. Like one is him, and the other one’s her. Then we go see the fireworks over at Epcot Center, and Larry and Suzanne are making out pretty good while these fireworks are exploding all over the place. I guess you’d have to say the whole thing was about as romantic as it gets. Must of been, because after, when the four of us were heading back out on the monorail, Larry holds up Suzanne’s hand, and she’s got this big diamond on her finger. “What do you think of this?” he says. The whole thing makes me a little tense, you might say, on account of Jeannie’s right there, and I know she’s thinking, OK, where’s my ring?
But we took their picture, the two of them, with the stuffed dogs. I’ve still got the picture, if you want to see it. That’s more the way I remember Larry, before he got all serious and cut his hair. Grinning like he always was back in those days.
But the thing that got me—well now, of course, looking back, it seems more important than it did at the time—was the way she only held his hand while Jeannie was taking the picture. The minute the flash went off, she let go.
JOE MARETTO
I DON’T GET IT. I keep trying to figure out what went wrong. Because at every step along the way, things just looked so good. And now this.
Angela and I went steady right through high school. I never looked at another girl. That’s God’s truth. She was all I wanted.
I wasn’t looking to set the world on fire. She didn’t need to find herself or any of that. What we wanted was to take over my uncle’s lunch counter, get a nice home, have healthy kids, raise them right. Someday sit in the den and watch our grandchildren open their Christmas presents, knowing we’d done a good job. Does that sound like too much to ask?
We did it by the book. No fooling around before we were married. First two years we were married, we lived with her folks, so we could save up for the down payment. We moved into this house the day Kennedy was shot. Our daughter Janice came along nine months later to the day. And Larry two years after that. So we had our boy and our girl. Angela stayed home with the kids, like mothers did in those days, and I worked like a dog at the restaurant. Nights, weekends, I didn’t complain. I had two healthy kids and a lovely wife. They were worth it.
Angela was just great with those kids, you ask anyone. Home-cooked meals every night, you could eat off the floor. Janice wanted skating lessons, Angela drove her an hour each way to the rink. Same thing with Larry’s Little League games, and then those drums. By this time the restaurant was doing real good, we got our liquor license, put in the bar. Running a restaurant in this part of town, big Italian clientele, I’m not saying we didn’t have one or two fellows among our customers that may have been on the wrong side of the law on occasion, but we kept our noses clean. We always ran an honest, family-type establishment. A lot of the time I’d be working, but Angie never missed one of the kids’ events at school. And always had the right thing to say if Janice didn’t get invited to a dance or maybe Larry struck out or fumbled a ball in the field. Larry may not have been a natural athlete, but you never saw a bigger heart in a player, or a kid that tried harder.
I’m not pretending the teenage years were a picnic. Janice had her skating to keep her out of trouble, but Larry was always such a friendly guy, always going someplace, he had some friends that maybe wouldn’t have been Angela’s and my choice. Long hair, guitars, drums, the whole bit. Larry’s only problem was, he trusted everybody else to be as decent as he was. But I trusted him too. I knew he had his head screwed on right, and sooner or later he’d buckle down and get on with his life. Which he did.
Angela and I had always planned on Larry going to college, but when he graduated high school, he said that was it. What are you going to do? He starts tending bar down at the restaurant. We tell ourselves now’s just not his time yet. His time will come.
Then he met Suzanne, and it seemed like that was going to do it for him. That little blonde had enough ambition for the two of them. “You know, Dad,” he said to me, not too long after he met her, “Suzanne’s going to go far in the world.
“You wait and see,” he says. “One of these nights you’ll turn on the news in the den and it’ll be Suzanne up there on Channel 7. And she’ll be coming home to me.”
He said being around her gave him a reason to make good himself. He was always telling us things Suzanne told him, how you’ve got to have a goal in life. Whatever it is you want, you can attain it, if you try hard enough and believe in yourself. You have to think positive. Don’t ever doubt yourself, and don’t get distracted looking over your shoulder at the other guy. Just be the best you can be, or be all that you can be. Go for it. Now I’m probably getting it confused with some commercial. But you get the idea. And I’m telling you, it all sounded pretty good to Angela and me. It seemed to us like Suzanne was giving Larry just the kick in the pants he’d always needed, to get somewhere.
Six, maybe eight months after he’d met her, Larry comes up to me real serious one night, says he needs to have a talk with me, man to man. He’s been thinking about his future, and he’s set his priorities. A person can’t get anywhere just having fun all the time. He wants to make something of himself, and not just party the rest of his life. All the things I used to tell him, only now he’s telling them back to me.
The bottom line was, he’d cut his hair and signed up for a night course in accounting. Told me he wanted to learn the restaurant business properly, so he could take over the place one day and make me proud. “I think I got a future in this line of work, Dad,” he tells me. Well, I could have told him that. A person would come into the bar just to be around that boy. You trusted him. He listened to what you said. He’d make you feel he cared, which he did.
“OK, son,” I tell him. “Show me you mean business and I’ll make you weekend manager come fall. I won’t treat you no different than if you were somebody else’s boy, though. No special favors. Business is business.”
You should’ve seen how serious he was about the whole thing, right from day one. Sold his drums. Went out and bought a briefcase, and a diamond for Suzanne. Handed out our matchbooks every time he walked in a door. People were telling me they’d run into Larry somewhere and before they could even spit it out to say, “How do you like those Red Sox?” he’d be asking them, “You give any thought yet to where you’re holding your company Christmas party this year? You tried my mother’s lasagna recently?” He’s hiring bands, got a comedy night once a month, ladies night at the bar. And so forth.
Next thing I know, my son’s close to doubled our business, Saturday and Sunday nights. No college degree, but the guy’s golden. He takes the bonus I give him and puts a down payment on a condo. The place on Butternut Drive.
All this time, Suzanne and Larry were engaged, although what with his night hours and her job at the mall, sometimes days went by he didn’t see her. Angela used to say she couldn’t understand it how two young people in love could be apart that way. My wife’s more what you might call the romantic type. But by my way of thinking, those two kids were just being sensible. Before a couple starts their life together, they need to have their ducks in a row.
He gave her the Datsun for Christmas. Nothing was too good for that girl, as far as my son was concerned.
They were married in July, and she gets this new job at a cable TV station. He kept his nose to the grindstone. They lived just around the corner from us, but we didn’t see that much of them to tell the truth. He worked long hours, and she was always out with her girlfriends or taking some workshop on how to improve your vocabulary or get ahead in the career world or some such thing. One time I remember Angela called her up and she couldn’t talk because she had this wardrobe consultant there, looking over her clothes, to tell her what she should wear. “I just found out I’m a summer, and all my clothes are winters,” she told Angela. “I beg your pardon?” says Angela. She called it getting her colors done. Said it would help her in her career. All I know is, finding out she was a summer cost my son a couple hundred bucks, and that was before she even went out to buy all those new outfits. She told us on television, everything’s got to be perfect. “The camera never lies,” she said. Well I don’t know about that.
CAROL STONE
I DON’T NORMALLY WATCH daytime television of course, but I have to admit I was tuned to “Wheel of Fortune” when Suzanne called to tell us she got the job. I admit it, I think Vanna White is a real sweetheart. Not so much in the brains department, of course—not like Suzanne. But she’s got this presence that practically comes right through the screen and into your living room. Like Suzanne always said about Vanna, “She understands the camera. It’s like she was born on TV.”
“You better be tuned to Channel 37, Mom,” my little girl told me. “Because from now on, that’s my station.”
“You got the job!” I said, and then I started screaming like I’d won the “Wheel of Fortune” myself. Earl was upstairs in his den. To hear me carrying on, he must’ve thought someone had been murdered.
“I knew you’d get it,” I told Susie. “I’ve been thinking positive.” Which was the case. All that morning I was picturing her, sitting at a desk in front of a microphone, reading the news, interviewing celebrities, and so forth. Ever since she was a little girl, basically, I’ve been visualizing that scene. And now it was finally coming true.
I said she’d be needing some new clothes. We’d better make a trip over to the mall. Then her father got on the extension. We were both just so proud of her. Who wouldn’t be?
We asked her when she was due to start. You didn’t want to miss her debut, that was for sure. She explained to us that she wouldn’t be on camera right away. A person had to put in their time, getting orientated. They were planning to start phasing out the guy they had reading the news, but he had seniority. They couldn’t step on too many toes, you know? But it was only a matter of time before our Susie would be the main on-camera talent. Well, as far as her father and I were concerned, she was always the main talent. The rest of the world just took a little longer to recognize that fact, was all.
“At first I may have to do a little filing and typing,” she told us. “But that’s only temporary. I just know that once the station manager sees what I can do, he’s going to give me my big break.”
“Sure you will, honey,” Earl told her. Suzanne could always get a man to do what she wanted. No one knew that any better than her daddy. When Suzanne set her mind on something, she got it.
ED GRANT
ONE THING YOU’VE GOT to understand: This isn’t some NBC affiliate I’m running here. We’re talking local cable, broadcast range forty, fifty miles tops. Your church holding a bake sale? Senior class got a car wash going to raise money for a trip to Washington? We’ll put it on the air. This is the station to watch, if you’re interested in a public service short on how to do the Heimlich maneuver, or you want to know if school’s going to be cancelled on account of snow.
You couldn’t exactly call it a news show, what we produce here. But three times a day we broadcast what we call our community events listing. Such and such an organization is holding introductory square dancing lessons. So-and-so lost their kitten. That kind of thing.
The job I actually advertised was your basic secretary, gal Friday position. Girl I can send over to Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee, type me up a memo to the oil company saying they made a mistake on our last bill. That kind of thing. We’re talking minimum wage. No benefits. Kind of job you give a gal with nothing but a high school diploma, that’s just biding her time till her boyfriend pops the question.
Then Suzanne Maretto shows up for her interview. She’s got this little suit on, with a bow at the neck, and she’s carrying a briefcase. High heels, hairdo like she’s just come from the beauty parlor, a nose kind of like a cartoon character, I’m telling you, George and me—he’s the cameraman, sound man, all-purpose studio technical crew—we just shot each other a look when she walked in the door. Like, I think you got the wrong idea, sister.
I told her that too. First thing she does when she comes in my office is shake my hand really hard and look me dead in the eye. You got the feeling she must’ve taken a class one time where they told her that made a good impression, but she didn’t quite get it right. Then she hands me this resume she’s got listing all her college broadcasting experience, video credits, workshops she’s attended, what have you. She’s all wired up, like she’s been psyching herself all morning. “Here’s a list of my references in the media field,” she tells me. “I encourage you to contact any or all of the people on this list for confirmation of my credentials.” Et cetera et cetera.
I wanted to stop her then and there and explain, this wasn’t that kind of job. She was overqualified. I was looking for your basic gofer. But it was hard getting a word in edgewise. You had the feeling she had this speech all set, and if you interrupted in the middle she’d have to start it all over again from the top.
So I just sat and watched her. You had to admire the kid, she was trying so hard. And here she actually thought I was some kind of media bigwig, and my two-bit job might actually be a stepping-stone in her career. I can still remember the gist of how she finished off her little speech there. “In our fast-moving computer age,” she says, “it is the medium of television that joins together the global community, and the television journalist who serves as messenger, bringing the world into our homes, and our homes into the world.” She had a line in there about Paul Revere, and how the television journalist carries his or her news across the countryside, bringing us all together. “It has always been my dream to become such a messenger,” she says—looking me in the eye again. “I look to you now to make that dream a reality.” End of speech. You kind of felt like you should applaud.
“Listen, Suzanne,” I tell her. “Sounds like you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You’re ambitious and nice-looking and you got a lot of natural poise. You seem like you’re the type that might really have a future in broadcasting. But I got to tell you, you won’t find that future here. This place would be a dead end for you. Not a beginning.”
Now it’s her turn to just sit there. She’s got her legs crossed at the ankle. Hands folded in her lap. Briefcase propped against her chair leg. Up close I can see it’s imitation leather. And something else I’ll always remember. Her makeup, you know that liquid foundation stuff women put on? Up close, you could see how she only applied it out as far as her jaw line, so her neck and under her chin is a different color, like she has on this peach-colored mask. For some reason, seeing that made me kind of sad. Sorry for her, almost. All of a sudden she didn’t look so pulled together after all. You had to wonder if maybe she was about to cry.
