Free Pins: A Novel by Jim Provenzano Page B

showed her knee, where barely a trace of a scrape had reddened her soft skin. Joey tried not to laugh at Sophia’s concern. His own knees had been scraped, his legs bruised, arms chafed in so many places since starting up wrestling again, they blended together to cover his whole body. He didn’t mind the pain so much. It told him he was there, a person, in his body, unlike the other times where he could feel invisible, nobody, alone. The pain was a dent, a reminder.
    Joey played with Sophia awhile, then distracted her while he switched channels to the Smurfs. She abandoned him quickly. Joey took up her crayons, turning her little bubble creatures into Itchy and Scratchy.
    During a break between commercials, one of those awkward gaps where some dozing guy in the production room forgot to put in a tape, he heard his mother in the kitchen talking on the phone to some other mother, by the sound of it. But her words were hushed, and he heard just one sentence: “If he became one of those, I’d kill myself.”
    Joey cringed on the floor, stilled. It must have meant what he thought it meant. No way could he tell her. No way.
    Sophia blithely watched the tube, waiting for it to continue its barrage of cartoon images.
    Waiting until he heard his mother finish on the phone, he limped to the kitchen, sat at the table, helped her unpack the groceries, prepare dinner. She placed a big chicken on the counter, began running it under water in the sink. It dropped down with a heavy plop. She was always working, cooking, running the kids from one place to another. Maybe that was why she never had time to look nice like Mrs. Khors, who was always “showing a home” or “going out.”
    “You stir my sauce?” She inspected a box of something, unsure where to put it, or why she bought it.
    “Yeah.”
    She put the box down. “Chicken and shells, and salad. I hope that meets with your approval.”
    “Sounds fine.”
    “You want something now?”
    “No, Ma.” He thought this would be a good time to ask her, tell her, before she got to the point of really meaning what he thought she’d said. As she cooked, he helped put stuff away. That would work. “Who ya talkin’ to?”
    “No one. You bein’ nosy?”
    “No, I just–”
    “Mrs. Gambardello. You know her from church. She’s got that nice daughter, Cara. She’s in your grade, isn’t she?”
    “Yeah.” She’s also good at dropping her pencil a lot to get my attention.
    Mike marched to the kitchen doorway, halted to attention like a king’s guard. “I demand seven cookies, Madam, to pay your taxes.”
    “You can have two.”
    Mike dropped the military stance, moved the stool, leaning over the kitchen counter to tug the ceramic teddy bear closer. “We got ants.”
    “Here.” She gave Mike a bottle of Windex. He took cookies out with one hand, shot ants with the other.
    Joey’s mother continued talking about Mrs. Gambardello and her daughter “and the car they just bought had something wrong with the transmission.” Her only new friends were other Italian women, like their neighbor Mrs. DeStefano, who sometimes babysat Sophia and Mike. The few women in town she’d come to know were all Italian, as if they all spoke a secret language nobody else knew and she wouldn’t dare befriend anyone else. “You hungry? Are you allowed to eat tonight?”
    He smiled. “Yeah.”
    “So here, eat.” Carrot sticks again. He nibbled one just to please her.
    “When did you meet Dad?”
    “Why you wanna know?” She cut tomatoes on the counter.   It must have been for the salad, because the sauce bubbled slowly in the immense pot that rarely left the stove.
    The smells made his stomach growl. He got up, grabbed a piece of bread, dipped it in sauce. “I dunno. Jus’ curious.” The sauce almost burned his tongue, but it tasted good; salty, sweet, everything he loved about food. He got another piece of bread.
    “Well, it’s not a very romantic story,” she said. “Your father