Sunday – Quinn

I stayed home with Willy Saturday night and we watched World War Z and then had a Mario Kart marathon until I felt bug-eyed and useless. It was good to escape into his world for a while, because aer we walked Jill home, I was still stuck in my head and it wasn’t fair to Willy. But Sunday was different. Ma came home, napped for a couple hours, made her marshmallow pie that everyone in the world loves but me—because marshmallows taste like little chunks of chewy soap!—and then the three of us went down the block to the Galluzzos’.

We arrived late; the house was already packed. A couple of the younger neighborhood kids sat on the stairs that overlooked the front hall and the living room. Each one had a hyper-colored plastic gun, and they pretended to shoot the group of guys in the living room watching the Pats play the Broncos on TV. It was the aernoon game, but it was already in the second quarter. ey were screaming at what should have been a pass interference

that hadn’t been called.

“Boys!” Ma yelled into the room.

I almost laughed at how quickly the roomful of grown men snapped to attention when they heard Ma.

A moment passed, then Guzzo’s dad shouted back, “Marshmallow pie!”

Everyone cheered.

“Nice to see you too, Richie,” Ma said. We walked into the kitchen and she put the pie on the counter, Mrs. Galluzzo hugging us all hello. Out the window, I could see the small backyard, the porch. It was packed too. It looked like half the neighborhood had shown up. Willy scrambled off to nd some kids his age down in the basement, where they usually played video games, and I headed outside. But I gotta admit, I felt weird. e Galluzzos’ had always been my second home, but as I moved through the kitchen

toward the back porch, I felt oddly slow and awkward, like I was wading through a pool of water.

As soon as I stepped onto the porch I saw him. Paul. My stomach clenched. He was ipping burgers at the grill. A red bandanna tied up over his head. Ratty T-shirt, even in this cool November weather. Guzzo stood right beside him. Two brothers side by side. Man, I’d never really taken in how huge they were, like, they could have squatted, pitched forward, and put their knuckles in the dirt, and they’d be the linemen I just saw wearing Pats and Broncos uniforms. ey waved, and I waved back, but was instantly wondering if Guzzo had said anything to his brother about the other night.

It bugged me not knowing. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to keep quiet about it, or if I was supposed to head over and slap Paul on the back. It did feel like this party was thrown together all of a sudden for him. Why else were we all there? Paul didn’t live here, and yet he stood there at the grill, like he was at the helm or something, and the whole party radiated out in front of him.

Paul prodded the burgers and I saw that Jill was on the porch too. She was sitting on the railing, leaning against the post in the corner, watching Dwyer shoot hoops in the driveway. I joined her in the corner, sitting on the other railing, facing her and the yard behind her, where I could see Guzzo nudging Paul and pointing at me.

“You think you all really have a chance this year?” Jill asked me, nodding toward the basketball.

Of course she’d go there rst—that was all anybody wanted to talk about.

“Everyone else does,” I said.

She turned and looked at me. “at make you nervous?”

“I keep hearing this voice in the back of my head,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like a frigging crazy person. “It’s pushing me, you know, like, ‘go, go, go,’ but what I really hear is ‘Don’t fuck it up.’ ”

“Coach putting pressure on you?” she asked.

at wasn’t even half of it! Coach Carney and his plans were drilled into me. We’d had our warm-up practices the week before. e rst serious preseason practices began on Monday. Everyone knew we had a great team this year. People were even talking about it in the press, wanting to know how far we’d go—semi nals, nals—but all we cared about was who was

going to be a starter. at’s who the scouts would focus on—the guys with serious playing time.

But it wasn’t the team that bothered me, it was the press. I’d already seen Coach Carney doing interviews le and right, getting all excited like some clown at the carnival. I was sure we’d see more of them too. It had been a long time since we’d had a team with a shot at being ranked number one in the state, and even though there were only een players, three coaches, and a part-time trainer, it felt like we were chasing the trophy for thousands of people.

But right then, I decided I was only going to concentrate on one person.

Jill. So I just said, “Not too bad,” and she nodded, and it was kind of impossible not watch the light shi in the highlights in her hair. ere were other people on the porch, but nobody was listening to us.

“So here’s something, I don’t know, weird. You know how the cops came to the party the other night?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, no one got busted. e cops broke up the party, shook a few guys down, looking for pot, but not nding any, and they just made me send everyone away, made me stand there in the hall and watch everyone leave. ey made me call my parents. It was so embarrassing.” She leaned in closer.

“But what was worse, they stood there in the front hall looking at me, waiting for my folks to come home, aer everyone else had le, and one of them, I don’t even know his name, but he obviously knew I was Paulie’s cousin, he kept looking at me like he was disgusted. Finally, he pointed at me and said, ‘Don’t fuck this up for your family.’ ”

“Did you get in any kind of trouble?”

“No,” Jill said skeptically. “I thought he was going to call Paulie, but he didn’t. He just said that, waited for my parents, and when they got home, he le. Nothing else happened. It was just . . . like I said, weird.”

Mr. Galluzzo pushed open the screen door to yell out to Paul. “Hey, it’s almost halime. We got a roomful o’ guys gonna come running out here for burgers soon.”

Just his dad shouting to him seemed to pull the whole yard closer— pulled me closer to him. I looked past Jill’s shoulder to Guzzo and Paul. ey were still at the grill, Paul with the spatula in one hand. “I get a day off and all you do is put me to work?” he yelled back to his dad. He laughed. “Don’t

worry,” he said, raising his hand in the air, the spatula his scepter, “I got this.”

Paul was famous for his burgers. He made them himself and even while the burger itself was still juicy, the bits of onion inside stayed nice and crunchy. ey were my favorite, better than anything Ma ever made. Mr. Galluzzo poked his head back in the house to tell folks that the burgers would be ready in a minute, but someone shouted to him to come see some play Brady made, and he le the porch and let the door slam behind him.

“I think I know why they couldn’t call Paul,” I said to Jill.

She gave me a go on look, then added carefully, “Yeah, I saw something

on the news.”

“I saw it happen.”

“What?” Jill bent forward and grabbed my wrist.

I could hear the rubbery echo of the ball pounding in the driveway, the chatter from some of the neighbors in the backyard, the rattle of a bag lled with bottles being moved through the kitchen inside. I shied closer to her on the railing. “Me and Guzzo and Dwyer were at Jerry’s before your party,”

I told her, voice low. “I saw it. I saw Paul and that kid.”

“It was Rashad, Quinn. at’s who Paul arrested. You know Rashad. He goes to our school. He’s tight with English and those guys.”

“Fuck,” I said. In fact, as soon as she said it, I could picture him, hanging with English in the halls. “ROTC dude, right? Shit.”

I felt like such an ass. I’d quickly convinced myself I had no idea who that kid with Paul was that night. And yeah, there were like a thousand kids in each grade at school, or whatever, but I did know him. Or know of him, really. I’d seen him—Rashad—in that uniform, and it’d made me think of my dad wearing his own at college. How my dad had looked proud in all those pictures.

Jill cocked her head in disbelief. “You all just watched it go down?”

“Guzzo and Dwyer were waiting in the alley. But I was there.” I glanced around, all paranoid, making my voice even lower. “It was ugly. I don’t know what Rashad did, but Paul kicked the shit out of him.”

“I heard someone talking about it earlier,” Jill said, scooching closer.

“ey said he was resisting arrest.”

“I guess.”

“Did Paul, like, see you, or anything?”

 I hesitated. “I don’t know,” I said. It felt weird to talk about any of this, as if by mentioning it at all, I was betraying Paul. I looked over to him and Guzzo as if reading their faces might tell me what they were thinking, or whether Guzzo had said anything.

“I don’t think he saw me,” I said, turning back to Jill. “I doubt it.”

“Did Guzzo?”

“What?”

“Tell him?”

We were hunched so close together at this point that when I heard my name shouted out, it felt like someone dropped an ice cube down the back of my shirt.

“Hey, Quinn!” It was Paul. “Why don’t you quit hitting on my cousin and come help me serve these burgers?”

I froze. e timing scared the hell out of me—it was as if he knew I’d just been talking about him! Jill spun around and yelled, “Go ip your own burgers, Paul!”

“What does that even mean?” he asked. He and Guzzo laughed.

“I don’t know,” Jill said, turning back to me. “But better than saying nothing.”

Jill never took shit, never let anyone get the jump on her. I always gured it was because she was used to being the only girl in a huge group of guys— there were eleven Galluzzo cousins, and she was the only female—and she just wouldn’t let them tease her, or if they did, she decided long ago that she sure as hell was going to make it through the gauntlet regardless.

I, however, wasn’t as used to it. In fact, I must have looked stupid with nerves because her eyes stayed glued to me as I got up and told her I’d catch up with her later, and as I turned, she smiled and I felt the air leave me in a rush, because I wanted to take her by the hand and get the hell out of there,

but I couldn’t.

“Quinn!” Paul again.

en Guzzo. “Quinn!”

en Guzzo began a slow clap, and he and Paul chanted my name louder and louder as I crossed over to them, and I was sure even folks in the neighborhood who weren’t already at the party could hear them.

“Dude,” Guzzo said when I reached them. “You have no chance.”

“Like you know anything about chances.”

 “Damn right,” Paul said, grinning at me.

“Shut up,” Guzzo said.

Paul ignored him. He had a bottle of beer in his le hand, and he held out that st to bump knuckles with me, and I did. “What’s up, Quinn?” he said.

“You don’t say hello anymore?” He took a swig of beer and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his T-shirt. at’s when I noticed his right st was stuffed into a bucket of ice water on the grill shelf beside him, all casual—frigging hell, he had scabs all over his knuckles—like nursing his wounds from Friday night right there in front of everybody at the BBQ was NBD!

“What’s up?” I asked.

He tossed the empty beer bottle into a cardboard box near his feet. “Hold this,” he said, handing me a faded plastic tray. He squeezed the juice from a couple of burgers with the spatula, sending ames up and around them. “I know the O’Rileys like ’em dried out,” he said. He pressed again, charring them more. “Make sure they know which ones are theirs.” He pulled his swollen st from the ice bucket, exed the ngers, then stuck it back in.

“Seriously, man,” he said to me. “Were you ever going to get your ass over here?”

“It’s a party,” I said. “People mingle. I just got here. Jesus. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” Guzzo snapped. “Why are you getting defensive?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look,” Paul interrupted. He cut the air between us with the spatula, a drop of grease landed on my T-shirt. He pulled his wet hand from the bucket and pinched at the spot, pulling off as much of the grease as he could.

“What the hell’s the matter with you two?”

“Nothing,” I said, but I wasn’t sure. I kept trying to read his face or Guzzo’s for some sign. Still not knowing if Guzzo had said anything to Paul was starting to eat away at me. Guzzo wouldn’t meet my eyes.

But Paul did. “Listen,” he said. “I’m not kidding. You guys need to have a mind meld or something. If you keep bitching at each other like this into the season, you aren’t going to play well. You’re going to suck. So strap on a pair and get your shit together.”

I nodded and Guzzo did too. It was always like that—Paul’d give us marching orders and we’d march—especially with basketball.

 “Way I see it,” Paul continued, “if the whole team moves off the ball more, and if you can get English to give it up more, you all have a real shot.

Everyone else relies on two, maybe three players at most. You’ve got eight or nine solid players, right?”

“English’s been working on his range,” I said. “He’s going to shoot all he can. He’s going to break his record from last year.”

“You all should,” Paul said. “at’s my point.”

He started scraping burgers up off the grill and dropping them on the platter.

“ey better have the xings ready in the kitchen,” Guzzo said.

“Why don’t you go nd out?” Paul said. Guzzo was about to protest, but Paul spoke over him. “Seriously,” Paul said before shouting out, “Burgers up!”

Guzzo jogged ahead while I waited for Paul to slide the last burgers onto the pile. As soon as he did, I started to follow Guzzo, but Paul grabbed my arm. His blue eyes were red-rimmed and tired. “I’m going to have a few days free,” he told me. “We should work on your footwork. We’ll get a little in today. You come by aer practice tomorrow too. I’ll be here.”

“Yeah,” I said. But he kept holding my arm longer than he needed to until it was obviously awkward.

“You all right?” he asked. “You seem a little uptight. What’s up?”

“Burgers,” I said, way too chipper. “Nobody wants them cold.”

I could feel his eyes on me as I carried them up to the kitchen, and I could still feel the pressure of his ngertips like a ring around my elbow. I made a point of eating in the living room with the guys watching the game. e game was a good distraction, a way to pay attention to something else, to try to take my mind off Paul squinting at me, his gauging me as he’d been talking to me at the grill. He’d been all smiles, all business-as-usual, and despite the swollen hand in the bucket and the shredded knuckles, he’d been waving to people across the yard like there wasn’t a damn thing on his mind other than serving them their burgers.

And while I kept seeing Paul’s Popeye arms at the back of Rashad’s neck, nobody else seemed to be wondering about why the Galluzzos felt the sudden need for a party. No one else was talking about the fact that Paul was in the news. Instead they all yelled at the TV when the Pats blew a twenty-

ve-yard pass with another ag for holding. ey yelled again aer the Pats

recovered from a sack and, on third and eighteen, scored a touchdown. I yelled along with them. It was just easier. Guzzo came in and out of the room a few times, but it felt like he was keeping his distance from me, hovering around his brother, when Paul would come in to check on the score.

But the game wasn’t distracting enough—when I tried to swallow the burger down, it felt like I had an animal trying to crawl up and out of my throat, so aer a while, I wandered into the kitchen, wondering where Jill was, and I found her there ghting with her mom in the corner. ey were going at it about Friday night’s party, right there in front of everyone.

“I’m not kidding, young lady!” Jill’s mom said, cramping a cigarette between two ngers and waving it in front of Jill. “is is serious. e Rowells are still screaming at us because of the last party. is is it; you’ve really blown it this time.”

“All right. All right. I got it,” Jill said, standing like she was ready to ght or run, whichever she needed. “Can we not do this here?”

Her mother leaned back and drew a big breath, as if to collect herself.

“And one more thing,” she nally said. “You can’t expect Paulie to just be

there to save you all the time.”

“Oh my God. I don’t.”

Mrs. Galluzzo had been haleartedly rinsing off a few of the now empty platters with my mother, but when she heard Paul’s name, she swung around.

“You do,” Jill’s mom continued. “And he’s got bigger and better things to worry about than his little cousins screwing around.”

“You’re right—he does,” Jill said under her breath, but everyone heard her.

“Hey,” Mrs. Galluzzo interrupted, her face going all tight and pissed. “You watch what you say next.” She stepped away from the sink. Everyone else in the room went quiet, and Jill had gone deep red. “You might have a little respect. Today. In my house. To-day!” e platter in her hand shook, and my mother put a hand on Mrs. Galluzzo’s back to calm her.

“at’s what I was trying to say,” Jill’s mom said, stepping closer to Mrs.

Galluzzo. “I mean, you know. He has an important job.” She fumbled for more words, then turned back to Jill. “See what you’ve done? You apologize to your aunt Rita right now.”

 “I’m sorry,” Jill said automatically.

“You’re always sorry,” her mom added bitterly, before sucking on her cigarette.

“Honey,” Mrs. Galluzzo said to Jill, her face soening. “Paul has a hard job, and sometimes he has to make tough decisions. All I’m saying is, please respect that, and who he is.”

“Yes,” Jill said, but she wasn’t looking at Mrs. Galluzzo. She was looking at Paul, Paul who was looking in through the screen door.

“anks, Ma,” he said.

“Oh, Paulie,” Mrs. Galluzzo said, whirling around. She looked like she wanted to say more, but didn’t have the words for it.

And as we were all waiting to hear what she would say next, we heard something else. e TV. It was turned up so loud for the game that when there was a break, and the news anchor’s voice set up the teaser for the evening news, we all heard it in the kitchen: “Tune in tonight for the latest updates to this developing story as our experts analyze the shocking video released today of Officer Paul Galluzzo’s arrest of Rashad Butler.”

Suddenly the TV went mute. Someone in the living room must have found the remote, but it didn’t matter. It was too late.

e kitchen was so silent I could hear my pulse in my ears, pumping red- hot burning blood into my face. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t move. But I wasn’t alone—no one did.

We might have stayed like that, frozen in time, but Mr. Galluzzo busted into the kitchen from the living room in a kind of frantic waddle, holding a spread of dirty paper plates in his hands. “Hey, m-maybe we need to get some m-more burgers going,” he sort of stuttered, more nervous than I’d ever heard him, but he stopped short as he looked around the shocked crowd in the kitchen.

“Well, I’m not making any more right now,” Paul said from the doorway, staring back at his dad.

“Yeah. No. Yes. Of course. I just mean—”

“Look,” Paul told his dad, interrupting him. “Take it easy.” He sighed, but then he lied his head and glanced around the kitchen through the screen door. “Let’s just say it. ere’s going to be more of this press. It’s going to look ugly. But everything’s going to be just ne. is just comes with the job. I’ll be all right.” He remained on the porch, but he leaned forward, his thick

arms going up on either side of the door frame. “But yeah,” he added. “I do need everyone to stick by me. Especially family.”

Everyone immediately started saying how they supported him, and he nodded and smiled, but was looking past all the women to me. “You too, Quinn,” he added. “Right now, I need your ass out here on the court for a little two-on-two.”

I was so freaked out it was a frigging relief just to be given an order.

“Okay,” I said dumbly, and I swear there were a few faces in the room, including my own ma’s and Mrs. Galluzzo’s, who looked at me with a swelling pride, as if he’d just asked me to saddle up and join the posse on the hunt for some ruthless criminal, and I was putting down my farming tools to go join the greater cause. I passed Jill on my way to the porch, and I tapped her elbow as I walked by. She could hold her own better than anyone I knew, but I wanted to let her know she wasn’t alone, because at least Jill was strong enough to actually say what I was only thinking. Maybe everyone else at the party was nervous for Paul, but I was nervous about him— especially as I followed him down to the driveway.

“Two-on-two,” Paul said. “All rebounds are offensive. Aer a basket, you gotta make three passes before you take another shot. Got it?” He waved his thumb between Guzzo and himself. “Galluzzos against you two dumbasses.” e dumbasses were me and Dwyer, of course.

ey gave us the ball rst, and from the rst drive, I knew it was going to be a physical game. I didn’t shoot. I just dribbled and kept Paul slapping at my forearm and side. He’d taught me to dribble, a little too well. Guzzo’s too big to try to take him to the hoop, but he took my bait, so I got the lane plugged with both Galluzzos and Dwyer popped out back by the top of the key. I got him the ball with a no-look pass and he made the shot.

“Get your ass in action,” Paul told his brother.

is went on for a while and the game got rougher. e score stayed close, but none of us could hope to out-rebound Guzzo, so they made more points off our missed shots than they could make on their own. eir driveway is narrow, and the rest of the time, Paul and Guzzo bumped us until we were backed up against one of the houses on either side. But while Paul’s arms were as thick as my neck, I beat him off the dribble, and twice in a row I got a foot around him and nailed fadeaway jumpers Guzzo couldn’t block.

 “What? You think you’re English now?” Paul said to me.

“No.”

Paul put his hand in the air for us to stop. “Wait. Was that even three

passes?”

“Yeah,” Dwyer said.

“You losing count,” I laughed, trying to keep it light.

But Paul didn’t. We checked, and he came up all over me. If we’d had the full space of a real court, this would have made it easier to get around him, but in the driveway, he just kept bumping me back and back, until I was almost out to the sidewalk. e driveway sloped down, and I was in the

street when Paul nally eased up.

“Where the hell are you going?”

I didn’t answer. I just chucked the ball from the street. It wasn’t a real shot, and I didn’t think I could actually make it. I just wanted to watch it hit the rim and see what would happen. It hit the top of the backboard and

bounced into the yard near the grill.

“What’s up with that?” Guzzo yelled.

“You got to be tougher than that,” Paul said to me. “You can’t give up. I’m just trying to help you, Quinn. You got to keep your head in the game and nowhere else. You got that?”

“Man,” I said. “is isn’t a game.” I brushed past him and walked up the driveway. “I’m done,” I said.

Dwyer and Guzzo started to complain, but Paul’s voice rose up over theirs. “I’m just trying to help you, Quinn. Like I always have. You remember that.”

How could I forget? I collected the ball from the yard and tossed it to Dwyer, then went inside. I said a quick good-bye to Mrs. Galluzzo and told Ma I’d meet her at home, then le through the front door, taking the steps two at a time, half expecting Paul to be there, blocking my path, reminding me how many times he’d been the one working with me in that same driveway, the one cheering me on from the stands of my middle school, JV, and now varsity basketball games. e one who taught me how to angle the blade beneath my chin when I shaved. But he wasn’t there. He was back under the basket with Guzzo and Dwyer, showing Dwyer how to get a leg around a man bigger than him—the same move I’d used on him moments before.