Where I'm Calling From

for Molly. I mean, she was there, I was here, and I couldn’t have gotten her out of that place if I’d wanted to. But the fact is, I didn’t want to. She was in there, they said, because she needed to be in there. Nobody said anything about destiny. Things had gone beyond that.
    And I didn’t even go visit her—not once! At the time, I didn’t think I could stand seeing her in there. But, Christ, what was I? A fair-weather friend? We’d been through plenty. But what on earth would I have said to her? I’m sorry about all this, honey. I could have said that, I guess. I intended to write, but I didn’t. Not a word. Anyway, when you get right down to it, what could I have said in a letter? How are they treating you, baby? I’m sorry you’re where you are, but don’t give up. Remember all the good times? Remember when we were happy together? Hey, I’m sorry they’ve done this to you. I’m sorry it turned out this way. I’m sorry everything is just garbage now. I’m sorry, Molly.
    I didn’t write. I think I was trying to forget about her, to pretend she didn’t exist. Molly who?
    I left my wife and took somebody else’s: Vicky. Now I think maybe I’ve lost Vicky, too. But Vicky won’t be going away to any summer camp for the mentally disabled. She’s a hard case. She left her former husband, Joe Kraft, and didn’t bat an eye; I don’t think she ever lost a night’s sleep over it.
    Vicky Kraft-Hughes. Amanda Porter. This is where my destiny has brought me? To this street in this neighborhood, messing up the lives of these women?
    Amanda’s kitchen light went off when I wasn’t looking. The room that was there is gone now, like the others. Only the porch light is still burning. Amanda must have forgotten it, I guess. Hey, Amanda.
    Once, when Molly was away in that place and I wasn’t in my right mind—let’s face it, I was crazy too-one night I was at my friend Alfredo’s house, a bunch of us drinking and listening to records. I didn’t care any longer what happened to me. Everything, I thought, that could happen had happened. I felt unbalanced. I felt lost. Anyway, there I was at Alfredo’s. His paintings of tropical birds and animals hung on every wall in his house, and there were paintings standing around in the rooms, leaning against things—table-legs, say, or his brick- and-board bookcase, as well as being stacked on his back porch. The kitchen served as his studio, and I was sitting at the kitchen table with a drink in front of me. An easel stood off to one side in front of the window that overlooked the alley, and there were crumpled tubes of paint, a palette, and some brushes lying at one end of the table. Alfredo was making himself a drink at the counter a few feet away. I loved the shabby economy of that little room. The stereo music that came from the living room was turned up, filling the house with so much sound the kitchen windows rattled in their frames. Suddenly I began to shake. First my hands began to shake, and then my arms and shoulders, too. My teeth started to chatter. I couldn’t hold the glass.
    “What’s going on, man?” Alfredo said, when he turned and saw the state I was in. “Hey, what is it?
    What’s going on with you?”
    I couldn’t tell him. What could I say? I thought I was having some kind of an attack. I managed to raise my shoulders and let them drop.
    Then Alfredo came over, took a chair and sat down beside me at the kitchen table. He put his big painter’s hand on my shoulder. I went on shaking. He could feel me shaking.
    “What’s wrong with you, man? I’m real sorry about everything, man. I know it’s real hard right now.”
    Then he said he was going to fix menudo for me. He said it would be good for what ailed me. “Help your nerves, man,” he said. “Calm you right down.” He had all the ingredients for menudo, he said, and he’d been wanting to make some anyway.
    “You listen to me. Listen to what I say, man. I’m your family now,” Alfredo said.
    It was two in the morning, we were drunk, there were these other drunk people in the house and the stereo was going full blast. But Alfredo went to his fridge and opened it and took some stuff out. He closed the fridge door and looked in his freezer compartment. He found something in a package. Then he looked around in his cupboards. He took a big pan from the cabinet under the sink, and he was ready.
    Tripe. He started with tripe and about a gallon of water. Then he chopped onions