Stephen Vittoria

An excerpt from the novel CHRISTINA & THE WHITEFISH , the first four chapters

Part One

“I come from a boardwalk town

where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud.”

—Bruce Springsteen

fraud

One

Babalú.

I’VE ENJOYED THIS SONG a thousand times.

Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration. But I’d wager it’s at least three hundred times. The record is scratchy as hell but the beautiful jet black label is damn near pristine. RCA Victor… The Master’s Voice… with that dog staring straight into what I think is called a gramophone. I remember that because my grandmother had a real beauty at her place over in Ocean Grove – that stick up its rump town that hails itself as “God’s Square Mile at the Jersey Shore.” Her gramophone didn’t work but that didn’t matter. She had a “newfangled record player” as she called it so she could enjoy her Mario Lanza records. She adored the powerful tenor, his sweet timbre floating away on an ocean breeze – but not too loud because the local holy rollers might not approve of a swarthy Italian from Philly, the so called City of Brotherly Love. I’m not kidding. Until maybe ten years ago they actually had a law on the books that made it illegal on Sundays to have cars roaming their quiet streets. Ocean Grove. Talk about childlike behavior.

In point of fact, I memorized the label. RCA Victor… The Master’s Voice… For best results use RCA Victor needles… BABALÚ… Margarita Lecuono – that’s who wrote the song… then of course there was Desi Arnaz and His Orchestra… Vocal Refrain by Desi Arnaz… and then curved along the bottom in circular fashion: RCA Victor, Division of Radio Corporation of America, Camden, N.J., Made in U.S.A.

Steel trap, huh? I mean I could be reading it right now and who would know? But I’m not. If I learned anything down in “God’s Green Acre” it was not to perjure yourself. I live by that. You know, most of the time.

And when I say I’ve enjoyed “Babalú” a thousand times here’s what I mean because I’m not exactly kicking back on the sofa digging some Latin Jazz. Oh no. What I do might be considered insane or at least hovering on the outskirts of Camp Insanity. You’ll understand more later but here’s what I do. And keep in mind – nobody knows that I do this, except now, of course, you. Because it’s probably time that I share my secret. (If not now, when?)

I have a basement that’s neatly divided into two sections. Bing and bang. So when you walk down my rickety stairs (that I need to replace at some point) and you hit bottom, you kinda veer to your right into this subterranean expanse that resembles an art studio, mostly because it is. You see I consider my painting what they call “performance art.” Although there’s no audience. Except for the performer. I know, that sounds masturbatory but it’s not. I like to think of it as a never-ending rehearsal period. And also a pretty good workout for my constantly deteriorating forty-six soon-to-be forty-seven year-old body – an organism that’s been to hell and back and fortunately lived to tell about it.

So, the first thing I do is strip down buck naked. Just like when I arrived: October of Anno Domini nineteen-hundred and forty-seven… disembarking at what the hoity-toity proudly named the “Raleigh Fitkin-Paul Morgan Memorial Hospital” down there in Neptune.

Now, at this point my six paint cans are cracked open, ready to go. There’s a brush in each: sky blue, navy blue, King’s red, a kind of orangy-red, amber, and then bright white. The colors never change. My art, if anything, is redundant. So I move to the center of the room and position my newly acquired trash can. Standard issue. Gunmetal gray. No deep ridges or depressions. As flat as possible. New, used, or beat to hell, it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s a regular put-out-by-the-curb trash can.

So there it is – in the middle of the room, a lonesome dove, ready to be assailed-attacked maybe-even-ambushed by yours truly. Nice alliteration, right? That cannister, that naked galvanized steel trash can, if it had feelings, would sit there persecuted, waiting for the assault to begin – anticipating an onslaught of paint, getting waxed up if you catch my drift. Just like its many siblings born in this basement, all of them formerly known as just a trash can.

I drop the needle (or “stylus” for your audiophiles) onto my trusty Technics turntable that immediately reads each little wiggle and bump in the pressed vinyl as a distinct sound vibration, which then gets translated into electrical signals or soundwaves that roll through the pre-amp in my Pioneer receiver. And this baby with its one hundred watts per channel feeds gigantic Cerwin-Vega loudspeakers. They’ll blow your fucking doors off.

Heaven in a basement…

…as Desi’s conga drum belts and beats for precisely twenty-four seconds; and for all twenty-four seconds I’m facing the can, my right leg pulsing with Arnaz’s fiery drum. And then right at twenty-five seconds the orchestra kicks in – my cue to commence hostilities. But in actuality, it’s not very hostile at all. The can never fights back. It’s a willing partner in our pas de deux.

I start with sky blue as Desi roars “Babalú… ¡Ba-ba-lú! ¡Babalú, aye!” Now, you gotta visualize that the sky blue takes up a good portion of the entire circumference of the can – so I hit it with a generous coat. And I use house paint. Oil-based and preferably Dutch Boy, so it covers really good. Next, as the rumba gets really rumblin’ and I’m zig-zagging around the can like a whirling dervish, I transition to the navy blue, which forms a kind of shield shape on the front. Of course that’s the real hallmark of the label.

And my goal is this, because you oughta know: sky blue, navy blue, and the base red are all applied before Desi and the boys wrap it up – all told about three and half minutes later. Usually it’s not a problem.

I then change records, replacing Desi with the aforementioned Mario Lanza as I embark on the detailed portion of my work: the tomatoes and the subsequent words. I consider these two elements the very guts of the piece, so things really slow down. Almost to a snail’s pace. I throw on my comfy paint-stained robe, which now is ancient and resembles something Sonny Liston might have worn into the ring. I grab my bifocals because like I said I’m not the man I used to be. I plop down onto my mushroom-like cushioned toadstool for a more focused albeit relaxed approach.

Why? Well, as I often tell folks, greatness exists in the minutiae.

2 Tadasana.

It was dawn and Christina felt like she was hovering on the edge of the world. From a purely geographic standpoint, she was standing on the rocky western coast of North America. The edge cartographers considered a slice of the Pacific Rim.

And if these cartographers were forced to pinpoint the exact place where Christina’s bare feet rooted themselves into the moist ground, they would most likely label it Santa Monica. Palisades Park to be GPS exact. That thin strip of wavy grass that loitered just above PCH and its adjoining stretch of sandy coastline, one that framed a surfer named Dusty, and of course that giant deep-sea that bubbled between her feet and the Orient.

The Mountain Pose—or Tadasana (tah-DAHS-anna) in Sanskrit—looked like a simple pose to the sweet elderly couple who strolled by with their gray Miniature Schnauzer hooked on a hot pink leash. But the pose was anything but simple. Internally, Christina’s muscles were strong and working hard. In fact, over the last few months, she had learned that with Tadasana you must not only be mindful of the muscles that should be fully engaged—but equally mindful, maybe more so, of the muscles that need to remain tender and soft. Like her entire yoga practice, which was actually rather new, a self-imposed journey toward peace. Or at least a negotiated cease-fire. Something resembling a much-needed armistice.

But for Christina, this bumpy journey wasn’t about geography, although by now—in the summer of 1994, more than two years after she arrived—she was very familiar with the safe confines of Santa Monica, California, a pretty city named after Saint Monica, the mother of famed theologian Saint Augustine. It was also the final stop on America’s self-styled “Mother Road” aka Route 66.

She liked her new home. There was a Bohemian café on Wilshire that wasn’t half bad. There was the Ye Olde King’s Head Pub that served sumptuous Irish cider straight from the old country. In fact sipping God’s nectar at their long ornate bar reminded her of Mom and Dad—and that was a good thing. There was the ancient and battered pier with its hokey amusement park that charmed her nonetheless, especially when the Sun was sinking over the usually calm Pacific. And, of course, the People’s Republic of Santa Monica offered a decent contingent of leftover hippies and barbarian surfers, cats who occasionally offered those fragile doses of peace that Christina desperately craved but found so damn elusive inside her trembling darkness—a shadowy storm that began building exponentially back in the summer of nineteen-hundred and eighty-eight, six years ago.

But as of late, and after a good deal of hard work, she’d been able to hold this tempest at bay. Or was the damn thing simply gathering steam as it hovered out there just beneath the horizon? Getting more ferocious as it prepared for a renewed frontal assault?

Another possibility: Was Christina actually winning the battle? All good questions. Unfortunately, at this time, all without answers.

She landed in Southern California via spaceship courtesy of the people who actually own and operate this third rock from the Sun. And once she was back living with regular run-of the-mill Earthlings, her leaders up the chain of command supplied her with the currency necessary to start and sustain life—at least for a short while. After that she was expected to support herself and assimilate with the nice folks who populated this laid-back colony, those who received their daily mail at 90405.

Along with her most cherished comrade (who had since blown town), she rented a bungalow on Ocean Park Boulevard—one of those concrete boxes built during the 1940s when the Douglas Aircraft Company turned bucolic Sunset Park and most of Santa Monica into a company town.

For months, the small house was stark and colorless. Her most cherished comrade once called it “drab and pallid.” But recently, Christina tried to massage her living space warm and cozy, picking up used and cheap eclectic furnishings from nearby garage and lawn sales. And for the most part she succeeded. She hung lace curtains in the tiny kitchen, curtains that softened the early morning light. Usually at daybreak a yellow tea pot whistled on a blue gas flame. Christina would sit at a small red Formica table, sipping Chamomile tea and picking on some whole wheat toast with jam, per one of her newly respected commandments: keep eating. The dancing squirrels in the courtyard provided comfortable entertainment.

She found a large Buddha for her main room (chipped and scarred but only ten bucks!) along with some beanbag chairs and a small 1950s sofa: burnt orange and marshmallow soft. She tossed the existing sofa that came with the place. A framed poster of the seven chakras hung in solitude—forcing one’s gaze to the heart of a silhouetted woman seated in lotus pose, a mystery lady that embodied all the appropriate chakra colors. The bedroom was sparse and rarely used. There was a mattress on the floor with some rumpled sheets, a pillow, and a gray footlocker supporting a large and healthy Philodendron. But mostly she slept in the orange marshmallow next to her small clock radio that played low throughout the night. K-Jazz out of Long Beach. She needed the quiet music for fear that the silence would drive her stark raving mad.

Christina took a job at a neoteric coffee shop called Starbucks on the corner of Hill and Main. It was only a fifteen minute walk, which meant she didn’t have to drive, something she hated doing in Los Angeles anyway. She was first lured to this coffee junction by the green and white mermaid on their logo—but also their name—a character in Melville’s Moby Dick, one of her Dad’s favorite novels. She worked five or six days a week and her shifts were anywhere from six to eight hours. Usually eight. “Why? Because she’s good under pressure, that’s why,” Ricky her manager would tell his disgruntled employees who wanted more hours. “If I had to pick one of you to be in a foxhole with it would be this firecracker.”

Ricky also had a thing for Christina, even though he was probably twenty-five years older than his Frappuccino whiz. She knew Ricky was into her but Christina was also well practiced at dodging the male species: first the boys in high school, who were always on the prowl, and now men (for some reason usually older) who were constantly interested in the conquest, a reminder of what they could never have achieved in their youth.

But Ricky was harmless, she figured, just a window shopper. And the bottom-line for Christina was simple—she wanted the job and actually enjoyed the work. Time passed quickly and she could be surrounded by the hustle and bustle of human company without having to truly engage. Best of all, when she left for the day, the job and the green barista apron stayed behind, protected under the watchful eye of that beguiling siren hanging over the door.

❖❖❖

Although at dawn on this early summer morning, standing out there on the edge of the world, with her bare feet still rooted in the moist earth, the now rapidly-moving sun was no longer just hinting at a new and warmer day. Nope, it was surging fiercely over the distant Mojave, set to plough through the Inland Empire, and then accelerate across Hollywood— taking direct aim on Christina, who had transitioned from Tadasana to Adho Mukha Shvanasana into Virabhadrasana: the Warrior Pose. This beautiful, tanned-skinned woman of Black Irish descent was rock-solid, steady as she goes, maybe a few beads of sweat modeling on her forehead, beneath her wavy-thick and cascading black hair that somehow looked amazing no matter what. And for a moment, just a nanosecond, this twenty-three year-old was confused.

Again.

Because that playful Sun was up to its old tricks—rising above scorched desert and jagged mountains instead of climbing over a massive ocean that stretched across her childhood gaze, like it did so many dawns ago.

In New Jersey.

Up and down the windswept coast in places like Red Bank, Brigantine, Manasquan, and her favorite—the mysterious, ghostlike, and many would say “infamous” Asbury Park.

Because from Christina’s point of view, the Sun was supposed to rise over water.

-Three

Progresso.

I WAS PARTICULARLY HAPPY with this latest rendition. As per usual the colors popped. But that’s never been an issue. For me, it’s always about the quality of the words, especially since I’m freewheeling on the letters, no stencil bullshit like Warhol. And, of course, it’s also very much about the tomatoes. You have to get the shadowing just right to create the illusion of depth and texture.

So, emblazoned across the top of the blue shield we have: PROGRESSO. Large white capital letters with the two Rs dipping just below the baseline. I think I nailed it on this third day of July, nineteen-hundred and ninety-four. In fact I always put the date on the ass end of the can. Down low. Out of the way. In quotes for some odd reason: “3 July 1994.” Like the Brits, right?

Below the large PROGRESSO letters I pulled off a real workmanlike rendering of “Recipe Ready” along with its corresponding design lines. And then below that I really nailed the bright amber letters “Crushed TOMATOES” set against that orangy-red oval backdrop. I finished off the blue shield with Progresso’s all-important after-sell: “With Added Puree.” This along with the aforementioned “Recipe Ready” can be demanding since the letters are italicized. That stroke, or penmanship as we used to call it, took some time to refine. I think I’m close.

Now, for the piece de resistance – the tomatoes. Five plump beauties, one cross section slice, and some leaves for the trim. And I must tell you – I also nailed the tomatoes. Maybe the best ever. In my opinion, this particular can will take up the mantle as the GOAT. And if this replica can of crushed tomatoes was Cassius Marcellus Clay, it would shout, “I am the Greatest!” Like I said, nailed it as if some great painter like Georgia O’Keeffe crawled inside my britches, actually shocked myself. The tomatoes look like they just fell off the vine – of course in a manner that a New York City art critic might write was “effected in an abstract expressionist kind of way.” I found the leaves (which are nothing more than trim) to be pedestrian at best, but who’s looking at the leaves, right?

All in all, I’m ecstatic with this new interpretation. I might actually take a couple months off before I engage with a new can. Plus I have to keep up on the writing. This chronicle of sorts is kicking my ass. Moreover, why the hell did I even talk myself into doing this? Posterity? “Tell your story,” they say, “People will find you noteworthy.” I don’t know, sounds like smoke getting blown up my ass, since I know of no time capsule waiting breathlessly to include my words.

Hell, I could type on this old Underwood for years and end up hammering out two to three hundred pages of chaotic gibberish.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve taken two creative writing courses up at Brookdale Community, so that’s a help, no doubt. I’ve also been told it’s probably in my blood. That claim I’m not so sure about.

But what I am sure about is reading. I’m what they call a voracious reader. So was my Ma. That’s where I got it from. Over the last twenty-five years or so, I’ve read a lot of words from numerous big-time brains. All the usual suspects: James Joyce. Orwell. Hemingway. Steinbeck. Clemens. James Baldwin. Salinger. Virginia Wolfe. Faulkner. Both Jacks – London & Kerouac. Pasternak. Gabriel García Márquez (Gabito!). Harper Lee. Margaret Atwood. Mailer, of course. Most everything Hunter Thompson wrote. Also, a lot of lesser known authors like Frantz Fanon and this hip cat from the Pacific Northwest, Richard Brautigan. Great first person narratives. And if you start to find my writings derivative or like I said above, chaotic gibberish, well, there’s always lighter fluid and a match. That usually does the trick.

On the other hand, painting offers me structure. It has edges. Identifiable dimension. The focus is right there, right in front of you. Concept: reconstruct an everyday and mundane can of Progresso crushed tomatoes. Boom. The canvas, or in my case an actual can, becomes your entire world. Boundaries, right?

But writing is willy-nilly, very unruly… and I fear that I might easily go wayward, like a small boat on a big ocean. Too much freedom has always freaked me out. I need structure. Hard form. I need to be wedged between a rock and hard place. In fact, given the chance, I’d make a shitty God. He or she (or it) started out with nothing, right? Blank slate. And then had to figure out all the bullshit. Corn gets harvested in early fall. The penis goes in the vagina. Cats eat mice. The Earth revolves around the Sun. The Sun revolves around the center of the Milky Way. Water starts freezing at thirty-two degrees. And how the hell do you pull off a virgin birth? Seriously, sit back for a second and think about being God. Just the planning will fuck you up. Just think about how shit could go wrong. Terribly wrong. I mean even if I was given one job in this ever-expanding universe: “Hey you, yeah you, with the receding hairline – you’re in charge of getting the buses to run on time. Make it happen.” I’d bet dollars to doughnuts my rapid transit system would be a goddamn catastrophe – or kind of like it is right now.

It was my father’s… or the “old man” as my mother liked to call him. He really wasn’t that old when I was growing up, younger than I am right now. He was a reporter for the old Newark Evening News – founded in 1883 and the great daily folded in ‘72. In fact I had a paper route every day after school. Pop was proud to call his employer “New Jersey’s paper of record” and not “that fucking rag, the Star-Ledger.” He bounced around from one bureau to another: Morristown, Montclair, a few months in D.C., then Trenton for a while, until his longest and final stint in Belmar. Down the shore. Mostly he covered local politics but always added what he thought was a necessary disclaimer: “All politics is local, folks.” I’ve come to find out truer words have never been spoken.

He died in 1965. Shot in the chest three times during a grocery store hold-up in Toms River. My mother asked him to pick up a few things on his way home. He was forty-two. And she was never the same. Ma died back in ‘89. I was their only child. They were good parents for sure. One of Pop’s fellow reporters, a sportswriter named Joe Flynn, gave me my old man’s typewriter – this Underwood. Joe Flynn said he was positive that Frank wanted me to carry on his legacy. Joe also thought the Underwood might come in handy for college.

Which never happened.

Unless, of course, you count the University of Vietnam.

4 Trauma.

Following the Gulf War in 1991, a number of U.S. Military battalions received “Valorous Unit Awards” for “extraordinary heroism against an armed enemy.” Units with names like 1st Squadron – 4th Armored Cavalry Regiment and Co C – 1st

Battalion, 41st Infantry. Also cited for valor was Christina’s unit, known as the 522nd Military Intelligence Battalion and she loved every man, woman, and asshole in that battalion. Most were known only by their last names—Washington, Phillips, Vásquez, et cetera. A few had nicknames—Spanky, Pizza, Boomer, Munchkin. They would die for her and she for them.

❖❖❖

Two Years Earlier

When Christina packed her bags it was the spring of 1989. And when she locked the front door she suddenly realized that this old colonial gem was the only home she had ever known—perched on a hill just south of the Delaware Water Gap.

She was now the official owner of a two-door Jeep Cherokee, the rugged four-wheel drive her Dad kept in mint condition. It was raining on the day she left, escaped really with her best friend Jaime—these two American kids heading south along the old river toward Easton, PA and then west on Route 22. The dark red Cherokee was aimed straight at their final destination: Las Vegas, Nevada.

A new start.

They were lovers since sophomore year at Belvidere High School in bucolic Warren County, a place known and advertised as “New Jersey’s Best Kept Secret.” Their relationship shared the same tagline.

In many ways, Belvidere could have been a town constructed between the ears of one Norman Percevel Rockwell. Situated on the banks of the Delaware, this quintessential Victorian hamlet offered what you might expect: Queen Anne gingerbread dollhouses boasting elaborate wood trim; some of the homes exceedingly colorful.

One late October afternoon represented Christina’s vanguard memory—walking home from school with Jaime, their hands touching and grasping, sunlight slicing through painted leaves, some floating as if animated by gravity. There were no words, just the serene whisper of nearby cascades that belonged to the Pequest River—a tributary to the Delaware. It’s a memory in what poets might call “a moment carved in time.”

Growing up in Belvidere, there was one uncomfortable reality for Christina: Her mother and father both taught at the high school; Darlene weaved her way through U.S. and world history and Jack extolled the virtues of American literature. But they were both cool, never once crossing the Rubicon into her sacred teenage world.

Throughout her teenage years, Christina thought she would follow in the family business— not because Jack or Darlene pressured her regarding pedagogy, they did not. Her lifelong exposure to the intrinsic value of teaching had simply seeped into her DNA. Plus she was really good at math and science. She loved numbers and really fancied how the guts of astronomy were ruled by numbers. And when she first read Carl Sagan’s seminal book, Cosmos, she was officially hooked—with one of Sagan’s lines becoming her lightning strike:

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Christina spent time with her Dad in the Warren County Library researching colleges that offered programs in astronomy and astrophysics. They were leaning toward UC Berkeley or UC Santa Cruz. She wanted nothing to do with ivy-covered walls. The west coast seemed right, especially after they visited both schools during the summer between junior and senior year. Christina was accepted at both and the decision process became a comical and daily ping-pong match of alleged absolute decisions: Berkeley-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Berkeley, Berkeley-Santa Cruz—until one day the senior at Belvidere High said “Santa Cruz” and that was it.

Graduation was great; and all of Christina’s cross-country moving plans were in motion, except for the elephant in the room—Jaime, who was sorta kinda thinking about maybe attending Trenton State or nearby Warren Community. Or maybe taking a year off. For Jaime, a sturdy free spirit, college and career were mere afterthoughts, much to her parents chagrin. She was brilliant, no doubt, and political, but her cynicism regarding convention kicked institutional education to the curb.

So Christina and Jaime made grandiose plans and big promises for exciting visits with both eighteen-year-olds smiling through the obvious tribulations, both hiding behind façades that masked their doubt and pain. And then without warning, life—as it’s apt to do— dropped a hand grenade.

Death arrived at Christina’s front door and not for a game of chess.

Jack & Darlene perished in a helicopter crash somewhere over an Alaskan glacier—a goddamned shore excursion from their cruise ship docked in Juneau. That was in the summer of 1988, just months before her frantic escape to Nevada, a dire attempt to free herself from the agonizing grief.

She wanted out. Of her body. Of everything. And of course Jaime was there for her. Every day. Every hour. Every minute. For Christina, college—like heaven—could wait. She wanted to run. So she ran. And Jaime, being the quintessential free spirit, galloped out of Belvidere right by her side, even though Vegas seemed weird and arbitrary. Ultimately, Jaime figured why the hell not; heading to the desert with Ti might offer her soul mate a chance to heal. At least somewhat—since Jaime knew that Ti needed a mountain of healing.

The dark red Cherokee exited Interstate 15 at Russell and then hung a hard right on Las Vegas Boulevard. A few seconds later these two Jersey girls came face-to-face with legendary signage:

WELCOME TO FABULOUS LAS VEGAS NEVADA

They rented a one bedroom apartment on Silver Dollar Ave and both landed peasant-level jobs at the venerable Sands Hotel and Casino—Jaime as a pool and recreation attendant and Christina working for the Boutiques Manager. They made decent money, drove to work together, and for Christina, the noise-clamor-and-crazy-racket of a Vegas casino helped to drown out the demons.

Cue the matador music: “Ladies and gentlemen, give a big Sands Hotel and Casino welcome to the one and only Mr. Warmth—Don Rickles!”

Elizabeth HuntSeptember 1, 20232023, Fall, Fall 2023, Stephen Vittoria, Stephen, Vittoria

Stephen Vittoria

Part One

fraud

One

Babalú.

2

Tadasana.

-Three

Progresso.

4

Trauma.

Subscribe to Mailing List