“Goddamn it. I asked you to pace yourself.”
“You don’t have to tell me nothing, I’m a grown-ass man.” Ozzie could feel Rita stiffen on his lap, and then she stood up.
“Make that your last one,” she whispered. “Don’t be embarrassing me like that time you punched Harold in the face. This ain’t no South Philly rent party.”
“Why you gotta bring that up?”
“?’Cause you don’t know how to act once you get that liquor in you,” she said.
Ozzie didn’t like her tone. She didn’t know the weight that was pressed down on him so heavy, it was hard to breathe at times like these. “I don’t need you policing me. I get enough of that at the shipyard,” he said the moment the music stopped. Rita shook her head at him just as Sadie’s skirt swished around her knees at Rita’s side.
“You lovebirds all right?” Sadie asked, and Ozzie couldn’t tell if she had heard and was pretending that she hadn’t, but he didn’t miss the anger that flashed through Rita’s eyes.
“I was just coming to say my goodbyes.” Rita turned to Sadie and threaded her arm with hers. “Would you come with me as I thank Martha one last time?”
“Certainly,” Sadie responded, and then they moved through the crowd.
Ozzie drained his glass and sucked on an ice cube. He needed to pee and found the powder room through a small door underneath the stairs. As he was moving back toward the kitchen, a man with a thick mustache stopped him. “Hey, fellow. Could you make me an old-fashioned on the rocks?”
Ozzie shook his head to clear his thoughts. “Excuse me?”
“With whiskey, not brandy, please.” The man touched his pocket watch in his waistcoat pocket.
Then it dawned on Ozzie what was happening. “I’m not the help,” he said, then pushed past the man and out the front door. As he was closing the door behind him, he heard Raymond call his name over the music, but he did not stop. He staggered down the front steps and into the fresh air, which eased the suffocating weight that had been sitting on his throat.
When he pulled the car around, Rita did not wait for him to get out and open her door. She plopped down in the passenger seat and said, “You sure know how to show your ass and ruin a good night.”
He pulled away from the curb. “Why didn’t you tell me you were applying to Penn?”
“What difference does it make which schools I apply to? The important thing is that I go.”
Ozzie flicked his turn signal and then made a right turn onto Broad Street, careful to stay in between the white lines. “The Alexanders tell you to keep that from me?”
“What? No.” Rita fumbled with her gloves in her lap. “It was a long shot. I didn’t even think I’d get in.”
“It would have been good to know what my wife was doing. I stood there smiling like a fool.”
“You played the fool all on your own. Drinking like a fish, then sitting in the corner by yourself like a damn recluse.”
He pulled to the corner of Ringgold Street and was glad to see a spot that he could slide the car into without needing to parallel park. Rita hopped out of the car before he could kill the engine. She had no reason to be mad. He should be the one upset.
He dropped his keys in the candy dish on the end table in the living room. The stairs creaked under his weight. When he reached their back bedroom door and turned the knob, he found it was locked.
“Sleep on the couch,” Rita shouted at him.
He tried again, softening his voice. “Come on, baby. Don’t be like that.”
“If you wake my aunt…” Her voice trailed off.
Rita was as stubborn as an elephant’s leg. There was no sense in trying to bend her. He shuffled down the stairs and then into the basement and flung himself on the green sofa.
As he tossed, he replayed Rita’s comment.You act like you left the screws from your head in Germany.He hadn’t left the bolts and nuts to his head, but he had left a chunk of his heart and a piece of his soul.
Katja.
His three-year-old daughter was lost to him, and that gutted him deep in his core. What kind of man was he?
And with Rita moving into this new elite world, he didn’t know what he could offer her either. He was happy for her and so proud, but in the same breath, he was more unsure of himself than he had ever been in his life.
