Page 72 of Vicious Intentions
Chapter 15
Annamaria
Eighteen years old.
Every night for the past three months, Raffaele starts our text exchange by sending me a new quote he picked out earlier in the day, just for me. Poems from Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, Warsan Shire, and so on, and so on.
He makes a point of telling me which ones are his favorites, pairing them with new poems I’ve never read before. And every night, he ends our conversations the same way, by asking me how I am. It almost feels as if he’s waiting for me to give him a different answer. And tonight, I think I’m at a place where I can give him one.
Rafe:How are you?
Me:Better. More like myself.
The typing bubbles appear and disappear until his reply finally lands.
Rafe:That makes me very happy to hear.
Me:Does it?
Rafe:Of course. Why wouldn’t it?
Me:We didn’t end on the best of terms last time. It’s hard for me to feel assured you actually care this time.
Rafe:That was my doing, not yours. You are not at fault for my behavior.
I chew on my bottom lip as I type my reply, and before I can talk myself out of it, I press send.
Me:Did you mean it? The words you said? That you were tired of pretending?
Rafe:I’m not pretending now.
I reread the message and frown. What does he mean by that? Is he referring to the cruel words he once sent me, or is he saying that this is the real Raffaele? The one who reads beautiful prose and knows exactly which lines will lighten my heart.
I don’t have the courage to ask. Thankfully, he ends the exchange with a new question that leaves me momentarily speechless.
Rafe:What beauty did you experience today?
I think long and hard about his question. I’ve come to realize that when Raffaele asks me something now, there’s an underlying reason behind it. It’s not hard to decipher what he wants me to think about.
What did I experience today that made my life richer? What made today a good day? A day worth living.
Me:I worked at the soup kitchen tonight and saw an old man, with nothing to his name, give a boy a baseball he’d kept from his previous life.
Rafe:Explain.
So I do. I open the voice memo and begin to paint the lingering image that followed me home tonight.
Me:“The boy and his mother are new to the shelter, so I don’t know their names. But I do know that they have fallenon hard times and are now living out of their car to make ends meet.”
Me:“Ralph is a familiar face at St. Mary’s shelter whenever the weather turns cold. But now that it’s summer, he doesn’t like sleeping there very much. Still, we can always count on him being first in line for a home-cooked meal, always tossing his precious baseball into the air as he waits.”
Me:“Something in Ralph must have shifted tonight when he saw the little boy cry silently in his mother’s arms. The poor boy was about five if he was a day. Too young to understand why he couldn’t go home, or why he had to eat there, amongst strangers, while his friends back at school had kitchens, stocked fridges, and warm beds.”
Me:“It reached a point where neither the mom nor her son was eating. The food got cold while she did her best to console her frightened child.”
Me:“That’s when I saw Ralph stand up from his seat and sit right next to them. I only began to pay attention to them because Ralph never likes to eat next to anyone, preferring to keep to himself.”
Me:“He distracted the little guy by throwing the baseball back and forth, just so his mom could finish feeding him and then herself.”
