IT WAS 1983. I was eleven. My father, some kind of salesman, wore ties. The company he worked for transferred him from our town in New Jersey to Long Island. I liked where we lived, but that didn’t matter. We packed up and moved right after Christmas.

I met Andrew the first day we stayed in our new house, the same size and shape as our old house. What was different was that there were no sidewalks, no telephone wires, and that I had no friends.

I was outside tossing a Nerf football in the air. Playing catch with myself was no fun but there wasn’t much else I could think of doing except crying, and I’d already done that all morning.

“Hi there,” came a voice behind me.

I turned around and there he was. He had a long smiley face with green eyes and freckles.

“Hi,” I said quietly.

He looked at the house.

“You’re moving in here?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Andrew Hoffman,” he said. “I live two houses down. What’s your name?”

“Peter Pellegrini.”

I wished he would leave. I lofted the Nerf up and ran after it as far away as possible. He followed right behind me.

“I’m in sixth grade,” he said. “What grade are you in?”

“Fifth.”

“Want to play catch?” he said. I didn’t know how to make a new friend and I felt sick. He put his arms up so I threw him one. It bounced off his chest and chin before he caught it and threw it back like a girl.

“Are you Jewish?” he said.

“No.”

“Are you half-Jewish?”

“No.”

“I am,” he said. “I’m completely Jewish.”

He tucked the ball under his arm.

“Come here,” he said. “Do you curse?”

“No,” I said.

He looked around, as if to make sure nobody was listening.

“I curse,” he said. “I say shit, dick, and asshole. But not the F word. If the F word is in a movie, it’s automatically rated R.”

“He threw back the ball underhanded. My mother came out of the house and when she saw us she called for my father to come see. They stood watching us, smiling proud, like we were something glorious they’d painted on a nice big canvas.

“Your mother’s waving to me,” Andrew said. He waved back.

“Don’t curse,” I whispered.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Do you like your parents?”

“Yes. Sure,” I said. I looked back at them. She finished waving and they walked inside.

“Come here again,” he said, and glanced around. The coast was clear. “Where they’re in bed, your father puts it in your mother. Then you know what?”

“What?”

“Then he pees in her.”

I stared at Andrew Hoffman and he stared back, hard but empathetic into my eyes, like he knew this would change things for me, but that someone had to let me in on it.

“I’m serious,” he said. “They do it to have a baby, or just for fun.”

A woman called his name, loud but lovingly from somewhere down the street.

“Well, I gotta go,” he said. “My fuckin’ mother. See ya.”

He threw me the ball one last time and walked off.

The full story can be found in Fiction Number 59. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.

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Marc Palmieri is an assistant professor at Mercy College’s School of Liberal Arts in Dobbs Ferry, NY, and a longtime guest faculty member of The City College of New York’s MFA program in Creative Writing. His plays, all published by Dramatists Play Service, include NY Times’ “Critic’s Pick” Levittown as well as The Groundling, Carl the Second, and Waiting for the Host. An excerpt from a novel in progress, When I Wore Floods, is published in Fiction issue #59, and his short story, IQ Test, in issue #64. He has also published short form memoir in The Global City Review and (Re) An Ideas Journal. His screenplays include Miramax Films’ Telling You. Marc graduated from Wake Forest University in 1994, where he played baseball, and was drafted as a pitcher by the Toronto Blue Jays. He received both his MA and MFA in creative writing from CCNY. His memoir, She Danced with Lightning, about life with his daughter’s struggle with epilepsy, is published by Post Hill Press (August, 2022).

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by Marc Palmieri