“I think I can handle it, Dad.” He seems to cringe when I call him “Dad.” Or maybe I just imagined that.
Before I hang up, I hear my father ask the guy to repeat his name. It’s Sam Roth.
Stolen Bicycles
I can’t imagine that my father would be in any kind of trouble with that Sam Roth guy. My father is a remarkably nice man. People always like him. He’s part of why Stevie practically lives here. He always wants to watch the ball game, but he’ll totally turn it off and play video games with us. And he’s good, too.
My dad grew up in Ohio, in this very small town called Troy, so small that I always think it must have been a shock to his system the first time he saw New York. We go there a couple of times a year to visit his parents; we land in Columbus, where his brother now lives, and then we rent a car and drive to Troy. The only hotel in Troy is a Days Inn where the sheets always feel dirty. But we stay there, two or three long weekends a year. On the drive from the airport, as the scenery goes from city to suburb to country, I count how many billboards there are advertising Jesus. Maybe that’s why I’m the only Jewish kid I know who says “Jesus Christ” when I’m surprised, or pissed off, or have screwed myself royally. Other than Stevie, that is, but he probably got it from me.
When we’re in Troy, we go to church. It’s a small community church, and the four families who’ve been going there more than one hundred years have honorary ownership over each of the four stained-glass windows. Every year we take a picture in front of the Brandt window. Once, standing in the white church, under the window, gritting my teeth for the picture, I leaned in and asked my dad—trying not to break my smile—whether his parents knew I’d been raised Jewish. Mom’s Jewish, their wedding was even Jewish, with a rabbi and the seven blessings and the stomping of the glass at the end. They must know. But Dad just smiled and shushed me.
Apparently, Troy isn’t as nice as it was when my dad was growing up. My grandparents like to take us to the mall, where we eat at a diner that my father says used to be his favorite restaurant. My grandparents don’t seem to notice that things aren’t as new as they used to be. My dad tells me that he worries about his parents wandering around that mall without him, oblivious to the fact that it’s maybe not a place for elderly people to wander around.
It was at this mall that I found out my father was brave—but a quiet kind of brave, so that until then I hadn’t even been aware of it. I was nine years old, and we were at the mall alone together, running errands for my grandparents. It’s an outdoor mall, rows and rows of stores with sidewalks in between, kids racing by on Rollerblades and bikes and skateboards. I’ve always been jealous of kids who are good on skateboards because I have terrible balance. When we were little, Stevie had a skateboard and spent hours in Central Park watching me fall off it.
My father and I were coming out of the video store, having rented a couple of movies, and my father told me to wait, go back inside, just wait a second until he came and got me. I knew what he’d seen, because I’d seen it, too, but I guessed he just wanted me to stay inside until it was over. There were two boys, maybe fourteen or so, cutting the chain locks on some mountain bikes resting against a parking meter. My father walked toward them—and these were not skinny kids; they looked scary, at least in my nine-year-old opinion. But my dad walked straight to them, with his glasses and the corduroy patches on the elbows of his jacket, and he talked them out of stealing the bikes.
I know that because I recognized the look on his face when he talked to those boys. It was the same look he got when he was explaining something to me. He actually reasoned with them. I still wonder if those boys waited until we walked away and then came back to take the bikes, but I don’t think they did. I think they were actually convinced by whatever my father said. My dad: so reasonably insistent, so calm.
So when he got off the phone that Wednesday night, my dad didn’t shout for me or for my mother. After I hung up the phone, I went back to my room and called Stevie, then finished my history reading, and I only knew my dad’s phone conversation was over because I saw him, out of the corner of my eye through my open bedroom door, walking down the hallway toward the living room. I heard Pilot trotting toward him, but my father must have not wanted to play with him, because the dog came into my room, rubber ball in his mouth, begging to play fetch. A few minutes later I saw both my parents on their way down the hall, and when they got to their bedroom, they closed the door behind them.
So now I have no idea what’s going on, but I know it has to do with that guy on the other line.
History
Mr. Barsky is staring at me, like he’s expecting something, some words, to come out of my mouth. Stevie’s sitting next to me, and he nudges me with his elbow. I must be pretty far in outer space, because my arm hurts where his elbow hit, like maybe it’s not the first time he’s done that in the last few seconds.
“Nick Brandt,” Mr. Barsky says, “would you care to join us?”
“Umm, yeah.”
“And where are we?” Mr. Barsky’s making fun of me now. He’s a nice teacher, but he thinks it’s incredibly rude when kids daydream in class. I can hear the other kids shifting in their seats.
“Umm …” I try to remember what I read in last night’s history assignment, something clever, something to make Mr. Barsky laugh so he won’t be pissed at me for being rude, but my mind is a blank.
“Henry the Eighth’s court, sir.”
“Well, then you should know it’s a treacherous place in which to piss off the king.” Mr. Barsky’s lips begin to curl. He’s gonna laugh soon.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, then. Anyone else know why we should care so much about Henry the Eighth’s marriage to Anne Boleyn?”
“Because of its contributions to the Reformation” comes a voice from behind my head, a voice that’s kind of scratchy like maybe the talker smoked too many cigarettes last night, or didn’t get enough sleep. It’s Eden’s voice.
“Excellent, Miss Reiss.”
Today Eden’s bra is blue. I saw it when she walked into the classroom, just the strap, peeking up by her neck. I wonder if she’s hot, wearing that long-sleeved button-down. This classroom isn’t air-conditioned, but she doesn’t have her sleeves rolled up like the rest of us. She always seems somehow more crisp than anyone else. There’s a softness around her breasts, and at her hips and her belly, but somehow, she’s … sharp.
Later, when we’ve finished dinner and my mom is reading in the living room, my dad comes into my room looking exhausted.
“Hey there, Buddy,” he says, rubbing his eyes. I’m sitting on my bed, over the covers, doing my Algebra II homework.
“Hey, Buddy,” I say back. Buddy is a nickname from when I was little. I decided a while back that I would stop saying it or answering to it, but tonight I’ve forgotten. I lean back against my pillows.
“This has been a long friggin’ week, you know.” He sits down at the foot of my bed. My mom says my dad used to curse a lot. Not like the angry kind of cursing—like I said, he rarely gets loud and angry. But just kind of peppering his sentences with “fuck” and “balls” and “sonuvabitch.” When they had me, he tried to tone it down, apparently. The result is that he uses words like “friggin’,” which, frankly, I think sounds worse than “fucking.”
“It has?”
He looks up at me, like he’s just realized that he knows something that I don’t; like he forgot that I don’t know whatever it is that’s making his week long.
Maybe Sam Roth is trying to extort money from him. Like, Sam just looked him up, made up some dirt about him, some invented secret from his Ohio past that no one in New York knows about, and he’s threatening to tell my dad’s fund’s investors if my dad doesn’t fork over some money.
I’ll cut to the chase. We can figure it out. I can help him.
“Who’s Sam Roth?” I say quickly, before I can change my mind.
My dad blinks; he starts for a second
, like maybe he’s going to get up off the bed, maybe he’s going to get my mom, maybe he can’t stay sitting down. The bed actually bounces a little as he lifts his weight off of it.
“How do you know who that is?”
“I don’t, Dad; that’s why I just asked you. In fact, it’s exactly what I just asked you.”
“Right, but—where did you hear that name?”
“He’s the guy who called last night. I heard him say his name. I think he called Tuesday, too. Someone called asking for you.”
My dad nods. “Yes, that must have been Sam. He told me he’d tried the house before.”
“He didn’t even know your name. He asked for Sheffman Brandt.”
“That is my name,” my dad says, leaning back on the bed. I’d had him momentarily flustered, but he’s composed himself now. Now that he knows how I know Sam Roth’s name.
“Yeah, but no one who knows you calls you that.”
“True.”
He doesn’t volunteer any more information, and it’s not like him not to answer a question directly. I’m sure Sam Roth is trying to screw with my dad, and I want to tell him he can tell me; whatever this Sam Roth is doing to him, I’ll help him figure it out.
“So, who is he?” I say, trying to make it sound casual. I try to turn it into a joke. “What’s he got on you?”
My dad smiles slowly, like I’ve just said something right, something a little closer to the truth than he thought I could.
“Oh, that,” he says. “Just some …”—he exhales, puffing out his lips—“just a little bit of history there, I guess.”
“He from Ohio?”
He shakes his head. “Only kind of.”
“How can someone be kind of from a place? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes sense here.” He smiles. “Kind of.”
He sounds tired, but I won’t let up.
“Kind of?”
“Yup,” he says, like case closed. But he doesn’t get up. He sits there, looking at me. More like watching me. I feel bad for him; he looks pretty wiped. Whatever this guy is doing to him, it must be pretty bad. Just for now, I’ll change the subject.
“Speaking of history, I thought Mr. Barsky was going to eat me alive today.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I totally spaced in class.” Because of Sam Roth, I want to add. And maybe because of Eden Reiss, too.
“Well, careful with that, Buddy. Don’t want to get a reputation with the teachers. Maybe you should do some extra credit or something to make up for it.”
“Jesus Christ, Dad, one space-out in the decade I’ve been at Francis,” I say, irritated. “I don’t think my reputation is destroyed just yet.”
“Yeah,” he says, getting up, patting me on the shoulder, “not yet.”
And as he leaves the room, I think, Yeah, not yet.
The Weekend
Well, my dad may have been having a long friggin’ week, but it’s Sunday morning and I’ve been having a long friggin’ weekend. Mostly because if she didn’t think I was an idiot before, Eden Reiss most definitely thinks I am now.
“Jesus Christ, man,” Stevie says when he calls me, “you’re acting like it’s the end of the motherfucking world or something. It wasn’t that bad.”
“Wasn’t that bad?” I say, burrowing under my covers, bringing the phone with me. “Are you an idiot? Name anything worse I could have done.”
“Oh, come on. Chin up,” he says, and it’s then that his voice cracks and he can’t hold his laughter in anymore. “If only you’d kept your chin up last night. ’Cause you were damn sure looking down when you threw up all over Eden Reiss’s shoes.”
I didn’t throw up on Eden’s shoes. Not even that close to them. But close enough. She was at Simon Natherton’s party, too. She was hanging out on the roof, too. She was smoking a cigarette and holding it lightly between her fingers, like she didn’t even care that it was there. So that was definitely close enough.
“Jesus Christ, Stevie, don’t make it any worse than it was.”
“Oh, come on, it’s not so bad. It’s just the natural order of things. You’re a healthy American teenage boy. Only right that you drink yourself sick.”
“You didn’t,” I mumble.
“Can’t go by me, kid. I’m mature beyond my years.”
“Simon threw up, too, goddammit.”
“Yeah, but he just had the good sense to do it on the street outside the house. Not on the roof in front of everyone.”
At least, it’s raining today. At least, Simon’s parents are out of town until Wednesday, and at least, it’s not like the housekeeper would be able to tell that it was my throw-up.
Jesus, that’s nasty. I know his housekeeper; when we were little, we used to eat the cookies she baked after school. I should send her something.
My head hurts. My headache travels from my left temple to my right eye. After Stevie hangs up, wishing me a happy hangover, I lie in bed staring at the ceiling. I close one eye, then the other, back and forth, focusing on a spot in the paint, watching the way it moves back and forth as I look at it with one eye at a time. Then I realize that this winking process of mine is making the headache much worse and I don’t know why I started doing it in the first place, so I stop and roll over to hug the pillow but I can’t fall back asleep because I have to go to the bathroom too badly.
Eden barely looked at me all night; just my luck she waited until I got sick to get close to me. I only went up to the roof because I knew she’d be there. Simon wouldn’t let anyone smoke in the house, and Eden always smokes at parties. I’ve never seen her smoke any other time. She was wearing a white tank top with jeans, and she stood out because every other girl was wearing black.
It was warm last night and Eden was sweaty. It’s almost like she compartmentalizes her bodily functions the way she does her smoking: at school, dry and crisp; at parties, smoky and sweaty. I watched when she brought a cigarette to her mouth and could see the sweat that had formed on her upper lip. And when I saw that, I was glad I was across the roof from her, because I really do think that had I been closer, I wouldn’t have been able to stop my hand from reaching out, my thumb from brushing the sweat away, my tongue from licking it off my finger.
And I’ll bet her smoky party sweat would have tasted like honey.
I literally (and pathetically) stumble out of my bed. It’s noon, and I’m just getting up, and I’m only up because Stevie called. And I’m pretty sure he only called because he wanted to make that “chin up” joke. Friggin’ asshole.
“Look who’s up,” my dad says to me, bright and cheerful as I continue to stumble, now into the living room, where he’s sitting on the couch.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Watching the pregame. Reds are playing the Mets at one.”
“Go, Cincy,” I say pathetically. Dad grew up rooting for the Reds in Ohio, so I root for them, too.
“What did you do last night? You didn’t get home until after two.”
“How’d you know that?” A while back I convinced my parents that a cell phone was actually more restrictive than a curfew when it came to keeping tabs on me.
“Your mother wouldn’t go to sleep till she heard you come in. So she kept me awake while she waited.”
“You guys don’t have to do that.”
“She can’t help it. You’re her baby.”
“Yeah, but I’m not a baby.”
“She just sleeps better once she hears your door click shut,” Dad says, shrugging. “Anyway, what did you do last night?”
I pause before answering. I wonder whether he and Mom would be more pissed that I was drinking or that I was doing it perched atop a roof.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask finally.
“Walking Pilot.”
“Well,” I say, “Simon Natherton had a party.”
Dad snorts at me. “I think Simon Natherton had a keg.”
“That, too,” I sigh, too distracted about
Eden to even bother trying to cover up.
“You know,” he says, stretching his arms out behind him like he does when he’s making fun of me, “when I was your age we used to imagine the sophistication of the kids from New York City. Surely they weren’t climbing onto rooftops, hovering around kegs like the kids from Troy, Ohio.”
“How’d you know we were on the roof?”
Dad grins at me.
“Boys will be boys.”
“There were girls there, too,” I say, cringing at the memory, lowering myself onto the couch beside him. Why did we start inviting girls to parties, anyway? Whose brilliant idea was it to so increase our chances of humiliation? My chances in particular.
Dad sniffs. “What’s that smell?” he says accusingly. I should have showered before coming out here.
“Sorry, Dad.”
“You reek of cigarette smoke.” He’s really strict when it comes to smoking.
“It was a party.”
“I don’t care if it was a meeting of Winston-Salem.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me, apologize to your lungs.”
I look down at my chest. “Sorry, Lungs,” I say.
“You’re not funny, Nicholas,” Dad says, but I can tell he’s at least mildly amused by me.
The phone rings. Dad jumps as though the phone has startled him, then looks at his watch, like he’d been expecting a call at some particular time and he has to make sure this is it, this is that call at that time. He begins to get up, off the couch, as the phone rings for its second time. Then he looks back at me, remembering that I’m here, remembering that I will probably notice it if he rushes into the other room to take this call, that I will wonder what call he could possibly need to take out of my earshot on a Sunday afternoon.
And so he stands there. Not even quite standing, really, since he never fully got up from the couch. He’s kind of crouching. The phone rings a third time, and I can tell he’s worried he’ll miss the call.
The Lucky Kind Page 2