December Park

by Ronald Malfi

  Farther along the road, the lights of The Bagel Boutique abruptly went dark, their business done for the day. I’d worked there last summer, dragging myself from bed at four o’clock in the morning to twist dough into rings, dump the rings into a boiling vat, and slide the boiled rings into a six-hundred-degree oven. Even though I wore rubber gloves, the heat was intense enough to cause my fingernails to rise off my fingertips. It was an ungodly enterprise, particularly for a slacker like me.

  “What do you think happened to her?” Scott said. “Someone did that to her. Someone killed her.”

  “Maybe Lucas Brisbee did it,” Peter suggested.

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  “You didn’t hear about Lucas Brisbee?” Peter said. He held his cigarette, examining the ember while the wind coaxed water from his eyes.

  “I heard,” said Scott.

  I leaned against the portico. “Who’s Lucas Brisbee?” I repeated.

  “Amanda Brisbee’s older brother,” Peter said. “He graduated like five years ago from Stanton. You know Amanda, right?”

  “Sure,” I said. Amanda Brisbee was a grade lower than us. She’d been on the girls’ field hockey team her freshman year until she shaved the hair on one side of her head, started wearing black nail polish, and fell in with the wrong crowd. I knew her mostly through mutual acquaintances—I happened to be friends with the wrong crowd—though I’d never said a single word to her.

  “Check this out,” Peter said, and I could detect from his faint grin that he was happy to tell the story. “For the past month, Lucas had been coming to our American history class to talk about the Gulf War. He stopped in every Wednesday wearing his camouflage jumpsuit thingy to talk about what it was like over in Iraq.”

  “He spoke once in Mrs. Burstrom’s class, too,” Scott added. “It was bizarre. He wore one of those pith helmets, like they wear on M*A*S*H, and you could see he was sweating to death in the thing.”

  “Well,” Peter continued, “he apparently showed up this Wednesday, right on schedule, walking across the football field from the senior parking lot, done up in his whole uniform. Only this time he had his rifle slung over his shoulder.”

  “Get the hell out of here,” I said.

  “I’m dead serious.”

  “Swear to God,” Scott chimed in.

  “Mr. Gregg was out with a gym class when it happened,” Peter said. “He told everyone to go back inside, then went up to talk with Lucas. They argued for a bit, and Mr. Gregg actually had to wrestle him to the ground. Some cops showed up, and they took the dude away.”

  “Who told you this?” I asked.

  “Jen and Michelle Wyatt. They were in the gym class and saw Lucas walking down the football field before Gregg told them to get inside. They said they could see the rifle on his back and that he marched toward them like a Nazi.”

  “That can’t be true,” I said, looking out across the highway. A cool darkness had settled over the city. Lampposts came on. Shopwindows on the opposite side of the highway glowed like tiny electric rectangles. At the next intersection, I watched the taillights of automobiles simmering at the foot of a traffic light.

  “Like hell it isn’t,” Peter said.

  “I would have heard about it on the news,” I said. “Or at least from my dad.”

  Peter shrugged. “Does your dad tell you everything? And besides, maybe Brisbee hasn’t, like, been charged with anything yet.”

  “Maybe the gun wasn’t loaded,” Scott suggested.

  “Weirdest part is he apparently never went to Iraq,” Peter said. “The dude never even enlisted in the frigging military. He worked as a mechanic rotating tires and changing oil and shit over in Woodlawn since graduation. The son of a bitch made the whole thing up.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  “It’s true,” Scott added, nodding. “I heard it, too.”

  “Can you believe that shit?” Peter said, turning away. He’d smoked his cigarette down to the filter. “Guy was nuts, and he’s been giving lectures at our high school for the past month.”

  A car sped by and honked at us. I didn’t recognize the driver.

  “Maybe nobody killed her. Maybe she died from an accident.” Yet even as I spoke those words I didn’t believe them. I kept seeing the way her head had been smashed and the sallow fish-belly hue of her skin.

  “I guess so,” Peter said, but he didn’t sound convinced, either.

  Scott glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late.”

  “Yeah,” Peter said, tossing his cigarette butt on the ground.

  I flipped my jacket collar up around my neck. “I’ll catch you guys later. I gotta stop by the deli for my grandmother.”

  “You want us to come with?”

  “Nah, I’m cool. Thanks, though.”

  “Hey.” Peter thumped me on the forearm. “Come out tonight, all right?”

  I sighed.

  “Maybe your dad will give you an extension on your curfew,” Peter said. “It’s not like we’re gonna stay out all night.”

  “It’ll be fun,” Scott added.

  Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I said, “I’ll see.”

  “Cool.” Peter grinned at me. Then he turned and shoved Scott out onto the sidewalk. They waited for a break in traffic before hurrying across Governor Highway. I lost sight of them as they disappeared among the shadows of an unlit parking lot.

  I walked parallel to the highway until I hit the crosswalk, then waited for the traffic lights to change. Pastore’s Deli was a small family-run shop at the end of a strip mall. It stood across the street from the Generous Superstore, the grandiose supermarket whose slogan was Convenience is King! Even so, my grandmother had been patronizing Pastore’s since I was a little boy, and I maintained fond memories of Mr. Pastore feeding me slices of Boar’s Head bologna and wedges of stinky cheese as my grandmother did her shopping.

  The store was usually empty, but on this evening, I noted a bit of a commotion outside. Several adults loitered by their cars in the parking lot, talking animatedly. My head down, I shuffled past them and entered the deli.

  “Hello, Angelo.” Mr. Pastore peered at me over the bifocals perched on the edge of his nose. He was a dark-skinned old man with tufts of white hair over his ears. A man I did not recognize stood in front of the counter, and it seemed that my arrival had interrupted their conversation.

  “Hi, Mr. Pastore,” I said, unzipping my coat. The little shop was sweltering, due to an overworked space heater mounted above the doorway.

  At the back of the store, I grabbed a loaf of sliced Italian bread, then surveyed the rack of candy that lined the wall. Pastore’s always had the good candy, the stuff that was generally difficult to find: Astro Pops, giant Sugar Daddies, shoelace licorice and black licorice buttons, Jujubes, candy dots on rolls of white paper, wax lips, wax bottles filled with syrupy liquid, candy whistles, peanut brittle, Ocean City taffy, exotic jelly beans. After some deliberation, I selected a giant Sugar Daddy and a pack of Trident gum to mask the smell of cigarettes on my breath.

  I walked to the counter, where I knew Mr. Pastore would have the rest of my grandmother’s order waiting for me.

  Mr. Pastore talked in a low voice to the man I did not know. At one point, he glanced at me from over the man’s shoulder and forced a smile.

  The man, who was dressed in a navy-blue sweater and chinos, stepped aside so I could put the bread and candy on the counter.

  Mr. Pastore winked at me, then fished around beneath the counter until he produced several packages of cold colds, already sliced and wrapped up in wax paper. “I read in the Caller that you won first place in their creative writing competition,” he said as he rang up the items. “That’s wonderful, Angelo. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Will they be publishing the winning story?”

  “Well, they were supposed to, but they said it was too long,” I said. “But they mailed me a check for fifty bucks.”

  “
Fantastic!” Mr. Pastore pushed his bifocals up the bridge of his nose, then read the totaled amount on the cash register.

  I handed over a twenty and waited for my change.

  Beside me, the man in the navy-blue sweater tapped his foot nervously. I turned and looked at him. Our eyes locked. He had small, dark eyes that appeared equally as nervous as his tapping foot sounded. A second later, he looked away.

  Undoubtedly sensing my unease, Mr. Pastore smiled wearily at me. “There’s been some commotion down by the park tonight. They’ve got the intersection of Counterpoint shut down. Maybe you’ve seen the police cars.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry. The image of the dead girl with her head staved in flew in front of my eyes again. I couldn’t shake it. All of a sudden, I could feel nothing but the volcanic heat radiating out of the space heater above the shop’s door.

  “People are worried something might have happened to someone,” Mr. Pastore continued. That false smile was still firmly rooted to his face, yet the tone of his voice was grave. “People are worried it might be one of the . . . well, you know . . .”

  I opened my mouth to say that I had seen the police carry a dead girl out of the woods on a gurney, but then I shut it. I looked at the man in the navy-blue sweater. What if he was the father of the dead girl? The notion struck me like a zap from an electrical outlet. Did I really want to be the one to break the news to him?

  Mr. Pastore handed me my change, which I stuffed into the pocket of my coat. I snatched the bag of groceries off the counter and thanked him as I moved quickly to the door.

  “Angelo?” Mr. Pastore said. When I turned around to face him, he said, “Maybe it’s best you hurry straight home tonight, yeah? No dillydallying.”

  Temporarily unable to speak, I nodded.

  “Good boy,” he said.

  I opened the door and ditched out into the encroaching darkness.

  Chapter Two

  The Shallows

  It was dark by the time I arrived home. There were lights on in the old Dunbar house next door and a car parked in the driveway. The new neighbors had arrived a few days ago, but I’d yet to lay eyes on them. There hadn’t been a moving truck at the house yet, so I assumed they still hadn’t fully moved in.

  It was supposed to be my father’s night off, but his unmarked police car wasn’t parked in the driveway, and I wondered if he’d been called out to work because of the dead girl. Before going inside, I stomped mud from my sneakers against the doorjamb of the Cape Cod I’d lived in all my life.

  Inside, I was greeted by a blast of hot air and the welcoming aroma of my grandmother’s pasta fagioli simmering on the stove. There was something eternally comforting about entering a house infused with the aroma of Italian cooking. Kicking off my sneakers in the foyer, I felt my lips and the tips of my fingers tingling as they warmed up.

  I went down the hall and poked my head into the den to observe my grandfather, engulfed in the flickering blue light of the television, snoring in his Barcalounger.

  In the kitchen, I dumped the groceries onto the table, then shrugged off my jacket and folded it over a chair. My grandmother stood before the stove, conducting an orchestra of steaming, bubbling pots and pans, looking like wallpaper in her floral housedress, her silver hair petrified into that steel-colored dome fashionable among women over sixty-five.

  “Where’s Dad?” I said.

  “Well,” said my grandmother, “that’s a fine how-do-you-do.”

  “Sorry.” I kissed her cheek on my way to the refrigerator. “Smells good.”

  “Is your grandfather asleep?”

  “He’s watching TV,” I lied.

  “Asleep,” she muttered. “So then he’ll be up tossing and turning all night in bed.”

  I popped the tab on a can of Pepsi, eliciting a look of disapproval from my grandmother. For whatever reason and with no documentation to back up her hypothesis, she firmly believed all sodas caused cancer. “So where’s Dad?”

  “He got a call.”

  “Was it about a girl?”

  “A girl?”

  “Like, for work.”

  “He doesn’t tell me anything, that son of mine. And I don’t ask about his work, Lord knows.” She stirred the pasta fagioli with a big wooden spoon. The pot was as big as a cauldron. Beside it, chicken cutlets spat and sizzled in a pan of vegetable oil. “What girl are you talking about?”

  “Cops found some girl in the woods behind Counterpoint Lane. Me and the guys saw it on our way back from school.”

  “She was lost?”

  “She was dead.”

  “Oh, Madonn’!” She set her spoon down on an oven mitt. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe some kind of accident.” But I knew it wasn’t an accident, not the way she’d been naked and sour-looking beneath that sheet. Not the way her head had been smashed in. For the first time, I wondered how long she’d been in those woods before the police found her.

  “Was she from around here?” my grandmother asked.

  “I don’t know who she is. Or was,” I corrected.

  “What a horrible thing.”

  “Did Dad say what time he’d be home tonight?”

  “I told you, he doesn’t tell me anything, that man. Now go wash up for supper, will you? And wake your grandfather. He fell asleep in front of the television again. I know he did. Don’t lie for him.”

  We ate, accompanied by the lament of my grandfather who, for as long as I could remember, found fault with just about everyone and everything on the face of the planet. Recently, it had gotten so bad that my grandmother forbade him to watch the television news or read a newspaper, as the injustices depicted therein were enough to send the old man on a rambling monologue of such creative profanity, it would have inspired an entire regiment of longshoremen to take notes.

  In August of 1990, after President Bush dispatched American troops into Saudi Arabia—my older brother, Charles, among them—my grandfather sifted through his own memorabilia from the Second World War. Our family made nervous jokes about his determination, at the age of seventy-eight, to reenlist alongside my brother. Yet my grandfather, as steadfast as he was old, was disillusioned in an altogether different fashion.

  The collected relics from his time served in the South Pacific consisted of, among other things, several boxes of medals, an ashtray made of ammunition shells of varying sizes assembled to suggest a miniature B-29 Superfortress, and, perhaps most impressive, a samurai sword appropriated by my grandfather from the dead body of a Japanese soldier killed in New Guinea.

  “I shot him dead right out of a tree,” my grandfather had told me on more than one occasion, “and this sword fell with him. In fact, it stuck in the dirt, blade-first, and quivered there like a tuning fork.”

  The sword was impressive, shiny and handsome with colorful jewels embedded in the hilt, complete with an intricate foreign insignia of a dragon with the head of a tiger etched into the scabbard.

  For a number of years after the war, my grandfather had received a barrage of letters from an attorney in New York—whom my grandfather was quick to deem a “shyster sympathizer”—representing the Takahashi family making request after request for the return of the sword to the family of the dead Japanese soldier. It was a family heirloom, and the Takahashis would gladly pay any asking price for its safe return. I’d seen the letters, typed on fancy law-office stationery with a Manhattan return address, and they were polite and sympathetic toward my grandfather. Yet my grandfather refused to even entertain their offers.

  Finally, having resigned to the fact that my grandfather was a stubborn old mule of a man, the Takahashi family delivered one final letter to him. I’d seen this letter as well. All it contained were the directions for the appropriate cleaning, storage, and maintenance of the samurai sword. If they couldn’t have it back, at least they could ensure that it would be properly taken care of.

  However, it was not the sword or the other items
of similar interest my grandfather dug out of the garage on that day in August. What he produced was a worn photo album with a leather cover, held together by rubber bands. It was filled with black-and-white photographs from the war and the year he spent as a lifeguard in Australia. He took the album to the yard and tore up the photographs and spread them like confetti into one of the metal trash cans.

  At the time and in my naïveté, I attempted to ascribe some symbolic meaning to this humble act but could not, for the life of me, understand what it could be. I had no other choice but to ask my grandfather why he’d destroyed his photographs. With the practicality of a mathematician, he responded that the nightly recaps of the rising tension in the Middle East on the news merely reminded him that he had old junk stowed away in the garage and he was well overdue in getting rid of it all. It was nothing more symbolic than spring cleaning.

  Seated around the dinner table, we ate while the television droned on in the den. My grandmother had parted the curtains over the kitchen windows in case my father returned home from work. As was the pattern, upon seeing the headlights of his sedan turn in to the driveway, my grandmother would rise and fill my father’s plate, timing its placement on the table perfectly with the sound of the front door opening in the foyer. On these nights my father would wash his hands in the kitchen sink, then join us for dinner, still in his shirtsleeves and necktie.

  Since my father rarely returned home before dawn on the evenings when he was called out, he would not be coming home in time for dinner this evening, yet the curtains remained parted and my grandmother remained vigilant, as she was not one to break tradition.

  “How was school?” my grandmother asked.

  “It was okay.”

  “Anything interesting happen?”

  Since nothing interesting ever happened, I relayed the story Peter had told me about Lucas Brisbee coming to school wearing fatigues and carrying a rifle, only to be tackled in the school parking lot by the gym teacher.

  My grandmother shook her head. “Why would someone do such a thing?”

  “It happens all the time, Flo,” said my grandfather. “It’s nothing new. All you hear about is kids taking guns to school, shooting up classrooms, and building bombs in their garages.”