For years East Ninety-sixth Street was considered to be Manhattan’s version of the San Diego–Tijuana border, the line in the sand where all Upper East Side development stopped, and few ventured north of that east-west corridor, which ran from First Avenue to Central Park. Crossing it meant entering a world of housing projects and drug dealers, but once you did, you found yourself in a gray zone: East Harlem was not quite Spanish Harlem, but it was definitely not Yorkville. But where others saw decay I saw an opportunity to live cheaply in Manhattan, which had, after all, been number two on the list of goals I’d drawn up at Celie’s house.
The apartment was above JFK Fried Chicken, which is a low-budget version of Kennedy Fried Chicken, which is itself an homage to KFC—a knockoff of a knockoff. While we waited for the real estate agent, two unmarked SUVs pulled up and a gaggle of officers jumped out and slapped handcuffs on a man standing right in front of the building in what appeared to be an undercover drug bust. I turned to Kareem.
“Well, maybe it’s a good sign,” I reasoned. “Could mean the neighborhood’s getting better.” Once inside, I knew I wanted it before I’d even reached the avenue-facing bedroom. It had a decent-sized kitchen and hardwood floors, which, as the child of a carpet cleaner, I’d always coveted. It was a walk-up, but the apartment was on the second floor, and there was lots of light.
“I’ll take it,” I said. We had less than twenty-four hours to gather the requisite bank statements, money orders, and letters of recommendation from our employers. Kareem had only been at the telemarketing gig for a week, so I took the company letterhead from his introduction package and forged a proof-of-employment letter. He snagged one of his father’s bank statements and I scanned it and created a new paragraph stating that he had many more thousands in the bank than he actually did. I was a little criminal, just like my parents. The real estate agent altered my credit history, which was blighted with my credit blunders from college. “The whole packet is going to be faxed,” she explained, “so it’s okay if we cut and paste.” The next morning, Kareem and my parents crowded into the agent’s tiny one-room apartment in Kips Bay and watched as I handed her $3,700 in cash. Kareem had contributed none of it; my parents even had to lend him $75 for his credit check because I had nothing left. We agreed to split the rent, but that didn’t do anything to change my parents’ opinion of the person I’d chosen to make my life with.
“You worked all summer to pay for this and he didn’t do shit,” my mother complained.
“I know,” I said. What could I say? They were right.
“Your father is very disappointed in Kareem, but he would never tell you that,” she added.
“He won’t let me down,” I told her. “Trust me.” Four days later I got the call: The apartment was ours. I jumped up and down, unable to believe my luck: I was going to live in Manhattan. My dream, realized. Even my mother shared my enthusiasm.
“Manhattan, Jenny, that’s wonderful,” she gushed. When I took my parents to see the place a few weeks before we moved in, they were impressed.
“For a first apartment, this is great,” my father said, scoping out the kitchen. “Really, Jenny, this is terrific.” Just then a small cockroach made its ascent up the wall next to where my father was standing; his thick hand came down on it without missing a beat. “Yeah, this place is real great, Jenny,” he said, smiling like nothing had happened. “Real great.”
Later that month my parents took me to Pier One to pick out new furniture. At the register I held out the sum in cash, but my mother shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Your father and I will take care of it.”
“No, Mom, you can’t!” I protested, but they had their way. Officially it was a gift in celebration of their daughter’s milestone; my mother soon revealed the unofficial reason.
“Because when you break up,” she said, “your father doesn’t want there to be a war over the furniture.” I didn’t get angry at her comment. I knew she was right.
CHAPTER 10
East 103rd Street
Manhattan, New York
November 2000
• • •
TRUE TO MY PROCRASTINATING NATURE, I WAITED UNTIL FIVE in the morning on the day of the move to start packing, and I hadn’t finished by the time one of our friends went to get the U-Haul. In the end I was dumping drawers into boxes, just like my parents used to. Naturally, the elevator got stuck so we had to run the thing manually. My father couldn’t help, and I could tell it bothered him, so he hung back, drinking his Looza pear nectar and his Ensure, which my mother offered at every opportunity. “Gotta keep your strength up,” she’d say. He’d gotten thinner in recent months, and his eyes, once squeezed by his retirement girth, were now sunken and hollow. His morale had taken a serious hit when a chemotherapy needle leaked the deadly potion into his hand, the work of a careless doctor. The resulting wound looked like a volcano on the brink of eruption rising from the back of his hand. “Number one my ass,” my mother vented. “I should sue this motherfucking hospital, I swear to god.”
As we loaded the truck I tried my best to avoid my parents, which wasn’t easy. I knew what would happen when the time came to say goodbye, and I agonized over it. After several hours I’d finally packed all I wanted to take—one of my rooms, however, was an absolute disaster that I vowed to return and clean—and I found myself alone; everyone was waiting downstairs. I took a deep breath and walked slowly into the living room. My father was sitting on the couch. I froze. I couldn’t avoid this, I had to face him. I ambled over to the sofa and plopped down next to him. We took one look at each other and burst into tears, so loud it sounded like howling. We knew that this goodbye meant more than just “see you in a few days.” This could very well be his last lucid goodbye, a surrogate for a time when he wouldn’t be able to say anything at all. After a few moments of this we looked up at each other and started crying all over again. Neither of us seemed able to stand up. My mother walked in, took in this scene, and shook her head.
“Two sentimental Italians,” she said. “Unbelievable.” My mother would be following the truck to the apartment, but my father didn’t feel strong enough to go. I’ll never know if that was the truth, or whether he was too sad to prolong our farewell. We sat there for a minute more until my mother said, “Come on, Jen. Let’s go.” She managed to resist being taken in by our display, and I realized that her maternal instinct must have kicked in—she was being strong for the both of us because we had fallen apart.
“Goodbye, Daddy,” I said. I reached out for him and he returned my embrace. I smiled. “See you soon.”
Kareem told his parents we’d gotten married so they couldn’t protest our living arrangements, and it took a month for them to discover our lie. Soon his father was demanding to see our marriage certificate. Within a week Kareem’s brother was leaving death threats on our answering machine, accusing us of destroying the family honor, and his father followed suit with tirades designed to make Kareem feel guilty for breaking his mother’s heart. “That’s it, I’m done,” I said, and called the precinct down the street. The next morning two officers paid us a visit and listened to the messages, and later that week Kareem’s father was slapped with a restraining order and his brother was arrested for aggravated harassment, spending the night in jail. Perhaps he finally realized the consequences of doing his parents’ dirty work, because after his jail stint the calls stopped and we were finally free to live together in peace.
But we never did. Kareem had lost his home, and he sought to replicate it on 103rd Street. We engaged in maddening, logic-bending arguments during which Kareem blocked my exit from the apartment with his hulking physique. One night he pounded on my locked bedroom door for three hours, inflicting gashes where he attempted to rip it off its hinges. All the while I sat at my computer desk trying not to breathe. The next morning I silently crept out of the apartment, but he heard me open the front door and chased me out onto the street and into a cab. I jumped out and hail
ed another, but he pushed his way into that one, too. Four cabs later I was able to shove him out for good and speed away. The driver must have thought we were nuts.
“My father is dying and you choose to act this way?” I said over the phone a few hours later. “What is wrong with you?”
“I told you, I’m going to be there for you,” he said.
“This is being there for me?” I asked, incredulous. “You’re torturing me!”
Our fighting took us so far from the baseline that we entered a kind of hyper-reality where logic didn’t penetrate; it was eerily reminiscent of my mother’s irrational explosions. But his rage always subsided, and afterward he’d admit that he’d been out of line. I was reeled in by his sudden clarity—he wanted to change! “I can’t believe what I’ve done, Jennifer, I’m so sorry. It’s not me. They fucked with my head,” he confessed through body-wracking sobs. He claimed only one thing could save him: therapy. He was committed to getting better, he said, for us. He began talking to someone, and I was thrilled. I had the old Kareem back, and these explosions had just been a blip.
But by February I had bigger problems. “Daddy,” I said when I called home one evening, “I just got fired. Please don’t tell Mommy.”
He laughed; it was just like when he spotted me at Saturday school and vowed to keep it from my mother. “I won’t, don’t worry. Whatever you need, we’re here.”
“I love you, Daddy,” I said. But his relaxed manner belied something more profound.
“Jenny, he’s not doing well,” my mother confessed in a late-night phone call. “I’m taking him to the hospital tomorrow, okay? Meet us there?” We’d just celebrated our last New Year’s—apart, because I’d been stuck at work, cursing myself because I knew he wouldn’t be alive this time next year.
“Of course I’ll be there,” I said. When I walked in the next morning his legs were swollen from the sudden infusion of liquid, meaning he’d been severely dehydrated. But even worse, his scrotum was grotesquely enlarged, looking like a water balloon ready to pop, causing him terrible pain. As the nurses inserted his IV and catheter my mother kept trying to cover his nether regions with his hospital gown. I was horrified at my father’s state; when had this happened? When I was fighting around with Kareem, that’s when, and I felt terrible. My mother was right: My priorities were fucked. And they remained that way, as I ran out into the hallway every few hours to alternately argue and make up with Kareem. “Jenny, please,” my mother implored. “Your father’s sick. Will you give it a rest?”
“It’s okay, let her talk if she wants,” my father said, his voice cutting out every few words like a shaky cellphone connection. When he was wheeled away for tests later that day I asked my mother, “How sick is he? I mean, is this it?”
“I don’t know, honey,” she said. “We’ve got to keep him hydrated, and when he’s stronger he’ll start another clinical trial.” I knew it was a pipe dream, but I wasn’t sure if she did.
Since the bulk of his fellow patients were terminal, visiting hours didn’t exist, and as days turned to weeks my mother essentially relocated to Sloan, sleeping every night in the unoccupied bed across the room. If someone was assigned to it she’d sleep with him in his bed, careful not to disturb his IVs. One night when she was asleep he went to the bathroom unaided and tripped and hit his head; the subsequent X-ray revealed that the cancer had spread to his brain.
“We did a PET scan and there’s also some activity on the spine and one of the ribs,” one of the doctors confirmed.
“Can the brain be radiated?” my mother asked, not pausing for a moment to absorb this setback.
“Only if he builds his strength up,” the doctor said. My father half paid attention. With minor exceptions he had ceased connecting with most people, and his face wore the grimace of someone retreating from this world and entering the universe of pain. He never left.
“Then that’s what we gotta do,” my mother said. She fed him more Ensure and tried to get him to eat the hospital’s offerings but he refused, and his weight peeled away in layers until his skin shrank so much that his tattoos appeared darker. Because Sloan was four blocks from Hunter I made it my second home, eventually mastering the underground passageways that led to the elevator that took me to my father’s room, where I’d plop myself down on a chair and curl up with a book. When the fighting between me and Kareem became unbearable I would sleep there, too. (A few times he tried to follow me but I outran him.) My mother invariably asked me to bring ice cream, which she hoped would entice my father to eat, but he was often asleep by the time I got there. Because my mother got the bed, I got the chair, but I didn’t mind, comforted by the sight of my sleeping parents and the sound of their light snoring. It was just the three of us again.
WHAT ULTIMATELY SANK my relationship with Kareem was the night he physically prevented me from leaving school. I was about to head to Sloan when he placed his bulky mass between me and the door, and when I’d attempt to escape he’d mirror my every move. Thankfully there were people milling about the halls, and I shouted for someone, anyone, to call security. As soon as I started screaming, Kareem panicked and ran downstairs. I followed and caught up with him just in time to see him restrained by eight security guards who seemed to appear out of nowhere. I watched from just inside Thomas Hunter Hall as they spent half an hour calming him down, and I felt responsible somehow, like I had caused his breakdown because I’d asked him to change his life. But I also felt betrayed, because he had become unbalanced, and I hadn’t committed to this Kareem. I had committed to the Kareem I’d first met, the Kareem who was harmless as a puppy. How could I have connected so strongly with someone so unstable? Was it in my DNA to forge connections with troubled people, people with unbalanced personalities, people with dubious sexuality? A crowd formed around me and I tried to act like a bystander, but my cover was blown when one of the guards popped his head in and said, “He says he just wants to talk to you.”
“What, are you kidding?” I asked, astounded they were entertaining his whims. The guard even asked me a few more times—“No, no, no!” I yelled. “How many times do I have to say it—he refused to let me leave!”—until Kareem tried to slip from their grip, charging a few feet down Lexington Avenue before the guards pounced again. A few minutes later a different guard popped his head in and asked me if I wanted to press charges, telling me that because we lived together I had a textbook domestic violence case on my hands. “We just did this with his brother,” I muttered, kicking myself for not foreseeing this turn of events—the apple and the tree and all that. “I can’t,” I said to the guard. “Just please accompany me to Sixty-eighth and First? I have to visit my father in the hospital.” I was supposed to pick my mother up hours before and drive her to Staten Island to get a fresh change of clothes. When she saw me she began whisper-screaming, “Where the fuck have you been!” but I shook my head and beckoned her into the hall and finally confessed the hell I had been living with Kareem.
“It’s over, Ma,” I said.
“Thank God,” she said, and held me.
“It’s over, Daddy,” I said, returning to the room.
“Good,” he whispered, barely audible. “Because I want to kill him.”
ONE AFTERNOON I came to Sloan to find my half-brother, Tony, sitting at my father’s bedside; he’d brought his wife, Carrie, and she sat quietly in a chair next to him.
“Hi,” I said to my brother, who I hadn’t seen in thirteen years. He was prematurely gray, just like our father, and shared his round, welcoming eyes. His features were a little broader, though, and his accent was Florida all the way.
“Hey, Jenny,” he said, leaning in for a hug. “How ya been?”
Terrific. Thrilled. Titillated. “I’m okay,” I responded. “How are you?”
“Oh, good, you know, same old,” he said. I didn’t even know what the “same old” was.
“How are your … kids?” I didn’t know even know if they had any. Where had I been?
>
“Good, good,” he said, addressing my father. “Toni is almost three now, and little Timmy is going to be one in December. Can’t believe it.” He spoke with an openmouthed smile and a hint of wonder, just like Grandpa used to. It was childlike without being juvenile. It was charming.
“Hey, Johnny,” my mother said, kneeling down to meet his face. “Would you eat some pizza if I got some? Just a slice?”
“I might,” he said. Dried spittle caked the sides of his mouth; when he drank from the plastic hospital cups he’d leave some behind on the rim.
“Come on, Jen, Tony, Carrie—let’s get pizza,” my mother suggested. We grabbed a pie from around the corner and made small talk; my mother did the heavy lifting because it was awkward. I wanted to pull Tony and Carrie aside and tell them how sorry I was that my father had missed their wedding, and how we’d pleaded with him to go, but I didn’t. I could barely handle what was in front of me.
When we got back my father took a few bites of pizza and promptly set it down. My mother didn’t force him, just whispered “pistachio ice cream” in my ear when I left that day. When I returned the next afternoon, Tony and Carrie were still there, their eyes focused on the television, along with my father’s. He reminded me of a child then, absorbing the images with a blank expression, as though they were beyond his comprehension. I wondered how much of my father’s brain the cancer had infiltrated, then wondered if he was playing dumb to avoid a confrontation with the son he’d publicly stood up. Either way, father and son said very little to each other, and when Tony finally hugged his father for the last time there was no scene, no tears. My moving out had been more emotional than their final goodbye. My heart would have been breaking for Tony if it hadn’t already been cannibalized by loss.
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