“Yeah, I know. If I’d known I would have skipped to be with her.”
I looked at his profile. “You’ve been over there? To City Island?”
“Sure. Lots of times.”
“With Jenna?” I thought of her father and the boundaries he’d laid down.
He laughed. “Before I ever met her. I use to fish off the pier near the bridge. I once tried to get a summer job at the marina. Jen and me, we get together and walk around Orchard Beach Park. I have to do the right thing. I want to meet her folks, see where she lives. Let them know straight out Jen and me are together. I love City Island. I could live there.”
“How come?”
“’Cause it’s small. It’s surrounded by water. It feels like home. Kind of cozy and safe and cut off, know what I mean?”
“Like your home?”
“Not where I live now. Where I’d like to live one day.”
“But there’s nothing there. There’s nothing to do but eat. Jenna even says so and she liked growing up there. It’s so different from the rest of New York.”
“Maybe that’s why I like it.”
“Maybe your family could move there.”
“I don’t have a family. I live in a group home. My last foster parents moved before the school year started. I didn’t want to go with them to Norfolk. I was old enough. I could decide to stay on my own.”
I looked at Brody more closely. I was afraid to be too nosy and ask the questions that would give him a history and fill in the blanks.
“Aren’t you afraid to be by yourself?”
“I’ve always been by myself. It could have been worse, I guess. I always knew I was really on my own. I don’t know why my real mother gave me up. I don’t know who my father is. Bottom line, I have to take care of myself.”
“Doesn’t that make you mad?”
“I used to be, but now all I want is my own life, my own place, and to do what I want. I’ve been working part-time near boats and water since I was fifteen. South Street Seaport promised me something full-time when I graduate, but I’m thinking how cool it would be to find a job on City Island. Then I could really stay.”
Brody had always struck me as a guy who said what he meant, and knew what he wanted and pretty much how to get it. But what I wasn’t hearing was where did Jenna fit in? Was she just a stepping-stone to his need to belong somewhere?
His self-confidence was amazing, and it made me wonder if there was some great advantage to having to build your own life, create your own family from the ground up. To not be afraid of the world, not be afraid of being told no. City Island must have seemed like a cosseted haven to him, the safe harbor at the end of the crazy world he came from, where kids were discarded like garbage.
Brody was already eighteen by the time we started our senior year. He looked and behaved older than most of us, which was part of his attraction. We still didn’t know yet how combustible those kinds of traits could be. Awesome to us, threatening to others.
We all had to plot and plan how to get together on Friday nights and weekends for parties and occasional trips into the city to a club. Elaborate lies were created that tested the boundaries of our lives, our families, our communities. Brody had no such concerns and became our de facto leader. I know for me it changed the idea of how big and complicated the world was beyond my own neighborhood. For Jenna I think it was more confusing. How far was she willing to go before she had to turn back home?
“My father is going to kill me,” she inevitably moaned on each new adventure. Like the one that took us to Staten Island, another remote outcast of a place.
In the spring before graduation, Jenna’s parents insisted on hosting a birthday party for their daughter in the tiny backyard of their home. The idea both embarrassed and frightened Jenna, but everyone looked forward to the evening, hoping that the Hardings were cool enough to just disappear so that the real party could go down.
I got there too early, and sat on Jenna’s bed and watched as she finished dressing and did makeup and decided on a pair of cute but treacherous high heels. Her friends started arriving in earnest around 8:30, quickly spilling into the front yard, and the street to the side of the house. Some boy who’d once dated Jenna, before she’d left the island and met Brody, actually showed up, his presence blessed by her father. Goodlooking but, to my way of thinking, too much like a Tommy-in-the-making.
By 10 the party was on, but Jenna was nervous and excited waiting for Brody to appear. Me too. It was such a mixed party that everyone thought Jenna’s folks surely knew about Brody by now. Her father especially was jovial and in good spirits, joking with the boys and drawing lots of raucous laughter. Gracious and flirtatious with the girls, drawing whispered comments like, “He’s kind of cool.” Music and voices and laughter floated like a breeze and wafted over the neighborhood.
Brody arrived a little before midnight, making an entrance that was not soon forgotten because of its simplicity and class. Those are my words. There are some who might give a slightly different spin. In any case, some kind of energy shifted in the yard. With it came anticipation.
Jenna, who had been giggly all evening, ran to greet Brody n a way that left no doubt they were an item. Before greeting anyone else, Brody presented Jenna’s mother with flowers. She was so startled that she barely managed a thank you before escaping into the house with the bouquet. For Tommy Harding, Brody had a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. Brody shook Tommy Harding’s hand and thanked him for inviting him to the party, and into his home.
The ice had been broken.
The critical initiation had been passed. Brody was in. All of us closed around him and Jenna like the good buds, comrades, classmates that we were. It totally excluded her parents.
From his pocket Brody took out a delicate chain necklace with a sparkling gem pendant dangling from the center. Jenna turned so that he could fasten it around her neck. We woowooed like a team cheer while Jenna kissed Brody her thanks, and her love.
Given a real choice, I’m not sure that Jenna’s father would have included Brody Miller, and it seemed to me Brody was an unwelcome surprise. Brody wasn’t just another high school friend, he was a young man. He was not just another guest, he was seeing Tommy’s daughter.
The music and laughter continued, and so did the drinking. At one point I noticed that the cake had been brought out and placed on a sawed-down tree stump that served perfectly as a small table. On previous visits to Jenna’s house her father had always complained about the stump, promising to dig it out and get rid of it one of these days, while admitting that it had its uses, like now. The appearance of the cake was a good sign. By 1:30, 2 at the latest, the party would be over and we’d all leave. I wouldn’t have to bare witness to whatever humiliation Jenna’s father was making a case for, as he watched his little girl enjoying herself.
Jenna and Brody held hands, or put their arms around each other. Sometimes they danced, swaying together, hip to hip. Facing each other, the intimacy in their gaze naked and exposed. They looked great together. Years later I’d recognize that Jenna and Brody were setting an example and a standard for our own possibilities in love.
Tommy Harding drank too much. Mrs. Harding tried to draw him aside, away from the party that was not meant for him. Too late, Tommy’s insecurities surfaced and he set out on a course aimed directly at Brody Miller. He suddenly stumbled across the yard, grabbed Brody’s arm, and jerked him around, squaring off.
“I don’t appreciate you comin’ in here and taking over my daughter’s party. Who the fuck are you anyway? Don’t touch her.”
“Daddy!” Jenna gasped in genuine shock.
The crowded yard grew silent so quickly it was as if we were all holding our breath, waiting for this moment.
Jenna’s father and Brody were chest to chest. Brody had the advantage by about three inches. Standing with yet another beer and a cigarette in one hand, Tommy used the other to jab a finger in Brody’s face. Brody took a step back. Jenna was hold
ing his arm. That only infuriated her father more.
I closed my eyes before the first punch could be thrown. All around me people were on the move; standing way back, or pushing through the side gate onto the street. I heard a lawn chair scrape against the flagstone ground and then fall over, as did a bottle that broke. I heard Jenna screaming at her father to stop, her mother wailing like a Greek chorus. I heard Brody quietly telling Tommy Harding to calm down, but I was waiting breathlessly for the tipping point. Brody’s next suggestion that maybe he should leave was overridden by Jenna’s declaration that she was going with him. That sealed it. Both were cut off by a sudden crunch and a thud, a grunt. A highpitched scream rose over the music.
Jenna got between her father and Brody. Her red hair was like a flag, and the only color to be distinguished in the yard lit by lanterns. She was not trying to stop her father but trying to protect Brody. Her choice spurred Tommy Harding into a fury. And it was as if some silent call had gone out. Suddenly, nearly half a dozen men, including Jenna’s former boyfriend, were rushing Brody. They surrounded him, tackling him to the ground.
I heard them calling Brody every dirty word and name they could utter.
“Call the cops. Call the cops!”
It was my own voice I heard, disembodied and shrill. I wanted to make them stop, but I was terrified of the men turning on me as well. No one went to Brody’s aid, and Jenna was wrenched from his side. Once again, he was on his own. He didn’t belong on City Island, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get a chance to be with Jenna Harding.
I don’t remember hearing police sirens. But the fight had lost its momentum and the men were weary. I couldn’t see Brody, but I knew I had to get out of there. Fear took over. I stepped over the debris that was now the backyard. The birthday cake had been smashed and destroyed, the colorful frosting a globby mess on the ground.
Jenna was crying hysterically and being comforted by her mother, but she kept calling out Brody’s name. Her father was slouched on a step at the back of the house. Another man sat bent over on the tree stump that minutes ago held the birthday cake. Brody was on his knees, silently hunched over and motionless. Two men stood over him, as if daring him to get up. Finally, I took a hesitant step toward Brody, but someone stood in my way to prevent my passage.
“It’s all over. Go home. There’s nothing to see. Just go home.”
“Brody? Come on. Get up. Let’s get out of here,” I heard my own trembling voice.
“Don’t worry about him. We’ll see that he gets home. It was a fight and now it’s over.”
“But he didn’t start it,” I said.
The man got right in my face. “Go…home.”
I hung around outside, shivering not from the night air but from having watched Brody outnumbered by five or six able-bodied men. There were still a couple dozen partygoers hanging around. I waited for Brody to come out so we could head back into the city together.
Maybe twenty minutes later a police car ambled its way up the street. The two officers got out and approached the house as if they were just stopping by for a friendly cup of coffee. No rush to see if a teen named Brody Miller was hurt and maybe needed an ambulance.
I decided that Brody would probably be okay.
I went home.
Jenna was not in school the entire next week. Neither was Brody. The talk was not about the ruined birthday party but about the fight, and Brody getting his ass kicked. There was also talk that Brody and Jenna had run off together. I preferred that story to the one that kept playing in my mind.
Jen returned, sullen and standoffish, for the last three weeks of school, and finally graduation. She had nothing to say about anything, except that she and Brody had broken up.
Okay, I could see that happening. She wasn’t going to defy her own father. She wasn’t going to take a risk, or stand up for what she believed or what she wanted. I can’t say if that was a mistake, but it was certainly her loss.
I, for one, never saw Brody again.
* * *
It was years before I thought I’d figured out what happened to Brody Miller. I couldn’t tell Jenna. Anyway, I kind of lost touch with her a few years after we graduated. Once I did ask her, flat out, if she ever heard from Brody. She said, simply, no. End of conversation. I heard that someone contacted his group home supervisor only to be told that Brody was no longer there. He was past being a minor, a ward of the state, and if he chose to take off without telling anyone, he had the right.
Jenna and I drifted further apart. What used to hold us together no longer existed. I guess that was as much by choice as it was by circumstance. I know now that you have to work at the things you want, like friendship or love. She landed a job at a law firm in New York. I finished college and returned home. Then one day I realized that I had never returned to the island since the night of Jenna’s birthday party. But that was also the start of some not-so-far-fetched thoughts that wouldn’t go away.
Like believing that Tommy Harding and his friends had killed Brody Miller that night and buried him in the Harding’s backyard.
After a while it didn’t even seem so crazy an idea. I’d already witnessed some of the terrible things people were capable of doing to each other, all to protect themselves, their families, their homes…or in the name of God.
Then, one day, I took a bus back to City Island, getting off the first stop outside a restaurant called the Sea Shore. That was as far as I got. I made myself sick wondering, What if I’m right? What if Jenna’s father goes to jail? What if her family is forced to sell their home, and they leave the island in disgrace? What if Jenna hates me? If Brody was really dead, could I be forgiven for catching and turning in his killer, the father of a friend?
But I wasn’t prepared for a full-fledged flashback of the night of the fight, chilling me to the bone on an eighty-degree day. I turned around and caught the next bus off the island. I was shaking like crazy.
It was a year later when I came up with a real plan. I first went to the police precinct that covered City Island and asked about an incident one spring night nearly seven years earlier at the home of one of the residents. The cops made a show of checking old ledgers and computer databases, and said they could find nothing out of the ordinary. The only thing recorded for that Saturday night was an incident involving a small boat that had been stolen by teens and later run aground.
I did a search of newspapers articles and reports for that entire week. Nothing. I kept thinking, Cover-up. Or, had the police arrived to drive Brody off the island, maybe all the way home? But that was part of the problem again. Brody had no home. He’d wanted City Island to be his home. Maybe he’d gotten his wish.
I Googled his name and the date and still got nowhere. But it was more likely that without anyone to champion him, Brody could have met with foul play. Another thing…people vanish all the time. Sometimes, right under our noses.
There was no help for it. I knew I was going to have to go back and see Tommy Harding.
I don’t think I was prepared to learn that Jenna was back, although I’d heard rumors over the years. She was no longer with her parents but in her own place. I couldn’t find her listed in the local directory, so I called the City Island Historical Society, located in a converted school. An elderly voice answered. Of course he knew the Hardings. He also knew nothing of the night that stayed in my memory.
It was a weather perfect day when I next returned. I got off the bus several blocks from the corner where I’d turn to approach the Harding house. I used the walk to look around and found, eerily, that everything seemed pretty much the same as the last time I’d been this far. There was a craft fair in full swing, and the sidewalks were crowded with tables and makeshift booths of local folks selling their stuff. I bypassed it all.
I turned the corner and approached the Harding house. I was caught off guard when I realized that someone was sitting on the tiny porch. It was Tommy Harding in the flesh, alive and well. I stood on the curb and s
ilently stared at him, too struck by warp time to be able to say anything. He leaned forward in his decaying wicker chair.
“Can I help you? You lost or something?”
“Mr. Harding?”
“Yeah. Who’s asking?”
“I went to school with Jenna. Maybe you remember me?”
He silently regarded me, so still and so coldly that I expected him to yell, Get the hell out of here!
“Sure. I remember you now. How’ve you been? Jenna hasn’t mentioned you in years. Well, come on in.”
I walked through the open gate and up to the steps.
“I know you weren’t expecting me. I’m meeting some friends for lunch in a while,” I improvised smoothly. “I thought that since I was here…”
“You want to know how Jenna’s doing?”
“How are you and Mrs. Harding?” I stalled, minding my manners.
“Fine, fine. Grandparents now, thanks to my son living in San Diego. Wife’s out at that street fair. Come on up and have a seat.”
“Thanks, but I can’t stay long,” I said. “I did want to ask about Jenna. How’s she doing, and everything. I lost touch with her a few years ago.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. I wondered if he was putting together Jenna leaving City Island to go to high school and meeting me. And Brody.
“Well…you know Jenna. She became Miss Independent after she finished high school. Moved into the city, got a job…”
“Did she ever get married?”
“Two years ago. A young guy she grew up with from around here. He’s a cop in the city. Ran into Jenna when he gave her a speeding ticket, and boom. Before you could say City Island they’re planning a wedding.” He cackled gleefully at his own joke. “Sorry you weren’t invited.”
He wasn’t sorry at all, and neither was I. Things change. “I hope she’s happy.”
“She sure did make a beautiful bride. Come inside. I have an album with all the pictures.”
He got up and headed into the house. I hadn’t expected Tommy Harding to make it so easy for me. The inside of the house had not changed either. The first thing I still saw was that Home Sweet Home sign on the wall. It suddenly bothered me a lot to see it. While he was trying to find the right album, I walked toward the window that faced out on the backyard.
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