by Cataneo, D.
Roy said, “You better quit eating glue.”
Nicky eyed Dad closely during supper. Dad sat calmly in his white T-shirt, arms on the table, and chewed his meat loaf and sipped his can of Ballantine. Same as always.
Nicky thought, “One cool customer.”
For a long while, the incident gave Nicky the creeps, the willies, and a first-class case of brain cooties. Starting on November 22, 1963, he questioned everything, from the Tooth Fairy to whether Mr. Ed, the talking horse on television, could really talk. And for the first time in his life, Nicky wondered, with a queasy belly, “What can happen next?”
The answer, of course: plenty.
Help 4
What could happen next? One thing could lead to another. And before you know it, your big brother is off to war in a jungle on the other side of the world. Off to the war they showed on TV every night, in living color, mostly deep greens and bright reds.
That’s what.
Nicky sat on his bed, the scent of Roy’s aftershave lingering in the spring air. He glanced at his alarm clock, which was alongside Roy’s alarm clock. Roy left fifteen minutes ago. Only about ten zillion minutes till Roy came home.
“One year,” Nicky thought. “I’m going to need help with this.”
He found Dad in the living room. Dad was uneasy in his easy chair. Dad stared at the television, without watching the television. The TV was tuned to a movie musical. On the screen, a man wearing overalls crooned to a woman wearing a straw hat. The woman did leg-kicks on a hay bale.
Nicky asked, “Want me to change this, Dad?”
Nothing.
Nicky thought, “This is bad.”
Dad hated musicals. They were on his hit list, along with Blue Castle hamburgers, cars manufactured by American Motors, the New York Mets, and old man Van Der Woort from the sixth floor, who never held the elevator for you. If Dad’s mind was right, he would rather swallow sewing needles than watch a musical.
Nicky said, “Aren’t the Yanks playing today?”
Nothing.
Dad was on the premises, but Dad was not there. Dad was in a daze. Nicky had never seen his father in such a state. He had seen Dad happy, angry, tired, disgusted, confused, worried. One time he even saw Dad leave the house wearing two different-colored shoes. That was a famous mistake in family history. But dazed—this was a new one.
Dad wasn’t the type. He was unflappable. He was a cool customer. Dad had seen it all, from the Great Depression to World War II. Dad hit the winning basket in the 1947 North Bronx ADC championship game. Dad climbed the fire escape like a superhero when they were locked out of the apartment. Dad laughed—actually laughed!—when he caught the rat in a coffee can the night it stepped off the dumbwaiter into the kitchen. One night, Dad won $62 in a poker game. Dad once saw Babe Ruth stopped at a light in Riverdale and another time shook Dwight Eisenhower’s hand at a luncheonette in Yonkers.
But now, with Roy on his way to Vietnam, Dad looked like Superman with a lapful of kryptonite. Dad looked like he did the weekend he had the stomach flu.
“Hey, Dad, I’m gonna go roller-skate on the parkway,” Nicky said.
Nothing.
Dad’s watery eyes stared at the television. On the screen, a man milked a cow in rhythm to trombone music. Poor Dad. He had always been a world-class worrier when it came to his boys. The highness of fences, the sharpness of scissors, the slipperiness of staircases, the ravages of exotic diseases, the darkness in a stranger’s heart—Dad saw potential danger to his kids everywhere. Now his older boy was on his way to war. The airplane ride alone was enough to cause deep, deep worry.
“Dad cannot help me,” Nicky muttered.
He found Mom in the kitchen. She stood over the Formica table, peeling garlic. She wore her most massive apron. Her short black hair was wrapped in a red-and-white kerchief. She was dressed to cook.
“What’s with the long face?” Mom said. “You’re not going to walk around here like that for a whole year. Count your blessings.”
Nicky thought, “Okay, let’s see. My brother is gone and my father is a zombie. But at least I have not swallowed rat poison; a steam roller has not crushed my skull; a hand grenade has not exploded in my pants …”
Nicky fibbed and said, “I have a headache.”
“Well, be thankful you have a head,” Mom said. “You don’t see me sitting around complaining. I’m making myself useful by cooking.”
In the small kitchen, garlic sizzled, water boiled, and the oven preheated. Mom toiled amid a pile of peeled potatoes; opened tomato cans, serrated lids up; a pyramid of cream cheese bricks; crumbled crackers on a sheet of waxed paper; a haystack of something green and leafy. The air was hazy with flour.
Nicky thought, “Mom is in bad shape.”
When Mom was upset, going over the edge and around the bend, off her rocker, she hit the kitchen and cooked the way some people hit the bars and drank. One night, famous in family lore, Roy disappeared for six hours. He was fourteen and he vanished from the face of the earth. (Turned out Roy and Fishbone Callahan walked the one hundred or so blocks to Yankee Stadium, to stand outside and wait for foul balls.) While Dad frantically searched the dark streets of the Bronx, Mom cooked up a lasagna, baked an apple pie and two pumpkin pies, and churned out five quarts of escarole soup.
Now Nicky stood in the preheated, boiling, sizzling kitchen and he thought, “Roy will be gone for a year. We’re gonna need to open a restaurant.”
“You won’t see me sitting around staring into space,” Mom said, chopping something orange. “I lived through World War Two. My two brothers were overseas for almost three years and we didn’t sit around staring into space.”
Nicky knew the stories of Uncle Dominic and Uncle Vinny the way most kids knew the stories of Curious George and the Cat in the Hat. Uncle Dominic served as an airplane mechanic in Europe. He was shipped home safe and sound in 1945 with a bowel infection. Uncle Vinny was a star second baseman, moviestar-handsome, and industrious enough to go to Fordham for part of one semester. He enlisted in the navy the day after Pearl Harbor and became a frogman. On a mission in the Pacific, he was eaten by a giant clam. His name was listed on the War Memorial plaque, the one recently splashed with graffiti, down in Grant Park, and Nicky was surprised Mom would bring him up on this night.
Nicky said, “Ma.”
Mom said, “I hope we have pot cheese.”
Nicky thought, “I wonder what Checkers is up to. Man’s best friend.”
He found the creaky brown mutt stretched out at the apartment door, graying snout perched on the threshold. Checkers’s nose twitched. He was sniffing the hallway air, waiting for Roy to get off the elevator, the way he waited for Roy to come home from school, all those afternoons.
“You can’t lie here a whole year, Check,” Nicky said, although he did see the attraction of the idea. He rubbed his hand along the dog’s back. Checkers shifted, groaned, broke wind.
“Help,” Nicky squeaked.
And his plea was answered by a sweet, wonderful sound. The noise was faint, but clear. Nicky moved away from Checkers. He entered the hot kitchen, searching, following. Mom didn’t look up. The glorious sounds came from outside. They floated on the spring breeze, drifting through the kitchen curtains, into Nicky’s eager ears.
Nicky’s Stupid Shenanigans 5
The sounds gently rose from the PS 19 schoolyard, directly below the kitchen window. Boyish shouts. A dull thwock, unmistakably the impact of a stickball bat against a Spaldeen. There is no other sound like it. The clatter of a wooden bat on asphalt, the shriek of a boy, the jangle of a chain-link fence. “Home run,” Nicky remembered. “Those were the sounds of a home run.” Music to his ears.
Nicky moved past Mom toward the kitchen window, toward the noise. He walked in a trance, as if hypnotized by something beautiful and magical. He was lured to the window. He walked like he did in his dream about Jane Jetson, the one where she blew kisses and crooked her finger at him.
&
nbsp; “Do you hear that?” Nicky said to Mom.
“We need eggs,” Mom said. She stirred something thick and gloppy in a bowl. She was building up a sweat.
“They’re playing stickball out there.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Mom panted, grunting, putting her shoulder into it. “Nobody plays stickball around here anymore.”
Nicky parted the curtains and looked out at the sunny day. The schoolyard was empty. Not even a pigeon. And now the schoolyard was silent. The music had stopped. Nicky stared. He stared till his eyeballs ached. He wanted them to be there.
And they emerged, as if out of a fog. Icky Rossilli, pitching. Billy Braggs, hitting. Skipper and Fishbone, pounding their mitts, throwing long shadows onto the gray asphalt. Best of all, out in center field, a tall lanky boy shifted from foot to foot, and spit through his teeth, and tugged at his black baseball cap. Vintage Roy, from the good old days. From the pink of his cheeks to the rolled cuffs of his dungarees, Roy appeared to be roughly age thirteen. Nicky took in this scene from the beloved past, and the sweet sounds—thwock, clatter, shout—rose up again.
“I can really hear them. I can really see them,” Nicky said.
“Oh, THAT nonsense,” Mom said. She shook her head. “You’re starting your stupid shenanigans again.”
Mom knew that Nicky was seeing things. Lovely, old things. This was not a recent development. For years, Nicky had conjured scenes out of the past, right before his eyes.
“The last thing we need today is for you to start acting like a nut,” said Mom, clopping a knife on the Formica as she diced.
Nicky was sure he was not a nut. The visions didn’t haunt him or scare him. They didn’t command him to take a hatchet to his family or to eat cockroaches or bark at the milkman. The visions never came on suddenly. They were strictly voluntary. Nicky tuned in to them the way you tune in to a favorite radio program. He enjoyed seeing things from the past. As far as he was concerned, it was no different from looking at old photographs or listening to an old song. No different from remembering the good old days that went along with the photos and the songs. Nicky merely took the reminiscing a few steps closer to the slippery edge.
For example, one Sunday afternoon Dad, Roy, Nicky, and Mr. Greenblatt who lived down on the second floor took in a game together at Yankee Stadium. They sat in cheap seats, high in the third deck. The Yankees were in last place, and they were having a very bad day. They let fly balls dribble out of their mitts and they made throws that were too short or too long and they struck out or popped up whenever the moment called for a big hit. The small crowd on hand booed. It was like being at a party that turned bad.
Dad and Mr. Greenblatt were drinking Ballantine beer. They chattered on and on about the mighty Yankees of the good old days. They spoke of the Great DiMaggio, and their faces softened and their eyes got moist. The way they described him, the Great DiMaggio played center field for the Yankees as if he were a prince with angel wings. Mr. Greenblatt belched and said, “Joltin’ Joe was regal.” At that moment Nicky peered down at the current Yankee center fielder, who was picking his nose.
So Nicky concentrated and stared until his eyeballs hurt. And out of a fog trotted Joe DiMaggio, in the fluttery flannels from the newsreels. Nicky stared hard around the magnificent stadium and the crowd, no longer booing, was on its feet, cheering with mad delight. Everybody seemed happy. Nicky spelled out this grand vision for Dad, Roy, and Mr. Greenblatt.
“I see Joe D.!” Nicky exclaimed.
Mr. Greenblatt peered into the neck of his Ballantine bottle and said, “Did he get into the beer?”
“Don’t mind him. He sees mirages out of the past,” Dad said.
“He’s just plain nuts,” Roy said.
Mr. Greenblatt, who had a huge head and a thick Hell’s Kitchen accent, clapped Nicky on the back and said, “Awwww, he’s all right. The little fellow just has a craving to give the modern world the slip. Who can blame him?” And Nicky thought Mr. Greenblatt was a genius.
Now, as Mom cooked, Nicky looked out the kitchen window at the boys on the playground, and he was grateful for the view. It was a wonderful scene. Roy and his pals looked as innocent as stuffed animals. The old gang wore their old clothes—dungarees, white T-shirts, and canvas sneakers. Roy removed his cap and revealed a crew cut, flat and bristly. Nicky fondly remembered the crew cut. It was Roy’s trademark hairdo before he let his hair grow over his forehead, over his eyes, down his neck, the moppish hairstyle that boiled Dad’s blood. Nicky was comforted to see Roy’s old crew cut, thin layer of Brylcreem glistening in the sunshine.
Nicky watched Roy play stickball. He watched Roy swing the bat for a solid hit. He watched Roy take first base. He watched Roy lean his hands on his knees, just like the big leaguers. He watched Roy move smoothly off the base—his trademark little bounce and hop. Roy dancing in the sunshine. Nicky wondered, “I’m crazy? Who wouldn’t want to see this?”
Nicky withdrew his head from the kitchen window and said to Mom, “Guess what?”
“Oww,” Mom said sharply. She had clipped a finger with the knife.
“Know what I’m going to do this summer?”
“Right on the knuckle, as always.”
“I’m gonna play stickball this summer.”
Mom carried her bloody finger to the faucet and said, “Don’t be crazy. Nobody plays stickball around here anymore.”
Hypnotizing Icky 6
This happened two weeks later.
Nicky sipped Kool-Aid, sunshine on his face, and kept watch out the kitchen window. On the kitchen table were Roy’s old baseball mitt, Roy’s old Spaldeen, and Roy’s old yellow stick-ball bat. In a previous life, the bat was a mop handle. Nicky surveyed the PS 19 schoolyard, looking for something old, hoping for something new. He stared at the PS 19 playground until his eyeballs ached. All he got for his trouble was a pain in the eyeballs. Down on the asphalt, a pigeon waddled, a paper cup tumbled end-over-end. There was nothing from the old days. No Roy. No stickball. The sweet visions hadn’t returned since the morning Roy shipped out.
“I’ve lost my powers,” Nicky moaned. “Another change, for the worse.”
Mr. Misener, the grouchy superintendent of Eggplant Alley, dragged a garbage can down the back stairs of Building B. He sang one of the old love songs, warbling over the racket of the banging metal can. It was the kind of beautiful, soft spring day that made crabby men sing. The kind of day that shrieked for stickball.
Nicky stared harder. He wrinkled his brow, adjusting his forehead the way Dad adjusted the rabbit-ears antenna on the television.
Nothing old.
Nothing new.
In the late afternoon, the sun put a yellow glow into the tenement windows. Cool shadows crept across the stoops. Nicky watched the bricks change from red to orange to purple in the fading light. But he didn’t see the beauty of the sun and light. Instead of enjoying what was there, Nicky pined for what was missing.
In the far corner of the PS 19 schoolyard, a basketball thunked and a metal backboard twanged. Two black kids from the Groton Avenue tenements were shooting hoops. Nicky’s stomach grumbled. He thought, “If they can play their game, why can’t we play ours?”
Nicky let his eyes sweep the schoolyard, one last time. Mom would come around the kitchen soon and begin to build sandwiches for supper, a Martini family tradition on Sunday nights. Then Nicky wouldn’t be allowed to leave the apartment, no matter if the Yankees themselves showed up at the playground, shouting at Nicky to grab a glove and come down.
And out of the long shadows of Building B appeared the redheaded Icky Rossilli. One of Roy’s old gang.
Icky walked briskly toward the short wall on the schoolyard’s edge. He walked as if the wall were a train that might pull out of the station. He couldn’t wait to get to that wall. Icky hurried and tossed glances over his shoulder, keeping watch on the black boys playing basketball. Icky slumped onto the wall, sighed deeply, fired up a cigarette. He examined the concrete betwee
n his sneakers. His head swiveled to check on the black boys on the basketball court. Nicky remembered that Icky was a pitcher.
Nicky squeezed the Spaldeen ball as the elevator rattled toward the lobby. He had found the ball stuck in Roy’s mitt in the back of their closet. The ball must have plopped into the mitt during that last stickball game. The ball sat in the mitt in the closet for four years. Nicky looked at the ball, once pink, now darkened to the color of rotten meat. He thought about the ball hiding in the dark closet for the past four years. “Sounds good to me,” Nicky thought.
Icky’s head snapped up when he heard Nicky’s footsteps. Icky was on guard out here. “Hey. What do you know, little Nicky Martini,” Icky said without enthusiasm.
Icky wasn’t Nicky’s first choice to find on the PS 19 schoolyard this afternoon. Icky was a hard case. Nicky thought Icky was not the type to get enthusiastic about playing stickball, even for old times’ sake.
Icky was not a boy to get enthusiastic about anything, except maybe a six-pack and a girlie magazine. He was the first of Roy’s friends to swear, the first to smoke, the first to get a girlfriend, the first to dump his girlfriend, the first to get a job, the first to get fired from a job. Icky was barrel-chested and tough, and he tried to act tougher. Icky talked a lot about joining the marines and killing commies, but he never got around to it. Icky also said he would cheerfully go to Vietnam if drafted. He made the boast after he was sure he would never get the call. Icky was among the luckiest in Nixon’s new draft lottery. The Ping-Pong balls had tumbled his way. His birthday had come up 351st—no chance of getting drafted. In this same lottery, Roy’s birthday came up number one—guaranteed to be drafted. “The only lottery a Martini ever won,” Dad joked.
“Hear anything from Roy?” Icky said, yawning.
Nicky told Icky about the postcard from Roy. The card was passed out to the troops upon arrival in Vietnam. The card was pre-printed with the message that BLANK—and Roy wrote in his name here—had arrived in the Republic of Vietnam and was awaiting assignment. Mom taped this postcard to the refrigerator.