by Rita Lakin
“Thanks for lunch,” says Bella, calling to Evvie in the kitchen on her way out, “but next time could we have the fricassee?”
Evvie mumbles something unintelligible.
The girls leave. I go into the tiny kitchen and sit down at the minuscule dinette table and chairs set. Evvie’s back is to me.
“We’ve got to stop this, Ev.”
Evvie turns. She’s in tears. “I can’t. I just can’t. I’m so miserable.” She drops down onto the other chair and leans her head on her arms. “I miss him every moment!”
With that she looks up at me pleadingly. “Maybe if I see him again one more time...”
I reach over and touch her arm. “Honey, you know you mustn’t. It’s over. You have to stop torturing yourself.”
The doorbell rings.
“You answer,” Evvie says. “Probably one of the girls left something. I don’t want to talk to anybody.”
To my immense surprise there is a familiar man standing on the other side of the screen door: Joe Markowitz, Evvie’s ex-husband. I haven’t seen him in years. I can’t help but stare. Time hasn’t been good to him. He seems to have shrunk from his original five foot seven. His back has rounded out like a man with osteoporosis. There’s not much left of his original curly black hair, only shreds of gray tufts. His black eyes, which once seemed big and glittering, are pale and washed out. The expression on his face is mournful.
He manages a small smile. “Hello, Gladdy. Long time no see.”
I can’t take my eyes off him. “Evvie, come look who’s here.”
Evvie comes to the door. Her eyes widen in shock. “Joe? What the hell are you doing here?”
He gives her a half-toothless grin. “Guess what. I’ve just moved down to Florida. And guess what. I rented an apartment right here in Lanai Gardens.”
For a moment, she is speechless. Then, “Oh, swell,” she says in disgust, “just what I needed.”
BREAKFAST WITH THE BICKERSONS
We’re sitting at my dining room table—Evvie, Joe, and I—sipping coffee.
There used to be a radio show my mother and I listened to when I was growing up. Way before there was television. It was hilarious. It was about a couple named Bickerson, John and Blanche, who did nothing but bicker. (Get it? Bickering Bickersons? Shows were kind of simplistic those days.) Don Ameche and Frances Langford, two wonderful actors, played the parts. But they had nothing on the couple airing their show in my apartment this morning. The bickering Markowitzes.
Yesterday Joe stayed only a few moments to give Evvie news she didn’t want. The way she put it, after he left, was that she’d rather have the heartbreak of psoriasis. But I immediately had it in my head that maybe Joe might take her mind off Philip, so I invited them both for breakfast. I guess it’s working, though perhaps not in the way I imagined.
Evvie says, “So in all of Fort Lauderdale, you had to pick this place to plant your tuckus?”
Joe says, “I thought it would be nice to be near family.” With this he looks pleadingly at me.
I shrug. “Sure, that’s a good reason. More coffee?”
Evvie: “No.” She glares at me. Translation: Why did she ever let me talk her into this stupid breakfast?
Joe: “Sure, thanks, you always did make a good cup of java, Glad.”
I, however, remember a different Joe, criticizing everything anyone in our family did. My coffee he called “like mud.” Seems like Joe is rewriting history. In the past he never wanted to have anything to do with us.
Evvie, helping herself to more pancakes: “So our daughter finally got sick of having to take care of you? She threw you out?”
Joe: “Martha did no such thing. She liked having me live with them.”
Evvie: “I’ll bet. But then again, I remember she always used to take in ugly stray dogs. Out of pity.”
Joe, getting hot under the collar: “I was a big help to them. Her Elliot couldn’t change a light bulb without me.”
Evvie: “Yeah, yeah. I remember how good you were around our apartment. I had to get on my hands and knees and beg before you’d ever change a light bulb for me.”
“More syrup?” I ask, putting my body between theirs before they come to blows. Both of them push the bottle away, narrowly missing spilling that sticky stuff on me. I’d better not get too close.
Evvie daintily wipes her mouth. “I always meant to ask how come your darling family didn’t take you in when you went broke? Again.”
Joe, hotter: “My sisters wanted to. Only they had their own kids living with them!”
Evvie, under her breath: “Losers, one and all.”
Joe stands. He never could take anything bad said against his clan. “I heard that. Take it back!”
Evvie, standing also: “Why should I? Truth is truth. And besides I’m not married to you anymore, so I don’t have to pretend to like people who hate me!”
Joe, moving swiftly to the door, his napkin still under his chin: “And vice-a-versa, babe. Vice-a- versa!”
One slam of the front door screen, then another.
Evvie’s voice outside my kitchen window. “Go downstairs the other way. I can’t stand the sight of you!”
“Vice-a-versa again, bitch!”
Silence. That went well, I think, smiling. Then my smile fades as I remember Joe when we first met. Standing tall, wearing his army uniform proudly. It was late 1944; the war was soon to come to its dramatic end, but we didn’t know that yet. Excitement was in the air. Danger. Couples falling in love and marrying just before the men were shipped out overseas. The women not knowing whether their husbands would ever return. Evvie and Joe were caught up in the drama. With his curly black hair and flashing dark eyes, Joe was a looker! And Evvie, the exciting, beautiful redhead, so in love. The two of them holding hands and looking at one another, their shining glances saying This is it. This is real love and it will last forever.
Joe came back alive and then reality set in.
I can still hear them shouting at one another from the stairwells.
Oh, well, at least it took her mind off Philip.
THE SCREAM
NEW YEAR’S EVE 1961
A woman screamed. For a moment, everything and everyone seemed to freeze. The street was still. The air seemed not to move. Then, almost in slow motion, Gladdy saw Jack turn toward the alley from where that chilling sound came. And, without thought, he started running toward it. Gladdy felt herself reacting too slowly. By the time she found her voice and called after him, “Jack, no!” he was already out of sight.
A heart-stopping moment later she heard her husband shout, “Patty, run!”
And then the shot.
To her ears it was as if a small firecracker went off, but she knew in her heart this was something worse. She’d never before heard gunfire, but she understood that’s what it was. In the same almost paralyzed moment she and Emily looked fearfully at one another. Then again out the window at the alley. Surely Jack would reappear and grin up at them and tell them it was some false alarm.
Why fool herself? This was something bad. Gladdy ran for the door, not even taking her coat. With a last anguished look at her daughter, she raced out.
“Stay here, Emily!” she cried as the door slammed behind her.
NEW YORK JACK
When Jack climbs out of the taxi in front of his hotel, he stops to smell the air. Nowhere in the world smells like New York. He is instantly jazzed. The city does that to him. He smiles as he watches the mobs of people moving along the street. Just about every single one of them has a cell phone to an ear.
He’s purposely chosen this hotel because it’s closest to his former precinct. It looks kind of run-down, but it works with his budget. He thinks ruefully that his cop’s pension was small when he retired years ago, but now it’s ridiculous in these inflated times. There is no room for grandiose expenditures. A thought pushes into his head about the money it cost to take Gladdy on that impromptu runaway trip to Pago Pago. Be a long time
until that credit card is paid off. Well— he smiles remorsefully—it was almost worthwhile.
He has called his old buddy Tim Reilly in advance, and Tim is waiting for him at his old precinct. At least he knows one guy who is still there.
After checking in, Jack drops his bags in his room and walks out again. He doesn’t want to take a cab or bus; he just wants to walk the city streets and absorb every image. The cop in him comes back instantly and he finds his eyes darting all over, taking everything in. His back straightens, his step quickens. He is home.
How he’s longed for this city. It crept into your bones, and no matter how far you went, or for how long, you never forgot it; you never stopped missing your true emotional home. How many times over these years since Faye died has he contemplated moving back? New York is alive, while Florida—let’s face it; they call it God’s waiting room to wherever the hell or heaven you go to next.
But he stays in Fort Lauderdale because of Morrie. Because Morrie became a cop, too, and Jack wants to remain close. To advise and just be there for him. Then again, had he left, he wouldn’t have met Gladdy Gold. B’shert. Fate.
Anyway, it’s been a while since he’s visited his daughter; Lisa, and Dan and the boys. About time he came to see his latest grandchild.
He knows, before he eventually heads back to Florida, he has to make one other stop: Zabar’s. The ultimate take-out deli. The best in the whole world.
Funny, he reflects, Gladdy and her husband, Jack, had lived on the West Side, too. Faye and I probably hit Zabar’s to shop at the same time they did on some Sunday mornings. I must ask Gladdy about that.
Walking into that store with its thousand luscious smells. Picking up bagels, lox, whitefish, and cream cheese for the ritual Sunday morning family breakfast. Oh, yes, and the heft of the hernia-causing New York Times. What great memories.
He smiles as he passes an alley. Not such great smells in there.
He even likes the noise of the garbage trucks picking up in the middle of the night. Oh, well, he thinks happily, once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker.
Same old precinct on Fifty-fourth Street. Jack walks inside. Doesn’t look as ratty as it used to. Still smells just as bad from years and years of piss and vomit and worse; and above all, fear. He is amused at himself, at how he is so aware of the odors in the city in contrast to Florida. People waiting in the police station look the same as always, bedraggled, aggressive, and frightened. He wonders if the plumbing is the same. The pipes used to roar every time someone used the johns.
Jack gives his name to the desk sergeant as he glances at the cop on duty. God, he thinks, was I ever that young?
He is directed to Detective Timothy Reilly’s office. Reilly stands up as he enters, then hurries to him. They bear-hug. Tim is as genuinely glad to see him as he is to see Tim. They look one another over. Tim hasn’t changed all that much. Just everything rounder and heavier. Still the same cowlick popped up on top of that Irish carrot-red head now sprinkled with gray. Jack wonders how he shapes up compared to his old buddy.
“How come they haven’t sent you out to pasture yet?” Jack asks.
Tim laughs. “I’m the only one left who knows where the bodies are buried.” Tim pours himself a refill from a thermos. “Green tea?” he offers as they sit down.
A raised eyebrow is Jack’s response. “What? No more station-house sludge for coffee?”
Tim points to his chest. “The old ticker can’t handle that slop anymore. The wife read some article about Japanese green tea keeping you alive longer.”
Jack holds up his cup. “As I recall, Mary Lou was never wrong about anything.” He grins.
“You got that right.” Tim grins, too.
Jack runs through a litany of names. Wondering where all the old gang are. “Morton?”
“Dead. Heart attack.”
“Janowsky?”
“Retired. Mexico.”
“Porter?”
“Dead. Died in his bed.”
“Furino?”
“Shot in a domestic three years ago, had to retire.”
Jack apologizes for not staying in touch. “I promised,” he says contritely.
“That’s what they all say,” Tim answers. “Nobody does. Once they’re out of here... fugeddaboudit. How’s the kid? He always wanted to be a cop like Daddy. End up as a fireman?”
“Morrie stayed the course. He’s a detective in my own local precinct, not five minutes from where I live in Fort Lauderdale.”
“Way to go. My boy grew up to be a Con Edison repairman. He always did hate the sight of blood.”
“And Mary Lou?”
“Same old, same old. Really old,” Tim says, grinning. “She won’t let me retire. No way I come home and sit around and mess up her house. Her house.” This is an old joke and they laugh at it. All the guys used to say they were more afraid of retirement than any perp, because their wives would murder them for being underfoot.
“So what’s this about? You didn’t come to see if I got uglier than you.”
Jack takes a deep breath. “I want to open an old case. A cold case.”
Tim grimaces. “Too much sunburn? Or maybe those TV shows they got now made you homesick.”
“I met a woman.”
“Ahh. You old dog, you.”
“Her husband was murdered. Twenty-sixth precinct. New Year’s Eve, 1961. Someone attacked a girl. Her husband played hero and got a bullet in the gut. College professor. Columbia.”
Tim looks at him incredulously. “Get outta here! A case over forty years ago? You gotta be kidding.”
“It’s standing in the way of her committing to marry me.”
Tim smiles wryly. “Come on. That’s crazy. Tell her to snap out of it.”
“I wish it were that easy.”
“And you want to solve it now? You? Single- handed? I don’t have to tell you how idiotic you sound.”
“Don’t I know it?”
Tim Reilly sits back in his swivel chair, examining his old buddy’s determined face. He shakes his head unbelievingly. “You remember that old TV show? Must have been way back in the fifties— ‘There’s a million stories in the naked city’? That’s it, Naked City. And you have to pick the one in a million impossible ones.”
Jack looks sheepishly at him. “Guess so.”
“You really intend to go through with this? I can’t talk you out of it.”
“ ’Fraid not.”
“I hope you didn’t promise your lady love that you’d solve it, O hero cop?”
“She doesn’t even know I’m here.”
“Good, keep it that way. ’Cause when you fall on your ass she won’t know that, either.”
Jack grins. “You will help me, won’t you?”
“Couldn’t think of any other sucker?”
“ ’Fraid you’re it.”
“You know it ain’t gonna be easy.”
“That’s why I came to you. So you’ll give the guys at the Twenty-sixth a heads-up?”
“Wouldn’t miss their catcalls for anything.” Tim stands and pretends to swat him with a folder. “Like there’s anybody else dumb enough around here but me.” Jack pretends to duck. “You’re gonna make me go out on a limb for you and you—not even sending me a damn postcard with some orange trees all these years?”
They both laugh. Jack places his hand over his heart. “Mea culpa.”
“Yeah. Like you know from mea culpa.”
Tim walks Jack to the door. “Don’t call me, I’ll call you. What fleabag are you staying in?”
Jack shakes Tim’s hand. “The Dartford down the corner. And I’m itching already. Thanks for the support.”
“De nada.” Tim grins. “You always were a sucker for lost causes.”
Jack starts to walk down the hall. Tim calls after him. “How long are ya staying in town? Have time for a Yankees game?”
“Sure,” he says. “Depends on you. If I get this thing solved real fast, you’re on.”
“Then, that’s a no, I take it.”
Jack grins, feeling wonderful. Nothing like old friends. He’s glad he found Tim again.
JACK’S FAMILY
Jack sits on a bench in the neighborhood pocket park across the street from where his daughter, Lisa, lives on New York City’s West Side. It’s a wonderful spot with a perfect view of the Hudson River. Only a few minutes ago a ship—he was sure it was a British ocean liner— passed them heading for its pier.
He gazes happily at his three adorable grandchildren: the two older boys, Jeremy, eleven, and Jeffrey, thirteen, and three-month-old Molly, asleep in her carriage. The boys, who look like towheaded athletic twins, are on the grass playing with their brand-new Game Boys. Jack is exhausted. One trip to the FAO Schwarz toy store and he’s running on empty, as is his wallet. He’s glad to be sitting down.
Lisa, right next to him, lifts her face up to the sun. “Are you sure you won’t stay with us, Dad? We can take Molly into our room; it’s no big deal.”
“And keep you and Dan up all night?” Jack shook his head. “I’m better off in the hotel down where I am. It’s more convenient to—” He breaks off.
“Does it have to do with why you’re here?” The autumn leaves are falling around them and Jack recalls how he used to take the whole family on yearly trips up to New England when the leaves turned color. It was almost a New York ritual.
“What are you thinking?” Lisa asks.
“I was remembering the fall trips we took to see the leaves. Your mother always looked forward to them.”
“Me, too. I used to love going to the bed-and-breakfasts where they had those fluffy down featherbeds and all the antiques and such fancy food for breakfast. It seemed like we were in a different century. Morrie never wanted to go. He wanted to stay home with his pals because it was the beginning of football season. We had to drag him along. Remember?”
Jack nods. “No matter how long I live down in Florida, I still miss the change of seasons.”
“I know. But surely you don’t miss the ice and snow?” Lisa takes a good look at her father. “So, why are you really here, Dad? This isn’t your usual once-a-year jaunt.” She tosses her hair.