by Janet Capron
After she had delivered the alcohol—a rum and Coke, a Dewar’s, and a Finlandia on the rocks—Evelyn rejoined me on the sofa, where we sat facing Michael. Following her lead, I crossed my ankles in an attempt to appear demure, but I doubt I pulled it off. I was dressed in one of my working outfits: black satin hot pants, granny boots, a tiny, puff-sleeved pink angora child’s sweater stretched across my bosom. Michael leered at me politely.
We let a moment of silence pass while we savored our drinks. Twilight slipped into darkness; longtime foes of the sun, the three of us heaved sighs of relief. No one thought to turn on a light for quite a while. Finally, Evelyn reached to her left, where an early example of Lucite supported the three-tiered plastic lamp. She lit the top bulb and turned it away. Still no one spoke. Michael and I would have sat drinking without saying a word until the stars came out, until the liquor had hit, as we often did when left alone, but Evelyn was better socialized. Eventually she more or less announced to the shadows against the wall in front of her that soon she would hop into her old Mustang and take off for City Island, where her daughter would be finishing up dinner, washing the dishes.
I pictured a raw domestic scene too brightly lit and needlessly busy. It was depressing, repugnant even: the tart smell of tomato sauce hanging in the air, the daughter squabbling with her brother and a mutt yapping at somebody’s heels, the TV playing a sitcom rerun, its canned laughter numbing the senses like a tab of Thorazine, drowning out the sweet chorus of late-summer crickets. But obviously, Evelyn looked forward to it.
“Eddie might be home. It’s too early for him to go out yet. Sometimes he just hangs out at Rocky’s on the corner. Sometimes he goes who the hell knows where. Never mind, I don’t worry about him anymore; it’s the street I’m worried about with him on it, if you want to know the truth.”
A few sips of vodka and she was beginning to sound more like her usual self.
“You should tell your daughter and Eddie, too, to come into the city and stop by my saloon.” Michael was fondling his glass, making the ice tinkle. Now he seemed restless and eager, talking about the bar, the home he so rarely left. “There’s free music most weeknights. We have a lot of good musicians who showcase their material there, like Tommy Shelter and Lionel Pike and, let’s see, Max Ghostly... Freddie Bombay played there last night...Omega’s going to be around this week. Remember her?”
“Lots of famous people.” Evelyn nodded politely.
“They like to try out new stuff. It’s on Seventy-Sixth and Second. The Traveling Medicine Show. Come by with Janet. Have a few cocktails on me,” Michael said.
“Eddie would like it. He’s into music, plays the guitar. I don’t hang out much anymore. Got other things to do at home. I never told you this, Janet, but I live with someone. A good man. He does hate to leave the island, though. Can’t drag him into Manhattan. But he keeps busy. Any kind of work out there he can get. He can do everything: carpentry, painting, even a little plumbing.”
“What’s his name?”
“Danny. Mr. Fix It. Local fellow.” Evelyn swallowed more vodka and started smiling over the rim of her glass. She was musing. “He’s simple in some ways, at least that’s what people think, but really he’s very wise. He’s taught me everything I know about plants, their names and when they grow and where, too. I never figured there were so many varieties of wildflowers right on City Island. Well, you’ll meet him, Janet, when you visit this Sunday.
“Michael, why don’t you come along? Plenty to eat. Nice view of the bay and the city. We get these really intense red sunsets out there on account of the pollution.”
For one instant, an entire dream blazed in my mind. Michael and me going somewhere together as a couple. Then, sure enough, he started to squirm a little and crossed an ankle over his knee. He hung on to his crossed leg as if he were trying to pull himself away.
“Sorry, gotta work.”
Michael never had to work, mainly because Michael didn’t do anything.
“Michael’s like those rare Beaujolais that don’t travel well,” I said.
“You mean we’re not going to be able to import him to City Island?”
We all laughed. Michael tilted his head and smiled at Evelyn as if he were seeing her just then for the first time. He uncrossed his leg, letting his foot drop to the floor. Usually he was not only shy, not just wary, but, truthfully, a touch paranoid as well, because he was always slightly psychotic from the methedrine. But he seemed to relax now.
When I came across someone I thought was worthy of Michael, I would make a case for that person, and I had devoted a good deal of time over the last few weeks to descriptions of Evelyn. Michael and I were both fiercely sentimental about our friends. For instance, there was 4-H Jimmy, the bartender from Indiana. Michael had regaled me one almost garrulous night with descriptions of Jimmy’s first studio apartment in the city: matching flour and sugar canisters in the kitchen, felt flags from Indiana State’s football team pinned to his wall. Jimmy used to wear madras Bermuda shorts on his day off back then. He was in such earnest then, breezing into the Traveling Medicine Show for a few cocktails before he went to work as a maître d’ at his clip joint on Third Avenue. Four-H Jimmy was so guileless it broke Michael’s heart. He made me appreciate his protégé. “Don’t be a snob,” he said.
The truth is I had very much wanted my madam and my Svengali to meet, and when Michael’s curiosity finally got the better of his fear, if I demurred at first it was because I felt I had a lot at stake. I wanted Michael and Evelyn to approve of each other. Now, I sat gloating between the two of them like an indulged only child.
He casually asked if he could check out the bedroom. “I’m curious,” he said.
“Hate to disappoint you, fella, but there’s nothing to see. Of course, you’re welcome to look. That much is on the house,” Evelyn said.
He went out into the hall and turned to his left. Facing the bedroom, he pushed open the beaded curtain with both hands and stuck his head inside. We got up and followed him as far as the edge of the living room.
“You can walk right in. No one’s gonna grab you and ravage you,” Evelyn called out to him.
“More’s the pity,” he said, but he didn’t go inside.
I shrugged my shoulders. “He told me he wanted to check it out, where I work. I told him there was nothing to see. I think mostly he just wanted to meet you.” I spoke softly so he wouldn’t hear.
“Handsome, that one,” Evelyn said.
City Island
I thought it was about the ugliest, most forlorn-looking house I had ever seen. Chunks of brown paint were flaking off the wood shingles. A crumbling porch had been partially screened in on the left side of it, but the screen was full of holes big enough to stick your head through. The poor thing looked as if it had been abandoned, left to rot. So much for Mr. Fix It. And none of this would have been so bad if the one tree shading the house, a spindly oak about twenty feet high, hadn’t been drooping as if it wished it were dead. An old-fashioned wheelbarrow sat by itself in the dirt yard; behind it I could see rusted engine parts splayed out on the ground, an incidental arrangement of inner tubes, coils of rope, a snarl of rubber hose, and, to the left at one edge of the property, an empty doghouse with half its roof caved in. Long, bold weeds shot up through all this debris in unlikely places. And I could see the rear end of the old Mustang, its tailpipe dragging, sticking out of a small shed next to the house. A hedge about five feet high ran along the left side of the property, and a tall, unpainted wood fence bordered on the right, which created the impression Evelyn’s neighbors had done their best to block this scene out.
The single charming detail was the healthy-looking Saint Bernard that had begun to bark at me from just inside the front door, which swung open presently to reveal a man in a red T-shirt and blue-jean overalls. The man bounded toward me, down the sandy path leading from the house. His black hair, underneath a dirty white sailor cap, was greasy and combed close to his scalp. As he
got closer, his soft blue eyes shone with pleasure and he smiled, revealing an open space and the clean outline of pink gum where at least four of his upper front teeth should have been. But the smile was so confident and sweet, like a baby’s grin, that I found myself thinking about the superfluity of front teeth. He extended his hand and shook mine warmly.
“Dan’s the name.”
“Hi, I’m Janet.”
“Yes, I know that much.”
The Saint Bernard was jumping up on me by this time, trailing a fibrous length of drool that threatened to glob off and drop itself perhaps on my face, now that its own was next to mine. Dan pulled the dog by the scruff of its thick neck so that it danced a minute backward on its hind legs. Then it fell to all fours and lunged again, tongue out ready to lick, the gooey saliva dangling dangerously above my outstretched hand. I was hoping the animal would settle for a pat, but it ignored the gesture, throwing its front legs around my neck like an old friend who’d been dying to see me.
“All right, Bear, that’s enough,” Dan said, too calmly, I thought, as I stood there trying to keep my balance. I watched the spit swing over my sandaled foot.
“C’mon now, you silly brute,” Dan said, this time giving it a man-sized push.
The animal galloped to the left; in three swift strides it reached its destination, a hole in the high hedge. I followed, curious to see what was on the other side. Above the hedge, another house stood, the mirror image of Evelyn’s, only this one was trim and tidy, its wide clapboards painted a crisp white. Little beds of pink and blue hydrangeas posed at the corners of the emerald-green lawn. The smugness of it inspired one of my acute attacks of longing for the orderly assumptions of middle-class life. For a few seconds, I suffered a driving impulse to go visiting over there instead. Meanwhile, the dog had planted its feet squarely before a mysteriously empty-looking break in the neatly clipped hedge. It was barking viciously at something.
“She seen a squirrel, or maybe it was a groundhog. But it was them squirrels ate up my strawberries out back. She could kill one or two. I wouldn’t mind,” Dan said, joining the dog and me.
“You grow things behind the house?” I asked.
“We got near half an acre stretching all the way to the edge of the cliff above the water. I started a patch of berries and put in an orchard of apple trees, oh, this was ten years ago, before I was living here myself. Evelyn had her heart set on an apple orchard back there for some reason. The apples don’t seem ever to ripen proper. They fall out the tree green. Doesn’t matter really. It’s a pretty kind of tree.”
Dan spoke in an unexpected, loping cadence—unexpected because City Island lies right off the Bronx, after all. But this thin strip of land has always been a forgotten stepchild of the city, nothing more than a sandbar boasting a row of cheap fish restaurants that feature local lobsters, along with a large marina just beyond us at the far end of the island.
“You from around here?” I asked.
“Never left. I mean, I been to the city, but I never traveled yet. Maybe one of these days,” he said, sounding as if he meant it. “Let’s go in the house and I’ll fix you a drink.”
The inside was a Mary Poppins surprise: gleaming blond wood; a ceiling with exposed beams; yards of sofa covered in a cerulean blue, which looked pretty clean, not counting the animal hairs (a fat little calico cat was there to start rubbing up against me as soon as I crossed the threshold); state-of-the-art hi-fi center; accommodating-looking brown leather swivel chairs with ottomans to match; and a long glass coffee table with nothing but a couple of brimming-over ashtrays on it. The living room and the stairway were carpeted in wall-to-wall shag. The entire house smelled like roasting meat.
Dan caught the look of shock on my face as he rejoined me with my requisite scotch and soda. (Sometimes I could be persuaded to have a beer in the morning, but any time after midday was scotch time.)
“Everybody does the same when they first get a look at the place. Taxes, you see, the IRS. Can’t flaunt nothin’. She keeps most of what she makes in a box at the bank. Not even too much jewelry or anything else fancy. Doesn’t believe in attracting attention. Smart one, she is,” Dan said.
Just then, a set of legs could be seen at the top of the staircase followed by the rest, one lithe teenage girl with long hair like her mother’s, coming down the steps. She stopped midway, greeted me with a dull hello, turned and disappeared upstairs again.
“That’s Ava. She likes to stay in her room most of the time.”
Dan had poured himself a large drink of something. Couldn’t tell what it was because the glass was tinted. We were about to go and sit on the couch when we heard the kitchen door slam. Evelyn, dressed in jeans and a halter top, came bursting into the living room, her arms outstretched like a school crossing guard blocking traffic.
“Hold it, hold it. Don’t sit down. There’s an emergency.”
“What’s the matter, anyone hurt?” Dan asked, looking genuinely anguished.
“Nope, but somebody’s gonna be if we don’t find that damned snake.”
“Where’s the snake?” Dan asked.
“That’s what I’m saying. The snake booked, vamoosed, took a powder. I just went out to the shed to get a few bottles of wine—he’s gone! No telling how long it’s been. We got to find it before Eddie hears about it, or we’re all dog meat, capiche?”
“But that’s impossible. He’s in a cage,” Dan said.
“Yeah, well, somebody left the cage door open. The snake’s gone, I’m telling you.”
“Eddie’s most prize possession, a boa. Keeps it in the shed,” Dan said to me.
“I’m organizing a posse right now,” Evelyn said. She went to the foot of the stairs and yelled, “Ava! Come out of there now!”
The girl appeared immediately.
“Go over to the hedge. Look up and down it until you see Eddie’s snake. You didn’t open that cage door, did you?”
“No, Mother,” she said, stressing the word ‘mother’ in a fairly cheeky way.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re part of the expedition. Go on to the hedge.” She turned and faced Dan and me. “Dan, you look up and down the fence—on both sides, I don’t care what the McCormacks or the Kravitzes have to say about it. Capiche?” she said, addressing herself to everyone. “OK, go. Look carefully. Dan, wear your glasses. C’mon now”—she waved Ava down the stairs and out the door—“I’m taking the road. Oh, Janet, you go out back. Check the orchard.
“We’ll catch him. How far could a snake travel in a day?”
No one knew the answer to that.
I didn’t particularly want to be the one to find it, but I went through the kitchen and out the back door, where I intended to sit under a tree until I thought an appropriate amount of time had passed. If the snake were on the ground somewhere, I would just as soon miss it.
The orchard was a maze of apple trees, a few green apples already fallen and rotting in the tall weeds. I was wandering in it, lost in some romantic dream about Michael, when I heard a voice.
“What’s up?” it said.
I looked around, didn’t see anyone.
“Hi, what’s doin’?”
I followed the voice into a tree. There, naked to the waist, with his blue-jeaned legs stretched out on a branch, sat a faun. He had a nimbus of long, soft ringlets framing his boy-face. His shoulders were broad and knobby. His skin was so pale it was translucent, touched with the faintest patina of green, but it didn’t look unhealthy. It looked more like the wings of a gypsy moth, or the tint of something that had turned recently from a leaf-thing into an animal shape. He might have just conjured himself up minutes before I got there. His gray eyes were murky, like smoke. He was smiling in a beatific way. Instead of pipes, he held a cigarette to his mouth and pulled on it.
I jumped a little. He laughed.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I live here. My name’s Eddie, Eddie Carnivale, but they call me Eddie Apollo. I’m tripping on a thou
sand mics right now.”
“You seem very calm,” I said.
“Acid always calms me down,” he said.
“Didn’t mean to disturb you. I was looking for a snake,” I said.
“Look no further,” Eddie said, smiling.
There were other hunting parties arranged by Eddie in the following weeks, and Evelyn told me later that everybody walked outside more or less with their heads down for a long time after that, but they never did find the poor snake.
Finally, conceding temporary defeat, we assembled in the dining room. Evelyn disappeared into the kitchen. I had offered to help, but she wouldn’t hear of it, preferring to steer Ava ahead of her through the swinging doors. That left me to entertain the two men, Danny and Eddie. Danny was tucking into another highball. Eddie was still tripping his brains out and for the moment seemed the least concerned of anyone that his pet was missing.
“He’s a brave boy, gone out to see the world,” Eddie said, sounding philosophical and maybe a little proud that his boa got away. If it were my snake, I would’ve been worried about it, but then I didn’t have the perspective a thousand mics of acid was likely to provide.
Eddie poured himself a tall glass of what looked like rum. I was on my second scotch and soda by this time. I was almost hungry because I’d had no methedrine since early in the day, before I left on my long trip on the Seventh Avenue 1 train to the last stop, followed by an interminable bus ride to the end of City Island. I was getting sleepy, too. So I excused myself and went upstairs to the bathroom, where I promptly did a line, a fat line. I came down buzzing and no longer in the mood for dinner.
Eventually Evelyn and Ava emerged through the kitchen door carrying a big platter of pot roast adorned with carrots and potatoes and another platter piled high with surplus vegetables. They went back and came out again with a gravy boat, a bowl of penne, and a large tomato-and-iceberg-lettuce salad already dressed and tossed, this time accompanied by the Saint Bernard, almost within slurping distance. Danny took the dog by the collar and pulled it outside. He came back in and poured the decanted wine to the rim of each person’s big goblet. I was grateful for that. Then he raised his goblet as if to toast but thought better of it and just drank. Evelyn, still standing, piled our plates with food and passed them along. The entire elaborate meal seemed out of place. Everybody but Danny sat staring at their plates for what struck me as an ungracious amount of time.