Shepherd Avenue

by Charlie Carillo

  "You said something bad about them last night."

  "When?"

  His face was pure innocence. He really didn't remember, until I repeated his exact words. The skin under his white stubble went pink. He kicked a pebble into the street. "Jews are good at makin' money. Some Jews, anyway. It was a stupid thing to say. . . How do you know about Hitler?"

  I felt my face flame. I couldn't tell him about my secret business with Nat. "They taught us in school."

  "Oh . . . how long you gonna stay mad at me?"

  I thought it over briefly. "An hour."

  He cracked a sunflower seed between his teeth. "Well, that sounds fair. When you're through being mad will you help me feed the chickens?"

  "Yeah."

  "Go on, run ahead, I'm holdin' you back."

  As I ran I wondered whether I could fish my letter out and cross out the part about Angie not liking me, but in the end I decided I was content with the letter the way it was. Little grudges seemed to keep everybody going on Shepherd Avenue, and as long as I had to live there, why should I be any different?

  I went to the cellar and dropped the money into the jar. When it was all in I shook the jar gently to level off the coins, and felt a tingling thrill from my spine to my scalp. Halfway full. I was getting there.

  I lay in bed that night wondering how adults could cook each other. Rosemary might be able to put someone in an oven, I decided. Grace would cook me with pleasure. Connie? I was pretty sure she could make the transition from poultry to people without much trouble.

  I got up and went down to inspect my escape money just one more time, while the rest of the house slept. Moonlight leaking through the basement window guided the way. It was there, all right. I hugged it to my chest before putting it back. Now it seemed more important than ever.

  The next night Vic woke me up when he came in at three a.m. and knocked a hairbrush off his dresser. Startled by the sound, I sat up. Vic was unzipping his new leather jacket, a jet-black thing Connie detested. It had cost him a week's pay.

  "Sorry I woke you, kid." He hung up the jacket. All he had on underneath was his undershirt. His shoulder blades looked sharp.

  "I wasn't asleep," I said.

  He grinned - a genuine grin, the first one in weeks, or so it seemed. "Christ, you're like an owl. I can never catch you with your eyes shut."

  I hesitated. "Where were you?"

  "Highland Park. Sitting on a bench." He fingered a cigarette from his pack.

  "Come on, Vic. You weren't just sitting on a bench all night."

  "Yes, I was." His gentle tone, the Vic of old, threw me. I knew he wasn't lying. He looked at my painting as if noticing it for the first time.

  "That your mother?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "You're a good artist."

  I felt warm all over. Incredible. One nice sentence from him and my guard fell. "Thanks." I lay down again, propping my head up on my elbow. "You hate it where you work, huh?"

  He sat on his bed with his knees apart, his arms dangling between them like lead bars. "It's all right." He wiggled his hands. "It's just that it's such a long day, and they watch me every second. I get the feeling Uncle Rudy doesn't trust me, the way he stares when I work, Grace, she's even worse. Like yesterday, she boiled a big pot of potatoes to make a salad, and when I peeled them some of the potato came off with the skin. You'd think I'd killed someone, the way she hollered. The potatoes cost maybe a buck a ton."

  "I hate Grace," I said fervently.

  Vic shrugged, yawned. "It's their store, I guess they have to worry about everything."

  "You could get another job."

  He shrugged. "I don't really give a shit where I work. It's not just the job, it's everything. Rosemary coming over all the time, talking. You never heard anybody talk so much and say nothing." He cocked his head. "You never liked her, did you?"

  "She never liked me."

  Vic nodded. "You're a good kid, you don't want to hurt my feelings. But I don't care about her anymore. I look at her and can't believe we were going to get married. What for, to make babies? Jesus, I'm a baby myself."

  He squashed his cigarette out. "Those damn cakes she kept sending me." He lit a fresh one. "The way she railroaded Mel out of here." He was suddenly serious. "Don't listen to any­thing that deacon says. He's an asshole, you didn't do a thing wrong."

  He stopped talking. We could hear Connie's loud snoring at one end of the hall and Angie's softer snoring at the opposite end. Connie's was operatic, coming in peals with lulls in be­tween. Angie's even snoring filled the silences. They were like the auricles and ventricles of a heart, beating in perfect rhythm.

  "What a marriage, huh?" Vic asked, jabbing his butt in op­posite directions of the hallway.

  "What do you mean?"

  He chuckled. "Forget it. You'll know what I mean when you're eighteen."

  "Bullshit," I said, stung by the way he'd lorded his age over mine.

  "Whoa!" He blew out smoke with the sound of steam escaping from a valve. "What a mouth on you."

  "I can talk that way if I want."

  "Nobody's stopping you," he said calmly.

  I was furious. "You'll see. Everybody'll see. Some day I'll get out of here, you watch me."

  "Sure you will. Your father won't be gone forever."

  "Yeah? Well I don't know if I'm gonna wait for him. You know?" I gulped. My throat felt parched. "Why should I wait for him?"

  He puffed on his cigarette. "Beats me."

  "You're damn right." His lack of belief in me pissed me off. Okay, okay, then, that was fine - I'd been moments away from telling him about my bottle money and the trip I was going to take to Patchogue (and beyond!), and now he'd blown it. Too bad for him.

  "What are you grinning at, Joey?"

  "None of your beeswax."

  "You're a real wise guy since I left to play ball, you know that?"

  I didn't want to talk about me anymore. I had to find out about the world beyond Shepherd Avenue.

  "Hey, Vic, did you like it in West Virginia?"

  He lay on his back, the ashtray on his belly. "Ahh, you could go into town if you felt like having fun. Most of the guys on the team went every night."

  "What for?"

  "Drink beer. Screw the town whore. I'm tired, let's go to sleep."

  I was quiet for only a moment. "Vic."

  "What." He finally sounded tired.

  "Did you ever screw the town whore?" I spoke without know­ing what it meant. Vic flicked his ashes, puffed on his cigarette again.

  "Yeah, sure, I went a few times."

  "Did you like it?"

  He let out an exasperated breath. "Who've you been talking to, Johnny Gallo?"

  "He went, too?"

  Vic laughed. "Not in West Virginia, kid, they're all over the place. Where'd you think I went those nights with Johnny, the opera?"

  "Well what's it like?"

  He sighed, blowing ashes over his pants. He swatted them away. "It's no big deal. It's all over in about five minutes and she doesn't really hug you back and the whole time you're worried about getting a disease."

  "What disease?"

  "The clap."

  "What's that?"

  "Jesus Christ, my mother ought to hear this. . . ."

  "She's asleep, don't worry. Come on, Vic, did you ever have the disease?"

  "Yeah. Once. It feels like your dick's on fire every time you take a leak."

  Vic's imagery startled me. "It hurts when I pee. It burns a little, once in a while."

  "Joey, relax, you do not have the clap."

  "Maybe I got it from you."

  "Impossible. We'd have to be faggots for that to happen."

  "What's a fag - "

  "Enough!" He sat up, held up both hands, and made erasing motions. "End of this subject. And listen, everything we said tonight stays in this room, okay? Don't tell anyone I had the clap."

  I nodded solemnly. "You still have it?"

  "Nahh. T
he team doc gave me shots, it went away."

  "So how come you went to the whore?"

  Another sigh, maybe the last one his lungs could spare that night. "You get lonely, Joey. Some of those nights I wouldn't have minded just talking to her but that ain't how it works."

  He stubbed out the cigarette, put the ashtray on the floor, and lay on his side, facing me. "Everybody makes such a big deal out of it, but it's the same damn thing as food. There's got to be more to being alive than just screwing and eating."

  "I'm glad you're talking to me again, Vic."

  He pointed at me. "Remember, not a word of this to my mother or father. Or Rosemary, in case she ever tries to pump you." He thought over that possibility.

  "Jesus Christ, Rosemary," he said, rolling to face the wall. "She'd be having Masses said for my soul." We fell asleep.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  "We must always remember that we are all brothers," Deacon Sullivan said from the pulpit. "It's so easy to lose sight of this plain truth, but what we do to our brothers we do to ourselves. You cannot possibly respect yourselves if you don't respect one another."

  All around the church people squirmed. Vic sat next to me. Every time he closed his eyes to catch a snooze Rosemary gave him a savage nudge. He'd open his eyes without looking over at her.

  It was too hot even for idle whispering, so Sullivan's words reverberated around a silent church.

  I was in agony. As usual, Connie had forced me to wear my white shirt, with its strangling collar. Men all over the church were sticking their fingers in their collars and running them around their necks.

  The sermon finally ended. Deacon Sullivan had lost some of his fire - his Masses seemed less populated these days. My mind wandered during the final ten minutes of ritual prior to the distribution of communion wafers. Vic leaned to my ear.

  "Kind of disgusting, don't you think, this whole business about eating somebody's body?"

  My neck tingled. I didn't know what to say, though the same thought had occurred to me. Vic winked.

  Rosemary leaned past him. "What'd he say? What'd he say?"

  "None of your beeswax," I told her. I was getting good mileage out of that expression.

  "Don't give me that," she said. "What'd you say, Vic?"

  "I said it's very hot in this place."

  "Offer it up to the souls in purgatory."

  "This is purgatory."

  From elaborate golden cabinets Sullivan brought out the flasks of wine, the sacred chalice, the huge gold goblet that held wafers for the crowd. He took a wafer the size of a cocktail coaster in both hands, murmured some words over it and broke it in half - we could hear the snap. He crunched the halves into his mouth, poured wine into the chalice and drank it down. Connie reached across Angie's lap to prod my knee. "Let's receive."

  "No," I said.

  "Why not?" She squinted one eye. "Did you eat breakfast this morning?"

  "No. I just don't wanna eat God's flesh."

  She squeezed my kneecap as if she meant to tear it off. Angie sucked in both lips to hide a smile. She let go of my leg and shrugged lightly. If I wanted to tumble into hell along with her husband and her son, it was my business.

  She got up to receive, joined by Rosemary, who left a choking scent of toilet water in her wake. Sullivan served the parishioners, most of whom were bent-over, hairy-lipped crones who clamped their mouths shut on the host as if it were a secret spy document to be swallowed for security reasons. Zip Aiello was one of the few men to receive.

  "Eh, he'll eat anything that's free," Connie said when she got back to the pew.

  When the last woman had been served Sullivan wiped and put away the goblets - "did the dishes," as Angie said. The doors at the back of the church were opened. A current of warm air prickled our necks, and a low groan of relief sounded. A few more minutes and we'd all be free to go home, to enjoy our cool basements with a glass of cold wine or ginger ale, then later a plate of spaghetti in thick red sauce with pieces of meat that had simmered since dawn.

  Sullivan rubbed his hands, squinted toward the back of the church and cleared his throat. When he spoke the first word shot from his mouth an octave higher than the rest.

  "Many of you are troubled people." He coughed; something had gone down the wrong pipe.

  "What's he doing, starting over?" Angie complained.

  "I got a flame on low under my gravy," Connie said.

  Vic leaned past me to address his parents. "I have to get out of here. I'm dying, I mean it." A woman in front of us turned around and shot him a stare. Vic returned it in full. "What are you lookin' at?" The woman looked away first.

  "A change is coming to this neighborhood," Sullivan said when his fit passed. "A change you all fear. This change is creating hatred, and that's the worst thing that can happen to a man." He held a fist to the pit of his chest. "It blackens his soul. Brothers must talk with one another, or there can be no love, no understanding."

  Hadn't we heard this same shit already? There was impatient buzzing all over the church at this two-sermons-for-the-price­of-one special. Sullivan ignored the noise and spoke louder.

  "Horrible things build up inside a man when he contains them in his soul. When you have a boil on your hand you don't put a glove over the wound to hide it, you cut it open to draw the pus."

  "Disgusting," Connie said. "Now I ain't gonna be able to eat."

  Sullivan cleared his throat again and waved at the back of the church. The doors, gateway to our salvation, banged shut.

  "Oh, he's out to murder us," Vic said. "He definitely wants us all to suffocate."

  "Shut up," Rosemary said. "Listen for a change, wise guy."

  "Ah, you shut up, for once in your life."

  Rosemary's startled face turned as white as the flour she was always up to her elbows in. Sullivan's words echoed, now, with the doors to deflect them.

  "Your brother is here today!" he boomed. "He wishes to speak with you, to cut open his boils."

  Sullivan beckoned. Behind us people turned in their pews, murmuring loudly. Frank Ammiratti, the neighborhood traitor, was coming up the aisle. It seemed to take him years to reach the pulpit.

  "My poor gravy," Connie said. "The meat's gonna be like shoe leather."

  While Connie bemoaned her gravy Ammiratti talked, wiped sweat off his scalp, and talked some more. He couldn't sleep at night, he told us, knowing we all thought he'd betrayed us by building the hamburger joint.

  Light through stained glass shined blue on his head. He went into a speech about coming to this country poor and building himself up from nothing. He spotted Angie, pointed at him, and spoke of all the wonderful plumbing he'd installed in Am­miratti homes over the years. Angie's hands balled into loose fists but he said nothing.

  Then he dropped his bombshell, reminding us that his corner lot at Shepherd and Atlantic had been vacant for so many years that we'd all forgotten it was his, not a playground. We slashed his tires, we broke his windows, but he was willing to forgive.

  I slunk down low in the pew at that last sentence but Angie patted my knee reassuringly. "He don't know," he whispered.

  Ammiratti forced a smile and showed us his palms. "People, why in the world do you let this restaurant upset you so? Ladies, won't it be nice to be able to buy tasty, inexpensive food without having to light the oven on these hot summer nights?"

  He'd overplayed his hand; the church exploded in cries of female outrage. The women who attended the ten o'clock Mass dined out once, twice a year at most, dragged to restaurants by their Americanized kids. They wiped the silverware under the table and didn't trust that the water glasses were clean.

  Ammiratti tried to save himself with a speech about how clean the place would be and how an eight-foot fence all the way around it would assure privacy for neighbors. People shouted back that the colored would come to eat, and nobody else. Outside the church, parishioners for the eleven o'clock Mass knocked on the locked doors, wondering what the hell was going
on. Sullivan jumped up to the pulpit like a referee anxious to keep boxers from killing each other. He held his arms out until there was silence, save for the knocking.

  Ammiratti gave his head a wipe before telling us we were all invited to Opening Day at the hamburger place, ten days from now.

  "I don't want to hurt any of you."

  Then he bolted out of the place. There was a moment of noise and light when the doors opened, then muffled sounds as they closed shut behind Ammiratti.

  Deacon Sullivan ran his tongue over his lips. "The Mass is ended. Go in peace."

  "Thanks be to God," we whispered dutifully.

  "Well," Vic said on the walk home, "that was entertaining. They ought to let Frank talk every week. Put a band behind him."

  "Is that all you want out of church?" Rosemary asked. "En­tertainment?"

  Vic gave her an odd smile. "What else?"

  Connie's gravy had not been ruined. Rosemary ate the midday meal with us, silent as a stone. Vic had more of an appetite than usual.

  "Grace and Rudy are worried stiff," he said, almost joyfully. "That hamburger joint's going to rob some of their business."

  "All of it," Connie corrected.

  "Yeah, well, they're going to keep the store open extra hours, so they want me to work late some nights."

  "What did you say to that?" Connie asked.

  "What could I say? They're the bosses, you do whatever the bosses say. Right, Pop?"

  "Or you get another job," Angie said. "You have a high school diploma."

  "I got nothing," Vic said after a moment.

  Silence. Vic lit a cigarette, careful as always to blow the smoke straight up to the ceiling. Connie began clearing the table.

  "Eh, so it opens in ten days, we'll see how it goes," she sighed. "Nobody's goin' anywhere."

  I hid my smile. How little they knew of my secret intentions.

  Angie went to the couch to read the Sunday paper. Connie couldn't hear Rosemary over the running water when she said, "Victor, I deserve an apology."

  "For what?" he said, breathing a cloud of smoke into her face.

  "You told me to shut up in church."

  "So I did. You've told me to shut up a million times, I don't remember you apologizing."