"Hi." A note from a flute. She moved to Vic's side and found his hand. They laced fingers. Vic cleared his throat.
"These are my parents, and my nephew, Joey. This is Jenny Sutherland."
She glided over to us on bare feet and stopped in front of me, eyes gleaming green. "Joey the painter. You make all those beautiful watercolors Vic tells me about."
She’d heard of me! It was almost more than my heart could take, and then she touched my cheek. "Your uncle talks about you all the time, how you help out with the chickens. You don't make him call you Uncle Vic, do you, Vic?"
"Just plain Vic," he said. He was looking at Connie.
Angie piped in for the first time. "He calls me Angie, and I'm his grandfather."
Vic, Jenny, and I burst into laughter. In the midst of it Connie swung at Vic's face with her open hand, then pulled it away suddenly, as if she'd slapped at a bee and gotten stung.
Blood gushed from Vic's nose, and now Jenny Sutherland was a cyclone, getting a handkerchief, boiling water for tea, bringing out a plate of cookies. What had started out as an invasion had turned, ridiculously, into a visit.
We sat on pillows at a low coffee table, drank orange pekoe tea, and ate salty cookies with bits of green in them - seaweed. Jenny explained that when mankind was all through ravaging the earth of its animals we would be forced to harvest the sea for food, and that she wanted to get a head start.
Connie and Angie listened politely, their breath blowing puffs of steam off their mugs. One tight muscle in Connie's throat told me she thought it was all bullshit. There was a rim of red crust around one of Vic's nostrils but otherwise he was fine, smiling and joining in the conversation.
When Jenny was through talking about nutrition from the sea Connie spoke up.
"There's plenty of cattle in the world. We can still eat all the meat we want."
Jenny smiled. "We'll see," she said softly.
"What do you do?"
"I paint, Mrs. Ambrosio. Not here, I take classes."
"You paint too!" I exclaimed. Jenny winked at me. My heart hammered as if it meant to get out of my chest.
Connie said, "You make money at this?"
Jenny shook her head. Her hair was so lush it rustled like wheat in the wind. "I work at Gristede's supermarket for money."
"Oh, oh." Connie let the information sink in. "And you two ain’t married."
They both laughed her off, nervously.
To change the subject, Vic said, "I'm looking for work, Ma, I got money from my baseball bonus."
"Won't they want that back?"
"Only half. I gave that much back already."
Angie hesitated. "You still have four thousand?"
"Just about."
"Long as you're keeping their money don't you think you owe baseball another shot?"
"Never, Pop." Vic's eyes got icy. "That was somebody else's merry-go-round. All I ever did with my life was try to hit a baseball over a fence. That was my big concern in life, and then I realized I didn't give a damn."
Vic laced fingers with Jenny again, seemingly for strength. "Know what I used to do in the dugout, Pop? Even at Franklin K. Lane? Used to sing to myself, all the time. They called me Sinatra because I sang all his stuff, but all I was doing was keeping myself from going crazy."
Jenny smiled and rubbed the back of Vic's neck as if he'd just sparred a tough round. Angie waited before saying, "And you think you got it licked now, is that it?"
Vic shrugged, exasperated. "Pop, I don't know. All I know is what wasn't right for me. . . . I'll get a job. Maybe I'll take some classes at NYU. All I want to do is something I like."
"Do you think I liked plumbing?"
"Never thought about it."
"Then think about it!" Tea leapt from Angie's cup, scalding his wrist. Jenny reached out to wipe it but Angie pulled away from her.
"Think about what it's like to work in crawl spaces. I used to touch noses with rats. Was I happy? Did I like that? Christ!"
He buried his face in his hands, very briefly. When he took them away his eyes were red.
"You kids, you think you got the world licked. It looks easy but it's hard. Go on, play house." He turned to Connie and me. "Let’s go home." He reached for Connie’s hand and pulled her to her feet. I rose slowly, hoping to show Vic I wasn't eager to leave, wasn't his enemy.
Connie and Jenny were weeping. Vic looked as if he'd been in a car wreck. As Angie put his hand on the doorknob something in him broke. He turned, hugged his son, and then, after a moment, included Jenny in the hug.
"Oh, Mr. A.," she said.
He let them go and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "Listen. Come to supper next week." He wrapped his arms around them again as if he meant to compress all three bodies into one being. Then he bolted out the door. Connie and I had to catch up to him.
Outside, huge gray rain clouds had blocked the sun. The sky exploded with rain just as we reached the mouth of the subway station.
For three days the rain fell, hard and steadily, keeping the three of us unusually drowsy. Drifting in and out of naps, it was hard to distinguish morning, afternoon, and dusk - only night was definite.
The backyard flooded, and the chickens huddled together on the dry island of the coop. Water ran in crooked streams down the cracked cellar steps, and the drain grate at the bottom needed a cleaning every few hours from the twigs and dirt that collected there like miniature beaver dams.
An enormous puddle formed down at the corner near the burger joint, where faulty construction had screwed up the drainage system. A residue of clay bleached it bright yellow. From the parlor we could hear unsuspecting drivers slamming their cars through the deep water, almost with the regularity of waves on a beach.
Green leaves, torn before their time from maple trees, were plastered against the sidewalk and car windshields. All the windows were shut, but an aimless draft managed to run through the house like a lost ghost.
Chill. From her cedar chest Connie dug out a blue woolen sweater that had once belonged to my father. I put it on, tainting the air around me with the smell of mothballs.
Wearing his sweater, I painted furiously in my corner of the cellar - mostly ships, on stormy oceans. Sharks devoured men who fell overboard. The blue of the sea mixed with the red of blood to make a muddy purple. I worked too fast and carelessly to keep the mess from happening. The only thing I worked on carefully during the storm was a portrait of Jenny Sutherland.
Connie came down to hang laundry on the short clothesline there. As usual, I put my brush down upon her arrival.
"My God, in that sweater you look just like him."
"You gonna be long, Connie?"
She pegged clothing. "Go ahead, I won't watch."
"Yes you will. You always sneak a look."
"I do not. . . . What's that, Vic's girl?"
"Connie! . . . Not yet. It will be when I'm done." "Why are you painting her?"
"I feel like it."
"You like that girl?"
"Yeah, Connie, I like her a lot."
She sighed, returned to her laundry. "Go on, I won't look." "I'll wait till you leave." I folded my arms.
She rolled her eyes. "Just like the father." She clumped away. I resumed work on the painting and felt a sudden SWAT! at the back of my head. She'd tiptoed back to hit me!
"That's for being a wise guy," she said, this time leaving for good.
The roof proved to be solid - there wasn't a single leak, or at least nothing that Agosto Palmieri complained about. His opera records played almost continuously, accompanied by dramatic peals of thunder - he stayed away from high-hearted jazz records during the storm.
Thoughts of my mother: could she see me now, on earth, from her place in the heavens Deacon Sullivan was always talking about? Did she know where my father was? Was she watching him drive the station wagon all over the country? As a toddler, thunder had frightened me until she explained that it was just angels moving furniture.
Was she moving it with them now?
In a dream my mother and I were back in our Roslyn kitchen.
I was just home from school, and she was preparing dinner. It was a peaceful time for us, my father not home yet, and too early for me to start my homework.
She brought me a glass of chocolate milk to hold me until dinnertime. She always made it, because when I tried to, the chocolate powder caked up like mud at the bottom of the glass.
She set the glass beside my hand and sat beside me, beaming, her face warm from the heat at the oven.
"Joseph, I wouldn't trade you for all the tea in China."
"How about . . . a yacht?"
"Nope."
"How about . . . the goose that laid the golden egg?"
"No, sir. Even though you have a chocolate moustache." A flick of her fingertip took it away. She licked her finger. "Mmmm." "How about . . . a hundred dollars?"
"It's a deal, sweetie. A hundred dollars and a glass of chocolate milk." She sipped from my glass.
"Mommy!" I was going to kiss her but her stone-serious face stopped me. I'd never seen her looking like that.
"Did the milk taste bad, Mommy?"
She shook her head. "You don't like it where you are now, do you, Joseph?"
Oh God. I had to take a leak but my legs felt paralyzed. "No," I groaned. "I wanna stay here with you."
She managed a faint smile. "I'm sorry, Joseph. It wasn't my idea to die."
My heart hurt. Invisible elves hammered nails into it. "Is Daddy coming back?"
She closed her eyes and shrugged. "Sweetheart," she said vaguely.
"Mommy!" I reached to touch her cheek and she burst noiselessly, like a soap bubble, vanishing without a trace.
Then I was awake, sitting up in bed, staring at my own portrait of her. Shivering, I got out of bed and went down the hall. Two, three a.m.? It had to have been. "Angie?"
His sheets rustled. "Joey?" His hair stood up like porcupine quills. "You sick?"
"Can I sleep in here?"
Angie's instincts were sharp, even though he was groggy. He threw back his blanket. The mother-of-pearl buttons on his fancy long johns winked in the dim light. I drifted off to sleep, his heavy, soupy breath all around me like ocean fog. No questions about it the morning after - I awoke before he did and crept back to my cot in Vic's room, where rain still spattered the window.
With the house sealed so tightly against the weather Palmieri's music penetrated to the bone, making me feel very close to death. Angie and I played lighthearted card games to buoy our spirits.
"Got any fours?"
"Go fish."
"Nuts."
"Angie?"
"I'm listening."
"After you . . . die, do you meet everybody in heaven that's already dead?"
"How should I know? I ain't died yet." Then, in afterthought: "Oh. You'll see your mother, don't worry."
But instead of death the storm brought life. Along the baseboards in the basement mushrooms sprouted, nourished by accumulated dirt in the lines of mortar, tiny pale plants with fanned undersides. All they needed was the moisture in the air.
"Perzonous," Connie warned. "Can't eat 'em."
We knocked them down and scraped them away but they grew back just as strong, with additional regiments under the shower ledge and around the base of the toilet bowl. A miracle.
On the storm's third afternoon we heard a hard splashing of water on the front stoop, as if buckets of it were being hurled from Palmieri's window. Had he gone mad up there in his lonely flat? No - the rain gutter had clogged.
I held the ladder steady while Angie removed fistfuls of black leaves and pollywogs from the thing. Soon a hard gurgling sounded all the way down the copper leader, carrying with it big flakes of rust. We'd been outside just a few minutes but went in soaked to the skin.
Connie brewed tea with lemon and honey and added a splash of whiskey to our mugs, the first alcohol of my life.
I gulped it down. Instantly my eyes filled with tears. The glow crept all the way to my hands, as if heat were emanating from a miniature sun where my heart had been, my fingertips and toes its most distant planets.
Connie tipped my empty cup. "Eh, one gulp. That's your Irish half."
That night the phone rang at ten o'clock, an unusual occurrence, especially since Vic had abandoned his baseball career. Connie stiffened when she answered it, listened awhile, and said something I couldn't hear. She motioned for Angie to turn down the volume on the TV set.
Then she held the receiver out to me in two hands, a palm under each end, cradling it as if it were a newborn infant, the extension cord its uncut umbilical.
"It's your father," she said, feigning calmness. "Hurry, take it, it's long distance."
I took it. There was a mild crackling over the wire. "Hello," I said, as if I didn't know who it was.
"Hey, Joey." The crackle grew insistent. It was as if he were calling to me across a cornfield.
"Where are you?" I asked. Angie and Connie stared at me, motionless, like a couple of kids watching a horror movie.
"Seattle," he said. "Are you okay?"
"It's raining."
He chuckled. "It rains here all the time."
"I don't care."
"Hey," he said. "That's no way to talk to me."
We listened to each other breathe. He said, "What are you doing?"
"Nothing. Painting."
"You're what?" The connection had gone weak for a moment.
"Painting!" I shouted. "They gave me your old paintbrushes."
"Jesus, that stuff's still around? Is it any good?"
"Some of the hairs fell out but the brushes are okay. The colors are good." What the fuck were we talking about? I hadn't seen him in ages and he wanted to chat!
"So when are you coming back?" I asked, swallowing the words "to get me." I tried to make it sound as if I didn't care.
"Oh, a few weeks, the most . . . really, is everything okay? You sound sort of funny."
"What do you care?" I exploded. "You dropped me off here and drove away."
"Hey! I didn't call long distance to get yelled at! Don't you ever talk to your father that way!"
I held the phone against my chest while I calmed down. Maybe he heard my heart beating.
"He hang up?" Connie asked. I put the phone back to my mouth.
"What are you gonna do to me?" I asked nastily. "Hit me? You're a million miles away, Dad, I'm not afraid of you." Silence. The man had never so much as threatened to hit me all my life.
"Joey, I didn't expect this." I'd broken him. The operator cut in.
"Forty cents for the next three minutes, please."
"Hang on," my father said, all confident again. With strangers it was easy for him to be his brassy self.
"Forty cents - "
"I heard you, Goddamn it!" he shrieked. Coins dropped. The phone hummed, and then he was back on the line.
"Joey?" he ventured. "Are you all right?"
I shut my eyes and pictured him dangling from a high wire by the phone he spoke into, a pool of sharks circling beneath him. If I hung up, he'd fall in.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. Thunder shook the house.
"What was that?"
"It's only thunder, Dad, don't be scared. . . . Take your time coming back, I like it here." If my lying would increase his pain, so much the better.
More silence, save for the damn crackling.
"Joey, don't you even miss me? I miss you."
I'd never heard his voice so weak. I couldn't answer him - it was as if my throat were corked. I literally threw the phone to Angie, who bobbled it as if it were a hot potato. He got hold of it and passed it to Connie, who put it to her ear.
"Yeah . . . what did you expect, a brass band? . . . Sure he misses you. . . . No, don't put no more money in the phone. . . . Yeah . . . yeah . . ."
She hung up. "Madonna." She kept her hand atop the phone as if she thought it might try to leap off the hook
and disgorge my father through the earpiece.
Angie gave me a pair of his long johns to wear to bed that night. I felt skinny as a scarecrow inside them. Rain hit the window like pebbles whenever the wind shifted a certain way. The clammy cold pierced even the long johns. When would this rain stop?
In the dead of night, with all of us asleep.
Before I was even fully awake the next morning I was kicking the sweaty long johns from my legs, struggling like a man in a straitjacket. Naked, I went to the window and turned my face to the sun as if I'd just discovered it.
"Oh, boy," I said aloud. I felt gladder at the sight of that sun than I ever had at the sight of a human being. I pushed my window open, and the sharp smell of brick and concrete made my tongue go wet.
Breathing behind me. Connie at the doorway, on her way to the bathroom. I covered my crack with both hands. She snorted.
"You think I never saw one before?"
I pulled on my clothes, grabbed an apple, and ran out to greet the day, though it was barely past six. The sidewalks were immaculate, as if their pebbly surfaces had been buffed. Every car parked on the street gleamed like Johnny Gallo's. There was no curbside garbage, no gasoline smells, no dog crap.
Coffee smells floated from our basement all the way to the yard, where the chickens plodded about tentatively, testing the damp ground. Their undersides were stained brown, the way ships are barnacled. When they stood still, their feet sank into mud — they seemed to be standing on yellow stilts. An undershirt had blown loose from some distant clothesline and landed in our yard, brown and wrinkled like a hunk of elephant skin.
"Two washes and it'll be good as new," Connie said.
All around me the groan of opening windows sounded. They seemed to be greeting one another. Cowering but unbroken, our tomato plants had made it, green fruit snug to the vines. Later in the day Angie and I would tie them to longer, stronger stakes with coarse hemp.
And after that I would search for bottles. There were very few around but they gleamed so brilliantly from the cleansing rain that I sort of hated trading them in for grimy coins.
"These are real clean, Nat. Look at 'ern!"
"Clean, schmeen, the price is still the same."
The birds, Angie, Connie, and I were intact. The storm had taken away only ugliness, but just temporarily.
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