Shepherd Avenue

by Charlie Carillo

  "They cut the grass yesterday," Francis said. "Ma, how come he's doing that?"

  "Hush, Francis, just hush."

  I pushed it over ten strips of grass, up to the edge where the garden had been, before I stopped, sweat-soaked, out of breath. I dragged the mower to the garage like a sled, put it back where I'd found it, and went to the car without saying good-bye.

  It started on the first try, to Angie's relief.

  "I was afraid she wouldn't go," he said, patting the red dash­board as if it were the neck of a favorite but aging horse.

  He didn't speak again until we were on the expressway. "Feel better?"

  "I feel like an ass."

  His hand went to my neck and squeezed the cord there. "Joseph." We were quiet the rest of the way to Shepherd Av­enue.

  "How was it?" Connie asked.

  "We just looked at the place from the car," Angie said, pleas­ing and surprising me. I was going to miss him when I ran away.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  During breakfast the next morning the phone rang. Connie spoke a few cryptic sentences before hanging up on Jenny Sutherland, who was inviting me to spend the day with her and Vic in the Village.

  I gulped a mouthful of coffee. By this time I had trained myself to endure the stuff. "My sister," I murmured sarcasti­cally.

  Connie cocked her head. "What'd you call her?"

  "Nothing ... why do they want me?"

  She shrugged "Maybe they like you. Go figure it. Anyway, you ain't going."

  "Why not?"

  "You could get lost on the train. A colored could stab you. A Pee-Arr could steal your money. You could get kidnapped."

  "I could run away," I interrupted.

  "Yeah, sure, tomorrow. Run away. I'll pack your things."

  "Don't kid around like that," Angie said. Connie still didn't take my hints seriously but Angie wasn't just brushing them off anymore. It was nice to have the extra attention since Vic's departure but at the same time, I had to be careful. He was light as an angel on his feet, and if he decided to follow me to my money jar someday I'd never hear him stalking me.

  Maybe the day in Roslyn had taken something out of him and he was anxious to have me out of his hair. "Let him go," he said.

  Connie frowned. "You think she sets a good example for a little boy?"

  So that was it. She wasn't really worried about me getting lost, stabbed, robbed, or kidnapped - she feared I'd be forever tainted by Jenny's loose morals.

  Angie laughed her off. "What's she gonna do, teach him to murder?"

  Connie shuffled back to the phone, where Vic's number was scrawled on a scrap of a macaroni box that was wedged between the phone and the wall. "Funny. Milton Berle should worry about his job." She began dialing.

  Astronauts bound for Mars couldn't have a more detailed list of instructions than the one Connie recited for my solo journey to Manhattan:

  Ride in a subway car with a cop, look before you sit, don't touch the seat with your hands, don't get caught in the doors, don't stare at no one, don't eat any candy you find.

  Angie and I laughed together at that last one.

  "You really think he'd eat candy he finds on the train? What is he, a monkey?"

  "It don't hurt to say it," Connie said.

  "What about fruit?" I teased. "Can I eat an apple if I find one on the train, Connie?"

  She gave me a black stare and pressed the price of two tokens into my hand. "Walk him to the train," she commanded. On the way Angie slipped me a buck.

  "Treat your uncle and the girl to ice cream," he said, turning for home at the bottom of the el staircase.

  Angie's decision not to wait for the train surprised me, and then it hit me, like the puff of wind from the train that came minutes later: he was no kid anymore, and stairs weren't easy to manage. That impression I'd gotten on the ride to Roslyn was no illusion.

  I made the trip without a hitch, remembering the right place to transfer and riding the whole way with my hands on my lap. There was a half-eaten O Henry bar on the floor of the train I never would have dreamed of eating if not for Connie's warn­ing. I let it lie, wondering how the hell she knew it would be there.

  When I emerged into the sunlight of West Fourth Street I was surprised to find Jenny waiting for me by the Waverly movie theater. Vic had staked out the other subway exit, across the street. I was a little disappointed because I'd wanted to see their home again. Vic, hairier than ever, said they were afraid I'd get lost among the crooked streets.

  It was a bullshit reason. Connie never got a good look at their apartment and Vic knew that if I went there, she would grill me as intensely as cops do a murder suspect once I got back to Brooklyn: Was the bed made? Were there dishes in the sink? Did you see any cockroaches (this question accompanied by the inimitable twitching of her fingertips)?

  No wonder she finally decided to let me go! Little did she suspect her son's quick thinking would foil her. She'd be as frustrated as a tourist who takes snapshots of an exotic land but forgets to remove the lens cap.

  It was a brilliant day. There were so many people on Sixth Avenue that we couldn't walk three abreast, so Vic led the way, snake-style, holding Jenny's hand while she held mine. She looked back at me from time to time, laughing at nothing in particular.

  The first stop was for soft ice cream cones, which I paid for, telling them it was Angie's money.

  "He's so honest," Jenny said.

  Next we headed for Washington Square Park, where musi­cians played in front of upended hats. One guy stretched a rope between two young trees, and while he walked along it he juggled three tennis balls. A magician cut a piece of string with a scissors, held the cut ends in his fingertips, and produced one long string again.

  Jenny pulled me aside while Vic became absorbed in the act. I let a wild joy flood my being, anticipating what I'd hoped for on that long train ride: a change of heart in Jenny, who was about to ask me - no, beg me - to move in with them, along with my pal Mel. We'd have the world beat, as long as people were too lazy to bring back soda bottles for deposit money.

  She stroked my face, her thumbs rubbing where sideburns would one day grow. "Baby, you're not mad at me anymore, are you? I mean you understand why we can't all live together, don't you?"

  I thought I could hear my heart turn over behind my ribs, as if it had been flipped with a spatula and pressed flat to fry faster.

  "Joey?" She clapped my cheeks lightly. "You understand, right?"

  "Sure." I clenched my teeth and pursed my lips, a living Portrait of Zip Aiello as a Young Man. Her hands fell from my face.

  "Oh, baby - "

  "It's okay because I'm going away pretty soon anyway." "You are? Where?"

  First my money jar, now my half-baked dream of depar­ture - I spilled my darkest secrets to this child-woman without any prompting. It was important to make her believe I didn't need her.

  "Long Island," I said. "Patchogue. That friend I told you about, she's waiting for me. She's kinda mad at me now, though. I gotta see if she's still my friend."

  "Of course she's still your friend."

  "Shut up. You don't even know her."

  Jenny didn't get mad. "When are you going?"

  "When I make some more money."

  "But how will you get there?"

  "Trains. It's easy. I ride trains all by myself," I bragged, having ridden alone for the first time an hour earlier.

  It was remarkable, how seriously Jenny was taking me. She'd been on her own from such a young age that everything I said sounded plausible. She chewed her lower lip before saying, "But what will you do when you get there? Live with her family?"

  "Nah. They don't like her and she doesn't like them."

  "So where will you go?"

  "I dunno yet. I ain't even sure I want to take her with me."

  She dared to take my cheeks in her hands again. "Oh, baby, I never tell anyone what to do but please please please be careful."

  "Don't worry about me
." I took her wrists and pulled her hands off me.

  Vic turned to us, shaking his head in wonder. "Every week I watch that guy cut the rope and I still don't know how he does it."

  We walked away, dodging footballs and baseballs that criss­crossed the air over our heads. One errant baseball headed our way. Natural shortstop that he was, Vic snared it on the short hop in one hand. He gazed at it for a moment, as if it were a tiny planet populated with wonderful people, before tossing it back.

  Jenny squeezed his hand. "Miss baseball?"

  Vic smiled, teeth showing white through his beard. "Nahh."

  Vic and Jenny wore matching sandals. I could go a lot faster in my sneakers and had to slow down to their shuffling sandal pace. Jenny sensed my urgency and tugged on my hand.

  "He's like a wild stallion!" she laughed, yanking me to her hard chest and kissing the top of my head. "I've never seen so much energy in anybody!"

  "Yeah, he gets worked up," Vic said. "Used to take him hours just to fall asleep."

  Jenny passed her palm down my forehead, past my nose and chin. Then she ran it across my shoulders.

  "Uh-huh," she said, confirming her own thoughts. "He's going to be very tall, Vic. Taller than you. The size of his head — I can tell."

  "I'm a cesarean," I proclaimed, proud of it now, proud of anything that set me apart from the rest of the creatures in my cage. "I didn't come through the birth canal. They hadda cut my mother open so I could be borned."

  I'd intended to frighten Jenny but she smiled. "It was worth it, little brother."

  Good God Almighty, what did a young male have to do to stay mad at her? I hadn't a clue, and Vic probably didn't, either. "You really think I'll be tall, Jenny?"

  "I know you will."

  Vic pushed back his shaggy hair. "Don't be in such a rush to grow up, kid," he advised. "You have all the time in the world."

  "Don't call me 'kid,' " I snapped.

  Vic was surprised. "Hey, I didn't mean it. I call everybody 'kid.' "

  "I'm not a kid anymore. . . . Call me Joe."

  "Not Joey?"

  "No," I insisted. "Just Joe. Joe's my name from now on."

  "Joe it is," Vic said, reaching for a low branch of a maple tree and grabbing a leaf. "Sure, like Joe DiMaggio."

  "Don't pull the leaves. . . . Who's that?" Jenny asked, but Vic only hugged her and winked at me. I didn't return the wink because his hug had pulled Jenny's hand from mine, where I'd wanted it to remain all day long. As soon as he let go of her I grabbed her hand again.

  "You trying to steal my woman, Joe?"

  "Yeah."

  Jenny laughed gleefully and did a little two-step in the air. "Dear me," she gasped, "my two handsome men! I'm the envy of New York City today!"

  They decided that my sneakers were too hot to wear on a summer day and led me to a basement shop on a side street. The air in there was rank with the smell of cowhide but it was much cooler than the street.

  A skinny man with a goatlike beard came out from a back room, wearing a leather apron. His hands were dye-stained.

  "How they fit?" he asked Jenny, his voice filled with suspi­cion.

  "Oh, ours are fine," Jenny said, twinkling her toes. "We want a pair for our son."

  Vic's mouth dropped open. I stared at Jenny, then at Vic - what was this all about? But Jenny's eyes told it all: Don't let on, let him think you are!

  "Yeah," Vic said when his composure had returned. "Make my son a pair like ours."

  The cobbler had barely given me a look. His eyes were on my feet. "Take the sneakers off. Socks too."

  He made me stand on sheets of white paper and traced around them with a pencil.

  "Stand still!"

  "It tickles."

  Jenny giggled. Vic rolled his eyes to the ceiling, the tolerant husband indulging his giddy wife.

  "Same color?" the cobbler asked.

  "It's up to him," Jenny said.

  "I want mine the same as yours, Mom," I said. Jenny buried her face in Vic's shoulder. At last the cobbler rose, a hand to his crooked spine.

  "This is your kid?"

  "Our firstborn," Vic said straight-faced.

  He eyed us, tugged his beard. "Well my God, you must have had him when you were twelve!" He cackled shrilly. "All right, come back in an hour."

  We left the shop, roaring with laughter, and wandered around the park some more. Vic was anxious to watch the magician cut rope again, vowing "This time, I'll catch the trick."

  While he was absorbed in the show Jenny said to me, "Some­times it's fun to pretend, isn't it, Joey? I mean Joe."

  Why did she have to remind me it had only been a game? My airy mood burst and turned leaden. "Pretending is for ba­bies."

  "Aww. But every once in a while —"

  "You're not my mother, Jenny. She's dead. And you're not even really my sister."

  She caught a windblown wisp of her own hair and twirled it in her fingers, holding its tip and gesturing with it like a teacher with chalk. "I'll tell you what," she said. "If I ever do have a child, I hope he's exactly like you."

  My back tingled as if the tip of a feather were being dragged lightly along the bumps of my spine.

  "Exactly?"

  "To a tee. I mean that."

  "They'd have to cut you open to get him, you know. I bet it would hurt."

  "I wouldn't mind." She dropped her hair, crossed her heart, kissed her fingertip, and touched my nose. "I swear I wouldn't." The crowd applauded the magician. We were the only ones not watching him.

  "How about if it hurt . . . like a toothache?"

  "I'd still have him."

  "How about if it hurt . . . like an earache?"

  "I'd still have him."

  "How about . . ." I shut up, swallowed, and rubbed the sudden gooseflesh on my arms. This was one game I'd never expected to play again.

  "You cold, baby? On a hot day like this?" I let her hug me until it was time to get my sandals. All those people watching the guy cutting rope were missing out on the real magic of Jenny Sutherland, right behind them.

  The sandals fit perfectly and cost ten dollars, which Jenny paid out of her pocketbook. I think she held the money for both of them.

  "Thanks," I said. "This is one of the best days of my life," I added, surprised to hear my voice crack.

  "Aw, it's our pleasure, Joe," Vic said, emphasizing my new name.

  "All right, enough of this," Jenny said. "We're all starving so let's go home and eat."

  Vic looked alarmed. "I thought we were gonna eat Chinese."

  "Right, at home," Jenny said. "We've been out all day and I want to try our new wok."

  "What's a wok?" I asked.

  "A Chinese frying pan. Let’s go home."

  I would get to see their house after all! I slung my sneakers over my shoulder the way David must have carried his slingshot after killing Goliath. They were tied at the lace tips and bumped my back like an exterior heartbeat as I walked.

  "Let's go!" I shouted, unable to contain my joy. Maybe I would get to stay the night. If it worked out, maybe I could stay for good. . . .

  I led the way to Sullivan Street, along Sixth Avenue. I was in the middle, holding their hands. The Waverly was directly across the street from where we were now, and at a tiny news­stand in front of the subway stairs I'd climbed earlier I saw my father buy a pack of gum.

  His blue eyes looked past us, maybe at the pickup basketball games behind us. He had a gruff beard, even thicker than Vic's. It was devoid of gray, unlike the salt-and-pepper of his thick hair. His face was suntanned. His blue jeans were low-slung on his hips. He unwrapped a stick of gum, folded it into his mouth, and bit it hard.

  Those teeth: perfect, even, defiant, unmistakable.

  I dropped their hands. "Sal!" I screamed, instead of "Dad." He moved casually down the subway steps. I made it halfway across the avenue and then there was a screech of brakes, a bump to my left hip. I was flying through the air. I rolled for a while, seeing a suc
cession of alternate images: sky-street, sky-street, sky-street. Jenny screamed my name, and then I lost consciousness.

  When I came to the first face I saw was Connie's, hovering over me like a harvest moon.

  "He's alive," she said, then put a hand to her mouth at even the thought that I might not be.

  "Of course he is." Angie appeared at her side. "Hey, you." He tickled my toes through a bed sheet.

  Jenny Sutherland, her face tear-streaked, took my hand. "Baby, are you all right? Oh, baby, baby!"

  Behind her stood Vic, looking like a naughty schoolboy. He probably hadn't been yelled at by his parents yet. Now that I was conscious the fireworks could begin.

  "What happened? Where am I?" My tongue clung to the roof of my mouth as if it had been glued.

  "You're in Saint Vincent's Hospital," Vic said. "You got hit by a cab near here. Don't you remember?"

  "I didn't see any cab."

  "He didn't see you either. You ran out there like a maniac."

  "Get the doctor," Angie snapped. "Where the hell's the doc­tor?" Vic left the room and returned moments later with a tall, thin man in hospital whites. He parted his way through every­body without touching them. They made way for him as if he were a fire engine.

  "How are you feeling?" he asked gently.

  I swallowed. "I'm thirsty."

  "Do you remember what happened?"

  "I saw my father across the street," I said groggily. The doctor looked at Connie for an explanation.

  "His father's gone, he thought he saw him," Connie said.

  I sat up. "I did see him, Connie." My hip throbbed. The doctor leaned close to me.

  "You're all right," he said. "You've had a mild concussion - that's sort of like a big headache. You're a very lucky boy."

  "My hip hurts."

  "But it isn't broken. We took X-rays." He straightened to stand back with the others. "He's incredibly lucky. That cab could have killed him but all he got was a few bruises. Do you know what the odds are against that?"

  "Hey," Angie said, "what do I look like, a bookie?"

  "Can I have some water?" I whined. The doctor passed me a white plastic cup with a straw jutting from its lid.

  "Sip it slowly," he instructed. "And rest." He patted my head. I slid my hand under the sheet to feel my hip and learned I was naked.