The doctor huddled with Connie and Angie near the doorway while Vic and Jenny stayed with me. Vic manfully tried to blink back tears, without much luck.
"Give him air," Connie commanded. The doctor had gone away. They were at the mercy of her wrath.
"Keep your voice down," Angie said, pointing to the other side of the room where a boy with a bandaged head slept.
Everyone was quiet, but it was the eye of the storm. I heard cars honking out on Seventh Avenue and felt oddly safe in this room, out of their range.
I sucked on the straw. The water was deliciously cold. "I'm okay," I assured them.
Angie pointed at Jenny and Vic. "You two, you should have watched him."
"You're blaming us for this, Pop?"
Angie held his hands out, palms up. "All I know is, we had him all summer, he never got hurt. You have him one day . . ." His voice trailed off.
"That cab knocked his sneakers right off his feet," Connie said, fueling the argument. "The ambulance driver said they were ten feet away."
"It didn't knock 'em off, Ma, he was carrying his sneakers."
Connie's eyes widened. "You let him go barefoot?"
"He was wearing sandals. We got him sandals like ours."
Connie looked down at their feet. "Ten years old and you're turning him into a beatnik?"
"Oh, stop it, Ma, just cut it out."
"Don't blame them," I piped in. "They didn't push me into the street, I was chasing my father. How many times do I have to tell you?"
I stopped talking because my head throbbed. Connie smiled at me in a sickeningly sweet way.
"Don't do that, Connie, I'm not crazy," I said. "That was my father going to the subway."
"Did you two see Sal?" Angie asked Vic and Jenny.
Vic rolled his eyes. "Christ, Pop, there were a million people around," he boomed, flapping his arms.
Jenny Sutherland opened her mouth and hesitated before saying, "I don't even know what his father looks like." But her words, the chirp of a sparrow amid the roar of lions, were barely acknowledged.
Connie turned back to me. "Okay, what did he look like?"
"You know what he looks like. Except he had a beard."
"Everybody in this crazy neighborhood has a beard. What else?"
"I don't know." My head throbbed harder. "I just know it was him."
"What makes you so sure?" Connie persisted. "You ain't seen him in months and you ain't never seen him with a beard."
"I'd know that fucker anywhere," I shot back.
My words stunned them. Next to me the bandaged boy groaned and rolled over.
"All right, all right, it's the drugs they gave him," Angie said. "He didn't mean it."
Connie couldn't have been more shocked if I'd spit in her eye. She backed away from the bed as if I'd turned into a cobra.
"It's all so terrible," Jenny said, reaching for Vic's hand.
Connie said, "You, can't you keep your hands off him for one second?" The women exchanged steel-melting gazes. If they'd begun socking each other no one would have been surprised. Jenny gave up and began pulling her hand away but Vic wouldn't let her.
"Never talk to my lady like that, Ma." His voice was chilling. "My lady can do whatever she wants."
To everyone's relief the doctor returned and put a hand to my forehead. It was cool as a raw steak. "We want to keep Joseph here for the night, just for observation."
"No!" I knocked his hand away. "Please, please, don't let them keep me here, Angie."
"You said nothing was broken," Angie said.
"Well that's true, but he's experienced - "
"We got pillows and blankets in my car," Angie said in an iron voice. "We are taking him home, Doc."
The doctor shrugged. "It might be best at that." What a jellyfish! He left the room and called for a nurse to make out the papers.
"Thanks, Angie, thanks," I said, as if I'd just been spared from the electric chair.
Vic said, "Our house is closer."
"Forget it," Angie said. "You've done enough."
They made me ride a wheelchair to the sidewalk. Angie had driven into the city, despite the crooked streets that confused him. Vic carried me to the car. Jenny kissed me on my forehead. "We'll call you tomorrow, sweetheart."
Connie arranged blankets and pillows in the back, and then we began the long, slow ride back to Shepherd Avenue, Angie braking frequently to avoid potholes.
"I thought you never drove to Manhattan," I said, half asleep. "That's what you told me, Angie."
"This was an emergency," he said, reaching back to pat my knee. I shut my eyes. The last voice I heard before falling asleep was his.
"If that was Sal, what the hell is he doing in the city?"
I woke up the next morning in Vic's bed. My head throbbing, I went across to my cot. I must have slept for sixteen hours straight.
"No running around today," Connie ordered, forbidding me even from my paintbrushes. I was annoyed, because it had been days since I'd gone bottle hunting. I was sure there were at least a dozen on my turf with my name on them.
Of all people, Grace Rothstein made me a wonderful baked Alaska. I ate the whole thing by myself. She sat stroking my back and cooing while I spooned the sweetness down, I remembered Vic telling me how she went hot and cold with children. Until now, I'd never believed it. I told her the story of the accident, and then Connie said, "You're so mad at your father, why'd you run after him?"
I licked my spoon clean before answering. "I was gonna tell him not to come back for me."
Grace gasped. Angie said, "You weren't really gonna do that, were you?"
I shrugged and dug into the rest of the baked Alaska.
Even Rosemary came to see me. Could she have forgotten the time I'd whacked her on the ass? No, but nothing cleansed Shepherd Avenue sins like a brush with death. She brought me a fistful of Superman comics, which was really incredible, knowing how trashy she thought they were. The buzz around the neighborhood was that she was dating a dentist from Woodhaven. Connie was polite to her face but after she went home she murmured, "Bet she had her eye on that dentist while Vic was away playin' ball."
The only real disappointment that day came when Vic called to see how I was. No, he said, Jenny couldn't come to the phone because she wasn't around. Some "sister."
My last visitor of the day was Freddie Gallo's widow, but even as I told her about getting hit by a car - the description improved with each rendition - I could tell she wasn't paying attention.
"And then I stopped rolling and that's all I remember," I said.
"Good," Freddie's widow murmured absently, as if I'd just described my first day at school. She was quiet for a moment and then the news was out suddenly.
"Johnny's engaged." Her voice was artificially bright. "Nice girl, from Cobble Hill. Has her own apartment."
Connie hiked an eyebrow. "She lives alone?"
"Oh, yes, she's real independent. My Johnny always liked independent women." Her hands squirmed in her lap. Angie found the manners that had deserted Connie.
"Congratulations," he said, squeezing her hand and kissing her damp forehead. I was annoyed, having lost center stage.
The reason I came over . . . I mean I wanted to see if the boy was okay, but . . . there should be a party or something." She swallowed. "I don't know how to put no party together."
Before she could start bawling Angie and Connie assured her our basement would be a perfect place for the party, and that she could invite anyone she wanted. She was on her way out when Connie asked, "Does Johnny have a choice?"
Freddie's widow didn't turn around but stopped dead and arched her back, catlike, as if someone had caught her between the shoulder blades with a dart.
"No."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Another party. Same cake, same lemon ice, most of the same people.
Johnny Gallo's fiancée didn't invite anyone from her side. Her name was Nancy. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, very t
hin. She seemed bored, or scared, as if she expected to get yelled at. She was very quiet, with none of Jenny Sutherland's bounce. My heart jumped in anticipation of Jenny's arrival with Vic; I was no longer mad that she hadn't called me.
When at last Vic came down the rickety basement stairs - for some reason he'd used the front door, something he never did - he was greeted with shouts and even applause. Only I didn't clap. Jenny wasn't with him.
Grace yelled, "Hey, where's this American girl you ran out on your job like a bum for?"
Vic smiled weakly, tolerantly. "She didn't feel so hot, she decided to stay behind." He shifted his weight from foot to foot. "She says hello to everybody."
"She don't even know us," Grace mumbled.
Zip Aiello said, "Shave that beard already - what are you, a Jew?" Uncle Rudy gave Zip a hard look but said nothing.
I was nearly in tears over Jenny's absence and intercepted Vic on his way to greet Johnny.
"How's your head and your leg, Joe?"
"Fine. . . . Is she okay, Vic?"
"Sure she's okay. Leave me alone for a while, okay?" He rubbed my hair as he nudged me aside.
Vic and Johnny were stony-faced as they approached each other. They stuck out their hands to shake but on a simultaneous impulse dropped them and embraced for a good ten seconds. Then Johnny made a clumsy, formal introduction of his bride-to-be.
"Didn't notice your car outside, Johnny," Vic said.
Johnny nodded grimly. "Sold it. The wedding, the new apartment . . . I can use the bucks, ya know?" He rubbed his nose. "Maris and Mantle, they're sure knocking the shit out of the ball, ain't they?"
Vic nodded, though he probably hadn't watched a game since his last time here with Jenny. Johnny touched his cheek. "Beard looks good. Maybe I'll grow one."
Nancy said, "Please don't do that, Johnny, you'll scratch me."
Johnny gestured at Vic with his beer bottle. "His woman don't complain." Vic walked away gray-faced.
Grace was disappointed in being gypped out of a chance to inspect Jenny. "All the times I felt bad I still went to parties, I didn't want to spoil nobody's fun," she said.
Uncle Rudy, gadget-lover that he was, had brought along his movie camera and asked the engaged couple to strut for him. Johnny and Nancy obliged, trudging like robots toward his blazing row of hand-held lights.
Was that a pot belly that Johnny, of all people, was growing? He moved as if he'd had an operation to remove springs from his heels.
Zip obligingly spooned cake and gulped wine for the camera, and then Rudy beamed his lights on Connie. She squinted and put her hands over her eyes.
"You're melting the icing on the cake, Rudy."
He didn't stop filming. "It's a movie, do something," he urged frantically as precious film spun through the sprockets.
Connie lifted the cake and slid it forward a few inches, then pulled it back to its original spot. "Satisfied? Pain in the ass German," she said. Grace laughed shrilly.
Rudy killed the lights. "None of you move for me." "Madonna, I see purple flowers," Connie said, rubbing her eyes.
Rudy twisted a key to wind his camera. "Where's Angelo? I have a few feet of film left, let's get him in the movie."
Connie rolled her eyes and said to me, "Make your Uncle Rudy happy, go find your grandfather and tell him to come be in the movie."
I ran upstairs. It was unusually quiet, no sound of radio or TV - Angie liked to sneak away from crowds to catch ball games. He wasn't in the parlor or the upstairs kitchen. I pushed open the door to Angie's room without knocking.
He and Vic were seated side by side on his bed. Vic's arms dangled low between his knees. They looked at me.
"Taking movies downstairs," I said.
No answer. I sat on the end of the bed, next to Vic. He reached around for the back of my neck but didn't squeeze it with his usual vigor. The fingers felt damp.
"She just split, Pop," he said in a voice of wonder. "I get back from the bookstore Thursday and all her stuff's gone, all her clothes. That same morning she asked me if I wanted chili that night. I told her sure."
Vic shook his head, the way a man does to clear it after taking a knock. "The note just said, 'I had to go.' Bing, like that. Not even her name, she signed. Who was I, the milkman?"
Angie's breath whistled through his nostrils. "What do you want from me?"
"Tell me what I did wrong!"
"Vic, I was here, you were there."
"Pop, she said she was gonna cook chili! You tell someone you're gonna do something and then you disappear? That's lying." Fierce tears flooded his eyes. "I swear I don't know what I did wrong."
Angie waited for a wailing police car to pass before saying, "Maybe the way you lived was like lying."
Vic stiffened. "Hey, I wanted to marry that girl."
"Did she know that?"
"I only told her a million times. She used to laugh it off, so I did, too. I figured there was time. . . ."
Angie's grin was odd, half sympathy, half mockery. "You scared her off,"
Vic was crying harder. His beard was wet. "I only meant her good. God, for the first time in my life . . ."
He buried his face in Angie's shirtfront and squeezed my neck with renewed strength. He needed us, both of us. I'd never felt so close to Victor Ambrosio.
But Angie wasn't drawn into the passion of it all. He kept his head high, as if a rising flood were approaching his nose. "Tell you a story," he said. "When I was a kid I saw a dog walking funny once, right in this damn neighborhood. I get a little closer, I see his hind leg is practically ripped off - the bone's sticking through the skin, he's bleeding to death."
"Dixie?" I guessed.
"No, not Dixie. Joey, don't interrupt." He narrowed his eyes in concentration. "Car must have winged the pooch. I went after him but he ran faster on three legs than I did on two. But finally he falls down, and I get to him. And he bites my hand."
Angie tapped his stomach. "Fourteen shots for rabies, right in my gut. One worse than the other."
Vic sniffed. "What's this got to do with me?"
"I only meant him good."
Snot bubbled from Vic's nose. "Jesus, Pop, you compare my girl to some rabid dog?"
"Wild is wild, Victor. That don't mean bad."
Vic sighed as if it hurt to breathe. "That story doesn't do me any good."
"I'm sorry. It's all I got. Now you figure it out and live with it, one way or the other. Blow your nose, we have to be in a movie."
Vic rose, wiping his face. "I'd better wash first, I'm a mess."
"Movin' back in?"
"I'd like that, Pop."
"Good, good." Angie held up a finger. "But this is it. You leave again, you stay gone. This ain't the YMCA. Fair enough?" Vic nodded.
"You all right now?"
"I'll live."
"Hurry up, wash your face. Twenty years from now you don't want somebody lookin' at this stupid movie and askin' why you were crying."
We followed Vic to the bathroom, as if he couldn't handle the task alone. "This Jenny, she couldn't be pregnant, could she?" Angie asked casually.
Vic opened both spigots at the sink, doused his face. "No. We were real careful about that."
"Too bad Johnny wasn't, the poor kid." Angie went downstairs.
Vic threw more water on his face. He looked at himself in the medicine cabinet mirror to watch it drip off the beard. "Hey, Vic?"
"I'm right here, Joe." He kept looking at himself. Maybe he was trying to figure out if his appearance had chased her off.
"How about me, Vic?"
He looked at me. "You? What about you?"
I handed him a towel. He rubbed his face as if he meant to erase his features. "Did Jenny say anything about me before she left?"
His laugh exploded like a sneeze into the towel, which he balled up and threw against the wall. The hairs of his beard pointed wildly in all directions.
"I didn't even rate a good-bye, ya think you were gonna get on
e? Come on. All she did was leave, buddy." He snapped his fingers. "Pick up the towel, would you?"
I hung it on the rack. "I just thought . . ."
"What? What? Talk louder, for Christ's sakes."
"I THOUGHT SHE LIKED ME!" While the "L" sound was still rolling off my tongue I didn't know what I was going to say. I'd come within a vowel of "loved."
Vic laughed again and smacked the mirror with his palm, putting a hairline crack in the glass. "Sure she liked you, Joe. How she cried all night when that cab hit you . . ." He wrinkled his face in mock sorrow and dragged a forefinger from the corner of his eye down his hairy cheek. "She was your sister, right, and your mother, too, huh?"
He pounded his chest. "And what about me, huh? God, what a wizard at playing house, lemme tell you. Cook, sew, fuck -"
"Shut up! You shut up about her!"
"No. You hear this, Joe, now's as good a time as any." He clapped his hands once, hard, a teacher getting the attention of a sleepy student.
"Important lesson, here, for a young man." He put a heavy hand on my shoulder. "Learn how to spot a flake when you meet one. Lesson two." The other hand slammed down on my other shoulder. "Stay the hell away from her."
The hands came off my shoulders and I felt light enough to float, all of me but my heart, which plummeted like a rock dropped in a vat of pudding.
Downstairs, they called for us. "We're coming!" Vic shouted through cupped hands. I pushed his chest.
"You're a liar, Vic. You don't mean that about Jenny."
"Every word of it I mean." He suddenly seemed so old-world Italian - his anger, his dramatics, the placement of nouns first in his sentences. He shoved me aside. "Come on, they're waiting for us."
I couldn't find an outlet for my rage. "You'll get yelled at for busting that mirrorl" I sputtered at his back.
The party - if you could call it that - was over before ten o'clock. Vic went to bed right away. Connie folded the cake box in half and wedged it into a bulging garbage bag, then handed it to me to take outside. She was paranoid about roaches and never let trash stay inside overnight.
When I got outside with the oily bag I noticed someone standing with his hand gripped around the NO PARKING pole a little way down the block. I pushed the bag into the can and went over to check it out.
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