I pounded the steel safety bar with my palm. "Why?"
"Because," Angie said calmly. "Just because. And that's the best answer I can give you."
His eyes, more than his words, got through to me. The wheel groaned, shifted. We went down a notch, paused, went down another notch, each stop punctuated by the sound of the safety bar clanging down on a new set of passengers.
He patted my hand. "You'll see. You'll get older, you'll be surprised by how much you can forgive. If you're smart. And you are."
I didn't like the way he sounded. It was too much like a goodbye. "Next year we'll get Connie to ride this thing," I said.
Angie let his lips flap as he exhaled. "Next year . . ." He gestured vaguely at the sky. "Too far off to think about."
We were a quarter of the way down. "Point in any direction," he said suddenly.
"Why?"
"Just do it. Point, point."
When I'd pointed in all directions he nodded.
"All those places you pointed, I worked there. This whole neighborhood, it's all mine, everything you can see. That clown Ammiratti is nothing next to me."
His shoulders seemed to widen. He tilted his head back for a look at the stars, and then his eyes closed - no, he was grimacing. His Adam's apple jumped, as if with a hiccup. We moved another notch groundward, and as the carriage rocked it seemed strange that Angie should sit with his eyes closed and his face stern for so long.
"Angie? Y'okay?"
Before the wheel could clang down another notch I knew he was dead.
I surprised myself with my composure. As long as we sat up there, demigods above Brooklyn, not even death could get us. I pulled Angie's fingers free from the cold iron safety bar and put his hands on his lap. When our carriage reached the ground and the operator lifted the bar to let us out, I finally started crying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Palmieri took me home, jabbering incoherently the whole way. I vaguely understood that we'd left Angie behind. The next thing I knew I was in my cot, under the covers. Downstairs was the din of voices, visitors comforting Connie.
The next morning it was as if the wall between us had been torn down, never existed. She strode into my room and laid out my dark suit. I took a bath and put it on. Palmieri had to knot one of Vic's ties around my neck because Connie didn't know how to do it.
The funeral parlor was a carpeted room full of people on foldout chairs, talking in loud voices. Sometimes they even broke into laughter. It all seemed like a long, sick joke.
I stayed at Connie's side, and when she moved I even took her hand. Part of me still hated her and we both knew it, but I was the only male Ambrosio around - the role of something or other sat squarely on my small shoulders.
I knelt with her before the coffin, Angie's face powdered pink, his lips crusted, a rosary twined in his hands. He didn't look dead, just made-up. I kept waiting for his tongue to flick at those lips and dot them with bits of chewed sunflower seeds. The worst thing of all was that his hair had been parted by the stupid undertaker in a way he never wore it.
"Neither son here," I heard them moan. "Neither son." Oh, what a disgrace it was.
I felt like telling them all to shut up. How could they put on such performances and then show up at Shepherd Avenue to munch pastries and guzzle coffee?
Grace Rothstein, skinnier and crazier than ever, took over the reins at the house. Angie's death provided her with a perfect outlet for those cooking impulses the demise of her husband's deli had stifled. She made pies, roasted chickens, put up gravies. A bond developed between Connie and Freddie Gallo's widow, both members of the same dismal sisterhood.
Palmieri came down to sip coffee and pay his respects, though he couldn't hide a selfish worry from his clownish face - would Connie sell the house? Where else could he live so cheaply?
I sneaked away from the crowd and lay on Angie's mattress. His room reeked of Old Spice. I went through his closet, where he kept his work shoes and the black lunch pail. I tried on his vest, slid my hands into the pockets and felt little bumps.
Sunflower seeds. I ate half of them and took the rest to my room, putting them in the pocket of my own jacket. Handling them made me feel better.
Deacon Sullivan had become a priest weeks earlier and delivered the eulogy before Angie's open grave. I didn't listen to a word and I doubt that Connie did, either. In the middle of it she pointed to a patch of scrubby grass next to the hole.
"That's where I'm gonna end up."
I had to run off and pee in a clump of bushes next to a tombstone with a black marble hand atop it, the forefinger pointing toward heaven.
I approached the priest after the service. "Father Sullivan?" I could tell he loved his new title. "Yes, Joseph?"
"My grandfather never really liked you."
His mouth fell open, as if I'd plunged an ice pick into his guts. "I just wanted you to know that," I said casually. "He felt sorry for you, that's why he was always nice when you came to the house."
I walked away from him, a long-denied score settled at last.
That night I flopped on Vic's bed, the first time I'd ever used it voluntarily. It wheezed odors of his sweat, a smell tangy with leather and horsehide fragrances, as if his long hours of ball-playing had permanently leached those elements into his perspiration. I savored the smell, believing I'd seen the last of him. Before him, this bed had been my father's: had it once breathed his dreams, too, odors of watercolors and oil paints?
Downstairs the babble of "mourners" was steady, sort of like the clucking of the chickens had been. They were driving me crazy and I knew there were days of this bullshit to come.
I couldn't take anymore. I knew it was time to leave Shepherd Avenue. I would be going ahead of schedule, Mel's birthday still a few days off. I checked the calendar and saw it was September 9, my mother's birthday. She would have been thirty-one years old.
I went to the telephone, dialed Long Island information, and asked for the number at Mel's aunt's house, even though I knew she wasn't "alowed" to use the phone. I didn't even know the name of the ogres she wrote about - the operator found the number by tracing it through the return address on one of Mel's letters. The operator said it wasn't quite in keeping with company policy to do it that way but I talked her into it, whined her into it.
How often Connie had bitched about long distance phone bills from West Virginia! The bill for this call would come after I'd split, my final insult to my grandmother.
The phone rang four times before an irritated female voice snapped, "Hello!" above a crackling sound. The phone must have been near the stove, where she was frying something.
"Hello, I would like to speak with Mel DiGiovanna, please. This is Joseph Ambrosio calling."
My mother had done a good job teaching me telephone etiquette, but this woman wasn't impressed.
"What are you, kiddin' me?"
What a voice, a human bugle; I had to hold the phone away from my head to protect my eardrum. I didn't know what to do, so I began repeating the same schtick until I was interrupted.
"I heard ya the first time, I heard ya the first time. Wait a minute, willya?" There was a thumping sound as she dropped the phone, then the crackling subsided a bit as she turned the flame down on whatever she'd been cooking.
I clenched my teeth, thrilled by the thought that the next voice I heard would be Mel's. We would talk a lot less awkwardly than we wrote, I was sure.
But no.
"Hello?" It was the aunt again. "You there, sonny?"
"Uh-huh."
"Mel don't live here no more."
I felt nauseous. Sweat beaded up on my arms and forehead. "What?"
"She don’t live here no more. My brother in Phoenix took her three days ago." She might have been talking about an old couch.
My lips felt dry and crisp as the paper I painted on. "Where's Phoenix?"
"In Arizona. A long, long way from here." There was triumph in her voice.
I lo
oked wildly around the parlor for a pen and paper, walking in a circle as wide as the phone cord would stretch. "Can you give me her address?"
"I — no, wait, hey! You're the little punk who wrote all them letters, ain't you?"
The parlor seemed airless. "I'm not a punk." It took precious breath to say it. "Where's Mel?"
"I ain't tellin'. What for, so youse two can write bad things? You think I didn't see them letters? That last one she tried to send, ho, boy, I wish they had the electric chair for kids."
"What did she say? In the letter?"
"I ain't telling. I don't have it no more, anyway. We used it to light the charcoal last night on the barbeque. We cooked pork chops outside."
Fucking Italians, squeezing food anecdotes into every aspect of their lives! A wild, desperate stab of hope; this woman was lying through her fangs. Mel was in her room or outside or chained up in a corner of their garage, near a food bowl and a water dish.
"Mel's still there, isn't she, Aunt?" I said, not knowing what else to call her.
"No she ain't. . . . Aunt? Don't you aunt me. I'm not your aunt."
"You tell Mel I'm coming right over. Tonight."
"Hey! Are you crazy? You stay away from our house! Just stay away!"
I raised the phone as high as I could and slammed it down, hard enough, I hoped, to break her fucking eardrum.
The hum of voices downstairs exploded briefly in laughter. Someone, probably Grace, had cracked a good joke. I knew it would take hours for them to clear out. I lay on Vic’s bed the whole time, barely blinking as I stared at the ceiling. Connie went by on the way to her room, and then there was silence. With Angie gone she no longer snored, having lost her collaborator in those nightlong window-trembling symphonies.
I took my bottle bag from the drawer where I'd hidden it. I remembered how Zip had teased me about not being able to carry my chickens with me. Thanks to Connie, that wasn't a problem anymore.
"I'll show her."
Underpants, socks, and shirts went into the sack, and there was still loads of room. The thing breathed a sweet-sour smell from the sticky drippings of all those soda bottles I'd hauled.
I tossed in a few Spaldeens, even though I didn't play stickball anymore, and that seemed to complete the job. I checked under my cot and even slid a hand under Vic's mattress, extracting a stale Milky Way bar. I ripped off the wrapper and ate it, ignoring its chalkiness.
So little to take. How could it be so easy to pick up my life and go? There had to be more. I remembered a box of sunflower seeds Angie had opened just before he died. I tiptoed to his room and threw that in, too. I would not eat those seeds. I would save them, the way people save sugared almonds from a wedding.
I took the framed painting of my mother off the wall. The frame made it too bulky, so I took it apart, dismantling the work of my dead grandfather. I winced with the pull of each little nail at the back of it, as if they were being yanked from my flesh. It was a relief when the thing finally fell apart. Frame, glass, and cardboard backing tumbled onto my bedspread. I left it all there and rolled the painting into a scroll. There was a crackling sound as I did that, and when I unrolled it for another look bits of watercolor dust fell from my mother's face, which now had white lines where paint was missing. I had aged her twenty years.
"I'm sorry, Mom."
I hastily rolled it up again, put a rubber band around it and stuck it in the bag. The only thing to get now was my money. I went to the basement without turning on any lights, knowing every corner, every pipe, every shin-shattering object down there. I clutched the jar to my chest as I carried it upstairs, as tightly as firemen hold babies they pull from burning buildings.
I trembled as I dumped the money onto the bedspread for a final count. The coin level had risen a full inch above the grease-pencil mark I'd made on the jar. No thieves in the house, after all. It came to $43.35, including the paper dollar I still had from Nat's tip. There would have been more, only I'd lost that pocketful of change on the Ferris wheel with Angie. We had laughed over that, I remembered.
There was nothing more to do but go to the bathroom. I had to giggle, however strange it seemed; it struck me that the only similarity between Connie and my mother was that they were always telling me to go to the bathroom before I went anywhere.
I took a leak and didn't flush. I looked at my face in the mirror Vic had broken. The crack ran jaggedly down the middle of it, dividing my face between the eyes and giving me a lightning-shaped scar on my cheek.
Tough guy. I finally looked like a tough guy. I mussed up my hair to make myself look even tougher, but it fell back into place. I studied my cheeks for the slightest sign of beard, but I barely had peach fuzz. Yeah, some tough guy.
Angie's can of shaving cream was still on the sink. I found his razor in the medicine cabinet, unscrewed it, and shook his rusty blade into the wastebasket. I wet my face with hot water, screwed the empty razor shut, shook the can, and squirted shaving cream into my left palm. The odor was dizzying, sending me back to the time I met Angie; for a few seconds I had to grip the sink to keep my balance. I took his lather brush, dipped it into the cream, and painted my face where whiskers would one day grow.
It made my skin tingle, as if from a narcotic. Two yellow rivers cut the cream patches on my cheeks; I was crying. I wiped over the rivers with the brush and then I was okay, calm and steady as I scraped my face with the toothless razor. I rinsed it in a thin stream of hot water, just like Angie used to. My confidence grew with each stroke. The mission was going to be all right.
I floated back to my room, my head a planet separate from the rest of my body, the odor of Rise its atmosphere. I put on my windbreaker, slung the sack over my left shoulder, and hefted the money jar in my right hand.
No more of that damn basement; I would go out the front door. Halfway down the hall I panicked and went back, thinking I'd left something behind. I moved some books on the bureau and saw a pointed white object the length of my middle finger.
It was the feather from Roslyn the Duck, which Connie had stuck in my hair that time. I blew dust off it and stuck it where she'd put it, in the hair at my crown. Indian-style, on feet light enough to leave the tiniest twigs unbroken, I would escape from Shepherd Avenue.
Down the hallway again. I put the sack down and had my hand on the brass knob of the glass-paned interior door when the chandelier snapped on.
"Hey, Yankee Doodle. And where do you think you're goin'?"
I whirled to face Connie, who stood at the other end of the hallway. If she'd been a stranger, her appearance would have scared the shit out of me.
Rage caved in her dentureless mouth even deeper than nature had. Her loose hair hung in serpentine coils over her breasts. Those twisted feet I'd rubbed with sand at Rockaway Beach looked absolutely obscene. The crooked, long-nailed big toes jutted in the air, like the sandals of a court jester. Her skin was the color of her nightgown, the color of macaroni dough. She looked worse than Angie had in his coffin.
I forced myself not to be frightened. "I'm leaving this place." I said it louder than I'd meant to, tinkling the glass chandelier chimes ever so slightly. "I'm running away with Mel."
Hadn't I vowed never to repeat my plan again? I was sick of my own voice.
She stepped toward me. "Why?"
"She's the only one."
"The only one what?"
"Who . . . loves me."
"Madonna mi, love he wants." She lifted her massive arm and pointed in the direction of my cot. The flying squirrel curtain of flesh on her upper arm trembled. It must have been like holding up a barbell. Her face showed the strain.
"Get inside."
"No. Good-bye."
I opened the door and stepped onto the black and white tiled area between the doors. A paratrooper, ready to jump into the wind. I had my hand on the main door's knob when I saw something that literally froze me in place.
Connie was running toward me. Not walking fast, running. All her life, m
aybe, she'd saved the one sprint her body allotted her for this night. The floor thundered and the panes of the interior door rattled at her approach. It would have been less surprising if the Empire State Building had yanked itself free of its foundations and come after me on brick feet.
I fumbled with the door, got it open, and flashed outside, clutching my goods. Safely down the front steps, I was ready to trot to the el, confident that Connie would stop at the porch. Wrong. Before the door could bang closed she bashed it open and cleared all the porch steps like a hurdler, hair and nightgown flying. When she landed, her knees bent, the gown flattening all around her like the white part of a fried egg. Her legs are busted, I told myself, but then she stood straight, looked at me, lifted her arm again, and shook a fist.
"GET BACK HERE!"
It was the loudest scream I'd ever heard. Windows went yellow all along Shepherd Avenue. Zip Aiello appeared on his porch in long johns, scratching his cheeks with both hands. Connie crouched, as if awaiting the sound of the starter's pistol, and then she came after me.
I turned and ran. Even as my legs pumped I realized how ridiculous it was to be chased by Connie. Maybe later, on the train to Jamaica, I could even laugh about it.
I peeked over my shoulder and saw that I was losing her. A train went by, in the opposite direction of the one I needed. That was good; usually that meant another was due in the right direction within minutes.
One last peek at Connie. She was tiring even more. Her mouth hung open and she was hunched forward in search of breath. I turned back toward the tracks just in time to feel my foot catch a chunk of broken sidewalk.
The jar and the sack went flying in looping arcs. I heard the smash of glass, then came down hard on my belly. My elbows took the brunt of the fall as a paralyzing tingle ran all the way to my hands. My knees hurt, too. The skid had scraped the pants clean through to the skin.
I shook my head to clear it and saw coins rolling around amid bits of broken glass. The train I needed went by. The sack had landed on the spikes of a wrought-iron fence, where it still hung, its contents spilling. A Spaldeen rolled toward me. I reached for it with a stiff hand but my fingers wouldn't cooperate to pick it up. I watched it roll to the curb, then rolled onto my back to take the weight off my wounded joints.
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