by F. P. Lione
We stopped talking when we heard the door open and Garcia came out of the courtroom. Then it aggravated me that we stopped talking because Garcia was there, like we were covering something up.
We said good-bye to Katz and walked back up to Canal Street. The train was pretty empty on the ride back to Midtown, so we could actually feel the air conditioning in the cars.
We got back to the precinct at 2:30 and slept in the lounge for an hour before signing out at 3:30.
When we were walking out, Joe stopped on the steps of the precinct and tried to talk to me. “Tony, before we go jumping to conclusions, we need to pray for Pastor. I’ve known him a long time, and he’s a good guy. If he’s struggling with being tempted by this woman, he needs our prayers, he doesn’t need us judging him.”
“He needs a beating,” I said, shaking my head, but then I lightened up a little because it wasn’t Joe’s fault. “I’ll see you tomorrow, buddy,” I said as I gave him a hug.
I drove my truck around to 8th Avenue and stopped across from Madison Square Garden to run into the pizzeria. The owner, Jay, wasn’t there but had left orders to give me two commercial-size buckets of Italian ice. I got a cherry and a rainbow and tossed them forty bucks. They threw in about forty of the paper Italian ice cups and gave me a bag of ice to keep it cold while I drove home.
I was going to head downtown, but the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel was clear enough, so I shot through Jersey. It was Friday, and the traffic through Staten Island to get down the shore would be horrendous. I took the Jersey Turnpike and got off in Bayonne, so when I got on the Staten Island Expressway I’d have only one exit till I got off.
I stopped home and threw the Italian ice in the freezer and drove into Great Kills to the hot dog store. It’s the place that all the hot dog carts and concession stands buy from. I loaded up on hot dogs, frozen burgers, and rolls. I threw in a bag of knishes and some deli mustard.
Now that I don’t drink anymore I hate being home alone on a Friday or Saturday night. All my old friends would be in the bars or down the shore, and I tried to think of something to do for the night.
When I got home the kid next door was outside shooting hoops with his face pulverized. He was a nice kid, maybe fifteen years old, and played a lot of sports. My first thought was that his father did it. I didn’t like his father. He reminded me of my father with a lot of booze thrown in. He was quick to slap the kid in the head, and I’d see him sitting outside sucking down beers and trying to talk to women as they walked by.
Just to show you his mind-set, lately everyone in the neighborhood has these bumper stickers that say, “My child is an honor student at PS 30,” or whatever school the kid goes to. This clown gets a bumper sticker that says, “My kid can beat up your honor roll student.”
“Hey, what happened to you?” I said as I walked up on him.
“I got in a fight playing football,” he said as he bounced twice and shot the ball through the net.
“Weren’t you wearing equipment?”
“Yeah, but I was on the sidelines and my helmet was off.”
“Was this the thing with the cheerleaders?” I asked.
There’d been a big fight at the fields down on Father Capodanno Boulevard—a bawl broke out between the two cheerleading squads, and it turned into a riot.
“Yeah.”
“Did the cheerleaders do that to you?”
“One of them clocked me when I tried to break it up. After that it was the defensive line.”
“It made the papers,” I said.
“Don’t remind me,” he said, sounding miserable.
“I hear Sports Illustrated is featuring it in an article about violence at kids’ sporting events,” I threw in.
“Come on. Are you serious?”
“Nah, I’m just messing with you.” I smiled.
He threw the ball at me, and I dropped my bags to catch it. I shot hoops with him for a couple of minutes before going inside.
I figured he was catching enough grief from his old man about getting hit by a bunch of cheerleaders. When I was a kid, if I came home after catching a beating, my father wouldn’t let me in the house. One time when I was about eleven I came home all beat up by this kid Mark Russell. I don’t even remember what the fight was over, but my father dragged me back to his house and stood there and made me fight him until I won. When Mark’s father came out of the house to stop it, my father told him he’d kill him if he tried to break it up. Mark was upset and kept saying, “I give, forget about it.” But my father wouldn’t let me leave till he was bleeding. It was a stupid fight, and Mark and I would have forgotten about it the next day. But to this day he’s never talked to me again.
I carried the food into my apartment and changed into shorts and a T-shirt. I called Michele before I went out for a run but got no answer. I took my truck over to Midland Avenue and parked by the beach. The boardwalk was full of joggers, walkers, and bike riders, and there was a good amount of people out on the beach. The tide was low, and I knew if I walked out on the sand I’d see the leftover bottles, needles, jellyfish, dead horseshoe crabs, sea glass, condoms, and seaweed that wash in with the tide.
I took it all in as I jogged along the cement part of the boardwalk. I didn’t care if the place was a cesspool, I loved it.
The late day sun was shining off the water, and I could see Hoffman and Swinburne Islands as I ran. I could see clear across to Brooklyn. The old parachute drop on Coney Island was silhouetted against the sky just past Seagate.
The parachute drop, or Brooklyn’s Eiffel Tower, as it’s sometimes called, was originally designed for paratrooper training back in the 1930s. It was bought at the World’s Fair and has spent the last sixty-some odd years in Steeplechase Park. It stopped running back in the sixties and was actually declared a landmark twice, in 1977 and again in 1988. I figure with the new Mets farm stadium and the area getting a face-lift, eventually someone will restore it and get it up and running again. My mother went on it once when she was about six years old, and she’d never go on again. She said she made it to the top but got so scared she blacked out and doesn’t remember coming down.
The concession stands were closed, so I got off the boardwalk at Seaview Avenue, where the boardwalk is actually made of wood. I was sweating now, and I ran across to the deli for a bottle of water. Since I hadn’t run in a week, I was sucking wind, and I slowed it down to a walk as I headed toward South Beach. I turned around when I ran out of boardwalk up by the boccie ball courts and did a slow jog back to my truck.
Alfonse was outside watering the garden when I pulled up. He’d cleared a lot of it, and it was mostly tomatoes at this point. I had about ten tomatoes sitting on my windowsill, and what I didn’t eat, Michele would probably take home tomorrow. She kept asking me to bring her some, but I never knew which day I’d be out there.
“Tony, Julia made you some zucchini,” he said, putting the hose down as he walked into the house.
Julia making zucchini could be anything. She fries them, stuffs the flowers, makes them parmigiana, or puts them in a stew. Alfonse brought out a bowl with foil over it and a piece of bread, so I was guessing stew. Julia makes it with tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, and basil. I could tell she just made it; it was still warm.
It was 7:30 when I went down to my apartment and ate the stew, sopping up the juice with the bread. I took a shower and flipped through the channels on the TV while I waited for Michele to call back. I was bored out of my mind, so I went back outside to thank Julia for the stew. She shooed me away, saying I eat too much takeout.
“Tony, don’t forget to move your truck off the block for tomorrow,” Alfonse said.
“Thanks, I forgot about that.” I went inside for my keys and parked my truck up on Greely Avenue. The sun was just about down now, and streaks of pink stretched across the dark blue sky.
When I walked back, Alfonse and Julia were talking to Sandy in the front yard.
“Hey, Sandy,” I said, sm
iling.
She was looking better these days. Her husband was out on bail for when he stabbed her, but so far he hadn’t bothered her. He was facing some serious time for assault and attempted murder, and if he messed with the restraining order now, he’d be in jail until trial.
“Hi, Tony,” she said.
“Where’s the kids?” I asked.
“In their pajamas, watching TV,” she said.
She looked like she wanted to tell me something. “Everything alright?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I talked to the ADA today. So far Ralph hasn’t taken a plea. He said he’ll take his chances at trial. He’s probably gonna say I’m crazy, that I take antidepressants and stuff.”
“Sandy, he stabbed you. And he assaulted you. He can’t justify attempted murder, don’t worry about it,” I said.
“You’re probably gonna have to testify. I’m sorry to drag you into all this.” She was getting upset now, starting to cry.
“Don’t worry about me, I testify all the time. In fact, I testified today for an armed robbery.”
The truth was, this would be different. It was someone I knew, and an off-duty incident. If Ralph had a good enough lawyer, he’d make me look like a vigilante.
Julia had gone inside, and now she came back out with some salami and cheese, a bowl of figs, two bottles of wine, and four glasses. It was Chianti, the old man’s kind with the straw going up the bottle.
“Come and sit,” she said as she motioned us over to the picnic table. She lit a couple of citronella candles, and we all sat around the table.
“None for me, Julia.” I held up my hand when she went to pour the fourth glass.
She looked at me and nodded. Alfonse and Julia never say anything about me always turning down a glass of wine. She went inside and got a bottle of Pellegrino and some lemon slices and poured it into my wine glass.
Joanne, Sandy’s friend and our neighbor to the left of us, came over to schmooze with us. She has five daughters that all look alike to me, and she was telling us about some Irish step dance competition they were in. Neal from down the street was walking his dog and wound up sitting down. We talked about the weather, the Yankees, the next mayor, and Ralph. Sandy and her kids were in counseling. Her daughter seemed to be having the hardest time with it. She asked to see Ralph, and Sandy didn’t want her to.
“I wouldn’t let her,” I said. “He’ll play with her head.”
“They won’t let him see the kids,” Alfonse said. “Look what he did to you.”
I didn’t want to tell Alfonse that there was a good chance the courts would let him see her, especially if she wanted to see him.
“But, Tony, they told me at court that I wasn’t allowed to say anything bad about Ralph to my children. The judge said I’m not even supposed to talk to them about what happened.” Her voice went up a notch on that.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “The kids are traumatized, and they can’t talk to their mother about it?”
“They said that’s what the counselor is for. So now whenever they want to talk about it I have to tell them to talk to Sylva, that’s the counselor.”
“Don’t get me started with lawyers and judges,” I said. Everyone knows that lawyers are sharks, but they forget that the judges are all lawyers.
After they finished the second bottle of wine and were opening up a third, Alfonse asked me, “You don’t drink, Tony?”
“I used to,” I said. “Then it got out of hand, and I try to stay away from it.”
“But this is just wine, it’s good for you,” he said, looking confused. “The doctor tells me I should have a glass every day for cholesterol. But it’s gotta be red wine.” He pointed at me. “Even the Bible says to drink wine.” His face lit up, like a lightbulb went on, and he said, “Jesus drank wine!”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “In fact, in Jesus’s day, that area was the most wine-producing and wine-consuming region in the world. They drank it at every meal.”
They looked impressed that I would know that. The only reason I knew was because Denise read it in a gourmet food and wine magazine and called me to tell me so I could drink wine and be healthy.
I was holding my wine glass full of Pellegrino, rolling the stem between two fingers, wishing so bad it was wine so I could bring it up to my face and breathe it in. I could almost taste the smoothness and warmth of it sliding down my throat. I envied them their easiness in being able to drink it, and I wanted to pick up the bottle and pour myself some. I wished for the thousandth time that there were a way I could learn how to drink socially. You know, just have a glass of wine like everyone else and leave it at that.
“You go to AA, Tony?” Sandy asked.
“No, nothing like that,” I said.
“If you don’t need to go to AA, then why can’t you have a drink?”
New York logic. I almost said, “Yeah, you’re right,” and picked up the bottle to pour myself some. Then I thought about Michele. She’d never know that I had a drink, and neither would Fiore. But they’d be here in the morning, and I’d have to face them. I thought about what Michele said last night about being honest with each other right from the beginning and about how I haven’t been honest about a lot of things with her.
The truth was, I felt kind of like a fraud with Michele. Like maybe if she really knew me, she wouldn’t be so quick to marry me. Here I was with everything going my way. I was getting married, getting a great kid, and I was sitting with my neighbors, wanting to drink so bad my eyeballs hurt. It was like I kept waiting for the hammer to hit me and things to crash and burn around me like they always did.
I felt a little detached, and I had to concentrate on what Alfonse was saying. He was talking about growing up in Italy until he was about fourteen, which made him younger than I thought. He came from farmers, poor as anything, who came here because they’d heard that in America the streets were paved with gold.
“The streets were paved with the sweat and blood of the Italians,” he said, a little drunk and heated now.
It wasn’t just the Italians, but you’d never convince him of that.
“I worked hard all my life here. I never took no help from nobody. My father died, and my mother sewed and cleaned houses to keep food on the table. There was no welfare; you worked if you wanted to eat. I started working when I was fourteen years old. I was a laborer, I worked on the docks. I knew how to work hard.”
He’s from the old school like my father and grandfather, hardworking men who respect a good work ethic over an education. It’s funny, but sitting there I realized they have two separate sets of values. They believe in honesty and integrity in their work, but their principles are a lot different at home. They keep things from their wives, things like money and women. You wouldn’t think it to look at Alfonse, but he still has something on the side. Every Thursday he dresses up nice and meets his girlfriend. He tells Julia he’s going to the old neighborhood in Brooklyn, which he is, because that’s where his thing on the side is. Part of me was thinking that he treats Julia good—she has a beautiful home and he loves her, so what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I realized I was stuck somewhere in between with two sets of values and that I used either one when it suited me.
I stood up and said I was tired and spent ten minutes talking them into letting me go to bed. I went downstairs and looked at the clock, surprised that it was 11:30. I saw the message light blinking on my answering machine and played the message from Michele asking me to call her.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said when she picked up on the third ring.
“Where were you?”
“I was sitting outside with Alfonse and Julia.” I was gonna leave it at that, but I added, “Sandy was there with her friend Joanne and Neal from down the street.”
“How is Sandy? She’s the one you helped with the husband, right?”
I could hear her thinking. She’d never met Sandy, and I knew she was curious about her. She thought she had a th
ing for me, which in a way she did, but that was just because after my run-in with Ralph, he was gone and she thought I did it.
“Yeah, she’s doing good.” I paused and said, “Alfonse brought out a couple of bottles of wine and some food, so we were sitting around talking.”
“Is that hard for you? I mean with everyone drinking wine like that.” I noticed she didn’t ask me if I was drinking, she just assumed I wasn’t. “Did you want a drink?”
“Today I did. Lately I do.”
She was quiet for a second and said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I guess I should though. You should know things like that about a person before you marry them. In case you want to change your mind.”
“No, Tony. You should know things like that about a person so you can help them through it. I appreciate you telling me. Is there anything else I should know?” She said it jokingly, but I knew she meant it.
“Yeah, actually there is,” I said, wondering if this was the right thing to do. “A few months back my old girlfriend Kim came here. Nothing happened, but I never told you.”
“Oh,” she said. “What did she want? Never mind, stupid question.” I could hear the anger in her voice. “I know what she wanted. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want to fight about it. I didn’t ask her to come here—”
“How did she know where you live?”
“She said she ran into Mike Ellis’s girlfriend on the boat.” The boat is the Staten Island Ferry, but everyone just calls it the boat. “She was only here for five minutes, and when I told her I didn’t want nothing to do with her, she left.”
Now, this is the part where I learned why men never tell women anything.
“So why are you telling me now?”
“I guess because of what you were saying last night about being honest with each other right from the beginning. I’m trying to do that,” I said. “Are you still there?” I didn’t hear anything and thought she’d hung up.
“I’m here. I’m sorry. You surprised me with this, and I’m mad that you didn’t tell me then, but I appreciate you telling me now. Did you think I would have blamed you for it if you told me when it happened?”