As Dr. Rosensohn had told me, it was time to grow the fuck up. I was willing to try.
Rose suddenly pulled back from the embrace and poked a finger at my jacket.
“Hey, Jo-Jo, what’s stabbin’ me, here?”
I put my hand over the box bump. “A very bad idea.”
“Yeah? You keepin’ a bad idea in a box?”
Before I could say another word she struck like a snake, pulling my hand away and reaching into my pocket to pull it out. A nanosecond of puzzlement, and then she realized what she was holding and her jaw dropped.
“Oh my God!”
“I was going to do it, Rose. I was going to get down on one knee and everything.”
“My God!”
“It was a stupid, selfish idea. I wasn’t thinking of you. Not that you would have accepted my proposal, but anyway, you can relax. I’m not proposing to you.”
“You don’t want me?”
“Oh, I want you. But getting everything you want is for kids, and I’m no damn kid.”
Her lips were trembling, as if a winter wind had suddenly blown through the house. “I ain’t no kid, either.”
“Sure you are. You just did it backwards. You were old when you were young. Now you can be young again.”
She smiled at me through fresh tears. “Well, you’re makin’ it easy, Jo-Jo. I’m gonna do it. Gonna give my prick landlord notice tomorrow, get outta here by the end o’ the month.”
My heart sank. “Wow. That soon?”
“Yeah. Justin wants me there yesterday, you know? Gonna have Christmas in Seattle. That’s what he wants.” She made a sound that was half-chuckle, half-sob. “Shit happens fast when it happens, you notice?”
“Sure does.”
Suddenly we were awkward in each other’s presence, knowing whatever it was we’d had was officially over, and what the hell had it meant while it was happening? I’m not sure either of us would ever really know. But whatever it was, it had been precious.
Rose continued holding the ribboned box in her open hand, as if it were a baby bird she couldn’t persuade to fly away.
“Never seen such a beautiful box.”
“Open it if you like.”
“Really?”
“What the hell. If you like the box, you’re going to love the ring.”
She pulled the ribbon and opened the box. The stone was square-cut, in a platinum band. Rose brought the box to her face and turned it to see the ring glitter from all angles.
“Most beautiful thing I ever saw.”
“Try it on.”
Her eyes widened. “I can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“’Cause we ain’t gettin’ married.”
“You can still try it on. Go ahead, I had to guess at the size. Want to see how I did.”
She slid the ring on and held her hand out, fingers spread wide.
“You did good, Jo-Jo.”
“I got lucky. The woman at the ring counter had hands like yours.”
“No kiddin’? She work in a Laundromat too? That’s the only way you get knuckles like mine.”
“Anyway, I figured if it fit her . . .”
I stopped talking, because Rose was sobbing.
“Jesus, man, you gotta be so fuckin’ nice about everything?”
She pulled off the ring, set it back in the box and put the lid on. She even tried to tie the ribbon around the box, but her hands were shaking too much.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said, taking the box and the ribbon and shoving them both back into my pocket.
“There,” I said. “Like it never happened.”
Rose had calmed down. She wiped her eyes and forced herself to look stern. “You’re gonna get your money back, right?”
“Yeah, don’t worry about that.”
“’Cause I’m gonna be real upset if you don’t get your money back.”
“Got the receipt right in my wallet. That I’m not going to show you.”
She giggled. Then she told me Justin would be back in a few weeks to help her pack up, and that her landlord was going to be pissed off by the sudden departure, and all the spruce-up improvements he was going to have to do for a new tenant.
I headed for the door on shaky legs and dared to ask, “Am I going to see you again?”
She shrugged. “Like I said, I’ll be here a few more weeks.”
“But you won’t be knocking on my door, will you?”
She let her head fall. “Can’t do it anymore, Jo-Jo. I’m sorry. It’d make me sad, ‘cause . . . you know.”
“Yeah.”
We hugged one more time. She put her lips to my ear. “You were really gonna ask me to marry you, weren’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“So what happened?”
Your hair smelled like bleach, I wanted to say.
“I grew up,” I said instead.
I broke the embrace, kissed her forehead and stepped outside. The cold air felt good. It helped dry my tears as I crossed the street and hurried to my lair at good old 207.
Chapter Thirty-two
My lair! That’s what the house had become. I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I pulled down the shades on my front windows and almost wished I hadn’t had the bars removed.
I quit running in Highland Park, quit walking around the neighborhood. I existed on whatever I had in the refrigerator and the pantry, supplemented by a few quick trips to White Castle for burgers and fries. I watched a lot of stupid daytime TV, took a lot of naps.
I wasn’t particularly unhappy. Mostly I was numb. For a full day and a half I forgot all about my chickens, neglecting to feed and water them.
How about that? My grandmother strangled my first crop of birds, and now these new birds were in danger of starving to death! With a jolt I remembered them and ran outside to feed them. Luckily it had rained the night before, so their water bowls were full.
“I’m sorry, girls,” I said, tossing french fries and burger scraps around the yard. “Been a little distracted lately.”
They looked fine, having gotten by on whatever they were able to scratch out of the ground, and there was a bumper crop of eight eggs waiting to be gathered. My usefulness was diminishing by the moment. Even the damn chickens didn’t need me anymore.
My naps got longer and deeper. I frightened myself by falling asleep once as darkness fell and awakening as darkness was again falling. I’d missed a whole day.
Parched and woozy, I got out of bed, staggered to the kitchen and drank straight from the faucet until I thought my belly would burst. Then I went to the backyard and tossed another load of scraps from White Castle to the chickens. The yard looked like hell, streaked everywhere with dung that needed to be raked into the soil, but I was in no mood to do it.
What the hell day was it? I had no idea. I was lost. I needed a shower, a shave and a reason to live. I got as far as the shower when the pounding on my front door jolted me back to reality.
Rose?
I pulled on a T-shirt and hopped into my jeans before rushing to answer the door. My hair was wet and the cold air was a shock, but not as big a shock as the sight of Officer Billy Debowski standing there on my front stoop, looking grim.
“Joe, I’m sorry,” he said.
My head was spinning. What day was it? Had I missed my last session with Rosensohn? Would they actually send an emergency-services cop to arrest me for a parole violation?
I held my hands up, as if he had a gun trained on me. “Billy, I didn’t miss a session. I’m not due until next week.”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Put your hands down, for Christ’s sake!”
I did as I was told. Billy took a deep breath.
“You don’t know what happened, do you?”
“I’ve been asleep. What? Something happen to my daughter?”
“No, no, not your daughter!”
“You know a guy named Nathan Grossman, right?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Old guy, sits on Atlantic Avenue all day?”
“You mean Nat?”
“Yeah. They called him Nat.”
Called. Shit. The past tense was almost always bad news.
* * *
The headline in the following day’s New York Post said 98-YEAR-OLD BROOKLYN MAN MURDERED FOR SEVEN DOLLARS. As if the kid who’d bashed Nat’s skull in with a hammer knew he had a five and two singles in his pants before he killed him.
Nathan “Nat” Grossman, a survivor of the Holocaust, died where he lived—“on the mean streets of East New York,” as the Post reporter put it. He’d been seated in his lawn chair in front of his onetime bottle-recycling center when a shirtless fourteen-year-old boy said to be mentally retarded came up to him and demanded money.
Nat being Nat, he told the kid to get lost. Two blows were struck, though the second was probably not necessary. Nat was pronounced dead at the scene, and less than an hour later the boy was arrested at his nearby home by Officer Debowski, who stood on my front stoop barely an hour after that, sharing the gory details.
“This kid is some whack job, Joe. We got word he had guns, which turned out to be bullshit. So we bust into his house and he’s sittin’ at the kitchen table, with a big bowl o’ Cocoa Puffs. He’s pourin’ Coca-Cola on the cereal—believe that? Meanwhile the hammer’s right there next to his bowl, blood drippin’ on the table. He looks at us like he’s annoyed. We’re interrupting his meal. Total psycho. You okay, Joe?”
I wasn’t. I felt faint. Billy realized this and led me to my kitchen, where we both sat down. Through the fog in my head something was nagging at me, and at last I realized what it was.
“Billy. How’d you know I knew Nat?”
He reached inside his jacket pocket and removed an envelope.
“This was on the victim’s person,” he said. “Looks like he’d been carrying it around for a while.”
Billy slid the sealed envelope across the table. It was wrinkled and grimy at the corners, and my name and address were printed on it in shaky capital letters.
“It was zipped inside his jacket pocket,” Billy said. “Maybe that’s why the killer didn’t find it.”
I looked at it without touching it. “Okay if I open it?”
“Hey, it’s your property. I’m just the mailman.”
The envelope practically crumbled in my hands, but the single sheet of lined yellow paper it contained was in good shape. It was a handwritten note, all in capital letters. Maybe nobody had ever taught Nat about lowercase letters. I knew his formal education had been brief.
JOEY,
IF YOU’RE READING THIS I’M DEAD. MAYBE SOMEBODY KILLED ME, OR MAYBE I JUST WORE OUT. DOESN’T MATTER NOW. I WANT YOU TO HAVE WHATEVER I HAD. IT’S NOT MUCH BUT IT’S IN MY ROOM AT THE SENIOR CENTER. ANYBODY GIVES YOU A HARD TIME, SHOW THEM THIS LETTER. IT’S MY WILL.
YOURS TRULY,
NATHAN GROSSMAN
(“NAT THE JEW”)
“Everything okay?”
Billy’s voice jolted me. I knew he was dying to know what was in the letter. I handed it to him. He read it with a furrowed brow, as if it were a ransom note, then passed it back to me with a shrug.
“Sad.”
“That’s the word for it.”
“So this old guy just hung out all day on Atlantic Avenue?”
“This neighborhood is all he ever knew. He didn’t have any relatives.”
Billy’s face darkened. “I’m gonna wind up the same way, the rate I’m goin’. Remember that girl I was dating, the one with the kid? She dumped me.”
“I’m sorry, Billy.”
“I don’t miss her as much as I miss her kid. Who by the way loved your book.”
“I’m glad.”
He shook his head. “Fucking relationships, man.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I mean, Jesus! What am I doing wrong? I got bad breath or somethin’?”
“It’s not you, Billy. The world’s insane.”
“You got that right. Coca-Cola on Cocoa Puffs. Christ!”
“Not to mention hammer murders.”
“That I can understand easier than Coca-Cola on Cocoa Puffs.”
Billy had to get back to the crime scene. I walked him to the door.
“By the way, Joe, if anybody gives you any grief, I can vouch for you.”
“What do you mean?”
He gestured at my hand, the one clutching Nat’s letter.
“I’m a witness. I took the envelope out of his jacket, and I watched you open it. What I mean is, I know it’s for real, in case anybody contests it.”
I had to laugh. “That’s what’s so pathetic, Billy. Nat was totally alone in this world.” I shook the letter. “There’s not a person on this planet who’d give a shit about this.”
“Yeah? Listen, you never know. Could be his room is full of shoe boxes stuffed with cash. Hoarders. I’ve seen it happen with old people. Cash their Social Security checks, never spend a dime. Is that senior center he lived in nearby?”
I nodded. Billy smiled. “I’d get there fast if I were you, Joe. The people who work there have master keys to all the rooms, and some of them have pretty sticky fingers.”
* * *
The next morning I made my way to the senior center, a gloomy yellow brick building with small windows. You walked in and smelled disinfectant, the really powerful piney kind to mask the odor of the dying. All it really did was remind you that people came here to die.
A young black woman who must have weighed close to three hundred pounds sat slump-shouldered at the reception desk, reading People magazine. She had the weary look of a person whose job is so depressing that the only way to do it is to exist in a self-inflicted catatonic state.
She looked up from her magazine and seemed surprised to see me. This wasn’t the kind of place that got a lot of visitors.
“Help you?”
I cleared my throat. “I’m here to collect Nathan Grossman’s things.”
Her eyes widened in what seemed to be amusement. “His things?”
I showed her the letter. It was startling enough to improve her posture. She was actually sitting up straight by the time she was through reading it.
“I ain’t sure this is an oh-ficial document.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
She shrugged as she handed it back to me. “Guess it’s all right. Cops already been and gone.” She shook her head. “Funny old man. He finally get a visitor, after he day-id.” She pointed down the hall. “Room one-sixty-three.”
“Don’t I need a key?”
“Ain’t locked.”
I didn’t see a soul on the walk down that gray hallway, though I heard coughing through closed doors, the kind of coughing where you expect to find a lung on the floor. Round landlord-halo lights in the ceiling lit the way, a fitting bit of decor in a place filled with people on the brink of acquiring halos.
I opened the door to room 163 and stepped into what could have been the dormitory home of a college freshman: a narrow cot, a bureau with a small mirror over it and a freestanding clothes closet.
The lone window looked out onto a sooty air shaft. No wonder Nat spent his days outdoors, regardless of the weather. This place was strictly for sleeping.
No pictures on the cinder-block walls, no photographs, no books. The drawers contained shirts, socks and underwear, and in the closet his winter peacoat hung from a solitary hanger, his gloves and woolen hat jammed into its pockets.
No documents of any kind. No printed matter. I wondered where he’d acquired pen and paper to write that letter to me. There wasn’t even a table or chair for him to sit at to write!
I sat on the cot and buried my face in my hands. I was afraid that if I let mysel
f start crying, I’d never stop. I struggled to stay calm in that horrible little room.
There was nothing to take here, nothing anybody could possibly want, so why would Nat leave me a letter sending me to this dreadful place?
I had to get out, and when I took my hands away from my face I became aware of a splash of color, a little green glow on the wall opposite the window. I turned to face the window and there it was on the sill, all by itself in the morning sun, like the last soldier standing after a long, horrific battle.
It was an ancient White Rock ginger ale bottle with bubbly raised lettering, the kind they stopped making when aluminum cans came along. There on the label was the winged White Rock girl, forever kneeling on that rock as she gazed into the water.
That bottle had to be at least fifty years old. How many such bottles had I brought to Nat, all those years ago? Maybe I’d brought him this one! Maybe that’s why he wanted me to have it!
I took the bottle in my quaking hands and wiped the dust from its shoulders.
“Thanks, Nat.”
On my way out I showed the bottle to the girl at the reception desk.
“That’s all you takin’?”
“The rest is just clothing. The Salvation Army can have it.”
“A damn bottle,” she said, rolling her eyes and waving at the ceiling. “Farewell to you, Mis-ter Grossman.”
It was crazy, but I felt wonderful when I hit the street, my precious bottle in hand. I’d expected this trip to Nat’s room to send me into the deepest depression of my life, but the opposite thing was happening.
True, Nat had led a strange life: all by himself with no property, no descendants. Even his old place of business was long gone, so there was literally nothing, nothing to indicate he’d ever walked the earth. That was one way to look at it.
But suddenly, I was seeing it another way. Nat had been like a rocket ship, voyaging ever deeper into space. The rocket didn’t acquire as it went; it dropped pieces in stages as it burned out. Eventually Nat was just a capsule drifting in space, until that crazy kid with the hammer came along, and then he was just a tiny point of light, shining through that green bottle on his windowsill.
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