by Jen Conley
I nodded.
"But I'm not leaving Jason. Not tonight, at least."
I waited.
"He's still handsome and funny, like he was when I married him. He is Michael's father, even if Michael's not around to spend time with."
"Don't say any more, Natalie," he said, shaking his head.
"I try to remember what it's like to be a parent, try to explain it to myself now," she went on. "But I'll never understand it unless I'm doing it—unless I'm being a parent. Jason and I can't have that anymore. But what else do I have left?"
He held up a hand as tears came from his eyes. "Please."
"Even if you treat me wrong, even if you're not someone I should spend my life with, I still need you in my life. I still want you to treat me somehow, even if it's wrong."
After wiping his face dry, he turned to his dresser and started packing. "I can't stay here tonight. I want a divorce."
Natalie stared into his back, her face breaking into sobs.
Pulling clothes out of drawers and piling them onto the top, tears dribbled down Jason's cheeks again.
I walked out of the house, passing the living room and the boy's framed photo on the fireplace mantel. His blue eyes stared into emptiness.
A scream and the sound of breaking glass shot through the air as I closed the door.
Redline
by Eddie McNamara
Tommy Riordan, known citywide by his graffiti tag, "Devs," addressed his shabbily-dressed, adolescent troops from the center of the handball court in Marine Park. "After you stomp the shit out of them, make sure to take their fucking sneakers—it'll break their hearts worse than if you killed their mothers. Don't let any of them leave this neighborhood with shoes on their feet. Got it?"
We gave Devs our undivided attention as he spoke in his hybrid accent: heavy New York street tawk with the occasional word that betrayed the Irish brogue of his early childhood. When Tommy was angry, his accent became more pronounced, and that made people nervous.
He was a neighborhood folk hero at the age of 16. Tommy seemed happiest when he saw a weakling getting picked on. He took the opportunity to smack the aggressor around until they were cowering and begging him to stop. He bullied the bullies of our eighth grade class until they were completely submissive to him and became his lackeys. He was the only white boy at the Starrett City Boxing Club—the 178lb Golden Gloves novice division champion, training to fight grown men in the open division the next year. The knuckles of his hands were gruesome: swollen, busted, misaligned and scarred from battle.
The most infamous Tommy Riordan story was the one whispered in the boys' room and on the playground, where some unlucky bastards tried to steal his Walkman on the D train. A group of would-be muggers bumrushed Devs, trying to snatch his wallet or watch or anything they could grab off him, but before they could get anything, Devs smashed his own Walkman on the subway floor, putting the fuckers in a lose-lose situation. Then Devs lunged at the biggest one and sunk his teeth into the kid's face like a starving dog. Half-Face's friends split and left their boy behind. Tommy bit a good-sized chunk out of that dude's cheek and spit it on the subway floor. The neighborhood kids would say, "Fight Tommy Devs and you'll lose face one way or another."
Devs stared each of us down as we nodded in agreement, ensuring our dedication to the cause.
It was the summer of 1989 and I had overstayed my visa. My parents shipped me off to my widowed uncle in the States when my glue sniffing and petty run-ins with the local Gardaí had become too much for them to handle. They hoped that living and working with my half-mad uncle and his sons Tommy and Rory would sort my problems out and turn me into a productive member of society—or at least they'd be able to beat the trouble out of me.
I had gone from a depressed Irish midland town of 20,000 to Brooklyn of the late 80s—the New York City of Marla Hanson's slashed face, Yusef Hawkins getting killed by a bunch of Guidos because he was a black man in Bensonhurst, the crack epidemic, Howard Beach, Bernie Goetz, squeegee men, hookers in Times Square, homeless everywhere, 2,000 murders, Do the Right Thing, AIDS, AIDS, and more AIDS, tribalism, distrust, mayhem, "Fight the Power" on the radio twice an hour. Brooklyn might be a destination for polite middle-class Americans now, but back then it only served as an inspiration to get the fuck out. I couldn't believe my luck; there was finally real excitement in my life. There's no need to sniff glue when you can take a train to a Cro-Mags matinee at CBGB knowing that any moment something could jump off and you'd have to throw down, or having to fight to keep your baseball cap, jacket or backpack on the subway ride home. It was pure madness, and I loved it.
I was officially enrolled in school, but Marine Park Junior High School wasn't in the cards for me. My days were spent working with my uncle Francie scrap-metalling. It was hard labor and we got on well working together. I didn't care much for school, but that's where the Puerto Rican girls were and I couldn't help but feel like I was missing out on that experience—the freckled girls back home were dog-ugly in comparison and I was stuck hauling metal instead of chatting up a girl with her name spelled out in gold on a necklace.
While the school and the park were Devs's kingdom, Tommy wouldn't dare step out of line at in his father's house. Francie was 36 years old and hard as a coffin nail. He'd been working proper men's jobs since he left school at 12 years of age. He had an imposing physique, but not the type you could get in a gym; he was farmer strong—workingman strong.
One of the neighbors, a guy called Romano who wore a shirt and tie to work, walked over to Francie and me as we were having a kickaround in the front garden.
"How's it been since that nigger bought the house next door?" Romano asked.
"Grand," said Francie without looking at Romano, kicking the ball to me.
"You're not worried about the value of your house going down the shitter?" asked Romano. "This is the last white block left on this side of the jungle." He continued, "One of them moved in, they're gonna flood the place like cockroaches now. I'm just saying, I'd understand if you lit a match to put a stop to the infestation before it started."
"Why don't you fuck off back home," said Francie, focusing his attention on Romano, "I've got more in common with him than I do with a fat loudmouth Guinea like you. I'd take ten niggers like him over one of yours any day."
Romano turned visibly angry, went red in the face, but what was he going to do about it?
The truth was, Francie and the new neighbor Mr. Heath became fast friends. Heath was from Trinidad, and like Francie and myself, he was a Manchester United supporter. He'd come over for the early morning matches due to the time difference and the three of us would drink Red Stripe beer and agree that Paul McGrath, the half-Nigerian, half-Irish star defender for United and the Republic of Ireland was the best man on the pitch.
Though three years apart in age, Tommy and Rory were in the same grade at school. Rory lacked his brother's casual relationship with violence. Although he would seem to be the ideal candidate for bullying—a short, thin, ginger who wore badly silk-screened heavy metal shirts from the Aqueduct Flea Market—Rory was under his brother's umbrella of protection, and no one was willing to find out what the consequences might be for picking on him. He could have worn a pink skirt and a New Kids on the Block shirt to school and nothing would have happened to him.
But Rory was only untouchable in one tiny neighborhood.
The Park served as the dividing line between two almost identical working-class areas. The run-down houses looked the same, the rusted cars with too many miles on them looked the same, the discount stores that sold irregular clothing and dented canned goods looked the same. The immigrants came from former British colonies and drank Guinness (some from cans, some from pint glasses). The kids went to the same schools and played on the same teams. The parents had the same low expectations for their children; landing a civil service job with a pension was like winning the lotto. Everything was the same on both sides of the park, except for ski
n color.
Rory arrived home late for dinner that night, on foot and visibly shaken. He made the mistake of riding his bike through Marine Park on his own, and you didn't ride your bike alone in the park if you intended on keeping it. The very least, you'd have to fight for it. It was just a no-name crap frame stickered to look like a Redline RL-2011—the expensive BMX bike from the movie Rad. The crime didn't bother the old fella as much as the fact that Rory told the story with tears in his eyes (and without a scratch on his face or marks on his knuckles to indicate a scuffle).
Uncle Francie couldn't understand why he just gave his bike up because the robber intimidated him. "It's that other cunt that should be crying right now, not you. Not one of mine!" Francie barked, as he began to toss things from Rory's side of the room out the window: boxes of baseball cards, Nintendo games, comic books, a guitar that never stayed in tune, and all of his copy-of-a-copy music tapes—everything his son owned. He piled them near the garbage cans in front of the house, announcing loudly to passers by that they were free to take anything they wanted because his youngest was giving all his worldly possessions away. Francie mumbled something about having two daughters that Rory only partially heard, but fully understood. My little cousin flopped down on his bed in a half-empty room and tried to hold back the tears this time.
"He fucking hates me, Eamon, my own father hates me," Rory said. "I'm not like Tommy, I'm not like you. I'm an embarrassment to him. No matter what I do, it's always wrong."
"That's not true," I said. "He's always on about you when we're on a job together. About that posh high school in Manhattan that offered you a scholarship for playing chess, and how you'll be the first Riordan to go to college and not have to work like a dog for a living. He knows that Tommy's not going to make it far as a pro boxer with his busted hands and paper-thin skin. He's proudest of you. He's just not one of these huggy American fathers who kiss you on the mouth. Alright?"
"I'm already the first Riordan to make it to the eighth grade. Being the academic success story of this family is not much of an accomplishment. Dad doesn't care about school and grades. He calls me Oscar Wilde when he sees me reading around the house."
"Oscar Wilde was the cleverest man that ever lived."
"Oscar Wilde was a faggot," Rory said as he buried his face in his pillow.
I wasn't lying or saying those things just to make him feel better. Francie was always going on about Rory being in the advanced classes with all the Jewish and Chinese kids who were kept segregated in educational apartheid—safely away from the blacks bussed in from the Vandeveer Houses and the shanty Irish from Gerritsen Beach bungalows. The old man reckoned that Rory was sharp enough to have a proper job. He could be a lawyer or banker, and avoid the bottom of the construction barrel, the half-tinker job of scrapping and salvage. Francie only questioned whether his son had the balls to match his brains.
Everyone knew about the bike wars, but nothing was ever done to stop it. It was as if the cops just allowed it to play out because to them, every kid involved was a piece of trash. Every weekend, the ones who lived on the other side of the park would ride, two or sometimes three to a bike: one on the seat, one standing on the back pegs and maybe one sitting on the handlebars, and go 'shopping' until they all went home on a bike of their own. They would look for the softest kids, the ones who would hand over their bikes without even putting up a fight. More often than not, bystanders playing softball, jogging, or drinking in the park would intervene during the robberies and a three-on-one fight might turn into a seven-on-three or a five-on-ten brawl, producing the kind of violence that most people believe only happens in the movies.
Devs continued rallying his ragtag army in his quest to avenge Rory: "OK, so what we do is, we send one of you little shits out on the GT Pro Performer. When they see you looking like a scared little white boy on a $250 bike, they're gonna be on you quick—so you better be able to pedal your ass off." Devs looked at the excited and nervous faces in front of him and asked, "Which one of you is the fastest?"
Most of the kids turned their heads and looked to the same eleven-year-old. Luca Giordano, a gangly kid who looked much younger than his age and wore the same Don Mattingly t-shirt every day, sheepishly raised his hand.
Devs smiled. "Good, the little greaseball's gonna be our bait. Make sure they chase you to the fieldhouse where the rest of us are gonna be hiding. Don't fuck up. We got bats, hammers, chains, all kinds of shit that'll teach them that they can't come here and disrespect us in our neighborhood. Bash their heads in, knock their teeth out. Take their bikes, their money, anything they got. Throw them a beating so bad that when they even think about our park, they should have nightmares about us. We're the fuckin' monsters that will haunt their dreams. They'll remember us forever. All of you be here at the fieldhouse Saturday and bring your boys."
The next day, I drifted into the park with the Riordan brothers at noon. We were greeted by about a dozen anxious kids milling about behind the fieldhouse sharing cigarettes and drinking whatever bottles of malt liquor could be bought at the Arab store with pocket change, speaking boldly about what they hoped would happen that afternoon. Tommy removed a can of Krylon from his backpack and hit the freshly painted red field house with a DEVS mpk tag. He looked more intense than usual. His hair was newly shorn in a high-and-tight military style and his eyes weren't blinking.
Rory kept one hand in the pocket of his denim jacket touching the Rambo-style survival knife we bought at the martial arts supply shop on Nostrand Avenue right after the humiliation of the robbery and its aftermath. He used his other hand to smoke a cigarette down to the filter.
Luca wasn't speaking to anyone. His eyes scanned the patchy grass, discarded bottle caps and cigarette butts on the ground next to the pile of long, thin, stickball bats. He shuffled the caps around with the worn out Olympians on his feet. Devs put his arm around him and spoke quietly in his ear. Luca nodded. Then Devs shook his hand and Luca smiled for the first time that day.
"Bacon! Put the beers down!" someone shouted. The brown bags were placed gently on the ground as the group backed up a few steps to a see where the police were.
"That ain't the cops; it's an ambulance," said some kid in a Spuds MacKenzie shirt, pointing to the ambulance parked 100 feet away at the curb.
Rory spoke up: "We should forget this. Let's just get out of here. Paramedics have the same radio as the pigs. If they see us do something, they'll radio the cops and we'll all end up in Spofford. We can try again some other time."
Devs glared at his brother with the same contempt that Rory saw in his father's eyes the day before. "Don't worry about those fat slobs in that ambulance. They'll be doing fuck-all, chauffeuring some miserable old cunt whining about chest pains to the hospital any minute. Alright boys. Let's do this."
Luca jumped on the GT bike and pedaled nervously towards the Avenue U parking lot where Billy Clancy, a grown man who still worked at the Bagel Barn, said that he spotted some kids who "don't belong here."
Luca rode for less than 15 minutes, but due to nerves, it probably seemed to him like hours before he finally heard a voice call out: "Yo shorty, yo shorty, let me see that bike." A tall skinny kid was standing on the back pegs of his friend's bike as they rode alongside Luca. "My boy just wants to try it so he knows if he wants to buy one like that. You can hold my bike if you want while he rides yours for a minute," he said. As soon as the kid on the pegs jumped off and lunged towards the GT, Luca took off flying.
Our crew watched the chase from behind the fieldhouse. At first, it seemed that Luca was going too fast to keep the thieves hopeful that they could catch up to our scrappy Greg LeMond, but when two other punks on bikes joined in and started chasing Luca, we knew we had them. Devs was smiling. "Three on bikes, one on foot. Be ready."
We lined up with our backs to the fieldhouse wall, waiting to get revenge for our boy Rory, to show Devs what we're were made of, and to teach these kids not to make the mistake of thinking that they ca
n steal from us without consequences. Some had bats, some had hammers, but most of us were empty handed.
Rory looked more pasty than usual, like he was ill with a bad flu. He was fidgeting so much that I had to tell him to stop moving or he might give away our location and ruin our element of surprise. I knew that Rory wasn't a fighter, but I was proud that he got stuck in with us and resisted his brain telling him to get the fuck out of there and run home.
The sound of a BMX bike hitting the brakes hard on a patch of dirt was the signal that Little Luca was back and it was about to kick off.
The first kid following Luca behind the fieldhouse hit his brakes and finally caught a glimpse of what was waiting for him. His eyes opened wide as he made the Holy Shit face. A split-second later, Devs tackled the kid, knocking him and his bike to the ground. The others swarmed and started soccer-kicking—punting him in the face and ribs, stomping on the bike that fell over his right leg and crushing it until his leg bent a kind of way that legs shouldn't bend.
The second and third hoods arrived. One of them quickly got his face smashed in like a piñata with a stickball bat swung by an acne-faced kid called Kruger, knocking him off of his bike. He fell hard without bracing himself. His friend tried to get away, but someone threw a hammer at his spokes and his bike crashed to the ground. He ran for it, only making it a few steps before being gang tackled and blasted from all angles.
A frenzy of violence unfolded. Bikes were lifted overhead and thrown onto their former riders lying prone on the ground. Some of our guys were getting winded from the volume of punches and kicks they were throwing. The unluckiest of the three thieves tried to protect himself against the stickball bats connecting with his head by curling up in the fetal position, but he wasn't having much success.
The paramedics patiently watched the melee unfold until the end. Once the ambulance driver saw that the failed thieves still hadn't gotten up off the ground, he turned the engine on and rolled away from the carnage. I guess he and his partner didn't want to get involved until they were dispatched.