PALMS
Amanda remembered her first palming like Martin’s hand was still on her head; large, knuckly. Make you smart, Martin said. She submitted to it, even though she didn’t like the feel. Her father, Rich, felt uncomfortable, but there were some things you had to do. He had been back in the house on a tentative basis, and his wife wouldn’t want to hear he was making trouble in the neighborhood again, with Martin of all people. Martin was on the second stair of his stoop. We’ll be going along now, Martin, Rich said. It’s fine, Martin said. She’ll be all right now. He removed his hand from her head. Now that Amanda was an adult he didn’t give her palmings. The Braiker boy, though, who lived next door, still got them. He was in high school. He wondered if when he graduated he wouldn’t. There was something comforting about Martin softly rubbing the top of his head, when he said hello. It might make him smart: who knew.
Nobody knew much about Martin other than that he sat on his stoop every morning, watching the B2s go back and forth, both directions. He never wore long pants, unless it was snowing out. He got a haircut every few weeks. Weekends he took a walk to Marine Park, biggest park in the borough other than Prospect, if you count that—but who does. He rollerbladed when he got there, a couple of times around. If he knew people that he passed, he gave them palmings, but only if he knew them. Some mothers pulled their youngest kids away, because it seemed odd. They moved to the bike path when they saw him coming, and put a hand up to wave, and he did the same. Otherwise he kept to himself, with large headphones on, listening to music low enough that no one else could hear.
There had been a piano teacher who rented the basement of Martin’s house for many years, a middle-aged woman who’d been to conservatory in Russia. She kept a handwritten sign wedged under the knocker on the door saying “Piano Lessons,” with her phone number. Amanda had been to her, even, though the Braiker boy was too young. People say Martin was friendly with the woman; that, when children showed up at the basement for their lessons, they sometimes saw Martin through the window sitting on the piano bench turning the sheet music pages. When she stood up to get the door she would pat his head, and answer the bell. Some lessons he sat there listening, for the first part at least, and then he would go out on his stoop. The woman, people said, wrote the word practice, in long loopy letters, on every page of their children’s music books. She underlined it, many times, sometimes so hard that the page broke. She moved out after she hit one of her students. The boy had been playing a chord with the wrong final finger, over and over again—she lost it. Martin was the one who came to the door as the student burst through, face and eyes black and blue. Ever since then he was alone in the house and on the stoop, though the piano lessons sign stayed. It curled up from the humidity, blotched from raindrops but never totally ruined, protected by the eaves.
• • •
When Amanda moved back to the neighborhood a few years after college, after she’d lived in San Francisco for a while and felt it was time to go east, she decided not to go back home to her mother. Rich was out again at that point. There would have been plenty of room. But she had a good job for Pfizer, the drug company that she’d started working for in college. It wasn’t that nobody had expected Amanda to go to college, but one of the city universities would have been fine, don’t you think? her mother liked to say. She had always been the best basketball player in the neighborhood. They put her on the boys’ B team once she started for Good Shepherd. And in high school she only got better, particularly after she hit her woman’s height. Rutgers recruited her and gave her a scholarship, but not enough, of course, to pay for everything. Pfizer let her temp part-time in the off-season, at the office in Newark. The local EVP had played for St. Francis. When Amanda quit the team her sophomore year, they let her work as many hours as she could. She graduated, but it hadn’t really mattered.
The house was ten blocks away from where she grew up. The B2 stopped right in front, on its way to Kings Highway, where Amanda got the Q to take her into the city, where she worked as a regional accounts manager. It was a good bus; it came on time; it was clean. Amanda could sit on it and work. She could sit out on her stoop and wait for it to arrive, no more than a minute or two. Some days, if she wasn’t outside yet, the bus driver dawdled over someone’s MetroCard. He had a soft spot for Amanda. She brought him a Christmas card with a Buckley’s gift certificate every December. When she went up the bus steps Martin waved from his stoop.
It wasn’t long before Amanda started seeing Robert Dillon, who was working at her office in Manhattan. He was an outside hire whose contract was with a PR firm, but he was working with the regional VP to rewrite the copy on the Pfizer website. They sat in the VP’s corner office for hours while the VP brainstormed on and on about what Pfizer stood for, what communities they were looking to help and be a part of, what the essence of their business was. Robert took dutiful notes and asked pointed questions. Some of them verged on the very personal. Sometimes the VP would ask Robert for a line from literature that he could then riff off: We beat on, boats against the current, medical advancements moving up. Robert told Amanda this in her home. Soon Robert and Amanda were commuting together on the B2. The Pfizer contract was long-term and open.
Amanda’s favorite time of the day was early morning, when she woke up without an alarm so as not to disturb Robert, and dressed silently in the running clothes she’d laid out for herself the night before—an old basketball T-shirt, formfitting nylon shorts. When she had lived in San Francisco, she would wake up early and run the hills above the Castro, where every once in a while she would get a peek at the water. It had seemed sunny then, even in winter. But back home in Marine Park, sometimes she’d start her run in the dark, and her route was dictated by which streetlamps would still be on, on the outer rim of the park. With the sun coming up behind her she raced her streetlamp shadow to the next light, until, on her third mile or so, the sun was up enough. Then she crossed Avenue U and went over to the salt marsh, where she could run by the water like she used to—except there were no hills here, none at all. This wasn’t a problem for running, really. It had been for sledding when she was five, before basketball took over the winter. But now, grown up, hills seemed superfluous. On flat ground, she could run effortlessly and focus on nothingness; not pain in her legs, not the heavy pull of her breath; not her father. By the time she got back and was out of the shower Robert would just be stirring.
Robert had grown up in Brooklyn but not in Marine Park. He’d been to a liberal arts college where he studied literature and media, and his favorite bars were in the Village. He’d never met anyone quite like Martin, or when he thought carefully about it, he guessed he’d just never been in such close proximity to someone like him before. It’s got nothing to do with Marine Park, Amanda said indignantly. The guy is touched as shit. But Martin had been around so long that the neighbors were superbly used to him by then, and that was a palpable feeling. Some evenings, when Amanda was in the shower or on business calls, Robert would sit outside with Martin. They’d each be on their own stoop, of course, the day stumbling to an end around them. Martin explained about palming once, but other than that he didn’t have much to say. He said, It’s how I stay warm inside. He wasn’t embarrassed.
Can you try it on me? asked Robert then. Can I see what you mean? And so Martin stood up, and reached over the fencing separating the stoops, and put his hand down on Robert’s head. Robert closed his eyes. Martin’s hand reached in deep, through his thick hair, the tabs of all his fingers pulsing. Robert sat strangely like that, Martin’s fingers moving above him. He waited for something to happen, for the message to hit him like experience, but it didn’t. Robert thought that Martin seemed disappointed. Try me, Martin said, and sat down and took his headphones off. Robert extended his hand, but couldn’t bring himself to touch Martin’s head. He looked around him at the cold, quiet street. It’s OK, he said. It is OK, said Martin. Martin put his headphones back on and listened to
his music quietly.
• • •
The oldest Braiker boy was used to being on the rooftop. From there, either on his family’s side or Martin’s, he could see the long line of houses on R, and Fillmore and Quentin on either side. There was the large, imposing structure of PS 222, the local public school that he had gone to. When he was a student there he’d been convinced that the building had once been a rich man’s mansion, and that’s why the names of the rooms were so particular and color oriented. The Green Room, now the gym. The Blue Room, which still smelled like chlorine, on the first floor—now the cafeteria. The detail that clinched it was his discovery, in fifth grade, of a dumbwaiter, at the back of his fifth-floor classroom. He stuck his head inside during independent reading and the teacher ran over and held his legs while she screamed for the teacher’s aid to go get help.
The rooftop was the only place where you could find flat open ground where nobody else was watching. The Braiker boy liked to lie there and imagine jumping from one plot of houses to another. They weren’t all that far away, actually. The alleys were thin. Truth be told, he had measured the gap once and found that if he was an Olympic level long-jumper, on a practice jump even, he could do it. Sometimes he stood on the very edge, his sock-covered toes clinging to the siding. When the B2 came humming down the avenue it shook the houses a tiny, imperceptible amount, just enough that his body shivered a little. He was fairly certain he’d survive the fall. He’d heard of weirder things happening.
The Braiker boy had brought the Ventrone girl up to the roof with him. The morning of, he’d gone up and thrown some old blankets down. He didn’t really think that anything would happen. They got on the bus to go to Madison HS together in the morning—both of their classes started on the early session. They didn’t say anything about it, though they’d planned it off and on for a week. Second period, he could hardly listen to Mr. Kelly talk about unit circles and sine functions. When they got out, it was hardly noon. They stopped for pizza at Pronto’s on R and Nostrand, sat in the new expanded section that looked like a real restaurant. The Braiker boy paid, which he hadn’t done before. She said, All right then.
Her hand slipped on the ladder as she was going up. It was old and in his parents’ closet. He’d pushed aside his father’s pinstriped suits to give her room. The trapdoor was heavy, and he regretted having let her go up first, though he felt that this was the gentlemanly thing to do. From two rungs below he pushed with his hand as well. She was that much smaller than him. The grating sounded like something was broken. It happens all the time, he said. Once he’d gone up in a lightning storm and it had sounded much worse than that, the wetness of the metal and plaster hinge shrieking. He’d lain under an old rain jacket, looking below him at the double yellow line in the middle of the street, blinking from the rain.
With the Ventrone girl, there were no such weather issues. After looking over the edge, she ran up and down the block of houses, dodging the spaces where the trapdoors came up out of the roof. The Braiker boy, who had done this all before, sat down on the blanket. It was a wool blanket, and he regretted it suddenly. The Braiker boy picked up the blanket, smoothed it out, brushed the pebbles off the ground underneath it. When the Ventrone girl sat down with him he found that he had nothing to say except apologize for the rapid beating of his heart. His palms weren’t sweaty. But he was sure that she could feel it.
Robert Dillon saw the Ventrone girl leave. He had the day off from work because the EVP was in Las Vegas for a conference. He was lounging in the living room reading a paperback by the wide front window when he saw her. He had almost been asleep. The lull of the B2s going by could do that. She stuck out, though, because she was walking so fast. She pulled the door shut too hard and walked toward Quentin with a purpose. Later, after Robert had cooked pasta for him and Amanda, after Amanda had finished her daily glass of wine, he laughingly told her about it. Amanda had just gotten off the phone with her father, who had moved back into the house, and Robert was casting around for things to say. Funny story, he said, today. Amanda was indignant. You saw that happening and you didn’t say anything? They’re underage; their parents should know. Robert was surprised. He didn’t know whether to tell Amanda that he’d lost his virginity in his freshman year of high school, or whether it was too late. He tried to think of something else to talk about. I’m sure Martin saw too, he said.
Right, Amanda said. That’s useful.
• • •
Amanda’s father, Rich, wasn’t all that bad a man. True, he was known by the neighbors to stomp out the front door, slamming hands on everything: not just the door, their car sometimes even, so that they wanted to bring it up, but who could have the heart. He was the football coach and assistant baseball coach at Madison. He’d been all-everything at Madison when he went there, in the seventies, lettering in football and baseball. Baseball had been his true love. He played football because it got you some respect. But he’d grown to like it as a coach. Had to—he didn’t have any other options. There wasn’t any way he was going to be a fireman, or a cop. He wasn’t that stupid. The longtime field caretaker, Grady, retired his senior year, and they hired Rich for after he graduated. He was already working the day of. The principal said to him, Rich, you can get your robe later. First we need some more help with the bleachers. His mother never forgave him.
It got so bad one summer, when he’d been looking particularly boozy and blotchy for days, he told everyone that he had cancer. Not everyone at first; first just the men at the Mariners Inn. Which was the incredible thing about that place, that they kept it to themselves. Nobody liked to talk about things like that. But then he started saying it to everyone, whenever he could. You know Rich has cancer, Big Bailey’s wife said to Big Bailey one day. I heard about that, he said. He was stopping people on street corners, telling them, reeking. What could you say?
When his wife let him back into the house, it was autumn. It would have been fall baseball season already. He’d missed summer football training, and you couldn’t mess with a team once you’d missed summer training. He hadn’t even had a landline at the hole he found in Howard Beach until he moved back in. But now it was baseball season, the high school kind. Madison had gotten to the city championship the year before, and everyone thought they should do it again. Technically, Rich was the pitching coach, not that he knew anything about pitching. He assumed they’d found a new assistant. Some recent graduate who didn’t want to go into the fire department either. Fewer and fewer, it seemed to Rich, were going since 9/11. Rich didn’t blame them. He remembered that morning, driving to the middle school to pick up Amanda. I can walk, Dad, she’d told him. He had opened the car door for her. Is there going to be a war? she’d asked him. He was looking down the boulevard on Quentin, watching what looked like smoke across the island. Shut up, he said. He didn’t let her go outside to pick up the papers that had floated the ten miles from across the river. He didn’t want her to have that memory. Rich was good for a while after that, but soon he stopped. Everyone talked about it as little as possible. It was already a long time ago.
One day, when he finally worked up the courage to go back to Madison to pick up his personals, he ended up walking down R. When he walked anywhere around Marine Park on what he called his constitutionals—They keep up my constitution, he said to his wife; Do some laundry, she said—he always walked down R. Even if he had to go out of his way to do it. It was the widest street, and it didn’t have stores on it. All the houses were clean. There weren’t any broken windows. There were always people sweeping in front of their steps. When he walked by Thirty-Eighth he noticed that Martin wasn’t on his stoop. No sign of life in his daughter’s house either. One of these days, he’d go inside.
At Madison the junior varsity was already on the turf field. The varsity wouldn’t be out for another hour or so; the head coach liked it that way. Rich stood by the chain fence, and watched the middle infielders turning double plays. Th
ey were mostly bumbling, a little overweight, as junior varsity kids tended to be. A kid at third base had sweatpants on. One of the second basemen at least understood the footwork, and Rich focused entirely on him—the way you do when you’re watching people dance, if someone puts a song from the jukebox on, if there’s only one pretty girl in the room the entire night; the way you zero everything onto watching her. Most beautiful was the way the kid transferred ball from glove. He had good, quick hands. Rich recognized it. He’d probably start on varsity someday. It was only four years, high school, but it felt like a lifetime. You came in, you grew up, you played shortstop, you graduated.
• • •
That afternoon there was a freak storm in the middle of the day. It hadn’t smelled like rain. If you’re from Marine Park you can smell the weather coming in from the ocean, before it breaks up against the hot swell of city air. Even still, it caught everyone by surprise. Amanda and Robert were sitting in folding chairs in their backyard, listening to a Rutgers game on the radio. Amanda knew that Robert didn’t like basketball, but they listened to it anyway. The old man who lived on the end was on his deck, in a folding chair, ensconced in hanging vines. The Braiker boy was on the roof, clutching a blue windbreaker that he didn’t need yet, deciding whether to find the Ventrone girl. There wasn’t much they could do. They could walk around the park. There was a place he knew, covered by weeping willows, where they could sit on the grass. But it was getting cold. Though he didn’t expect the rain. Point is, they were all outside when the storm came rolling in.
Marine Park: Stories Page 12