Car Trouble

by Robert Rorke

  Now I could look at the wheelchair, which was shiny and silver—the Di Napolis must have bought it brand-new—and the man in it, who was so laid-back, maybe medicated. Brian was sitting next to me on the couch, gratefully drinking coffee.

  “We used to live closer to Brian’s family, in Midwood,” Mrs. D. said. “Then Kevin’s father got a big job with the phone company, and he wanted to buy a house. So here we are. Almost ten years later.”

  It was the most innocent remark, but it suddenly hit me.

  “My dad worked for the phone company.” The wheels were turning. “Patrick Flynn. Maybe they know each other.”

  “Probably. Jim, that’s my husband’s name. Jim Di Napoli.”

  Brian was making plans to take Kevin out for a drive this weekend. “That would be great,” Kevin said. “I get kind of cooped up in here with the TV on all day.”

  “Oh, I don’t watch it all day,” Mrs. D. said, fingers picking at her sweater. “Just my stories.”

  I imagined Kevin rolling himself from room to room to get away from those agonizing afternoon dramas. My mother had stopped watching them now that she was working.

  I sort of wanted to get out of there. I knew this house—or maybe I should say Himself knew this house. This is where he took me that day after rehearsal and I had to remember this address for him. The time I asked one too many questions and he hit me. I couldn’t ask Mrs. D. if her property or car had been vandalized. But I bet that’s what happened. My father the punk. Vinnie Sorrentino had nothing on Patrick Flynn.

  I finished the coffee, the cup steady in my hand, and put it on the end table. Somehow I’d gotten hold of myself. The shock of seeing Kevin had worn off. He and Brian were finishing up their conversation. Brian made everything steady and smooth, for Mrs. D. and Kevin and me. My father walked into a room and you held your breath. With Brian it was the opposite. I could see that he would forget the play too, and devote his time to taking care of his friend.

  I was glad when Brian started saying his goodbyes: I wanted to go outside and have a look around. I stood up and put on my coat, shaking Kevin’s hand one more time. While I walked down the stoop, I saw the public school Himself drove past on our first visit to this neighborhood. This was definitely the house. I should have stopped him. Gotten out of the car and taken whatever implement he was carrying out of his hand. I had to make it up to the Di Napolis somehow.

  “You handled yourself well in there,” Brian said, patting my knee in the car. “Once you got your bearings.”

  I thought of the night I helped Mom fix Himself up on the bathroom floor. I could handle an emergency. I smiled and leaned against the door. The sky was a sharp darkening blue. “You know, if you ever need help, with your friend, taking him around or stuff, I can help you.”

  We were driving on Sixtieth Street, toward Eighteenth Avenue. “That’s very thoughtful, but you don’t have to do it,” he said.

  “I can do something, Brian. You’ve done a lot for me. You’re like the only guy who ever gave me any encouragement. And you got me out of the house and that was good. ’Cause now I’m not going back in.”

  Eighteen

  Two weeks had passed since the play shuttered and I was stuck in the house, actively moping. I dialed Larry’s number from the pay phone in the gas station on Snyder Avenue. He was back at St. Thomas Aquinas, playing the organ. They paid him thirty dollars each time, plus the tips he got when he did a wedding. It sounded like a fortune to me.

  I hated making calls from the gas station. I dreaded the moment when the line would be interrupted and my location would be exposed by that nasal recorded voice: Please deposit five cents for the next five minutes. I didn’t want to have to tell the story of why I was using a pay phone. But it wasn’t all about my pride. The booth smelled like cigarettes and piss. I had to keep the door open just to breathe.

  The line rang several times before anyone picked up. It was Saturday morning, probably too early. Fortunately, Larry answered but he didn’t have good news for me. “Sorry, sport. I have a wedding and two deads this weekend,” he said.

  “Deads” were his nickname for funerals. “One at ten. One at eleven. The wedding’s at four. I’m just putting a little polish on my Thom McAns.”

  I was going to have to find another way to amuse myself. “Call me later and I’ll see who’s around,” he said before hanging up.

  Now what? I had no backup plan and when I got back in the house, Himself was up, watching The Quiet Man on TV. He watched that freaking movie every time it was on, but I was damned if I was going to watch John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara bicker for the umpteenth time and went up to my room. About half an hour later, there was a knock at my door and he leaned in.

  “How about a drive?”

  He’d never let me drive the Red Devil. I hadn’t driven since Christmas, the night I safely brought everybody home. I asked if we could go out to the beach.

  We switched places when we came off the Marine Parkway Bridge, right next to the old coast guard building, a brick and white shingle box across from Fort Tilden. If you drove west, you ended up in Breezy Point; if you drove east, you went to Uncle Tim’s house. I adjusted the mirror and cruised down a windswept four-lane street, with the window cracked open. One day I wanted to drive the way Himself did, with my right hand on the wheel, left hanging down the front door. The epitome of nonchalance.

  After a mile or two, we came upon the entrance to Breezy Point, a private community with a guardhouse, a small sturdy hut with a shingled roof. Nearly everyone who lived here was Irish, but the families didn’t live here year-round; the homes, one story, modest, and crammed together, lined the “streets,” cement paths named Gotham Walk, Jamaica Walk, and Kildare Walk. I drove up and down one of the few paved streets, looking at the homes with some vestiges of summer left behind—colored lanterns strung around an empty patio’s slender iron fence—and one house that had Christmas lights in the bay window. At the end of each street boardwalks led way, way out to the beach. It was hard to believe we were still in New York City. I drove to the end of Rockaway Point Boulevard. The sky, a clear powder blue ringed with scalloped white clouds that never moved, was right on top of us. The sand was almost white, as if mixed with snow, and the ocean a flat, sleepy blue.

  “So how do we get out of here?”

  I needed a little help making a K-turn to go back down the avenue but after that I was fine. Himself asked to pull up in front of Kennedy’s, on Jamaica Bay.

  “Let’s enjoy the view.”

  Kennedy’s, as far as I knew, was mainly a bar. The older kids from St. Mike’s told stories about hanging out there in the warm weather where they danced on the patio, made out with the girls from St. Brendan’s, and drank until they threw up. But it also had a real restaurant. It couldn’t have been open yet, so that meant we were going to the bar. Himself’s time on the wagon was about to end. No way could he sit two, five, twenty feet away from a beer tap without asking a bartender to fill a glass and quench his thirst. The lifelong thirst.

  I didn’t want to go in. “What are we doing here?”

  “We are going to look at the view,” he said, door already open.

  The bar was a vast improvement on the Dew Drop, and Versailles compared to the Mermaid. The walls were paneled in knotty pine with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides and double doors that opened on a small patio facing the beach. Two miniature flags, green, white, and orange for Ireland, and the Stars and Stripes, listed from either side of a Budweiser clock on the wall behind the bar. We sat at a small table near the doors, Himself letting me have the bay view.

  There didn’t seem to be any waiters, just a bartender who was stacking glasses. He was a Paddy down to the shock of white hair, the runny blue eyes, and the brogue.

  “What can I get you?” He was getting up to go to the bar, all smiles, back in his element.

  What did I ever drink in a bar with him? “Ginger ale.”

  He came back with a soda and a pint o
f something amber in a frosted glass. He took the first sip before he even sat down, hooking his lip on the rim on the side of the glass with relief.

  We had to sit back from the table so our legs didn’t collide.

  “They have cabanas here, don’t they?” I said.

  Himself nodded. “Your grandfather and grandmother used to rent one when I was a young lad.”

  Whenever I was near a beach, I thought of the summer. I knew this summer was going to be different. I’d be old enough to get my working papers and had stopped at the Baskin-Robbins going up on the corner of Church and Utica and filled out an application. The store was going to open in another month. If that didn’t come through, I’d try to get a job out at the beach. I wasn’t a good enough swimmer to be a lifeguard, but maybe I could be a cabana boy. What would I have to do—carry lots of canvas folding chairs and fetch old Irish ladies their cans of Bud?

  “You think Uncle Tim would let me live in his house if I got a job at the beach this summer?”

  Himself raised one eyebrow, but didn’t answer. The scar on the bridge of his nose was healing nicely.

  “You don’t have to ask him,” I said. “I will.”

  “Let’s see if you get the job first.”

  I drank some of the ginger ale. It tasted flat; I bet very few people here ordered soft drinks, and it probably just sat around. “My friend Larry has a job.” I told him about the organist gig at the church.

  “Is he that guy I drove home that night? Big fellow.”

  I nodded.

  “You know, just ’cause that play is over doesn’t mean you can’t see him or that other gal who was in the car.”

  I shrugged. “I see Larry in school every day, but Immaculata—” I paused. “I mean, I can’t call her. She can’t call me.”

  He blushed. “Shame on me. Gotta get that phone turned back on or your mother will kill me,” he said with a chuckle. He took another sip, one that left foam on his upper lip. He glanced at the TV screen and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. There was an aftershave commercial on. He turned to me. “You see the Martinucci girl? She got pretty banged up.”

  I’d knocked on Gina’s door once. Maybe it was too soon because she wasn’t really in the mood for company, but her mother let me talk to her for a few minutes. Gina was reclining on a gold plastic slipcovered couch in the living room, staring at the television.

  I felt like an idiot standing there. I asked her how she was doing.

  “Not great,” Gina said, not really looking at me. Her hair, short now like mine, was brushed back behind her ears and bobby-pinned to the sides. Her left leg was in a full cast. It looked like a plaster-of-paris monstrosity. Someone had done her the kindness of painting her toenails a sunny peach color.

  Her acoustic guitar was lying on the cushion next to her, as if she tried playing it but lost interest after a few chords. “I’m probably going to gain a hundred pounds sitting here for the next eight weeks.”

  Himself had dropped me off at school the first Monday after the fight, driving past the boarded-up window of McDonald’s. He was convinced there were going to be some repercussions. “The school doesn’t want those jigaboos from Tilden coming on school property, looking for that guinea. What’s his name? Sorrentino.”

  Vinnie wasn’t coming back for a while, I’d told him.

  More regulars were drifting into the bar for something to tide them over till lunchtime. Himself had finished one beer and ordered another. I switched to Coke.

  “Tell me again how your sister got mixed up in all this,” he said, training the blue beams on me.

  I sat up straight. He obviously wanted to have this discussion far from home, where Mom wouldn’t tell him to give it a rest. “She was backstage with me during dress rehearsal. She wasn’t there when the fight started. I told you. I was with Larry.”

  “So she was there on the sidelines after.”

  Our little driving lesson was turning into a cross-examination. I was fed up. “Nothing happened. We left. It was all over in fifteen minutes.”

  “You could have been followed.”

  I leaned in. “We can be followed anytime we walk down Church Avenue. People like us get mugged there all the time now. I told you: the restaurant was locked. The cops didn’t let anyone out.”

  I stirred the ice cubes in my glass with a straw and waited for his comeback. A nasty smile crept across my father’s face. “He’s on his way out, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “The director.” He looked over at me. “The school’s gonna pin it on him.”

  I was so naïve. “Brian had nothing to do with the fight. He wasn’t even there.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He and the other teacher, the Mafioso, they were supposed to know where everyone was. They’re out.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Let’s see what happens at the end of the school year. I’ll bet you fifty bucks.”

  I pushed the Coke away. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  It was always going to be like this, until the day I left the house. Himself needling me or setting fires I had to put out. It was such a drag. I left him in the bar and strolled on the tiny beach. Across the bay, the sun shone down on the Coney Island boardwalk, the green circle of the Wonder Wheel, and the Parachute Jump. I sucked in the salt breeze and went back to the parking lot and the Red Devil, leaning on the hood. The headlight I’d kicked in had been fixed, without a word.

  He came out of the bar smoking a cigarette, the collar of his jacket pulled up. He took the wheel for the drive home. I asked if we were going to pay a surprise visit to Uncle Tim over in Belle Harbor.

  “Not today. I owe him money,” he said, chuckling and leaning on the steering wheel as the Mercury entered the on ramp for the bridge.

  It made me sad to be going back so soon. I could spend the entire day at the beach, even when it was chilly outside, but I didn’t say anything as we passed the brown golf course and the deserted brick buildings and airplane hangars at Floyd Bennett Field. Eventually we stopped at a red light on Avenue U. Long lines of people were waiting to get on the buses pulling in front of Kings Plaza.

  Then I decided to ask him a question that had been on the tip of my tongue for months. “Remember that book Uncle George gave you?”

  He kept his eyes on the traffic. “Your uncle has given me lots of books. Son of a gun likes to read.”

  “The one he gave you the night he left for Germany.”

  Why was he playing dumb? He knew which book I was talking about. He sat back in the seat as we cruised past the Torregrossa funeral home and the Floridian diner with its dull chrome exterior. “What about it?”

  My heart was beating wildly. “He gave you that book to help you. Did you ever open it?”

  “That’s between your uncle and me.”

  “What did you do when you went to the Di Napolis’ house?”

  “I never gave you that name.”

  “I got it from the operator,” I lied. “I gave the address and they gave me the name. A James Di Napoli lives there. What did you do to him?”

  We were driving on Brooklyn Avenue. The mailbox he’d knocked over with the Black Beauty on Christmas had been replaced. “Did you know his son was a Vietnam vet? He had his legs blown off. Did you know that?”

  I expected to feel the crack of his hand across my face. But he kept driving. When he did say something, his voice was raspy and you could cut the sarcasm with a knife.

  “Who told you that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just know that I know. And if you thought you were teaching that guy a lesson, believe me, whatever you broke or damaged can be replaced. But their son is in a wheelchair.”

  I turned away. He had to know how small he was in my eyes. My face was hot but inside I was chilled to the bone. I didn’t care if I never had another driving lesson. And if he hit me again, I would tell Mom everything.

  V.

  The Pink Panther />
  Nineteen

  My mother shook me awake. “C’mon, Nicky. Get up.”

  I struggled to open my eyes and when I did, the room was pitch-black. Her hand gripped my arm outside the blankets. She was wearing her car coat. What time was it? Where was she going? I couldn’t see the digital radio behind her on my chest of drawers.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Her voice trembled. “Your father’s in Kings County.”

  I shot up in the bed. He was in an accident—that was the first thing that flew into my head. “What’s wrong?”

  “He was robbed.” Then she burst into tears. “He was stabbed, Nicky. Oh my god.”

  My heart jumped and I felt my throat close up. I cradled Mom and stroked her back and she told me what happened. The cops had called Uncle Tim after the ambulance had brought my father to the emergency room because, of course, our phone wasn’t working. She took a tissue out of her coat pocket and blew her nose. “Your uncle’s downstairs. He’s driving me to the hospital.” She stood up and wobbled, as if she was going to faint. “Can you come downstairs?”

  Queenie was at the bottom of the staircase, her tail wagging as if we were going to have an adventure, her small black eyes alert. Uncle Tim was standing in the living room, in a short jacket and jeans, ready to go. His face was ashen.

  “Can I come?” I already knew the answer.

  Mom touched my shoulder. “Stay here and watch your sisters.”

  This was nothing we could fix with a bottle of boric acid and some cotton swabs. Uncle Tim put his arm around Mom’s shoulders and led her out the front door. I watched them walk to Uncle Tim’s car, parked across the street by the lamppost. The sky was midnight blue with a stark waning moon. In the garden, the first hyacinths, blue and white, were opening up. I felt myself tearing up. It would be all right. At least he hadn’t been shot.

  I closed the door and stayed in the vestibule with the dog, not knowing what to do next. It was Saturday morning; the clock in the living room said four thirty. I was tempted to wake one of my sisters to keep me company, but if I roused one, they’d all be up. And freak out. As much as we wanted Himself to stop it, or just go away, I never thought it was going to happen this way. The car service job was supposed to get him out of the bars, but it had only put him further in harm’s way. He could not win.