Car Trouble

by Robert Rorke

  Rolonda waved goodbye as Larry led her deeper into the dancing couples. She wore tight jeans and a ribbed white turtleneck that accentuated her tiny waist. Most of the girls who hung around with the guys at St. Mike’s dressed like boys, loose shirts and straight pants. Rolonda wasn’t afraid to look sexy. I couldn’t wait to dance with her, even if she was Larry’s date.

  The ten dollars covered three sodas. There was no alcohol served—even for the seniors, though they always tanked up before walking in the door. While I was waiting, somebody else found me.

  “Nicky, I didn’t see you come in.”

  It was Brian. He was standing two ahead of me in line, holding a yellow plastic cup. Smiling at me, but it was more a curious smile than a friendly one. The guy in front of me gave his order and stepped aside. I gave my order to the long-haired string bean behind the counter and looked down while he filled three red cups. Brian was off to the side, waiting for me. I couldn’t sneak off if I’d tried. I grabbed the plastic soda cups—they were a little unwieldy—and hoped Larry would see me from the crowd to take his.

  I had to walk past Brian. “What are you doing here?”

  I must have sounded cocky because he was taken aback. “They recruited me. I’m what you call the faculty moderator.”

  “Like the chaperone?”

  He laughed. “Gee, Nicky. That makes me feel like somebody’s aunt.” We moved away from the line, which snaked behind the refreshment table. He nodded at the dancers. “What a turnout.”

  I nodded, distracted, looking through the open blue doors of the cafeteria to the brightly lit school basement. The language lab, where I listened to French tapes, was directly across the hall. I hadn’t spoken to him at school since the day I cut his class. He never asked me about it and I assumed there was no problem.

  The band was playing something by the Stones. One of the girls from the play—I couldn’t think of her name—approached. “Mr. Ventresca, would you dance with me?”

  It was Carole Esterhaus, Gina’s replacement as Rosie. Her tight-fitting yellow top just met the waistband of her jeans.

  “I’m on duty, Carole, but I think I’m allowed one dance.”

  She pushed a strand of lank brown hair behind her ear and kissed me on the cheek. “Long time, no see.”

  “Hey, Nicky, make sure you find me before you go home,” Brian said as he walked away with Carole. I looked for Larry and Rolonda in the crowd. They were way over by the windows. Larry’s geeky flamboyance—arms and legs spazzing all over the place—made him easy to spot. That and his Revenge of the Bronx lavender shirt. Rolonda was going to need a real dancer on the next song—my cue to cut in.

  I took a slug of flat ginger ale and raised the cups above my head as I moved through the throng. Larry reached for them and passed one to Rolonda.

  “What dance were you doing just now? The telethon chicken?”

  Rolonda laughed into the cup of soda and turned away. “Stop. It’s going to come through my nose.”

  “Let’s see you out there, Mr. James Brown,” Larry said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Give me the right song and I’ll show you.”

  The lead guitarist, a wiry, handsome guy with a good tenor voice and an electric guitar strung casually across his chest as if to say “Me? I just play this,” stopped the set to flash his great smile and say a few words to the crowd before the band took a break. The baby-faced drummer stroked the cymbals with his brush while he spoke. When the band disappeared, their groupies followed, curly heads bobbing through the silver doors, and the taped music resumed. This time, it was something I could dance to: “I Was Made to Love Her.”

  I handed Larry my soda cup and reached for Rolonda’s hand. “This is more like it. Come on.”

  Rolonda passed her cup to Larry and followed me into the middle of the crowd. “Be back in a flash,” she told him.

  I was half the dancer that Rolonda was. Her shoulders and hips moved in a syncopated rhythm like she had the beat down. I tried to copy her moves instead of jumping around like an excited white boy. She knew what I was doing and winked at me. It was easier for me to dance with a girl who came with someone else than approach a stranger—even if that’s what Rolonda really was. She complimented my dancing, which was all I needed to hear. I could leave when the song was over and the night would have been a success.

  It was a Stevie Wonder double play. The song segued into “Uptight,” and then the entire floor was wall-to-wall bodies. I wondered if the guys in the band knew everybody was really rocking out to Motown when their imitation folk rock only brought half the crowd to its feet. The place was completely packed now. The back of Larry’s loud shirt peeked through the mob, and I was glad he had found someone else to dance with.

  “Wow, that was great,” I said when the song ended. Rolonda was pulling out the collar of her turtleneck for some air. “If you see Larry, tell him I went to the ladies’ room.” She snaked through the crowd as “Sally Go ’Round the Roses” came through the speakers. In grammar school, when the classes were mixed, I got along better with the girls, or at least had more to talk about with them. How much could you actually say about the track team, which was all anybody at St. Mike’s seemed to talk about? I was glad when the play came along, when I could hang out backstage between numbers and have something in common with most of the kids there. I wished Immaculata was here right then, even if she didn’t strike me as the type who went to school dances.

  “Sally Go ’Round the Roses” ended in the middle of the second verse and the band strolled back to the stage. I decided to take a walk. I drank about a gallon of water at the fountain outside the cafeteria and went down the hall to the bathroom. An Out of Order sign was taped to the door, so I went upstairs to the first-floor bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. A whiff of acrid-smelling smoke came in through an open window. I heard some voices outside and gruff, rumbling laughter. I took a leak and crept over to the window. Three guys were smoking a joint in the outdoor stairwell that led from the basement to the parking lot. One looked up and saw me. It was Vinnie Sorrentino.

  “Well, if it isn’t Conrad Birdie,” he snickered. He had been back in school for a week, with a moustache, dark and bushy; he had the look of lurk all over his face. “You ever talk to Gina?” I didn’t say anything. He held up the joint. “You want a hit? Or you gonna run and get the cops?”

  I backed away from the window and heard them cackle. I almost asked what they were doing there. If Vinnie was hanging around, nothing good would come of it. My gut told me to go home.

  I went back into the darkened room and looked for a bright lavender shirt, elbowing my way past the tangle of sweaty dancers as the band played a song I didn’t recognize. I thought Larry might be in the back of the room, but I didn’t see him. He was off in the corner, making out with Rolonda.

  I stopped and looked away. Then I looked back at them. Her long arms, sheathed in the ribbed white fabric of the turtleneck, gripped the back of his purple shirt, and I felt washed out. And jealous. Damn him for having the balls to bring a black girl to the dance and kiss her like that.

  I didn’t know what to do next. The only other person I knew here from the play was Carole. Maybe she was dancing with people from the play or the girls from her high school. I went back into the jostling crowd of bodies and looked for a girl with a yellow shirt, but I didn’t see her. I stopped by the bandstand and checked out the groupies. The same fan club clung to the sides of the stage. Were they all competing for the affections of the lead singer? Maybe that was the thing: learn to play the guitar, instead of faking it like I did in the play. I checked my watch. It was eleven thirty; these dances usually ended around midnight. If I left now, I’d have to wait awhile for the Church Avenue bus. I had never stood out on that corner, next to the gas station and the White Castle, at this time of night, but I imagined it would be completely desolate. I made up my mind to leave.

  The cafeteria was starting to empt
y out and the dance debris was already in evidence: discarded plastic cups littered the floor, along with straws and gum wrappers. When I saw Brian out in the hallway, by the language lab, saying good night to a bunch of upperclassmen, I asked, “Do you have to stay and clean up this mess?”

  He shook his head. “That chore belongs to the Student Activities Committee. I think they can handle it. So, I think I’m free to go. Can I give you a lift?”

  The prospect of walking four long blocks in the dark to the bus stop did not thrill me. I said yes.

  “Good. My car’s right out front.”

  He led the way up the stairwell and past the rows of lockers and empty classrooms on the darkened first floor. Only the school lobby was illuminated and that’s where we saw him: Vinnie Sorrentino, trailing in behind two upperclassmen I didn’t know, guys with shag haircuts. Vinnie kept his head down but raised it long enough to shoot me an evil look. Brian intercepted him, putting a firm hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, Vinnie.”

  Vinnie looked up, blushing, glassy-eyed. The two older students stopped.

  “How you doin’?”

  Vinnie shrugged. He was in full Italian stallion gear: black bell-bottoms and a tight red muscle shirt. A thin gold chain peeked out from under a glossy bomber jacket. He looked over at his friends. Brian turned to them. “Fellas, why don’t you go down and enjoy the dance.”

  They nodded and disappeared through the double doors to the hallway. Then Brian gave his full attention to Vinnie. “The dance is almost over. I know you want to go downstairs, but not tonight. You’re on probation. You can’t attend school activities. And I think you might be a little high.”

  I stepped back. I didn’t want to see Vinnie’s face as Brian escorted him out of the building. I didn’t want to be here at all.

  “C’mon, Mr. Ventresca. Five minutes, I swear. Ten. I just wanna say hi to my friends.”

  “You’ll all see each other in class on Monday.”

  I moved to the exit and could see in the glass’s reflection that Brian was steering Vinnie around, gently pointing him toward the door.

  “I can’t, Vin. Let’s go.”

  Vinnie gave Brian this halfhearted shove, as if he knew he was no match for him. “So what, did your little boyfriend rat on me, tell you I was here?” Brian didn’t say anything, but I turned around. “What are you lookin’ at, faggot?” he said.

  “I don’t have to listen to this,” I said.

  I pushed through the double doors into the vestibule and then through another set of doors. Brian called my name, but I was going, going, gone, down the front steps and up the block. A strange kind of light shone down on the street, exposing things I wouldn’t have normally been able to see: the chipped seesaws and interlocking boxes of the jungle gym in the playground across the street. I looked for the moon, but I couldn’t find it. The sky was a spectacular indigo studded with shy, blinking stars. It was dead quiet. I was alone and I was free, free to slip back into that limbo between school and home, where nothing could touch me as long as I kept moving.

  Then I heard Vinnie’s voice, yelling, something garbled and obscene. God, he was such an ingrate. I wasn’t getting involved. It would be like dealing with Himself, a junior version. If I was going to make it in this world I’d have to get better at eluding these steamroller guys with their anger, the problems they couldn’t fix, and that constant urge to fight. I was no track star but if Vinnie was going to come after me, I’d run, all the way to Church Avenue. I didn’t care if he thought I was queer or weak or anything. I just wanted to get away from him.

  I decided to get a head start, trotting across the intersection at Clarendon Road and down the next block. Soon I was walking next to the high brick wall that surrounded the Tilden football field. A car engine idled behind me. For one crazy second, I thought: the white convertible from my dream. I turned, expecting to see it. Instead, there was Brian waving at me through the windshield of his car.

  He pulled over as I was crossing Tilden Avenue. “Come on, get in,” he said through the rolled-down window. “I sent that clown home.”

  I bent down and looked at him. “What was that? It’s not my fault he got thrown out of school.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  I put my hands on the window frame. “What do you want from me?”

  Brian looked through the windshield. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m not okay. Okay? I just wanted to get out of my crazy house and have a good time. Things are not right and maybe I wanted to have a good time. And if this is about last Tuesday, I’ll tell you why I cut class. My father came home with a gun that morning and I had to go home and find it.”

  I turned away from the car and looked up the street. A light came on in the front room of one of the darkened houses. I waited to hear someone open the door to see who was making this racket.

  Brian got out of the car and came around to my side. “Nicky, come on. Get in the car.”

  The interior of the car had an old, oily, metallic smell. I nestled into the groove between the door and the back of the seat. Sweat ran down my neck. The door on the driver’s side creaked as Brian got in and sat behind the wheel. “Where are we going? You haven’t told me.”

  “Right. Sorry. You can take Tilden.” I pointed out his window. “I live over in Flatbush. Or East Flatbush as they’re calling it these days.”

  “East Flatbush,” Brian mused. “I don’t think I’ve ever been over there.”

  “You’re not missing much.”

  The engine coughed as he pulled out.

  “This car’s seen better days,” Brian said. We were driving east, past this tiny playground, the kind that still had aluminum baby swings. I directed him to Schenectady Avenue, where we came upon the mute granite expanse of Holy Cross Cemetery. Brian had never seen it.

  “This is where my father taught me to drive,” I said.

  I remembered that first trembling day behind the wheel of the Black Beauty on that green spring afternoon—the last time Himself and I sat side by side without conflict—and now where were we, sitting across from each other at a kitchen table with a gun between us. And that’s when the whole story came spilling out, the days and nights that led up to the morning he brought home the .357 Magnum.

  “My father lost his job earlier this year. He’s an alcoholic,” I said. My face was hot with shame, and I was fighting back tears. I tried to collect myself but it was no use. “He disappears. He comes back. He gets into a fight. We fix him up in the bathroom with boric acid and cotton swabs. Then he gets stabbed. And then they sew him up at Kings County. It just never ends. He wakes everybody up at five in the morning to yell at us. He checks our arms for needle marks. Everybody’s afraid of him,” I said with a loud gasp. “Even my mother.”

  I covered my mouth, as if Himself was sitting in the backseat. There would be no absolution for this confession, just penance. It was the kind of confidence that could get me killed.

  “He probably thinks he’s protecting you guys,” Brian said. “But he sounds like he’s gone over the edge.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” I said.

  “Is the gun still in the house?”

  “I can’t find it. I’ve looked everywhere. My mother said she would”— I made quotation marks in the air—“take care of it.”

  “Is there anyone you can tell? Someone who can get through to him?”

  I thought of Uncle Tim. If I dragged him into it, Himself would really have a fit. I could call my grandfather in Florida. Then I would get crucified. Maybe it was a chance I would have to take. I wiped my wet fingers on my jeans. “I can’t go home like this.”

  “I suppose people have talked to him about AA?”

  I told him about Uncle George and the Big Book. “That was a waste of time.”

  I told Brian to turn left at the next light. After we passed Albany Avenue and the field of graves reappeared, he said, “This cemetery goes on
forever, doesn’t it?” I looked ahead at the midnight strip of Snyder Avenue, the distant traffic light turning yellow.

  “I apologize for lying to you. It was a really bad day.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. You’ve got a lot on your shoulders, Nicky. Everyone needs someone to talk to. He wasn’t always like this, I bet.”

  “No.”

  “That day I saw you by Brooklyn College, he was teaching you how to drive. That was pretty nice of him.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded to the cemetery outside Brian’s window. “I aced parallel parking on the first try.” There were two sides of Himself: the fearless man who walked across the highway to rescue the guy who had the motorcycle accident, and the sneak who got even with his elected enemies. That was the father I was living with now.

  “I can talk to somebody about this if you want me to.”

  “Like who?”

  “The Department of Social Services. They deal with troubled families all the time.”

  That’s where we got our food stamps. I shook my head. “You can, if you want to see me in the grave. I shouldn’t even have told you.”

  We were almost home. I wished I didn’t have to get out of the car. “This is my street,” I said, rolling down the window. “You can pull over here.”

  Brian sounded incredulous. “C’mon, Nicky. I can drop you off at your house. I don’t have to leave you on the corner like this.”

  He turned left and went slowly down the block. Before I got out of the car, he reached into the backseat and wrote his phone number on a piece of paper. I tucked it into my back pocket.

  “Call me if you want to talk. Anytime.”

  I nodded. I already had the door open. Then he reached out and hugged me. It was so unexpected that at first I tensed up, as if it was some kind of threat. He smelled like aftershave, something with a lime scent.

  He looked me directly in the eye and I was startled by the intensity of his gaze. “Be careful, Nicky.”

  Twenty-Two

  Some guy named Morty Rifkin called my mother at the bank two days later. He wanted to see me about a job at Baskin-Robbins. It had been a while since I filled out the application, writing Mom’s work number and extension in the box for our telephone number. I went over to the store, on Church and Utica. Morty was the manager. He interviewed me in the back room, behind the counter. I wasn’t quite sixteen, didn’t have my working papers, but he didn’t seem to care.