Car Trouble

by Robert Rorke

  “This is great. Just great,” Mom said. Exasperated, she rose from the telephone bench and went into the kitchen and continued making dinner. Maureen and I set the table. “And what am I supposed to do if your father finds out? What do you think’s going to happen then?”

  “I don’t know,” Maureen said. “But I can’t take it anymore. Tell him to get out. Why can’t you do that? You know what he’s doing is wrong.”

  Mom flung her a look. “Of course I know what he’s doing is wrong.”

  Before Maureen could reply, the front door opened with a familiar shove and Queenie took off, tail wagging, to greet her master. Maureen rolled her eyes at me and left the room, stomping up the staircase. How I wished I’d been upstairs doing my French homework. Now the shit was really going to hit the fan.

  Himself strode into the kitchen, grinning, as if someone had just told him a great joke. “Good evening, Mrs. Flynn. What’s all the commotion about? I think I overheard a loud discussion.”

  “You didn’t hear anything,” Mom said.

  He flashed a cocky smile. “You sure about that?” He looked from Mom to me, eyebrows raised. “No work today?”

  “Day off.”

  He was mildly stewed but friendly. He must have run out of money at the Dew Drop because he pulled a six-pack of Bud from a brown paper bag and peeled one can off the plastic ring.

  “You’re just in time for dinner,” Mom said, pulling a sizzling meat loaf out of the oven. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, as if relieved to be off the hot seat.

  Patty picked up Queenie’s leash off the closet door handle. “Come on,” she said, cocking her head.

  “Tell Dee Dee and Mary Ellen it’s time for supper,” Mom said as the collie trotted after Patty out the back door.

  Himself opened the refrigerator door to put the remaining cans inside. He offered me one and I shook my head.

  “Ah, yes. My son is not a drinking man.”

  Mom drained the string beans in the sink, put them back in the pot, and covered them. “Go inside, Pat,” she said. “I’ll have your plate in a minute.” She went upstairs, no doubt to have a word with Maureen.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He took his Bud and left the room.

  Disaster averted. But I wondered how much he’d heard. It would be just like him not to say anything now, but wait a week or maybe two, then have us all downstairs for a lecture or a promise that he was the last one who would be leaving the house.

  Twenty-Seven

  Maureen left us one week later, packed off to Rockaway for the summer to be “a mother’s helper.” Or, as she explained it while she was packing, “I’ll clean up and take the kids to the beach while Aunt Julie sits on her ass and reads magazines.”

  Leave it to my sister to crack jokes about her exile, but I was sorry she had to go before Himself did. She was the first of us to move far away from home—all the way to Colorado, where the bitter winters were preferable to the contact sport of being the eldest girl in the family.

  The last day of school rolled around, a short day, only morning classes. We would all be set free by one p.m. Everyone was going to the beach afterward. That was the tradition at St. Mike’s. I’d never done that, but I decided if I was there I could visit Maureen. Now that Larry had wheels, getting there would be a breeze.

  I cleaned out my locker, tossing Bic pens into the trash along with some notebooks and my trig textbook. As long as I lived, I never wanted to see another isosceles triangle. I pocketed my combination lock and walked over to McDonald’s to meet Larry. I had never seen so many cars parked outside the school. Volkswagens, Valiants, Chevy Novas—every senior who had a license and enough money to buy a used car was ready to tear out of here.

  Without the school crowd—Tilden had already finished for the year—McDonald’s was pretty dead. Larry was at the counter, trying to cajole Rolonda into coming with us when I walked in. She was filling extra-large soda cups with Coke and Sprite for two sweaty guys in UPS uniforms. I looked at their long brown pants and thought they must be dying in this heat. One of the men took the sodas from Rolonda while his buddy paid for them.

  “Wish these were a couple of cold beers,” said the younger of the two, maybe in his early twenties, a few years out of high school, with thick, muscled arms and hands the size of dinner plates. He called Rolonda by a nickname when she handed him her change.

  “One of your frequent customers?” Larry asked. He had already changed out of his school clothes into shorts and a Mets shirt. “I’m gonna have to get a job here to keep tabs on your fan club.”

  “Oh, that’s Lonnie. He works at the warehouse up the street.” Rolonda had pinned her hair back and her face, lovely with those bright brown eyes, looked out of place under that McDonald’s cap. “I know him from the neighborhood. His sister is in my school. You boys want some drinks for the trip?”

  Now that she and Larry had been going out awhile, she never charged us. We both ordered Cokes.

  “It’s too bad you can’t come with us,” I said, grabbing some straws at the condiments counter.

  Rolonda leaned on the counter, looking out the front door at the long day ahead of her. “I really don’t like the beach. I told Larry if he wants to take me to Jones Beach, where they at least have a pool, that’s a different story.”

  Larry gave her a kiss goodbye and we were off.

  “Pick me up at six,” Rolonda said after us. “Don’t forget.”

  When Larry told me his father was giving him the Plymouth, I thought it was going to be some dad car—sedate, pastel, pile the kids in the backseat and drive out to Ronkonkoma to visit Grandma. I didn’t think it was going to be a Fury. I could see it at the end of the block, across the street from Collisionville, as we walked down East Fifty-Eighth Street.

  “Wow, it’s really gold. Did you give it a name?”

  “Not yet.” Larry stuck the straw through the hole in the plastic cup.

  “You have to.”

  “Maybe I should ask your old man. You tell me: What would he call it?”

  All I could think of was the Goldfinger, after the movie and that Shirley Bassey song: He loves GOLD. The car was a two-door in gold with a black hardtop, a panoramic windshield, and stacked headlights. Larry rested his drink on the hardtop while he searched his pants pockets for his keys. I looked inside. Some stitching was coming out of the seats and the vinyl was shiny in spots from all the backsides that sat there.

  I got in on the passenger side and pressed the button to lower the window. A smile spread across my face. “This is great. I’m gonna have to wait another year for my license, but this will do.”

  “See? There are advantages to starting school late.”

  Larry was born at the end of December, and his mother kept him out of school for one year so he would have no problem getting into a Catholic grammar school, where kids were admitted in the order of their birth dates.

  We went to the beach the back way, cutting through the Brooklyn Terminal Market to Remsen, where we picked up the Belt at Rockaway Parkway and headed west. Larry fiddled with the radio until he found a station that came through. It was Simon and Garfunkel, singing “Cecilia,” a song I didn’t really like, but their good-natured harmonies seemed to fit with the day. We were doing about fifty and soon the Marine Parkway Bridge, battleship blue and shaped like a steel caterpillar with two curved towers, came into view. The land was completely flat and the sea air rushed at us.

  “Too bad about Ventresca,” Larry said. “I’m going to miss having him around next year.”

  “Makes me want to transfer,” I said.

  Larry laughed. “You in Brooklyn Tech? It’s a rough scene down there.”

  “Maybe it’s not so bad.” Valerie had survived going to Bishop McDonnell for the three years, taking the subway to Franklin Avenue. You just had to be careful, mind your own business.

  “So what do you think of the car?” Larry asked. “I know it’s no Pink Panther, but it rides pretty
well.”

  “It’s great. Do you freak out when you’re driving on the highway? I’ve never done that.”

  Larry stopped at the tollbooth and tossed some coins into the box. “Piece of cake,” he said. “I don’t go when it’s rush hour. I’m not an idiot.”

  The road made a horrible buzz-saw sound once the Fury hit the bridge span. The view of Jamaica Bay could not be beat. You could see the orange brick bathhouse tower at Riis Park and beyond that, the cold blue Atlantic, dotted with distant ocean freighters that looked like toy ships.

  I was wearing my bathing suit under my khakis and had packed a ham-and-cheese sandwich with my towel. “It’s probably going to be too cold to swim but I don’t care,” I said. “I’m going in.”

  Larry took the first exit and made the first left, onto an asphalt strip that ended at Bay 14, the last bay at Riis and the hangout for kids from the Catholic schools.

  He parked near a small firehouse that serviced this end of the Rockaway Peninsula. The strip divided Riis Park from Fort Tilden. A half-dozen or so cars were already parked alongside Larry’s, with more on the way. Larry pulled a heavy metal cooler out of the trunk and lugged it to the beach, towels and a blanket stacked on top, finding a spot not too far from the water, on the left side of a slightly sagging volleyball net. Sweat dripped from my forehead, and I stripped down to my suit immediately. My skin was nurse-white and I quickly applied some Coppertone before the sun found me. A volleyball game was in full swing—more guys than girls playing—and they all looked older. One of them called Larry over to join in. The girls wore faded denim cut-offs over their bathing suits and the guys wore tank tops and denim shorts. An open cooler with cans and bottles of beer was sunk into the sand next to one of the net’s poles. Larry asked me to play, but I wanted to get my feet wet. I hadn’t been near a beach since my last trip to my uncle’s house.

  The tide was out. The shore was covered in tangled, glossy clumps of seaweed and crushed shells, all glistening in the sun. Waves were rolling in slowly, as if the ocean was on a ten-minute break. The cold brine slid up my calves and then my knees as I made my way toward the few swimmers who had braved the temperatures. One of them waved at me, a girl with thick, matted, wet dark hair.

  “Rainone!” I called out.

  I dove into the water and swam out to meet Immaculata. Without her aunt Chickie’s beaver coat and those squeaky orthopedic shoes, I barely recognized her.

  “The dead arose and appeared to many,” she said. That crazy grin, which seemed to paralyze her face, was the same.

  I hadn’t expected to see anyone from the play, but the girl swimming with her was also from Bye Bye Birdie—Mary Zaleski. They both wore one-piece bathing suits—Mary’s red and Immaculata’s royal blue—that seemed to flatten their breasts. I hugged them both at the same time and felt their hard nipples against my ribs. I dove straight down after that, my balls tingling. When I surfaced, I knew Immaculata would have a million questions, and she did.

  “What have you been up to? I tried calling you, but I couldn’t get through. I thought I would have heard from you.”

  I must have seemed like a complete weirdo, but I wasn’t going to tell her the story of my family’s exile. I stuck to the good stuff, the good news: my job and the scene up on Church and Utica.

  The waves were gathering strength. I forgot to bob and one smacked me right on the ear. I told Immaculata I was surprised to see her out here and that’s when Mary said she’d twisted Immaculata’s arm into going.

  “I agreed to make a cameo appearance. How’d you get here?”

  “Larry has a car. He passed his road test.”

  Immaculata turned and looked at the shore. “He’s here too?” She gave me a meaningful look. “I didn’t hear from him either, Nicky. After the play, nothing.”

  We had let her down. I was sure Larry had no clue. I didn’t know what to say. So I said something stupid. “Larry’s a busy guy. He’s got this girlfriend now.”

  She nodded and looked down at the water. “Well, I guess it’s old home week. You look good, Nicky. Your hair grew out.”

  “I would have called you, really, but our phone was disconnected. There was a lot of stuff going on at home.”

  She looked at me intently. “Your father. I could tell.”

  From one ride in the back of his car? She was smarter than most people I knew. “It’s better now. I can call you.”

  My excuses sounded hollow to me, and they must have sounded worse to Immaculata. We weren’t moving anymore and my legs were getting cold. We decided to swim over to the bathhouse. The girls were good swimmers, effortlessly rotating their bodies through the water. The tide had turned and the big waves were rolling in now, cresting right over my head. The cries of children carried over the water as we came closer to the bays where families set down their towels and beach equipment.

  “This is about as far as we can go,” I said. “Let’s go in.”

  It was a short swim back, but the undertow pulled at my bathing suit like a pair of lonely hands. Clumps of hot sand stuck to the soles of my feet as we walked. I couldn’t wait to get up to the boardwalk.

  Immaculata was telling me about her summer job—she was an usher at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway—when a tall Puerto Rican guy in a pink jockstrap slinked past us and said, “Hello, gorgeous.”

  “Get a load of that one,” Mary said, shielding her eyes with the palm of her hand. “He must be headed to Bay 1.”

  That was the nude beach. I looked over and saw the man walking away, the waistband of his jockstrap a stark contrast to his exposed, hairy rear end.

  “He was checking you out,” Mary said, lifting her wet hank of hair off her back and pulling the chain of her crucifix along with it. If she yanked it any faster, she would choke herself.

  “He was?” I opened my mouth to say something back to him—not that he would have heard me. I wasn’t going to call him a name. But I didn’t want him thinking I was flattered. He had settled down on a giant white terry-cloth towel.

  Immaculata touched my arm. “Don’t, Nicky. It doesn’t matter. You’ll never see him again.”

  We stopped at the restrooms on the way back to Bay 14. I looked at my face in the cheap, wavy mirror. A flush of pink was already there and on my shoulders. I had a T-shirt to cover myself with back at the blanket. Larry came in and rinsed off his glasses in the sink.

  “Hey, where’d you go to, sport?”

  “Ran into Mary and Immaculata in the water.”

  His Mets T-shirt was soaked to the skin. “Oh yeah? Where are they now?”

  “Outside. You should cool off in the water. It’s a little icy, but you get used to it.”

  The girls were standing next to the old cement drinking fountain, talking to some guy with dark hair and a bandanna tied around his head. He tapped a can of Bud to his lips, draining it. Then he crunched and dunked it, like an aluminum basketball, into a dented steel trash can.

  I should have known from the peacock stance. Vinnie Sorrentino. I hadn’t exchanged one word with him since the dance.

  Larry and I walked over. He made an affectionate bow to Immaculata. She grinned and gave him a big kiss. “It’s so good to see you. I was hoping you’d be here.” She gave him the once-over. “You lost a lot of weight.”

  He blushed and lowered his head. “I’ve got someone counting my calories.”

  Vinnie was smiling. His black hair was knotted; sweaty tendrils stuck to his forehead. His eyes had a glassy, blurred cast. He was completely lit.

  “You’re not going to believe who’s here,” he said. “Gina. Down by the volleyball net. Good as new. Check it out.” He started walking to the restroom. “I gotta take a piss.”

  I’d only seen Gina a few times since the accident, but usually in the backseat of her family’s Dodge. The image of her being carried out of McDonald’s on a gurney flashed before my eyes and suddenly I was worried. I looked out at the ocean as if I expected to find the funnel cloud of a freak t
ornado whirling in, but the water was clear and bright, in bands of deepening blue. A perfect day, for our reunion, but there was a hidden warning in the waves: something told me to be careful.

  We were all thirsty, so we had to walk back to the cooler. A dozen or so bikes, ten-speeds and English racers, were chained to the fence that ran along the boardwalk; their spokes glittered in the sun. First thing I did was slip my undershirt, warm now and still smelling of Clorox, back over my head. Larry handed out Cokes, Tabs, and ginger ales. The volleyball game was over and the players were splashing around in the ocean. Mary padded down to the tide line and cajoled Larry into joining her. “I don’t see Gina anywhere,” he said, peeling off the wet Mets shirt. He handed me his black frame glasses and wriggled out of his khaki shorts. “If she shows, don’t let her get away.”

  Immaculata and I sat on the blanket, and I rubbed some more suntan lotion on my legs—the backs of my knees smarted—and she told me about the people she had seen at the theater. The play at the Alvin was Company, and it was a hot ticket. This guy I’d never heard of named Stephen Sondheim wrote all the songs.

  “How’s the show?”

  “Very good. It won all these awards. Remember the movie That Darn Cat? That guy from the movie, Dean Jones, is the star. Who knew he could sing?”

  I smiled.

  “You know who came in one night? You’ll never guess.”

  “The Pope?”

  “Close. Jackie Kennedy. I almost had a stroke. She was so striking. But she has a big face. Big, Nicky.” She burst into a paroxysm of laughter. I remembered her backstage, cracking everyone up. Well, if that’s liquid gold, you can pour it all over me.

  “Beats making double-fudge sundaes for junior gang members on Church Avenue.” Then I thought: I can hand out playbills to Jackie Kennedy. And Ari Onassis, if he comes with. “I can hold a flashlight. Any job openings over there?”

  “I don’t know. I can ask.”

  “My father hates me working on Church and Utica.” I paused briefly. “I’m going to see a play next month. My first. I think it’s off-Broadway. Brian invited me and Larry and a couple of other students to see A Moon for the Misbegotten.”