That’s when somebody else turned up in the noodle shop. Somebody wearing a light-blue wrap dress with a gold belt and bronze high heels.
THE ANGEL NIECE
Miss Piggy: I spy because I care!
Kermit the Frog: Well, I care too!
Miss Piggy: Well, why don’t you say so?
Kermit the Frog: I JUST DID!
Miss Piggy: ALL RIGHT!
—The Muppets Take Manhattan, movie
The hot light from the street made Mom’s bleached hair and metallic accessories shimmer like she was radioactive, and she was shooting Phil with the fattest eye-laser-beam death ray I’d ever seen outside an intergalactic war movie with a massive special-effects budget. “Get away from my daughter,” she said, all out of breath.
Phil laughed quietly.
“Sara?” said Dad.
“If it ain’t my little angel niece,” said Phil.
“I told you, step back,” snapped Mom. “And can it with the niece thing. It grosses me out.”
As Alma ducked under her lap blanket, Dad ran to Mom and stretched his arm in front of her like a seat belt. “You wanna tell me what’s going on, Sara?”
“Phil and his slimeball brother are finally going to jail,” said Mom.
Phil’s sunken eye sockets were pools of shadows. “Somebody’s feelin’ full of herself,” he said.
“I kept your frauds a secret for twenty years,” said Mom. “You repay me by messing with my kid? How dare you.”
“Mom, what are you talking about?” I said.
“Don’t worry, Sara,” said Phil. “Uncle Phil knows you ain’t told nobody nothin’ about nothin’. Who’d believe you?”
“Who do you think believes me?” said Mom. “Said he’s working something in the neighborhood and nobody go nowhere till he gets here.” She rubbed her heel where her shoe was cutting in. “Late, as usual. Somebody get that ape a watch.”
“What’d ya tell Gotcha, Sara?” asked Phil. “About that real estate business you ran with me all those years, up in the Bronx?”
“What?” said Dad and me, at the same time.
Mom pointed at Phil. “You tellin’ a nine-year-old girl to play sick, stickin’ me in the corner of some room to distract people while you sold ’em buildings that were rotten from the outside in, and givin’ my father a cut? Nobody who’s not you would call that running a business together.”
The empty smile on Phil’s hollow face made my skin prickle. “Your mother was a natural, Claude. Another reason I had hope for you. But she ain’t a rat. Not Sara.”
So many questions were swarming my head, I started spitting stuff out at random. “Phil has been running scams for twenty years? He stuck you in a corner? Mom, why have you never told me this?! And how did you even know we were here?”
“Your e-mail said Sunday, noon,” said Mom. “Where else would you be?”
I yelled, “You broke into my e-mail?!”
That’s when Banazio strutted into the noodle shop and danced a jig. “Gotcha! Gotcha.” The room was flooded with the fuzzy sound of walkie-talkies as three cops rushed in behind him. “Hank Banazio,” he announced, waving his badge. “FBI.”
“Fancy seein’ ya, Gotcha,” said Phil, backing away from the police officer who was coming toward him. “As per the usual, hate to disappoint you . . .”
“Who’s disappointed?” said Banazio. “Oh—wait. I forgot to say it, right? Phil and Roger Gascogny, you’re under arrest.”
The cops slapped handcuffs on Phil and Roger—who were, apparently, brothers, not brothers-in-law—and walked them to the back of the shop, reading them their rights, just like on Law & Order.
I yelled, “How can they be under arrest, Banazio? You missed the entire bust!”
Banazio made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Sorry about that. Sun’s been so rare this drippy summer, I was parked on a bench, basking, and oops! Hank, you’re late! To think I proceeded to stumble into the midst of the action, not knowing what tomfoolery was afoot. Then I get to Eleventh Avenue, and it’s like, the place is nowhere to be found. That address you gave me, C-Feng, it’s kind of hidden, right?”
“Nope,” said Mr. Chin, taking a seat at a table. “My doorbell is clearly marked.”
“Nevertheless. There I am, searching for the hidden address, when lo and behold, my telephone rings! And after all these years, who’s come a-callin’? The Hellcat. If you hadn’t set these fellas up, C-Feng? Your mother never would’ve buzzed me. Turns out these yokesters have been running illegal moneymaking operations in this city for as many years as I’ve been trying to convince Sara ‘the Hellcat’ LeBernardin to talk to me. The Hellcat knows all! Little did I know that the power of maternal love was the one thing that could make her spill the beans. Beautiful. Next summer, C-Feng, see me about an internship. You and all your gangster pals, too.”
“Maybe you should intern with us, FBI guy,” said Lala.
Banazio peered at Lala. “Yowza. She’s a quick one. And speaking of wow . . .” He spun on his heel to face Rita, who was standing near the cops and the handcuffed Gascogny brothers, taking notes. When she stuck her tongue between her teeth and waved, her silver tooth flashed. Banazio strolled smoothly in her direction.
I looked at Mom. “You knew Phil was Alma the whole time?”
Mom pulled a brush out of her purse and started messing with my hair for the first time since I was about five years old. “Oh, Claude. I’ve always known way too much. Unfortunately. Tell you the details later. I’m all talked out.” Then she looked over her shoulder and noticed the wheelchair, which was near the cash register. The blanket still covered Alma’s head, but her long legs stuck out, frozen, like a Halloween lawn decoration. Mom snorted. “When’d you get outta the pen, Joanie?”
A voice beneath the blanket went, “Shhh!”
Mom muttered to herself while she worked through my tangles. “Breaking parole, are we, Joanie Maloney? Gascogny now, which figures. Soon as I deal with my ragamuffin’s head of hair, I will report you, too, you lunatic.”
Mom must’ve been in too much of a rush to put on her makeup. Her dark blue eyes were clear, like somebody’d flipped on the power, and her sea of orangey freckles made me think of one of those storybook girls who talks to lions and bears.
I felt myself bust out with a huge smile. “You broke into my e-mail, Mom,” I said. “That means you actually care.”
When Mom pinched my cheek, I yelped. A storybook girl with the gentle touch of a lobster, that is.
“Of course I care, Claude,” said Mom. “I love you. Or, you know. Yeah.”
It had been so long since I’d seen Mom smile, I’d forgotten all about her crooked teeth.
When I hugged her, I inhaled a salty breeze.
“I love you too, Mom,” I said. “Nice nickname, by the way.”
“Nobody has ever called me ‘the Hellcat,’” said Mom.
I said, still squeezing her, “And nobody’s gonna start now.”
Living in New York City is like having your very own eight-million-headed dog. Sometimes it brings you strange gifts, like a musician on the N train who makes you dance in your seat, or a practically perfect shawarma with garlic sauce, and you’d swear all its faces are smiling at you. Other times it barks all night and pees on your favorite shoes.
That afternoon, the dog trotted along with Mom, Dad, and me like part of the family. The heat rising up off Eighth Avenue caught the sunlight and pitched it here and there, at the cars and the shop windows, making twinkles, and curled around us, friendly, as we rounded the corner to walk down Sixtieth Street, toward home. Lala and Money had left the noodle shop on his scooter, and Brett had stayed behind to get the sesame ice cream for his mother. I’d promised to join him for old-timey movies later.
Dad was shaking his head. “I wish you’d told me you and Phil went back like that, Sara.”
“I wish you’d told me you were sending his fake sick girl money,” said Mom.
“This whole
family gets triple Fs in communication,” I said. “Seriously, Mom, if you’ve always known Phil was a creep, why did you keep quiet about it? The man was practically my babysitter!”
Mom clasped her hands behind her back and looked ahead of us, like she was walking toward something she’d been thinking about, which at the same time was pulling her forward. “My whole life, Claude, I was supposed to act like I couldn’t see things. Bad things that were happening right in front of me. It’s hard to unlearn that, and speak up. It feels unnatural. Like the whole world works one way, and your world works a different way. And the outside world might not want you in it, or you wouldn’t know how to be in it, if it did. You end up trusting the people you know and don’t trust more than the people you don’t know at all. I always figured that by keeping Phil close, I’d never have another problem with him. It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud. When he started up with another sick-girl scam, I did try to keep you away—but you’re not accustomed to being told what to do. Thankfully, in addition to being stubborn, you’ve got more courage than me. I’m sorry, Claude. Nobody’s born a parent. I’m learning by screwing up.”
I tried to imagine being a parent. If it was anything like being a kid, it was not a slice of vanilla birthday cake with a smear of buttercream and a mess of sugar flowers you can eat right off the top. As far as I could tell, nothing was, except actual cake. Which was what was so great about it.
“Why does Phil call you his niece?” I asked.
“Phil has always wanted to be a gangster,” said Mom. “He wanted it so bad he started pretending we were related. He even kept a picture of me in his wallet. Flashed it around when he was tryin’ to soften up some guy for the kill.”
Was that Mom, in the photo Phil showed me? How had I not recognized her?
“Why don’t I ever see pictures of when you were a kid?” I asked.
“My childhood isn’t something I go around trying to remember,” said Mom.
“Yeah, because nobody thought about your feelings at all,” I said. “No wonder you’re so mean sometimes.”
Mom started laughing. Laughing and snorting.
“SO MEAN!” I said. “Right? Because so many people were mean to you?”
When Dad put his arm around Mom, he looked like a grown-up, real-life parent, even with the blue stripe. “Speaking of mean, lemme put it out there how lucky Phil is that my pop wasn’t here to see this. If Grandpa thought somebody was messing with you, Claude? Guarantee he wouldn’t have asked Gotcha to deal with it.”
“I miss Grandpa,” I said. “Even if he was a bad guy, I miss him twice as bad.”
“We all do,” said Mom. “I even miss my own parents. Wish somebody’d help me make sense of that one.”
“It makes sense to us, Mom,” I said.
Dad frowned and gave Mom’s shoulder a squeeze. “No doubt.”
SUNSET PARK
The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and she repairs it.
—Louise Bourgeois, artist
After Alma Lingonberry, life in Sunset Park kept going and going, like a shopping cart full of junk let loose on a downhill avenue.
Brett and I decided I’d put my photograph of the Fuzhou crew in my closet. I wanted to keep it, just not on my wall. I didn’t want to watch the Thing hanging out with my grandfather like it was a friend that would protect him. Because it didn’t. If Grandpa was here, I think he’d be glad I’m a few steps ahead of him, as usual. I’m tap-dancing, even. Leading my past, and my parents’ pasts, and their parents’ pasts in a never-ending parade around the planet. Like we all are.
Like Brett is. His new project is a philosophy newsletter for parents stuck in prison. He took up Banazio on his offer of an FBI internship and is using his new connections to get it out. He doesn’t let things go, my best friend. It’s one of the things I love most about him.
Lala and Money broke up for five seconds when Money said he missed pretending to be Scott Jones, with all those friends—but they made up five seconds later, when he recited one of her poems by heart. Yes, he’d gotten that poem by spying on her e-mails to Alma, but as they say in Brooklyn in the movies, Whaddayagonnadoaboudit?
Rita the Producer moved to Los Angeles with her new boyfriend to try to sell her screenplay. “Hank Banazio makes me laugh” is what she told me. “And he doesn’t hog the spotlight. That’s a rare specimen, Claudeline.”
Which reminds me of what Brett said when we were hanging out on our bench in the park, analyzing how the doofus FBI agent snagged a snazzy dame like Rita.
“Who knows?” said Brett. “Chapter seventeen says that a great leader keeps a low profile. When the task is completed, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’”
“We did do it ourselves,” I said. “Banazio wasn’t our leader at all!”
Brett nudged me. “I meant you, Claude. You were our leader. Banazio was one of the people. Anyway, we don’t do anything all by ourselves, in my opinion. Everything in the world is connected. All the good things that happen, and all the bad things too.”
Speaking of this tangled-up web of a world, I guess I’ll probably always miss Phil. It’s not like I want to spend time with the guy. It’s the old version I miss. Laughing with him. Or maybe it’s the old days I miss, when I didn’t think too hard about stuff. Anyway, even if I could go back to those days, I wouldn’t want to.
Neither does Mom. She told me that when Phil went to jail, Chef Guillaume cried, and not because his fancy-schmancy restaurant lost its authenticity. Phil had been robbing him, and Guillaume had been too scared to do anything about it. But even with Phil gone, Mom quit. She said she wanted to try her luck in the world outside the one she’d always known. The bartender at her new restaurant, he’s pleasant enough, but he’s always yappin’ about law school and the stock market and the yadda yadda.
With no Phil and no Rita, I don’t go into Manhattan much anymore. Nowadays me, Brett, and Lala—and Money, when we can drag him into the daylight—spend our free time at the noodle shop, hanging out with Dad.
I’m gonna leave you with the words Skippy Chin said when he handed Dad the keys to the noodle shop so he could retire with his wife in their house over on Eleventh Avenue.
“Remember, Si,” said Mr. Chin, “you’re only as good or as bad as your last bowl of noodles.”
At least I think that’s what he said. Anyway, as far as philosophies go, I think that’s pretty easy to swallow.
As far as stories? Why not go with the happy ending.
—C. LeB., Sunset Park, Brooklyn
AFTERWORD: HOW I PICKED MY PHILOSOPHY
Lao Tzu is the Chinese philosopher Brett is obsessed with. That summer, Brett was carrying around a book the guy wrote more than two thousand years ago called the Tao Te Ching. The librarian with the turquoise hair told me it’s been translated from ancient Chinese hundreds of times, and every time, the words come out a little different.
I gotta give that librarian a shout-out. Every time I asked her a question, such as “Who are some philosophers?” or “How do you tell a detective story?” she stuck a book in my hands. She didn’t just give me so-called kids’ books either. Even if I didn’t understand everything in those books, there was usually at least one part that made sense. Now whenever I come across something I like, I add it to my philosophy collection.
So that’s the philosophy of my philosophy. Now I’ve REALLY got nothin’ left to say, so I’m gonna do this:
Withdraw as soon as your work is done.
—Lao Tzu
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank my agent, Susan Hawk, and my editor, Kristin Ostby, for believing in this novel from the start, and for working so diligently to make it great. Thanks to the entire team at Simon & Schuster, including Laurent Linn and Mekisha Telfer, for their enthusiasm, and for the creativity with which they have handled each stage of the production process. Ziyue Chen’s warm and cheerful cover illustration c
aptures the sunset tone of the story perfectly. My husband, Tim Mapp, my son, Laszlo, and my stepdaughter, Adèle, are sources of love, encouragement, and inspiration. I am also indebted to the many readers and friends who gave this book, and me, the utmost care and consideration over the past several years: Ginny Wiehardt, Lisa Thornton, Ron Horning, Anna West, Andy Dowdy, Matt Weedman, Katherine Leggett, Leslie Robarge, Lhasa Ray, Susan Levin, Jeffrey Yang, Michelle Alumkal, Colie Collen, Adriana X. Jacobs, David Jacobs, Jonathan Regier, Jennifer K. Dick, Jacob Bromberg, Cynthia Tolentino, Edith Balbach, Todd Fletcher, Mei Ying So, Lee O’Connor, Yael Lehmann, Xiaoyu Sun, and Shuk Yi Wong. Megan, Alex, Amaya, and Luca Zesati, Kyla Krug-Meadows, and the indefatigable infant and toddler teachers at Lucasfilm cared for my newborn, my husband, and me so lovingly while I revised; we owe you our sanity. Rob Liguori provided swift, skilled fact-checking at a critical moment. The errors that remain are my own. I’d also like to thank the Rees family, for years of kindness, and my family, especially Barbara Balbach-Haines, David Lariviere, Geraldine Tierney, Sarah and Stanley Balbach, Allane and Louis Lariviere, and Pat and Jim Mapp. Finally, thank you to all the families and students with whom I have had the pleasure of working in my capacities as a clinical social worker and as an instructor. Every story is connected.
SARAH LARIVIERE grew up in Champaign, Illinois. She graduated from Oberlin College and has a master’s degree in social work from Hunter College in New York City, where she specialized in casework with children and families. She wrote The Bad Kid in Paris, France, and Austin, Texas. She now writes, makes art, cooks, and gardens in San Francisco, California, with her husband, Tim Mapp, and their children, Adèle and Laszlo.
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