August and Then Some (9 page)

“I'm not so good at driving, Dad.”

“I'll show you.”

Great. Just when I thought we were done with life lessons for the evening, I was about to learn how to drive the guy's prized possession. I had no First Holy Communion, no confirmation, no walkabout, no fire ceremony, not even a Briss—but my rite of passage was waiting for me in the parking lot of an old Irish pub.

Cars feel a lot bigger when you're behind the wheel. He folded up his jacket and put it under me so I could see over the steering wheel. When I came close to going off the road or veering too far into the other lane my dad—between checking out his swollen eye in the mirror—reached over, jerked the wheel and straightened me out. “You can't just hold the wheel straight, you gotta keep moving it. Roads are never straight even if they look it, so you gotta make little movements along the way.”

“I'm trying.”

“Get on the parkway.”

“WHAT?”

“Make a left up here and get on the Bronx River. You can do it.”

“No, no, no—”

“Hey just do what I tell you.”

I got on and hugged the white line of the shoulder for my life.

After a few minutes Dad asked if I knew how fast I was going. I was too scared to take my eyes from the road to the speedometer, so I guessed. “Forty?”

“Try again.”

“Forty-five?”

“Again.”

“Forty-eight?”

“Son, you're doing
fifteen
miles an hour on the highway. You gotta pick it up. Give yourself a little more gas and get up to forty.” I pushed on the pedal. My hands held so hard on that wheel you could have chiseled initials into my knuckles. “That's it. You're doin it. Remember: little movements. You always gotta adjust to your surroundings.”

“Got it.”

“If you see a deer, lean on the horn. They get stuck in light, but horns make them run.”

“Since when do we have deer around here?”

“Never. I'm just telling you in case you drive someplace that does.”

Apparently I got better at adjusting to my surroundings and we drove in silence for a little while.

Dad lit up a cigarette. “I know something about you, Jake.”

“What's that?”

“You know how to back up your friends. You know how I know?”

“No.”

“Because you swung the cue. If you'd just stood there and didn't do anything then no one would know if they could ever count on you for anything. Anyone who was watching you tonight knows that you back up your friends and fight when it's right to. And I was watching.”

Yeah, it wasn't a game of pool and an illegal drink he gave me for my birthday. It was a test. And I was only driving home because I passed.

“When's it right to?”

“Decisions, decisions. They're a bitch.”

 

Dani was asleep when we walked in, or at least she was in her room with the lights off. Mom was waiting in the kitchen for us
and when we came through the door Dad headed right for the refrigerator. “You should have seen your son. A natural on the table.”

“What happened to your eye?”

Dad cracked open his beer and slurped the suds off the top. “Nothing. He was like a pro out there.”

Mom looked at me. “You OK, Jake?”

“Yeah.”

“Course he is,” Dad said. “Kid had fun for once.”

She threw him an accusing look then said to me, “Maybe you should go to sleep now.” She came and gave me a hug and ran a hand over my whole head. It had a medical feel to it like she was searching for bumps. She said, “Happy birthday, Jake.” Then she examined my face.

“Thanks.”

Dad said, “Jake, we gotta do this again. You're a natural.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe we get you your own stick next year.”

“Sure. Night, Dad.”

Climbing the stairs I heard the muffled voices of an unhappy and dejected wife and a father who more than anything just wanted her off his back.

 

I woke up that night having to pee real bad and stumbled down the hall with my eyes half open, guided by light seeping through the cracks of the bathroom door. Everything in our bathroom is white; the bathtub and bowl, the sink, the tiles and curtains. Only the floor is blue. The light from our ceiling fixture bounced off all that white and lit the room so hard that when I pushed the door open and walked in, my eyes got blown out for a second. Then my father came into focus. He
was standing in front of the bowl, with his back to me, pants open like he was taking a leak. It took a second to register that my sister was sitting on the toilet bowl facing him. My father whipped around, zipping his pants and said, “Don't you know when to leave people alone?” My sister hustled past me and into her room. Dad said, “Get out, Jake.” But I didn't move. He headed for the door and I moved out of his way. “Leave people alone,” he said in my direction, his mouth smelling like a distillery. He moved down the stairs in the same dreamlike state I had just been in a few seconds ago. I followed.

In the living room we passed the couch he slept on when he and my mother were fighting, passed the tables with all the pretty framed pictures I could barely see—the house lit only by bleeding streetlights—but could feel looking at me. He stubbed his foot on a dining-room chair I'd spent so many dinners sitting on, listening to him chew.

He stopped in the kitchen and wrestled a bottle out of the cabinet. I saw his head in silhouette teetering back and forth on his neck like someone about to fall asleep at the wheel. I hit on the lights; his eyes squinted to a slit. The smile on his face turned to a deep frown, then back to a smile again. He opened his bottle, tilted his head back, poured a couple seconds' worth in his mouth, then swallowed and wiped his lips on his wrist. He kept his head pointed toward the ceiling and spread his arms wide like he was keeping balance on a tightrope or impersonating an airplane.

“What are you two doing awake?” My mother had come up behind me, stood in the doorway, and sussed that my dad was loaded. “Come on, Jake, leave him alone and go to bed.” I thought,
what woke you up, Mom? Was it Dad? Or was it Danielle? Was it a tiny noise she made when she was trying hard not to make a sound because she was too scared? And have those sounds been waking you up for a long time now?
Have you rolled over and fallen asleep on them? What are you trying to keep me from seeing by standing in the doorway of our kitchen in your nightgown?

Mom pulled at my pajama top to get me to start walking away. “Let's go Jake, let him sleep it off.”

I kept my feet firm, looked in my dad's direction and said, “What did you do?” He fluttered his lips and specks of saliva spewed out between them.

My mother said, “He does all kinds of dumb stuff when he's drunk. Just go to bed. There's nothing you can do when he's like this.”

Again I asked: “What did you do?”

“Trust me, he doesn't know what he's doing,” my mother said like she was bored with him. “I've seen him get naked at parties when he was drunk. He can't even hear you.”

Finally.

Watching my mother bury her head to what was going on and watching my father get away with it in his blackout, finally all the old anger and pictures of sunsets made sense.

My father turned to clay and crumbled down in front of me. I felt sane. I felt smart.

And I felt murderous.

I looked at the knife rack on the counter. Was he right? Could I be trusted to fight when I had to? And would I fight dirty? Sneak attack without a war council? I wanted to take that knife and cut out a chunk of his neck to make up for the fingers my sister almost lost to frostbite. A couple hours ago I smacked a pool cue over a guy's back. How much of a leap could it have been? And how could he have argued? He beat on a guy to commemorate a birthday. He must have agreed that the punishment for messing with my sister needed to be something more than that.

I walked to the knife rack, my eyes on him the whole time.

“Jake, just leave him alone before he starts swinging at
someone.” She sounded a little more alarmed, and didn't want to get close to him.

It seemed logical to think that slicing him would be passing another one of his tests. It would mean a body and bloodstains on the floor. It would also mean charges piling up on me so high that the whole city, all its cops, lawyers and judges and everyone else would see it from wherever they stood. I'd be underneath that pile suffocating, my father standing on top of it.

Those images stopped my hand from taking the knife out of its holder. They made me want to be different than violent. Something worse maybe. Something he hated, that defied what he taught me to be, and was proud of me for being. I just didn't know exactly what that was.

Right now what I really want to be is a guy who can step into this scene and tell me to pick up the phone when everyone is asleep and call the cops. But options aren't retroactive.

“Will you just go to bed,” my mother said again, all exasperated and shit. “Please.”

And I did. I didn't go to my sister's room, or for the phone—I didn't call anyone out on anything, I asked no questions. I shut my mouth, walked out of that kitchen, left my parents alone and went to bed. Just like I did again and again for the next five years.

Odessa Diner, Avenue A, early morning. Stephanie and I sit in a window booth, me in my beat-up work jeans and t-shirt, Stephanie in yesterday's outfit. I'm wolfing down my breakfast, she moves her scrambled eggs around with a fork, mostly just looking at them. “Hard to eat in the morning?” I ask.

“Hard to do everything in the morning.” She abandons the fork. “You always wake up this early?”

“I'm always up this early, but the waking up happens all night.”

“Every night?”

“Every night since.”

“That's like a year?”

“Just like a year, only longer.”

“Damn, that sucks. I mean for real, that sucks.”

“I agree. What time you got?”

She checks her watch, allowing me to change topics. “Seven forty-two. What time you go to work?”

“Eighty-thirty.”

“Every day?”

“That's why they call it work. What time you have to be at school?”

“I don't.”

“My bad, it's fuckin July.”

“I'm done with school, anyways.”

“You graduate early?”

“Nah, I'm just done.”

She picks up her fork again and successfully takes a bite.

“Why?”

With a full mouth she says, “Being in school, not being in school, what's the difference?” A piece of egg flies from her mouth to my plate. We both look at it then look back to each other. “Sorry,” she laughs, and puts a hand over her mouth, sweetly embarrassed.

“Difference is, if you go to school you can go to college.”

“People in my family can't even pronounce college.”

“Oh, and that means you shouldn't go?”

“With what?”

“With your brains and good looks.”

“Boy is trippin.”

“No I'm not, it's true. At least the brain part.”

She leans back in the booth. “Excuse me?”

“I mean the brain part is what gets you into college.”

She leans forward, forearms on table. “Let me tell you something about women.”

“Oops.”

Now she takes her fork in her fist and points it at my face. “Don't ever, ever let them think that you or anyone else might be thinking their looks ain't good.”

“OK, I'm gonna backtrack just a little and say that no matter how good-looking you are, if you want to go to college—and I know you can—then you have to graduate high school first. Or at least get a GED, which is what I'm doing. It's easy, you should—”

“Um hum.” She holds the fork in eating position again.

“And you are good-looking.” No response. “Cute as fuck all.”
She gives me a sarcastic squint. “Pretty as all get out.” With food in my mouth: “Flowers are envious.”

“Shut up.”

“You can give a guy whiplash on a scantily clad day.”

“Whoa, check out the big words on the college boy.”

“Check out the beautiful girl on the other end of the table.” We stare at each other. “Who is probably really smart.”

“You gonna shut up now?”

“Yes.”

I eat. She pushes eggs.

“So what do you do all day when you're not in school?”

“Babysit. Part-time.”

“So what about when your kid comes?”

“Then I'll babysit full-time. Cept they call it mothering and you don't get paid.”

I go back to eating. I feel her staring at me so I look up. “What?”

“Yo, what's up with ketchup
and
hot sauce on your eggs?”

“It's good. You should try it.”

“I'm Dominican, not Mexican.”

“I've noticed.”

She looks out at the rush-hour crowd on their way to a normal workday. The scene glazes her eyes a bit. “You know, I don't sweat what you did.” Then she turns to me and we hold a stare for a second.

“What did I do?”

“Trying to steal your dad's car. With your friend and everything—what was his name again?”

I take a deep breath to get it out. “They call him Nokey.”

“Yeah that's whacked. Anyway, I heard more fucked up things.” I have no trouble believing she has. And now I remember the scar on her hip and wonder if that's one of them.

“Well thanks for saying that.”

She nods. “But how come they ain't putting your dad on trial too?”

“They might.”

“Might?”

“Might, might not. It's complicated. Sometimes laws work in the wrong people's favor.”

“I feel you.”

“Hey, what happened to your hip?”

“What hip?” Her fight coming out again.

“Your left. What happened to it?”

She drops her head and pokes around her plate. “Nothing happened to it.”

“It's a birthmark?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

She sighs with a frustration that's older than she is. She drops her fork onto her plate, leans back in the booth, yanks her shirt up from her hip and pulls her pants far down enough so I can see it. “Here.”

“The fuck is that?”

“What's it look like?”

“Umm, a tattoo of a Playboy Bunny with a blunt in its mouth?”

“Good for you.” Now she yanks her pants down a little further. Underneath the smoking bunny spelled out in black medieval letters is
NELSON
.

“Please tell me you were drunk.”

“I don't get drunk.” She sits back up, grabs her fork, and looks out of the corner of her eyes to see who else saw that.

“Man. You didn't think of maybe getting it airbrushed onto a t-shirt or something.”

“Look, I showed you, now shut up about it.”

“OK.” I stay quiet for a few seconds. “I only asked because I thought it was a scar.”

“It might be. Look, I just want him to … Shit. You never did something to yourself thinking it might change someone else more than it be changing you?”

This pauses the shit out of me. “Maybe.”

We keep eating.

“Yo, put your napkin on your lap,” she tells me.

“What?”

“Your napkin. You supposed to put it on your lap. It's not doing you any good on the table.”

“It's catching the stuff flying from your mouth.”

“Now who's being cute?”

She dips her finger in her glass and flicks me with water.

“Wise ass,” I tell her. She nods in agreement. “I think you're gonna be a great mom.” And she smiles the kind of smile that replaces her fight with self-possession.

More eating.

“Hey, yesterday …” I ask.

“What about it?”

“When we were on the stairs with your boyfriend and you went after him … what was the deal with you pulling your hair? Why'd you do that?”

“I pulled my hair?”

“Yeah.”

“You trippin again.”

“You did.”

“Why would I pull my own hair?”

“That's my question.”

“Yo, you stupid, yo.”

“Says the chick who didn't graduate high school.”

“Shut the fuck up.” She means it.

We pause.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

We pause more.

I scoop up the last of my eggs, then drop the fork onto the plate.

“Ah-ight, now I'ma aks you something,” she warns me. “You don't gotta answer, but … Ah-ight, let's say you stole the car and you really did sell it to someone—”

“OK.” This is not someplace I want to go, but we're here.

“—and then they have to register the car, get insurance and shit, right?”

“Yeah?” I see where she's going.

“Well they got computers. Won't the car show up like it's stolen when they try to do that?”

“Yeah, but it would have been long gone by then.”

“OK, lemme aks you something else. Your father would have called the police.”

“Yeah, but it would have been long gone there, too.”

“Yeah, but if the cops seen that nobody tried to break in the house, ain't they gonna go to the only other guy who's got a set of keys to the house? The guy who is you?”

Pause.

“Yeah.”

Pause.

She looks at me like she's telling me to add it up.

“We didn't think that one all the way through, OK? Are we done?”

She says, “We done,” like she knows something and is not going to share it.

I pull the paper napkin off my lap, wipe my mouth, then ball it up and throw it on the table. I stare at the red streaks and blotches on it as it tries to unfold itself back to life. I see the refrigerator. Hear the hum of it. The picture on it. The paint. Red and white. The magnets. I see white underwear. And I can't help it, but I see bloody pussy.

“Shit!” Stephanie yells.

“What?”

She sinks down on the booth and puts her face under the table.

“You gonna puke again?”

“It's Nelson.”

“Where?”

“Across the street waiting for the light.”

“Oh, shit.”

“He see me?”

“I don't know. Fuck's he doing up this early?”

“Fuckin tonto.”

“He just saw
me
.”

“Shit.”

“He's lookin right at me.”

“Shit.”

“He's walking this way.”

“Shit!” She slips out from under the table, starts to crawl.

“The fuck you doing?”

“Don't look at me, don't look at me.”

“OK. But get off the floor, you look deranged.”

“Shut up.”

Stephanie makes it to her feet and runs hunchbacked low to the floor all the way to the back of the restaurant. A waitress spins out of her way. Everyone watches her until she pushes through the bathroom door. Then all eyes come to me. I take a sip of water, like nothing happened. I look at the people in the booth in front of me. “How you doing?” I ask. They go back to their breakfast.

I look out the window and Nelson is right there. We lock eyes. He looks around the restaurant. Back at me. Now we're having a tough-guy staring contest. He steps away slowly watching me over his shoulder until he's out of sight.

This guy's a monumental fucking problem.

 

From a few buildings away I see someone that looks just like Nokey sitting on my stoop with a six-pack of something next to him. I don't want to believe it's him, but it's hard to argue with my guts when they're churning. He looks at me. Yup, that's him. At the precise moment I think to turn and run he calls out my name and stands up. Fuck. I've been working in what feels like a goddamn oven all fuckin day, now I gotta climb out of the quicksand of this motherfucker's bullshit.

I stand still as he walks toward me. A very clear vision of the kind of heaven it would be for me to personally carry this kid to his grave comes to me. Burying him in the old lady's Upper East Side backyard so deep not even her heirs would find him.

“JT,” he says all gentle and shit.

“Hello, Eugene.”

“Eugene?”

I look into his face and it brings up clear, deep flashbacks of that night: him driving like a maniac, fucking with people on the road just to inflate the ignorant cowboy in him. The panic coursing through his eyes when he realized what happened. “You look like a bucket of shit,” I tell him.

“I can appreciate that.”

“How'd you find me?”

“Your dad.”

“You went over to my dad's? That's ballsy of you.”

“Actually, he kind of came to me.”

“Did he?
Sent you down here to get some dirt on me, huh?”

“It's not like that, man. He's worried about you.”

“Too late.”

“Says you're really skinny. And he's right.”

“Then tell him to send me a quiche.” I try to pass him making for my building. He stands in my way.

“He doesn't blame me, Jake. And you neither.”

“Yeah, right. Then why doesn't he drop the charges?”

“I'm sorry. JT.”

“Oh, please.” I get past him, but stop when he yells behind me.

“Jesus fuck, Jake. Can you loosen the fucking hook you got on me already?”

“Oh here it is. I get it now: If I cop to my end of it you feel better, right? Right?”

“It was my stupid fucking idea, OK? But how long could everyone have just done nothing? At least we tried to help her, JT. I'm sorry, OK.”

“No, you're pathetic. If you had my head for one fucking night, sorry wouldn't even enter into that shit, You'd fuckin crap out your insides, man. You'd be like: Holy shit, am I hot? Am I cold? Can I speak? How come I can't feel my arms? Am I seeing shit?” I get up in his face; he flinches back a step. “You'd believe there's no way you're making it through the night. And you'd wonder if you should take yourself to hell and be done with it. And we both know that's what you'd do. You're not tough. Take away your looks and you ain't shit. Admit it dick smack, the whole thing was about you and you, not about helping Danielle.”

He leans against the building, head to the sky, the beer dangling in his hand, his eyes welling up.

“Bout fuckin time. Now leave.”

“It was my fault.” Words barely coming out.

“Leave.”

He rolls his back against the building, pushes off and walks in the opposite direction from my apartment.