Leaving Brooklyn (19 page)

It was snowing again. I put the patch over my bad eye and saw clearly the usual sights: the central mall and wooden benches of Eastern Parkway, the neon sign of Dubrow 's Cafeteria lit red for evening and the lonely men still huddled over their coffee, the lingerie shop, the newsstand, all with the patina of tenderness snow gives the world. Just what I would have seen with both eyes. My bad eye's talents weren't needed here.

I switched the patch. A test. Could my bad eye get me home? Was it of any practical use, or were its talents good for nothing but adventure and trouble?

Not much of a test. I knew Utica Avenue so well I could have walked it blindfolded. The Sugar Bowl, where people from school might be sipping ice cream sodas as I passed; Laurel and Hardy 's drugstore; the lighted marquee of the Carroll Theatre announcing, through the falling snow, this week 's movie. I couldn't read the title, but whatever it was, I was sure the characters kissed and parted, kissed and parted.

Traffic was sparse. In the deep distance, splatters of red and green alternated on wavy poles. I crossed easily and turned down Montgomery Street, where one building had a short cut to East New York Avenue, useful on cold days. You took the elevator to the basement, went through a dimly lit corridor past the boiler and piles of garbage, and emerged in the back of the candy store, saving a block. But no, it was too dark and deserted for that corridor. I chose the long way, outdoors.

Suddenly there in the snow, only minutes away from home, a feeling of limitless buoyancy flowed through me like breath. It seemed I might leave the earth and sail up unimpeded, as the snow around me was sailing down, and float right over Brooklyn
up to where the stars drifted—I couldn't see them but they were there. I didn't want to float away, though; I was so enraptured that I wanted to remain here on earth, or maybe just a few inches above, and dance. Everything seemed perfect and right; the world, glistening and abundant, unfurled its rightness and perfection—how come I hadn't noticed before? Of course I would have everything I wanted, my life would be all I dreamed. And even if it weren't, it didn't matter; nothing that could happen mattered; it was enough to be alive on this moist and spinning globe. Every flake of snow tingled on my skin, joyously cold and hot at once. There was not even any more death in this miracle of a world, just wave after wave of life and motion. This was too good to be true, I knew. I had been touched by something beyond the palpable. It came from nothing that had happened to me today or ever, beyond circumstance, out of nowhere, a gift that wouldn't last, but I wanted it to last as long as such gifts could. I wanted to prolong it and also to let it be, not touch it for fear of shattering it. I didn't even stop walking. No change must break the enchantment. It would end any second, but I would remember and hold it, an intimation of what might be, and because it was so beautiful I knew remembering it would be heartbreaking.

It lasted longer than I had dared hope, so long that I was dazed with gratitude, and then it started slowly to dissolve, and when I neared the corner and saw the figure of a man approaching, it vanished abruptly as though it never was.

I switched the patch to my right eye so that I could see. He wore a pea coat and wool scarf, and was tall and broad-shouldered. His hands were dug into his pockets as he lumbered along with his head down, a man lost in himselfAbout thirty feet away, he looked up, noticed me, and slowed down. His mouth opened slightly. He raised a hand and my stomach bounced. Then settled. Bobby! If he hadn't come along I might still be in bliss.

“Audrey! Long time no see. What happened to your eye? Did you have an accident?”

I pulled off the patch and stuffed it in my coat pocket. “No, I 'm fine. A doctor gave it to me for eye exercises. Didn't you ever notice something wrong with my right eye?”

“No.” He kept grinning and rubbing his gloved hands together. “Maybe I should've looked harder. So how ' ve you been? I don't see you in the store much these days.”

“No. Busy, you know. School and all.”

I asked after his wife, Bobby, and the baby. Wondrously, I remembered his name—Donny. I had seen him crawling around the store last summer, making little mountains out of sawdust. He was a handful, Bobby replied, and Bobby was pregnant again.

“It would be nice to have a girl this time. You know,” he said wistfully, “someone to sit quietly on her daddy's lap. Donny is never still for a minute.”

“Even girls don't sit very long,” I said, and we stomped our feet in the snow.

“You certainly are looking great, Audrey. You've grown up.”

“These things happen.”

“An answer for everything. Same old Audrey.”

“Well, I think I 'd better go on home. Good seeing you.”

“Listen, what do you say to a cup of coffee somewhere first? Talk about old times, catch up. Maybe you can give me some advice.”

“About what?”

“Oh, I don't know. I'm thinking of getting a job. This working for my father is a dead end. I don't want to sell chickens all my life. And Bobby 's not the type who'll want to do what my mother does. Come on. You'll warm up.”

“I wish I could, Bobby, but my mother's expecting me and I'm late already. They're having a card party.”

“So give her a call.”

“What are you thinking of, the Sugar Bowl?”

“Nah, it's filled with all those kids. I'll take you to the Blue Feather.”

That was a local bar whose dark windows displayed a blue
neon feather. No one I knew had ever crossed its murky threshold. It was a joke around school: What sorts of primitives frequented the Blue Feather and what unknown caverns of Brooklyn could they come from?

“Oh no, I think I'd better not. Thanks anyway.”

“Some other time, then. Let me walk you home, at least.”

Bobby sounded even less like a book than the eye doctor at his worst. I had read many novels of unrequited love at long last rewarded, of joys arriving too late. The women in the novels were always brimming with exaltation or regret, but I felt nothing.

“Did you really never notice my eye?”

“No. But I'm not very observant. Let's see.” I faced him and opened wide. “I can't see anything wrong.”

“It's probably too dark,” I said.

“Well, nobody's perfect. I grew up with my mother, so little things don't bother me. You hardly notice if you really care about someone. So do you have anyone good at school? Is Memling still doing American History? He used to sing 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' when he got to the Civil War. Every single stanza.”

“They retired him last year. He must've gone out singing. I managed to get Carlino. You know, Pre-Marriage for Senior Girls? I was on the waiting list and then they opened another section by popular demand.”

We were at East New York Avenue, a huge two-way thoroughfare with no traffic lights and a stream of whizzing cars, even in the snow. Bobby grabbed my elbow—“Come on! Now!”—and we raced across during a short lull. Only half a block to my house.

“You girls are the lucky ones. All we ever had was Hygiene. You know what they told us? Fellas, you have five thousand shots in you. Don't waste them.”

I must have looked startled, for he quickly added, “Oh, excuse me, Audrey. That just slipped out.”

“It's okay. I can take it.” I almost countered with Mrs. Car - lino's definition of Petting, still in my book bag where it had lain
all day, through classes and Arlene's eye makeup and the subway and the doctor, but I knew enough not to.

“So how old are you now? Around eighteen?”

“I 'll be sixteen in two months.” We paused at the snow-covered steps in front of my house. Tomorrow my father or I would have to shovel. Not enough to have school closed, though, unless it kept up all night.

“No kidding? You could have fooled me. Jailbait.” He chuckled and tweaked my nose. “A pretty girl, out on these dark streets so late… ”

“Oh, come on, Bobby.” I frowned. “I'm going in.” He raised his hand the way my father did, to ward off assault. “Jeez, I keep putting my foot in my mouth, don't I? No offense. Listen, I remember when you were in kindergarten and came into the store holding your mother's hand. You were a cute kid. My mother liked you too, the way you used to watch her do the chickens.”

“Oh, I loved to watch her. And I had such a crush on you, it was pathetic. Did you know?”

“Really? Me? But you were just a baby. Oh, wait a minute, I remember you wrote me a letter when I joined the Navy. It was a cute letter.”

“I missed you. Then you came back and got married. You threw me over without mercy. Well, that's life, isn't it?”

“Sure is,” he agreed.

“What did you do in the Navy, anyway?”

“I was a seaman. Deck force. We kept up the ship, painting and repairs and so on. We were stationed in Hawaii most of the time. Great place for swimming.”

I started up the steps. “Bobby, why don't you try looking for a job in the city? There's so much happening there. I go in a lot because of the eye doctor. It's another world, really.”

“And travel forty minutes each way on that crowded subway? Nah, who needs that?”

“Well, thanks for walking me home.”

“Any time. And listen, Audrey, I didn't mean anything, you know that.”

“I know. 'Night, Bobby.”

From the porch I watched him recede, hands in his pockets again, head down. Under the streetlight his silhouette was haloed in snow and his profile took on a bluish cast. The crystals on his pea coat gleamed like rhinestones.

I hadn't needed my good eye to get home. I could do it without eyes. Or someone like Bobby would come along and willingly take me. On that dreamy one-eyed walk from the subway, the familiar streets and shops had barely existed; my entire past barely existed, could be rolled up into a mote in the eye and winked away. As I stood on my porch, just outside the arc of warm light from within, already hearing the rumbly voices of the men, and beneath them, in counterpoint, the lithe, fluty voices of the women, I was sure my true life had not yet begun. And when it did, oh how freely I would float.

I opened the door and stepped into the card party, in full swing.

There they were, my father, Mr. Zelevansky, Mr. Ribowitz, Mr. Singer, Mr. Capaleggio, and Mr. Tessler, amidst their cards and glasses of soda and ashtrays and nuts and pretzels. I could greet them easily now. They were men like the eye doctor. They took off their glasses and their clothes in the same way, and climbed on their women. And though I could readily picture them doing that, climbing on their women—busy at mah jongg in the next room—I could not so readily imagine their making love to them, cupping a breast in one hand and leaning over till the tongue found the tip of the nipple, or tracing the line of the torso with a tender thumbnail. If they did, it was beyond my vision.

I beamed a smile on all and yanked off my scarf. My father's back was to me. I bent to kiss him on the cheek and he accepted my kiss with a slight turn of the head, his eyes detaching reluctantly from his cards. “Oh, cold, Audrey!”

“It's snowing again,” I sang out in the juicy operatic tone of Mrs. Gamanos in the doctor's waiting room. “Hello, Mr. Tessler. Hi, Mr. Cappy. Hello, hello. How are all you gentlemen?” As I cir - cled the table I let my hand alight for a second on Lou Zelevansky's shoulder. “Hi, Lou, how are you?” He, after all, was the one I had known since my birth, the one with whom my parents had listened to Joe Louis knock out Max Schmeling in the first round before I was conceived. I expected the men might drop their cards in shock and my father leap from his chair, demanding to know what I thought I was doing, addressing Mr. Zelevansky by his first name. Or he would burst out laughing and say, “Look who's grown up all of a sudden! Who does she think she is?” But nothing happened. No one seemed to notice. It was easier than I had thought, just as what I had done with the eye doctor was easy. There for the taking, as perhaps many of life's privileges were. That crucial secret must be what distinguished the adventurous from the timid. Mr. Zelevansky replied that he was fine, thank you, and inquired in kind, and the game continued.

I proceeded through the archway to the dining room, where I could hardly say hello before the smiling women were exclaiming over me—how suddenly grown up, how was I doing in school, wasn't I cold, wasn't I hungry?

Not cold, never cold, but hungry. A plate was waiting in the oven: roast chicken—maybe Bobby had delivered it while I lay on the eye doctor's couch—rice and string beans. Applesauce for dessert, my mother called into the kitchen, but if I could wait till later they would be having apple pie.

“Poor Audrey, she has to stand while she's eating. We' ve taken her chair,” said blond, garrulous Mrs. Tessler. “Here, dear, use my chair. I don't need it—I'm East this hand.”

“Thanks, it's quite all right. I don't mind standing.” I was perfectly comfortable leaning on the door frame, observing the games and gnawing on my chicken leg. In my head, I was matching the women with their husbands, imagining them doing what I had done. Mr. Cappy in the distance, slender and ruddy, his
pipe protruding from his mouth at an interesting angle, was the only one of the men besides my father who might by prevailing movie and advertising standards be called attractive. I envisioned him curved over Mrs. Cappy, a hollow-cheeked woman with glinting black eyes, fuzzy hair, long gold earrings, and jutting bones. Her eyes closed, her earrings quivered. Roly-poly Mrs. Tessler straddled her roly-poly husband—a man so quiet that for a long time I had assumed he must have a cleft palate like the chicken flicker—on one of the king-sized beds from their furniture store, the pair of them bouncing like green-eyed teddy bears. Mr. Tessler and Mr. Singer, the possible widower or divorcé, were known to be inseparable friends as well as business partners ; perhaps Mr. Singer watched.