Marine Park: Stories (3 page)

Dad wasn't watching. He was pretending to shadowbox with Lorris, who was saying, I'm the greatest, I'm the greatest.

Don't do it, man, I said. They don't even try that on Tony Hawk.

It's gonna be sick, he said, and gave it a little hop to get his speed up.

He made it all the way down before falling. I have to give him credit for that. But then he swerved toward the wall and got scared and fell. He wasn't even going that fast. All I heard was a squelch, like the sound the black dried-up shark eggs make when we squish them on the beach at Coney Island. It was the same sound. His wrist looked bent sideways. He jumped up and was screaming, My wrist, my wrist, and my dad came running over, Lorris right behind, and that's when the third air conditioner fell out the window, crashing and breaking into pieces, and my mom yelling from the kitchen, Goddamnit you're an asshole. Dad and I drove Hayden to the hospital first, but when we got back we swept up all the pieces.

 • • • 

It wasn't long after that until it was my birthday, and to celebrate Dad took me out driving with him. It was the weekend, so we had plenty of time. Mom was home with Lorris playing Legos, because in a recent school art project his portrait of the family had her smaller than the rest of us, off in the corner. She'd been at work a lot. I don't think Lorris meant anything about it. He was always a terrible artist. But you could tell she was upset.

When we weren't rushed, Dad liked to pull out all the stops in the driving. First he drove us to the parking lot in Marine Park, and let me drive around there for a few minutes. We pulled into and out of vertical spaces. Everybody learned how to drive in the Marine Park parking lot, and the cops didn't mind as long as you were being safe. I've heard they're much more careful now—they jumped all over the two underage kids last week who ran their mother's car into a hydrant—but this was a while ago. We were particularly safe, of course, because we were in Dad's driving instructor car. It had a problem with the wheel so that it lilted a little to the left if you didn't correct it, but it was perfect and I loved it.

From there we pulled onto Quentin, rode that all the way down to Flatbush, which was heavy six-lane traffic. Dad took the wheel again at that point. I was still getting used to cars on both sides of me. He exaggerated all his driving motions here, the point being for me to observe. Hit the left blinker. Make sure you're keeping up with traffic. Always check all three mirrors.

If you stay on Flatbush and keep going you hit the water, Rockaway and the Atlantic, twenty blocks from our house, but that's getting onto the highway, and I didn't want to deal with that yet. We made a right onto U, and Dad stayed in the right lane the whole way. Then, after passing the public library and the salt marsh where the water mill used to be, where you can still see the foundation coming out of the surface, we were in Gerritsen. Dad ceremonially pulled into an open spot and put the car in park and pulled the keys out and handed them to me when we passed each other going around the hood.

This was my favorite moment, using the key, the throat-grumbling the engine makes when it comes on, how if you do it wrong it kick-starts like someone laughing hysterically. Then the way the wheel shakes a little in your hand, your foot on the brake, everything ready to move.

I pulled out and Dad said, Good, good, keep it easy, and I imagined the fake line in the middle of the road like he told me to, keeping a little to the left of it. I hit my right blinker and we were on a one-way street, and my turn came perfectly into the center. I accelerated a little and tried to ease off and onto the break at the red light, completely smooth. I navigated around a double-parked car without my dad saying a word.

When we were little, the only activity that Lorris and I wanted every night was wrestling with Dad. He didn't like to hit us; Mom was the one we were afraid of, her slaps more damaging than any neighborhood scrape. Scarier too because she'd cry after, holding ice to our cheeks, even though we told her it was OK and we didn't need the ice. But wrestling was something that Dad knew how to do. He'd lie down in our living room on his back, and one or the other of us would run down the hallway and take a running leap and jump on top of him. Then the other would come from behind his head and try to cover his eyes or hold his legs. When we jumped, he made an
oof
sound, like we had knocked the air out, but he always caught us, in midair, no matter what part of him we tried to jump on top of. He'd keep us suspended there for a few seconds, turning us back and forth like a steering wheel, and then pull us back down and wrap our arms in a pretzel. Mom liked to watch this from the kitchen, where she'd be cleaning the dishes, usually Dad's job but she let him off the hook when he was wrestling with us.

Coming down a one-way street like that was the same feeling of being suspended in midair, the windows open, the radio off so I could concentrate, the car on a track, almost, so it felt impossible to deviate. I could close my eyes or shut off the driving part of my brain and the car would keep going forward, where I was willing it to go.

It was the corner, the one with two traffic lights, the one with the old storage warehouse on one side, and the Burger King, where teenagers go after the movies to sky the drink machines and not pay; with the shit factory on the other side, the green fence shaped like a wave on the top that goes on and on forever. There's a gate in the fence with an entrance to the recycling dump. When Dad saw it, it was like he woke up from being asleep with his eyes open. He leaned forward and said, Make a right here, go into there. We've got to pick something up. Then the red Chevy came screaming up from behind us and crunched into the passenger side.

I sat in the driver's seat. There were doors being opened and slammed shut. I think I heard the sirens immediately. Police cars were never far away. The Chevy driver went right over to Dad's side and pulled him out and Dad lay on the ground, breathing heavy, on his back, looking up.

I was in the car. I was out of the car. I was sitting on the side of the curb. My dad lay on his back and groaned quietly, talking to himself. There were people all around him. He kept pushing the air in front of him, up and away. My mom got there. My dad was sitting up. She was screaming the whole time. Another fucking air conditioner, she said. Driving with your fucking underage son. You've got some fucking lot of nerve. Dad was sitting up and laughing. He was shaking his head, I remember that. He'd just gotten a haircut, and you could see red skin beneath the gray. I remember when Dad came to say good night to us, later, he said, Your mother and I love each other very much. He had his hands on the side of the mattress. Don't take things so seriously, he said.

It was hot that night, and Lorris was in my room again. Mom pulled out the trundle bed. She smoothed the sheets. She kept her hand on his cheek, her other hand on my arm, her feet between the two beds, until Lorris told her that he wanted to turn on the other side. She went downstairs, and she put the television on, but we could hear her and Dad arguing. They were quiet. We only heard the sounds of their voices. It stopped soon and they turned the television off. Lorris got out of the pullout bed and stood in front of mine. He put his hand on the side, and I lifted up the sheet. I faced one way, and he faced the other, because I didn't like it when our breaths hit, but he kept his foot next to mine until four in the morning. Then he got up to go to the bathroom, and I had the bed and the sheets and the quiet room to myself.

S
itting on the bus on the way home from Kings Highway train station with our shopping bags at our feet, Lorris pointed at the man sitting across from us. It was the years when we fought. Look, Lorris said. When the man reached down to scratch his lower leg his jeans rode up a little, and you could see his gun, just the holster and the leather strap. He's a policeman, I told Lorris. Lorris nodded. I feel safe, he said.

 • • • 

We fought all the time. We threw punches. We kneed each other in the chest. We knocked each other down, waited until the other one got up, knocked him down again. We got angry. We squeezed each other's fingers so hard they got jammed, or what looked like jammed, in the way that we jammed our fingers while playing basketball. We scratched pimples into our legs and called them mosquito bites.

When fights were over, when Lorris was knocked down, when I had my whole weight on top of him, I gave what was our cruelest punishment of all—the kiss of death—the bone of my chin jammed into his cheek, pushed down between his gums until he screamed, hard enough that they'd stay raw, and the orthodontist, when Lorris went to one a few years later, told Lorris he needed braces. But when I pulled my chin away, he gave me the same look, his eyes disdainful, as if he knew there was nothing else I could do. And, surprised, I'd let him up.

Then we'd lean against the wall together, breathing hard. It stopped us being angry. We could be regular human beings then, so much that by the time our father came running up the stairs, shouting, What's going on? we'd be laughing, or doing something else, my glasses crooked but back on my face.

 • • • 

Every year we went shopping at Christmastime, by ourselves, near Kings Highway. There were stores for everything. Rainbow for clothing, KB Toys, a small bookstore, jewelry shops. Once I went by myself but came back ten minutes later than I'd said I would, and my mother had been sitting next to the door, on a dining room chair. My father was pacing the room. Lorris was watching out the window, and it was him who opened the door.

You're fucked, he said, quietly, happily, the emphasis too much on the second word. With his body blocking my parents' view, he punched me above the knee, and backed quickly away, so I had to hobble into the house. From then on Lorris and I went together, even though it wasn't clear what good Lorris would do. Two's better than one, our father said, and left it at that.

One winter, not long after that—on our first stop we got clothes. A turtleneck for our mother, who was trying to start running even with the snow, and a sweatshirt for our father, because he said he looked good in them. Then we went to the bookstore under the train tracks.

Morning, we said, as we entered the shop. The bell had rung over our heads. The man grunted. Good morning, Lorris said, stamping on the welcome mat in front of the door, with pictures of snowflakes on its edges. The man looked up but didn't grunt. We spread out around the store, opening books and looking at their inside covers. Here, Lorris said, and handed me a small red one:
Walking Tours of Brooklyn
. Perfect, I said. One more. Mister, I said, do you have any suggestions for a gift for our father.

The owner of the bookstore looked at us. He was reading the paper. The headline rustled into the subheadline while the owner shuffled. Is he still married? the owner asked. I said yes. The shop owner kept reading his paper.

In between two rows of books, Lorris put a hand on my shoul- der and pointed at the ground. Look, he said. I looked down. Then he reached up and slapped my ear, and it started ringing. He danced away before I could grab him, but I threw the book I was holding at his neck. He shifted and it hit his shoulder, and the pages flapped to the ground. Hey, the shop owner said, but Lorris was already laughing. He dodged out of the store, and the bell clanged over his head. I found a book of best travel destinations with a pretty woman on the cover and bought that. Lorris was standing outside, and I pushed him against a car. The sound of his body hitting the front made a satisfying thud, and then we were better. The week-old snow had left streaks of dirt and frost on the car's window, and Lorris's body left a print.

I wanted to get Lorris a pair of sneakers with wheels in them that you could pop out, instant rollerblades. So we went into Payless, me leading and pulling Lorris behind, his eyes closed. When I asked the salesman where to look, I did so in a whisper, so that Lorris couldn't hear. Once I'd paid, I led him outside, and stood him there, and just looked at him for a second. He was small against the Payless window, his head only coming up a little above the display shelf of shoes. Breathing in and out, he had his hands flattened, calmly, against his side. People walking by were starting to look at us. Ready, I said.

Then Lorris said, Now it's my turn. While I closed my eyes he turned me around, around, and around again, his head coming up only to my chin. The sounds of the world came at me, the gray snow on the sidewalk receding into nothing.

 • • • 

Eyes closed, I could hear my breath more rapidly. It came on alternate beats with my footsteps, the crunch on the salted cement. Lorris's hand, never touching me, pulled at my jacket sleeve, and I stumbled forward. I could hear people shouting, though I wasn't sure why. A truck beeped near us, and there was the slide that comes when a car pulls into a spot, just missing the curb. The tires hugged the ground. Lorris, I said. He didn't answer. I smelled the tang of lemon, from the falafel restaurant, the burning of the legs of meat I remembered must be turning, slowly, in the window.

What happened then, I can only describe it as a vision. It appeared in my eyelids like a movie, with surround sound, circling my head. In the vision, Lorris and I were in a car, and he was driving. He didn't feel older, he was just driving, as if he knew how and it was natural. It was an old car, the dashboard dusty and streaked with fingerprints. I was in the passenger seat, leaning back. Maybe I was teaching him—though I didn't know how, though it felt like I did. Lorris made turn after turn. I didn't recognize where we were, but it was a one-way street. Ahead of us, there was a speed bump, and on top of the speed bump, something small wrapped in blankets. We got closer, and I saw the blankets shift. There was the sound of the tires on the unevenly paved street, the hum. The echo of the blinker click as it shut off. Lorris was looking straight ahead. When we went over the speed bump, there was another sound. Was that—, Lorris said. No, I lied. I told him no. You're fine. It was nothing. Lorris looked at me, pleading. The car stopped at the end of the street. He put it into park. He put his hands back on the wheel. Other cars passed us, slowed down, sped up, there were those sounds—but he wouldn't look away. Then the vision ended, and the real Lorris was saying, in the real world, Open your eyes.

 • • • 

We waited for the bus for fifteen minutes. Lorris had his bags arranged on the sidewalk around him. He showed me his palms, where the stretched plastic had cut into them, leaving a deep red trench. He held them up to me and I wouldn't answer him at first. Rub them, I said.

A pregnant woman smiled at us from two people ahead in the line. I looked down at the ground. Happy holidays, she said. I nodded. How old is he? she asked. Old enough, I said. Lorris was kneeling down, checking with one hand in each bag that everything from his packages was still there. How long is your bus ride? she asked. Five and a half minutes, Lorris said, his eyes still on his bags on the ground.

It felt wrong going up the bus steps, watching Lorris, ahead of me, using his MetroCard next to the driver. The bus felt too heavy, Lorris too close to the wheel. I closed my eyes and tried to listen. The bus engine coughed. People muttered in the front seats. I opened my eyes, and reached up toward Lorris one step above me. Let's walk, I said. Or take the next one. Please. Lorris looked down the steps. He gave me the scathing look again, like he did when I hit him, like there was no way he could hurt. Then he turned and got on the bus. I watched him go. You coming? the bus driver asked.

The avenues began to pass by. We sat next to each other, not talking. I leaned back. The bus engine coughed and coughed. The man with the jeans reached down to scratch his leg, showed the gun. Safe, Lorris said.

 • • • 

This all happened and we got to the house and in half an hour both our parents would be home, having left to walk to the mall on the other side of Avenue R to buy presents for us, not holding hands but with their hands almost touching, swinging side by side. But there was no way for us to know that then, standing at the front door leaning on the bell. We could hear the sound of it echoing. The windows were all closed. The echo came back to us, like laughing. A tall man on a too-small bike came riding slowly down the sidewalk. He was careening side to side. He looked at us, kept watching us until he was all the way on the other end of the block, and then he stopped, and looked back. Let's go, Lorris, I said.

Walking quickly, we went around through the alley to the back of the house, opened the red gate. I reached around in the plastic case over the barbecue, found the key I hid there, went to open the back door. The locks clicked. Hello? I asked the house. The basement was damp and smelled like summer. Nothing answered. I locked the door behind us.

I turned to Lorris and put one finger to my lips, and we walked up the creaking stairs. The house was quiet. One open window, off the kitchen, let some air in, and the curtain fluttered. I turned on the light, which hissed. Hello? I said again.

The bottom of the curtain was dancing. It was a dark curtain, I don't know why we had dark curtains. It seemed heavier than it should be. I couldn't see behind it. The curtain kept dancing. Slowly we walked toward it. I could hear everything from outside, the scrape of a door, the sound of people running, a horn beeping, twice. I raised my hands, I felt my knuckles pop. And suddenly there was a hand grabbing my arm and I turned around and swung.

It was Lorris, laughing, who ducked the punch, and ran shrieking into the living room, but I followed him, running, threw him down on the floor and hit him with both hands. His stomach, so the wind got knocked out, his shoulders, his face with my palms. He was shouting, scratching at me, my face, my mouth, my eyes. The packages were strewn around us. I pinned him, so he couldn't move anything, and leaned my head down close to his. Close your eyes, I said. No, he said, get off me. But then I hit him again and he did. I did too. I could hear the creaking of the walls, the rush of the bus going by outside the windows. There were no leaves for the wind to rustle on the dead trees. Lorris whispered, What are you going to do?