Venus Drive (2 page)

“You're a sick boy. Your mother said you were a problem, but I always told her it was a phase.”

“I thought it was, too,” I say.

Mrs. Lizzari is down on the corner with her walker, her mesh grocery sacks.

“How're you fixed on light, Mrs. L.?”

“I'm a Broadway star up there!” she says.

Home, I boil some pasta and peas, fire up my mother's old Fischer radio. The youth of America sing their anthems of youth. Once I knew the words. I troll for soothing locutions, catch a familiar voice.

“Our culture is afraid of death, and considers it something we must wage a battle against. I say, surrender, submit. Go gentle. Terminal means terminal.”

It's Tessa, I realize, even as the host breaks her off.

“Well, I guess you're saying just lie back and pray the Eastern religions are right about reincarnation.”

“No, I'm saying just lie back.”

 

Mrs. Lizzari calls me for a special batch, almond-ginger. When I get there she hands me a small canvas, lighthouse generica, a hammer and nails.

“Over the mantle, dear,” she says.

“So, tell me,” she says, hoisting her cookie tray, “what made you say those things to Hilda?”

“What things?”

“Horrible things.”

“I was just trying to help.”

“We don't need any help in that department, thank you.”

When I leave I still have the hammer in my belt loop. I bang it on Hilda's door.

“Who's there?”

“It's your local service representative,” I say, wave the hammer through the chained slit. “Whenever you're ready, Hilda. Just let me know. There's no reason you should suffer.”

“Who's suffering?” she says.

 

You can hear them in the hallway, their early wheels. Mrs. Lizzari is in her house gown, helping the medics make the corner with their gurney. Hilda is up to her neck in sheet.

“She's okay, she's going to be okay,” says Mrs. Lizzari. “She's not so lucky yet.”

I nod, duck back inside.

My mother's windows get no dawn light, but there's a kind of slow undimming going on in the dining room.

I fetch the sack.

All it takes are the tiniest taps of the hammer to make a good part of my mother real old fashioned dust-to-dust-type dust. I crush a little morphine up and sift it in. I add some water, cook it all down in a spoon, draw it up through a hormone needle, roll my sleeve. I stanch the blood with velveteen.

Now I'm on the flower-print couch.

Now I'm thinking, is that the morphine, or is that my mother?

Something is setting beautiful fires up and down my spine.

Daddy can't stand the kikes. Daddy says they look down their kike noses at him in the state store, where Daddy picks and packs, crates up the Liquor Board liquor. The kikes treat him without time of day.

“Those fucking kikes,” says Daddy.

Maybe Daddy's a little tippy tonight.

“You're tippy,” says Mother.

“I stopped for a few.”

“But Daddy,” I say, “aren't we the kikes?”

“That's what they say,” says Daddy. “I say it's them. Who needs them? Who needs her?”

What Daddy maybe means is that us Cherskys of the Hill District are not like the Blitzsteins of Squirrel Hill, except maybe my Aunt Rachel, who married in, and who we never see her anymore.

“Who needs her?” says Daddy. “Let her cavort with the kikes.”

Cavort is a smartie word. It was on the vocab quiz. Maybe Daddy knows it because he used to be a smartie, too. Now he's sore arms, sore neck from him hauling all the Liquor Board crates, sore everything every night, aching, waiting for his salt bath, wanting to know from us which of us needs Rachel. Now he shushes up for in case the Old Lady will hear. The Old Lady is in her room with her high holy silver, the Chersky locket swinging on her collar lace. She never leaves her room. She gets her dinner after, and not the ham we hide away. We are always shushing for in case the Old Lady puts her high holy ear to the keyhole. We never say the name of ham, or the name of Uncle Joey's Polish girl, Paula, Paula, Paula.

Let them hide the ham away. Let Daddy come home tippy, or call Uncle Joey a bum until Joey bawls how it's not his fault, it's the gas he got in France, the mustard. Then he'll peel off money for Daddy from his copper money clip. Mother says the money is green enough for legal tender, why ask what he does for it? A bagjob, a bet, a favor in a pinch? Bumhood is not Uncle Joey's fault, either. He gave his mustard mask to a boy with bad breathing. The gas came floating through the trees of France, and now he reads books all day,
Astronomy of the Gods, A Century of English Verse
, spits dip on the back stoop, gets mustard nervous, waits for the moon to be over the park for Paula.

Let us just be Cherskys, Aunt Rachel's Blitzstein shame. This is my belief.

Want to know my faith? School does. Mother says to say American.

“Hey,” says Uncle Joey, “how about Alleghenian? That's what everyone around here is. Gypsy, dago, mick, it's all Alleghenian.”

What about chink Chinese? I want to ask. What about my best girlfriend Mona Yee, who me and Mona are the front-desk smarties at Duquesne Grammar, tops, not counting Alvin Kwon? We are best friends with our shaved ices on the spit-brown stoop, and we are best friend rollers on our roller skates. Everyone who sees us sees us together, the Chersky girl, the pretty one, the only one, and Mona Yee, Chinese pretty. We are from up the Hill and we roll down it, past the bakery, the butcher shop, the state store where Daddy fetches whiskey for the kikes.

Sometimes I see Daddy through the window. He nods his curved-up jaw at Mr. Vance, the Liquor Board man. Maybe Daddy sees me but he never waves back. That's okay, it's like in school, somebody bombs you with an ink bomb on you, but even if the paper sticks to your blouse you better not turn, you better not look. Not if you want to stay a smartie. Only Alvin Kwon ever turns and only Alvin ever looks. He burns his eyes at the boys in back, the ones who vow they're sending Alvin to the Slabs.

“Never!” says Alvin, who's going to be mayor someday, and can recite the Gettysburg address in perfect Lincoln.

 

Today, Mona and me, we are after-class rollers, rolling under steel smoke, over all the broken sidewalk backs of mothers. We roll down the Hill past Paula's house, to the city pool, where I swim in the no-pee water. Mona is sweet and waits with her books on the lawn. The no-pee pool is no-Chinese. Mona doesn't mind. She's getting smarter while I do my crawl, my butterfly, my aqua-ballerina spins. Oh, if only there were more of us Chersky girls, spinning out the letter C, all of us identical, aqua-amazing in our no-pee ballet. Only after, when I'm dressing, do I remember Mona out there under the steel-smoke-lifted dark, under Paula's park moon. I come out with my hair knotty wet. We sit for another minute, then get ready to climb the Hill, skates laced around our necks. Mona's having ham at the Chersky's tonight.

 

Mother is mad at the Gypsies. What the Gypsies do is come to the back door, never the front door, ask to cut through. Who wants to tell a poor old Gypsy woman she can't cut through? Don't be a dummy, says Mother. Don't be a dingbat, foolish. Sure, let them through, but don't lead them. Otherwise, say good-bye to any silver on the table. Say good-bye to any nickels in a coin dish on the table.

“It's not their fault,” says Uncle Joey. He's got ham-hiding eyes. His fork has the French shakes.

“Whose fault is it then?” says Daddy.

“It's their way,” says Mother. “We teach our children to read, they teach theirs to cut through.”

“My teacher taught me to read,” says Daddy.

“Are you tippy?” says Mother.

“I'm fine. I stopped for a few. Vance was making a Federal case again, what do you want? You know, I should just join the goddamn army. Be useful. Maybe I'm old, but I could do something. Supplies.”

“They'll supply you with the mustard,” says Uncle Joey. “They'll get you good.”

“Knock it off, Joseph,” says Daddy. “And for the month, what have you got?”

Uncle Joey peels new bills from his copper clip. Mother says we know the money is U.S. mint and that's all we know. We don't ask. We're Cherskys, what's to ask? We all look over to Mona, as though to say, “Oh, Mona, sorry for the family fuss.”

“Mona,” says Daddy, “how's your ham?”

“Corned beef,” says Uncle Joey, keyhole loud.

 

Tonight we will be secret night rollers, me and Mona, after the sink, the towel, the rack. Daddy goes to his newspaper chair, with all the war parts and funny parts of the newspaper we are not to touch. Uncle Joey tunes in the radio scores, shines his shoes for Paula. The way he rocks in the rocker when the college scores come on, the vein in his forehead pumping like a Frenched-up heart, you'd think he went to college, but everything Uncle Joey knows, Mother told me, he read on the stoop, spit into the wind.

It must have been a good day for bleacher blankets, all the college smarties with their cocoa and their cheers. The radio man calls out numbers over brass and whistles, drums. Uncle Joey jumps. He looks afraid, like they're going to supply him all over again, get him good, a gas bomb through the roof.

“Oh, shit, oh, shit,” he says, and goes.

“Don't worry,” I tell Mona, “he's just late to the park.”

 

Mona and me, we sneak out the back and roll down to Paula's house, the alley window. Here's moonlight Paula in a wintergreen slip. Here's the bone-handled brush she pulls through her bone-colored hair. She brushes it and we wait for her to blow a kiss at Uncle Joey, who's wallet-sized, tilted with the post-cards in the mirror. He has his brim hat on, his over-the-shoulder belt, his going-off-to-the-mustard-war shirt. We have the same picture in our house, and one of Uncle Ferdie, who didn't get the mustard, who got a bullet in the neck instead.

Ferdie's buried under the trees of France.

“Blow a kiss, Paula,” we whisper. But Paula runs her finger on the brush bone, lays it on the bureau top. The Allegheny stars are out over us, maybe the dipper, the bear, or all the god men Uncle Joey showed me in his star book, stuck there bawling in their sky robes.

 

We are night rollers rolling by the bakery, the butcher shop, down our block and down the Hill. We are rollers rolling past the houses like the Blitzstein house, where Rachel is so pinned-hair pretty, not a Chersky anymore, maybe with a locket on her collar, tearing tissue for the Temple Jews.

We roll by Mona's house, and Alvin's with the Chinese lights. “Alvin! Alvin!” we cry, but he must be busy burning up his mother's kitchen—liberty or death. When Alvin is mayor he'll emancipate Mona to swim in the no-pee pool.

We are rollers in the river town. We very much wish we could skate the black waters here. We roll on off state corners instead. Here are all the downtown buildings pointing steelish into the night. This must be where Mr. Vance will make his Federal Liquor Board case. Poor Daddy will have to join up for usefulness and maybe get a bullet in his neck. He'll be tippy in a brim hat in the sky. The Old Lady will die of holy silver sadness. Uncle Joey will marry in with Paula. He will tell us the truth about his copper money clip, the college scores. What about Mother, though? Who will bring her dinner after, after?

“Go, go, go,” I tell Mona. It's a basement door propped open at the bottom of a stairwell. It's a dim, white light.

“Go, go,” I tell Mona, but I go first, sideways, skatewise, down the stairs.

This dirty tile river was made for secret rollers. We are rolling down it, shushing ourselves as everything gets dirtier, dimmer, us wishing our wheels wouldn't click. We could get demerits. We could go to Juvey, even. The pretty Chersky girl in chains.

The hallway opens on a wide stone room.

It stinks of pickled animal, frog day at Duquesne.

“The Slabs,” says Mona.

She skates off to the far dark behind us.

The dead men here don't look asleep. They look woken up into picklehood. They are stiff on cots that have skates fixed on. They are swelled up, blued-over, see-through, with black slits for bone to show. There are dead women, too, some the color of Mother, waxed over like hidden ham wax.

You don't have to touch to know how cold they are.

You don't need a clock to know how late it is.

Here comes a man in a dirty sky robe. He's pulling a cot with wheels across the stone.

“You here for this one?” the man says.

Even as I roll over I can see it, the copper money clip, there where the sheet doesn't reach. It's sticking out of Uncle Joey's shoe. “It's not his fault,” I tell the man. “It's not. The boy had bad breathing. He couldn't breathe.”

The man sweeps a hand for the whole stone room, all the slit-shot-caught-a-stroke dead, all the broken-back-mothers-of-dagos dead, all the mick dead and time-of-day dead and which-ones-are-the-kikes-kike dead, all the cut-through Gypsy dead, the kosher-paper-lady dead, the blued-over, see-through, Alleghenian steel-smoke dead, the college-drumsand-money-clip-we-don't-ask-where-the-bullet-came-from Chersky dead.

The man says, “Bad breathing, huh?”

The man says, “Looks like an epidemic to me.”

Everybody wanted everything to be gleaming again, or maybe they just wanted their evening back. Everybody was from everywhere, had gathered here to hide from the daylight. Some of these people sat around a marble table with straws in their hands. It looked like they were waiting for lemonade. They were trying to get my friend Gary on the phone to get more lemonade. It was early, late, lockjaw hour.

“Is it like this in Geneva?” I said to a man at the table. I was new here, recommended to the straw people by Gary. I felt like the pupil of a great instructor out alone in the dead city.

“Is what like what?” he said.

“Is this like this?”

“I'm from Scarsdale,” he said. “All I can tell you about is Zurich.”

About then the woman with the telephone called out the terrible news.

“Gary's not anywhere,” she said.

There were moans, whispers, ruminations on fate, hard words for God. People started to shuffle out of the room. A few fell on the coat pile in the corner.

“This is why I hate America,” said the man from Scarsdale. “This brand of bullshit. Where the hell is Gary?”

“He told me he'd be over later,” I said.

“That's exactly what I'm talking about,” said the man. “And here comes the fucking sun.”

The man bent his straw into a periscope, poked it over the windowsill.

“The sun, the sun,” he said. “You fiery whore.”

“Maybe I can find Gary,” I said.

“You flame-blown bitch,” he said.

“I think I know where Gary is,” I said.

The man from Scarsdale spun his periscope.

“That's a good story,” he said. “Work with that story.”

 

I walked around the ruined sectors of the city and worked with that story.

It was really my story and it went like this: shaky, steady, shaky, steady. I was in shaky right now. I tended to waste a lot of time looking for Gary. It's difficult to stay the course to steadiness when you've got to find Gary all the time. It's difficult to do anything at all. Sometimes, when I needed money, I stole my girlfriend Molly's stuff, but the quality goods were running low. To top it off, I was pretty certain I was suffering from that deficit thing. That disorder. Everything flickered a lot, and I never knew which story I was working with.

Take the story of Gary's thumb. Many years ago, on the eve of manhood, Gary sawed it off with his father's Black & Decker table saw. Gave it to his mother on an olive dish, or maybe it was a cookie plate.

“You should have seen the look on my mother's face,” said Gary, back from emergency.

The truth was, you could still see it on her a few days later, there in the bar mitzvah ballroom. That kind of look, it doesn't disappear, even with all that disco-nagila going, and Gary bouncing high in the chair. Gary's uncles, men with great bony mouths, slid Gary from his throne into my arms. I held him there, the bandaged hand between us, and under the din of Hebrew synths, I asked him why he did the sawing.

“They wouldn't let me watch TV,” he said. “The late movie. Now I watch all hours. Anything I want.”

That's the story how Gary left his thumb and his youth behind, though they did sew the dead thumb back on.

We had years as strangers before I saw him again, but somehow I've always been following Gary. What he did to his thumb made him, I believe, a wisdom-giver.

Me, I was never bar mitzvah'd. According to the tenets of my faith, I'm nothing close to a man, though I have a hairy neck and look older.

 

Walking around now I thought of all the times I used to walk around and see Gary on the streets of this city. It's funny to see someone down here from your town. You think everyone will stay behind and do everything you did all over again, forever. You picture old geezers in jean jackets doing whip-its behind the plaza.

But I got out and Gary got out. Everybody gets out. Getting out is not the problem.

You can picture what the problem is.

For instance, Gary tried to be a rock star, even trained his bad thumb to squeeze on a guitar pick, but rock was dead.

“Somebody should have mentioned something,” he said.

Next thing, I see him loitering near trust-fund bistros, looking smug and hunted.

“I'm in goods and services,” he said. “It's the only uncompromised medium left.”

That was when I decided to buy his services, his goods. I was in a steady phase, but Molly was tired of my clarity. It's hard to fuck your girlfriend when she's fucked up and you're not. It's harder than the Skee-Ball they used to have at the Plaza arcade, all that agony over a fuzzy prize.

Now the sun was clearing the rooftops, the water towers. I thought of the man with the periscope. I looked for Gary in all of the Gary places, but I was too early. These places were all haunted by the future of Gary.

I wanted to score for the straw people, maybe make Gary proud.

I wanted to have friends from all over the world in the way of a man who has no friends. Maybe some of them were still heaped on the coats.

I went home when I knew Molly would be at work and started to pull her music off the shelves. This was what I called a mercy burgle, all those bands overmuch with faux hope for the world and untricky beats. I unloaded a stack of them on a British guy with a store down the block. He got by selling crap at a mark-up to club kids—used-up ideas, pants unpopular in their own time.

“I just staple a tag on and they buy it,” he told me. “It helps that I'm a Limey.”

The Brit's eyes had this pucker of awful witness. He'd been everywhere just as everything got ugly: art, philosophy, rugby, love. Maybe what he'd seen had made his teeth fall out, too.

I asked him if he knew where I could get what the straw people needed.

“I don't travel that road anymore,” he said. “It's clogged with idiots like you. Now sod off.”

He held a mug of tea and I noticed a sliver of cellophane floating on top. Was that the new dead style?

I went down to the park and watched the sparrows peck things off the blacktop. Those animal kingdom shows I always watched with Molly made like there were animal societies, but these birds just hopped around unbidden. I picked one sparrow to be the hero. He proved himself the moocher of the flock.

There was a man in Lycra on a nearby bench, breathing hard, a paper sign pinned to his chest.

“R
ACE FOR THE CURE
,” the sign said.

I went over to another bench and waited for a feel in the air that would mean the coming of Gary.

“I'm resting,” said the racer. “I'm going to get up. Just give me a damn minute.”

 

People always said that what Gary did to his thumb was due to a disturbance, but I figured it happened in a moment of calm. Once he sawed off his thumb and gave it to his mother on a breakfast tray, he was in the free and clear. Who would ever bother a boy like that again? Who would tell him when to go to bed?

This is what I mean by wisdom.

The death of rock was just bad luck.

But Gary was getting it together. Meanwhile, he was mentoring me. The last time I'd seen him he came over with his knapsack, dumped out pills, powders and plant kingdoms on the kitchen table. Molly was gone and I looked around for something of hers to give Gary.

“Hey, are you sure you can handle all this stuff?” he said, pinched a razor blade between his living finger and his dead thumb. “Look at you, you're slavering.”

I asked Gary for some girlfriend advice.

“Do you love her?” said Gary.

“That's what I'm asking you,” I told him. “Do I?”

He kept propping his thumb up against the side of the razor.

“Why don't you use the other hand?” I said.

“Give a man a fish,” said Gary.

“You want fish?” I said.

 

Now Molly was home with her mortar, her pestle. She liked to crush things for wellness when enough was enough.

“You're home,” I said.

I smelled fennel.

“I had a headache.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“So sorry you went and took more of my stuff? Don't tell me, you just need it for a little while.”

“I need to find Gary,” I said.

“You need a better embalmer,” she said. “Look at you.”

“Look at these,” I said, spread out my hands for her, my thumbs. “These are all that separate us from the beasts of the field.”

“What beasts?” said Molly.

“The ones of the field. In the field.”

“Actually,” said Molly, “that's a myth.”

“Actually,” I said.

“I mean,” said Molly, “factually.”

“If Gary calls,” I said, “tell him I love you.”

“Get the hell out of here,” said Molly.

“Just give me a damn minute,” I said.

 

I went to get some coffee, to think hard about where Gary might be. But then I started to think hard about what Gary said about fish. Give a man one why?

There was a straw dispenser on the counter next to my coffee cup. You pushed a little lever and the straw jerked out.

I had a flitter, a flicker.

I saw Gary bouncing high in his ballroom chair. I saw him carried in it across the city, waving to crowds with his bandaged hand. His tusked uncles bore him across wide avenues full of birds. They took him into all of the Gary places, the parks, the bars, bodegas. Gary's mother and the Brit danced around the chair with feathered parasols. I was running to keep up. I had a message to deliver, memorized on some prior occasion. The message went: “I am running to keep up.”

A hand poked out of the crowd and hooked my arm.

“Pay extra to nod on my counter,” the coffee man said.

“I wasn't nodding,” I said. “I was passing out. You want to work in this town you should learn the difference.”

I paid for the coffee and headed off to the straw party. I pictured the man from Scarsdale watching me arrive through his periscope.

 

There were only a few coats left on the hallway floor when I got back. Through a doorway I saw some of the women on a bed. One slept with her tongue out in the other one. A phone glowed open in her hand.

I heard Gary in the next room, laughing with the man from Scarsdale. They looked to be lords of something fallen. There were white dunes and straws on the marble, pills and cash on the floor.

“This guy,” said the man from Scarsdale, pointing. “He was here before. Who is he?”

“He's a rising young angler,” said Gary.

“Come again?”

“Give a man a fish,” said Gary.

“Ah, yes,” said the man from Scarsdale. “Many applications to that little homily. Gary here has not yet taught me how to fish, so it's a good thing he finally came over. I was starting to do lint off the carpet again. Are you familiar with the fable of the dropped rock?”

“He knows all about it,” said Gary, chopping, sifting.

“Hey,” the man said to Gary, “what happened to your thumb? Did you break it?”

“Childhood accident,” I called from the couch.

“Yeah,” said Gary, “my mother misjudged me.”

“Listen,” I said, “I just saw this guy with a sign on his shirt. R
ACE FOR THE CURE
, it said.”

“Sucker,” said the man from Scarsdale, stood.

“Where are you going?” said Gary.

“Me?” said the man from Scarsdale. “I'm going into the bedroom. I'm going to put some of this shit on my cock and slip it in those dyke asses before they know what hit them. Then I'm going to take some valium and fall into a deep, beautiful sleep filled with dreams of Geneva.”

The man from Scarsdale winked at me, walked out of the room.

“Jesus,” said Gary.

“Christ,” I said.

“I mean, what is that?” said Gary. “What are we supposed to do with that?”

He stared into the mirror. His razor hand shook.

“Tell me what I'm supposed to do with that?” said Gary.

“It's okay,” I said. “He's just some guy.”

“I'm tired,” said Gary. “I'm so tired.”

“Everything's fine,” I said. “You're here. I'm here. Everything's fine.”

“Fuck here,” said Gary. “We were from a town. A little town. Do you remember?”

“What a question,” I said.

“There were people there,” said Gary, “There were cars. Carports. You knew where to park.”

“Dog hatches in the doors,” I said. “Dog doors. Nearmont Avenue. The trestles on Main.”

“Spartakill Road,” said Gary. “Venus Drive. The Hobby Shop, the Pitch-n-Putt, Big Vin's Pizza, the Plaza.”

“Behind the Plaza,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Gary. “Behind it.”

We were quiet for a while.

“Evil's not one thing,” said Gary. “They didn't teach us the gradients. We could have stayed.”

“Blown our brains out in our cars,” I said.

“Not me,” said Gary. “What did he mean, Geneva?”

I got up, took the man from Scarsdale's seat, pressed Gary's dead thumb in my hand.

“Are you sorry you did it?” I said.

“Get the hell off me.”

I stroked his thumb, brushed it, tenderly, the way you would a blind, tiny thing fresh-pulled from a hole.

“Just tell me if you're sorry,” I said. “Because here we are. Because, me, I've been following you. Do you understand that? I've been following you all along. So, just tell me, are you sorry?”

“Hell, no,” said Gary. “I wanted to watch TV. Anyway, what's done is done.”

“Done and gone,” I said.

“Don't fucking wallow,” said Gary, and pulled his thumb away. “Never fucking wallow. You wallow, you're pretending you were something else in the first place. I know who I am. I'm Gary. I go down into the street, I'm Gary. I've never stopped being Gary. There's no cure for it. There's no race. It's not a race, okay? It's a contest. Do you get what I'm saying?”