Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

  Headfirst she plunged in, and down here, too, her near-weightlessness in water felt like flying.

  Sometimes Jack was at the pool too, though he didn’t dive himself; he would sit in a beach chair on the sand, his sketch pad in his lap, scribbling away with his colored pencils as Toni dove. One day she got out of the water and joined him to find that he had drawn a very flattering likeness of his sister in her blue bathing suit, back arched, head up, arms outstretched, floating in midair. It was very naturalistic, except for one detail: he had added a red cape, at the nape of her neck, to her blue bathing suit.

  She laughed when she saw it, but he said, “Am I wrong, Sis?”

  She shook her head. “No. That’s exactly what it feels like.”

  “Like the start of an adventure?”

  She sat next to him and nodded. “You should try it. See for yourself.”

  “I don’t need to,” Jack said. “That’s what drawing’s like for me too—an adventure. Most of the time I don’t even know where it’s going or how it’ll turn out. It just comes out of my fingers and onto the paper.”

  “Now that’s super,” Toni said, impressed.

  “Naw,” Jack said modestly. “I’m more like Jimmy Olsen. Somebody’s gotta get pictures of you mystery men.”

  They grinned at their shared adventure, their secret identities known only to each other.

  * * *

  The Sensational Marion had a good high-wire act, but Toni was flat-out astounded by the performer who followed her on the free-act stage. His name was Peejay Ringens, and word got around fast that he was booked at Palisades for an entire month—the longest deal the Rosenthals had made with one performer since they took over the park. Toni was baffled at first by the equipment and rigging that was being set up for him. There was a water tank, six feet in diameter and three feet deep, not unlike others she had seen; but instead of a single tall ladder there went up a series of ladders, the highest being a hundred feet tall and the lowest about forty feet, all of which supported a long sloping ramp. Between the tank and the ramp, workmen were stringing up a safety net, like the one used by trapeze artists. Was this an acrobatic act or a high dive? Toni couldn’t figure it out.

  She got her answer at his first performance. The audience was standing, not sitting, the benches having been moved to make way for all the equipment. The park announcer proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen, Palisades Park is proud to bring you the most stupendous and thrilling act of all time by the premier high diver of the world today, Mr. Peejay Ringens!” As the crowd applauded, a tall man—about six feet two, in his mid-fifties, wearing satin tights, diving cap, and a jacket with a red, white, and blue American shield on the chest—strode with a smile onto the stage and began climbing the hundred-foot tower to the recorded accompaniment of a brass band playing a stirring march. At the top of the ladder, Ringens walked onto a small platform. To Toni’s amazement, he picked up a bicycle that was waiting for him there, and as the music swelled, he straddled the bike and pushed it to the lip of the platform. He looked down the long slope of the ramp, which at the forty-foot end had a little upturn, like a ski chute.

  He pushed himself and the bicycle forward, drew up his feet and placed them on the pedals, and the bicycle began racing down the incline.

  The crowd held a collective breath as the bike raced down the slope in what seemed like two heartbeats. Then it hit the upturn and was fired upward like a skeet shot—for a few moments bicycle and rider both soaring through space as though riding on air.

  Until Ringens let go of the bike.

  Toni gasped along with the rest of the crowd.

  The bicycle fell away from him and into the safety net, but Ringens flew past the net, straightening his body and extending his arms like Superman in flight. He hurtled through the air another seventy-five feet until reaching the tank, where he made a perfect swan dive into the water, briefly disappearing from sight—then surfaced and climbed out to thunderous applause from the audience.

  Toni applauded as loudly as anybody. She had never seen such a feat before—each part of it would have made a remarkable act by itself, but the two together were spectacular. How did he do it? How did he time it so that he knew just when to let go of the bike and allow his momentum to carry him into the tank? It seemed that a moment too soon would bring him crashing into the side of the tank, while a moment too late would have him sailing over the water and into a horrified audience.

  She wanted to run up to him right now and ask him these things, but decided to come back for Ringens’s evening performance, illuminated by spotlights. It was just as amazing the second time, though the bicycle overshot the net and came crashing to earth (Ringens later joked to the audience that he went through at least three Schwinns a week).

  She watched his act another three times before she got up the nerve to approach him after an afternoon performance.

  “Mr. Ringens, sir?” she said, coming up to him. “My name is Toni Stopka and I thought your act was really swell.”

  “Why, thank you, young lady,” Ringens said, doffing his diving cap, revealing a receding fringe of graying hair.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll let go of the bicycle too soon? Or too late?”

  He smiled at that. “Oh, I was afraid of that for a long time,” he said, “and it nearly destroyed my career. The first time I ever tried to do this stunt, I set up the ramp on the edge of a pond in Kansas City, Missouri. But I let go too soon, I fell short of the deep water I’d intended to land in, and crashed into the shallows. Nearly broke my back.”

  “But you went right back and tried again?”

  “Nope. I had the ramp set up beside a lake near my home in Florida, but I couldn’t bring myself to make another attempt. Worse, I was so gun-shy I couldn’t even make a regular dive. I thought my career was over.”

  “What did you do?” Toni asked breathlessly.

  “I’ll tell you what I did: every day I would climb to the top of the tower, and take an imaginary ride down. I did that every day for a month until the memory of that first terrible ride started to fade. Finally one day I called all my friends to come over to the lake, and I announced that they were here to either have the pleasure of seeing me perform a perfect dive or of attending my funeral.” He laughed. “I’ve never missed a dive since. Fear has no place in this business—it’ll kill you if you let it.”

  “I want to be a high diver someday too,” Toni said in a rush.

  Something shadowed his friendly eyes and Ringens’s manner changed. “Well, that’s all well and good,” he said, more guardedly, “but you still have a long time to make up your mind what you want to be when you grow up.”

  “Oh, but I know this is what I want to do! Can you tell me how you—”

  “Glad you enjoyed the show,” Ringens interrupted, suddenly cooler, and brushed past her. “Thanks for coming.”

  As she watched him go, Toni puzzled at the sudden turnabout in his manner—had she said, done, something wrong? All she wanted was to ask his advice. But maybe he thought she was being too forward. Or he didn’t think she was really serious about being a diver. Whatever it was, it didn’t stop her from attending as many of his performances as she could over the course of the next month—but she didn’t try to approach him again.

  * * *

  On a sweltering afternoon in July when the electric fans in the French fry stand were doing little more than churning the humid air, Adele lifted the frying basket out of the sizzling oil and was startled to see, through a cloud of greasy steam, the last person she expected to find standing on the other side of the counter.

  “Dad?” She poured the just-finished fries into a bin, wiped her hands on her apron, and hurried up to the counter. She glanced around for her mother, but Marie was not in evidence. “What brings you to Palisades?”

  He smiled, but it seemed like a nervous smile. “I went for a walk down Palisade Avenue,
and next thing I knew, here I was. Anyway, do I really need a reason to stop by and say hello to my only daughter?”

  “No, of course not.” She tried to think of the last time Franklin had come to the park and realized it had been at her wedding on the Carousel, nearly thirteen years before. “Why don’t we get a bite to eat together, it’s almost time for my lunch break. Jim, cover for me, okay?”

  “S’okay, boss,” Jim agreed amiably.

  Adele took Franklin to the Grandview Restaurant overlooking the Hudson, but he appeared disinterested in the breathtaking Manhattan skyline or the sailboats plying the river like gulls two hundred feet below. He was fidgety, restlessly drumming his fingers on the table as he studied the menu. They ordered roast beef sandwiches and a couple of Cokes. Franklin put the menu aside and his gaze seemed to bounce nervously around the room without really settling on anything.

  “So you really walked all the way here?” Adele asked.

  “Just needed to stretch my legs,” he said. “A man can go crazy sitting on a couch all day. Say, the Schencks don’t still own this place, do they?”

  “No, they sold it to the Rosenthals years ago.”

  He nodded. “Thought so. Did you ever meet Eddie Mannix?”

  Adele admitted she didn’t know the name.

  “I went to school with him in Fort Lee. Tough little guy. The Schencks hired him as a bouncer, eventually he became general manager.”

  “Is that so?”

  “He asked me to come work for him. In the publicity department.”

  “I never knew that,” Adele said, surprised.

  “Oh, sure. This was 1914, 1915. I said no, of course. I was making movies.” He stopped drumming his fingers and flexed them nervously. “The Schencks took him with them when they moved out to the Coast. Now he’s general manager of MGM—can you beat that?”

  Adele didn’t know what to say to that.

  “When I was looking for a job after the war, I gave Eddie a call.” He glanced away. “He never returned it.”

  Their sandwiches and Cokes arrived. Franklin took a few bites of his, then lost interest in it, his agitation painfully clear.

  “Toni’s swimming in the pool,” Adele said, trying to change the subject. “Why don’t you stop by and say hi, I know she’d love to see you.”

  Franklin nodded, but his attention was elsewhere. After a long moment he said quietly:

  “You make all these decisions in your life, and they all seem like the right decisions at the time. You think you’re doing the right thing. And it’s only later that you realize, no, they were exactly the wrong decisions, and instead of bringing you what you wanted, they only carried you even farther away from your dreams. And somehow you’ve got to live with that.”

  He was clenching and unclenching his right hand. Adele reached out and cupped his hand in hers.

  “Daddy, you did do the right thing. You did right by your family. There’s no use dwelling on what might have been.”

  He stared at her. “Tell me you don’t,” he said.

  Adele flinched. She couldn’t find the words to reply.

  Franklin pushed aside his barely-eaten sandwich and said, “Guess I’m not hungry.” He stood. “I’d best be getting home. Marie will worry.”

  He kissed her on the top of her head, like he used to do when she was a little girl. “Bye, honey.” Before Adele could think of a way to keep him there, he was gone. She tried to finish her sandwich, but quickly found she had lost her appetite as well. She paid the check and left.

  On her way back to the French fry stand, she glanced over at the pool across the midway, looking for Toni, who had worked her way up to the ten-foot diving board, much to Adele’s distress. She didn’t see her daughter, but to her surprise she did catch a glimpse of her father—as he was exiting the Casino Bar next to the pool, on his way to the Hudson gate.

  She stood there, chilled to the quick on a hot sultry day, then hurried over to the Casino, where Harry Shepherd was filling in at the bar. “Harry,” she said, disquieted, “that man who was just in here, did he order anything?”

  “Just a beer,” Harry replied. “Why?”

  Adele blinked back tears, the pain in her father’s heart filling her own.

  More than once that day, Adele found the tears again welling up, but pretended it was the steam from the frying basket making her eyes water. This didn’t seem to convince Jim, who, when the park closed at midnight, asked, “Adele, you okay? Something wrong with your dad?”

  She locked up the cash register and forced a smile. “Not much gets past you, does it?”

  “Hard to miss. All day you’ve looked so blue, I wanted to check to see if you were still breathing.”

  She laughed. “Thanks, but I’ll be okay.”

  He still didn’t look convinced.

  “Look,” he said, “once we’re done here, why don’t we go over to Joe’s? Coffee’s on me.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Jim, but I’ve got to get home. My neighbor’s been watching the kids.”

  “Okay. But if there’s ever anything I can do…”

  All at once his hand was touching her waist.

  “I mean, I know it must be tough, running this stand on your own, and with two kids to boot…”

  Adele found herself quick-frozen to the spot, but the touch of his hand felt warm—too warm. For a moment she welcomed it—then sense won out over sensation and she slapped his hand away.

  “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said.

  “Look, I was just trying to—”

  “I know what you were trying to do,” she told him, “and if you ever try it again, you’re fired.” She fought to keep herself, and her voice, from trembling. “You got that?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, backing off. “Sorry.”

  “Now drop the awnings and let’s get out of here.”

  Jim did as he was told, she locked up the stand and hurried away toward the parking lot before he could say another word.

  In her car she sat with her hands trembling on the steering wheel, jammed the key into the ignition, and went careening out of the lot, not sure who she was angrier with—Jim, for having exploited her trust, or herself, for wanting him, if only for a moment, to do just that.

  10

  ADELE AND MARIE WERE ABLE to keep liquor out of the Worth home, but Franklin easily circumvented this by doing his drinking outside the house, in one of the many taverns and roadhouses along Palisade Avenue. Marie kept the car keys in her possession at all times so Franklin would not commit vehicular suicide, but this meant he often staggered home dead drunk for all the neighbors to see, which added a new dimension of mortification for Marie. She and Adele, along with Dr. DeCecio, begged Franklin to stop, to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, but Franklin only withdrew further into himself, in final retreat from his battle with life.

  After the incident with Jim, Adele contrived reasons for Toni to help out with the stand, and the buffer worked, keeping Jim at a safe distance. One morning in late July, as mother and daughter arrived as usual around 10:30 A.M., they were making their way across the main midway when Minette Dobson hurried up to them and asked, “Have you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Laurent Schwarz,” she said. “Roscoe’s son. He’s dead.”

  Toni lost her breath, like the time she had belly flopped and had it knocked out of her. “What!” she said when she could breathe again.

  “How?” Adele said, equally stunned.

  “Killed in action, I think. In the South Pacific.”

  “Oh, God,” Adele whispered. “Is Roscoe here?”

  “No, he’s at home. Anna Halpin’s covering for him.”

  Adele took Toni’s hand and they reversed direction, out the front gate and down two blocks to 740 Palisade Avenue. Toni felt numbly unreal, as if she were dreaming something new and terrible. As the two of them walked up the steps to the Schwarz home, Adele saw in the front window a red-and-white ribbon emblazoned with t
wo stars—one blue and one gold. Adele fought back tears as she rang the doorbell. It was answered by Roscoe, whose own eyes, Adele saw at once, were red from crying.

  “Oh, Roscoe,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded, as if unable to speak, and took them inside. Roscoe’s wife, Hazel, was trying to comfort their four daughters, ranging in age from nineteen to twenty-six. They had all been crying, and looking at them, at the grief in their pretty faces, Toni felt anxious and afraid.

  “Oh God, Hazel,” Adele said as she embraced her friend, feeling Hazel’s sob as she held her. “What happened to him?”

  Toni remembered playing in this house, playing with toys belonging to Laurent, eight years older than her but amused by this little girl who rejected his sisters’ dolls in favor of his toy trucks.

  “He was stationed in American Samoa,” Roscoe said quietly. “He wasn’t even in combat. Some fellow fell off a landing barge and Laurent jumped into the water, trying to rescue him. But he … didn’t make it.”

  Toni said in a small voice: “He died?”

  Roscoe nodded. “Yes, honey. He did.”

  “But he died a hero,” Adele said. “Trying to save someone’s life.”

  “He was a good boy,” Roscoe said, an almost unbearable sadness and pride in his voice. “He always tried to do the right thing.”

  He broke down into tears, unmanned by grief, his wife clinging to him. It was all too much for Toni. Terrified by the naked pain and loss all around her, she turned on her heel and ran out the front door.

  She heard her mother cry out “Toni!” but she didn’t stop, couldn’t bear being in that house a moment longer. She raced down the street, unwilling to face the truth that Laurent was gone, that she would never see him again, and afraid to voice the fear that really drove her away from the Schwarzes and back through the bright welcoming gates of Palisades Park. In here she could find refuge, in here there was laughter and merriment and the roar of a roller coaster to drown out the sound of a grown man weeping.

  But the park wasn’t open yet, there were no roller coasters to occlude the sadness in her heart, and she didn’t know where to run to. She stood there in the center of the midway, longing for the sound of a calliope.