Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

  After the reaction had died down, Lorenzo told the audience, “For my next trick I will need a volunteer from your ranks. Would anyone care to—”

  Before the magician could even finish, Eddie’s hand shot up, he bolted to his feet, and within seconds was making his way toward the stage.

  Eddie could see the queasy recognition in Adele’s eyes, but it was too late for her to get Lorenzo’s attention. With a few quick strides, Eddie was up and on the stage at Lorenzo’s side.

  “Ah, thank you, my good man,” Lorenzo said, oblivious to the frozen smile and fearful eyes of his assistant behind him. “And what is your name?”

  “Eddie. Eddie Stopka.”

  “Stopka?” Lorenzo said, only now realizing something was not kosher.

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  Eddie’s fist came up like a piston, cold-cocking the magician with a right cross to his jaw.

  Lorenzo the Magnificent folded like a pair of deuces.

  Adele put her hand to her head and muttered, “Shit.”

  The audience erupted in shock and confusion. Eddie took a long, satisfied look at his fallen adversary and said, “Prick.”

  He turned, and on a whim, took a bow to the audience—then jumped offstage and strode back up the aisle to the exit.

  He smiled. It may not have actually accomplished anything, but it sure made him feel a hell of a lot better.

  14

  AS EDDIE DROVE HOMEWARD DOWN Palisade Avenue, he couldn’t help but notice the long line of cars—black sedans and flashy limousines—parked on the street opposite the park entrance, in front of Johnny Duke’s restaurant. During Eddie’s time overseas, mobster Joseph Doto, aka Joe Adonis, had moved his gambling operations from Brooklyn—increasingly in danger from the New York District Attorney’s office—to the more hospitable business environment of Bergen County, where Adonis took control of the rackets and purchased a fortress-like home near the Palisades. Duke’s became his base of operations, and according to Eddie’s friends from work, the “store” next door with its soaped-up display windows was a front for one of Adonis’s casinos and bookmaking operations. It purported to be a record shop dispensing 78 RPM records from vending machines, but at least one curiosity-seeker found that the records it dispensed were worn smooth, worthless, as phony as the storefront itself.

  More disturbingly, Eddie had been told by Bunty that Dick Bennett was now serving as one of Adonis’s top lieutenants, and that Chief Borrell continued to lunch regularly there, as did mob chieftains like Willie Moretti and his brother Solly, Thomas Lucchese, and Cliffside Park–based Frank Erickson, the biggest bookmaker on the East Coast.

  Not my business, Eddie told himself, and turned right onto Route 5 and down the winding hill to Edgewater.

  When he got home, he sat the kids down and soberly told them that their mother wasn’t coming home, but assured them that she did want to see them again—someday. Jack seemed shaken but Toni immediately snapped, “Fine. Who needs her, anyway? We’ll do fine without her, won’t we, Jack?” To which Jack replied, “When will we be able to see her?”

  “She doesn’t know,” Eddie said with a sigh. “She figures you’re angry at her and wants to give you time to get over it.”

  “I don’t care if I ever see her face again,” Toni insisted.

  “You may feel different about that someday, honey.” He went on to explain about Adele’s childhood and their grandfather’s failed dreams for his daughter. But while Jack seemed interested, Toni just got up from the sofa, said, “I’ve got to do my homework,” and huffed out of the room.

  The holidays were soon upon them like an onrushing car, and when he received the annual invitation to Ralph and Daisy’s house for Thanksgiving, Eddie was forced to level with them. Marie was shocked that her daughter had abandoned her family, and though she understood better than anyone the dreams and demons that had driven Adele to do it, she became consumed with the idea that she might have somehow prevented it—should have left Franklin when he started drinking and taken Adele with her.

  As a result her guilt and grief led to an excruciatingly uncomfortable Thanksgiving, as Marie, trying too hard to be solicitous and sympathetic, smothered her grandchildren with attention and a cloying pity that made Toni, Jack, and Eddie cringe. “My poor babies,” she cooed to them as if they were just that—words no teenagers, no matter how bereaved and abandoned, wanted to hear, and certainly not on average of twice an hour.

  At the end of a long, trying day, the Stopkas bundled up in their winter coats and scarves and quickly fled, though not before Marie’s parting invitation of “See you all on Christmas Day!”

  On the way home in the car, Jack was the one to break the exhausted silence. “Dad,” he said, “I think I’d rather hang myself with my Christmas stocking than go back there next month.”

  “I second that.” Toni bunched her scarf up into a noose and mimed strangulation, her eyes bugging out. “Oh, the poor babies!” she choked out.

  Eddie laughed. “Okay, a quiet Christmas at home. But what’ll I tell your grandmother?”

  What he eventually told Marie was that they were going to spend Christmas with Eddie’s sister and her family in New York, which was half true since Viola’s family did come over to spend the holiday in Edgewater. Eddie and Toni cooked the turkey, with Viola handling stuffing, sweet potatoes, and dessert. Eddie, who loved to eat, found he was enjoying cooking; he and Toni had begun alternating making dinners, and for Christmas she gave him a copy of The Good Housekeeping Cookbook.

  * * *

  Adele’s departure was now known among family, but Toni still kept it secret from her classmates at school—certain that to reveal it would mean social banishment and dashed hopes for any chance at all that Slim Welker might actually notice her again now that softball season was over.

  So it was a mark of her desperation that Toni now, during Christmas break, chose to reveal her secret to someone outside her extended family.

  That week, as drifts of snow were banked high on Edgewater’s narrow streets, making the town look like a frozen topiary, Toni, alone in the house, slipped into her parents’ bedroom—and sat down at her mother’s old makeup table. She gazed into the mirror at what had seemed to her, only a few months ago, to be a perfectly good face—maybe not beautiful like her mother’s, but not hideous either. Now all she saw was the way her straight brown hair hung limply almost to her shoulders, the freckles that blemished her nose, and how pale and thin her lips looked. Why, she asked herself with disdain, would Slim Welker ever notice a face like this?

  She opened the table drawer, but it was empty—her mother had taken her cosmetics with her, of course. And anyway, Toni could scarcely remember what her mother had tried to teach her about applying makeup.

  There was only one person she could think to ask for help, but she didn’t know her phone number.

  Twenty minutes later, bundled up in her wool coat and scarf, Toni ascended the twisting switchback curves of Route 5 and made her way to Cumbermeade Road in Fort Lee—not to her grandparents’ old house, but to another one a bit farther up the street, and knocked on the front door.

  It was answered by just the beautiful blonde Toni was looking for. Toni blurted out, “Aunt Minette, I need your help!”

  And with that, she burst into tears.

  “Oh my gosh, Toni honey, what is it?” Minette Dobson asked as she led Toni inside the modest home she shared with her mother, Sarah. As they settled down in the living room, Toni told her about her mother skipping town with Lorenzo, and it sounded just as tawdry and embarrassing as she was afraid it would. But though Minette’s eyes widened in surprise at first, there was nothing judgmental in her face or her tone.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I knew your mom wanted to get back into show business in the worst way, but this really is the worst way. None of us are saints, God knows, but…”

  “She tried teaching me about how to look pretty,” Toni said, a bit breathl
essly, “but I didn’t listen to her and now there’s a boy at school and I don’t know how to look pretty like you—Aunt Minette, can you help me?”

  Minette seemed touched that Toni had come to her. She smiled.

  “You are pretty, Toni. But a girl can always stand to look prettier when she’s trying to get a boy’s attention.”

  Minette took her upstairs to her bedroom, sat her down in front of her vanity, pulled Toni’s hair back behind her ears, and fixed it in place with a bobby pin or two. “There, that gives us a better idea of the shape of your face. It’s oval, that’s good—we don’t need to highlight your cheekbones.

  “I don’t put on a lot of war paint myself unless I’m onstage or out on a big date, and at your age you don’t want to overdo it. Your eyebrows are nicely shaped, but they could use a little more definition.” She picked up a pair of tweezers and plucked a few stray hairs from below Toni’s brow line, making her yelp. “Sorry. Always seems to hurt more when you tweeze below the brow line.” Minette finished plucking, picked up a brown eyebrow pencil, and began lightly filling in Toni’s brows: “You want to use a pencil shade that’s slightly darker than your hair, like this. At fifteen you’re not ready for Bette Davis eyebrows, just the hint of an arch—the way your body itself is hinting at what’s to come.” Toni blushed at this.

  Within minutes, Minette had subtly shaped Toni’s brows into neat crescents arching, as if surprised by their own elegance, above her blue eyes.

  She brushed some matte powder onto Toni’s face, “just enough to even up your skin tone,” in the process concealing her troublesome freckles. Minette then set to work on her lips. She opened a bullet of Revlon lipstick, redder than a fire engine, but Toni balked at it.

  “Ah,” Minette said, “I think what you want is monotone—a slightly more natural look. Let’s see…” She pulled open a drawer to reveal a standing armory of cartridge-like tubes—dozens of live rounds, each color a different caliber, poised and ready for action. “There’s Tangee, an orangish red … but with dark hair like yours, a darker red is usually better. How about … raspberry?”

  “They make lipstick that tastes like raspberries?”

  Minette laughed. “No, that’s just what they call the color. But lipstick has a fresh taste all its own, you’ll come to like it.” She popped open a tube and expertly applied a coat to Toni’s lips, adding a thin border of red to her top lip “to make your lips looks fuller and softer.”

  When she was done she stepped back and allowed Toni to survey herself in the mirror. She was relieved to see that she didn’t look as though she had just graduated from clown college—the raspberry was less garish than the ruby red her mother had tried on her. Her eyebrows looked natural, but more feminine than they had before. And the face powder had given her face a smooth matte finish—again, not shiny or clownish.

  “It looks … nice,” Toni said with a smile. “And I still look like me.”

  “When you’re a little older I can teach you about mascara and eye shadow. For now this should do fine.”

  “Can you—” Toni hesitated. “Can you do anything with my hair?”

  “Depends on what you want done.”

  Sheepishly: “Can you make it look more like what the girls at school are wearing?”

  Minette fingered a few strands of Toni’s hair. “You’ve got beautiful hair, hon, nice and thick. You usually wear it shorter than this, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I haven’t been for a haircut since before Mom left.”

  “This is almost a perfect Middy length. We can do things with this.”

  “We can?” Toni said with relief so naked and poignant it made Minette’s heart almost break.

  Minette smiled. “Sure. But we’re going to have to set it before you go to bed tonight, then I’ll style it tomorrow morning. So call your dad and ask him if it’s okay if you have a sleepover tonight at Aunt Minette’s, all right?”

  Minette’s mother made a delicious dinner of chicken croquettes, mashed potatoes, and succotash; over supper, she and Minette regaled Toni with stories from the career of Frank W. Dobson and the Seven Sirens. After supper, Minette proudly showed Toni a new dress she had just bought at Bamberger’s Department Store in Montclair—a beautiful blue silk evening gown, like something a goddess would wear. “My boyfriend’s taking me to the Stork Club in Manhattan on New Year’s Eve,” Minette said with a smile.

  “You’ll look beautiful, Aunt Minette,” Toni said. “What’s his name?”

  “Jay,” Minette said brightly. “So—you ready to have your hair styled?”

  Toni washed her hair, then dried it with a towel until just damp. “You need more volume,” Minette said, “and the easiest way to achieve that is with pincurls. All you need are a few bobby pins and a lot of patience.”

  Minette lifted up an inch-wide section of Toni’s hair and began twisting it around her index finger. “You wind the strands of hair around your finger, like so—each loop outside of the last loop—until you have a curl. Then you slide your finger out and pin it in place, like this.” She laid the loop of hair flat against the side of Toni’s head, then clipped a couple of bobby pins, crossing each other like an X, through it. “Now you try it.”

  Cautiously Toni began wrapping strands of hair around her index finger, but Minette stopped her: “No, you’re twisting the curl in the opposite direction of the last one. You want them all curling in the same direction.” Toni undid what she had done and wound the hair in the proper direction. When she had finished, she slid out her finger and Minette handed her a bobby pin. Toni awkwardly opened the pin, slid one half of it through the inside of the loop and the other half outside—repeated the process with a second pin that crossed the first—and the curl hung neatly in place.

  “Good,” said Minette. “Now you repeat this until you have about an inch-square section of curls, and you repeat that for your entire head.”

  “My whole head?” Toni gasped.

  “I said you’d need a lot of patience, didn’t I?”

  Toni found this more tedious than cutting potatoes into fries, but Minette made it fun by joking or gossiping about people at the park, and before she knew it Toni had a head full of curls—and bobby pins.

  “Now you cover it with a scarf, like this”—Minette tied one of her silk scarves around Toni’s head—“and then go to bed.”

  Toni was horrified. “With all this shrapnel on me?”

  “It’s worth it in the end,” Minette promised.

  Toni went to bed in Fran’s old room and gingerly laid her head onto the pillow. It felt like she was resting on a porcupine. She turned over on her side, and now the porcupine was pricking the whole left side of her head. She saw a sideshow act once called the Human Pincushion—this must be what he felt like. Was being popular worth all this? Was Slim Welker worth all this?

  Well, okay—Slim, maybe.

  She turned over onto her stomach, her face pressed into the pillow. The prickling was gone, but after twenty seconds she found she couldn’t breathe and turned, gasping like a fish on a hook, back onto her side.

  She finally managed to drift to sleep—but it was a light, fitful sleep. Around three in the morning, waking for the hundredth time that night, she decided that this beauty stuff was a colossal pain in the ass. Even for Slim.

  The next morning, after breakfast, she finally shucked off the scarf and Minette set to work, making a “V” part in Toni’s hair, then starting to comb out the curls. “This is why you want them all twisting in the same direction,” she explained, “so they all form a wave … like this.”

  Toni looked in wonder as a thick roll of hair bounced off the side of her head. “I get it now,” she said. “Like an ocean wave.”

  “Watch me again as I do the next one. The simpler a line is, the easier it is to comb, at least for someone just getting started, like you.”

  Minette combed the curls on the top of Toni’s head into a “roll bang” curling elegantly toward her forehead
. Then she combed back the left-and right-side hair and held them in place with small barrettes. And finally she teased the curls over her ears and below into a mass of soft, fluffy waves.

  “And voíla,” Minette said, “a Victory Roll—the latest style!”

  “Omigosh,” Toni whispered. “I can’t believe it, it’s so pretty! Thank you, Aunt Minette!”

  “You are most welcome. Now get dressed,” Minette ordered, “and we’ll go get you your own makeup kit, all right?”

  Toni showered and dressed, all the while casting disbelieving glances into the nearest mirror: was that really her? The memory of being pinpricked all night by a porcupine faded like the evening star. Why hadn’t she listened to her mother when she tried to teach her about all this?

  At Schweitzer’s Department Store on Main Street they went straight to the cosmetics department and found a more exact match of face powder for Toni’s skin tone. Minette also picked out Toni’s first cosmetics kit: a primrose case by Max Factor complete with powder, rouge, face cream, eyebrow pencil, and a lovely white cameo hairbrush and hand mirror made of Bakelite, which Toni thought were beautiful. When she tried to pay for it, Minette waved her aside and pulled her wallet from her purse. “No, no, this is on me,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Gee, thanks!”

  On their way out they passed through the “Misses” department, and though Toni showed no interest in the frilly dresses by Jane Holly, Miss Deb, or Judy Kent, she did slow, then stop in front of a display of mannequins wearing Shetland sweaters, pleated skirts, white socks, and saddle oxford shoes—the now-standard uniform of the ubiquitous “bobby-soxer.”

  “Maria DeCastro has a sweater like that,” Toni said wistfully.

  Minette saw in her face something she could only describe to herself as “confused longing.”

  “You want to try one on, hon?” she asked.

  “No, I—well, maybe,” Toni replied uncertainly.

  Minette put a hand on Toni’s shoulder and said gently, “What do you want, hon? Whatever it is, it’s okay.”