Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

  Toni said, very softly, “I … I just want to fit in. I don’t want kids looking at me, thinking, ‘There’s that poor strange girl whose tramp of a mother ran off with a sideshow magician.’ I just want to … blend in.”

  Minette smiled gently. “Then let’s put together a few things you can try on, and see if you like the look.” She helped Toni pick out a matching ensemble consisting of a white blouse with Peter Pan collar, a wool “Sloppy Joe” sweater in a color called Sunset Rose, and a red-and-white plaid skirt.

  Toni took the clothes into the dressing room with a mix of excitement and embarrassment. She slipped into the blouse, then the skirt, and then shrugged on the Shetland sweater that hung loosely just down past her waist. She straightened out the folds without looking into the dressing mirror; she was terrified to look at her reflection lest she hated what she saw. So without a single backward glance at the mirror, she left the dressing room and found Aunt Minette standing just outside.

  When Minette’s face lit with a smile, Toni felt a rush of relief and finally turned to look into the nearest mirror.

  She saw a bobby-soxer dressed in the latest fashions, her red lips slightly parted in amazement, face framed by bouncing curls of brown hair.

  “Oh, Aunt Minette,” she said softly. “Thank you…”

  Tears sprang to her eyes, and she hugged Minette as hard as she had hugged her mother on the day the park burned down.

  * * *

  Eddie spent that morning cleaning house and performing other domestic duties. The Navy had fortunately taught him how to make up a bunk, or bed, how to swab floors, even how to iron clothes. But washing the laundry had been somebody else’s department until now, and today’s hard lesson learned was the discovery that somewhere in the load of whites he had thrown into the washer was one of Adele’s newer red handkerchiefs. Result: a dozen pink boxer shorts, pink undershirts, and some lovely pink cotton socks in Men’s Size 10. Sighing, he put them aside and made a mental note to rewash them later in bleach.

  “Hey! What’s all the noise out there!” That was Jack, bellowing from the depths of his bedroom. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  Eddie pushed open Jack’s door and said, “It’s ten thirty. Get the hell out of bed and do something.”

  Jack sat up groggily in bed. “Like what?”

  Eddie tossed a heap of clothes at him. “Try a load of colors, to start.”

  Eddie went outside to lay the foundation for a small workshop the Murphys had graciously allowed him to build on the adjacent lot they owned, when an unfamiliar car pulled up to the curb. The passenger door opened and out stepped a teenage girl wearing a too-large sweater, plaid skirt, and white socks. He almost called out, Hey, miss, you interested in a nice pair of pink socks?—then she turned, tossing her fluffy brown hair away from her face, and with a shock Eddie saw it was Toni.

  “Hi, Dad!”

  As Minette Dobson got out of the driver’s side, Eddie’s brain quickly tried to formulate an equation that made some sense of this:

  TONI + MINETTE + SLEEPOVER = NEW HAIRDO + MAKEUP + NEW CLOTHES = FOR GOD’S SAKE, STOPKA, SMILE!

  He had learned this much, at least, from fifteen years of marriage.

  He smiled a big smile and said, “Toni! You look beautiful!”

  It wasn’t a lie. It may have been a shock, but as Toni hurried up the driveway toward the house, he marveled at the change in his daughter, no longer looking like a girl but like a lovely young woman.

  She beamed at the compliment. “Thanks. Aunt Minette did it all, she’s a miracle worker.”

  Minette demurred: “I didn’t raise the dead, honey, I just styled your hair and took you shopping.”

  “Well, seeing as how you’re both here, why don’t I fix us all some lunch?” Eddie suggested.

  “Sounds swell,” Toni said.

  Inside, Jack had finally gotten dressed. He took one look at his sister and said, “Holy Toledo! What happened to you? You look like a girl!”

  Toni felt a flush of embarrassment.

  “She is a girl, Jack,” Eddie noted. “But she’s still the same old Toni.”

  Jack looked at his sister’s long waves of hair as if they were some exotic vegetation. “Where’d you get all that hair? Is there a naked poodle somewhere in the neighborhood?”

  Toni punched him, not too hard, in the shoulder. Jack yelped.

  “One more crack,” she warned, “and you’re going to be using a girl’s bicycle seat for a while.”

  “Okay, okay.” Jack was actually grinning. “You’re right, Dad. Same old Sis. Hey,” he told her excitedly, “the Astor in North Bergen is playing Chapter 1 of Secret Agent X-9 next week, you wanna go?”

  “Is that based on that comic strip you like?”

  “Yeah, Alex Raymond. Starts next Friday. We can catch the second matinee after school.”

  “Sure, swell. We can meet at the bus stop in front of the school.”

  “Now that you two have reached a peace accord,” Eddie said, “you can help me make lunch for your aunt. C’mon, hop to it.”

  The kids hurried into the kitchen, but before Eddie could join them Minette said, “Eddie, I’m so sorry about Adele. And that Lorenzo character … yuck, he looked like he’d crawled out of a tube of Brylcreem.”

  Eddie shrugged. “I’ve got to admit, it hurts, but … mainly I’m just scared. I’ve got two kids to take care of. What am I supposed to do, be both father and mother to them? How the hell do I do that? I was barely able to figure out how to work the frigging washing machine.”

  “Just be what you are, a good father. That’s all they need. I’ll help out however I can. They’re good kids, they’ll get through this okay.”

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for Toni’s new look to be noticed at school. On her way into Miss Carleton’s history class, she was spotted by a surprised classmate, a bobby-soxer named Celia Dolinski, who addressed Toni for the first time all year: “That V-roll is simply delish, who did your hair?”

  “Oh, my mom did it.” Toni reasoned that if her mother could lie about Lorenzo, she could lie to preserve her reputation. “You really like it?”

  “Yeah, it’s slick. That’s a smart sweater too—is it Bonnie Lassie?”

  “No, Hi-Girl. The color’s Sunset Rose. I also got one in Sunset Pink.” She had committed the brands and colors to memory as if in preparation for an algebra exam. “They were Christmas presents. From my mom.”

  She got several more compliments in home room and Mr. Bandino’s English class, and at lunch time, as she carried her tray of milk, fruit, and a grilled cheese sandwich away from the cashier and into the cafeteria, she saw Celia waving to her from a table where she was seated alongside a phalanx of bobby-soxers with teased hair, ruby lips, Shetland sweaters, and saddle shoes—including Maria DeCastro. “Toni, come over and join us,” Celia beckoned, and Toni tried not to betray her thrill at the invitation.

  Toni was acutely aware that she was still a couple months shy of her fifteenth birthday; these girls may only have been fifteen, but they seemed far more mature and worldly than Toni. A few were even wearing mascara.

  Bridget Cullen, peering suspiciously at Toni from beneath bangs of bright red hair, said, “You’re on the girls’ gymnastic team, aren’t you?”

  Toni poked a straw into her carton of milk. “Yeah.”

  Maria DeCastro said, “You play softball, too, right? I’ve seen you.”

  Arlene Bratton raised an impeccably penciled eyebrow. “You used to wear your hair so short, I had you figured for one of those girls who—you know—don’t like boys.”

  Shocked, Toni protested, “Me? No, no, I like boys fine—as a matter of fact, there’s one who I—”

  She hit the brakes when she remembered who was sitting across from her, but Arlene leaned in: “Oh, so you’ve got your eye on some hunk of heartbreak, huh? C’mon, spill it, who is he?”

  “Uh, nobody special,” Toni said quickly. “I mean, there are scads of boys I
could go for. Just scads,” she emphasized.

  “Is that why you play softball?” Maria said, closer to the mark than she knew. “The better to check out the, uh, athletic equipment?”

  The other girls laughed merrily and Toni thought it best to join in.

  “Look, she’s blushing,” Bridget noted cheerfully. “I can’t remember the last time somebody in this group blushed!”

  “Relax, hon, we’re all boy-crazy,” Maria said. “Take my boyfriend.”

  Toni nearly coughed up her milk.

  “Every time I look into his eyes,” Maria continued dreamily, “I still get vertigo. And we’ve been dating forever—since June!”

  From that point on, Toni seemed to have passed muster with the group. At the end of the day, so elated that she had to tell the one person who could understand what it meant to her, she took the bus to the Dobson home.

  “Aunt Minette, it worked!” she told her in wonderment. “I think the girls at school like me now!”

  Minette smiled. “That’s great, honey, I’m happy for you.”

  “I’m going to use my savings to buy another skirt at Schweitzer’s. Will you help me pick it out?”

  “Sure. Let me get my car keys.”

  “Oh! How was New Year’s Eve? Did you have a good time at the Stork Club?”

  Minette’s expression, usually so bright, clouded over.

  “Not exactly,” she said quietly. “I … didn’t go.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because the miserable SOB never showed,” Minette said bitterly.

  Toni was stunned. “He … stood you up?”

  “Yeah. I ‘cried in’ the New Year.” But she was clearly more pissed off than sad now. “I was an idiot for starting up with him again in the first place. He’s done this for the last time—I’m through with the louse.” She snapped up her car keys, grinned. “C’mon—let’s go do some shopping.”

  * * *

  To her delight, Toni was invited back to the bobby-soxers’ table the next day, and the day after that, and then, on Friday, they asked her to join them after school at Bischoff’s Confectionery and Ice Cream Store on Anderson Avenue. At a quarter past three that afternoon Toni, Celia, Arlene, and Maria sat down at the counter and ordered ice-cream sodas and malteds as Bridget popped nickel after nickel into the jukebox, ordering up the first in a succession of Frank Sinatra tunes:

  All or nothin’ at all

  Half a love never appealed to me …

  Bridget swooned her way over to the counter, exclaiming, “Ohhh God, doesn’t he just send you? Doesn’t he?”

  There followed a spirited debate over whether “You’ll Never Know” was superior to “Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)” and could either of them ever compare to “Embraceable You”?

  “What’s your favorite, Toni?” Celia asked.

  Toni had heard Sinatra on the radio but could not for the life of her think of a song title. But taking her cue from the first song on the jukebox she ventured, “I like ‘All or Nothing at All.’”

  “Oh yeah, that’s strictly delish,” Celia agreed.

  By the time their sodas arrived they were going into graphic detail as to what made the pride of Hoboken such a “drooly”—it was clearly not just his voice that caused them to swoon. Toni found him a bit stringy and bony for her taste, but the girls talked about him as if he were a thick, juicy steak.

  Toni managed to hold her own in the conversation, but it was a boy’s voice, heard from behind her, that struck Toni temporarily dumb:

  “Hey, doll, you ready?”

  A delicious chill ran down Toni’s spine—it was Slim Welker.

  She turned automatically, but of course it was Maria he was addressing—who immediately got up, hugged him, and was the lucky recipient of a kiss from those full, sexy, absolutely magnif lips of his.

  “Sure,” Maria said. “Let me just pay for my soda.” She explained to the girls that she and Slim had a “study date” at the library. Toni was reasonably certain that the only studying Slim was interested in involved baseball, specifically first and second bases. And boy, would she ever be happy to help him with those studies …

  Then, as Maria fished in her purse for coins, Slim Welker turned and looked directly at Toni.

  His cute little pug nose wrinkled in puzzlement as he squinted at her. “Do I know you?”

  Before a thunderstruck Toni could reply, Maria laughed. “Ha! Know her? She struck you out.”

  Toni winced. It was true. She had pitched against him once, and he had missed three easy slow balls. “Toni Stopka,” she told Slim. “We used to play softball in the parking lot at Palisades Park?”

  He looked stunned. “That was you?” And then the most wonderful thing happened: his astonishment turned into a simply perfect smile. “Wow. You’ve grown up. And then some.”

  Maria, not liking the direction this conversation was taking, slapped her quarter down on the counter and quickly looped arms with her boyfriend. “Study time, Slim, remember?”

  “Right, right.” He turned—but not before his gaze lingered, for the briefest yet longest of moments, on Toni. Her entire body tingled, as if Slim were training his X-ray vision on her. And then he and Maria were gone.

  Bridget and Celia went back to chattering about Frank Sinatra and Vaughn Monroe, but Arlene—holding her soda straw like a cigarette holder—leaned over to Toni and said quietly but knowingly, “I’d take that one nice and slow if I were you, honey.”

  Toni blushed. “What do you mean?”

  In a low voice, Arlene counseled, “You know what I mean. Maria’s a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. Bide your time.”

  “Why are you telling me this? Isn’t Maria your friend?”

  Arlene smiled slyly and shrugged. “What can I say? I find it more entertaining than radio serials.”

  The word serials stirred a vague unease at the back of Toni’s mind, but was forgotten amid her elation that Slim Welker had finally noticed her.

  She practically ran all the way home, where her buoyant spirits were abruptly punctured by the sight of a glowering Jack.

  “Oh my God!” she said. “The movie!”

  “Yeah, it was pretty good, thanks. Where the hell were you?”

  “Jack, I’m so sorry! Some girls invited me to Bischoff’s for ice cream, we were talking, listening to music, I lost track of time, and I—I forgot.”

  Jack said, “Yeah? What was so important that you forgot about me?”

  “Well, these girls, they’re really nice, they’re my friends … and there was this boy there, well technically he’s Maria’s boyfriend, but I’ve been trying to get him to notice me for the longes—”

  Jack looked at her in disgust. “I’ve got a news flash for you, Sis,” he said caustically. “You can’t bring Mom back by becoming her.”

  Toni felt as if he’d just slapped her. Anger boiled up inside her.

  “That—that’s just stupid!” she yelled at him. “You don’t know anything about anything!”

  “I’m going out to look for Dad,” Jack called over his shoulder. “You want to be Mom so bad, why don’t you go fix us all some dinner?”

  “Go to hell!”

  Jack stormed out, and Toni’s elation melted suddenly into tears.

  * * *

  Eddie, bundled up in his old Navy sea jacket, walked along wintry Hazard’s Beach, surveying the flotsam and jetsam that lapped out of the Hudson and onto the shore: gnarled tree limbs, splintered pieces of a packing crate, the occasional rubber tire tread. He walked for ten minutes before he found what he was looking for: a piece of driftwood about two feet long and six inches in diameter. It looked like part of the trunk of a white birch tree, the kind that studded the hillside below the Palisades. He picked it up, turning it over in his hands; it was smooth, and free of blemishes. He took a pocketknife out of his jacket and made a small cut in the wood near the top. The bark was soft but not too soft, and came away clean with one s
troke. This would do just fine. Already he was envisioning the face he would uncover with his chisel: a beetled brow of ridges, deep sunken cat’s eyes, and a scowl that was almost a smile. A good face: the face of Kū.

  15

  Palisades, New Jersey, 1946–47

  THE SUMMER OF ’46 saw the return of old faces to Palisades: not just Eddie but Dr. Frank Vita, back on duty at the first-aid station, as well as PR man and hero of Guadalcanal Jack Morris, and a dozen more ride operators and concessionaires. Only Laurent Schwarz would not be coming home—the one fatality in the park “family”—even as his father prepared to mark his fortieth season with Palisades.

  Despite frigid weather on its April 20 opening, the park was packed with twenty-eight thousand patrons in heavy overcoats, intent on having fun. All across the nation returning GIs and their wives or girlfriends were flocking to the parks they frequented before the war. This season there would be more entrants than ever in Palisades’ annual Baby Crawling Contest as America’s “baby boom” got under way. Eddie raked in bigger profits than ever before, and working alongside Toni and Jack in the family business helped to mitigate the grief he’d felt upon receipt of Adele’s divorce petition earlier that spring. He didn’t contest the divorce. His marriage was over; he had to accept that.

  Jack took the news badly, becoming moody and withdrawn, deflecting Eddie’s one attempt to console him: “You okay, pal?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jack lied.

  “Good. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches in life.”

  In truth, Eddie didn’t want to discuss this with Jack or anyone; it hurt too much. Jack’s namesake, Eddie’s father, would never have discussed such things with him—he would have expected his son to follow his example and “roll with the punches”—and so that became Eddie’s example as well.

  “We don’t need her” was Toni’s only comment. She had found the maternal guidance she needed in Minette, and her attitude toward Adele only hardened. But equally distressing to her was the return to Palisades of Peejay Ringens, whose bicycle act was as popular as ever. Though tempted to watch at least one of his dives, Toni couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.