Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

  The walls and ceiling of the little tavern were covered in rattan and the floors were hardwood—like the inside of a large and comfortable basket. Bamboo poles vertically accented the walls and crisscrossed the ceiling, from which were suspended floats hung in fishing nets. Everywhere there were plants—ferns and kentia palms, mostly—hanging from the rafters in wicker baskets or forming a jungle line along one of the walls. The furniture was all bamboo, with chairs upholstered in a lush green-and-white Hawaiian floral pattern; each table boasted a chalk figurine of a hula dancer, wicker placemats, and an unlit candle in a white bowl. Behind the bamboo bar were shelves containing every kind of liquor imaginable, arranged around a rectangular frame in which the image of a tropical beach, lapping ocean waves, and swaying palm trees beckoned dreamily. Playing from a speaker was the dulcet melody of Harry Owens’s “Sweet Leilani.”

  Bunty, arm-in-arm with a statuesque brunette, took it all in and said, “Wow. Can I come live here?”

  “No, but we can rent you a table for a few hours,” Toni said with a grin, picking up a menu. “And it’s an open bar today.”

  “Lead the way,” Bunty said, as Toni escorted them to a table.

  “Wow.” Viola and Hal entered and looked around them in delighted astonishment, as Eddie, wearing a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, greeted them: “Aloha. Welcome to Eddie’s Polynesia on the Palisades.”

  He hugged Vi, shook Hal’s hand. “Thanks for coming, Vi.”

  “Eddie, it’s beautiful. You did this all yourself?”

  “I had some help.” He led them to a table. “Drinks are on the house—here’s a menu, take a look and see what you’d like.”

  Hal, intrigued by the picture of a large bowl with two straws on the menu, said, “What’s a … Scorpion?”

  “Pure trouble,” Eddie said. “Did you drive over?”

  “No, we took the ferry.”

  “One Scorpion, coming up.”

  At the bar he combined Puerto Rican rum, gin, brandy, orgeat, orange and lemon juices, white wine, a sprig of mint—then put them in the blender, where they all became very good friends indeed. He poured the mixture over cracked ice in the largest drink bowl he had been able to find, and garnished it with a gardenia blossom.

  By this time Toni was back at the hostess station and heard someone entering make the customary exclamation of “Wow.”

  She looked up to find Jimmy Russo grinning at her. And he wasn’t looking around in wonder at the bar.

  “For a high diver,” he told her, still smiling, “you make one beautiful island princess.”

  Toni blushed to match her sarong.

  “Uh—thanks,” she said with a nervous laugh. The admiring look in Jimmy’s eyes was not unwelcome, but she had to fan herself with the menu as she stepped from behind the hostess station. “Nice to see you too.”

  Was it getting even warmer in here?

  While Toni escorted Jimmy to a table, Eddie delivered the Scorpion to Vi and Hal, then looked up and saw another familiar face entering the bar: Jackie Bloom, wearing his finest white linen suit and Panama hat.

  “I thought I might as well come dressed for the occasion,” Jackie said with a smile. He took a good look around and said, “Eddie, in all the years I’ve known you, I never suspected. You’re one helluva showman.”

  “Thanks, buddy, coming from you that means a lot. C’mon, let me buy you a drink.”

  Jack Stopka, also wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, went from table to table taking orders for pūpūs. The food turned out to be as popular as the drinks, and Tom was kept busy in the kitchen preparing potstickers and kālua pork ribs. Even if the clientele today was largely a home-team crowd, the positive response still pleased Eddie.

  At six P.M. he flipped a switch and the lighting in the bar dimmed from conventional white to the kind of sunset glow that had permeated the Hawaiian Cottage at night. He too had strung small white lights from the ceiling, and now they sparkled above. It was as if the ceiling had been pulled back, exposing a night sky splashed with stars. But Eddie went the Egidis one better: he’d rigged a couple of bright lights on tracks, hidden by bamboo struts in the ceiling, and now, powered by small motors, they streaked across the night sky like comets circling the sun.

  There were gasps, sighs, and spontaneous applause from the veteran showpeople as they suddenly found themselves sitting under island skies.

  As satisfying as that was, the gesture that touched Eddie the most came from his sister Vi, who got up from her table and—a little tipsy on her feet—put her arm around her brother and said, “Mama was so wrong, Eddie. You are far from an ordinary boy.”

  Tears welled in his eyes and, unable to find the words to thank her, he embraced her in a bear hug.

  * * *

  Eddie had been right in opening in February: the sight of a neon palm tree standing beside a thatched-roof entryway drew dozens of curiosity-seekers, tired of the long winter and yearning for some sun, to the Polynesia on the Palisades. Inside they were charmed by the atmosphere and warmed by the drinks and the food. Fort Lee was a small town and word of mouth traveled fast. By the end of Eddie’s first month in business, each weekend every table was full, as was the bar. Toni and Jack had been temporary help, filling in until Eddie knew whether he had a going concern. By the time Toni left for the Central States Shows in late March, it was apparent that he did, and he hired a full-time waitress who also doubled as a hostess.

  For the next two months, Eddie was in his glory: the vision he had nurtured in his mind for years had become real, and people were responding to it as he hoped they would. He loved going to work every day, leaving behind the chill of a New Jersey winter for his balmy tropical grotto. All the pain in his life—his father’s death, Sergei’s brutality, his mother’s betrayal, Adele’s abandonment—was left behind when he walked in here. As he had once imagined it, here it was always warm, always paradise.

  He also made a point never to have a radio playing unless it was a ball game or Hawaii Calls—nothing to intrude on the idyllic illusion. As a result he was often several days behind on current events. In April, when Chinese troops began a spring offensive that smashed the U.N. line and drove through five infantry divisions on their way to retake Seoul, Eddie didn’t hear about it from the TV or radio, but from Jack … who surprised his father by showing up at the bar one afternoon in the middle of the week.

  “Hey, I thought you had classes on Wednesdays,” Eddie said.

  “Not anymore,” Jack said. He paused a moment, then declared, “Dad, I’ve got something to tell you. I joined the Army.”

  For the first time, Eddie felt a chill inside his tropic retreat. “What are you talking about? You’ve got a student deferment.”

  “I enlisted, Dad. I couldn’t take it anymore, knowing I had friends fighting over there, maybe dying, and me safe and doing nothing at home.”

  Eddie came out from behind the bar, trying not to show the panic he was feeling, and gripped Jack by the arm. “You’re not doing ‘nothing,’ you’re learning your craft! You’re an artist.”

  “I draw pictures,” Jack said. “You and Toni, you do things. She jumps off ninety-foot towers, for God’s sake, into a shot glass. You left home at sixteen, traveled the country, joined the Navy—”

  “Yeah, and you saw how great that turned out,” Eddie said.

  “If you hadn’t joined,” Jack countered, “this place wouldn’t exist.”

  Eddie had no response for that. Jack looked at him searchingly, as though trying to reach inside him, trying to make him understand:

  “I don’t do anything real, Dad. I sit and I draw pictures. And for that I get a deferment while guys like Johnny and Rick get their asses sent to Korea. Can you imagine how guilty that makes me feel?”

  Eddie remembered well the frustration of being a male civilian on the homefront in World War II—the guilt he felt that eighteen-year-old Laurent Schwarz was going to war and he wasn’t.

  “Yeah,” Eddie said quietly. “I can.�
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  But Laurent never came back.

  “It’s just something I’ve got to do,” Jack said. “I leave for Fort Dix on Friday. So what do you say, why don’t you make us a couple of Singapore Slings and we’ll toast to it, okay?”

  Smiling wanly, Eddie noted, “You’re only eighteen. I could lose my liquor license, y’know.” He laughed a mordant laugh. “Fuck it.”

  He prepared the Slings in a blender, poured them into hula glasses, handed one to Jack, and took the other himself. He raised his glass.

  “Here’s to you winning the war,” Eddie said, “and coming back, like I did, to tell the tale.”

  “You bet,” Jack said. They clinked glasses, then drank.

  Eddie never drank on the job, but this time he drained the glass.

  Eddie saw Jack off at the train station in Newark on Friday morning, realizing for the first time what Adele must have been feeling on the day he had left for war. He felt sick to his stomach, felt a loss worse than when his father died, or when Adele left him for Lorenzo.

  He drove back to open Eddie’s Polynesia as he had each day for the past two and a half months. But now it was different inside. It was still warm, still tropical, but even this perfect piece of paradise could no longer muffle the distant echoes of war, or assuage the fear and foreboding Eddie felt for his only son.

  20

  Wichita, Kansas, 1951

  TONI STOOD ON THE TOP platform of the tower and gazed down at the crowd—though perhaps that was too generous a term—sitting in the bleachers below. Maybe twenty or thirty people, tops, barely filling up half the seating—a far cry from the crowds she’d enjoyed as part of Ella Carver’s act. And this was Wichita, not some small bump on the prairie like Goodland or Iola. In Toni’s first three months as a headliner, she had yet to perform for an audience larger than her first-grade class in Edgewater. But they had paid for a show, and a show was what Toni was going to give them.

  Down below Arlan was making a last check of the guy wires. He gave her a thumbs-up, and Toni moved to the edge of the platform, gauging the distance, the wind, x factors on the ground—and then she turned her back to the audience. A small murmur of surprise floated up from the crowd, and before the sound drifted away she sprang backward off the platform and into space, at her pinnacle drawing her knees to her chest and somersaulting as the world tumbled dizzily around her. Coming out of the tuck-and-roll, her body went rigid and she splashed into the water, straight as an anchor tossed from a boat. Quickly she relaxed her body into a curve, broke the surface, and climbed up the side ladder to the applause of the crowd.

  Applause was always a thrill, even as thin and scattered as this.

  As she took her bow, her outside talker announced over the PA, “Don’t miss Terrific Toni when she performs another stupendous dive again at three P.M. today and seven tonight!”

  As the crowd filed out of the bleachers, Toni toweled herself off, then helped Arlan secure the equipment. “Good show,” he said, as he always did.

  “Why can’t I build a tip, Arlan?” she said wistfully.

  “Takes time, missy. Don’t worry, everybody start somewhere.”

  She smiled wanly, walked past the bleachers and the small ticket booth where Toby Gilcrist—a young man with a good bally who she’d hired as her outside talker—called out, “Hey, boss? Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, Toby, what?”

  “Nice show, by the way. Listen, Toni, I hate to ask, but—I’ve got to send some money back to my mom in Chicago and I’m embarrassed to say I blew through last week’s salary already. Can you give me a lift”—lift being carny for loan—“as an advance against my next paycheck?”

  “How much do you need?”

  “Half a yard?”

  Toni almost gulped. Fifty bucks: that was his next paycheck. “If I front you that, what’ll you live on next week?”

  “I’ll get by on leftovers from Floyd’s Franks, don’t worry about me.”

  Toni earned twenty bucks a dive, three dives a day—when it didn’t rain, or wasn’t too windy to dive—about two hundred and fifty a week. Good money, but after she paid Arlan’s and Toby’s salaries, between taxes, gasoline, hotels, and food, she wasn’t making a dime on this game.

  But Toby was a good guy and a good grind man—she couldn’t bring herself to say no. “Sure, I’ll bring it by after I get dressed.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  Still in her bathing suit, she headed down the midway to Cliff’s trailer. To save money Toni hadn’t purchased one of her own but used Cliff’s to change in during the day, then rented a cheap hotel room in whatever town they were in. Cliff had offered to share his trailer with her for the run of the show, but Toni held back from committing to cohabit with him—bad enough, the Catholic in her chided, that they were having premarital sex.

  She slipped into his trailer, got into a pair of dungarees and a T-shirt, and was out in time to watch Cliff being launched out of his cannon, over four cars parked end to end, and into the cupped hand of his safety net.

  Afterward, Toni came up and kissed him. “Ready for some lunch?”

  “I’m hungry for something else,” Cliff said with a grin.

  Toni laughed. “What, now?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s the middle of the day, and your trailer’s not far off the midway,” she pointed out. “People passing by might hear us.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, still grinning, “they might.”

  “You do like to take risks, don’t you?”

  “Says the girl who jumps ninety feet into six feet of water.”

  “Okay, fair point,” Toni said, feeling a little frisson of excitement despite herself. She smiled mischievously. “Just try not to be so … vocal.”

  “Me try? You try!” He grabbed her hand and led her into the trailer, where they pulled down the blinds and started undressing. Toni stepped out of her jeans and slipped off her shirt. Though she’d done this many times before at night, standing there in her bra and panties in the middle of the afternoon, about to have a tryst with her boyfriend, it felt—different. And as Cliff moved close and kissed her, she suddenly knew why: she’d been here before, but on the other side of the trailer window, looking in.

  But Toni was quick to remind herself that she wasn’t cheating on anyone, and as far as the rest of the analogy went, the idea that someone found her as attractive as her mother—

  She kissed Cliff back, hard, and they fell onto his bunk.

  * * *

  After an especially dismal turnout for the evening performance, Toni wasn’t particularly surprised to find Scobey Moser striding toward her before she had even finished drying off. She slapped on a smile, but Moser looked sober as a judge—and she knew that she was in the docket.

  “Toni,” he said heavily, draping an arm across her broad shoulders, “we’ve given it, what, three months for word of mouth to get out?”

  Toni’s stomach churned. “Yes, sir, I know.”

  “It’s not your talker’s fault, Toby turns a good tip, but … people just are not coming back for that evening show the way they did for Ella’s fire dive, and they’re sure not telling everybody back in town how great that carnival high diver was and how they should go out and see her for themselves.”

  Toni nodded. He was right.

  “The way I see it, you’ve got two problems. One’s your billing. People gravitate to carnival acts with big adjectives in the names—words like ‘Incredible,’ ‘Impossible,’ or ‘Amazing.’ ‘Terrific Toni’ sounds like a radio show about that perky girl next door. No grandiosity.”

  “I see your point, Mr. Moser.”

  “Second, you’re not upping the stakes for the audience. They watched Ella swan dive into five feet of water in the afternoon, then her talker says, ‘Be sure to come back tonight at seven when Ella lights herself on fire and dives into a tank of flames!’ Man, we couldn’t keep ’em away! You do a forward somersault at one o’clock, a piked somers
ault at three, and a backward somersault at seven. How does your bally man tease the crowd back? ‘Come back tonight at seven and watch Terrific Toni do basically the same thing’? You need to top yourself, girl, that’s what builds a tip!”

  “I know,” Toni said. “I’ve been thinking about varying my routine—”

  “Maybe three dives a day was too much to start with,” Moser said. “Why don’t we scale back to two—one o’clock and seven—and see if you can come up with something that’ll be a real ass-kicker for an evening show.”

  “But … if I do that, will I only get paid for two dives a day?”

  “Honey,” Moser said, “I think you’re a talented gal and someday you may be a big star in this business … but you aren’t yet, and it’s costing me money. Two dives a day, take it or leave it.”

  Toni definitely felt the chilly implications of “leave it.” “I’ll take it,” she said, “and I’ll come up with a better act, I promise.”

  “Attagirl!” He slapped her on the back and walked away smiling. But all Toni could think about was that her income had just shrunk from two-fifty a week to one-fifty, with the same expenses. She had gone from not making a dime to being in the hole every week. Even if she ate every meal at the cook shack, ordering the seventy-five-cent pork chops for dinner, she would run out of money before she ran out of appetite.

  Five minutes later she went up to Cliff before he got shot out of his cannon and asked, “Is that offer of sharing a trailer still open?”

  “Hell yes.”

  She kissed him and said, “Let me just get my clothes from my motel in town, and starting tonight, you’ve got yourself a roommate.”

  The next morning she and Cliff went to the cook shack—a big tent with two long tables running down the middle, the air sizzling with the smell of bacon, ham, eggs, and sausage—and as they stood in line to order Toni overheard a man behind her say, “If that son of a bitch Toby ever shows his face again, you can bet I’ll—”