Motherless Brooklyn

by Jonathan Lethem

  Needless to say, it wasn’t commentary and impressions, but my verbal Tourette’s flowering at last. Like Court Street, I seethed behind the scenes with language and conspiracies, inversions of logic, sudden jerks and jabs of insult. Now Court Street and Minna had begun to draw me out. With Minna’s encouragement I freed myself to ape the rhythm of his overheard dialogues, his complaints and endearments, his for-the-sake-of arguments. And Minna loved my effect on his clients and associates, the way I’d unnerve them, disrupt some schmooze with an utterance, a head jerk, a husky “Eatmebailey!” I was his special effect, a running joke embodied. They’d look up startled and he’d wave his hand knowingly, counting money, not even bothering to look at me. “Don’t mind him, he can’t help it,” he’d say. “Kid’s shot out of a cannon.” Or: “He likes to get a little nutty sometimes. Forget about it.” Then he’d wink at me, acknowledge our conspiracy. I was evidence of life’s unpredictabiliy and rudeness and poignancy, a scale model of his own nutty heart. In this way Minna licensed my speech, and speech, it turned out, liberated me from the overflowing disaster of my Tourettic self, turned out to be the tic that satisfied where others didn’t, the scratch that briefly stilled the itch.

  “You ever listen to yourself, Lionel?” Minna would say later, shaking his head. “You really are shot out of a fucking cannon.”

  “Scott Out of the Canyon! I don’t know why, I just—fuckitup!—I just can’t stop.”

  “You’re a freak show, that’s why. Human freak show, and it’s free. Free to the public.”

  “Freefreak!” I hit him on the shoulder.

  “That’s what I said: a free human freak show.”

  We were introduced to Matricardi and Rockaforte at their brownstone on Degraw Street one day in the fall, four or five months after meeting Minna. He’d gathered the four of us in the van in his usual way, without explaining our assignment, but there was a special degree of agitation about him, a jumpiness that induced a special ticcishness in me. He first drove us into Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge, then underneath the bridge, to the docks near Fulton Street, and I spent the whole time imitating the nervous jerks of his head as he negotiated traffic. We parked in the middle of a concrete yard in front of one of the piers. Minna disappeared inside a small, windowless shack made of corrugated steel sheets and had us stand outside the van, where we shivered in the wind coming off the East River. I danced around the van in a fit, counting suspension cables on the bridge that soared over us like a monstrous steel limb while Tony and Danny, chilliest in their thin plaid jackets, kicked and cursed at me. Gilbert was nicely insulated in a fake down coat which, stitched into bulging sections, made him look like the Michelin Man or the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. He stood a few feet from us and methodically tossed chunks of corroded concrete into the river, as though he could earn points by cleaning the pier of rubble.

  Minna emerged just as the two small yellow trucks drove up. They were Ryder Rental vans, smaller than Minna’s, and identically decorated, one pristine, the other dingy. The drivers sat smoking cigarettes in the cabs, with the motors running. Minna unlatched the backs of the trucks, which weren’t padlocked, and directed us to move the contents into his van—quick.

  The first thing I laid hands on was an electric guitar, one shaped into a flying V and decorated with enameled yellow and silver flames. A cable dangled from its socket. Other instruments, guitars and bass guitars, were in their hard black cases, but this one had been unplugged and shoved into the van in a hurry. The two trucks were full of concert gear—seven or eight guitars, keyboards, panels full of electronic switches, bundles of cable, microphones and stands, pedal effects for the floor, a drum kit that had been pushed into the truck whole instead of being disassembled, and a number of amplifiers and monitors, including six black stage amps, each half the size of a refrigerator, which alone filled the second Ryder truck and each took two of us to lift out and into Minna’s van. The umber ofers and hard cases were stenciled with the band’s name, which I recognized faintly. I learned later they were responsible for a minor AM hit or two, songs about roads, cars, women. I didn’t grasp it then, but this was equipment enough for a small stadium show.

  I wasn’t sure we could fit the whole contents of the two trucks into the van but Minna only egged us to shut up and work faster. The men in the trucks never spoke or got out of the cabs, just smoked and waited. No one ever appeared from the corrugated shack. At the end there was barely room for Gilbert and me to crowd in behind the doors to ride with the band’s calamitously piled equipment while Tony and Danny shared a spot up front with Minna.

  We crossed the bridge back to Brooklyn like that, Gilbert and I fearing for our lives if the load shifted or toppled. After a few breathless turns and sudden stops Minna double-parked the van and freed us from the back. The destination was a brownstone in a row of brownstones on Degraw Street, red brick, stone detailing flaking to powder, genteel curtained windows. Some canny salesman had ten or twenty years before sold the entire block on defacing these hundred-year-old buildings with flimsy tin awnings over the elegant front doors; the only thing special about Matricardi and Rockaforte’s house was that it lacked one of these.

  “We’re gonna have to take apart those drums,” said Tony when he saw the doors.

  “Just get it inside,” said Minna. “It’ll fit.”

  “Are there stairs?” said Gilbert.

  “You’ll see, you chocolate cheesepuffs,” said Minna. “Just get it up the stoop already.”

  Inside, we saw. The brownstone which appeared so ordinary was an anomaly just through the doors. The insides—typical narrow halls and stairs, spoked banisters, high ornate ceilings—had all been stripped and gutted, replaced with a warehouse-style stairwell into the basement apartment and upstairs. The parlor floor where we stood was sealed off on the left by a clean white wall and single closed door. We ferried the equipment into the upper-floor apartment while Minna stood guarding the rear of the van. The drums went easily.

  The band’s equipment tucked neatly into one corner of the apartment, on wooden pallets apparently set out for that purpose. The upper floors of the building were empty apart from a few crates here and there and a single oak dining table heaped with silverware: forks, spoons in two sizes, and butter knives, hundreds of each, ornate and heavy, gleaming, bundled in disordered piles, no sense to them except that the handles all faced in one direction. I’d never seen so much silverware in one place, even in St. Vincent’s institutional kitchen—anyway, those St. Vincent’s forks were flat cutouts of dingy steel bent this way to make tines, that way to make a handle, barely better than the plastic “sporks” we were issued with our school lunches. These forks were little masterpieces of sculpture in comparison. I wandered away from the others and obsessed on the mountain of forks, knives and spoons, but especially those forks, as rich in their contours as tiny thumbless hands, or the paws of a silver animal.

  The others shifted the last of the amplifiers up the stairs. Minna reparked the van. I stood e table, trying to look casual. Jerking your head was good cover for jerking your head, I discovered. Nobody watched me. I pocketed one of the forks, trembling with lust and anticipation, joy in my fear, as I did it. I only just got away with it, too: Minna was back.

  “The clients want to meet you,” he said.

  “Who’s that?” said Tony.

  “Just shut up when they talk, okay?” said Minna.

  “Okay, but who are they?” said Tony.

  “Practice shutting up now so you’ll be good at it when you meet them,” said Minna. “They’re downstairs.”

  Behind that clean, seamless wall on the parlor floor lay hidden the brownstone’s next surprise, a sort of double-reverse: The front room’s old architecture was intact. Through the single door we stepped into a perfectly elegant, lavishly fitted brownstone parlor, with gold leaf on the ceiling’s plaster scrollwork, antique chairs and desks and a marble-topped side table, a six-foot mirror-lined grandfather clo
ck, and a vase with fresh flowers. Under our feet was an ancient carpet, layered with color, a dream map of the past. The walls were crowded with framed photographs, none more recent than the invention of color film. It was more like a museum diorama of Old Brooklyn than a contemporary room. Seated in two of the plush chairs were two old men, dressed in matching brown suits.

  “So these are your boys,” said the first of the two men.

  “Say hello to Mr. Matricardi,” said Minna.

  “Yo,” said Danny. Minna punched him on the arm.

  “I said say hello to Mr. Matricardi.”

  “Hello,” said Danny sulkily. Minna had never required politeness. Our jobs with him had never taken such a drab turn. We were used to sauntering with him through the neighborhood, riffing, honing our insults.

  But we felt the change in Minna, the fear and tension. We would try to comply, though servility lay outside our range of skills.

  The two old men sat with their legs crossed, fingers templed together, watching us closely. They were both trim in their suits, their skin white and soft wherever it showed, their faces soft, too, without being fat. The one called Mr. Matricardi had a nick in the top ridge of his large nose, a smooth indented scar like a slot in molded plastic.

  “Say hello,” Minna told me and Gilbert.

  I thought mister catch your body mixture bath retardy whistlecop’s birthday and didn’t dare open my mouth. Instead I fondled the tines of my marvelous stolen fork, which barely fit the length of my corduroy’s front pocket.

  “It’s okay,” said Matricardi. His smile was pursed, all lips and no teeth. His thick glasses doubled the intensity of his stare. “You all work for Frank?”

  What were we supposed to say?

  “Sure,” volunteered Tony. Matricardi was an Italian name.

  “You do what he tells?”

  “Sure.”

  The second man leaned forward. “Listen,” he said. “Frank Minna is a good man.”

  Again we were bewildered. Were we expected to disagree? I counted the tines in my pocket, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.

  “Tell us what you want to do,” said the second man. “Be what? What kind of work? What kind of men?” He didn’t hide his teeth, which were bright yellow, like the van we’d unloaded.

  “Talk to Mr. Rockaforte,” urged Minna.

  “They do what you tell them, Frank?” said Rockaforte to Minna. It wasn’t small talk, somehow, despite the repetitions. This was an intense speculative interest. Far too much rested on Minna’s reply. Matricardi and Rockaforte were like that, the few times I glimpsed them: purveyors of banal remarks with terrifying weight behind them.

  “Yeah, they’re good kids,” said Minna. I heard the hurry in his voice. We’d overstayed our welcome already.

  “Orphans,” said Matricardi to Rockaforte. He was repeating something he’d been told, rehearsing its value.

  “You like this house?” said Rockaforte, gesturing upward at the ceiling. He’d caught me staring at the scrollwork.

  “Yes,” I said carefully.

  “This is his mother’s parlor,” said Rockaforte, nodding at Matricardi.

  “Exactly as she kept it,” said Matricardi proudly. “We never changed a thing.”

  “When Mr. Matricardi and I were children like yourselves I would come to see his family and we would sit in this room.” Rockaforte smiled at Matricardi. Matricardi smiled back. “His mother believe me would rip our ears if we spilled on this carpet, even a drop. Now we sit and remember.”

  “Everything exactly as she kept it,” said Matricardi. “She would see it and know. If she were here, bless her sweet pathetic soul.”

  They fell silent. Minna was silent too, though I imagined I could feel his anxiety to be out of there. I thought I heard him gulp, actually.

  My throat was calm. Instead I worked at my stolen fork. It now seemed so potent a charm, I imagined that if I had it in my pocket I might never need to tic aloud again.

  “So tell us,” said Rockaforte. “Tell us what you’re going to be. What kind of men.”

  “Like Frank,” said Ty, confident he was speaking for us all, and right to be.

  This answer made Matricardi chuckle, still toothlessly. Rockaforte waited patiently until his friend was finished. Then he asked Tony, “You want to make music?”

  “What?”

  “You want to make music?” His tone was sincere.

  Tony shrugged. We all held our breath, waiting to understand. Minna shifted his weight, nervous, watching this encounter ramble on beyond his control.

  “The belongings you moved for us today,” said Rockaforte. “You recognize what those things are?”

  “Sure.”

  “No, no,” said Minna suddenly. “You can’t do that.”

  “Please don’t refuse our gift,” said Rockaforte.

  “No, really, we can’t. With respect.” I could see this was imperative for Minna. The gift, worth thousands if not tens of thousands, must absolutely be denied. I shouldn’t bother to form nutty fantasies about the electric guitars and keyboards and amplifiers. Too late, though: My brain had begun to bubble with names for our band, all stolen from Minna: You Fucking Mooks, The Chocolate Cheeseballs, Tony and the Tugboats.

  “Why, Frank?” Matricardi. “Let us bring a little joy. For orphans to make music is a good thing.”

  “No, please.”

  Jerks From Nowhere. Free Human Freakshow. I pictured these in place of the band’s logo on the skin of the bass drum, and stenciled onto the amplifiers.

  “Nobody else will be permitted to take pleasure in that garbage,” said Rockaforte, shrugging. “We can give it to your orphans, or a fire can be created with a can of gasoline—it would be no different.”

  Rockaforte’s tone made me understand two things. First, that the offer truly meant nothing to him, nothing at all, and so it could be turned away. They wouldn’t force Minna to allow us to take the instruments.

  And second, that Rockaforte’s strange comparison involving a can of gasoline wasn’t strange at all to him. That was now exactly what would happen to the band’s equipment.

  Minna heard it too, and exhaled deeply. The danger was past. But at the same moment I turned a corner in the opposite direction. My magic fork failed. I began to want to pronounce a measure of the nonsense that danced in my head. Bucky Dent and the Stale Doughnuts—

  “Here,” said Matricardi. He raised his hand, a gentle referee. “We can see it displeases, so forget.” He fished in the interior pocket of his suit jacket. “But we insist on a measure of gratitude for these orphan boys who have done us such a favor.”

  He came out with hundred-dollar bills, four of them. He passed them to Frank and nodded at us, smiling munificently, and why not? The gesture was unmistakably the source for Frank’s trick of spreading twenties everywhere, and it instantly made Frank seem somehow childish and cheap that he would bother to grease palms with anything less than a hundred.

  “All right,” said Minna. “That’s great, you’ll spoil them. They don’t know what to do with it.” He was able to josh now, the end in sight. “Say thanks, you peanutheads.”

  The other three were dazzled, I was fighting my syndrome.

  “Thanks.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Matricardi.”

  “Arf!”

  After that Minna got us out of there, hustled us through the brownstone’s odd hallway too fast even to glance back. Matricardi and Rockaforte had never moved from their chairs, just smiled at us and one another until we were gone. Minna put us all in the back of the van, where we compared hundred-dollar bills—they were fresh, and the serial numbers ran in sequence—and Tony immediately tried to persuade us he should caretake ours, that they weren’t safe in the Home. We didn’t bite.

  Minna parked us on Smith Street, near Pacific, in front of an all-night market called Zeod’s, after the Arab who ran it. We sat and waited until Minna came around the back of the van with a be
er.

  “You jerks know about forgetting?” he said.

  “Forgetting what?”

  “The names of those guys you just met. They’re not good for you to go around saying.”

  “What should we call them?”

  “Call them nothing. That’s a part of my work you need to learn about. Sometimes the clients are just the clients. No names.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They’re nobody,” said Minna. “That’s the point. Forget you ever saw them.”

  “They live there?” said Gilbert.

  “Nope. They just keep that place. They moved to Jersey.”

  “Gardenstate,” I said. “Yeah, the Garden State.”

  “Garden State Brickface and Stucco!” I shouted. Garden State Brickface and Stucco was a renovation firm whose crummy homemade television ads came on channels 9 and 11 during Mets and Yankees games and during reruns of The Twilight Zone. The weird name of the firm was already an occasional tic. Now it seemed to me that Brickface and Stucco might actually be Matricardi and Rockaforte’s secret names.