by Saints
“He your helper?” asked the checkout girl.
“Yeah,” said Anthony.
“Cute. Son?”
“No. Brother.”
“Oh.”
Anthony knew he looked older than his age, which was sixteen, but really—old enough to be Joey’s father? His fake ID said twenty-one, and he could pull off that age flawlessly, but even so, what kind of world did this girl live in? Then again, Anthony thought, why would anyone be paying close enough attention to him and his brother, who was eleven, to see the truth? And anyway, what kind of world was this actually—Clinton Hill in the era of “Brooklyn USA”—in which two black-haired, blue-eyed boys in basketball clothes shopped for a week’s worth of organic food, conspicuously without a mom or dad? Dickens’ orphans were no more self-sufficient. A sharp observer might have noticed something nuanced at the checkout counter: the gently parental kind of patience with which the older boy dealt with the younger; the practiced, adult kind of teamwork with which the brothers went about this necessary weekly chore; the decidedly grown-up kind of sexiness with which the older boy casually showcased his dark good looks with a baggy, black nylon tank top and coordinated shorts, worn with black-and-white striped Adidas shower slides.
It was a warm Saturday afternoon at the end of May. Joey’s school would be out soon, and Anthony would have to figure out the summer. July would probably mean summer school, since P.S. 287 offered a history program that Joey was excited about. Maybe in August they could go upstate again, to hike in the Shawangunks. It was just the two of them now, and they’d made a pact that this was the way they were going to keep things, so they could remain calm and safe and together. During the previous year their mom had died of a heroin overdose, after being repeatedly roughed up by a crazy boyfriend, and the boys had been forced out of her place in Fort Greene, basically onto the street. Anthony found a new place on Craig’s List in an old building on Washington Avenue near the Navy Yard, a row house that had been converted long ago into industrial space and then into a den of artist’s studios. Their mom’s brother, who reluctantly came up from Miami for the funeral, had been convinced to co-sign the lease, while dismissing the new place as “the ass end of Brooklyn.” The landlord was a painter, who lived and worked on the ground floor. He asked no questions about two boys living together and probably wouldn’t do so, Anthony knew, as long as the rent got paid on time.
“Here,” said Joey, reappearing with the tofu.
“Thank you, sir,” said Anthony.
That was the last item. As they left the store, laden with bags, Anthony suggested they treat themselves to fruit smoothies at the store’s little sidewalk stand. Joey had a Berry Blast—blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and raspberry sorbet—while Anthony opted for Mango Madness—mango, strawberries, pear, and pineapple juice. Such a good kid, thought Anthony as he watched Joey slurp away contentedly, sitting there at the picnic table. He deserves the best. Anthony had made it a priority to see that Joey stayed in school and not be derailed by domestic chaos. Next year the boy would be in the sixth grade and his prospects were good, excelling as he did in social studies and an advanced program called Go Math! The less Joey dwelled on the darker side of his mother’s death, the better they’d both be, Anthony thought. It was sad to be without parents, but there was plenty of love in their tiny family and plenty of room for Joey to develop individuality that, who knows, real parents might squelch.
As for Anthony, there was plenty of room for something to develop too, but he wasn’t sure what. He had no friends, really, except for the guys he saw at the gym. He’d never been particularly hemmed in by his mom, except during her periodic attempts to clean up and get respectable, but it was certainly easier now, without her inconvenient-though-never-very-convincing objections, for Anthony to go on dating the older men who paid well for the company of a handsome youth with good manners and a conversational nature. This was something he’d fallen into—fine. It was paying the bills now—fine. Whether or not he’d ever find the time to develop a real boyfriend or girlfriend, or go to college, and whether or not what he called his art was going anywhere, time would tell.
The sculptures he made with junk he found in the street—small stuff at first, when they lived with their mom—were getting bigger now that they had more space. “Assemblages” are what his landlord called them, when he first got a look at them, with encouragement that thrilled Anthony. The landlord even said that he might include one of Anthony’s pieces in a fall show he was organizing in Bushwick of so-called “outsider art.” Keep going, said the landlord. It’s all about discovery.
What Anthony had discovered in the previous year is that he and his brother were indeed outsiders: they’d become that, they’d been made that. The trappings of middle-class life, as defined by trapunto-covered sectionals and matching graphite-steel washers and dryers—that was for their mom’s parents’ generation, not for them. Born into Tudor Revival splendor on a fancy street on the “good” side of the Sunset Highway in Bay Shore, Long Island, their mom had been squeezed, after the death of her parents, into a narrow, less-than-middle-class margin of barely dignifying material comfort that she scrambled to inhabit for as long as she could. She’d been a dancer, which was never a workable life plan. Now her boys were well below even that margin, let alone the Oz of glass towers that New York was quickly becoming, and Anthony had no plan yet either, except for him and Joey to survive.
Instead of a plan, he aimed for a kind of realistic vision about life for him and his brother, an unillusory view of the terrain they inhabited—akin to the one Joey expressed when he came home from school one day excited that the topography of New York that had been so important during the Revolutionary War was still discernible today. They had been studying the Battle of Long Island.
“There are these hills,” burbled Joey, “called the Heights of Guan, and between them these passes where the British tried to get to the Americans. And they’re still there, in parks and stuff—you can see ’em on a map. And right here, Anth, where we are, in 1776 was all forest and farmland, and a block away in the river is where the British kept Americans imprisoned on ships…”
Anthony was proud of his brother’s interest in history. That could help point the way forward. So, Anthony thought, could his own understandings about the city. This was indeed the ass-end of Brooklyn, and very soon it, too, might be more Oz. So the boys would have to remain alert, flexible, ready.
* * *
A few hours later they were home.
“Ramen OK?” asked Anthony, from the kitchen counter.
“Sure, I guess,” said Joey. He was at the table, busy with his iPad.
“I’m thinking the usual thing—mushrooms, scallions, tofu.”
“Shitakes, please.”
“Oh, right—we got some. So like in twenty?”
“OK,” said Joey.
The meal was one of their favorites, and an added benefit was that it cost no more than a dollar per serving. Anthony would have a bowl with Joey and see the boy settled in for the evening, before going off on his date—dinner with a Londoner named Matthew, a media executive who visited New York often on business and liked to see Anthony for dinner and then for an hour or so in his hotel room. For this Anthony would earn $3500—more than enough to cover the next month’s rent, utilities, health insurance, and a lot more ramen and kale. When Matthew had texted to see if Anthony was available, he said he wanted to try a new, upscale Japanese restaurant that offered kaiseki cuisine. Anthony googled the place. It charged $375 a head for the traditional multi-course Japanese dinner “presented with the elegance of tea ceremony,” and $90 each for the sake pairing that Anthony knew that Matthew would order.
We’re having a little ceremony of our own right here, thought Anthony, as he brought over a full portion for Joey and a small one for himself. The boys ate at a massive, antique wooden table that was in place when they took the apartment—a possession of their landlord, who let them use it in
exchange for continuing to store it there. Their home was simple: rough wooden floors and rickety old windows; a few Ikea pieces mixed with the perfectly good “previously owned” items they’d found in the street, like a bench-like sofa that would not have been out of place in a doctor’s office. Anthony had made it a point to buy new beds and bedding.
“How’s the pageant thing going?” asked Anthony. It was Joey’s end-of-year social studies project: a Revolutionary War pageant to take place outdoors, in Fort Greene Park, on the steps of Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument.
“It’s going,” said the boy. “Are you still coming?”
“Sure I am. Next Friday, right?”
“Yeah.”
“OK. Do you know what they’ll do if it rains?
“I don’t know, they didn’t say. I guess we just keep doing it. You know it was very rainy when Washington made his retreat.”
“Fine, but what about the audience?”
Joey mugged a look of comical alarm, which made them both laugh.
“We’re so soft nowadays,” said Anthony. “Hey, need help with your lines?”
“I only have one, I told you.”
“Let’s run it.”
“Oh…,” said Joey, balking.
“C’mon, Joey,” said Anthony. “Let’s have it.”
The boy took a moment to compose himself, then declaimed, “Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose!”
The line hung there in the air, for a moment.
“Wow, awesome,” said Anthony.
“Ya think so?”
“Yeah, Joey, absolutely! Again, please?”
The boy shifted his position to get more into character.
“‘Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose!’”
Anthony shook his head in admiration.
“That’s great what you do with your arm—that gesture!”
“And I have a three-cornered hat and a spyglass!”
“No way. And a wig?”
Joey laughed.
“They said wigs were too expensive,” he said.
“So you’re Washington.”
“Yeah, I’m Washington and it’s August 22, 1776, and the British have him cornered in Brooklyn Heights, and in the middle of the night he evacuates his army across the river to Manhattan. So it’s a British victory and a loss for Washington, but it’s a necessary loss, so he can keep his army intact and go on to win the war.”
“Wow, A-plus, buddy,” said Anthony. “Or wait—they don’t give grades in your school, do they?”
Joey grinned.
“I’m between ‘major documented progress’ and ‘documented mastery,’” he said.
“Oh,” said Anthony.
“Between nine and ten out of ten.”
“I see.”
* * *
Three hours later, Anthony was sitting cross-legged on the floor of a rustic teahouse in the corner of a quiet garden on Manhattan’s lower West Side, not far from the Meatpacking District. He was with his date Matthew, in one of seven such teahouses that comprised the restaurant Wabi, where the hostess had greeted them at the door and walked them through a hallway and out onto a stone path, through the garden to the six-tatami-mat room that would be theirs for the evening. From there their server took over—an elegant, kimono-clad lady of a certain age who’d already served the first few courses, after each of which she knelt for a minute at the service entrance, to make sure the men were enjoying their food, before slipping out and sliding the shoji screen shut.
“I almost feel we shouldn’t be talking,” said Anthony.
“I know,” said Matthew. “There’s such a lot of contemplation to be doing.”
So far they’d had four courses, starting with an amuse bouche of deviled egg with lobster, truffle, and ponzu jelly, served on a green ceramic leaf—Matthew seemed to know all the ingredients. Then a trio of appetizers, conger eel rolled with burdock root, broad beans and mashed taro, and octopus with vegetables dressed in vinegar and miso, served in three precisely formed ceramic bowls—hexagonal, circular, and paisley-shaped. Then a second appetizer of fried trout and bamboo shoot in dashi sauce with wakame sea weed, served on a squarish platter glazed with a sketch of irises clumped on a rivulet, surrounded by fireflies. Finally a sashimi course, served on a wooden plank. From outside the teahouse, whose shoji screens to the garden in front of them remained so far closed, came only the sound of a trickling stream.
“Do you think we could be the only ones here tonight?” asked Anthony.
“That’s the way these restaurants are,” said Matthew. “Very private.”
“The presentation is amazing,” said Anthony. The wooden plank for the sashimi was carved in a subtle wavy motif.
“They use vessels that harmonize with the food being served, which itself is themed to the season.”
“Harmonize?”
Matthew pointed to the platter.
“Fish, rippling water,” he said. “Springtime, green leaves, insects coming alive…”
“Oh. Nice.”
“Those three bowls, very severe and geometric?”
“Uh-huh?”
“A bit of visual wit.”
“I see.”
“You’re not enjoying it.”
“On the contrary, I’m enjoying it a lot.” Anthony was speaking with what he thought of as his twenty-one-year-old voice.
“Good,” said Matthew. “I want you to.”
“I was just thinking today at the market how I needed more ponzu jelly in my life.”
Matthew smiled peacefully. Then another silence—not awkward; more aesthetic in nature, as they continued to contemplate. Also, possibly the effects of the sake were kicking in. Matthew was in a grey suit, an open collared shirt, and black socks; Anthony was in neat slacks and a black silk shirt that was unbuttoned enough to expose a good portion of his smooth, well-formed chest. He was barefoot, having decided it would be elegant to wear his new Prada loafers without socks.
“How was your day?” asked Matthew.
“Oh, you know—I worked a little on a piece, I went to the market, I helped my brother prepare for his school’s social studies pageant.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, apparently George Washington withdrew his troops from Brooklyn near where we live and saved his army from total defeat by the British.”
“Lord.”
“We live right near the river where some of His Majesty’s ships were parked to store prisoners of war.”
“I see.”
“Apparently lots of dead Americans were thrown overboard and washed up near our street.”
“Some people will do anything for attention.”
“Do you mean…the British or the Americans?”
“Fair point.”
“He’s obsessed, my brother.”
“A budding historian.”
“Could be.”
“Thank goodness we’re not at war now,” said Matthew, giving Anthony’s big toe a little wiggle and tug.
The attendant called out gently to announce her presence, then slid open the shoji screen and served the next dish: kinmedai—which Matthew explained somewhat helpfully was a fish known as alfonsino—smoked with pine needles, presented with a tempura of wild mountain vegetables and shira-ae mousse—mashed tofu. After which came lidded bowls with lobster steamed in smoked onion soy milk with herbs, presented with beet purée; and then a mini bamboo bento box of seared duck with avocado miso and fresh greens.
Observing the efficiency of their server became more thrilling with each course, while from outside in the garden now came the sound of other parties who’d arrived and, sometimes, footsteps near their tea house. It was after the server had delivered a palate cleanser—basil sorbet on a dish shaped like a chrysanthemum blossom—that she made a small gesture inviting their approval and then slid open the shoji screens in front of them. Revealed was the spring garden at night, a lush verdancy graced with a little stream and illuminated by la
nterns, discreetly populated with other rustic tea houses glowing around the garden’s edge.
“Very pretty,” said the server, almost to herself, as she retired and left the men to their sorbet.
“Did she just tell us what to think?” asked Matthew. He was joking, as by then they were both in love with the lady’s unassuming grace.
“She was quietly overwhelmed by the beauty,” said Anthony, “as she always is, night after night.”
“Imagine that,” said Matthew, taking a tiny bite of his sorbet. “Staying alive to the shock of beauty, time after time.”
“At her age, too,” said Anthony.
“How old do you think she is?”
“Hard to tell. Not young, though.”
“No.”
“Age can be so difficult to assess.”
The point was an impish jab at Anthony, who was at least forty years younger than his companion.
“Matthew, I…”
“Sorry. I know you’re sensitive about your age. Perfectly understandable in someone who’s twenty-one.”
Anthony cocked his chin toward the garden view.
“It’s amazing to think this exists in Manhattan.”
“It’s amazing, frankly, that you exist.” Matthew was staring not at the garden but at Anthony.
“Now, you know I’m way too young to get married,” said Anthony, playfully.
“Actually, no, you’re not,” whispered Matthew, growing serious for a moment. “I just want you to know how much you’re beginning to mean to me. I know you have to go home tonight, but I hope the next time I come over, probably in September…”
Anthony tried to formulate a response, but couldn’t think of anything, so they both just sat there.
