Corky's Brother

by Jay Neugeboren

  Sarah Jean and I followed Corky down a side aisle until we came to two girls who were sitting together. They looked at Corky, then back at the screen. We sat down, and Corky turned to the girl at his left. “You want some candy?” he asked. The girl gave him a dirty look, but this didn’t bother Corky. “Ah, come on,” he said. “I ain’t trying to be fresh. Honest. This is my cousin Sarah Jean from Pennsylvania and her boyfriend. Come on,” he whispered. “We’re sitting next to each other anyway and I got more than I can eat, so we might as well share. Here—your friend can have some too.”

  “It’s okay,” Sarah Jean said to the girls. “He’s my cousin.”

  For some reason, this seemed to do the trick. The girls took some candy from Corky and the next thing I knew he had his arm along the back of the seat of the one next to him, and her friend was saying she had to go to the bathroom and she got up and left, and then Corky and this girl were at it. I tried to keep my eyes on the movie—Yvonne De Carlo in a Technicolor Western—but I kept glancing at Corky to see how he was doing and then looking around at the other couples. Sarah Jean hardly moved. She just sat up straight and looked at the movie. My hand began to get sweaty in hers and I took it away and put my arm around the back of her seat. Next to me, Corky was starting to use his hands and I had to fight hard not to keep all my attention on him.

  I don’t know how much time passed before I finally let my arm rest on Sarah Jean’s shoulder, but she seemed patient about it, and when I’d finally gotten it there she leaned toward me and let her head rest close to my face. Then she reached up with her right hand and touched my fingers, one at a time. She said something and I shifted in my chair and turned to her. “I—I didn’t hear you,” I said, and when Sarah Jean saw how nervous I was—I squeaked on the first word and had to clear my throat—she laughed and moved closer to me, so that I could feel her breast against my side. The way she laughed didn’t make me feel embarrassed at all, and I relaxed a little and let my cheek rest against her forehead. I could tell that she knew I was nervous and that I was working up my courage to make the final move—and what I liked about her, what I still remember most—was that the way she rested against me, so patiendy—that’s the word that comes to mind—made me feel good inside, confident, grown up. It was as if she were saying, “It’s okay, Howie—you just take your time, and when you’re ready I’m here.”

  She was leaning deep into my shoulder by then, and when I looked down at her I saw that her eyes were closed and that she wasn’t looking at the movie. I reached over with my left hand to touch her cheek and she gave my finger a quick nibble. We both laughed, and then I leaned down and she leaned up and we met without any fuss or awkwardness.

  Time passed pretty quickly after that, even though all we did was neck and fool around, teasing each other—and no matter how much we kissed, it never got boring or sloppy. That was the thing I remember most—no matter how long we’d stay in a clinch, her lips seemed to stay smooth and cool. She was so gentle, the way she touched my face and arms and played with me with her tongue—no girl had ever done that before with me—that I could hardly believe it. And when we’d separate and lean back, she’d snuggle close and smile at me. “I’m real glad I came up to New York,” she said to me after a while, and I said I was glad too, though I wished it didn’t have to be because of Mel. “You’re a good friend to Corky,” she said. “He looks up to you—” I was surprised to hear that, because I’d thought it was the opposite, and when I tried to tell her it wasn’t true, that I didn’t know what she meant, she said that that made her like me even more. “You don’t tell him what to do,” she said. “I like that.” We talked about other things too, and off and on we watched the movie—I think the other picture was a rerun of Randolph Scott in Gung Ho—and then, much later, I suddenly felt an elbow in my ribs and I nearly jumped out of my seat.

  “Come on, lover,” Corky said. “Time to come up for air. It’s getting late—”

  “Where—where’s the girl?” I asked, seeing the seat next to his empty.

  “I sent her home,” he said. “Come on, it’s time to go to the schoolyard for our game of stickball. You’ll probably beat me tonight—I’m so stiff from wrestling in these seats—” We stood up and I tucked my shirt in where it had come loose and followed Corky out, holding Sarah Jean’s hand. When we were in front of the theater, Corky leaned close to me and winked. “You’re okay, Howie,” he whispered. “I knew you had it in you—” Then he spoke louder, for both of us. “Someday, what I’m gonna do,” he began, “is own a movie theater where they got a section of seats in pairs, without armrests…”

  On the way to the schoolyard we stopped and had some pizza—Sarah Jean had never had any before and she loved it—and then we walked up Snyder Avenue, to avoid going by the funeral parlor, and when we got to the schoolyard most of the guys were already there, playing stickball or pitching pennies. They came over to us slowly and they were shy about saying things to Corky about Mel. They didn’t say much, and when Corky told them to forget about it, that after the initial shock you got used to the idea and that, as everybody knew, it’d always been a question of time—when he’d made them feel better about it by talking like that, they all went back to what they were doing. Still, I had the feeling they understood what Corky was going through better than most guys would have. None of them asked him why he wasn’t with his family or at the funeral parlor.

  Corky introduced Sarah Jean to all the guys and I was kidded a lot and felt pretty good. We got chosen into a game on opposite sides, and while we played, Sarah Jean sat next to where we had the strike zone chalked on the handball court, and I could tell that the guys thought she was okay. An inning or two after we got there, Corky and I took over the pitching for our teams and as it got darker my fast ball began mystifying the batters. I struck them out so often that they started calling me Carl again. Corky did pretty well too, but after two innings he suddenly hit one of his wild streaks—he walked about six batters in a row before he switched to the outfield—and I wondered if I should begin pitching bad also, to kind of even things up, but I didn’t.

  “Why do you think it is?” Corky asked when we were finished playing and were sitting against the handball court, relaxing. “It’s the same when I pitch for our team—I’ll be going along fine for an inning or two and then bam!—the minute I get a man on base and got to pitch with a stop motion I can’t find the plate.” He shrugged, and laughed. “Ah, who cares—P” he said.

  Sarah Jean touched his hand and she said again what she’d said before: “You’ll be as good as Mel some day if you want to—”

  Corky bummed a cigarette from one of the guys and smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so. They say that after you develop to your full height and weight your body settles down inside and you get steadier. Maybe my control will improve then. Anyway, I don’t have to be a pitcher—you see me blast that ball over the fence off McGowan?—bam!” Corky said, imitating his own swing. “I showed him where I lived, huh, Howie?”

  The girls were starting to come down now—it was almost pitch black out—and Corky picked up his jacket and went over to fool with them, telling us not to do anything he wouldn’t do. Sarah Jean and I stayed where we were. I asked her if she was getting cold. She said no, but I put my jacket around her shoulders anyway. Some of the girls came over to us to see what Sarah Jean was like, and they were all so polite I hardly recognized them. They didn’t seem to like Corky’s horsing around as much as usual—I guess some of them felt strange about doing anything with him on the weekend his brother died. But by nine o’clock I saw him standing by the fence with a girl we’d nicknamed the Splinter because she was so flat-chested, and he was really giving it to her. Then for a long time Sarah Jean and I kissed, leaning on each other and on the handball court and on the concrete and on our elbows all at the same time—we shifted a lot—and I kept my hands around her inside the jacket. Straightening up once, one of them touched against her breast accidentally and I sta
rted to say I’m sorry, but she said, “That’s okay, Howie,” and let me keep it there. Unless you count the sessions we used to have at the corner of Linden Boulevard and Rogers Avenue ganging up on fat Louise, who let you do anything to her, it was the first rime I’d ever done that too.

  When we finally got up from the ground the schoolyard was empty, and both of us laughed at how sore our rear ends were. I told Corky it was past eleven o’clock, thinking he might want to get back home, but he said that the night was only beginning. He was right. The next thing I knew, we were on the IRT heading for Manhattan. At Chambers Street we changed for the downtown South Ferry local.

  Sarah Jean had never been on a ferry boat before and she liked it. The four of us stayed on the outside the whole time, even though the wind ripped through you, and when we got to Staten Island we hiked around until we found a diner that was open. By this time Corky’s girl had started getting angry with him, saying he’d promised to get her home earlier. Sarah Jean tried to calm her down, but she whined so much that Corky threatened to leave her stranded. She cursed him and then he began ranking her out about how flat she was, but Sarah Jean got him to stop right away.

  On the ferry back to Manhattan Corky and the Splinter made out inside on one of the benches, but Sarah Jean and I stayed outside again. We kept kissing and nuzzling and promising each other that we’d write every day after she went back to Pennsylvania. What I remember most was the way sometimes, after we’d come up from a long kiss, she’d say in a surprised way, as if she were discovering some new fact: “I like you, Howie—”

  When we’d gotten back to Brooklyn and dropped the Splinter off where she lived—it was almost five o’clock by then—we walked around together, and every once in a while, whenever I got the urge, I’d just stop and we’d kiss in the middle of the street and Corky would laugh at us and tease me. We walked around the neighborhood, showing Sarah Jean where all the guys lived and the places we hung out, and when we got tired we’d sit down on the curbstone and rest. At about seven o’clock we wound up at the corner of Flatbush and Church in front of Garfield’s Cafeteria, and Corky announced that it was time for breakfast.

  So we went inside and loaded our trays with pancakes and bacon and French toast and Danish and juice and milk and then sat down at a table by the window. We talked a lot about what a great thing it was to stay up all night and then have breakfast together, and I felt pretty good seeing people look over at us, wondering what three kids our age were doing in there at such an hour. After a while—we sat around the table for a long time and I’d finished a second plate of French toast, it tasted so good—we could see people going by all dressed up.

  “You gonna go to church?” Corky asked Sarah Jean.

  “We’ll get back too late,” she said, and smiled slowly at him. “Are you?”

  “It’s only eight-thirty,” I said.

  “Nah, Sarah Jean’s right, Howie,” Corky said, catching the look in her eye. “We might as well go to the park again, huh?”

  For some reason his suggestion sounded sour to me and I guess I showed it because he got mad, the way he did sometimes. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You got to ask your mommy first?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just that they’ll be wondering what happened to me. I don’t stay out like this every night of the week, you know.”

  “So go home,” he said. “The police must be looking for you.”

  I didn’t say anything and Corky didn’t either. The thought of repeating what we’d done the day before suddenly made me feel tired. “You call home if you want, Howie,” Sarah Jean said, breaking the silence. “Then the three of us can stay together longer.”

  I looked at Corky. “Sure,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  “How about your mother?” I asked Sarah Jean.

  She smiled. “She don’t worry about me,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, and left the table. I was afraid my father would yell at me, but when I said that I’d fallen asleep at Corky’s house and that nobody had woken me until just now, he said he’d figured the same thing. I guess he was sympathetic because of Mel. He reminded me that my grandparents were coming over and that he expected me home by four or five o’clock. When I got back to the table, I told them that everything was okay but that I had to be back for dinner.

  “Yeah,” Corky said. “You better—you never know when they’re gonna die, old people. Who knows? This might be the last chance to see them together.”

  I looked up at Corky and I think he knew from my look that I thought his remark was nutty. “My mother killed my father,” Sarah Jean said then, suddenly. I turned to her, wondering if I’d heard right. Corky looked at her sideways too. Sarah Jean nodded emphatically. “She took his drink away from him.”

  Corky laughed.

  “It ain’t funny,” Sarah Jean said, and Corky stopped smiling. “Everybody in the family knew about how he couldn’t stay away from the stuff. But he didn’t harm nobody with it.” She paused. “Him and your father were good friends, Corky—could of stayed that way, my mother didn’t—” She stopped and leaned forward. “The thing was, when I was young, at night my mother’d get him downstairs in the kitchen and badger the life out of him.” She talked low and we had our heads close together across the table. Her large eyes had narrowed by now in a way I’d never seen them. “I used to sneak right outside and listen. ‘Faith without works is death,’ she’d say. ‘You repeat it after me, Michael Stilman: Faith without works is death. Faith without works is death. Faith without works is death.’ She’d keep repeating it and she wouldn’t let up on him till she’d made him bawl. Then she’d feel satisfied.” She stopped. “I used to think of ways to kill her.”

  “But—” Corky began.

  “It don’t matter,” Sarah Jean said, as if she knew what Corky was going to say. “I know what I’m saying. If she’d let him be, he would of lived longer. But he didn’t have nothing to live for. Your Pa was gone by then and he was the only one my father ever felt real kin to—and they couldn’t have no more children after me on account of he had the mumps, so he had no son the way he would of liked. And then she wouldn’t even leave him have—” She broke off and started again, stronger. “She’d stand up there over him making him repeat it till he’d grab at her knees. ‘Faith without works is death. Faith without works is death.’”

  “Hey, lower your voice,” Corky said.

  Sarah Jean sat back in her chair and her face, which had gone all tight and tense, relaxed. Her eyes opened all the way. “I liked Mel real well,” she said to Corky. “He used to let me shoot his BB gun. He said I was a real good shot.”

  “Maybe for Christmas vacation me and Corky’ll hitch down to where you live,” I offered impulsively.

  Sarah Jean looked down. “You don’t got to,” she said. Then she looked up and she couldn’t keep from smiling. “But it’d be nice.” She licked her lips. “You know what else?—I didn’t tell nobody yet, but I’ve been thinking that as soon as I reach sixteen and don’t have to be in school no more I’m gonna leave home. I made up my mind.”

  “Me too,” Corky said.

  They both turned to me. I opened my mouth as if I was going to say “Me too” also—but I didn’t know if I should and I guess I had a crazy frozen expression on my face with my eyebrows up and my mouth wide open, because the two of them started laughing at me.

  “Boy,” Corky kept saying when we were outside, walking along Flatbush Avenue again, looking in all the windows. “You should of seen your face!”

  I laughed when they teased me, but by the time we were at the park and had rented a rowboat again, none of us was laughing too much. We tried singing and making jokes and tbings, but the longer the day went on, the quieter and more depressed the three of us got. Nothing helped. After we finished rowing, we walked around the park a lot and then took Sarah Jean through the zoo and the botanical gardens. Our money had pretty much run out, so we had to share a couple of hot dogs for lunch. We
ate at the Brooklyn Museum and walked around there for a while, with Corky trying to make funny comments about all the naked statues, and then we walked all the way home. I got to my house at about four o’clock, feeling pretty low, and guilty somehow for not staying with Corky overnight again. I told this to Sarah Jean, and she smiled and said that she’d take good care of him and that they’d both see me tomorrow.

  When I got to the funeral parlor the next morning most of the guys were already there, sitting in a row near the back of the room, and I sat down next to them. Corky and his family were in the front row and Sarah Jean was sitting next to her mother in the row behind them. There must have been a hundred or so folding chairs set up in the room and around the sides were baskets of flowers. I’d never seen so many in one place. The room filled up quickly and before I knew it they were playing soft organ music and a man was standing at a little lectern next to the coffin and reading from the Bible. When he finished and sat down, another man got up and began talking about Mel. Sarah Jean turned and smiled at me from in front of the room and I wished I could be with her. The guys who’d gotten to the parlor early whispered along our row that Corky had told them all about what we’d done the day before. “Boy,” Izzie whispered—he was sitting two seats away from me. “She’s some piece! They really grow ’em in the country!”

  The rest of the service is still pretty much of a blur to me. There were lots of people from the neighborhood around the room—some of the guys’ mothers, a few of the store owners from Rogers Avenue like Mr. Fontani and Mr. Klein, people who lived in Corky’s building—and the man up front spoke a lot about going to live with the Lord Jesus and about Mel’s great gifts and how they would now be put into the highest service in exchange for the greatest of gifts. I didn’t pay too much attention to him, but whenever I did I’d think up arguments against what he was saying. Along our row the other guys all seemed as nervous and fidgety as I was—Eddie picked his nose a lot, Louie and Marty talked to each other the whole time, and Izzie kept trying to find out how far I’d gone with Sarah Jean. Whenever the preacher mentioned Mel’s age, though, they all got quiet. I don’t think that what he said about the Lord working in mysterious ways made much sense to any of them. Aside from Corky, though, Kenny Murphy was the only one of the guys who wasn’t Jewish and I thought that maybe if we’d been brought up differently what the man was saying might have sounded right to us.