by Lenox Parker
He had the hotel operator send him the 17 phone numbers and addresses of the Frank Russos in Brooklyn. One of them would be the guy. He would call when he could get his head together on what he would say. Maybe he would wait until he saw Punch, though he didn’t think Punch would have any opinion on it one way or the other. Or Art, who never really liked Frank, though.
Planning the next few days, weeks and months of his life came down to sitting in the hotel room in Indianapolis. Howard needed a new project to call his own—shape it, develop it, and see it to fruition. He knew he could take on something spectacularly consuming since he had little else going on in his life. Taking on the gang would be the next project. Howard was going to write a play. He couldn’t possibly re-engage with them without a reason, and he didn’t have any other reason than to use the stories and perspectives to incorporate into a play. He would reinvent himself, again, with a piece he could truly call his own. It’s about time.
He left Indianapolis and thought that there could be nothing ever in the world that would make him go back there again. Driving east and on the last leg of his journey, Howard decided that he would wait to call Frank from Punch’s place and that way he would have better grounding to get the old gang back together. He was still uncertain about what to expect; though his decision to return was final and he didn’t waver.
Howard could remember the last time he drove up the New Jersey Turnpike. It was 1962 and he and the gang packed in Punch’s girlfriend’s car to Atlantic City. It seemed like a world away; and for many in the car, it was the first time out of Brooklyn, including Howard. He, Frank and Punch in the front seat, their girlfriends in the back seat. They went fishing on the steel pier, compared the boardwalk to Coney Island’s and played some games at the casino. They were young and though they had cleaned up at the pool hall the night before and felt loaded with cash; it wasn’t enough to get them all dinner and entertainment like they had planned. They spent one night at the Claridge and ditched at 5am the next morning without paying for the room. It was a nice memory—but that’s all it was, a memory, and Howard refused to be tethered to nostalgia.
In a few short moments he would be pulling into Punch’s driveway. Nearly 50 years had passed since these once-close friends had even talked in person.
Chapter 11
Howard and Punch
Crunchy leaves. I’ve been dying to step on crunchy leaves ever since I lost my leg and I can’t walk. Being a city kid, we didn’t have many crunchy leaves in the autumn, so whenever I had an autumn trip outside the city I loved to step on crunchy leaves. It’s one of the things I cherish being out here in Jersey. Adele and I were sitting on the side porch, partially enclosed with screens and glass, and watched the neighbor’s kids play ball next door. Apparently Howard is due here any minute. Adele was furious with me because I didn’t tell her until late last night that he was supposed to be coming. I still don’t believe we’ll see him. She’s been fussing all day with the house, shopping, the guest room.
“I have to fix the towels in the guest bath upstairs and turn the roast, you need anything?” she asked.
“First, Adele, we don’t even know he’s staying. Or coming for that matter. You’re going crazy with this. Relax. No, I don’t need anything. Just sit down and enjoy the weather while we can still sit outdoors.”
Any opportunity I had, I liked to be outside. Working in an office for 40 years and living in a tenement before then has driven me to hate being inside when I don’t need to be.
“And? And what if he does come? And what if he does stay? What, are we going to put him on the couch? Or make him share our bathroom? Sometimes, Karol, you just don’t have any sense.”
So I let her go on with her business. It can’t hurt anybody. She stepped inside and I heard pots clanging.
I spied a large, black, SUV with blacked-out windows driving slowly up the street, and then a few moments later back down the street. Then up again. For the love of god, it’s Howie.
I would give anything to stand up right now and walk across the lawn. I would give anything.
I feel so old, tired, and worn down. Like a whole life has run me over and dragged me under the wheels. And here I am, unable to move and for the first time in decades, I want to run. Tears started running down my face as I saw Howie stop the truck and get out, looking up at my house. It was the same look he had when he got out of the car when we all made a high school trip to Atlantic City: awe, mixed with skepticism.
“Howie,” I tried to call out, but my voice cracked, “Howie,” not much better. “Adele, get the door, Howie’s here, ADELE!”
She comes running from the kitchen holding a rag and sees through the front window Howie standing there looking at the house and she runs back into the kitchen.
“Adele, where the hell are you going? Would you get the door?”
“I gotta put on some coffee and put the cake out! Jesus, Karol, why didn’t you tell me he’d be here now!”
I fumbled with the folded up newspaper in my chair and rolled through the dining room to the front door. As I opened it, Howie was stepping up the walkway, holding a duffel bag.
“I don’t fucking believe it!” he said as he opened the screen door and stepped inside. Either Art told him I was in a chair or he’s just remarkably cool in his reaction, because he didn’t blink. He leaned down and we embraced, I couldn’t get a hold of myself.
“Punch, baby, look at you, full head of hair, you bastard! What is it, 30 years? More?”
“Howie,” I bumbled, “It’s just so great to see you. I can’t get over it. I really didn’t think you’d come. I mean, you know, I just didn’t really expect it.”
“Hey, I said I’d be here, and I’m here, aren’t I?”
By this time, nearly every neighbor on the block was peering out to catch a glimpse of Howard Kessler, in Karol and Adele Plotkin’s foyer. I realized that Adele couldn’t help but call her friends and neighbors—this was the most exciting thing to happen to her since the two grandkids were born. She came hustling out of the kitchen with a huge tray full of pastries, cookies, and the silver serving set from our wedding that had been used maybe twice before.
“Is this Adele? Jesus, you look just like I remember you when you were 17!” Howard said, kindly. I knew that the actor was coming out now.
“Oh, Howie, you too! It’s so nice of you to come back and see us! What took you so long?” she said.
There’s a loaded question, I thought. Without missing a beat, Howie answered. “I been busy but I haven’t stopped thinking about you guys.”
Terrible answer. I couldn’t think of a more insincere way to ingratiate himself to his hostess. It went right over Adele’s head, though, since she’s pretty much desensitized to comments that require a rebuttal. She smiled and set down the tray with the mountain of cholesterol and sugar.
“I’ll let you boys catch up,” Adele said, and ran into the kitchen, no doubt to get on the phone.
I didn’t even know what to say to the guy. He looked so familiar, but not because I knew him. He leaned over and took my hand, and put his head down. I didn’t know if he was praying or would start weeping.
“Punch, you don’t know what this means to me, after all these years, seeing you. I’ve missed so much,” he said.
To be honest, I wasn’t altogether sure I wanted to be sitting here dealing with this right now. I immediately sensed an ulterior motive. Recognizing, however, that I am slightly neurotic and that sometimes people do not always have it out for me, I gave this a shot. And not entirely unfazed by the flood of memories, it could be good for me to remember the good times instead of focusing on the shit that I have to handle now with the disease and my lopped-off leg.
“Remember when we used to run around the old, deserted Coast Guard station in Manhattan Beach?” I asked, hoping to start up an easy chat about the dumb things we used to do.
“Yeah, and that time it wasn’t deserted and the federal Marshalls
chased us in trucks out of there?” he answered back. I wasn’t sure if he was being polite, but it was a remarkable time to remember.
After the war, the Coast Guard closed the station at the tip of Manhattan Beach. Though it seemed excluded, we cut the fence and tore the place up and stole as much stuff as we could get our hands on. We were about 13 or 14 years old at the time so playing cops and robbers on a real base using fire extinguishers as guns was a blast. It was also federal trespassing and vandalism, so when the Marshalls came to hunt us down after they spied a giant hole cut in the fence; we used the fire extinguishers on them and ran like hell.
Post-war Brooklyn was teeming with experiences for untethered kids.
We talked for a long while about the old days; and the conversation kept shifting back to Howard. No surprise, I guess, since my life isn’t all that glamorous.
It was getting late and Adele poked her head in and asked if we needed anything. I said no, and Howie stood up. I expected him to bid goodbye, and be done with us. I have a cardiologist appointment in the morning, Josh is coming by in the afternoon for more PT, and Law & Order is on at 8pm with a new episode. I don’t really want to be bothered with whatever it is that Howie Kessler wants from us.
“Adele, thank you so much for your kind hospitality. I really mean it. You’ve kept a good house all these years for Punch!” Howie said, with a sweet smile that I didn’t trust from a million miles away. Adele, however, melted.
“Oh, Hon, you’re welcome! We’re just so happy to see you after all these years. I mean, a Hollywood star right here in New Jersey—” Adele gushed.
I stopped her there, before she got carried away. It was now officially an awkward moment, like on the steps of the front porch when the guy drops his date off. What does he do now?
“Ok, Addie, Howie’s tired, I’m sure,” I said, hoping he would catch the send-off. I made eye-contact with Adele, hoping she would also catch my message.
“Howie, I have your room all set up upstairs, with new guest towels, and fresh new sheets. You’re staying, right? Come.”
Oy. This can’t be good. Howie smiled, grabbed his duffle and turned to follow Adele up the stairs.
“I gotta leave here around 7:30am to head into the city for my cardio appointment. Will you—”
“Great, I’ll go for a run, get the paper, not a problem. I’ll be here when you get back. Any joint around here I can get the Racing Form?” Howie said cheerfully.
It was a beautiful, autumn Friday. Josh called and said he’d come over on the weekend with the kids and we could do PT then, if it wasn’t too much trouble. Of course, I said, since I hate the PT. So Adele and I stopped for coffee and some pastry at a diner in Ft. Lee on the way home from the doctor appointment. The cellphone rang; it was my daughter, Jessica.
“Dad, I’m so glad you picked up. I’m standing in your living room and there’s someone sleeping on your couch. I would say it’s a stranger, but it actually looks like Howard Kessler. Is Howard Kessler on your couch?” she said calmly, but with her voice cresting with the tension of not knowing what to do—as she has always done since she was a child.
“Jess, I didn’t know you were coming over! What a nice surprise!”
“Dad, the guy?”
“Hold on, your mother and I were just leaving the diner, can I call you back? It’s a hassle to get out of here with the chair—”
“Um, yeah, no, it’s not—can you tell me what’s going on before I start to freak out, please?”
I handed the phone to Adele, as I wheeled myself to the back exit.
“Jess? Jessie? Hi it’s me, your father handed the phone to me—”
“Tell her we’ll be back in 20 minutes,” I yelled to Adele. “Would you bring the car around please? There’s a step on the curb back here.”
When we pulled into the driveway, there was Jessica sitting on the front steps looking pissed and confused. Jessica is a writer and has been very successful as a freelance journalist, ever since she broke out on her own. I think she is successful. She is forever beating herself up and is never satisfied with her career. She put herself through graduate school after I subsidized a couple of her business ventures which didn’t work out. She was always a good writer, and I’m pleased she’s gone back to writing. She moved to Jersey City which isn’t too far from us so we see her a little more often now when she’s not on a deadline or travelling for a story.
She stood up to meet us in the driveway.
“Hi, I think that guy may be awake. Is that Howard Kessler, Dad?”
“Hi Jess, it’s so nice to see you!” I said with a big smile. I just didn’t want to explain.
“Why aren’t you explaining this? You’re avoiding my questions.”
Adele walked in the house after giving Jess a big hug.
“It’s Howie Kessler. But he’s not the movie star, while he’s here at least, he’s an old friend from the old days in Brooklyn.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by that. He is Howard Kessler, so he is a celebrity. You have a celebrity in the house. Does the press know? Do you realize there will be paparazzi here any minute now? Can you even deal with that?”
I hadn’t thought about paparazzi. It sounded ridiculous. She wheeled me up the ramp and sure enough, Howie was at the door waiting.
“Oh my goodness, is this your girl?” he asked, with as charming a disposition as he could muster in what appeared to be an increasingly awkward situation.
“Hi, I’m Jessica, it’s really nice to meet you Mr. Kessler. I just didn’t expect to see you here, sorry if I alarmed you—”
“That’s alright! I can understand if your dad doesn’t want to say anything,” Howie said as he smiled and put his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m just surprised there are no photographers around,” Jessica said, probingly.
“Yeah, I’m with you,” Howie replied, peering out the front as if to spy someone shooting an illicit photo. “But I don’t think anyone knows I’m here, yet.”
We all looked at Adele.
“I just told a few neighbors and friends that you might be coming,” Adele said sheepishly. “Come, I’ll put some coffee on, and we have pastry from the place in Ft. Lee, Jess, the Danish you love.”
Howard probed Jessica about her job and her travels around the world. They enjoyed talking since he had traveled quite a bit and was sincerely interested in her thoughts and experiences. She can hold her own with conversations with anyone. While they were talking, I was wondering what the hell I was going to do with Howie, and for how long he was going to stay. Jessica read my mind. Later that afternoon, she asked what I didn’t want to ask.
“So Mr. Kessler, what are your plans? Are you going back to Hollywood? Is there another movie in the works?”
“Ah, you get straight to the point! Smart girl you have, Punch,” Howie said as he laughed. “I’ll tell you what. I’m here on the down-low and hoping to avoid exposure, so your folks’ gracious hospitality is really helping out a lot. I’d like to stay out here for a while, see the boys, catch up. I don’t really have any plans.”
“Really? Because I thought you might have a movie planned or something,” Jess continued.
“Nah, my last project was cancelled, or I was fired, or something. My days are probably pretty numbered,” Howard responded lightly.
“Punch, let’s see who else we can dig up. That ok with you?” Howard shifted the conversation. I caught Jess’s eye.
“Yeah, I’m not doing anything and Art wanted to see you, too. He was around a while back when we called you back.”
“I’ll let you two have your time together, I’ll be in the other room,” Howard started, “I’d like to take you all out to dinner tonight, you have a local place you like? It’s on me.”
** *
Jessica was laying on the couch in the sunroom when I rolled back in, kicking the hassock as she toyed with her camera in her lap.
“That a new camera?
It looks fancy.”
“It’s not mine. My photographer left it in my bag, it’s his backup. From our trip last week to Montreal. I don’t know shit about cameras, Dad.”
“I don’t know, you always have something new you know about.”
“I got that from you, Mr. Engineer,” she said as she tinkered with it. “You need to find out what the fuck Howard is doing here, Dad, you know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I should write a book about this whole thing. It’s so bizarre, that he just shows up like this. And he’s really famous, I mean, like, really famous. When I was in Nairobi they were showing his films in a retrospective last year at the state theater—the STATE theater,” she said.
I watched a squirrel outside in a standoff with a crow over what looked like an acorn on the neighbor’s driveway. They were shouting at each other the way Mrs. Grossman would shout at us kids on the block playing ball, breaking the occasional window. Jessica would probably write something about this bizarre occurrence. I couldn’t tell if she was joking, or musing, or trying to get a rise out of me.
“Write whatever the hell you want. Just don’t do it to exploit him or me.”
“You don’t trust him any more than I do, why are you protecting him?”
“I should ask myself that question. We’ll see, we’ll just have to see.”
Chapter 12
Frank
My phone rings the other day, I’m out on a site and had no time for bullshit. I don’t recognize the number, it’s something in Jersey so I figure it can wait. By the time I could sit for a few minutes and listen to the message, I’m driving home in traffic on the Belt and aggravated.
“Frankie, Frank, this is Howie Kessler. I’m with Punch, I’m in town, let’s get together and see what we can drum up. Would love to see you.”
I almost drove off the road. I must have listened to the message a dozen times to make sure it wasn’t a joke, or even one of the kids messing around since we were just talking about Howie last weekend. I dialed the number and hung up equally as many times, since I just couldn’t put together the words to say after so many years—and I had so many questions.
