He took a handkerchief out and blew his nose. "Vic's got the right idea. Stairway to the stars. Two years from now he'll have his own house, someplace nice." He clumsily pantomimed a baseball swing.
"There's snot on your lip, Johnny," I said, knowing how meticulous he was.
"Thanks," he said reflexively, wiping his face. "Know somethin'? I shoulda stuck to baseball. I used to play."
"I gotta go inside, Johnny."
"The fuck you do. Just sit with me awhile, here," he said, though the two of us were standing. I didn't dare move, and besides I felt a little sorry for him. He wiped his face again.
"It all off?"
He meant the snot. "You look fine."
"Oh yeah? What do you know? You're from Long Island."
"I know plenty," I said, forgetting he was drunk and that his father had just died - my feelings of anger overrode sympathy.
It didn't matter, though. Johnny had barely heard me. He held up a forefinger; something had just occurred to him.
"You know whose fault this is, don'tcha? That asshole Frank Ammiratti, that's who. He's the one who let the neighborhood go down the toilet. Buildin' that fuckin' hamburger place." He was out of breath. "My old man, he cursed that place every time he looked out the window. That's why his heart gave out."
Suddenly he ran across the street and tugged at one of the curbside cobblestones. He worked it like a loose tooth, pushing it this way and that, until it came free of the cement and packed dirt that had held it in place, probably for decades.
"What're you doing, Johnny?"
He shouldered the stone. "You're my lookout. Know what a lookout is, Long Island?"
"A lookout for what?"
"I'm gonna bust the fuckin' window at that burger joint. Come on."
We walked rapidly down the street, Johnny shifting the stone from hand to hand every few seconds. No one else was around.
"Do this right, Long Island," he warned. "Don't fuck up or we're both screwed."
I realized what he meant: jail for him, reform school for me. Reform school! Just like in the movies, where they shaved everybody's head and fed you gruel.
"Johnny - "
"Listen to me. When the coast is clear give me the signal and I throw this baby through the window." He tripped and dropped the stone. Cursing mildly, he picked it up. "Think you can handle that?" he asked jeeringly.
"No. I'm not gonna be your damn lookout."
"Figures."
"I want to bust a window, too."
Johnny stopped walking and put his free hand on my shoulder.
"There's two windows in front," I said coolly, having watched the workmen install them. "We can each bust one."
Johnny belched, faltered. "Then there's no lookout."
"We don't need one," I said, suddenly the aggressor. I grabbed his jacket lapel. "Come on, let's do it."
He laughed. "Long Island, I had you wrong. You got balls."
Moments later we were at the site. No street lights burned nearby but the moon was out and shone brightly. We could see each other's face and the doomed windows as well. The windows reflected the moon, forming giant glowing white eyes.
They were huge panes of glass, each four by four feet, each worth a fortune. We hid behind a hill of clay-filled soil.
"You need a rock," Johnny said. "A big rock, the fuckin' glass is this thick." He held thumb and forefinger an inch apart.
I hunted around and selected a baseball-sized stone. "Ready."
He stared at me, probably recalling the kid who'd been too timid to start his car weeks earlier. He heard something and put a finger to his lips.
"Shh!" We ducked our heads. A man walked up the block, a huge German shepherd pulling him along on a leash.
"I thought that was your grandfather," Johnny said.
Angie - he'd be wondering where I was! I was supposed to have gone right back into the house after throwing out the garbage.
We had a quick strategy session, deciding who would break which window. The main thing was to do it fast and run like hell to Johnny's backyard.
I was amazed at how unafraid I felt. It was an alien situation, for sure, but I was also living with aliens, in an alien neighborhood. Let them do as they pleased if they caught me. I wasn't even afraid of reform school anymore - could it be any worse than Shepherd Avenue? At least it would be a faster getaway than waiting to collect a hundred dollars a dime at a time.
We stood side by side, ten feet from the windows. "One," Johnny counted. "Two . . ."
I thought about my father, my dead mother, Vic not writing to me . . .
"Three!"
I shut my eyes and hurled the rock - I'd made sure I was pointed in the right direction before closing them. I opened them a split-second later, just in time to see the crash.
All that stickball practice had paid off - my throw was so hard and clean that it cut a baseball-shaped hole into the glass without shattering the rest of the window. I could see the black hole standing out in the middle of the rest of the window. Hairline cracks radiated from the hole like veins.
A heartbeat later Johnny's cobblestone hit pay dirt. He'd thrown it shot-put style, hopping toward the target before letting go.
His was a more dramatic hit than mine, shards of glass tinkling for what seemed like minutes after impact. Almost nothing remained in the frame. He yanked me by the back of my shirt.
"Christ Almighty, move it!"
We flew down the sidewalk and hopped the fence surrounding the Gallo backyard, not having bothered to open the gate.
"Jesus," Johnny kept saying. "Jesus Christ on the cross." We listened for police sirens; nothing. A dog barked, and that was all.
I pointed at Johnny's clay-smeared pants. "Your mother's gonna kill you."
He waved his hand, still too winded to talk. "Doesn't matter, I'll take 'em to the cleaner's in the morning, she'll never know. I only gotta wear these when somebody dies." He got his breath back all the way. "Long Island, you were great."
"Ah, I only made a little hole. You busted the whole thing."
He shook his head. "Doesn't matter," he said gleefully. "Fuckin' Ammiratti's still gotta get a whole new window, even if the hole's this big." He measured off the tip of his thumb with his forefinger.
I checked my own clothes for telltale dirt, but I was clean, having stalked the dirt hills like a cat. A strange depression overtook us.
"Eh, so he buys new glass," Johnny said. "That burger joint's still gonna go up, ya know."
"JOOO-EEEY!"
Angie's voice, calling from our driveway!
"I gotta go home," I said, but Johnny grabbed my wrist. He was barely drunk anymore, though he still reeked of his father's wine.
"Don't tell nobody about this," he warned.
I yanked myself free. "Whaddya think I am, stupid?" I ran off, not even saying good-bye. Angie saw me coming.
"Where were you? Your grandma's havin' a heart attack inside, worryin'."
"I was talkin' to Johnny."
"Tell us when you go visiting," he said, guiding me into the house with his hand at the small of my back. He shut the door behind us and I felt truly safe, believing I wouldn't get caught for what I'd done.
The next morning white-suited Frank Ammiratti stood in front of the wreckage and raged.
"He had it comin'," Connie said. It was as if she were commenting upon a battle that had taken place in a foreign country. Anything happening outside the walls of her house was treated this way.
"Yeah, somebody was bound to do something," Angie concluded, eyeing me. "He should have been smart enough to put the glass in last."
The next day I was startled to hear Connie murmur "Long Island" in the vestibule - had she heard Johnny call me by that nickname, and did she know what the two of us had done the night before?
No. She was just reading the return address of a letter addressed to me, from Mel.
"What do you know, the crazy one can write."
She g
ave me the letter as if it were something federal laws forced her to hand over, like cigarettes for prisoners. I accepted it without thanks.
"See how I didn't open it and read it first?" she said childishly. I blinked at her a few times before answering.
"You're not allowed to, Connie. It's mine. See?"
I pointed at the address, running my finger over it as if it were Braille. "See? That’s my name." I was saying it to myself as well as to her. She looked at me in astonishment, evidently trying to figure out how I'd burrowed my way into her home and what sort of pesticide or trap it would take to be rid of me. At last she just waved me off.
"Who wants to read kids' mail anyway?"
You do, I felt like saying, but instead I turned away from her and brought the letter to my cot. It was hot in the room without cross-ventilation from the hallway but I shut the door anyhow. I didn't want Connie wandering in, on the pretense of looking for laundry or something.
Mel had a wild, boyish handwriting only faintly tamed by Catholic nuns who had, according to her, tried to beat penmanship into her hand with yardstick smacks to the palm. The page was pink. I figured she had stolen it from her aunt, because it certainly wasn't a color she would have selected for herself.
Dear Joey,
Hi. It's worse here than it was in Brooklyn. No buddy plays stickball. I got no friends. My aunt has a yard but I'm not alowed to play in it. My uncle always puts ferdalizer on it, everything smells like shit. Can you come visit me? Maybe if you have any monney you could come. You could take a train. No buddy would have to drive you. We live near the stashun. Write me a letter and tell me if your comming. I'm not alowed to talk on the phone.
your friend
Mel DiGiovanna P.S. Another thing that stinks, there's no lemon ice here.
"No lemon ice," I murmured as I stuck the letter back into the envelope — that seemed to be the saddest part of the dismal communication. I went down to the cellar and hid the letter in my art supplies, which "no buddy" ever touched. Connie was upstairs vacuuming rugs we rarely walked on. I took off my T-shirt, laid it on my painting desk, and poured out my bottle savings. The cloth of my shirt muffed the noise of the falling coins. I was afraid Connie would hear the sound (even over the noise of her Hoover upright with the bag that puffed out as it operated) and hurry down to investigate. She had the ears of a bat when it came to foreign noises in the house. She was always the first to hear a leaky faucet. Only when she slept was she oblivious to sounds, usually.
The money came to less than nine dollars, the hauling of more than four hundred bottles to Nat. It was a pittance, I knew. Disgustedly I put the coins away, put my shirt on, and, using a sketching pencil, wrote on half a sheet of my drawing paper.
Dear Mel,
It's not worse there, it's worse here. I got no friends either but Zip showed me where you can take bottles for money. The guy gives you two cents apiece and a nickel for the big ones. When I save enough money I'll take a train to your aunt's house. I don't know when. I would of wrote before but Rosemary hit me when I asked for your address. I'll get even with her. Freddie died and I didn't even get to go to the wake.
your friend, foey Ambrosio
Was this all I had to say? Something was missing.
P.S. I'm not eating any lemon ice either. I'm saving all my money so I can see you.
Maybe that postscript would make her feel better, knowing I too was not cooling my tongue on the wonderful ice.
I needed a stamp and an envelope. I could have shaken out a few coins and bought them, but I decided to ask Connie instead, knowing every penny counted in my mission to accumulate a hundred bucks. Trying to steal was out of the question. I didn't even know where her money was.
She didn't stop vacuuming when she saw me, so I waited for her to finish. When she clicked the vacuum off, the engine took a long time to shut up, dying from a shriek to a low baritone whine as the bag sagged. At last there was silence.
"Pull the cord for me, it's hard for me to bend over."
I knelt, yanked, and handed her the warm pronged plug. "Can I have a stamp and an envelope please?"
She wound the cord around the machine's shaft. "Is that your drawing paper you wrote on?"
"Yeah."
"Hey. That's special paper, it costs a lot of money. Ask first when you want to write a letter, we got cheap paper for that."
Who in that house ever wrote to anyone? You were lucky if they talked to you. I just nodded obediently, though. I needed what I needed.
She fetched a stamp and an envelope. I waited by the vacuum cleaner like a customer, instead of going with her to get them.
"Thank you," I forced myself to say, and turned to go downstairs to address the thing.
"Hey," Connie called. I turned to face her. "Is the girl all right?"
"She's fine," I lied. It was all I would say. She didn't really care, I figured. It would just be something to share with Grace Rothstein over coffee and rolls.
"Leave the letter with me. Your grandpa will mail it next time he goes out."
"I want to mail it now."
"You don't trust us?"
"I just don't want to wait."
"A day extra, that's no difference. She ain't going anywhere."
"Connie. I'm mailing this today." I shook the letter at her. The stiff paper didn't even flap.
The pyramid of wrinkles that suddenly vanished from her forehead told me I'd gotten my way with her for the first time.
"The mailbox is all the way down by Atlantic Avenue. You be careful, mister."
I had to swallow my snickering laughter as I walked away. She’d have had a heart attack if she’d known how far from home I strayed every day to gather bottles sucked dry by dirty strangers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Angie slipped casually into complete retirement, declining offers for freelance plumbing jobs. He didn't want to go without Freddie.
He went days without shaving and drank loads of coffee. His beard came in pure white, though there was still some black hair on his scalp.
Suddenly he was around the house all the time - without Freddie, the racetrack didn't interest him, either. Connie had barely adjusted to having me around when suddenly there was another pain-in-the-ass male on the scene, observing her go about her daily routines with the curiosity of a schoolkid watching a lion tamer.
Once in a while he cried right in front of us, as if the realization that Freddie was gone jabbed him like a needle. His poor appetite alarmed Connie. When he used to go off to work in the morning she always fried him a big bacon-and-eggs feast, and while he ate it she assembled a lunch into his black tin pail in the order he ate it: sandwiches on top, a thermos of coffee, cake, and lastly fruit, to clean the teeth.
She packed that pail so carefully that nothing in it jiggled. Angie would finish breakfast, say "So long" and leave. Often "So long" were the first spoken words of the day in the house.
Now the first words were "What are you doing?"
He wanted to know everything that went on. Eight-thirty in the morning, and Connie was frying a hunk of chuck steak. "What are you doing?"
"It's for tonight's gravy."
"Gravy now? It's eight-thirty in the morning!"
"When'd you think I started cooking, five minutes before you got home?"
"No, but I didn't think you started an hour after I left. You have to start so early?"
She flipped the meat without answering. He rubbed his chin. "Where's the morning paper?"
"We don't get one."
"Why not?"
"We never did. What made you think we got a paper in the morning?"
He shrugged. "I just figured you read for a while after I left, or something."
"And that's what you thought I did all day while you were out, read the paper?"
"Ahh, nuts, who said all day? I just asked for the paper."
"So go buy one, you got a nickel."
He stifled a belch. "I live here all these years an
d I don't even know where you keep the salt."
Connie flipped the steak again. "Go shave," she said, figuring it'd at least give her five minutes of peace.
He never bugged me if I was downstairs painting, but if I was reading on my cot, he would come in and ask if the book was any good. It got trickier and trickier to sneak out with the bottle sack, but I never got caught.
My father finally sent a letter addressed to me alone; I was permitted to open it myself. He'd written that he was working in an apple orchard for a week or so, and would be leaving soon for another place - he wasn't sure where. The same impersonal bullshit that filled the letters he sent to "Dear Everybody."
But there were three worn dollar bills in the envelope, which I had Nat change into nickels and dimes. These I put in my money jar, the equivalent of a hundred and fifty two-cent bottles. I was only out hunting for them every third day or so, now. It just wasn't worth my while to prowl the streets daily for three or four lousy bottles.
My father had not said when he'd return. Whenever I felt bad about his absence I forced myself to think about the hidden jar in the cellar, its level of coins creeping slowly but surely toward the rim, piling up as steadily as snow on the North Pole.
Angie walked into the room scratching his crotch just as I finished reading it. "Letter?"
I nodded. "My father."
"I didn't see that one."
"He sent it to me."
"Oh. That mean we can't read it?"
"That's what it means," I said, immediately regretting my cruelty. "Angie, why doesn't he call here?"
His hand moved from his crotch to his belly, as if he were groping for a lost wallet. "Maybe he's afraid that if he hears your voice, he'll come back too soon."
He looked at the painting of my mother. "Elizabeth," he said softly, touching the glass. "You're a good artist. It looks just like her."
"How do you know?" I taunted. "When was the last time you saw her?"
Angie hesitated. "In the hospital, just before she died."
I sat up straight. "You visited her?"
"A few times, yeah." He seemed embarrassed. His eyes were wet but he'd been crying so much lately over Freddie Gallo that these may have been residual tears.
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