Return to Shepherd Avenue

by Charlie Carillo

  It was just now hitting him: He was selling his house! He started talking about moving to California to be near his children. Suddenly he was crying, and doing nothing to try and hide it.

  “You okay, Rico?”

  He nodded, wiped his eyes. “My poor wife always wanted to see California. She ran outta time.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “You got a wife?”

  “Never married.”

  “You gay?”

  “No. Just unlucky.”

  He walked me to the door, assuring me that the roof was sound, the boiler powerful, the walls solid, the plumbing first-rate.

  “I know all that,” I assured him. “My grandfather knew what he was doing.”

  It was beginning to dawn on me—207 Shepherd Avenue was all mine! Unless this was all a dream, or maybe Rico didn’t actually own the house . . . could that be? He’d answered the door, but had he shown me the deed?

  “You okay there, Joe?”

  “Yeah . . . we just made a deal here, didn’t we? I mean, we have to draw up the papers and all that, but you did just sell me your house, right?”

  “Hey, man, if you got half-a-million bucks, you got a house.” He crossed his heart, then held up a hand. “Scout’s honor . . . listen, you want a little free advice?”

  “Shoot.”

  Rico looked left and right before speaking, even though we were the only ones there. “Never tell a Puerto Rican how much cash you got, ‘cause he’s gonna know you got a little more.” A sly wink sealed this proclamation, which would have done me some real good about ten minutes earlier.

  “I’ll remember that, Rico.”

  I went out the front door and down the brick steps. Rico watched me go, then called for me to come back.

  Jesus, had he changed his mind about the house already? Was this slam-bam deal we’d made in less than an hour too good to be true? Reluctantly, I returned to the front door, where Rico stood jabbing his finger toward my face.

  “I know you, man,” he said. “Don’t I know you? Why the fuck do I know you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You famous?”

  “Well . . .”

  Suddenly it came to him, his eyes widening as he shook his finger at my face.

  “Holy shit, I got it!” he cried. “You’re the crazy guy on the bridge, right?”

  My stupid smile told him he was right.

  Yeah, that was me. The crazy guy on the bridge.

  Chapter Two

  It was too easy, and that’s pretty amazing, considering how little planning went into my admittedly crazy mission.

  It was a beautiful spring day, perfect for a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, something I’d done a dozen times before. I was wearing shorts, a black T-shirt and green Keds sneakers. The small backpack I shouldered had the silver canister in it, and nothing else.

  Nothing especially odd about a just-turned-sixty-year-old man crossing the bridge that way. I was dressed a little young for my years, maybe, but the city is full of characters, and I looked like just one more, walking from Manhattan to Brooklyn across that glorious span.

  Until I stopped just past the middle, hoisted myself onto one of the suspension cables and began climbing toward the tower at the end of it.

  “Hey, look at that guy!” I heard someone shout. I was moving fast, hand over hand in a crouching crawl, and whatever else that person had to say was blown away by the wind as I climbed higher and higher.

  A gate blocked the way about twenty feet up but I was able to climb around it, scraping my chest on one of the protective spikes in the process. After that, the path to the top was unobstructed.

  Car horns blared below, but I didn’t look down. I had no particular fear of heights, but I’m a clumsy man even on flat ground, and the last thing I needed was any kind of distraction.

  When the wind gusted I hugged the cable and waited for it to die down. The cable seemed to stretch straight into the clouds, but I knew that was an illusion. All I had to do was keep moving, and I would get there.

  Now a helicopter hovered overhead and I knew it was a news copter, recording live shots of the deranged bridge guy. Was I a jumper, or just a climber? They’d know soon enough.

  A hard voice of authority from behind—just the word “Hey!” I peeked back through the gap under my arm, like a jockey checking for rival horses, and saw four cops on the cable, inching their way toward me.

  The lead cop yelled again, but I couldn’t hear what he said. It might have been “Stop!” but I ignored him and kept going, suddenly aware that this cable I climbed was not a stationary thing. The higher I went the more it seemed to hum and sway with the wind, which is probably why it had stood strong for more than a century—give and take, give and take. It was like ascending something ancient and alive—the long neck of a Brontosaurus, maybe, and I had to reach the top before the creature turned his head and flicked me away . . .

  They say it took eleven minutes for me to reach the top. It was good to be off the cable, standing on the flat surface of that stone tower. It was caked with a thick white-brown crust that turned out to be pigeon dung, and I remembered what Neil Armstrong said as he walked on the moon: “The surface is fine and powdery . . .”

  I looked back at the cable, where the cops were making their way toward me, moving a lot more slowly than I had. Now the helicopter blades were loud as the craft hovered at eye level, capturing my every move, which so far was the removal of my backpack from my shoulders. I unzipped the bag and took out the canister.

  “Don’t do it!”

  I turned to look at the lead cop, ten feet below, who straddled the cable with his legs while imploring me with his hands. Blond curls peeked out from the sides of his helmet and his bulletproof vest looked snug on him. The other three cops took his cue and stopped moving.

  “Whatever that is,” the lead cop commanded, “put it down!”

  “It won’t take long!” I replied. I unscrewed the cap on the canister and the cops drew their guns. Time for a split-second decision from the lead guy, who held up a hand and shouted over his shoulder, “Hold your fire!”

  That was the break I needed to fling my father’s ashes as high and far as I could into a dancing wind. The cops ducked their heads. The ashes seemed to hover in the air, forming a powdery white ghost that swirled around my head before spreading far and wide over the waters of the East River.

  My father, Salvatore Ambrosio. A showman to the end.

  * * *

  I was suddenly exhausted. I thought about chucking the canister over the side, but I didn’t want to hurt anybody, and it was beginning to dawn on me that I was already in enough trouble. I screwed the lid back on and waited for justice.

  The lead cop was suddenly in my face, breathing hard. He had the gun trained at my nose, but he was calm. He was twice my size and half my age, one of those guys who looked like he lived at the gym.

  “Let’s have the can,” he said softly. I handed it over. He shook it to feel its emptiness. “What was in here?”

  “Ashes.”

  “What?”

  “My father’s ashes.”

  “You mean, his . . . remains?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not anthrax? Nothing toxic?”

  “Unless it was in my father’s body when they cremated him, no.”

  He turned to speak to the other cops, who had finally reached the top. One of them ordered me to get to my feet for a fast frisking while another plundered my backpack, finding nothing. The lead cop spoke into a shoulder microphone. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I knew it was something to the effect that I was crazy but harmless, and I had no poisons or weapons with me.

  “All right,” he said to his fellow cops, “I got this guy.”

  They were dismissed and headed back down the cable. The lead cop packed the canister into the backpack, zipped it up and shouldered it. We were face-to-face. He had bright blue eyes that bulged a little and a face as s
mooth as a baby’s. He was breathing hard, but I wasn’t. He took off his helmet, ran a hand through a head of lamb’s-wool curls and put the helmet back on.

  “You saying you came all the way up here to scatter your father’s ashes?”

  “Right.”

  “You realize you’ve broken the law.”

  “I figured I did, yeah.”

  “Anything else you planned on doing up here?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like jump?”

  I spread my hands. “Do I look crazy to you?”

  “You want my honest opinion, or the one the shrinks tell us to give you?”

  I laughed out loud. So did he. He put his hands on my shoulders with a touch that was surprisingly gentle.

  “Ready to go down?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you handle it?”

  I shrugged. “I have to do what I just did, only backwards.”

  He smiled. “You’re a fuckin’ genius. I’ll go first.”

  He straddled the cable and waited for me to do likewise, right in front of him. Hundreds of people jammed the walkway below, gazing upward. We inched our way down the cable.

  “What’s your name?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “Billy.”

  “I’m Joe.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Joe.”

  “Am I under arrest, Billy?”

  “You will be. For obvious reasons, I’m not cuffing you ‘til we get down.”

  “Billy, I just want to say I’m really sorry for putting you through this.”

  He chuckled. “Aaay, forget it. We can slow down if you want. I could use the overtime.”

  Chapter Three

  When I was ten years old my mother died and my father flipped out. He sold our house, quit his job as a copywriter at an ad agency and took off on a summer-long cross-country journey, but not before dropping me off at his parents’ house on Shepherd Avenue.

  It would have been the same if he’d dropped me off with strangers, because that’s what my Italian-American grandparents were to me. This was a completely different world from the gentle one I’d known in the leafy-green suburb of Roslyn, Long Island, and the transition wasn’t easy.

  Nothing accelerates maturity faster than a tough neighborhood. In that motherless summer of 1961 I learned how to fight and swear and survive. I became a vandal and a schemer. I even fell in love and had my heart broken.

  Through it all, I developed a shell that would prevent me from ever, ever trusting anyone completely. It’s a permanent thing, that shell, and it never cracks.

  Mine didn’t, anyway. And people have pounded on it pretty hard.

  By the time my father returned from his journey a lot of things had happened. His kid brother Victor, then eighteen years old, was a high school baseball star who was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates, failed to cut it in the minor leagues and took off on his own journey. And my grandfather, a plumber named Angie, died of a heart attack—he actually breathed his last while seated beside me on a Ferris wheel.

  Those are just some highlights from that adventure-packed summer. My grandmother, Connie, was worn out from it all. She was weary beyond her years, a lady with a heavy body and a failing heart that was never going to get any stronger, and when my father returned he realized that dumping me off in her care had taken a toll.

  He moved into the house on Shepherd Avenue—he had no place else to go!—but he didn’t get his old job back. Instead, he tended to the domestic chores around the house by day while pounding away on his manual typewriter at night. He had half-a-dozen marble-backed notebooks he’d filled with writings during his cross-country journey, and now he was tying them all together.

  Connie watched him work with a fishy eye. “What are you writing?”

  “A book, Mah.”

  “A book? All of a sudden you’re an author?”

  “I don’t know what I am anymore.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “The things I did to make money.”

  She made a snorting sound. “Who’s gonna read a book about that?”

  “Probably nobody.”

  “So why write it?”

  “Good question, Mah.”

  “Ain’t you gonna get a job?”

  “If I have to.” He gestured at his notebooks, splashed open all around him. “First, this. I still got a few bucks stashed.”

  He continued typing. She slapped him lightly on the back of his head, as she’d done to me so many times when I drove her to the limits of her patience.

  “A head like a rock,” she declared.

  “Got it from you,” he replied, his fingers never once breaking their rhythm as he continued working. It sounded like gunfire when he typed. He struck those keys as if they owed him money.

  I went to school at P.S. 108, which both my grandmother and my father had attended, while the two of them struggled to stay out of each other’s way in the house. At breakfast they were already on each other’s nerves. I was never so happy to get out of the house and go to school, even though I hated it.

  My grandmother was a sweet savage who’d never expected to outlive Angie. She was always mumbling vaguely about her “bad ticker,” and then her trim, muscular husband suddenly cut ahead of her on line to the cemetery.

  She wasn’t prepared for that. I think she felt there was something rude about it. In a bizarre way, my grandfather had stolen her thunder, but not for long. Connie was slowing down like a watch in need of winding, only who can wind a human being?

  One night my father and I came upon her sitting on the kitchen floor, dazed and confused, like a boxer who’d been caught by a sucker punch.

  “Mah! What happened?”

  She shook her head to clear it. “I’m tired, Sal.”

  “Let’s get you to bed.”

  “No, no, no . . .”

  We each took an elbow. “Up you go, Mah. Come on.”

  “Turn the flame down under my gravy . . .”

  Her breathing was shallow and she was as pale as the sheet against her cheek. I’d never seen her so vulnerable. My father was worried.

  “Mah, I’m calling the doctor.”

  “No, no, no, just let me rest . . .”

  She got her way: no doctor. But an hour later we heard a thud and found her facedown on the kitchen floor.

  “Gotta check on my gravy . . .”

  We bundled her up and took her to Brooklyn Hospital. It was the first time in her life that Connie had ever been to a hospital. She’d never had an operation or a checkup. She’d been born at home, and her sons were both born in the house on Shepherd Avenue. Not a doctor in sight.

  But the medical roulette wheel we all ride finally landed on Constanzia Ambrosio’s number.

  Her eyes were wide with fear as she was placed in a wheelchair and pushed through the doors of the emergency room to meet her destiny. They put her on a drip to rehydrate her, but the doctor told my father she was in severe heart failure and it was only a matter of time—she might not even last the night.

  My father held her hand. I would have held the other one but the drip needle was taped to the back of it and I didn’t want to hurt her.

  She jerked her chin toward the IV bag. “What’s this for?” Her false teeth weren’t in, so her words were mushy.

  “You’re dehydrated, Mah.”

  “Yeah? They can’t just give me a drink of water?”

  My father chuckled, but I think he was disguising a sob. “Jesus, Mah, you’re too much.”

  She turned to me. “Joseph.”

  She’d never said my name so gently. I took a step toward her, and she inhaled deeply.

  “You’re a good boy,” she breathed.

  I was stunned. It was the first time she’d ever offered an opinion about me. I also knew it was the kind of thing she never would have said, had she expected to live to see another sunrise.

  Which she didn’t. I left the room to go to the bathroom and by the time I got back, Conn
ie was dead. Weeks would pass before my father would tell me her final words, issued in an angry growl as she clenched his hand:

  “I don’t want to die!”

  Remarkable words from someone who’d never seemed especially happy about being alive. But I was wrong about that. She grumbled all the way, but nobody loved life more than Constanzia Ambrosio.

  * * *

  Just before Thanksgiving my father delivered his manuscript to a literary agent in Manhattan. The Monday after Thanksgiving the agent called him, begging for exclusivity.

  The book was all about the advertising business. My father called it Creating Envy, because that’s what he said he did for a living: Make people jealous of each other.

  It was a sensation when it was published in the spring of 1962. My father caught one of those cultural waves in which people are eager for the truth, or think they are. He told all about the campaigns he’d worked on, the truths they’d stretched, the clever thinking that went into ads designed to—what else?—make people buy things they probably didn’t need.

  Nobody had ever written such a book, and of course my father was burning his bridges on Madison Avenue, but Creating Envy made so much money that he’d never have to hack the nine-to-five routine again.

  That was the good news. It was also the bad news, because it meant that Salvatore Ambrosio was not tied down anywhere. The house on Shepherd Avenue was sold, and we were off—around the world. Literally.

  Until I turned eighteen, we never lived in any one place longer than six months. On my eighteenth birthday I announced that New York City was going to be my permanent home, that I was through living out of suitcases.

  I thought that would upset my father. Instead, he seemed relieved, as if he’d just set down a heavy piece of luggage. Now he could follow his restless impulses a lot more easily. We happened to be living in the city at the time, in a two-bedroom apartment on Charles Street in Greenwich Village my father had bought for cold cash.

  “Okay,” he said. “Fair enough. You stay here. You okay on your own? What about college?”

  “I have other plans.”

  He sighed. My student records from a dozen schools, American and international, were a hopeless mess. He was in no position to lecture me about my future.