Return to Shepherd Avenue

by Charlie Carillo

  * * *

  I broke my lease, rented a moving van and packed up everything I had from my latest Manhattan apartment on West Fifty-Seventh Street. It wasn’t much: a bed, a couch, a kitchen table and chairs, pots and pans, a few lamps, my clothing and my books. Some people who live alone save everything. Others keep it light, treating a home like a lifeboat that could sink under the weight of too much stuff. I’m a lifeboat guy.

  My father’s apartment was practically barren. He’d basically used it as a crash pad between his adventures, the last of which took his life.

  He always called me to have breakfast with him at the Bus Stop Café in the Village before he took off anywhere, and his final trip was no exception. His canvas bags were packed and at his sides like a pair of faithful hounds while he ate his omelet, jiggling his foot throughout the meal.

  “Why the Amazon, Dad?”

  “Why not? Never been to a real jungle. Think I’ll need a machete to hack my way through?”

  “I’m sure they’ll provide you with one.”

  He finished his omelet and refused my help to carry his bags out to Hudson Street, where he hailed a cab to JFK.

  “Water my plants,” he said as he hugged me good-bye, and that was the last I saw of him, an eighty-two-year-old man in what appeared to be perfect health, eager to swing a machete on his way to whatever it was he was after.

  That bit about watering his plants was an old joke. He never had any plants. Too big a commitment.

  The new owners of his apartment wanted some of his furniture, and I gave the rest of it to a charity shop on West Tenth Street.

  My last link to the island of Manhattan was officially broken.

  * * *

  When I got to Shepherd Avenue I was lucky to get a parking space right in front of the house. I climbed those steps and rang the bell.

  A weary-looking Rico let me in. How different it looked empty! Most of Rico’s stuff had been shipped to the West Coast. He would be leaving for the airport in a matter of minutes, as soon as he handed over the keys. This he did with great solemnity, as if enacting a sacramental rite in a church.

  “These are for the front door . . . the back door . . . the garage . . .” His voice echoed off the bare kitchen walls and his eyes were wet. I don’t think he liked the house, but its history was in his bloodstream, as it was in mine, and now he was saying good-bye.

  “How are you getting to the airport, Rico?”

  “Eddie Everything’s taking me.”

  “Who?”

  “Cuban guy, lives down the block. We call him Eddie Everything, ‘cause that’s what he does. Little bit o’ everything. Good guy for you to know, Joe.”

  As if on cue the doorbell rang and a lean fortysomething man with wild eyes, bushy hair and a graying goatee let himself in. His denim overalls hung on his lean frame like laundry on the line.

  “Rang the bell, then I saw that the door was open so I came in,” he said. He shook my dry hand with his damp one. Something about him made you think he was being pursued, but he was friendly enough for a fugitive.

  “Eddie Martinez, at your service. You movin’ in? That your van outside?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m early. You need help unloading? Twenty bucks.”

  Rico laughed, then I laughed. As a matter of fact, I did need a hand unloading, and with Eddie Everything’s help all my stuff was piled up in the kitchen in a matter of minutes. I gave him a twenty and he gave me his card, which contained his name, the handwritten words I CAN DO IT and a cell phone number. Then he clapped Rico on the back. “All right, my man, let’s get you to the airport.”

  Would Rico and I hug each other as we said good-bye? No. It didn’t come to that. Instead, we stood face-to-face and gripped each other’s forearms, like an outgoing mayor welcoming an incoming one to the leadership of a troubled city.

  “Good luck, Joe,” he said, leaving the words you’re gonna need it unsaid but fully understood. Then Eddie picked up Rico’s bags. They went out the door to a rattletrap blue station wagon parked behind my van, loaded the bags in the back, got in and drove away without a backward glance or a wave.

  207 Shepherd Avenue was all mine.

  Chapter Six

  Like a giddy child I walked the rooms, my footsteps loud on the creaky wooden floors. The floors had been swept but the windows needed washing and everything cried out for a coat of fresh paint.

  I went upstairs to check out the apartment Rico had urged me to rent out. Back in 1961 a lonely old bachelor named Agosto Palmieri had lived in these upper rooms, paying what was certainly a pittance in rent to my grandfather. I remembered his opera records and his big, sad eyes, which always seemed to be brimming with tears. When my father and Vic sold the house after my grandmother’s death they agreed to give the buyer a break if he’d let Agosto stay on at the same rent for as long as he wanted, which turned out to be around six months. The old man died up there, and the only reason anyone found out was because the downstairs people were being driven crazy by his scratchy Enrico Caruso record, which kept skipping endlessly.

  It was a nice apartment, and it actually got a lot more light than the downstairs. The kitchen seemed to be in pretty good shape, as did the bathroom, and I checked all the ceilings—no leaks.

  The walls were a dreary faded green. Like the downstairs, it all needed a good coat of paint. I set up my bed in my old room overlooking the cemented-over backyard, even though it was smaller than the other bedrooms. I stretched out on the bed, stared at the ceiling. I fought an urge to cry, then an urge to laugh. What the fuck had I gone and done? Then I remembered something. I went to the window, got down on my knees and looked up at the overhang of the windowsill.

  And there it was, printed in faded but bold blue letters on the bare wooden underside that had never tasted paint: JOEY WAS HERE. Oh yes. And now, he was back. I flopped on the bed as if I’d been cold-cocked from behind and slept for ten hours.

  * * *

  Like a man possessed, I got to work fixing up the house. Number one on my list was a paint job, top to bottom. I hired Eddie Everything to drive me to the nearest Home Depot to load up on supplies. He couldn’t believe my choice of color. “Whoa, whoa, bro. White paint, for everything?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You gonna have to go two, maybe three coats in the bedrooms.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  We loaded up on paint, rollers, brushes and drop cloths. On the ride back Eddie tried to get in on the job.

  “Lotta work.”

  “I’ve got the time to do it.”

  “You want me to help, just say so.”

  “I got another job for you, Eddie. I want you to remove the bars from my windows.”

  We were on Atlantic Avenue by this time, just a few blocks from home. Eddie pulled over to the side and braked the car. “Hey, Mr. A. That ain’t such a good idea.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Yeah, man, I can do it, but you’re gonna be sorry.” He put his hand over his heart. “You understand, I’m losin’ money with this advice I’m givin’ you, but hey, money ain’t everything.”

  “I’m deeply moved, Eddie, but I can’t stand looking out through those bars. Makes me feel like I’m in prison.”

  Eddie chuckled. “The people you gonna get tryin’ to come in through those windows, they belong in prison.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Can you do the job, without damaging anything?”

  Eddie chuckled knowingly, a craftsman having patience with a knucklehead. “Gotta break the cement when I pull out the bars. I’ll do a good patch job, don’t worry.”

  “All right, Eddie, you’re hired.”

  “You sure you wanna do this?”

  “Absolutely. Think how much easier it’ll be to wash those windows with the bars gone.”

  He put the car in gear. “I’m workin’ for a crazy man,” he muttered to the windshield as we rolled along.

  When I got home I called T
aylor’s cell phone. She answered with a cheery hello, which told me she did not have caller ID.

  “Taylor, it’s . . . your father.”

  Maybe I was exaggerating by calling myself her father, but what else was I?

  A long, chilly silence. She’d refused to take the name Ambrosio, but she was one of us, all right, with an ability to nurse a grudge into the next millennium. In a left-handed way I was proud of her for the way she was making me grovel.

  “I moved to Brooklyn,” I continued. “Thought you should know, in case you were looking for me.”

  She chuckled, or maybe it was a snorting sound. Looking for me? That’s the last thing she’d ever be doing!

  “I’m surprised you’re not banned from Brooklyn,” she replied at last.

  “Huh? Oh, you mean because of the Brooklyn Bridge thing!”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry about your father. Hell of a way to find out my grandfather was dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Taylor.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not like I really knew him.”

  “Well, I kind of flipped when he died.”

  “Evidently.”

  “But I’m okay now.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Would it have killed her to say, “Glad to hear it, Dad?“ She never called me “Dad,” or “Pop,” or even “Joe.” I would have settled for “shithead.” She never called me anything. She just gave minimal answers to any questions I had, as if she were on the witness stand going toe-to-toe with a prosecutor bent on tripping her up.

  I struggled to keep the conversation, such as it was, alive.

  “How are you, Taylor?”

  “Fine.”

  “Care to add a detail or two to that reply?”

  “Look, I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “I’m sorry. Could we meet for coffee? I could come to you, if you don’t feel like going to Brooklyn.”

  “I’ve got your number. I’ll call you.”

  “All right. The sooner the better. Thanks, Taylor,” I said, but I’m pretty sure she hung up before I thanked her.

  * * *

  I started work on the upstairs apartment, intending to paint my way down to the basement. There was no rush. I had no deadlines to meet, no new book in the works. I spent a lot of time on the prep work, sanding the woodwork and patching the walls. The radio was good company—WCBS FM, playin’ all the oldies. There were no ties to cut, either. I had no close friends and I hadn’t bothered with a girlfriend for more than a year. I could do whatever I wanted with my time. The only obligations I faced were my meetings with the shrink—every other Wednesday, two p.m., at his office on West Seventy-First Street.

  I decided to be punctual about that. I was actually early for our first appointment, twelve days after I’d climbed to the top of the bridge.

  It was a small office, cluttered with books and a plant with dusty leaves. The lone window looked out on a sooty brick wall. Dr. Rosensohn gave me a friendly greeting but again, he didn’t offer to shake my hand. He sat at his desk and I sat across from him in the room’s only other chair.

  “So,” he began, “what’s new?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Did you enjoy being in the headlines?”

  “I could have done without it.”

  “Bet you sold some books, though.”

  “A few.”

  An ambulance wailed, not far away. We were both New York enough to ignore it. Rosensohn folded his hands on the desk.

  “What have you been up to since we last met?”

  “I bought a house.”

  He chuckled. “I ask you what’s new, you say nothing much. I’d say buying a house qualifies as much!”

  “Guess you’re right.”

  “So tell me about this house.”

  “It’s in Brooklyn. The East New York section.”

  Rosensohn’s eyes widened and he let out a long, low whistle. “Not the safest neighborhood in the world.”

  “You know it?”

  “Lived there when I was a baby, until my parents moved to Manhattan. Fled, actually. I take it the neighborhood is still . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to come up with an adjective, so I helped him.

  “Dangerous?”

  “Well, for want of a better word . . . may I ask why you moved there?”

  I told him all about the summer of ‘61, and the way I’d ridden out to Shepherd Avenue on that crazy impulse for the first time in half a century and banged on the door and offered to buy the house from a stranger, and how my crazy plan had actually worked.

  “So I figure it was meant to be,” I concluded.

  All Rosensohn could do was stare at me. At last he said, “Believing in fate is tricky. Sometimes things happen for no reason.”

  “What are you saying here, Doc?”

  He unfolded his hands and blew out his cheeks with a long sigh. “I’ll be straight with you. I didn’t believe you when you told me you didn’t have suicidal impulses, up on that bridge.”

  “Really.”

  “So now, you come to me and tell me you’ve bought a house where you’re bound to be the only white person on the block . . . do you see where I’m going, here?”

  “Spell it out for me and don’t spare my feelings.”

  This was awkward for him. He was Jewish, certainly raised to be a Democrat with liberal leanings, and he didn’t like saying what he had to say. So he leaned forward and all but whispered, “Moving to a dangerous neighborhood could be viewed as a kind of a gaslight suicide attempt. You don’t do it by your own hand, but you get yourself killed, which is the objective.” He hesitated before asking, “Is that your objective?”

  I couldn’t help laughing out loud. “Doc, you’re so far off, it isn’t funny.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  That pretty much did it for our first session, and I think he believed me. However, I did not tell him about hiring Eddie Everything to remove the safety bars from my windows.

  Didn’t want him to think I was nuts.

  Chapter Seven

  On Shepherd Avenue people didn’t greet a new neighbor with casseroles and cakes, especially one who appeared to be insane enough to take the protective bars off his windows.

  I had my morning coffee by those windows and watched people go past on their way to the elevated train, some dressed for office jobs, some in jeans and construction shoes with protective helmets and lunch pails in their hands. Working people, just trying to get by.

  But it seemed that everybody who passed my house took a moment to stare at the windows, and the newly patched holes where the bars had been.

  Eddie Everything also removed the bars from the basement windows. He did a good job and I paid him fifty bucks on top of the price he’d quoted. I knew I was going to need him for more work and wanted to keep him sweet.

  I told him to take the bars and keep whatever he could get for the scrap metal, but he refused, instead stashing them in my garage.

  “You’ll pay me again when you beg me to put ‘em back,” he said with a smile.

  “Are the neighbors making fun of me, Eddie?”

  He waved away my question. “Man, they got problems o’ their own. You can paint your house pink and let an elephant shit on your front porch, and they won’t give a fuck.”

  * * *

  The paint job was working muscles I hadn’t used in years. My arms and back were sore and I fell asleep at night as if I’d been drugged, to the hum of traffic on Atlantic Avenue and the inevitable wailing of police and ambulance sirens.

  I’d been a runner for most of my life, two or three miles a day, and intended to keep up the tradition in East New York. I had a lot of manual labor ahead of me and needed to stay strong, or so I convinced myself.

  Highland Park was nearby, a beautiful oasis of more than a hundred acres of trees and fields on the Brooklyn-Queens border, and that’s where I headed for my daily runs. I forced my body to take a lap or t
wo around its obsolete reservoir before heading back to Shepherd Avenue and the day’s work.

  Things were working out. The house was shaping up and I was dropping a few pounds I didn’t need, which was nice.

  And in the midst of all this I met my first Shepherd Avenue neighbor, not counting Eddie Everything.

  It happened when I was taking a pre-run stretch, about a week after moving in. I stood facing my front stoop and put my right foot on the top step before easing my chin to my knee to get the muscles stretched. I shut my eyes as I did this, and when I opened them he was standing next to me as if we’d had an appointment to meet.

  A tall, coffee-colored kid in athletic shorts and a T-shirt, gently shifting his weight from foot to foot. Bulging biceps and thighs, and a muscular neck leading to a clean-shaven head. If an oak tree could suddenly morph into a human being, it would have looked like this guy.

  The greenest eyes I’d ever seen regarded me calmly from a smooth brown face.

  “Seen you runnin’ in the morning,” he said softly. This could have been an observation or an accusation. He put his hands behind his back, as if to show he meant no harm.

  I hesitated. “Yeah,” I finally said, “I run in the morning.”

  “How far?”

  “Coupla miles.”

  He nodded. “Okay if I join you?”

  I noticed his feet. They were clad in a good pair of brand-new Nike running shoes, not the basketball sneakers I’d stereotypically expected him to be wearing.

  I liked to run alone. It was the one precious part of my day when nobody could bother me.

  But I was the new guy on the block, and the last thing I needed was to develop a rep as the snobby white guy.

  “You stretched yet?” I asked. He nodded. “So let’s go.”

  I let the kid set the pace—long, loping, silent steps. He was like a big cat, ridiculously strong and fit. I was going to have to work hard to keep up with him.

  Up Shepherd Avenue we trotted, in the middle of the street. The elevated train rumbled over our heads as we made our way toward Highland Park. We were like two strangers in the prison yard, checking each other out with our peripheral visions.