Return to Shepherd Avenue

by Charlie Carillo

  “Stop complaining. It’s penthouse B. The doorman’ll expect you.”

  A doorman and a penthouse. Looked like my old friend had done all right for herself.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was a tall white building in the high seventies on Central Park West, like a giant wedding cake with windows. Freshly showered and shaved, I carried a bottle of good white wine and a cone of small red roses as I entered the immaculate lobby.

  It had a black marble floor that undoubtedly got buffed every day, and a doorman with gold braid on his cap and on his shoulders. He called Mel’s apartment on the intercom phone, then smiled and spoke those three words everyone who visits a building like this dreams of hearing:

  “Go right up.”

  A quick elevator ride to the penthouse floor, thirty-four stories up—my ears actually popped, and when the doors opened she stood at the end of the hall in a simple black dress and high heels.

  And her hands were on her hips just like in the old days, whenever she was bracing for a confrontation. On trembling legs I walked right up to Mel, and despite her high heels I towered over her.

  “The ultimate tomboy in heels and a dress,” I said. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Joey.” She raised her hands to my face and held my cheeks, as if to make sure I wasn’t an illusion. “I can’t believe it’s you!”

  “Hey, didn’t you used to be taller than me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I can’t believe I was ever afraid of a shrimp like you.”

  She cackled, threw herself in my arms and hugged me with the kind of strength women get from obsessive gym workouts.

  “I’m little, but I can still beat you up!”

  “Don’t I know it!” I laughed and the ice, if ever there had been any, was broken.

  * * *

  Dinner on her roof terrace, overlooking Central Park: Cornish game hens, wild rice, and the best arugula and tomato salad I’d ever tasted, cooked and served by a skinny young man with a shaved head and a white smock who grinned like crazy but never spoke a word.

  Mel ate with real gusto, explaining that between treadmill running and something called “soul cycling” she could eat whatever she liked without gaining weight.

  Her life since Shepherd Avenue brought new meaning to the word turbulent. The last I’d known, she’d been shunted out to relatives in Tucson, Arizona. Turns out she made life so miserable for those sunbaked cousins that she was bounced right back to her Long Island relatives within a few months.

  But that didn’t bring peace. She ran away from home four times by the time she was seventeen, and on her eighteenth birthday she quit school and headed for San Francisco on money she’d saved working at McDonald’s.

  In San Francisco she knocked around from job to job, eventually becoming a waitress at a fish restaurant. The owner of the restaurant, ten years older than Mel, fell in love with her. They married when she was twenty, and with Mel’s encouragement—or “nagging,” she admitted with a giggle—her husband eventually expanded the business to ten restaurants on the West Coast.

  They were rich. They had three children and four grandchildren before the husband dropped dead of a heart attack last year, in the bedroom of his latest girlfriend.

  “So,” said Mel, coming up for air, “I said to myself, What the hell, I’m goin’ back to New York. Always wanted to live in Manhattan, so I sold the restaurants and bought this place.”

  Three bedrooms (for when her kids and grandkids came to visit), a sunken living room and drop-dead views of the city. I gestured toward the park, golden-green in the early-evening sunlight.

  “Not bad for your first New York apartment.”

  “Yeah, until I find something better.”

  I hesitated before asking, “Your husband died with his girlfriend?”

  “Oh yeah. He came and he went.” She toasted the sky with her wineglass.

  “You don’t seem too upset.”

  “I was upset after the funeral, when his girlfriend tried to claim their little love nest belonged to her. I straightened her out, don’t worry about that.”

  She smiled, and her eyes flashed with the same fury I remembered when I’d strike her out playing stickball. In those days she had fast hands, and I’d never even see the punch to my stomach coming.

  “What’d you do?” I dared to ask. “Beat her up?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Jesus, Mel!”

  We both laughed. Then she shrugged and said, “Hey, he wasn’t a bad guy, my Mario, but we kinda drifted apart. That’ll happen after forty years together. Only guy who ever asked me to marry him.”

  “Not true, Mel. I asked you.”

  “No, you didn’t. I’m the one who told you we were gonna get married someday, Joey.”

  I laughed, remembering. “That’s right. You always called the shots.”

  “I was older than you.”

  “Still are.”

  “Screw you for reminding me. Sixty-one. Christ. Ever heard of this dating website, Golden Years?”

  “I don’t do that stuff.”

  “Oh no? Got a girlfriend?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Lucky you. I just joined this website. Jesus, the losers I’m meeting! Always fatter and balder than the pictures they put up. Not that I’m any prize.”

  We fell silent. How strange this was! We’d lived a vivid few months together as children before being torn apart, and now here we were, suddenly reuniting as graying geezers.

  It was like being in a weird play where nobody knew their lines. We’d shared an overture and were now sharing a finale, with no acts in between. What might those acts have been like if we’d been together through adolescence and young adulthood? We’d never know, and there was no point in wondering. Too Late might as well have been tattooed across our foreheads.

  Maybe that’s why there was no sexual tension between us. We were like two old soldiers, sharing war stories from the battles we’d lived through, and then I remembered one major battle she’d missed.

  I leaned close and patted the back of her hand. “Hey. Bet you didn’t know I tried running away from Shepherd Avenue to be with you.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you shitting me?”

  I told her all about the money I’d saved collecting deposit bottles, and how I had a map of the United States so I could find Arizona, and how I’d sneaked out in the dead of night but tripped and fell running for the elevated subway, with my grandmother in hot pursuit. Mel was blown away.

  “Holy shit! That’s, like, the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!”

  “Imagine if by some miracle I’d made it?”

  She exhaled, long and hard. “Yeah, imagine.”

  I didn’t think mosquitoes could fly that high, but they could, so to avoid being bitten we moved inside, where Mel showed me pictures of her children and grandchildren, living all over the country. I had no pictures of my daughter.

  “I take it you’re divorced.”

  “I don’t believe in divorce, Mel, which is why I never married.”

  “Joey, you’re such a knucklehead.”

  Then I told her all about my Brooklyn Bridge fiasco, which she never knew about, because she never read the papers or watched the news. Mel shook her head in wonder over my mad deed, and was astonished by my career as a children’s-book author.

  “Christ! You must really have talent. I remember those pictures you used to paint.”

  “That was the start. My father’s old art supplies. Connie gave ‘em to me.”

  “Well, she was bound to do one good thing, wasn’t she?”

  “Ahh, she wasn’t so bad.”

  “Loyalty. I like that in a man.”

  Mel poured wine from the bottle I’d brought. “You haven’t mentioned my nose.”

  “That’s because it isn’t there anymore.”

  She chuckled. “Was that a king-sized honker, or what?”

  “It had
character.”

  “I passed it on to one of my sons and two of my grandchildren. Genes, huh? There’s no stopping ‘em! Your face is the same, Joey. Few lines, that’s all. Same big, sad eyes.”

  “The Ambrosios have the sadness gene. Dominant on both sides.”

  “Wiseass . . . ever wonder whatever happened to that priest who caught us in the garage?”

  “Deacon Sullivan.”

  “That’s the guy!”

  “Died of AIDS, about twenty years ago.”

  “No kiddin’? Can’t say I’m too surprised. He had tendencies, you know? My oldest grandson, sixteen years old, he’s headin’ that way. Loves his show tunes . . . hey, it’s no big deal being gay anymore, right? They’re everywhere. I’m thinkin’ it’s the hormones they inject in the cattle these days. Boy eats a hamburger, next thing you know, he’s tap-dancin’ on a tabletop, singing ‘What I Did for Love.’ What’s so funny?”

  I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe. “Mel,” I said when the fit passed, “it’s been wonderful seeing you, and I haven’t laughed like that in years, but I do have something shocking to tell you.”

  “Oh really? More shocking than climbing the Brooklyn Bridge to scatter your father’s ashes?”

  Suddenly the grinning servant was in front of us, serving coffee and cake before vanishing silently on slippered feet. Mel rolled her eyes at the intrusion.

  “I gotta put a bell on him,” Mel said when he was gone. “He’s great, but I can never hear him comin’. He just appears. Come on, Joey what’s so damn shocking?”

  I sipped coffee and leaned close to her. “I bought my grandparents’ old house on Shepherd Avenue, and that’s where I live now.”

  Silence. Her smile collapsed and her face darkened, as if a shadow had fallen across it.

  “You do not!” she cried.

  “I do too!”

  What were we, kids again?

  “Joey, pardon my mouth, but that is a bullshit thing to say.”

  “It isn’t.” I held up my right hand, like a witness being sworn in. “It’s the truth. I’m living on Shepherd Avenue again.”

  “Why would you do a crazy thing like that?”

  An unanswerable question, so I ignored it.

  “I’m fixing it up real nice, and when it’s done I’m hoping you’ll come over for dinner.”

  She ignored her coffee and poured herself another glass of wine. “Is your rooftop strong?”

  I was puzzled. “What do you mean, strong?”

  “Strong enough for a helicopter to land on it? Because that’s the only safe way to get to that neighborhood, Joey.”

  “Come on! It’s not that bad.”

  Mel made a snorting sound. “It was getting bad when I left, and that’s a long time ago! Don’t tell me East New York is becoming gentrified!”

  “Maybe not, but I’m sleeping better than I have in years.”

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  “Aren’t you curious, Mel? A big part of our lives happened on Shepherd Avenue. I had dreams about it for fifty years.”

  “You mean nightmares, don’t you?”

  “Please come.”

  Her hand trembled as she lifted her wineglass to her lips.

  “I gotta think about it, Joey. I really do.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder to indicate the past. “That part of my life . . .” She actually shivered, though the night was far from chilly. “Not sure I want to stroll down that memory lane.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “We’ll see. We’ll see.”

  She spoke those words in a cold, flat voice. This was the Mel I knew: tough and stubborn, a true survivor. I was never going to talk her into coming to Shepherd Avenue. She’d do it or she wouldn’t, and that was that.

  It was getting late. I told her I had to get going, rose to my feet and gave her a hug.

  “Great seeing you, Mel. I’ll call you when the house is done.”

  “Yeah, you do that.”

  We linked elbows as she walked me to the elevator. She needed to lean on me. My shocking news had sapped her strength.

  “Hey,” she said softly, “do you remember how we wrote each other those letters after they took me away from Shepherd Avenue?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Wish to God I’d saved those letters.”

  “Me too.”

  “How come we always save shit, and lose the good stuff?”

  “Great question.”

  She kissed my cheek, embraced me one more time.

  “Joey. That time you ran away to be with me . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well . . . I wish you hadn’t tripped.”

  She blinked back tears, and then the elevator arrived and I was plummeting back to Planet Earth, thirty-four stories below, trying to blink back my own tears so the doorman wouldn’t see them on my way out.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was past ten when I got back to Shepherd Avenue, and moments after I was in the house there was a knock on my door.

  It could only be one person, and that’s who it was.

  “Hurry up and let me in!” Rose hissed when I opened the door, and as she brushed past me to get inside she stopped and sniffed at me the way a dog might.

  “Perfume? Is that perfume I’m smellin’?”

  I hadn’t even noticed it. Mel must have been wearing perfume, which rubbed off when she hugged me.

  “I guess it is.”

  “You had a date?”

  “I was visiting an old friend.”

  “A woman.”

  “A woman I hadn’t seen in fifty years. She used to live on this block.”

  “You got all dressed up for her, huh?”

  “Rose, nothing happened.”

  “Hey, I don’t give a shit what you do.”

  “I didn’t do anything but catch up with an old friend. Come on, let’s go to the kitchen.”

  I tried to guide her by the elbow, but she yanked it away from me. So I walked to the kitchen alone, praying she would follow, which she did, sulking all the way.

  We sat at the table. I got us a couple of beers, and after the first sip Rose took a deep breath and suddenly made a scrunched-up face.

  “Man, what’s that smell?”

  “I sanded down the parlor floor today. That’s the varnish, probably still drying.”

  “Whoo! What a stink! I like the perfume better.”

  “You going to break my balls about that? I told you the truth. I went to see an old friend. She was eleven the last time I saw her.”

  “Yeah? How’s she look now?”

  “Old, like me.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Hey. Give me a break here, Rose. For all I knew, you were never coming back. Justin left three days ago, and I haven’t seen you in three days.”

  She finished her beer, setting the bottle down gently on the table.

  “I been cryin’ for three days, missin’ my boy,” she said in a broken voice, and then those fresh tears flowing down her cheeks made it a fourth straight day of crying, and all I could do was hold her until it was time to go to bed.

  Which we did together, but once again she fled into the night, saying, “I’ll see you soon, Jo-Jo,” refusing as always to stay until morning, even though her beloved son was playing baseball 2400 miles away, and even though he knew all about us and was cool with it.

  I wanted to tell her that, but I’d promised Justin I wouldn’t. When a man gives his word as seldom as I do, he likes to keep it.

  And if she’d stayed until morning she would have seen an amazing sight outside my bedroom window, which made me cry out with joy.

  Project Chicken Coop was complete.

  * * *

  Eddie Everything was proud of himself. “Came back last night and worked until nine o’clock,” he said. “Good thing I had a flashlight.”

  “Eddie, it looks great.”

  It was true. A four-foot chicken-wire fence surrounded the backyard, an
d the coop itself was simple but functional, with a slanted rain roof and a series of perches for the birds.

  Eddie had scattered a layer of straw across its floor, assuring me the birds would make their own nests.

  “How about the birds?” I dared to ask. “Any time soon?”

  He clapped a hand on my shoulder and winked dramatically.

  “I’m gettin’ ‘em tonight, after dark. And you gotta come with me.”

  “What for?”

  “Need a lookout, my friend, and that’s you.”

  “Eddie. Is this a dangerous mission?”

  “No! Not at all.” He laughed, his big white lima-bean teeth shining in the morning sun. “Unless we fuck up,” he added.

  He told me he’d be back that night and that I should wear dark clothing, which was lucky, because I didn’t have any other kind.

  In the midst of all this excitement I nearly forgot my appointment with Dr. Rosensohn. Luckily the elevated train to Manhattan arrived as soon as I reached the platform, and I got to his office right on time.

  The last thing I needed on my record was a parole violation, especially just before the great chicken caper.

  * * *

  It started off as a fairly sedate session. I filled him in on my Internet searches for Johnny Gallo and Mel DiGiovanna, and the visits that followed.

  He ventured a smile. “What made you do such a thing?”

  “I’d say I’m just catching up with old friends from Shepherd Avenue.”

  “How’s that working out?”

  “Do you know Raymond Chandler, the mystery writer?”

  “One of my favorites.”

  “Chandler said, ‘The swans of our childhood were probably just pigeons.’”

  He chuckled in appreciation. “What does that mean to you?”

  “It means: Be prepared to be shocked when you see someone you haven’t seen in half a century. Especially an old girlfriend.”

  His eyebrows rose. “This Mel person was your girlfriend?”

  I rolled my eyes. I didn’t feel like going into the whole business of us getting caught playing doctor, so I shrugged and said, “I was ten, she was eleven. She moved away from Shepherd Avenue, and I never saw her again until yesterday.”

  Rosensohn was wearing his “hmm” expression. “Living in the past is always risky, Mr. Ambrosio.”