Return to Shepherd Avenue

by Charlie Carillo

  Vic stared at the chickens, as if he were in a trance. Then he turned to me and said, “Remember when my mother killed all your birds?”

  My back stiffened. “That won’t happen this time.”

  I joined Vic at the window. We both watched the chickens strut and preen. It was an oddly calming sight.

  “Funny, ain’t it, Joey?”

  “What’s that?”

  “How much more peaceful your life becomes when the people you really love are gone. In this family, anyway.”

  I did not disagree.

  We left the bedroom and headed for the steps down to the basement. “Got a woman, huh?” Vic casually asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Someone left a silver bracelet on your windowsill. You don’t wear bracelets, do you?”

  Rose sometimes forgot her silver Tiffany bracelet, which Justin had given her after he signed with the Mariners. I felt myself blush. Sixty years old, and blushing over a woman!

  “I see someone occasionally,” I said.

  “Neighborhood girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of course. Who else would come here? Christ, what the hell is that stink?”

  “We just put in a new floor down here.”

  At the sight of the red and yellow tiles Vic turned to me wide-eyed.

  “Okay, Joey, now you’re scaring me.”

  “It’s like the floor we had down here, remember?”

  “Yeah, it’s exactly like the floor we had down here. Let me guess. You’re gonna put in a long wooden table with benches, right?”

  I nodded. “Sink and a stove, too.”

  “Jesus Christ, what are you buildin’ here, a museum?”

  “I just want it to be like it was.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  Vic shook his head. “So I’m guessing you took the bars off your windows because that’s how it was in ‘61.”

  “We didn’t even lock the doors then, Vic, remember?”

  “Sure. I also remember that the world was a very different place back then, nephew!”

  I waved his words away. “Not that different. Anyway, I need to fix up the basement so I can entertain.”

  He chuckled. “What, you’re gonna have a party down here?”

  “I’m thinking about it. A housewarming party, when it’s all done. You’ll come, won’t you?”

  “Oh yeah. I’ll have my tuxedo cleaned and pressed. Walk me to the front door, I gotta get goin’.”

  He climbed the stairs slowly. “Friggin’ legs are shot,” he murmured. “Might need a knee replacement.”

  “I’m sorry, Vic.”

  “Ayyy, eventually everything disintegrates.”

  “My uncle. Always looking on the bright side.”

  Vic and I walked out the front door and stood on the sidewalk, seeking a goodbye.

  “It’s good you patched things up with Taylor,” he said.

  “Well, they’re not exactly patched, but I’m working on it.”

  He hesitated before asking: “You never heard from her, did you?”

  I was puzzled. “Who?”

  He rolled his eyes and blushed for the second time that day. “Jenny Sutherland, who do you think?”

  “No, Vic, why would I?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, why would you? All right, let me go.”

  And for the first time ever my uncle voluntarily took me in an embrace, resting his chin on my shoulder. His eyes were shiny when he pulled back, and he gestured dramatically at the houses down the street, their locks, bars and cages giving off a metallic shine in the morning light.

  “How ‘bout that, Joey? At long last, Shepherd Avenue is a gated community. Who’da thunk it?”

  Then he was gone, limping slowly toward the elevated train station without so much as a backwards glance, undoubtedly thinking about the girl who got away.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I was all fired up to get started on a new mission, but first I had to get things straight with Eddie Everything and my next project.

  I made a sketch of the table and benches I wanted him to build, explaining how I wanted everything anchored to the basement floor. I had no idea of how good a carpenter he might be but took a chance and left him to it, stuffing a wad of cash in his hand to pay for the lumber.

  I’d barely counted the money. I was obsessed with something else.

  I was determined to find Jenny Sutherland.

  * * *

  This wasn’t going to be as easy as tracking down Johnny Gallo and Mel DiGiovanna. I couldn’t find Jenny on Facebook or LinkedIn or any other type of social media. Of course she might have gotten married and taken her husband’s name, but that didn’t seem like something the Jenny I remembered would do—get married, or take a man’s name. I Googled and I Googled—Jenny Sutherland, Jennifer Sutherland, J. Sutherland . . . lots of names popped up, but the accompanying images from all over the country clearly weren’t her.

  Forget the country! With a spirit like hers, Jenny could have been anywhere in the world! Or was she even alive? The thought of it all made my shoulders sag, and then I looked at it another way.

  From the time I’d lived in Greenwich Village I remembered how my bohemian neighbors would impulsively move to cities all over the world, for reasons that were never quite clear. You’d figure they were gone for good but eventually they popped up again like graying homing pigeons. You’d see them waiting on line to buy sausages at Faicco’s on Bleecker Street, greeting you with a grumble and complaining about rude waiters in Paris, or how tiny the ice cubes were in London pubs.

  Was Jenny one of those eternal Villagers? I Googled Jennifer Sutherland Greenwich Village and got nothing. Then I Googled Jenny Sutherland Greenwich Village and up popped a weird little ad for JENNY’S CATS. Leave your cat in our capable hands and enjoy your vacation in peace, it said. No term of stay too short or too long. J. Sutherland, Proprietor, 625 East 10th Street.

  I didn’t want to phone first, which was stupid, but I had this wild inkling that if I went there in person, I could will J. Sutherland into being the Jenny I’d known. Or maybe I just wanted to keep an illusion alive for as long as I could, the way you wish you could have slept a little longer to catch the end of that dream that ended so suddenly when you woke up.

  I wrote down the address, told Eddie Everything to let the delivery guys in if they showed up with my new appliances and headed for Manhattan.

  * * *

  I’d always hated the East Village. As far as I was concerned there was an oily grime all over it that no gentrification process was ever going to wipe clean.

  I walked east on Tenth Street into Alphabet City, past trendy coffee shops with outdoor tables and heavily tattooed waitresses. A sagging ailanthus tree stood in front of my destination, a brick building that looked as if it had taken a few too many punches over the decades. It needed painting and pity, two things it clearly was not going to get.

  I pushed open the dented front door and entered the vestibule, illuminated by the feeble light of a round landlord’s-halo bulb overhead. A tag saying JENNY’S CATS was taped above a ground-floor buzzer. I took a deep breath and pushed the button, triggering an ugly buzzing sound that seemed to shake the building.

  Nothing for a few seconds, and then, from the speaker: “Yes?” A female voice, strained and frantic. “Who’s there?”

  “Hello, I . . . uh . . . I’m looking for Jenny Sutherland.”

  “Are you dropping off a cat?”

  “No.” Wrong answer! “I mean, not just now. I wanted to talk about it.”

  “Hold on. Second door on your left, ground floor.”

  A bolder, louder buzzing sound unlocked the dividing door. I pushed it open and walked down a dim hallway reeking of pesticide before stopping at the second door and tapping on it.

  The door opened a crack, just a crack, and a woman with hair like corn silk gone gray was looking at me with the unmistakably bright blue eyes that made my b
oyhood heart swell with desire. They were a pair of sunbeams, cutting through the years like twin lasers, and all I could do was stand there and stare at them.

  Nobody else could have had those eyes. It was Jenny.

  “Would you like to come inside?” she asked. “Be quick, don’t let any of them out!”

  She pulled the door open and I stepped inside. She pushed it shut behind me, and when my eyes adjusted to the dim light I saw them all over the place: cats of all shapes and sizes, darting toward corners and swirling around Jenny’s ankles. I swear, there must have been a dozen cats in that studio apartment, and the only natural light in that place came from a window looking out on a fire escape and, a few feet beyond that, a brick wall.

  In the midst of the madness there was a bed, just a mattress on the floor with a tangle of blankets and sheets. It was the same hippie-ish decor I remembered from the day my grandparents and I barged into her Greenwich Village love nest to find Vic living there “in sin,” as my grandmother put it.

  No doubt about it: Jenny Sutherland was now an aging hippie, the kind who still had the mojo to march in protest rallies.

  I was reluctant to move, disgusted by the crunch of kitty litter under my feet. Jenny seemed shorter than I remembered her but still jackrabbit lean in a pair of blue-jean bib overalls and a loose gray T-shirt—undoubtedly, no bra underneath. Those ripe-apple cheeks of her youth had receded like an outgoing tide, revealing the stony beach that was her true face.

  But her eyes! They were still younger than springtime, alive with mischief and magic.

  “So,” she said, “it’s ten dollars a day, including food, unless your cat has special dietary needs.”

  “I don’t have a cat.”

  “Oh!” She cocked her head. “I don’t understand.”

  My lips had gone papery. I had to lick them before saying, “My name’s Joseph Ambrosio. Do you remember me? You knew my uncle. He lived with you for a little while, a long time ago.”

  She just stared at me, the blue in her eyes seeming to roil around like waters in a riptide.

  “His name is Vic. Victor Ambrosio. You had a place on Sullivan Street. I came to visit you once, when I was ten years old.”

  She seemed puzzled, and then those eyes widened to an impossible size and she covered her mouth with both hands, as if to muffle a scream.

  “Oh my God! You got hit by a car!”

  “That’s right. That was me. Is me.”

  And then she literally leaped into my arms, both feet off the floor. It was like catching a butterfly.

  “Looks like I found you,” I said.

  * * *

  Herbal tea and seaweed cookies. Incredibly, that’s what Jenny Sutherland and I shared in her kitchenette, at a tiny wooden table with two battered chairs. She’d brought those same goodies to Shepherd Avenue the one time she visited the house in 1961.

  She was eager to talk, and what a life it had been for Jenny, a bit like my father’s. When she left Vic she fled to a kibbutz in Israel, harvesting melons in the scalding midday sun. Then she moved all across Europe, backpacking some of the time, living in hostels when she could afford it. She was passionate about her painting, working as a street artist in Paris. Once in a while she would sell one of her works, but it was a struggle, one she eventually gave up.

  “My passion,” she admitted, “was bigger than my talent.”

  Then she tried to be a singer. Thanks to her looks a few bands let her shake a tambourine in the background, but her voice wasn’t up to scratch, so there was another dream dashed.

  Of course there were guys all along the way. As I’d predicted, she’d never married, never borne a child. And here she was now, pushing seventy and minding cats to keep body and soul together.

  I told her about my career in children’s books. She’d never heard of me because she’d never had kids, but seemed delighted by my success. I told her I had a grown daughter, and then I told her I’d bought the old house on Shepherd Avenue, to which she could only say: “That is wild!” The sort of response I’d expect to get from a kid.

  Incredibly, Jenny wasn’t asking me anything about Vic. I took a deep breath before broaching the subject.

  “I have to ask you,” I began. “Why’d you run out on my uncle?”

  Jenny shut her eyes, the way a squeamish patient does to avoid watching blood being drawn. “It wasn’t his fault.”

  “He was hurt pretty badly.”

  She opened her eyes. “He would have been hurt worse if I’d stayed.”

  “Did you just stop liking him?”

  “No, no! Victor was sweet. Probably the nicest guy I ever knew.” She smiled at some private memory of him. “Like a little boy lost.”

  “He still is, and he’ll be seventy soon.”

  “Oh Lord. He never married?”

  “Not even close. He lives alone in Queens, draws a pension. Drove a bus for thirty years.”

  “I never take the bus. Too slow.”

  “Well, no wonder you never crossed paths.”

  “Please don’t be sarcastic, Joey.”

  “I think you were the one for him, Jenny.”

  She suddenly jumped to her feet, grabbing a bag of cat food and pouring it into a big metal bowl in the middle of the room. At the tinny sound of the food pellets striking metal, cats appeared from all over, surrounding the bowl jowl to jowl, their tails twitching. A dozen cats at ten dollars a day apiece came to $120 a day, $840 a week, probably tax-free. Certainly more than enough to cover Jenny’s existence—feeding cats, scooping their shit, doing it all again tomorrow in this dim, crummy building.

  “I still don’t get it,” I said, tearing my gaze from the hypnotic motions of those cat tails. “If you were happy with Vic, why’d you run off ?”

  “I was afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  She forced a sad smile. “Same thing we’re all afraid of, Joey. Love.”

  She had me there. I sighed, got to my feet and opened my arms to her. She set the cat food down and hugged me.

  “Thing is, Vic was asking about you just yesterday.”

  “Come on!”

  “That’s what inspired me to track you down. Would you like to see him?”

  She pulled back from the embrace and squared her bony shoulders. “Joey, I don’t like looking back. I always try and look forward in life, you know?”

  “Yeah, well, as far as I can tell forward’s not looking any too promising for you. More cats, more cat shit. Am I wrong?”

  I’d struck a nerve. Her eyes blurred with tears.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked, in the voice of a frightened child.

  “I don’t know. I set myself on a mission to find you, and I got lucky. I won’t tell Vic about it, if you don’t want that. But I want you to be able to get in touch with me, in case you change your mind.”

  I wrote my name, phone number and e-mail address on a piece of paper and handed it to her. The note trembled in her hand as she slid it into the bib pocket of her overalls. For all I knew she’d discard it the moment I left—but what the hell, I had to take a shot.

  “You’re raking things up that should stay buried.”

  “Sue me.”

  “You were a sweet boy. Life has made you kinda mean.”

  “Sweetness is overrated. These days I settle for decency.”

  I went to the door and had my hand on the knob when Jenny cried out: “Joey, wait!”

  A change in heart? Had Jenny Sutherland decided to see Vic, after all? No. She pulled my hand off the knob and opened the door herself, just a crack, just enough for me to squeeze my way outside.

  “Can’t lose any of these cats,” she said, and once I was out in the hallway she closed the door in my face.

  I was numb on the long subway ride home, then stunned by the job Eddie Everything had done in my basement. The air down there was piney from the smell of freshly-cut lumber, and the table and benches he’d built were almost perfect replicas of those I re
membered. It was as if he’d worked from a photograph of the originals.

  “Eddie. Wow.”

  “Wanted to make sure they was right before I coat ‘em with varnish.”

  “Do it, do it.”

  “See what arrived while you was out?” He gestured at big cardboard boxes against the wall, one containing a stove, the other a sink. A refrigerator was yet to arrive.

  “I can install the sink all right,” Eddie said, “but you gotta get the Con Ed guy to do the stove.”

  He picked up a broom and began sweeping up the sawdust.

  “Great job, Eddie.”

  “We’re gettin’ there, Mr. A, we’re gettin’ there.”

  I went outside to feed and water the chickens, wondering if I was ever going to hear from Jenny Sutherland.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The days passed, and no sign of Rose. September arrived, and with it a welcome autumnal chill. I longed for the frantic nighttime knock on the door that didn’t come, and cursed myself for ever taking her to the beach.

  That was the turning point, I explained to Nat during my usual visit that afternoon. He turned to me with raised eyebrows.

  “What, she saw you in daylight and got scared?”

  “She saw the ocean and realized there’s a whole world out there she’s never tasted.”

  At some point that summer I’d changed my mind about keeping Rose a secret from Nat and told him all about her. Dr. Rosensohn got edited highlights, but Nat was up to speed on every step of this crazy, passionate scenario.

  “Doomed from the start,” he concluded.

  “Hey, thanks a lot, pal.”

  “Ahh, come on, Joey. It ain’t just the difference in your ages, it’s everything.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Plus, let’s keep in mind, she’s a woman. Don’t try to figure out a woman, it’ll make your head hurt.”

  “Once again, advice from a guy who’s never been married.”

  “To another guy who’s never been married.” Nat chuckled. “We’re doing our part to keep the divorce rate down, eh?”

  I sighed and looked down Atlantic Avenue. “Maybe I’ll drop in on her at the Laundromat.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t do that. Call her on the phone.”