Return to Shepherd Avenue

by Charlie Carillo

  “You kiddin’ me, or what?”

  Then they’d argue back and forth before settling on a price, usually closer to my father’s original offer than theirs.

  But this year was different. We got to the lot and there wasn’t a soul in sight: just a dozen or so trees, half of them lying flat on the ground, blown down by the wind. My father called out for the salesman. No answer.

  I figured we’d be going home without a tree for the first time ever, until my father walked over to a tree that stood tall and straight against the fence, a prom queen of an evergreen.

  “You like this one?”

  Before I could open my mouth he hoisted it onto his shoulder and began the short walk to the car. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Dad!”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But—”

  “I said, don’t worry about it.”

  But I was worried, all right, and a little sick to my stomach.

  Did I know my father? I thought I did. Until this moment he’d been the most honest guy I’d ever known—but he also loved a bargain, and this was one hell of a bargain.

  We didn’t talk on the way home. My mother actually gasped at the sight of the tree, which looked even better indoors than it had on the lot.

  We set it up in the metal stand, and even the trunk was perfect—it slid right into place, straight and true, with no need for my father to trim it with a hatchet. He fluffed out the branches.

  “My God, Sal, this is the best tree you ever bought!”

  “He didn’t buy it!” I cried. “He stole it!”

  My father glared at me. My mother glared at him. I looked down at my shoes, then up at my parents, and that’s when it became really interesting.

  There was no shouting. My mother’s glare had dissolved into a look of wonder, as if a stranger was standing in my father’s shoes. He looked like a little boy, scared and defiant at the same time.

  “I didn’t steal it,” he said. “I just took it. The salesman wasn’t around. Maybe he ditched the rest of his trees and went home.”

  My mother nodded. “Or maybe he didn’t.”

  “Elizabeth—”

  “Shhh, shhh,” she said, pressing a finger to his lips to silence him—a tactic that, to my surprise, actually worked.

  “Salvatore,” she said, “take Joey with you, and fix this thing.”

  Fix this thing.

  My father and I put our coats on and headed for the Christmas tree lot, where sure enough a salesman was sitting on an upended garbage can. He looked like a terminally ill man waiting to see a doctor.

  His beard stubble was white and his nose was rippled with broken capillaries. He didn’t look happy to see us.

  “Look around,” he said lamely. “Not much left.”

  “I already got my tree,” my father said.

  “So what’d you come here for?”

  My father cleared his throat. “I took the tree from your lot. I’m here to pay for it.”

  The salesman’s yellow eyes widened. “You took one of my trees?”

  My father spread his hands. “Hey, you weren’t here. I looked all over for you.”

  “I left to take a piss.” He gestured at the nearby diner. “They let me use their toilet, long’s I keep buyin’ coffee. Makes me piss even more.”

  “What do I owe you?”

  But the salesman’s mind was blown. He was shaking his head in wonder. “I can’t believe this. You took a tree and you came back to pay for it!”

  “What do I owe you?” my father repeated.

  The old man got to his feet. I heard his knees creak. “Well, now, that’s a tough question. I didn’t see it, did I? So how do I know what to charge you?”

  My father put his hand on my shoulder. “Ask my son, here. You can trust him, because he’s an honest man.”

  It was the first time my father had ever called me a man. I could feel my shoulders widen, and for a moment it felt as if I might sprout wings. The salesman turned to me, solemn as a priest.

  “Was it a good tree, son?”

  I nodded. “Best one you had.” I held my hand up over my head. “About that high.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Twenty ought to do it, then.”

  It was a friendly price, a real break for my father in light of his honesty.

  My father took a step back. “Twenty?” He gestured at the empty spot where the tree had stood. “For that?”

  The salesman made a snorting sound, half-laugh, half-disbelief. “Mister, it ain’t even there!”

  “Come to my house. See it for yourself.”

  “I ain’t leavin’ the lot again!”

  “I’m telling you, twelve bucks would be more like it.”

  “Nineteen!”

  “Thirteen!”

  I stood there in the cold, listening to them argue about a Christmas tree that wasn’t there, wondering if I was going to behave like this when I was a grown-up. I wished my father was the kind of man you could hug, so I could give him a hug. That wasn’t such a big deal, though. The big deal was the return trip to the lot. That was my father’s way of hugging me, by doing the right thing.

  At last they settled on a price. My father paid the man and we left the lot.

  That’s when a curious thing happened. My father’s eyes were brimming with tears as he got in the car. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel and sat there in silence. He was starting to scare me.

  “Dad? Are you okay?”

  He sat up straight, as if jolted from a dream. He had to clear his throat before speaking.

  “That mother of yours,” he said. “She’s one in a million.” He started the car, revved the engine. “Hear me, Joseph? One in a million.”

  * * *

  Taylor hadn’t quite sobered up by the time I got to the end of my story, but I had her full attention, fuzzy as it might have been.

  “Sounds like my grandmother was quite a woman.”

  “She was.”

  “And my grandfather was a lunatic.”

  “Not really. That was a bad day for him.”

  “Yeah. Because he had to spring for a Christmas tree.”

  “No, no. It turns out that the day before, my mother had been diagnosed with the cancer that killed her a few months later. My father knew about it. I didn’t. He told me about it years later.”

  Taylor let her head fall, exhaling long and hard.

  “He was angry about that. He never really got over his anger about her illness. And he was baffled by her, because no matter how sick she got, she never complained, never asked why this was happening to her. Brave lady, my mother.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Funny you should mention him. She believed in Jesus, with all her heart. She believed Jesus was looking after her.”

  Taylor lifted her head and rose unsteadily to her feet. I thought she wanted to hug me, but the move she made in my direction turned out to be a loss of balance, which she quickly corrected by grabbing the edges of the table.

  “I’m going to get some sleep now,” she said, more to herself than to me. Ignoring my outstretched arms, she released the table and shuffled toward the bedroom without another word.

  “You’re a chip off your old grandfather,” I said to her back. “He wasn’t much of a hugger either.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  At least Kevin was grateful for my visit. He embraced me on my way out and thanked me for coming over.

  “Come and see me, the two of you,” I said. “Like I’ve said, you can stay over if you want. I’ve got a whole apartment upstairs, waiting for you. Total privacy.”

  His eyes were still red but he forced a brave smile. “We may take you up on that someday, Joe.”

  As I left I realized that if I was going to make good on that offer, I’d better get some furniture up there. As soon as I got back to Brooklyn I called Eddie Everything and asked him if he could get hold of a van. Of course he could.

  The next morning we we
re off to IKEA, where I bought a king-sized bed, a mattress, a couch, a wooden table with two chairs and a bedside table. I also bought sheets, pillows. blankets, dishes, cups, glasses, cutlery and a couple of lamps.

  Eddie drove slowly back to East New York, the fully packed van clinking and rattling all the way.

  “So let me get this straight, boss,” Eddie said. “You’re stickin’ all this stuff upstairs, but you ain’t gonna rent out the apartment.”

  “Correct.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “My daughter may be coming over to visit, and I want her to have a place to stay.”

  “She may visit?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you ain’t sure she’s comin’?”

  “No, I’m not sure. Truth is, she’ll probably never come over. But I want to be ready, just in case.”

  Eddie’s eyes widened. He shook his head and chuckled.

  “No offense, boss, but you are one crazy white man.”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  We carried everything upstairs and worked together to assemble the furniture through Swedish instruction sheets with pictures but no words, cursing all the way. I cut my finger while putting the bed together and Eddie jammed his thumb trying to assemble the couch.

  “Jesus,” he said, “these Swedish fuckers don’t make it easy, do they?”

  At last everything was assembled, the cupboards were filled, and even the bed was made. The second floor of my house looked like a cozy little bed-and-breakfast.

  Eddie reached out to shake my hand, and then it hit me why he was doing such an unusual thing.

  Because all the work at 207 Shepherd Avenue was now complete. My house was finished.

  “Been great workin’ for you, boss,” Eddie said, and his voice actually cracked as he spoke. “You wanna do anything else, you wanna change anything around, you know where I am.”

  “Thanks for everything, Eddie Everything. I’ll leave the eggs on my front stoop from now on, okay? Pick them up whenever you want.”

  He startled me by pulling me into a quick embrace and patting my back. I paid him for the day and he pocketed the cash without counting it.

  “Anything else I can do for you before I go?”

  I hesitated, then decided to go for it. “I could use your advice, Eddie.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Justin wants Rose to visit him in Seattle, and he asked me to take her to the airport. But she’s mad at me, never mind why. Think I should take her?”

  Eddie’s face softened. “Man, you don’t need my advice this time. Rose is gone. Saw her get into a limo last night with a coupla suitcases. I’m sorry, man, I thought you knew.”

  * * *

  That’s when I fell into a kind of a dreamlike state. I had my book to write and illustrate, but it was an impossible task. Just couldn’t settle on a home or a permanent living situation for little Sammy Suitcase.

  In the midst of it, a happy bolt from the blue: Taylor phoned to thank me for coming to see her. She sounded awkward and formal, and I had a feeling she made the call at Kevin’s urging, but I was grateful anyway.

  “Call me any time,” I said.

  “Will do,” she replied, and I allowed myself to believe that she meant it.

  Otherwise, I lived my daily stations of the cross: run in the morning, feed the chickens, gather eggs, try to work on the damn book, walk the neighborhood.

  Visiting Nat was usually the highlight of my day. The old man knew everything I was up to, everything that was happening, and he was never judgmental.

  “You’re better off without that Rose for a while,” he said. “Young woman like that could put you in an early grave.”

  “It’s a little too late for me to die young, Nat.”

  “Ahh, nobody’s diggin’ a hole for you yet.”

  “You either.”

  “Maybe not, but I shiver every time I see a shovel. Remember that night you tried to run away, with all that money I paid you for those bottles?”

  That’s what a conversation with Nat was like. He could jump from the present to 1961 without breaking stride.

  “Crazy night,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, some people blamed me for what you did.”

  “People like to place blame.”

  “I didn’t know you were gonna use the money to run away! You told me your father was comin’ to take you home.”

  “Sorry I lied to you, Nat.”

  “Ehh, we all lie a little. Gets you through the day.”

  “Anyway, I tripped and fell before I could escape.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “I say you fell on purpose. Go ahead and make faces. I’ve been thinkin’ about it. You run up and down that block a million times all summer, and all of a sudden you trip and fall? Come on. Maybe your head was tryin’ to run away, but your feet had other plans. You were safe here. We all need safe, no matter how bad it is.”

  “No disrespect for your theory, Nat, but I’m already seeing a court-appointed shrink.”

  “Yeah, well, what the hell does he know? I don’t care where he went to college!” He stamped his foot on the stony sidewalk. “He can’t beat what I got. My degree came from these streets.”

  “And Auschwitz,” I said. It was a thought that had somehow turned into spoken words, which I immediately regretted. Nat stared at me long and hard, his hands clutching his knees. My head pounded as a fifty-year-old echo sounded in my ears. He escaped from Hitler, but he don’t like to talk about it...

  I dared to touch his bony shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Nat.”

  He nodded forgivingly, then relaxed his hands and spread them wide. “These streets,” he whispered. “A picnic, compared to that.”

  * * *

  Rose was gone, all right, but for how long? I went to the Laundromat, where her replacement, a short black woman with a fierce face, was stuffing a mountain of sheets into the biggest washing machine in the place. I asked her when Rose would be back and she made a snorting sound.

  “Nobody knows. She just said she hadda leave town for a while.”

  “She didn’t say how long?”

  “What’s the matter, you don’t understand English? She said she be gone for a while. You got a dictionary at home? Look up while. Meantime, I gotta work these fuckin’ double shifts.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, too. Sorry I ain’t got no son in the damn Major Leagues, makin’ a million bucks.”

  The days passed. No word from Rose, no word from Taylor. My agent nagged me about the new book, and I told her it was coming along slowly but surely.

  Lying to an agent isn’t a sin. It’s an expectation.

  Meanwhile, Justin Wilson’s agent came through for him, big-time. He’d finished up the season with the Seattle Mariners without faltering, and the story in the Daily News said he’d signed a five-year guaranteed deal with the team for an estimated $20 million. Not bad for a kid who’d just turned nineteen.

  I was working at my desk in the front room when Vic phoned me. “You see how much your friend is getting from the Mariners?”

  “Yeah. It’s unbelievable.”

  “Sure is. Especially if the pitchers find a hole in his swing.”

  “A hole?”

  “A flaw. It could happen. Kid only played a month in the majors, and they’re layin’ this kind of a bet on him? They’re all nuts.”

  I had to laugh. “You said he had a sweet swing, Vic.”

  “He does. So did Kevin Maas.”

  “Who?”

  “Look him up. Kevin Maas, M-double-A S. Played for the Yankees about twenty years ago. Came to the big club and for the first few weeks, every ball he swung at went over the fence. He was gonna make everybody forget about Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle. Then the pitchers figured him out, and the word went around the league, and he couldn’t hit his weight. Bye-bye, Kevin Maas.”

  “I doubt that’ll
happen to Justin Wilson.”

  “So what if it does? It doesn’t matter. He’s got twenty million bucks comin’ to him, no matter how badly he fucks up. It’s a crazy world, Joey, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

  I said goodbye to my uncle and looked out the window. A little kid was walking past in a red one-piece outfit, wearing devil horns and carrying a trident, followed by a girl dressed like a ballerina and another kid dressed like a cowboy. What the hell was this?

  It was Halloween! I ran out and bought a bag of Milky Ways, hoping I’d get some trick-or-treaters. I also got a pumpkin and carved a scary-face jack-o’-lantern, lit a candle inside it and put it on my front stoop.

  They began arriving at dark, mostly with their parents right behind them. I recognized some of the parents from the block, and we nodded politely to each other.

  Maybe this would help break the ice, I figured. They’d stop wondering about the weird white guy living all alone in that big house all these months, and have a conversation on the street with me now and then.

  Then again, maybe not.

  Bertha Washington appeared at my door with her two little boys, both in skeleton suits. I’d seen those kids coming and going to school but this was the first time we were face-to-face.

  “This is our neighbor, Mr. Am-bro-zee-oh,” she told the boys, who studied me with wary eyes.

  “I like your chickens,” the smaller one said.

  “I like my chickens fried,“ the bigger one said. Bertha tapped the back of his head but I couldn’t help laughing. I gave the Washington brothers two Milky Ways apiece.

  After the last of the trick-or-treaters left I tossed the seeds and the gooey innards of the pumpkin to the chickens, who tore into the mess. I turned in early and got up early, and when I stepped outside to go running I found that someone had stomped my jack-o’-lantern flat on my front stoop.

  That was depressing enough, and then I remembered that I was due at Rosensohn’s office that afternoon for my next-to-last session. I wasn’t in the mood for it, especially the way things were going.

  So I scraped up the pumpkin mess, took a trot around Highland Park and put in a few fruitless hours trying to write my last Sammy Suitcase story when I got a phone call from Eddie Everything.

  “How’s it goin’, boss?”