Dreaming Brooklyn
Father's day
He’s standing in the doorway, my father, baggy pants and slim. His white shirt rolled to his elbows; forearms like girders. Compact, springy, his eyes flicker like butterfly wings. His slicked black hair making him sleek all over.
I’m inside the door frame opposite from him. I’m standing beside my wispy mother. Unease coats the space between them, then twists and turns around the contours of the house.
My father smiles at me, his presence a magnet, and I want to go to the places he inhabits. But behind us, in the depths of the dim foyer, like a phantom, my grandfather lurks in silent judgment: “A man with no education.”
But it’s the second Sunday of April, and today I shall be under my father’s powerful wings and my legs are springs prepared to jump into his world, but I wait for the unspoken negotiation between the parties, my body caught in a hurricane’s eye.
I regard my mother’s face, then turn timidly to grandfather whose penetrating eyes show realms of doubt. I hide my enthusiasm, for fear my thoughts will betray me though I’m all set to shift from the dull monotony of this house to the reverie of the road that leads to my father’s seaside home.
I feel the secret tension ease. My mother says her tentative good-byes, but with a discomforting stare in her eye that puts a sty in mine. Grandfather approaches, stops and coyly hides his frown, and my father’s fights to keep his vitality live. But when the old man shakes the younger one’s hand, father regains his composure like a boxer recuperating from a hook.
I’m thinking--come on come on come on come on let’s go all ready. I hear a dim “goodbye” from nowhere, I edge to the door, and cross the border to stand beside my father and toward the anticipation of what will be. Released, I wave, turn, and dash out. My father nods, then scampers behind me. It’s now a race to the car.
“Nice day,” he says as though he means that but means much more in that gleam in his roving eye as though every day is an adventure, because part of the world always escapes him, and he is always catching up. We reach his convertible and he jumps over the door into the seat. I imitate him and feel connected.
The car eases past the tenement streets and their claustrophobic corridors, then out onto the avenue that leads to the highway by the sea. He drives deftly and though I imagine my mother shaking her head in anxious anticipation, and grandfather’s grave demeanor, and despite stories about how father fled in the night long ago only to reappear years later at the doorstep, Stetson hat in hand, a black belt with longhorn buckle holding up his jeans, and a string tie, saying “howdy” in mock innocence, he’s still the best father who ever could be cause he’s mine and even in school, when the guidance counselor says how do you feel, I say just fine and he shakes his head and asks “Am I sure?” and I say sure I’m sure. Who knows better than me?
Parked at a light, we see a flick in the wetlands that line the parkway. Father smiles and stutters “hoppergrass,” then squeezes a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, deftly draws one out, plunges the lighter into its socket. It pops out, he retrieves it, letting its hot ember kiss the tip of the tobacco. He inhales deeply and nabs a peek at the tip of the cigarette.
“Ready to see the fireflies?” he says. His eyes gleam like free birds catching glints of sunlight, and his winky smile makes me feel even I could light up and fly. He nimbly shifts gears, and we’re off again. We ease onto the highway, the sand and aqua tide beside us, accelerating like a rocket. The wind hits me hard and brisk. The stuffiness I’ve left behind is but a memory.
I want to be in this current forever, lungs loving the air, salt scent, ears entranced by seagull cries. I stick my hand out the window and my palm caresses the current. My eyes now dazzled by the green blue sea. People along the dunes come alive because with father, everything picks up speed and energizes. I love that every swerve and swoop and turn of the car is made for me. My stomach churns in delight like when I’m on the roller coaster, but it’s just me and him now: our own private ride—him and me co-pilots of delight.
Then thoughts of the other side intervene. This is why they warn me. Because father makes things fun and that’s not good because I’ve been taught the world must be somber. I imagine Ely the retard plunking along the sand with his sad mother beside him in her perpetual agony.
But here where freedom reigns a sign in the water reads “no trespassing.” Paint slapped on an old crusty plank of wood floating in the sea, from some magical island far away. Maybe father will hide me, put locks and bolts on the door, chains around the house, and I’ll make faces at anyone who calls the cops or tells Mr. Genneti, the bored walrus of a guidance counselor, with his big bald head and moustache.
The wood clappered house is in sight and we pull up fast. Sandpipers and seagulls swirl and scamper. Father swerves into the driveway, crackling gravel, then comes to a sudden jolting halt. He bolts out, rushes to my side, and pulls me out with arms as strong as Hercules.
At the screen door of the old peel-paint wooden house, a fluffy dog smacks at the dilapidated wood; thumps like the sound the bulls make at the rodeo when they’re stuck in their stalls waiting for the cowboys to pull the latch. My father yanks at the frame and the big wolf mutt springs in the air, his attention caught by a squirrel who dashes up an old telephone pole, then scoots across the wire.
My father hands me an old chewed bone, and I toss it. The dog lunges, brings it back, and soon we are playing in a world where boundaries dissolve and I feel an excited peace—with Scott the Hound dog, dragonflies buzzing, crabs raking their fingers across the rocks, waves breaking in on the cool mucky sand, translucent jellyfish floating unfathomably, and all around in dazzling swirls, the birds—half menacing, half wonder.
My father calls me inside. I go in and among the odds and ends, the plates piled in the sink, the picture of a battleship tilted on the wall, photos of my square-jawed uncles all in sailor suits.
But there on the sofa, legs crossed, cigarette between her fingers a woman with red hair so dazzling the room’s black and white and she is in color. Painted up with red lipstick, powder blue mohair sweater, tight, a black skirt that hugs her thighs, blue eye shadow and charcoal eyelashes so thick I feel them brush my skin. I turn to father and he smiles like howdee-doo, like nothing’s wrong, like a cowboy with a guitar, but now I see there’s three of us and this picture seems wrong. And I’m a stranger once again even though it’s she who should be the odd one out. A frown pops on my face like an opened jack-in-the-box.
My father asks “what’s wrong.” I want him to know but he can’t. Why should he? But I can’t contain my grief for I feel betrayed and I run outside toward the surf as the sun is setting. My father hollers “What about the fireflies?”
“I hate fireflies,” I say, and run up to the foam and let it rise to the eduge of my shoe. The froth is a giant tongue. Suddenly it’s just me and the sea and the glow of the orange disk in the distant sky with clouds treading by so slowly they seem to ease the world and all my pain. I hear my father but his words are sounds from far away. I turn to him, shyly, and see he is waving. Beside him on the porch, the woman stands in the doorframe, leaning, smoking, wondering: languidly and luxuriously. She draws me in, repels me. My father between us. It’s a tug of war, and I fear she’ll win. I think of home that’s not a home, not a place to go. I gaze at the sea and wonder what would happen if I just ran in and escaped forever, but then I say not yet, there must be some reason I’m here, not just now on this spot of sand but here on this globe, like the one the size of a basketball Randy the science whiz held in his hand, the one that all of us must share unless we go into outer space and that’s just in comic books and movies.
I’m stuck at the edge of the earth, and I look at my father, but he’s at a loss, not sure, confused. I remember how my mother said that in the War when he wrote home he made “b's into “d's and how that always bothered him and made him feel apart and I see my father wanting me but I see him not finding a way for the words to come out, just like he couldn’t get those letters to face the proper way. I want to help him but I can’t because I’m not the teacher.
The woman flicks her cigarette, and flings it through the air like a shooting star. She smiles and calls my name.
“Evan, why don’t you come into the house with your father and me?”
“Food,” my father says. We’ve made you your favorite meal.” My mind sees well-done hamburgers. I smell them grilling.
“And we have your favorite ice cream for dessert.”
I regard my father who nods like what she said was what he would say but he doesn’t quite know the code. So it’s not that I’m not wanted here. It’s not that my father is silent because he doesn’t care. It comes to me that the rules aren’t important because you can abide by them and not be true, but you can not know them and not be false. And I look at the sea and the dying sun once more and understand they’re for being grateful, not for escaping. Then I turn and walk toward the house. As I approach, my father smiles. And in the dark the fireflies are sparking. And it’s a happy time. And the fireflies know I like their glow. I reach my father and he puts his arm on my shoulder, brushes my shoulder. The woman relaxed, slinking against the door. The three of us smile, the way I wish the world could always smile.
forbidden room
“The Room”
Tall double doors, sprawled open: two columns of glass panels painted over bone-white. Inside, I peak a glimpse of grandfather, stern, abstruse; thick woolen pants, rumpled shirt, limp collar spread like weary bird wings; his face, a crag of seriousness, high cheekbones, gray eyes and hair. He talks briskly into the dull black phone. But behind his authority hides a life of sighs, and a back slumped from the hazards of time. Lips hovering over the mouthpiece, he takes and places orders. I don’t dare reach out toward him, but hidden in my pocket, I press between thumb and forefinger, his business card: “M. Merlyn: Rare Books and First Editions.”
His voice hovers back and forth around the receiver. Bits and shreds of queries: Back orders, bulk orders, discount orders, repeat orders, return orders. A hundred demands from places spread across an unknown geography inhabited by strangers who do not know or care how he endures to keep the house alive.
Dusk falls tautly, activity ebbs, he rises from his seat, and I make haste across the living room, irreproachably sit watching the pigeons swoop through the tenement corridors before he catches that I’ve been spying. A nod to me, but barely, he retreats to the bedroom and shuts the door. I approach warily and peek through the keyhole, watch him lie flat—fully clothed, although now slippers substitute for shoes.. Hovering above his head and held in outstretched hands, he regards
The New York Times. Over him, its winged pages cast a moth-like shadow.
I watch him, a vision thief, my eyes intent to catch a glimpse of the soul I hope will be revealed as he casts off the burden of his work, to confront in secret the man behind the bone; the mood behind the mask. But even as he disengages himself from his labor, I see how our parallel universes abut but never merge. Suddenly the turgid phone beside his bedside rings an alarm, and with a clank, he picks up the receiver, draws it to his face. He scrutinizes as he listens, his lips purse, grow into a pout as though words are inscribing themselves into an internal ledger. He mumbles, annoyed, nods to the unseen caller, casts his wearied body upright with grave deliberation. He murmurs numbers; calculations spring from his brow. Urgently, he grasps his closet door and grabs his overcoat, and once again I dash back into the living room, merge into the sofa, feigning innocence. The bedroom entrance opens and he’s on his way, jacket slung over shoulder, hauling a strapping suitcase, hastily casts out my name like an afterthought. The front door slams. Suddenly quiet permeates the air, as though an electric charge has been disengaged from its current.
Alone now, I require less stealth, although his overarching eyes seem to lurk everywhere. I enter the room of books, and stand just inside the silence. The expanse of his desk is covered with flapping papers that seem to hover like ghosts, rising from a breeze from the window crack. Scattered about them notebooks and pads. A bottle of mucilage, its rubber spout crusted. Coffee cup stains have drained areas of the mahogany top, leaving bleached crescent moons. The smell of ink is everywhere. I lower into his ancient chair, creaky and hard, vertical slats bark at my back as though to warn me of this off-limit space, his place, reserved for when he’s huddled in his work.
I arise and take another step inside; the walls of books seem to whisper. Sounds issue within their ancient bindings, their mystic script transfigured into voice. Their talk weaves across boundaries of cloth: stern, murky tones, covert as the dust that’s settled on their pages. The books: old men speaking from their graves, opened coffins spouting streams of meanings unharnessed and incomprehensible, free to roam now that I am alone among them, for I count little. These are his brethren, and like he who toils in realms of dream, hunched over, scribbling with an intensity that makes things dire, flow forth streams of words I can’t understand: hieroglyphic in their mystery. In his absence, his progenitors rise where he toils.
I approach a wall, look upward at an expanse of volumes so long they seem to recede into the distance like vertical railroad tracks. Treading tentatively, I stretch out a hand and touch a binding. Its deep red hue enthralls and beckons. Its attraction mysterious and magnetic, like a dare. Its texture moist like formaldehyde. I breathe through my fear, and grasp it in my hand. Suddenly the book seems to dance, then erupts into a discordant rhapsody, then transfigures into words that stream into air like a flock of squawking birds. They traverse the room in wild elliptical swoops and turns, pulling up fast, approaching the white plastered walls, then change direction. They encircle me and I’m captured in their embrace. Shaking and teasing, they roar in mockery at this little fool, whom they ridicule because they contain the wisdom of ages of which I know nothing. How I desire to battle their wisdom, in an impossible effort to split meaning from their boundless sounds and streaming script. To hold them in a struggling embrace so that they value my power, my voice, which is so narrow and reedy, not like theirs--or his. But mine nonetheless and I won’t settle until they respect my presence not as one of them but me, who I am.
I scream, resolute to show them my determination: to make up with forcefulness what I lack in understanding. The words suddenly lie still in air—abruptly stationary—regard me--then in growing comprehension, smirk. Then confoundedly they disperse, unglued they rush back into their containers, coffins slamming shut, safely harbored.
I hear the outer door open and urgent footsteps reverberate in my direction.
What were you doing in the room? Grandma yells. It’s not a place for you. And her telling me with her eagle eyes, her black hair in a bun, her stern eyeglasses that fall to the bridge of her nose backs me away until I run out the door into the street where squat Ely walks by waving his hat.
--My hat, he says. Waves it like a flag. A motor roars. Some local kids. One sticks his head of greased-black hair out the window, blurting in sadistic glee: “R E T A R D.”
Ely stares at the fleeing car, its image shrinking, the body half out the window turning to miniature . Ely raises his hand in triumph: “My hat.” And turns to me for approval, but I just stare, in part envious for his lack of care.
Frankie the highjumper
Frankie, with the orange hair, the high jump champ of all the schools in New York City is in trouble. I watch from my window, one floor above the street, as his angry father beats him with a thick black belt. The father’s pants hang down around his bulky waist but his chest bigger still, his arms massive lunks. He looks like he could bend steel. Everybody stays clear of him. Right now, there’s even more reason to. Sharp whacks resonate against the glass pane, making it quiver. The neighborhood knows not to interfere. The wrath in the air could make the buildings tremble.
I rush outside to get a better view and watch, listen, as Frankie howls like an animal in a trap, nearly as loud as the shrieks at night the first-floor girl makes, the one whose beaten and whom I’ve only heard and never seen. Frankie’s face now twisted in agony. Like a traffic accident, it’s frightening, and thrilling. The dull neighborhood welcomes its excruciating intensity. Frankie’s head trapped in the crook of his father’s elbow. Frankie is all orange now —not just his hair, a pumpkin head about to burst over the sidewalk. I’m thinking how the seeds would erupt and spurt. It would be ugly but I wouldn’t turn away. Frankie twists and turns like a flapping flag, but he can’t break loose. After twenty thrashes, his father tosses the belt in the air. It turns into an angry snake, then falls to the ground, the buckle lying flat against the curb. Tenement windows screech open. Pale heads stick out curiously bewildered.
Frankie is in the center of a giant coliseum. All eyes watch. Men women, parents children, hypnotized by the cruelty because Frankie’s pain gives life to their sluggish befuddled faces. Eyes and mouths are invigorated, shrugs of shoulders, tosses of the head, knowing and unknowing nods: Everywhere scrutiny and confusion. The block is torn between wanting the struggle to stop or intensify. Their own confusion keeps people at bay.
A huddling crowd forms in the street, like at a fire, or when cop cars converge on troublemaking punks. Some old men lean against the brick of the building across the street, mumble among themselves, scratch their heads, assess the situation like it’s a puzzle to be solved. Women in housecoats and curlers converge, hands to mouths.
A scraggly shout from an upper story hurdles down.
“You’re going to kill him.”
Faces turn upward to see Wally Chubler’s dad, one arm behind his back, hiding his whiskey bottle, red knurly nose screaming on his face, pajamas crinkled and worn. The throng stares like dumb beasts. Frankie yowls louder; In an instant heads revert to him. Tears sprout from his bulging eyeballs. No one to lend a helping hand. This angers me, but then consider I am no better and become ashamed. Frankie, who yesterday proudly showed his medal for becoming champion high jumper of all the schools in New York City—looks into my eyes—pleading but embarrassed, begging silently for his life. His frightened eyes make his pain enter me. The air grows menacing; sunlight raw like whiplashed skin.
“You’re killing him,” another rasping shout sprouts from Wally’s father. Even four flights up I smell the reek of his liquor. I want to flee, get far from Frankie’s pain, but I am rooted. If I do not act, I will be an accessory to his anguish and this moment will be etched forever in my brain: a trophy to cowardice. Frankie’s medal dangles before me, his smiling face full of pride. But my mind’s eye turns to sound and something calls me like a siren song.
Suddenly separated from the paralysis of the scene, I spring toward the struggle and dive into the big man’s knees and trip him up. He falls like a tower. Our bodies are sprawled and struggle in confusion on the ground. Frankie wriggles from his father’s grasp and tries to scamper away. His body limps, his head is dazed. He makes away clumsily like a wounded leopard. The father gets to his feet, looms over me, and glowers. He’s confused as to who to go for first: me crumpled on the ground or Frankie slipping away. He pulls me up by my shirt but this time Wally’s dad is joined by a chorus of voices. I have made the block grow bold.
“LEAVE HIM ALONE,” they shout: an unschooled chorus out of key, standing firm against their collective fear.
Frankie’s father suddenly seems stunned at the swarm of accusations. He backs away as if the stares were arrows. Self-conscious, disoriented, he shakes his head in confusion, like a boxer trying to ward off a hook to the head. His hatred lies naked for all to ponder because Frankie was not only his victim but his shield. He wants to melt away, to flee, to ward off the emotion of the street that seems to swallow him in its growing wrath. He backs up slowly, strategizing, trying to bluff his way out behind his iron mask. But judgment has been made and he’s exposed from here on in. He lowers his head, kicks a stone, retreats and recedes down the block till he’s just a puff of shirt and pants.
A deep sigh eases the crowd and bodies languidly disperse as if to re-accustom with the dullness of the day. I scan the street for Frankie but he’s disappeared. Where will he go now to escape the trap of his house. An old craggy man looks upward, shakes his head in disbelief, then lifts a thin gray arm, and points toward the rooftops. Frankie is standing and smiling, alone against the pale blue sky. His hair is still orange but the rest of him is back to normal, radiating the power to be high jump champ.
People shout in awe and concern.
“Frankie, come down.” “Frankie, everything is O.K.” A chorus of Frankie this and Frankie that.”
But Frankie remains unmoved in a bubble of thought, a devilish smile across his face. And even though up five flights, he looks down at me; his eyes huge orbs. He is smiling just for me and I understand that now we have a bond. Frankie winks. I even see his eyelid flutter clearly. Frankie the champion high jumper of all the high schools in New York City climbs atop the stone lip that surrounds the roof. And and leaps. He catches a current and soars over the rooftops. His shadow slides down the street like airliners when they’re flying low.
Ely rides by on his tricycle, appearing silly and oversized.
“Ely,” I say, “Look at Frankie. He’s flying across the sky.” Ely considers, then looks up. He catches something in his line of sight and points, turns back toward me, his mouth wide open, his eyes dark moons of wonder, his mind akilter with a silver sun.
Wow girls
Alcestes is sad and crying. His father hit him for crossing Ocean Avenue by himself. He scampered between the moving cars, daring them to run him over. He stood right in the middle on the white line. Cabs and convertibles whizzed by in both directions. The stares and harsh shouts of drivers all directed at him. One punky smartass with a gleam in his wicked eye seemed to aim his big finned machine right at Alcestes, but just before impact swerved, tauntingly. A funeral procession drove by, cars with lights on although it was day, and inside you could see sad faces and dark clothes. There was a succession of honks as though that might alleviate the somber mood. But Alcestes’ dare turned to fearfulness as he lost his nerve and wanted out. But now he was stuck! I watched from the sidewalk, my heart beating as fast as Alcestes was because I felt his terror.
Alcestes is crying now because his father, standing outside the doorway, wiggled his forefinger, summoning him with that simple gesture, and without a word from either man or boy, Alcestes obeyed. Like a condemned prisoner, he accompanied his father inside, the man’s hand on his collar. When Alcestes came back out, crying and noticing my staring, he bowed his head in embarrassment because he knew I could picture the beating in my mid. His head hung low and he didn’t dare even step one inch into the street.
“What happened?” I ask.
“He said he had to teach me a lesson.” We fell silent after that. So Alcestes sulked and sat down on a stoop. I snuggled beside him. Both of us stared out at the traffic. I could sense his need for vengeance, maybe more than he himself could. Whatever thrashing he endured reverberated in his body, and we both knew if nothing was done, there they would remain and consume him. They would follow him to school or the playground, resonate as he lay on his bed, and infiltrate his dreams. There would be no peace while these phantom hurts hurled through his body, and Alcestes could not be my friend so long as his anguish raised a wall between us.
We felt isolated in our grief until two big girls strolled by, stared and stopped in front of us, looked us over, and giggled loudly.
“Forsaken an forlorn,” the tall blonde girl said in a magnificent voice that seduced the sky. She laughed, and shook her head as though a hair was in her eye. Her pony tail swept the air like a paintbrush, and for a moment Brooklyn was dabbed with a mosaic of color sustained by her enchanting smile. The seductive gesture took me away from the core of Alcestes’ distress, and made me feel afloat, the stone beneath losing its heartless hardness. Her companion, short, dark-haired in cutoff shorts tugged at her arm. I could see she wanted to move along. I stared at the place between blonde girl’s thighs--where the fabric bunched--and envied her friend’s intimate contact. Everything seemed to fade but for the divine curvature of her hips and the contours of her legs. I breathed deeply and smelled her essence. It was like fine earth. Then light-headed, queasy, I began to keel over like the time when the doctor gave me a needle and drew blood. The girls looked distressed and the brown haired one with the cute pug nose stretched her palms outward and supported my chest as I began to faint and fall, and caught me with her outstretched fingers. In my hazy vision, I could see Alcestes shocked. Too much to take in after his beating.
“Are you O.K?” I heard a sweet voice say. I looked up in the haze and slowly focused and was brought back to the concreteness of the moment, like when grandfather manipulated the rabbit-ears antenna and the TV got better reception. I could see the lips that uttered those words and now became entranced by the silk-smooth beguiling skin of their faces. But before I would allow myself to be seduced again, I smacked my own cheek like when they did to revive a drunk. I shook away their hypnotic power, widened my eyes and made myself all right. I stared from one female face to the other, smiling like a dolt and felt Alcestes’ poke his elbow in my side.
“Yea, he’s okay,” the shortest one said. Her eyes were green like grass. Then it seemed the neighborhood sighed as the girls went on. Alcestes got up and paced.
“I’m dying.”
“You are not,” I said.
“Right,” Alcestes said. “Dead more like it.” He leaned back down, and closed his eyes like he never wanted to move again.
“Not dead,” I said. But he didn’t respond. “Not dead,” I said and wondered how to save my friend, then thought of Alcestes’ mom hanging wash that morning on the roof, and it all came clear.
“What do you do,” I said. “What do you do against a monster opponent?
Alcestes opened his eyes and looked. I waited till our gazes locked.
“Like David and Goliath. You find the weak spot,” I said. Alcestes looked at me in bafflement.
“Come on,” I said inspired.
Images sprung to my mind that gave me power. No more helpless boy that girls could vanquish, but an unstoppable force, for in my brain an arrow had been shot out of its bow and my body could not help but follow.
I ran into the building with Alcestes in pursuit. We grabbed two steps at a time with our legs and feet and like escaping birds who found an open door to a cage erupted onto the roof and daylight. Down below the cars whizzed by. But instead of seeing them as predatory mechanisms as they did when we were in the street, I gazed upon them as pathetic mechanical souls whose drivers would end up arriving at a destination until it was time for another and on and on, purposeless. I saw the madness of it all, like when late at night I turned on the light in the kitchen and roaches scattered: No one staying still; no one with a place to be, forever doomed to wander like lost and empty souls. And then I turned inward to my own soul and swore I wouldn’t be that way, never stuck in a bubble, removed from life whatever that was, that thing, life. But though I couldn’t know quite yet what it was, knew it was somewhere, but not where I saw.
I turned to Alcestes whose eyes were roving the rooftops like a sentry, ears perked up. We honed in on the fluttering behind us and Alcestes, taking my lead, followed the flapping sound. There they were. Rows of drying sheets, bloomers, towels, bathrobes—like stuck ghosts--held on clotheslines with wooden duckbilled pins, all snapping in the wind from gusts that crossed the roofs, squalls coming from distant lands we had seen on Randy’s globe, carrying with them strange voices, foreign tongues, traces of sea and distant cities, now reaching Brooklyn after a journey of a million miles.
“There,” I said with pointed clarity, my finger aiming my mind’s arrow. “Revenge awaits us.”
Alcestes and I rushed to the lines, then pulled them off, like expert thieves, the clothes pins, and bunching in our arms the garments, coverings, fabrics until they were big white balls we barely could contain in our arms. Possessed, we rushed to the roof edge, scoured our surroundings for signs of enemies, saw none. Then standing together, we took deep breaths, waiting for the swiftest breeze. Waited. Waited. Then it arrived. And turning to one another, nodded in knowingness and let the bundles go. Uncurled and unfurled, all were swept up in the air and began to float like drifting sails unanchored by ships or any other grounding thing. The winds were waves, and through the air the white shades escaped. Our deed now done, we took off quick across the buildings, knowing sirens would soon follow as we delighted in the imagined anger on the neighborhood’s face.
Randy the Warlock
“Alcestes and I Get the Picture”Randy--the warlock we call him--though no one knows how he got his name. Alcestes meets me in the lobby and says Randy has invited us up to his apartment. Immediately my heart thuds. Instead of our speedy dash up the stone-slab staircase, we tread warily, wondering what Randy has in store. He’s a phantom in the neighborhood, and when he passes through the street, people stare--long legs striding like some awkward bird. His hair, a house of blonde curls, head like a horse, big brick teeth, and long fingers that express themselves like an orchestra conductor. We all know to stay clear for a mere hello elicits a rant, and his eyes go wild like bats swarming out of caves on their nightly haunts. But he’s invited us and we obey entranced like two horror movie zombies.
Randy greets us at the door, his lanky frame so high it hurts my head to look up at him. He closes the door and we know we’re trapped. He leads us into his bedroom, and there, beside his bed, a table set like a laboratory. I scan the walls for shadows of Frankenstein until my eyes alight on a chart. Randy calls it the periodic table and I ponder how it got to be so flat and what you do with it besides stare at its two-letter rune revelations: Na. Ag. Ca. Ba.
Randy paces wildly, caresses flasks, dares to touch liquids he calls acids and alkalines and explains the differences in wild and foreign terms neither I nor Alcestis understand. He opens bottles and inhales gases. A look of delight and terror spreads across his face. He tells us how the fumes make him dream of precious stone and metal. As he speaks, I imagine caverns of sparkling emeralds and rubies.
He abruptly darts off and disappears like a badly spliced home movie, then reenters with a jar. His eyes dance like flies. He holds it up to the light to show us a pool of milky liquid.
“I will create life and become a God!” he says.
His teeth gleam. Eyes glare. Spooks us so we want to sneak out, but where our hands grope for a doorknob all we feel is plaster against our palms. Randy suddenly pales—skin sickly white. A formless face, expansive, as large as the corridors of our old brick tenement. We want to escape, dash down flights of stairs, jump landings, scoot round railings, but now Randy’s spirit blocks us on all sides. My heart beats hard, Alcestes, besides me, looks with wide eyed wonder, wishing I might have the secret to our escape, but I shake my head in warily bafflement and defeat. As though Randy has thrown a spell into the air and we are hypnotically encased.
“Do you two want to be like all the rest of them,” he says, pointing out the window, sneering. “Those hords! Or do you seek the truth?”
I can’t show my coward face. “Truth” I meekly say, and Alcestes nods to agree.
“Good, because….” Randy pauses and grins. There are devils in his eye. “The truth shall set you free.”
Randy puts a long strand of finger to his lips to hush us. He looks out the corners of each eye like a spy, and cautiously goes to a big door and opens to reveal a deep closet. It looks chaotic from constant ramsakling. He rummages, making noise like a clumsy dog searching for food, then takes out a flattened blue balloon, begins to blow it up, his mouth over it as it swells like a blue-brown belly. The globe takes shape, a big round ball. Randy twists the part that looks like a metal belly button and seals it. He holds the orb in his hands, then stretches out his arms so we can have a closer look.
“Continental drift. Continental drift, you stupid tenement boys.” I look at the globe and the blue vinyl patches take on the dimension of vast oceans.
“See, there, around the East of Africa?” He traces with his fingertip the edge of the continent, works his way around the coast, down to the tip.
“Now, look here,” he gleams and now traces the Western edge of South America. “They fit like a jigsaw puzzle.”
He pauses to see if we see, and he sees that we see and are in awe and for the first time a look of satisfaction releases Randy’s pent-up face.
But then as instantly his head seems to swell and to release his tension, words blurt forth.
“That’s because once they were united as one, but forces….powerful forces beyond the scope of your little minds, shifted and tore them apart till the waters came between, and they drifted…drifted…lands so vast you couldn’t cover them in a million years.
Randy grows wilder now. His hair seems to shoot from his head as we look in awe. His buck teeth look like they could gobble the world.
“It’s all in the plates. The Tectonic plates. Giant rocky slabs beneath the seas, far below where the fish with headlights float and swerve.”
He raises his hand above his head, wiggles his fingers. An incandescent eyeball seems to sprout from each fingertip. He stares at us, unconvinced that we understand.
“We were all once connected, you morons! The kangaroo and the squirrel. The platypus and the raccoon. All one giant mass before we were rent ASUNDER!”
He spreads his arms apart, twists them pretzel-like, makes cracking cackling sounds.
“One beautiful expanse. Nothing separating us. Paradise!”
Randy pauses, looks at us to see if we appreciate.
“Do you know what paradise is?” he shouts.
I see long winged birds of blue and green with bowed bills, fruits begging to be picked, streams of pure water, cool spray against my face.
“Then it happened. The tectonic plates.” He sees my confounded look
“Not like you eat on, fools! Huge masses of rock, a universe of pressure causing them to rend. So titanic, compared to it, this city is tinier than the smallest seed. In fact it’s invisible!”
He places his ear against the sphere.
“If you listen, you can hear the crackling, you can hear the ripping, the ballast burst asunder for eternity. Oh the pain of it all. Catastrophe. Families of animals shorn apart. Mama tigers taken from their cubs. They roar in tragic terror. Nothing they can do. Elephants seeing their loved ones floating away. They screech and bellow. Their tusks jut into the air helplessly. Yes, even those giant powerful beasts at the mercy of the elements. The world is split and a profound sorrow comes over the animal world. Because they love, too. Just like us. They have feelings. Powerful feelings. Imagine the tears of a mammoth! Imagine the cry of a saber-tooth tiger in pitiful pain. Never to see their loved ones again. Can’t you understand? Before one measly human form was on this earth, such sorrow and fear behind a billion animal eyes. All the animals were crying. On that day, they cried. They all cried.”
Randy flips, then flops on his bed and turns and twists. He cracks his knuckles, smacks his lips together, starts banging his head against the wall as if to hurl himself toward some relief. He tries to rise, gets to his feet, but quivers all over, then lurches forward like a giant tree toppling over from a lumberjack’s axe. His body now a frenzy. He quivers and shakes. His jaw vibrates like the chatter of joke store teeth. Alcestes and I watch his raving with our naïve terror.
“Oh, humans you selfish beasts!” he screams. “All those millions of years of suffering. Animal years. Dinosaurs, fish, pterodactyls, wooly mammoths, rodents the size of antelopes. All helpless before the great calamity and we just walk about like IDIOTS, not giving it a second thought.
Randy falls from the bed, smashes onto the floor. His whole body shakes like he’s been hit by lightning. Electricity crackles all around us. I hear the whisperings of the forces of doom.
“Run, Alcestes,” I holler and the seams suddenly appear. We rush out into the hall. The building shakes at its foundation. We can barely stay upright; the stairs wobble and shake beneath our feet. Randy is screaming about the end of the world. We lurch into the street, lungs aching, sweat streaming. But the rumbling hasn’t stopped. The street feels like jelly. Crackling and snapping all around us, like when we trample through rough brush in the park. The sidewalk is cracking; fissures are widening. We can barely run; our feet fail us because they’res no grip beneath the shifting concrete. We’re panicked now, fearing at any moment all the walls will crack; the building tumble. Randy’s shouts fill the block. Reverberate against a thousand panes of glass. Windows lift; heads stick out in terror.
Then sirens whine, whine louder, come closer. A big box of an ambulance screeches to the entrance way, and halts before our building. Two men in white jackets race into the building; one holds a stretcher. A police car arrives, pulls up. A couple of cops trot inside, palms hugging their holstered guns. I wonder how they can do it--the falling the world is collapsing around us. The concrete blocks of gray sidewalk with lightning shaped cracks, ravines appear, trees moan.
I trip hard and smack my knee against a slab of street, fall to the ground and roll on my back. Brain filled with a pain that sharpens my vision the way binoculars do as you twist them into focus.
I call out for Alcestes but he’s disappeared. I’m all alone in the night. People are gone; an odd silence. Even Randy’s wails have stopped. I feel my knee wet, my pants torn. My body is trickling. I pat the ripped part of my pants, and find blood on my palm. I must find momma and home. But as I lay there, I am suddenly possessed by the sky. The stars. Their twinkly stillness captivate me. Each sparkle, a nod of agreement. Suddenly invisible planets come into view and moons around planets as if to reassure me that out there dinosaurs still do roam. But I look up in doubt.
My mind moves back millions of years. I feel the vast terrain in its unbroken perfection, then the horrific splitting. Randy is right. The universe is crying. I get up, limp, feel my soggy leg. I see Randy is borne out of the house, strapped down on the stretcher, a piece of wood between his teeth. The cops watch him being taken into the back of the van. One tilts his cap and wipes his brow, looks at his partner and lights a cigarette. It is a red dot, meager and small in the dark black night.
Dim March
There he goes on this dim March day, the sidewalk gray, the sky bleached blue, Brooklyn sad and tired, and me with only a window to look out on the street where anonymous cars pass with the sound of motors that have no meaning, only scorn. There goes Ely, the retarded kid, blank dumbfounded expression on his mask-like face, his eyes like he’s in shock, his shoulders as though great weights thrust down upon them. His mother, worrying, leans out the window across the way, her forearms padded by the pillow she lays on the sill. The two of them making a forlorn pair. Where is his father? Could be dead. I know he’s gone. Though maybe he was never there. A mystery, this world.
Ely in his clueless prison, me in my cell room. I have a side street view. Not worthy even of looking out on the Avenue, where the people pass more openly and free. The alley is for those apart. On the periphery. The ones like Ely. Or Reggie, who walks by now, talks out loud where nobody is. Not being answered. Although maybe so in his own way.
Why have they put me here? That bird who dropped me from the sky, the man with the funny cap who drove me here, whiskers so coarse I could feel them in my mind. He tricked me good with that sleazy smile as he pulled the suitcase that lay beside him and carried it into the building: this big block of brick, only hollow with people living inside. And so many doors, like a maze, like some cruel game, me not knowing which door is mine. So I follow the stubbly-faced man up the stairs: cold, white, hard, and bleak, scrawled names and scratches on the yellowed walls. We stop before a door, shitty brown, like all the rest with little peepholes and a peeling gold decal that announces the number 10. And this is my “home." A peculiar word. You open your mouth and exhale, your cheeks expand. It should be comforting, a word that could protect you. But things deceive.
Like what they tell me in school about this God that put us here. He is supposed to be good, but between God and good there is a great emptiness. And I feel cheated. The lady that lives here with her crazy eyes. My mother. Did god put her here too? Why? To mock me, pain me, confuse me? So I run around the house yelling mommy mommy mommy and she is there to ask me what is wrong. I want candy, I want chocolate, I want chocolate milk, a milk shake, mallomars, milk duds, I want to go outside to the park, to watch the ducks, I want to go see the frogs in the reeds with their big bulging eyes, just above the water line. That is what she is there for. To be the answer to my wants. But it’s never enough. And every day I am betrayed.
Because certain wants she can’t satisfy no matter how I cajole, plead, demand. These desires hit a wall with the outside world as hard and unmoving as the walls to my building, as impenetrable as Ely’s forehead. And even the street is a wall, limiting me, keeping me restricted, held at bay, telling me I can go no further. And the ugly sky. It too a wall but different because it’s unreachable. I hear its mocking voice: “I can enclose, I will enclose, I will always enclose, but you will never cover me.” Building after building, like giant stalwart soldiers, stand guard as I make my escape to the park.
Oh the park where the trees and wind blend in a wondrous music where the sun plays with the leaves and all is sparkling and bright and makes me spellbound, where I can be alone and happy, alone but not isolated, where I hold toads and salamanders and feel their animal spirit that seems to enter me and calm me and I get all groggy from their inner tranquility. I want to bring them home and keep them, but mother doesn’t allow, so when I need peace I sit beneath a tree and cup these animals in my hands. And although I feel them wanting to escape, jabbing me with their tiny extremities, I hold them despite their tiny sufferings, for they are temporary and, compared to the relief they offer, I deserve the right to contain them.
Ely returns and sees me stare at him. I am a face behind a window and I see he does not know what to make of me. I watch him stand there, his mouth neither smile or frown. Suddenly, a change comes over his demeanor as though a wave from far away or deep inside takes over. He does not know what to make of it, but is buffeted by unseen forces that make him reel and sway and struggle to stay on his feet. With effort he stabilizes and his mouth widens, his lips twist like licorice sticks, and seem to grow broad, and then he hollers out my name: R O N A L D. The sound travels down the alley way, grovels along the ground, rises screeching and disappears like a frightened dog: R O N a l d. But then boomerangs back at me. r o n A L D.
Ely, shut up, I say in response to his voice, harsh and grating, as though he is hurling part of his fury. My shout stops him cold and suddenly he’s frozen in air, his mind disentangling what I mean. Centuries pass until some kind of knowing makes its way through his mind, then, finally, he comprehends, reaches down, picks something from the ground, and hurls it at me. A rock comes flying at my face. I turn to avoid it, but get hit hard by my ear.
Damn you, ELY. I’m going to get you
