August and Then Some (14 page)

A picture hangs on the refrigerator in the house that until a few weeks ago was mine—it's of Mom and Dad as kids. Eighteen, nineteen maybe. On a date in some cheesy-looking Chinese place in their old neighborhood. They had napkins folded like origami swans and tall bamboo glasses with umbrellas sticking out. In the background was a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge that had miniature lights poking through the holes. The table behind them had two regular chairs and two metal folding chairs that looked like they'd been brought out from the back room and dusted off. Now that I'm thinking about it, this Chinese joint doesn't sound as cheesy as it does heartbreaking. But hey, it was probably fun for them. Exotic, you know? My dad was in a tie, Mom was wearing a low-cut number. They were showing a lot of teeth in this snapshot, probably laughing at the accent coming off the waiter who took the black-and-white picture.

I wonder if my parents ever thought about this picture when it wasn't in front of them. I mean, they'd gone to the refrigerator often enough, they must have thought about it when they were pulling out leftovers or getting something to drink. But I wonder if they thought about it when they weren't fighting and there was nothing
left to do except get in bed. When she was reading and slid over to make room for him without looking up from the page and he was setting his alarm clock for four-thirty, thinking about cement, money, or some other girlfriend he had before her. I wonder if they remembered whether or not those kids in the picture ever took the time out to ask themselves what kind of nights they wanted when they grew up.

Here's the thing about this picture that's always been hard for me to admit. I don't actually think they were laughing because of the waiter's accent. I think the date was going really well. I think they were happy.

What the hell happens to people?

Some days I wish I had walked in, told the waiter to put the camera down before he clicked the picture. Dropped enough cash on the table to cover the check, and broke up their date.

Of course, if that worked—if they didn't go to the car together afterward, and my dad decided he wasn't going to slip his hand up my mother's dress, and my mother decided to say no, and they decided to break the whole thing up—I would have been history by the end of the night. Never to be born to them. Cancelled over a dish of lo mein. Some days I think them staying out of that car would have been right.

After babysitting Veronica we walk through the West Village. It's after midnight, everything is jumping. We come out of an ice-cream place on Bleecker Street licking cones of gelato. “What did you get?” Stephanie asks me.

“Pistachio.”

“Eeewww.”

“What do you mean ‘eeewww'? Pistachio's the best.”

“It's green.”

“So?”

“Pistachios ain't green.”

“I know, but we think of them as green.”

“I think of them as red.”

“They're definitely not red.”

“Yes, they are.”

“No, the dye is red, not the nut. Anyway would you be happy if I was eating red-dye-flavored gelato?”

“I'd be happy if you admit pistachios are red.”

I look at her gelato. “Wait a second, what the hell did you get?”

“Avocado.”

 

We cut through Tompkins Square Park, pass the handball courts and exit on Avenue B and 9th. We get to our stoop and I unlock the door. From behind us we hear Nelson call Stephanie's name. He's walking across the street looking very perturbed. Stephanie's covered in busted. I say, “Go inside. I got this one.”

Stephanie says, “No, you go inside.”

“You sure?”

“What am I, a child?”

I'm sure she's not. But at the same time you can't step over the line from kid to adult as fast as she has and not leave something behind. “Go inside,” she tells me again.

“I'll be right on the other side of this door.”

I let the door shut behind me and think it might be a mistake.

Nelson must be staring her down because I can't hear a thing. Finally she says, “What?”

Then there's all kind of screaming in Spanish and English. I can't make it all out, but I had a pretty good idea what it would be about before it started. The “you're a liar” and the “you're a whore” part I hear clearly. When Stephanie says, “Let go of me,” that's when I decide to open the door, and just as I get my hands on it, it swings open. Stephanie is trying to get in and Nelson has her by the arm. He and I make eye contact. Stephanie pulls away and squeezes into the lobby. Nelson stands there holding the door open. “What the fuck are you doing?” I say.

“Mind your business, asshole.”

Ralphie comes running down the stairs yelling in Nelson's direction. “Thas it. Get out of my building.” He gets right in Nelson's face with his attack-dog eyes. “Cierra la puerta.” Nelson doesn't budge. “I calling the police,” Ralphie says. This makes Nelson step back. “I calling them right now.” Nelson lets the door shut in front of him, then kicks it hard. After the echo of it dies down, there's a momentary quiet in the hallway. A very unhappy woman opens her apartment door and looks at
us. Ralphie says, “We sorry. Everything's OK.” She nods and shuts the door. Ralphie turns to Stephanie and says, “Toma una decisión ya.” Then he climbs the stairs.

Me and Stephanie get to the third floor. “You OK?” I ask her.

“Yeah, I'm OK.” And she checks the underside of her arm for marks.

“Let me see.”

“No,” she says, “I'm going home.”

“Come upstairs with me.”

“No, I'm going home.”

“Would you just come up for a second? Please.”

“One second.” We walk to my floor.

I let us in and slam the door behind us.

“What are you doing with this fuckin guy?”

“You mean with my kid's father?” She stands in the middle of the room, and folds her arms over her chest.

I grab a beer from my fridge. “You should be outta here, you know? Somewhere making an island for yourself.”

“Yeah, cause I got so many places where I can do that.”

“Then make an island
out of
yourself.”

“What's that mean?”

“Just leave.”

I pace the fifteen feet of apartment—look out the window but can't see Nelson on the street.

“I'm not leaving my kid without a father.”

“Fucking you doesn't make him a father.”

“And what does that make me, a ho?”

“I didn't even come close saying that.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Stephanie, stop it. You want this kid to be raised by Mike Tyson Junior then stay. But if I have anything to say about it—and I really hope I do—you'll find a better one.”

“Why you think you have anything to say about it?”

“Because he's a fucking loser.” I kill the beer in two swallows then grab another. “And I don't want to have to watch you from the fire escape, and drop ink balloons on him every time he gets out of control.”

“Ink balloons?”

“I just made that up, but you know what I mean.”

“You'd feel good doing that, right?”

“I'd feel good if you didn't get the shit kicked out of you.”

“Throwing ink balloons, or anything else on him don't do shit for me. You're not getting it.”

“I get that you don't have to be with a guy who attacks you for Christ's sake.”

She shakes her head at me like I'm ignorant.

“What?”

“Forget it.”

“Don't shake your head at me then tell me ‘forget it'.”

“I got an idea. Why don't you steal his gold chains, sell them, and give me the money.”

“What the fuck are you saying?”

“Like you did for your sister. Two or three thousand dollars, that should make it all good. Get me out of town.”

“Watch your fuckin mouth. You don't know shit about my sister.”

“You just like Nelson.”

“The fuck I am.”

“This is guys. This is what they do. They make it look like it's about their girl but it's about them.”

“IT WAS NOT ABOUT ME.” She flinches away from me, covering her face like she's about to get hit, and right now it feels good to watch her like that. “YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, IT'S FUCKIN SCARY.” I move closer to her, feeling like I hover three feet above her. “And this ain't shit, little girl. You see how mad I am now? YOU TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK WOULD YOU
HAVE DONE. TALK TO A FUCKING DOCTOR?” I throw the beer against the wall behind her and it misses her by two feet. She covers her head with her hands and screams as pieces of glass make tinkling sounds all over the floor, beer sprays the side of Stephanie's head. She crouches down to the edge of the mattress and hugs her knees to her chest. “FUCK OFF, YOU LITTLE SHIT.”

I hear the echo of my feet off the stairwell, but can't feel them hitting the stairs. I bust through the front door and almost hit Nelson in the face with it. I jump down the four stairs and he's right behind me. We lock on each other like Roman wrestlers trying to get the other to the ground. He slams my back into a parked car. I have two handfuls of his shirt and he's got two of mine. We spin off the fender and fall onto the street. My right elbow hits asphalt, but I don't feel it. I somehow get his head between my hand and the street and I'm using my weight to keep it there and line up a shot, but he wiggles an arm free and hits me right in the throat with it. I can't breathe. Now I'm on the street in the fetal position just covering up and I'm getting kicked in my back. I see the lights. Hear the siren. I uncover myself and see Nelson hopping the garden fence next to our apartment. A cop breaks for him into the courtyards of the other buildings. My wrists get cuffed and the cop lifts me up by them.

In the back seat with the grate in front of my face, trying to suck air in, an old image replaces what just happened and I can't shake it. I'm maybe five. Our dining-room table is set for company. It's raining. I'm watching from the side window. My mother and sister get out of the car; my sister is holding a paper bag in her right arm as she runs up the driveway, my mom behind her. Danielle slips, falls forward and I hear glass break under her. Blood mixes with the rain, and rushes from underneath her down the driveway. I'm frozen and can't use my voice to yell for my dad. My mom helps Dani stand up. She's wet, but not
bleeding at all. Red wine soaks the front of her. Mom pulls the other unbroken bottle out of the bag. She yells, “Shit,” because Danielle has trashed her outfit and now Mom has to go back to the liquor store before the guests come. That only registers slightly, because I'm still in the moment before that, when I saw something that was more real than what actually happened. And I feel myself needing to smash through the side door, run down the driveway and break her fall, but I can't move.

Mom rented an apartment without anyone noticing; put down the first and last month's rent way before the bank statements would get to my father, and called Dani and me to her bedside to ask how we'd feel about the three of us living in an apartment if we had to share a room. There she was right in front of us making a carefully plotted run for it. I said, “That sounds great,” and Dani nodded with the speed of a panting puppy dog. I guess Mom was just done with the hiding out in her own room in her own head routine. So one day after I went to work at the garage and she dropped Dani at swimming practice, Mom had stuffed the bag she usually took to work, wrote a note, left it on the kitchen table, and walked out without saying a thing. Assuming, I imagine, she'd see my dad in a lawyer's office some day.

The list of stuff we packed for our first night went like this:

The coats we slept on, the towels we rolled up and used as pillows and if we'd taken showers they would have served two purposes.

The apartment was a few miles south and west of our house, a few blocks north of the Bronx border and closer to the Hudson River. Interstate traffic ran outside our windows and replaced the river sounds I used to hear at night. We had no curtains or air conditioners so the sun came in early and brought the heat. The windows were open, but highway noises blew through the rooms more often than breezes.

It wasn't the heat or the passing trucks that woke me the first morning. It was the sound of one long steady whistle, like a freight train busting through the door straight into my head. I sat up fast and saw Dani asleep on the other side of the room. Oh right, I'm in a new place. The noise didn't bother Dani, but now that I was awake I could tell it was coming from another room, not my skull. I walked out of there and closed the door without waking up my sister.

In the living room I heard the whistle, but only saw plain white walls covered in decades of paint. The coats on the steam radiator were chipped in a few spots and I could see fifty years of renters trying to make the place homey with custom blues and beiges. I wondered if my mom was going to put a new color on those walls or keep it impersonal and ride out that flat white until Danielle and I got old enough and went off on our own. None of those thoughts stopped this incessant whistle working my nerve.

In the kitchen I saw Mom in her robe, standing in front of the stove, staring into the steam shooting out of the teapot. The gas
was still on. She didn't seem to hear it, let alone have plans to turn it off anytime soon. “Mom, what are you doing?”

My voice startled her out of her trance. “What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“You're gonna burn your water.”

“Oh, shit.” Then she turned the gas off and the high-pitched whistle wound down. She gave herself a defeated chuckle and stared into the empty paper cup. “Wow, it's quiet in here.”

I rubbed some crust out of the corner of my eye. “Is it that kind of quiet?”

“What kind?”

“You know. The last few minutes kind of quiet you told me about. The peace right before the patient goes. Is that like this?”

She thought about it. Then poured the hot water into a cup, held her hand over it and let the steam collect on her palm.

“Do we have a phone?” I asked.

“Not yet.” She opened two empty cabinets then looked around at the completely bare kitchen. “And no tea bags either.”

“Guess not.”

“Jake, I really need you to help me get things from the house. Would you?”

 

Mom rented a moving van with damp plywood covering its floorboards, and brought a roll of garbage bags. Dani opted to stay in the apartment and wait for us to bring the stuff back. On the way we stopped at a deli for bagels—the whiff of toasted sesame seeds countered the soggy wood smell. I sat shotgun as she drove from downtown Yonkers and pulled up at the curb of what was now officially Dad's house. She killed the van's engine. We sat in silence for a little while as the engine ticked down, and
the keys clanged against the steering column. Finally I opened the door and before I got one foot on the sidewalk she said, “I called the cops.”

I pulled myself back in and shut the door. “The who?”

“You heard me.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it's just me, but I thought there was a small possibility this wouldn't go smoothly.”

“Good point.” I looked up to the windows to check for movement. “So what—are they gonna pack the fine china for us?”

“Please don't joke.”

“OK.”

There was silence.

I said, “So they're—”

“On their way.”

“OK.”

I scanned the block and checked the rearview mirror like what the fuck was gonna jump us on a suburban street on a Wednesday morning. We don't even have alleys for someone to hide in. Just front lawns, driveways and garbage cans. Maybe an occasional cat.

Mom sat upright like a good schoolgirl, looking straight ahead, her shaking hands on the wheel. I swear sometimes she looked like an eleven-year-old trembling under the forty-year-old trench coat of herself. I'd seen it plenty of times. Her breaking down in aisle three of Pathmark, paralyzed by a choice between two cereals, flooded by memories of Terri calling her a lousy-rotten kid and making all choices for her, turning her decision process into something debilitating and scary. This one included.

“Are you expecting a spontaneous high-speed chase?” I asked. She let go the wheel, leaned back in her seat, tried to take a deep
breath, clenched and unclenched her fingers. “Wanna take your seatbelt off? Stay a while?”

“Are you under the impression that I'm not scared?” she wanted to know.

“No. But I might be under the impression I'm not.”

“Well, don't hold onto that fear for too long. Being afraid of your father is like swimming in drying concrete.”

“And next thing you know you're asking the lifeguard to throw you a jack hammer?”

“How'd you get to be such a wise ass, Jake?” And we gave each other a sarcastic smirk because we both knew that the answer to that question was lying on the couch with torn ligaments.

More silence.

I grabbed her a bagel and a napkin out of the paper bag and tossed them on her lap.

“Eat.”

She looked at it thoughtfully for a while, then her eyes glassed over like she could see through the bagel, through her legs, through the floorboards, through the street. She reached into the bag. “You eat too,” she said. And offered me the bagel by holding it in front of me. I took it from her. “Thanks for feeding me last week.”

“Yeah.”

I unwrapped it.

“I mean it.”

“Sure.” I took a bite fast, because I really didn't want to talk about last week.

“I guess I kind of lost it for a while.”

I nodded. And thought:
For a long while.

“I guess I didn't have to make you feed me.”

“Guess not,” I said with a full mouth.

Then she reached over with the napkin and wiped a speck of cream cheese off the side of my mouth. I didn't look at her and I
didn't stop her from doing it. That was the forty-year-old doing that. And I think I was glad for it.

Then mostly to herself she said, “Yeah, I probably didn't have to do that.”

So we chewed our bagels and waited for SWAT.

 

A cop car pulled up behind us. Mom looked at me, said, “Hey,” and made real wide lips showing me her teeth. I pointed to mine where she had a sesame seed stuck in hers. She slid her pinky nail between two teeth, ran her tongue over it, swallowed, then showed me again. “You're good,” I said. Then she finally took off her seatbelt and we both got out of the van.

This cop was out of central casting, only without a swagger or sunglasses. He was slightly graying, and his eyes were pending arrests, dark as asphalt. Probably less than six feet and his neck may have been slightly thinner than my waist. He walked to us taking his steps like a mechanical bull on low speed. His wedding ring that at one point probably fit perfectly now cinched the fat around his finger into a knuckle-length hourglass.

“Are you Savage?” he asked with a voice that followed suit.

“Yes. Hi,” my mom said with a cheerful smile trying to charm the law onto her side.

He deflected all that with a stale “What's the problem?”

I said, “Pick a starting place.”

“Jake,” my mother said in a low voice coming in straight for the block.

“OK.” And I put my palms up where everyone could see them.

She switched back to charm. “Officer, my husband and I are getting separated. I mean we are separated, we're getting divorced. Me and my kids are now living in an apartment—”

“Which one was your house?” he asked, as if he knew exactly what was coming.

“Oh, that one,” she pointed. “And now my son and I—this is Jake.” I said hi and he nodded at me. “We came … my daughter is at home. Our new home. Apartment. And Jake and I came to get some things out of the house.” She stopped and smiled again like she accomplished something.

“OK, and what's the problem with that?” he wanted to know.

That's when Mom took in a deep breath and tried to figure out how to explain. “He—” she started then reverted to scratching her head. “My husband—” Her head started doing its twitching thing from the house to the van to the cop car, which I took as my cue to jump in.

I said, “She had bruises a couple weeks ago.”

Mom cringed from the idea that that was said out loud, and in front of a total stranger. I felt embarrassed saying it. But he didn't flinch. I guess cops are like EMTs of domestic squabbles, nothing turns their stomach anymore.

“From what?” he asked just for the record.

“From him. From my dad.”

“Do you want to press charges, ma'am?”

Mom kept twitching her head around until it finally came to stillness pointing at the street. “She doesn't want to,” I said.

The cop looked at me like I was being cocky. “You know this?”

“I do,” I said, trying to convey that this is just how the game goes around here.

“Ma'am, do you want to press charges?”

She managed a no.

“All right.” Then he scribbled something on his notepad and shook his head, like something was a shame, a damn disappointment. My mother and I looked at each other surprised that he seemed to care. And I swear somewhere in his headshake I could see his family, and his relief that this wasn't him. When he looked up from his pad he was all business again. “Let's go inside.”

Mom led the way through the kitchen and into the living room where Dad was on the couch, his leg propped up, his arms spread on the back of the couch, and some kind of courtroom TV show playing in front of him. Judging from the look on his face he had seen the cop car from the window. “How nice. How lovely.” He pointed the remote at the TV and clicked it off. The room was quiet for a second. “Hi Jake,” Dad said. “You wanna do introductions?”

I turned to the cop. “I'm sorry I didn't get your name.”

“Mr Savage,” the cop spoke up, “your wife and your son want to take some of their things to their new apartment, OK?”

“Uh huh,” Dad said. And he and Mom locked eyes in something that looked like a silent hostage-negotiation. I don't know what the hell was really in that stare. Meals and drink? Emotions that ran in spirals? Things never said that close throats? The fuck should I know. I just saw it paralyze everything else in the room—me and that hulk of a cop included.

A static voice came over the cop's walkie-talkie; he reached down and lowered the volume. “The children can go with their mother until the divorce proceedings, if they're doing so by free will.” He looked at me for confirmation.

“Yeah,” I said. “I wanna go.”

“That's really it.” He looked at my parents who still had each other's eyes. My dad looked away from her and to the cop. “That's it?” he asked him.

“Until proceedings. Yes.”

My father then looked into a blank TV screen starting to see the beginnings of what an empty six-room house was like.

Mom, who had been holding a roll of black garbage bags the whole time, said, “I'm going to start,” and disappeared up the stairs.

Dad said, “So whudda you takin, Jake?”

“I don't know. Clothes. Music.”

He stared at me cold. “Make smart picks.”

“I will,” and I started to walk to the stairs.

“Because that'll be it.”

I stopped with my hand on the banister. “Whudda you mean?”

“I mean, that'll be all you'll take from the house for good.”

“What, do I owe you something?”

“No, you don't owe me anything. But now's your chance to ask for what you want. Now. This is the big chance.”

“I don't want anything.”

“No cash, no watch, no car, no gun.”

“Is there a gun in this house?” The cop really wanted to know.

“It's OK,” my dad said. “I got it on a permit. I'm a part-time security guard. My wallet's in that drawer.” Dad pointed, but the cop had no intention of checking. “The gun's not going to anyone.”

“Excuse me Dad, but shut up, OK?”

“Consider the subject closed then. It's off the table. We're done,” he said to me. “You wanna play pool? Go ask your mother. You wanna play football? Go ask your mother.”