Don't Worry About the Kids (2 page)

Jerry's back was red. Their father screamed at Michael, slammed a newspaper against his head, kicked in the castle. Jerry wailed. Their father yelled at Michael for letting his brother burn up while he kept himself protected. He grabbed at Michael's polo shirt but Michael was too quick for him. He ran off. All he ever thought about was himself, his father shouted. His father was kissing Jerry's back in a way that made Michael feel embarrassed. Michael looked down, watched the ocean foam around his ankles.

His father was dead, Jerry was crazy. Michael was forty-four years old, a successful orthopedic surgeon, the divorced father of two boys and a girl. Well. He had worked for seventeen years to create the kind of family he himself had never had, and now that family was gone, had
been
gone for over two years. Why, then, was he still so surprised?

They walked along Court Street, turned left, passed the Baltic Street Day Care Center. A line of patients, Jerry not among them, moved toward a Dodge mini-van. Most of the patients were in their thirties and forties. They wore housecoats and ragged furs, plaid shirts over heavy wool sweaters, brightly colored silk scarves, frayed slippers, men's ties for belts. Such sad flamboyance, Michael thought. The patients shuffled along in pairs, eyes downcast, skin colorless, holding hands like schoolchildren, looking as if they were emerging from a storm-tossed flight, airsick.

Next to the van a young Hispanic couple embraced. The man, about thirty years old, wore a long olive-drab Army coat. While his eyes and shoulders showed fatigue, his mouth and jaw were set in anger. The woman was attractive, young, her glossy black hair pulled back neatly, her eyelids shaded in pale lavender. Michael watched her lips move at the man's ear.
I love you
, she said.
Oh I love you
.

The woman stepped into the van. The man started to walk away, turned.

“Don't worry about the kids,” he called back. “You hear me? Don't you worry about the kids.”

Then he pivoted, raced across the street at a diagonal. Cars screeched, honked. He was gone.

“That's heavy, isn't it?” Langiello said, touching Michael's arm.

Michael saw that Langiello's eyes were moist. Had he misjudged him? By the end of their lunch, as now, Michael had become quiet again, uneasy. He wanted desperately to make a good impression. He wanted Langiello to know just how much he loved his children—how he
liked
them as much as he loved them—and yet, without his children physically there, he was afraid that anything he said would sound hollow.

Langiello talked about the neighborhood, about what it had been like growing up there. Michael answered questions. Yes, he liked to cook, to clean, to shop, to do the dishes, to do the laundry, to help the children with their homework. Yes, he had worked out a schedule with his partners that allowed him to be at home most days after school. He was on call only one out of every four weekends. He
liked
being a father, being at home with his children. And yes, as he had written in his diary, he did fear for his ex-wife's sanity, for her influence on the children. For months, before and after the divorce, she had threatened to commit suicide by hanging herself from the boys' climbing rope. She had thrown scissors and bricks and kitchen knives at him. She had threatened to harm the children.

She continued to tell the children she had never wanted a divorce, that she had done everything to save the marriage. She told them Michael had left her for another woman, that he had been playing around all through the marriage. She told them that he had beaten her. She told them he was planning to abandon them, to leave New York and take a job at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Langiello nodded sympathetically, said he'd seen a lot of guys in Michael's spot, that he admired Michael.

“Sometimes—” Michael said, encouraged by Langiello's words “—sometimes I feel like the Jackie Robinson of divorce.” Michael paused. Langiello smiled, and when he did, Michael felt his own heart ease. “What I mean is, sometimes I feel that I have to take all the crap my kids can throw at me, yet have the courage
not
to fight back.”

“Sure,” Langiello said. “I know what you mean. Don't I remember Jackie, what it was like for him that first year, everybody calling him nigger, going at him with their spikes?”

Langiello touched Michael's arm, pointed to a set of windows on the second floor of a three-story building, to the apartment in which he had lived for the first twenty-six years of his life. Bruno's Pastry Shop, on the ground floor, had always been there, Langiello said. They entered the shop. Langiello told Mrs. Bruno that Michael was a friend, a famous surgeon. Mrs. Bruno inclined her head, as if in the presence of a priest. Michael closed his eyes, inhaled the fragrances: butter, almond, chocolate, yeast. He saw Jerry, in the bathtub, himself on his knees, beside the tub, rinsing shampoo from Jerry's hair. He was carrying Jerry to the bedroom in an enormous pea-green bath towel. He was sprinkling talcum on Jerry, rubbing baby oil into his scalp, inclining his head to Jerry's head, closing his eyes, inhaling the strange, sweet fragrance.

Michael and Langiello walked along Court Street, passing fish markets, antique stores, restaurants, funeral parlors. Langiello said that his father had been a shoemaker, that when he was a boy he had believed the neighborhood was called Cobble Hill because of men like his father—all the Italian cobblers who worked there. Langiello pointed to the narrow store, now a locksmith shop, that had once been his father's. Langiello said that his great regret in life was that he had never been able to let his father, who died when he was fourteen years old, know how much he had loved him.

“My father died when I was sixteen,” Michael said.

Langiello put a hand on Michael's shoulder, and when he did Michael found that he wanted to tell Langiello
everything
. They passed a yellow brick building set back from the road like a small museum: The Anthony Anastasios Memorial Wing of the Longshoreman's Medical Association. In the distance, no more than half a mile away, Michael could see the Gowanus Parkway, the gray turrets and smokestacks of ships beyond. Michael talked about his father, who had been a bookkeeper for a small manufacturing company, Wonderwear Hosiery. His mother had worked as a practical nurse, taking care of invalids at home. Whenever she was on a case—this was before Jerry was hospitalized at the age of twelve—he would be in charge of Jerry and of the house: of cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry. It was one reason, he sometimes thought, taking care of his own children came so naturally for him.

They sat on a bench together in Carroll Gardens, watching old men in black jackets playing
bocce
, schoolchildren playing tag. The sky seemed lower, as if being pushed down by an enormous slab of gray steel. Michael thought of aircraft carriers, their decks stripped and lifted by giant cranes, then welded together until they stretched across the heavens. Had Michael resented having to care for Jerry? Some. Still, the days he had spent alone in their apartment with his brother were among the happiest of his childhood—the only times when the rooms were quiet, when he could be close to Jerry, could tend to him without being scolded—times when Jerry felt free to return Michael's affection.

Langiello asked if Michael had talked with his ex-wife since their last interview. She had called two nights before, Michael said, at three in the morning, exploding at him with obscenities, threats, accusations; and she had called again just a few hours ago, before he left for the hospital, to wish him good luck in his interview with Langiello. She had sounded rational, normal. She had told him that she was still willing to get back together.

“And I'll bet she's been giving the kids the same line,” Langiello offered. “Sure. I know all about it. The kids need a punching bag and you're it. They'll know the difference, though, Mike. Kids are resilient. I mean, they'll take her side now—she's the victim, right?—but you'll get your reward some day.”

“Maybe.”

“You will, Mike. I've seen enough of these cases to know. The open agenda is reconciliation—the hidden agenda is revenge. Hot and cold, cold and hot. The problem is that they had this great family once upon a time, see, and now they don't—and she gives them a story that helps them make sense of what can never really make sense. It's what I was trying to tell you before, about going to court: it's not who's right or wrong that counts, but who comes up with the best story. What you need is a good
story
, Mike.”

“Jackie's story?”

“Not a bad idea.” Langiello laughed. “I got close to him once, at this clinic for our team at Ebbets Field. I was in a group assigned to him, him showing us how to take a lead, get a jump on the pitcher. Jesus! I forgot about that for ages.”

“Where did you go—New Utrecht?”

“Yeah. I played second base, only I wasn't much. Good-field no-hit. You play baseball at Erasmus?”

“No.”

“I remember how great you were in basketball—first team all-city, right?”

“Yes.”

“For a little guy you were something else, Mike. We had these two big Italian guys that clogged up the middle—surf and turf, we called them—and in practice our coach got this kid from the JV to try to imitate you, the way you'd dribble through any defense we could throw up.”

“You were on the team?”

“Sure.”

“Why didn't you say so before?”

“Maybe I was hoping you'd remember me.” Langiello shrugged. “Ah, I wasn't much. Seventh man, my senior year. They'd send me in for surf or turf if they got into foul trouble.”

Michael tried to picture Langiello as an eighteen-year-old, in uniform. He tried to recall the game, but instead he saw Jerry running in circles around the schoolyard, screaming with joy, a basketball held tightly against his stomach.

Langiello laughed. “You faked me out of my jock once, going in for a drive, I didn't know what happened, you were so quick.” Langiello leaned forward, hands clasped. “You were all-Ivy at Dartmouth too—I remember following you in the papers, but you never went to the pros. In those days I guess you could make more being a hotshot doctor than an athlete. You read about the contracts these guys get now, out of college? It really pisses me off, you want the truth, twenty-year-old kids making all that dough.” Langiello paused, cocked his head to one side. “Let me ask you something, Mike. How much do you think I earn, the job I got?”

“I don't know. You have a law degree, don't you?”

“I have a law degree. Brooklyn Law School, Class of '68. But take a guess at how much I make. C'mon—”

“I'd rather not.”

“Twenty-three thousand.”

“That's
all?”

“That's all. Sure. But I got no complaints. I mean, I like my work, right? Child-abuse cases mostly—I get to
be guardian ad litum
for a lot of kids, get to make a difference in their lives.” He stood. “And I get to meet some fascinating people too, right?”

Langiello suggested that he walk Michael to the subway, that Michael had more important things to do than to pass the time of day with a guy like him. Michael clenched his fists, angry with himself because he hadn't seen that each time Langiello had asked him a question he had doubtless been hoping Michael would ask one back, would show interest. They stopped at the Gowanus Canal, leaned on the bridge railing, looked down into water that seemed thick with black clouds. He answered a few of Langiello's questions, then asked him about his work with child-abuse cases.

“Ah—crazy things go on behind doors once people close them,” he said. “And the craziest thing of all is how most of the time, the women and the kids, banged up to hell, all they want is for us to get the fathers to live with them again. They'll almost always drop the charges if only the bastard will come back home.”

“I'm not surprised,” Michael said.

“You know what the hardest thing in the world is, Mike? It's getting a kid
not
to love a parent.” They came to the Bergen Street subway station. Langiello said he would be seeing Mike's ex-wife later in the afternoon. Langiello smiled. “But don't worry, okay? You'll get more time with the kids. I promise—”

“Thanks,” Michael said. He moved toward Langiello, wanting to touch the man. “I wish I—”

“No need to say anything,” Langiello said. “I mean, it's been good to reminisce about the old days, the way things were when we were growing up. Times change, Mike. Times change and who's ever ready?”

They shook hands. Michael watched Langiello walk off, then started down the steps. He felt exhausted suddenly—drained—and he couldn't understand why. All he wanted to do was to lie down, to dream of lush green lawns and pale blue skies. Three teenagers, two in black leather jackets, stood below, where the staircase turned.

At the landing he made a right turn, then saw bright lights flare inside his head, welding sparks spraying crazily. A hand was jammed over his mouth so that his teeth cut into his lips, drew blood. He was being dragged backward by both arms. He resisted, saw a knife blade flash. He relaxed, let himself be led to an alcove. He stood on a soft mass of wet newspapers. Above him were rusting girders, sagging wires, a clogged grating coated with swirls of brown slime.

“Don't fight back. We ain't your enemies, okay? We don't want to hurt you unless we have to.”

Michael nodded. They were taller than he was. The man in front of him was well built, wore a black T-shirt, the sleeves cut off.

“You a friend of Langiello's?”

“Not exactly.”

“What's it worth to you if we take care of him?”

“I don't understand.”

“Don't give me crap. We know what Langiello does, the hold he got on you. You want us to do a job on him, it'll cost you five thousand bucks, cash, unmarked bills. Five thousand ain't much for a rich guy like you, the clothes you got on.”