Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (2 page)

Nicky found comfort counting the opposite of blessings. He built a list of the people and events that ruined his childhood. He did this in secret. No one wanted to hear his complaints, so he wrote them down in the back pages of a composition notebook
left over from first grade. On the day Roy left for Vietnam, the list included:

1. John F. Kennedy.

2. The Great Blackout of 1965.

3. The end of stickball.

4. Roy's horrid hippie girlfriend Margalo.

Nicky planned to write at length someday on each entry. He planned to put those vocabulary lessons to work and pour out his heart. He imagined someone would discover his writings long after he was gone. He hoped someone would publish them in a famous book, along the lines of
The Diary of Anne Frank
.

Looking back, with the wisdom that comes from reaching the age of thirteen, Nicky felt silly about Kennedy.

This happened in the autumn of 1963, when Nicky was six. He was fidgeting with Mom in a crowd on Broadway. He was smothered by cloth coats, bopped on the head by vinyl handbags, suffocated by drugstore perfume.

Somebody yelled, “Here he comes!”

Nicky caught a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy, chestnut hair blowing in the wind as he worked down the barricade, grasping hands and grinning and nodding. When Kennedy reached the barricade directly in front of Mom and Nicky, the crowd surged, the way a crowd lunges for a subway car. People yelped and pushed. Mom and Nicky were shoved forward. Kennedy reached into the seething mass to squeeze a flailing hand and a presidential knuckle popped Nicky in the nose.

Nicky wailed. His nose sizzled. Kennedy lightly touched Nicky's head and said, “Sorry,” and kept moving.

Nicky hopped up and down. His nose trickled blood. He stomped the asphalt with his Buster Browns. He howled, “I'm going to tell my DAD on you.”

Men in suits and sunglasses trailed Kennedy, who passed a handkerchief to one of the men. The man relayed the handkerchief to Mom.

“Ma'am,” he said.

“My dad will fix you, too,” Nicky said. A droplet of bright red blood brimmed on his upper lip.

Mom fished in her purse for a tissue. She refused to give the president's handkerchief to Nicky. She said, “Who knows where's it's been?”

“I don't wanna TISSUE! I want to tell DAD!” Nicky growled.

Nicky burst into the apartment and calmed down. To him, there was no place like 5-C.

With a tissue jammed up each nostril, Nicky stationed himself at the kitchen window and kept vigil down Groton Avenue, the narrow street that finished in a dead end at the rear of Building B.

At five thirty on the dot, Dad's Yum-E-Cakes delivery van, orange blinker flashing, turned off Lockdale Avenue. The truck roared down Groton, head-on toward Eggplant Alley. Nicky enjoyed the sensation—Dad rushing straight toward him.

The van rolled directly under the kitchen window. Nicky saw his father's wavy brown hair and thick arms behind the windshield.
The van was swallowed up by Eggplant Alley's underground garage. Nicky adored the sight—Dad coming home.

Nicky met Dad at the door and pulled him by the finger to the sofa. In a nasally tone, Nicky told the incredible story of the president who punched him in the nose.

Nicky said, “I bled.”

“That's bad.”

“You're going to beat him up, right, Dad?”

“Sure. But right now, I'm going to read the paper.”

“You'll take care of him, right, Daddy? No one hurts your kids and gets away with it, right? You always said that.”

Dad stood and touched a hand to Nicky's bristle cut. He said, “Your head's sweaty. Yeah, I'll take care of everything.”

“You fix him good.”

“Yeah,” Dad said from the hallway.

“Fix him.”

“You got it, pal. I'll take care of him. The dirty rat,” Dad said, fading into the bathroom.

Nicky dropped his moist face onto the plastic slipcover. He sighed in peace. Dad would take care of everything.

Three weeks later, on a Friday afternoon, Nicky stayed home from school with his annual autumn head cold. Mom ironed and stared at a soap opera on the TV, and the screen went black.

Then:

“Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.”

Mom sat gently next to Nicky on the couch. She made the sign of the cross. Nicky's bottom lip stuck out—his expression when utterly confused. He only wanted Kennedy roughed up a little.

When Roy returned from school, Nicky asked his brother if he had heard the big news about the dead president.

“No, I spent the day on Mars. Didn't hear,” Roy said.

“Well,” Nicky said, sounding official. “Kennedy was shot and killed, AND I'm pretty sure Dad was behind it.”

Roy said, “You better quit eating glue.”

Nicky eyed Dad closely during supper. Dad sat calmly in his white T-shirt, arms on the table, and chewed his meat loaf and sipped his can of Ballantine. Same as always.

Nicky thought, “One cool customer.”

For a long while, the incident gave Nicky the creeps, the willies, and a first-class case of brain cooties. Starting on November 22, 1963, he questioned everything, from the Tooth Fairy to whether Mr. Ed, the talking horse on television, could really talk. And for the first time in his life, Nicky wondered, with a queasy belly, “What can happen next?”

The answer, of course: plenty.

W
hat could happen next? One thing could lead to another. And before you know it, your big brother is off to war in a jungle on the other side of the world. Off to the war they showed on TV every night, in living color, mostly deep greens and bright reds.

That's what.

Nicky sat on his bed, the scent of Roy's aftershave lingering in the spring air. He glanced at his alarm clock, which was alongside Roy's alarm clock. Roy left fifteen minutes ago. Only about ten zillion minutes till Roy came home.

“One year,” Nicky thought. “I'm going to need help with this.”

He found Dad in the living room. Dad was uneasy in his easy chair. Dad stared at the television, without watching the television. The TV was tuned to a movie musical. On the screen, a man wearing overalls crooned to a woman wearing a straw hat. The woman did leg-kicks on a hay bale.

Nicky asked, “Want me to change this, Dad?”

Nothing.

Nicky thought, “This is bad.”

Dad hated musicals. They were on his hit list, along with Blue
Castle hamburgers, cars manufactured by American Motors, the New York Mets, and old man Van Der Woort from the sixth floor, who never held the elevator for you. If Dad's mind was right, he would rather swallow sewing needles than watch a musical.

Nicky said, “Aren't the Yanks playing today?”

Nothing.

Dad was on the premises, but Dad was not there. Dad was in a daze. Nicky had never seen his father in such a state. He had seen Dad happy, angry, tired, disgusted, confused, worried. One time he even saw Dad leave the house wearing two different-colored shoes. That was a famous mistake in family history. But dazed—this was a new one.

Dad wasn't the type. He was unflappable. He was a cool customer. Dad had seen it all, from the Great Depression to World War II. Dad hit the winning basket in the 1947 North Bronx ADC championship game. Dad climbed the fire escape like a superhero when they were locked out of the apartment. Dad laughed—actually laughed!—when he caught the rat in a coffee can the night it stepped off the dumbwaiter into the kitchen. One night, Dad won $62 in a poker game. Dad once saw Babe Ruth stopped at a light in Riverdale and another time shook Dwight Eisenhower's hand at a luncheonette in Yonkers.

But now, with Roy on his way to Vietnam, Dad looked like Superman with a lapful of kryptonite. Dad looked like he did the weekend he had the stomach flu.

“Hey, Dad, I'm gonna go roller-skate on the parkway,” Nicky said.

Nothing.

Dad's watery eyes stared at the television. On the screen, a man milked a cow in rhythm to trombone music. Poor Dad. He had always been a world-class worrier when it came to his boys. The highness of fences, the sharpness of scissors, the slipperiness of staircases, the ravages of exotic diseases, the darkness in a stranger's heart—Dad saw potential danger to his kids everywhere. Now his older boy was on his way to war. The airplane ride alone was enough to cause deep, deep worry.

“Dad cannot help me,” Nicky muttered.

He found Mom in the kitchen. She stood over the Formica table, peeling garlic. She wore her most massive apron. Her short black hair was wrapped in a red-and-white kerchief. She was dressed to cook.

“What's with the long face?” Mom said. “You're not going to walk around here like that for a whole year. Count your blessings.”

Nicky thought, “Okay, let's see. My brother is gone and my father is a zombie. But at least I have not swallowed rat poison; a steam roller has not crushed my skull; a hand grenade has not exploded in my pants …”

Nicky fibbed and said, “I have a headache.”

“Well, be thankful you have a head,” Mom said. “You don't see me sitting around complaining. I'm making myself useful by cooking.”

In the small kitchen, garlic sizzled, water boiled, and the oven preheated. Mom toiled amid a pile of peeled potatoes; opened tomato cans, serrated lids up; a pyramid of cream cheese bricks; crumbled crackers on a sheet of waxed paper; a haystack of something green and leafy. The air was hazy with flour.

Nicky thought, “Mom is in bad shape.”

When Mom was upset, going over the edge and around the bend, off her rocker, she hit the kitchen and cooked the way some people hit the bars and drank. One night, famous in family lore, Roy disappeared for six hours. He was fourteen and he vanished from the face of the earth. (Turned out Roy and Fishbone Callahan walked the one hundred or so blocks to Yankee Stadium, to stand outside and wait for foul balls.) While Dad frantically searched the dark streets of the Bronx, Mom cooked up a lasagna, baked an apple pie and two pumpkin pies, and churned out five quarts of escarole soup.

Now Nicky stood in the preheated, boiling, sizzling kitchen and he thought, “Roy will be gone for a year. We're gonna need to open a restaurant.”

“You won't see me sitting around staring into space,” Mom said, chopping something orange. “I lived through World War Two. My two brothers were overseas for almost three years and we didn't sit around staring into space.”

Nicky knew the stories of Uncle Dominic and Uncle Vinny the way most kids knew the stories of Curious George and the Cat in the Hat. Uncle Dominic served as an airplane mechanic in Europe. He was shipped home safe and sound in 1945 with a bowel infection. Uncle Vinny was a star second baseman, moviestar-handsome, and industrious enough to go to Fordham for part of one semester. He enlisted in the navy the day after Pearl Harbor and became a frogman. On a mission in the Pacific, he was eaten by a giant clam. His name was listed on the War Memorial plaque, the one recently splashed with graffiti, down in Grant
Park, and Nicky was surprised Mom would bring him up on this night.

Nicky said, “Ma.”

Mom said, “I hope we have pot cheese.”

Nicky thought, “I wonder what Checkers is up to. Man's best friend.”

He found the creaky brown mutt stretched out at the apartment door, graying snout perched on the threshold. Checkers's nose twitched. He was sniffing the hallway air, waiting for Roy to get off the elevator, the way he waited for Roy to come home from school, all those afternoons.

“You can't lie here a whole year, Check,” Nicky said, although he did see the attraction of the idea. He rubbed his hand along the dog's back. Checkers shifted, groaned, broke wind.

“Help,” Nicky squeaked.

And his plea was answered by a sweet, wonderful sound. The noise was faint, but clear. Nicky moved away from Checkers. He entered the hot kitchen, searching, following. Mom didn't look up. The glorious sounds came from outside. They floated on the spring breeze, drifting through the kitchen curtains, into Nicky's eager ears.

T
he sounds gently rose from the PS 19 schoolyard, directly below the kitchen window. Boyish shouts. A dull thwock, unmistakably the impact of a stickball bat against a Spaldeen. There is no other sound like it. The clatter of a wooden bat on asphalt, the shriek of a boy, the jangle of a chain-link fence. “Home run,” Nicky remembered. “Those were the sounds of a home run.” Music to his ears.

Nicky moved past Mom toward the kitchen window, toward the noise. He walked in a trance, as if hypnotized by something beautiful and magical. He was lured to the window. He walked like he did in his dream about Jane Jetson, the one where she blew kisses and crooked her finger at him.

“Do you hear that?” Nicky said to Mom.

“We need eggs,” Mom said. She stirred something thick and gloppy in a bowl. She was building up a sweat.

“They're playing stickball out there.”

“Don't be crazy,” Mom panted, grunting, putting her shoulder into it. “Nobody plays stickball around here anymore.”

Nicky parted the curtains and looked out at the sunny day. The schoolyard was empty. Not even a pigeon. And now the schoolyard
was silent. The music had stopped. Nicky stared. He stared till his eyeballs ached. He wanted them to be there.

And they emerged, as if out of a fog. Icky Rossilli, pitching. Billy Braggs, hitting. Skipper and Fishbone, pounding their mitts, throwing long shadows onto the gray asphalt. Best of all, out in center field, a tall lanky boy shifted from foot to foot, and spit through his teeth, and tugged at his black baseball cap. Vintage Roy, from the good old days. From the pink of his cheeks to the rolled cuffs of his dungarees, Roy appeared to be roughly age thirteen. Nicky took in this scene from the beloved past, and the sweet sounds—thwock, clatter, shout—rose up again.