Park Lane South, Queens (6 page)

“Your date is Michaelaen,” Carmela said. “Now tell about Freddy.”

Zinnie shrugged. “I just thought I'd, you know, go see how they're coming along with the restaurant.”

“And how's it coming?” Mary asked.

“I'll tell ya, it looks really nice. Fancy. You'd love it, Carmela. Veddy veddy art deco.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Yeah. Well … he's doing so damn well without me. I was kinda hoping … I really don't know what I was hoping.”

“You tell him about the murder?” Carmela asked.

Zinnie looked from her to her mother and back. “Sure.”

“Don't give us ‘sure,'” Carmela sneered. “We know all about it. The whole neighborhood knows. It's all anybody's talking about.”

“Oh. To tell you the truth, I did talk about the murder with Freddy. Only it was me who did the asking. I wanted to get the gay slant on it.”

“What?”

“You know what I mean. Sometimes they know about someone who's … uh … kooky in that direction. They hear things.”

“And did he?”

“Naw. But he'll keep his ears open. The last thing he wants is the cops cracking down on all the gays. They've got enough trouble with the AIDS scare.”

Mary and Carmela exchanged looks.

Zinnie screwed up her mouth. “Now what?”

“No, nothing,” Carmela busied herself with napkin folding. “Mom was just a little worried about Michaelaen …”

“What, that he'd get AIDS from Freddy?!” Zinnie's face went red.

“Well, God, Zin. Children do get AIDS, you know. It's not such a farfetched concern.”

“Look,” Zinnie cried then lowered her voice. “Michaelaen is
my
son and I'd appreciate it if you'd let
me
worry about it, all right?”

Claire, coming up the cellar stairs, saw Michaelaen at the back door standing still with a bouquet of parsley, waiting cautiously inside his little shroud of gloom. She slipped out the door.

“Hello,” she said.

He said nothing.

“I was just going to catch myself some lightning bugs.”

Michaelaen regarded her suspiciously through hooded eyes.

“Just to catch. I'll let them go, of course. I like to hold them in my hand. You?”

He nodded, reluctantly, and followed her onto the darkening grass.

Johnny Benedetto tossed around in his sloppy bed. Perspiration rolled off his body and wet the sheets. He was dreaming of a little boy in holy terror. Johnny flung one fist out desperately; the woods became the streets of Brooklyn and the little boy turned into himself. He entered the crummy building with the peeling wallpaper in the hallway and took the old elevator up. It took so long, then bounced to a stop. He heard someone in the apartment. Voices. Women's voices wailing. They were in there with his mother. He stood at the open door of the apartment and the women turned to look at him. They stopped crying. “Mom?” he called, looking past their heads. “Mom?” But nobody would let him in. They pulled him down the stairs and brought him somewhere else to wait for his aunt. He didn't like his aunt, he told them. He wanted his mom. His mom had gone away, they told him, she had gone back to Jesus and he must be brave.… Johnny woke up with a jolt. His breath came short and fast. Trembling, he reached out and felt for the gun on the night stand. It was all right. Just a dream. He was fine.

When dinner was done, Claire hung around the kitchen and helped her mother dry the dishes. Mary was going to hymn mass with the neighbor, Mrs. Dixon. They had been walking to church together for almost twelve years now, and chatting over the hedge whenever they hung wash, and still they called each other “Mrs.”

“Good Lord, it's muggy,” Mary wiped her brow. “I'd better change this blouse. Smells of fish. I hate that when you stand next to someone in church who's all smelly.”

“You really like to go to church, don't you, Mom?”

“I wouldn't go if I didn't like it, now, would I?”

“No. You wouldn't. But a lot of people would.”

Mary slid the Mayor out from in front of the refrigerator with one foot, put the leftovers inside, closed the door, and slid him back to his spot, smack in everybody's way. It was a wonder that no one ever stepped on him, but nobody did, and he wouldn't budge on his own. He liked the ride.

“Would it be,” Mary suggested casually, “that you'd like to come along?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Another time, then.” She surveyed the kitchen. Spic and span until the onslaught of night snacking. Claire was over at the sideboard, reaching for the tallest shelf with ease. Claire had the legs in the family. She reminded Mary of her own mother, Jenny Rose. The longest legs and most heathen ideas in all of Skibbereen. If Mary didn't know better, she'd think Claire was Jenny Rose born twice. Sometimes, when Claire looked at her … ah, silly notions only got you round the bend and back to where you started. You lived and died and if you'd done it well you would get your reward. There was no telling what the Holy Ghost was up to.

“Ma?” Claire steadied the plate she almost dropped, “How do you think something like that can happen? A murder like that?”

Mary closed her eyes and turned her head. Claire had always been the clumsy one. She couldn't bear to watch her with the good china.

“I mean from the murderer's side. How can someone live with such guilt?”

Guilt? Interested now, in spite of herself, Mary sat at the white pine table. “If indeed the murderer
knows
guilt,” she said.

“You mean a schizophrenic?”

“Ah, these labels psychiatrists put on things! Evil was around a long time before they thought up words like that. Words that allow murderers to sit around in hospital gardens and take the sun just as nice as you please. And then back out on the street to kill again.” She straightened her shoulders. “Especially in this city.”

“Yeah, but there must be more to it than that, than simple good and evil.”

“What's simple? We all are secrets from ourselves.”

Claire sat down, too. She loved it when her mother got like this, all deep and confidential. Irish.

“We trudge along, not being especially good, hoping, anyway, for miracles. Don't we? And then there are those who, having given up, have given in, regardless of …
because
of the blind and total lure of evil.”

“Yeah, but how does it start, the madness? When? Is it learned or inherent?”

“Or,” Mary's face lit up, “is it a living force predestined and allowed to exist by some great power, planted into innocence haphazardly?”

“A plan that has no plan?”

Mary leaned across the table. “Just lessons to be learned,” she whispered. “Battles to be won.”

Claire lit a cigarette. Her mother would be annoyed to know that the gurus preached the same philosophy, almost word for word.

“Oh, give me one,” Mary snapped.

Surprised, Claire gave her hers and lit another.

“Just don't tell your father.”

The Mayor hopped up and howled. “Oh, drat,” Mary put the cigarette out quickly and waved the air. “That's Mrs. Dixon. Let her in and I'll get ready.”

Claire opened the door and in came Mrs. Dixon, short and plump and her hair rinsed blue.

“Now look at this!” she gushed. “The prodigal daughter returned and not a tat the worse for wear! Just as pretty as ever!”

Claire smiled. Mrs. Dixon was so nice that she made you feel not nice. “Mom'll be right down, Mrs. Dixon. Just went to change her blouse.”

“Let me look at you. My, my!” Mrs. Dixon pulled her apart by the wrists. “You look like a teenager. Those lashes! And your brother's eyes!” Her own kindly, reminiscent gray orbs twinkled.

Claire's mouth went dry. She willed her mother to hurry. “Why don't you sit down, Mrs. Dixon, Mom will be—”

“I always wondered about you, Claire … if you were ever coming home. Your mother missed you so. And your dad—”

Mary arrived then, still buttoning up. Claire fled.

“Hello, Mrs. Dixon. Are we late?”

“Plenty of time, plenty of time.”

“Oh, you've brought your umbrella! Did they say it would finally rain?”

“It's for the webs, dear. Fending off the spider webs.”

Michaelaen looked out the upstairs window. He watched Grandma go. Now she was gone. Immediately, he snuck down the hallway and down the back stairs. He made himself into a tight little fellow and scooted out the doggy door. Nobody saw him. He rushed. He crossed Eighty-fifth and went straight up the block till he came to the tree. He sat down on a root two feet high. This tree was three, maybe four hundred years old. Even Grandpa said so. Michaelaen pulled one sturdy leg over and straddled the root. It was warm as himself. He dug swiftly with the shoe horn he'd brought and in a minute he had a pretty good hole. Michaelaen went into his pocket and pulled out the pictures he'd hidden there. Brian. Miguel. And a couple of the other big boys. They were a little sticky from his pocket. He folded them over and put them in the hole, then covered it up good. Just in the nick of time, too, because here came stupid Charlotte, who lived across the street. Probably on her way to the carousel, by herself. Thought she was big. Phhh. It wouldn't be too good if she saw him, so he'd better go home. She was one little freshie of a tattletale.

Johnny Benedetto lived in a three-over-three house, right on the southeast rim of Aqueduct Racetrack. The sweet smell of horse and manure and hay filled his kitchen all the time. In the summer it was worse. Johnny stood in the dark at the window, drinking Diet Coke, groggily watching through the Venetian blind at the horse they'd put up in the temporary big top, a golden horse whose head was more often out than in. The horse reminded Johnny of himself. She was a real rubberneck—couldn't stay indoors without watching the street.

There were plenty of housewives on Johnny's block who'd demonstrated and fought not to have the stables extended so close to their backyards, but that was just how Johnny'd got the house, cheap, from a family whose asthmatic daughter couldn't stand it. They'd moved out to Valley Stream and Johnny had lucked out. Nobody liked the smell, but what were you gonna do? There was a feeling Johnny got from looking out and seeing that horse there with her head sticking out. He couldn't understand why his neighbors didn't feel it, too. Fury. Black Beauty. Flicker. No, there was something all right about having a frigging horse out your window.

Johnny left his Coke can on the back stairs in a pagoda of other Coke cans and locked the back door. The track was all lit up, the fourth race already underway, and the mosquitos were biting. He was very much alive and that little Hispanic boy was dead. Real dead.

“Who do you like in the ninth?” Johnny greeted the horse while he lugged out the garbage. He opened the garage and hopped into the car. The front seat was littered with old papers, outstanding bills, styrofoam cups and one change of a wrinkly wardrobe which sat there like a frazzled passenger. This was Johnny's office. The engine underneath the hood looked like a gleaming space center and fingerprints on the door were removed fastidiously almost before they got there, but the inside of the car? He wouldn't know what you were talking about. Johnny turned the key in the ignition, set the air conditioner on full speed, and snapped on the overhead light. He searched the front and back seats thoroughly and eventually came up with the address he needed. When you had nothing to go on, you went with any stupid lead before you wrote it off. The worst feeling was having nothing to do. If you thought about things too much you'd go nuts. And you usually did.

His honor, digesting, watched staunch vegetarian Claire transport shiny bologna on Wonder bread out to the porch. The crickets were singing. Claire balanced a tall glass of milk with her sandwich and a pickle rolled dangerously round the plate as she maneuvered the door with an elbow. One frozen Milky Way protruded from each under arm.

“What?” she looked at him. “You, with your Kosher chicken appetite. You've got nothing to say.”

The cat can well look at the queen, thought the Mayor, miffed.

Claire climbed up into the hammock with her goods. The wobbly table was already prepared with an ashtray, a candle, and five Kodak boxes of unopened slides. These were the last days of McLeod Gange and the first color shots from her third day in Queens. Maybe one of them would be brilliant. One would be sufficient. Claire lit the candle to hold each slide in front of. This was not the way it was done, but she had sold her projector and carousel to Sami Ja back in McLeod Gange, the Tibetan village where she'd lived above the Tea Shop of the Tibetan Moon. She was used to doing it this way, now. And Sami Ja was back in the Himalayas making a living showing slides of naked Bagwanis from Poona to the wide-eyed Tibetans. His shows were a raving success. Even the sweet, aproned ladies came. The sight of those earnest, pink-faced yuppies on the road to redemption via nudity delighted them. They laughed and laughed.

Sami Ja was a Tibetan teenager who'd latched on to Claire like a suckling wolf when he'd heard where she came from. “New York?” he'd cried, ecstatic. “Want some hash?” Claire could still see him with his scant Fu Manchu and a lavender jacket that read CBS Sports, front and back. He would pay her to marry him, he'd told her on the day she'd arrived in the village, filthy dirty from the coal truck. “No? And what about a letter to sponsor? Oh, no? Well then, how would she feel about a good down sleeping bag? Brand new! Mountain climber died first day out. Good zipper!”

Claire had bought the sleeping bag. All alone, late at night when the tea shop was closed and the mice scurried joyfully over the icy rafters, she was happy to have her good zipper. Claire would miss Sami Ja. “Another day,” he'd flick his prayer beads over easy, “another dollah.” He would be all right, back there, taking bets from the trekkers, selling forbidden tours of the Dalai Lama's palace, playing poker with the disenchanted. One day he, too, would know these highlights of American culture that he could now only hear of and dream about: Haagen Daaz. “Dynasty.” That polyester mecca of bliss: Atlantic City. Someday it would all be his.