Читать книгу Shepherd Avenue - Charlie Carillo - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN I awoke the next morning I was alone. “Dad?” I said, then I remembered.

Sheets, blanket, and pillow lay in a thick tangle at the head of Vic’s bed, and clothes were scattered on the floor. It didn’t seem late. I finally found a clock under one of Vic’s undershirts. It was a little after eight.

I tugged on yesterday’s shirt and pants and walked into the hallway. The window at the end of the hall faced the backyard. It was a plot of black dirt about ten feet wide and fifteen feet long, next to the garage. A wild, snaggled, fruitless vine grew up the side of the wall. A few weeds speckled the dirt, and a thin beard of moss. Connie threw her decomposable garbage out there — melon rinds, coffee grounds, orange peels. The sweet smell of decay rose to the window.

I could hear water running and smelled coffee from downstairs. Still half asleep I went to the bathroom.

The door was open. I let out a yelp upon finding my grandfather, Angelo, shaving at the sink.

The whole room smelled of Rise. Angelo wore gray work pants and a sleeveless undershirt, and he was putting the final touches of lather on his face with a brush, even though the cream came from a can. He spotted me in the mirror.

“Hey.” He smiled, teeth bright yellow against the snowy lather. He took a bent cigarette from the edge of the sink and puffed on it, rinsed his razor, and pinched my cheek.

“Boy, did you grow.” He turned to the mirror and began scraping his cheek. “If you want to use the toilet I won’t look,” he promised.

“I don’t have to go,” I lied. My bladder was bursting.

“Didn’t you just get up?”

“Yeah.”

“So use it, use it,” he urged. “Everybody’s gotta go when they get up.” He banged the razor on the edge of the sink.

I stood before the head. My cock was tinier than I’d ever seen it — I imagined a cork inside it, blocking the flow. Diplomatically, Angie started to whistle. I moaned with relief as the urine started to flow, aiming for a rust streak at the back of the bowl.

“So,” he said. “You’re staying here.”

As if I had a choice. “Uh-huh,” I said.

“Good, I’m glad.”

“Where were you last night?”

He turned around to look at me. I was through pissing and shook myself, tugged the zipper. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business,” I said meekly, but Angie just laughed.

“I got home three hours ago. Don’t tell your grandmother.”

“Didn’t she wake up when you got home?”

“Nah. I’m always quiet.” He finished shaving, filled the sink with cold water, and splashed his face. He rubbed it with a towel, and I noticed the furrow of eyebrow across his forehead. It was one thick line of hair, unbroken over the bridge of his nose. The hair on his head was silver but the brows were jet black. Looking him in the eye was like looking at a cobra.

With wet hands he rubbed his scalp and began combing his thick hair straight back. A grin tugged a corner of his mouth. He knew how good he looked.

I asked, “How can you get into bed with her and not wake her up?”

He shut the water off. “My room’s at the other end of the hall.” He flicked the comb through his hair once more and put on a plaid sport shirt. He rubbed my hair and turned to leave the bathroom, buttoning his shirt.

“Did you have a fight with her?” I asked.

“What?” His voice was shrill.

“I mean, how come you have different rooms?”

He tilted back his head and let out a howl. “The questions you ask!” he said. “I say she snores. She says I snore. That’s how come.” He reached into his shirt pocket and gave me a pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum with three sticks left. “See you later,” he said as he left, laughing.

When I was through washing my face and brushing my teeth I went downstairs, where Connie sat with another woman.

“He finally got up,” the woman announced, as if I’d kept her waiting.

Connie said, “This is my friend Grace Rothstein from next door.” We exchanged stares. I even sniffed the air, sensing an enemy. She lowered her head and bared large, rodentlike teeth. She was ten years younger than Connie, tall and whipcord lean. Her hair was bleached an outrageous blond.

“Coffee,” Connie said to me, moving to pour it. I’d hardly ever drunk it — my mother used to say it was bad for me. I felt flattered and doused it with sugar, pouring from a glass cylinder that obviously had been swiped from a diner.

“Where’s Vic?” I asked.

“At graduation practice,” Connie said.

“Where’s Angie?”

“He has a plumbing job today, with Freddie Gallo. You didn’t meet Freddie yet.”

“Eh, I don’t know how they work when they stay out late like that,” Grace said.

“My husband never needed a lot of sleep.”

“Thank God for that, Con, he never got any. My Rudy, he’s always there, even when I don’t want him.”

They cackled. I sucked down the last of my coffee. There was a thick, sluggish trail of sugar at the bottom of the cup. I stuck my finger in it.

“How come you and Angie have your own rooms?”

Grace cackled with renewed vigor but Connie fell silent. She hissed something at Grace before turning to me.

“That don’t concern you,” she said.

My ears grew hot. “I’m sorry. My mother and father had the same room,” I explained lamely, sucking my finger.

“Ahh!” Grace exclaimed, prodding Connie’s side, “The Irish, they like that!”

Grace got up from the table and reached for an upright rolling cart that had been leaning against the table. “What else besides the spinach?”

“Nothing. My husband will get the bread.”

“Eh. He’s good for something.”

Grace grunted her good-bye and left. We heard the cart wheels bang as she dragged the thing up the cellar steps. Connie moved to the stove.

“She’s Italian,” Connie said. “She married a Jew.”

I didn’t even know what a Jew was, but I knew what “Irish” meant and asked what Grace’s crack about them had meant.

Without turning to face me Connie said, “My friend’s a little crazy.”

“She was talking about my mother.”

“Yes.”

“What did my mother ‘like’?”

Connie’s face was flushed. “Your father,” she answered. “Don’t make me explain Grace. Here, take more coffee.”

“No, thank you.”

“All right, I’ll make you an egg.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“That’s crazy, everybody’s hungry when they get up in the mor —”

A gigantic engine roar from the street interrupted her. I jumped with fright but Connie didn’t flinch.

“That’s Johnny,” she said. “He’s gonna give us all heart attacks.”

“Johnny who?”

“Johnny Gallo. Your grandfather’s buddy’s son. He plays with his car every day. You’ll meet Freddie later. Go meet Johnny now.” She pointed toward the cellar door.

Grateful for the dismissal, I cut through the furnace room, where strings of peppers hung drying. From the back door a set of steps led to the long driveway, bounded on the other side by Grace’s house.

Directly across the street from where my father had dumped me was a black car surrounded by a halo of bluish smoke. Its hood was open, and a young man hunched over the engine. It roared again, seemingly of its own accord. A fresh spout of smoke surrounded the car.

By this time I was coughing. Johnny noticed me and killed the motor from where he stood.

“Bet you’re Vic’s nephew, the kid whose old man run off.”

“My father’s on a trip,” I coughed.

“Whatever.” He wiped his hands on a rag. A large-boned, dull-eyed girl sat on the curb, sucking noisily on half an orange. When she finished it she threw the rind across the street and watched it roll, her mouth hanging open.

Johnny jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “She’s retarded,” he said. “Look at her. Ya believe she’s almost fifteen?”

The girl’s knees were pebbled with dirty scabs. She wore a loose red dress, scuffed patent leather shoes, and thin white socks. The mouths of the socks were stretched wider than her calves. There was a wet ring around her mouth dotted with bits of orange. Her hand idly massaged curbside rubble.

The door of the house behind her opened. A frazzled-looking woman in a pink nightgown leaned on the knob as she stuck her face out.

“Louisa! Your bath is ready.”

Louisa seemed to react from the feet up, and staggered to a standing position. When she was finally erect she turned and bolted up the porch stairs, like a horse flicked with a whip.

“Poor bastid,” Johnny murmured. “Do me a favor, kid, start the car.”

I slid behind the wheel, tingling with fear. “I don’t have a license.”

“Ah, don’t worry, you ain’t goin’ anywhere. Don’t even press the gas pedal, I can do it under here.” Johnny’s head disappeared, reappeared redder. “Now,” he commanded.

I twisted the key. The motor squealed like a cat being strangled.

“You’re killin’ the battery!” Johnny screamed. A kid no bigger than me slid behind the wheel, having entered from the driver’s side. The key turned. A sneakered foot pumped the gas pedal expertly, zoop-zoop-zoop.

“Faster, Johnny?” the kid called. A girl.

“Hold her down for a sec, Mel,” Johnny shouted. The motor roared steadily for five seconds. “Okay, that’s good.” He slammed the hood down. I followed her out the driver’s side.

Johnny wiped his hands again. “Mel, this here’s Joey, he’s Vic’s nephew.”

We stared without shaking hands. Mel wore cutoff jeans, a T-shirt, and boys’ black Keds. Her hair was nearly as short as mine, parted on the left. Her broad nose made her look like a street fighter. She was skinny but muscular.

“Well Chrissakes somebody say hello,” Johnny said.

“Hi,” I ventured.

“See you guys later,” Johnny said, getting into the car. “Sorry I yelled atcha, kid.” He drove off.

Mel cracked her knuckles. Her hands were wide. I looked at my own slender hands and rested them on my hips. I felt the bulge of chewing gum in my pocket, took out the pack, and held it out.

“Gum?”

“Thanks.” She took a piece. We crossed the street and sat on Connie’s stoop.

“I never started a car before,” I said.

“Gotta get used to it,” she assured me. I watched her chew the gum. It was the first thing I’d ever shared with another child, save for the loan of my eraser at the Roslyn Country Day School.

“You sure do it good,” I said.

Mel shrugged. “I’m used to it. Johnny lets me do it all the time.” She tried to blow a bubble but the gum was too soft. She tucked the wad back by her molars.

“Watch ‘Superman’ last night?”

“No, I missed it.”

“It was the one where the two guys have a fight over whose girlfriend makes the best lemon meringue pie and so they have a contest and one of the guys goes all the way to Alaska to try and steal a pie from his old girlfriend’s new boyfriend.”

“That’s a dumb one,” I said.

“I know, but it’s cool when Superman crashes through the ice.”

“That guy can’t really fly, he’s just an actor.”

“Uh-duh. Everybody knows that.” Mel cracked the gum. “How come your father ran away?”

I spat my gum out. “Why does everybody say that?” I screamed. “He didn’t run away. He’s on a trip.”

“Yeah?” Mel challenged. “Where?”

I slumped on the steps, feeling rough bricks against my back. “I don’t know.”

“When’s he comin’ back?”

“Soon.”

“Butcha don’t know when?”

“He’s got a lot of stuff to do,” I said evenly.

Mel shrugged. “I got no parents. Live with my aunt and uncle up the street.” She pointed.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It ain’t your fault.”

“Well, I’m sorry anyway. I got no mother.”

We fell silent, looking at our sneakers.

“My cousin is Vic’s girlfriend,” Mel said. “When they have kids the kids have to call me ‘Aunt Mel’ on account of I’m practically a sister, like.”

“Vic didn’t tell me he was getting married,” I said. “When are they getting married?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know they are?” I challenged.

Mel stood. I was startled by the way her face darkened. The hands bunched into fists. “Listen, you, they’ve been goin’ out for three years.”

I hoped she wouldn’t hit me. Gradually, her fists loosened. She sat again. “Everybody knows they’re gonna get married, that’s all.”

Momentary silence. Then she said softly, “I was sick last night. I threw up. Macaroni came through my nose.”

She was trying to make up. “Really? Through your nose?”

“Yeah.”

“Ewww.”

“But I feel better now.” She scratched a mosquito bite on her calf. “How old are you?”

“Ten.”

She smiled. “I’m eleven.”

“I’ll be eleven in December,” I countered.

“Well, I’ll be twelve in September.” She touched her fingertips, counting silently. “Hey! When you’re still ten I’ll be twelve,” she said triumphantly.

“Who cares?” I said, but she knew I did.

She pounded my shoulder. “Let’s get a lemon ice. Come on, I got a quarter.”

On the walk to the lemon-ice stand she softened considerably. She told me she hated her full name, Carmela Maria DiGiovanna, and that her parents had died in a car crash, and that she’d lived in her aunt’s house for two years and planned to stay at least a few more years. She hated cats, loved dogs, and hoped to play professional baseball.

“But I’m a girl,” she added grimly as we reached Willie’s lemon-ice stand. “I might wind up just bein’ a coach. Two, Willie.”

A fat, benevolent-looking man with a wide bald head scooped ice into white cups, shaping it into smooth mounds with the back of the scoop. He gave them to me while Mel fished out her quarter.

Willie gave back a nickel. “I ain’t seen you before.”

“This is the kid who’s living with Vic whose father ran away,” Mel explained. I was tired of giving my version of the story so I didn’t.

“Pleased to meet you,” Willie said. “I knew your father, he was okay.”

“He’s not dead,” I snapped, sinking my teeth into the ice. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever tasted before — soft and tart, with no stiffness to bite through.

Sucking our ices, we returned to Connie’s stoop. “Willie’s okay,” Mel said, “but he was a bastard not to give us these free, you just movin’ here and everything.”

Then she mapped out the territory of Shepherd Avenue for me.

A block beyond the lemon-ice stand was a deli owned by Rudy Rothstein, Grace’s husband.

“Vic calls her ‘Aunt Grace’ even though you ain’t related, on account of Grace always goes to the store for your grandmother,” Mel informed me. “She don’t get around too good, your grandmother.”

Mel lived half a block from us. In between us lived an old lady we only saw when she swept her porch, and a family with a new baby. The other families she didn’t really know.

On the opposite side of the street the only people I knew so far were Louisa, the retarded girl, and Johnny Gallo. A huge part of the block was a sewing machine factory, which went all the way to Atlantic Avenue. Mel showed me a rectangular box chalked onto the brick side of that building, with a large white “X” that connected its corners.

“Our strike zone,” she explained. “Vic taught me to play stickball here. I’ll teach you.”

“I’m not allowed to play baseball.”

Mel cocked her head as if I’d just spoken in Arabic. “Whaddya mean, you’re not allowed?”

I swallowed. “My mother told me not to.”

It was the truth. Two years earlier my father, sensing something weird about the way I was growing up, signed me up in the local Little League even though I’d never even held a bat in my hands. On my first and only time at bat a spider-limbed boy named Phil McElhenny let fly with a wild pitch that conked me on the head. Luckily I was wearing a gigantic plastic helmet with earlaps that reached below my cheeks, so when I fell to my ass it was more from shock than injury.

But my mother didn’t know that. She ran onto the field in hysterics, tore off the helmet, probed my skull for dents, and screamed over her shoulder at Phil. She weighed maybe a hundred pounds, but she carried me off that field in front of all those jeering kids and their parents, loaded me into the Comet, and ran red lights on the way to the family doctor, who informed her that not only would I live but that if I wanted to, I could go back and finish the game.

“Over my dead body,” my mother said, and it was piano lessons and a new doctor for me from then on.

“Your mother told ya not to?” Mel said, but not maliciously. “How come?”

“I got hit in the head once, that’s how come.”

Mel scratched her head. “But your mother’s dead. Do ya hafta obey people when they die?”

“I don’t know.” God, I felt alone. “Your parents are dead,” I countered. “Do you still obey them?”

Mel shrugged. “They never told me not to do nothing.” She smiled, scratching her nose. Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone. “Well if ya don’t play ball what do you do?”

I had to think it over. “I like to walk.”

She laughed. “Listen, nobody around here walks. Look, I’ll teach you stickball, it’s easy. It ain’t like baseball. The ball’s soft. Ya won’t be disobeyin’ your mother. Come on.”

She pointed. “If you hit a ball across the street it’s a home run, except if you hit one now you lose the damn ball.”

She walked me across the street to show me why. Mounds of dirt surrounded a deep, ugly hole that was to be the foundation of a fast-food hamburger joint.

We went to the lip of the hole. There was a puddle of dark water at the bottom of it, and a couple of pink Spaldeens floated on its surface like bobbing apples.

“Damn this thing,” Mel crooned, spitting into the hole. I envied the way she could do that — a clean, round ball of spit smacked the water like a coin. I tried but managed only a sloppy spray.

“Let’s get outta here,” Mel said. “The workers’ll get back from lunch soon; they’ll scream at us.”

From down the street a shrill voice called her name.

“Get in here! You were sick last night!”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m supposed to be in bed. I sneaked out.”

“Oh.”

She reddened. “I … wanted to meet you.”

“Oh.”

“Well, I better go.”

“Thanks for the lemon ice,” I said, but she was already tearing up the block.

* * *

Vic was remarkably patient that afternoon.

“The trouble is you’re lookin’ at me but you ain’t lookin’ at the ball,” he said, twirling it on his long fingers. “Keep your eye on this baby.”

I nodded and toed the rough sidewalk with the tip of my sneaker. The stickball bat, a sawed-off broomstick handle wrapped with black tape, seemed like a big toothpick. I’d missed ten straight pitches. If I’d been in Roslyn I could have fled to the safety of my room, but this was Brooklyn.

“It’s impossible,” I whined.

“No, it isn’t.”

“The bat’s too skinny.”

“It don’t matter how skinny the bat is because you’re hittin’ the ball with the middle of it, Joey.”

I didn’t understand that but I let it ride.

“Keep lookin’ at the ball,” he said. “Ted Williams says you should see the ball even when you’re hittin’ it.”

“Who’s Ted Williams?” I asked, but Vic had gone into his windup and lobbed the ball in. Behind him Mel, who’d sneaked out of her house, braced herself in anticipation of a hit. I swung and missed. Eleven pitches. Tears stung my eyes.

“I want to go in the house,” I said, my voice breaking.

But Mel wouldn’t let me.

“Don’t throw it like that, Vic!” she shrieked. “Jesus, nobody can hit a ball like that! Just throw it regular, he’ll hit it.”

I wiped my eyes. Vic heeded her advice as if she were a peer.

“You may be right,” he said. He threw a regular fastball, and I astonished myself by hitting a clean single that Mel fielded on the short hop. She winged the ball in to Vic, who threw an identical pitch. I hit it straight at him. He could have fielded it but he let it split his legs.

“All right!” he exclaimed. “I knew you could do it! Everybody in this family can hit.”

“I’m not hitting it far,” I said, secretly aglow with pride.

“Ah, that’s okay. You’re a singles hitter. Nothing wrong with singles hitters, they make good leadoff men.” He threw again and I hit it over his head. It bounced toward the open foundation but Mel fielded it at the last second.

“I ain’t always gonna groove ’em like this,” Vic warned, but there was pride in his voice. I could hit.

* * *

At the supper table I met Freddie Gallo. He and my grandfather had worked together that day, doing a small cement job somewhere in the neighborhood. Angie, a plumber, and Freddie, a bull of a laborer, were both retired, but they took on jobs together to pad their union pensions.

But I think they worked more for the companionship than for the extra money. They also caroused together at night — no one ever told me where.

Freddie sat at the end of the bench near Angie. They both smelled of Lava soap and their hands, hard-scrubbed, were pink. Still, there were deep lines of dirt under their fingernails and along the creases of their necks.

Still sweating from stickball, Vic and I sat next to each other.

“The kid’s a natural hitter,” Vic said, his hand on my back. Angie smiled neutrally at me.

“You’re both sweating,” Connie said.

Vic laughed. “How are we supposed to keep from sweating, Ma?”

Connie didn’t answer as she ladled vegetable soup out into big bowls. It was full of beans, tomatoes, lentils, and spinach.

Such flavors! Connie was able to extract tastes from foods like no one I’d ever known. The vegetables seemed alive in the broth, and the soup was so thick you needed a fork and a spoon to eat it. When shreds of grated cheese hit its steaming oily surface they disappeared like snowflakes landing on a warm sidewalk.

Angie’s manners were impeccable: though he was served first, he waited until everyone had food before starting. Freddie was a chowhound to rival Vic, slurping and letting out belches he only half muffled. Freddie was nearly six feet tall but he looked even taller. He was a stretched version of my grandfather, a bit leaner, with longer, stringier muscles. He wore a black T-shirt that showed off his round pectorals and pinched his upper arms. Veins and tendons coursed down his forearms like telephone cords.

Only his head looked old. His eyes were narrow and he was almost totally bald, the narrow scallop of bristly hair near his ears a close-cropped stubble.

There was no formal introduction to Freddie Gallo — he’d heard about me and I’d heard about him. A nod and a grunt sufficed.

When we finished the soup Connie cleared the table, leaving behind wine and cherry soda. Freddie and Angie rehashed the day’s work while Vic idly pushed crumbs around the tablecloth.

Angie went to the back of the cool cellar and returned with enormous oranges and apples. Connie brought him a sharp knife and he began cutting the apple into sections.

He rolled an orange at me and asked me to peel it, but its skin was too hard and thick for my fingernails to penetrate. Laughing, Freddie took the orange from me.

“When you work you’ll get hard hands so you can do this,” he said. “When I was your age I was tyin’ grapevines to poles in Naples. They hadda hire kids to do it — we fit easy between the vines.”

He ripped the skin off the orange.

“You and your stories,” Vic said.

Freddie tossed a piece of peel aside. “You, when are you gonna make a buck?”

“I’m playin’ ball,” Vic said calmly. “When I sign with a club I’ll have more money than you ever made tyin’ vines.”

Freddie cackled knowingly, a sound that warned: wait, wait.

“Enough already,” Angie said. He jabbed a slice of apple onto the end of his knife and offered it to me.

“Johnny makes good money working on cars,” Freddie said. “Be a mechanic. If you don’t make it in baseball you won’t starve.”

“I’ll make it,” Vic said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I ain’t the one who has to worry.” Freddie pointed. “You, you could break your leg, you could get hit in the head with a pitch —”

“Oh! Shut up already!” Connie said from the sink. “You make me shiver.”

Vic yawned and said, “I don’t want to get my hands dirty, anyhow.” He kneed me under the table to let me know he was after Freddie’s goat, which he got with ease.

“Dirt is good,” Freddie said. “A real man ain’t afraid of it.”

“Freddie. Your wife’s callin’,” Connie said, but he ignored the hint.

“How come you don’t eat with your wife?” I asked. Freddie stared at me, then looked at Angie.

“What’s this kid, a wise guy?”

“No,” I answered. “It’s not nice when people have to eat alone. My father always said that.”

“Your father!” he exploded. “He should talk!”

He was sorry the moment he said it, and put a knuckly hand over his mouth.

“Let’s all calm down,” Angie said softly. Freddie turned to Vic and picked up the thread of the other conversation.

“I never, never — you listening? — never came home from work with clean hands.” He passed the peeled orange to Angie and looked at me. “I got buried alive, kid. Twice they buried me alive.”

“Here we go again,” Vic sighed.

“Twice,” Freddie said again, cupping his hands around his wine glass as if to warm them. “Ten feet down the first time, fifteen the second.” His eyes glittered. I was suddenly afraid of him.

“Why?” I finally asked.

“Because I wouldn’t join the union. Because the boss paid me twenty-one bucks a day and everyone else eighteen. Well, the guys didn’t like that, so one day they say, ‘Fred, join the union.’ I told ’em I was doin’ okay without it.”

“Eh, that’s all,” Connie said.

He began to nod. “Same day, late in the afternoon, the boys are puttin’ away the tools. Foreman says, ‘Somebody go down and get that goddamn pick we left behind.’ I’m not doin’ anything, so down I go.”

He gulped wine. Connie said, “He’s talkin’ so much he’s dry.”

“Ten feet,” Freddie continued. “Even in August it’s cold like ice in that hole. You press your fist against the side and it gets numb. Am I right, Anj?”

“Always cold in a hole,” Angie said.

“Next thing I know I hear the dirt slidin’. Slidin’ like somebody’s pushin’ it, not like it’s fallin’ by itself. I turn my head to look and the dirt gets in my eyes, so now I’m blind. But I know what’s goin’ on, all right.”

Freddie’s color changed, as if a wash of black ink had been brushed over his face. Angie poured more wine for him. The apple slice in front of him was browning.

“I get down on my hands and knees and put my arms around my head to make an air pocket,” he continued softly. “So’s I can keep breathin’ awhile, you know?”

He demonstrated, putting his head on the table. He stayed in place so long the top of his head went pink.

Connie snapped him out of it by saying, “You should have joined the union.”

He lifted his head. “Damn the union!”

I swallowed. “Then what?”

He grinned evilly. “What could I do but wait? I wait for the bastards to dig, I listen for the shovels. Tons of dirt on my back, I can’t move an inch.”

He leaned toward me, his face inches from mine. “Darkness,” he said, the word riding to my face on a wave of wine. “Darkness like no man knows. You think you know what darkness is? Only corpses know. You shut off the light in the bedroom but the light from the street shines through the curtains. You can go in the closet but the light still comes in under the door.” He prodded my shoulder. “If you wake up at three in the morning don’t you see the whole room, the pictures on the walls clear as day?”

“The light bothers him at night,” Vic said. Freddie snapped him an irritated look for interrupting his narrative.

“They waited till they thought I was dead,” Freddie said. “But oh, how I fooled ’em! When I heard the shovels comin’ close I made like I was dead. The lousy shit foreman puts his hands around my waist to pull me up and I turn around and punch him, boom! Knocked him out cold.”

“Your language,” Connie commented.

“He’s heard worse,” Freddie said, the spooky mood dissolving with the end of his story. Actually, I’d rarely heard vulgarity from either of my parents. Freddie drained his wine glass and held it out for more.

“That happened twice?” I said. He nodded. “How come you fell for it twice?”

Vic roared with laughter. Angie hid his face so Freddie wouldn’t see him smile. Freddie waved me off.

“Ah, you got nothin’ to worry about. You’ll go to college and work in an office and have soft hands like a prince.”

“Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” Angie said.

“Feel these hands.” Freddie cupped his hands around my elbow, then dragged them down toward my wrist in a snaky spiral. “That’s how a man’s hands should feel.”

Connie said, “All your hard hands ever got you was buried twice. The second time you were unconscious, you almost died. So shut up.”

“But I got out!” he exclaimed, releasing my wrist. “By Christ, I got out!” Blood tingled back into my hand.

“Calluses,” Connie said wearily. “Your tongue oughta have calluses, the way you talk. And in the end you joined that union.”

“They made a rule,” Freddie said meekly. “You can’t fight a rule.”

Connie clapped her hands. “Enough. All of you put on clean shirts, we have to be there in twenty minutes.”

“Where?” Angie asked, his brow knotting. “What’s going on?”

“The christening party for the new baby down the block. I told you about it last week.”

“Another present,” Angie moaned. “You take care of it?”

“We’re giving money. Freddie, go home and change.” She spoke as if he were a child. He climbed off the bench without thanking her for supper and cracked Vic across the back of his head with three knuckles.

“Don’t be so scared of dirt, Mr. All-Star.”

Vic rubbed his skull and said, “Let’s compare bankbooks in a year.”

The house with the baby was near the train, a sister house to my grandfather’s. The only differences were green shutters instead of black ones, and a slightly less ornate wrought-iron fence in front.

The family’s name was Caruso. They lived on the second floor, above the new mother’s parents. As we entered the vestibule a strong, soupy odor filled our nostrils, but that smell was displaced by the tang of laundered diapers as we climbed the stairs.

I stayed close to Vic as we made our way across the crowded flat, a porpoise following a ship. He shook hands with people, dutifully pecked hairy-faced women on the cheek, and introduced me with the word, “S’mynephew.”

He got us soda in paper cups. We sat on a long couch, crinkling the plastic slipcovers. The place was so jammed with covered furniture that it would have seemed crowded with no people in it. Even the long windows lent no sense of space — they were veiled in white fishnet curtains that were rough to the touch, like screens. They billowed at the faintest breeze.

I sipped my soda and gagged. “This went bad, Vic, it’s sour,” I whispered.

He sipped from my cup. “It’s fine.”

“That’s not what Coke tastes like.”

“You dope. You never had cream soda? Hey, look at this guy comin’ in now, he’s a real character. Junkman. Lives across the street from us.”

Mel hadn’t told me about Zip Aiello. He was short and wide-hipped and his thinning brown hair was slicked straight back. His mouth was set in a severe pucker, as if the tang of lemon juice were on his tongue.

He made his way toward us, hands deep in the pockets of his loose gray pants. Vic introduced me and Zip went into a nodding routine, as if some biting, ironic truth had been whispered into his ear by his Creator. I lifted my hand to shake with him, but his balled fist never left his pocket.

“I seen you from the window,” he said.

Vic winked at me. “So what’s happening, Zip?”

Zip shrugged. “Found a little copper,” he said casually. “Thirty, forty feet. Leaders. Guy was throwin’ ’em out, puttin’ up new ones. Amoolinum.”

“Aluminum?”

“Whatever. What are you, an English teacher?”

“Gonna sell it?”

“Sure. Everybody knows copper’s better. Don’t rot. Amoolinum pits. Copper turns green but it don’t rot.”

He walked off without saying good-bye, having gone back into his nodding routine. Connie passed by and saw him on the way to the cake table.

“Eh, but what’s he thinkin’ about?” she asked. “He’ll wind up killin’ all of us.”

Vic said, “He’s the champion bottle collector in the neighborhood, too. He sees a bottle in the curb, he’ll jump out of a speedin’ car to pick it up.” There was affection in Vic’s voice, then he suddenly lost his relaxed look and stiffened as a heavyset girl made her way toward us.

“This is Rosemary,” he said. She hooked her arm through his elbow. “We go out,” he added, sort of apologetically. Rosemary forced a smile at me. Her face had so much makeup on it that it didn’t reflect light. She pulled Vic to the other side of the room to talk with him.

Unmoored, I drifted about until Mel caught my elbow.

“They made me put this dress on.” It looked awful, loose at the chest and snug at the waist. She kept tugging it down in back.

Suddenly there was a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” throughout the room as the new mother appeared, baby in her arms. The infant was like the stamen of a flower, surrounded by blanket petals.

The mother’s hair was pulled back into a ponytail. It was a few seconds before I even noticed her husband behind her, a skinny man in a dark suit. He touched a hand to the baby, then indicated the gift-laden table.

“You’ve been so generous,” he said in a quivering voice. “It’s wonderful for our Joyella to have such wonderful friends as she starts her life.”

Everyone murmured approval, but as the new father was about to continue his speech there was a commotion in the stairway. A man in a three-piece white suit walked with great solemnity to the parents. His silvery hair looked freshly barbered, and a gold watch chain was looped across his round belly. There was a fat red carnation in his lapel.

“Holy shit, that’s Ammiratti,” Mel hissed. “He’s on everyone’s shit list.”

With a flourish he placed an envelope on the gift table, pecked the mother on the cheek, and shook hands with the father. He apologized that his wife couldn’t come — her stomach was troubling her. The father nodded without offering words of sympathy.

Crimson crept up Ammiratti’s neck. He mopped his face with a handkerchief and bowed to the silent room, then left. Conversation resumed when the echo of his footsteps faded.

“A flower in his lapel,” Grace Rothstein said shrilly. “Forty cents every day for a fresh flower!” She slapped her right hand into the crook of her left elbow, kinking it into an obscene right angle. Everyone but one guy laughed, and I knew he had to be her husband, “Uncle Rudy.”

“Ammiratti’s a rich bastard,” Mel explained. “He owns a lotta houses, plus that empty lot where the hole is. Everybody hates him for that.”

“How come?”

“ ’Cause burger joints bring colored people,” she said, irritated by my ignorance. “He screwed us. He sold everybody out even though he has more money than everybody else put together.”

She bit into a thick cream pastry. I knew she was parroting the words of the adults she lived with.

“The balls on him,” she continued, through a mouthful of cream. “Walkin’ into a roomful o’ people who hate you and pretendin’ they love you.”

Johnny Gallo came in, sticking out in that chubby crowd like a foreigner. He had no hips or buttocks, and wore black T-shirts and slacks that made him look even taller and slimmer than he was. His sideburns were shaved high and his black hair was combed straight back. He looked like a walking sperm cell.

Mel had a mild crush on Johnny, and ditched me to join him. I was marooned in the midst of all those cliques — Vic and Rosemary, Angie and Freddie, Connie and Grace. For the first time in two days I felt a real pang for my father.

The baby lay asleep in her bassinet. I felt a little jealous of her, wishing I was little enough to climb in there and lie beside her.

* * *

“You like it here okay?” Vic asked that night when the two of us were in bed.

“I guess,” I said.

“When I get a little more time we’ll play more stickball and stuff. I gotta practice right now, with the playoffs and everything.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Hey. I forgot to ask you how you liked my girl Rosemary.”

“She’s nice,” I lied.

“Yeah, she’s somethin’,” Vic said. “She got me through school, you know? Helpin’ me with homework and stuff. Never yelled at me, no matter how stupid I was.”

Before falling asleep I noticed Vic staring at the ceiling, smiling.