August and Then Some (20 page)

On the Bronx River Parkway we passed the cluster of trees that cover our footbridge—we were close enough to the river to skim stones.

Nokey said, “Now that we're all back in business again I figured it would be a good time to say the thing nobody has said yet. Um, Dani? Do you even know what we're doing?”

She laughed at him.

“What? What's funny?”

I laughed too.

“JT, what's so funny?”

“She knows,” I told him.

“How does she know?”

“Ask her.”

“You told her?” he said, all offended. “The whole time she's known about it and you didn't tell me?”

“I didn't tell her.”

When I left the apartment that night, Dani was waiting for me with her sneakers on. She was leaning against the door with her arms folded like there was no way I was leaving without her. She had even taken the bracelets off her arm so they wouldn't
make noise. I mean it was a quarter to one in the morning, so in a whisper I said, “You know where I'm going?” and she nodded. I guess we started to think that because Dani didn't talk much, she didn't listen much, and we said things in front of her we didn't expect her to hear. But she heard. I'm figuring she knew exactly what Nokey and I had been up to the whole time and was just waiting for the right moment to join in. I asked if she was sure she wanted to come with us and she opened the door and walked out in front of me.

“How long has she known?” Nokey needed to know.

“That's a good question,” I said.

“This is bullshit. Danielle, what are we doing?” She smiled at him again. This enraged him. “What's with all the cryptic shit? Tell me what we're doing.”

To which she said, “Killing my father.”

What followed the short, thick, dead moment when no one breathed, was Nokey screaming, “WHOOOAAA. WHAT THE FUCK … DID YOU JUST SAY?” And I slammed my ear into the headrest because I snapped a look back at her so fast.

“Danielle,” I said. And then I said nothing because my mouth stopped working. I looked in her eyes to see if she actually held that thought somewhere behind them.

“Settle down, guys,” she finally said. “We're just stealing his car.”

Noke slapped himself in his face like he had just passed out and said, “OK, Dani, just for the record, that was really fuckin whacked of you. All right? But it doesn't change the fact that she knows, and that you told her, JT. This is real bullshit. The next time you two are thinking about going behind my back tell me first. OK? You know I hate people talking behind my back. It's fucked up.”

“We weren't—”

“This was my frickin plan, my idea from the beginning and you guys were—”

“Noke, don't get bent.”

“NO. You guys were changing the plan without telling me?”

“We didn't change—”

“Stop it, OK. Just don't do it again. See now I'm pissed off.”

“And the difference between now and the last ten years is …?”

“Just leave me be.”

“OK. But nobody was—”

“Just end it.”

About a half mile after the footbridge Nokey pulled off at the Crestwood Train Station exit. He cut the lights and drove the last few blocks by streetlamps. As our old house came into view I played over what Dani said. Maybe she wasn't just fucking with us. Maybe she was trying to make a point. Maybe what we were about to steal wasn't even going to come close to being enough.

I climb the stairs to the third floor and knock on Ralphie's door. I hear someone open the peephole, so I wave at it. Ralphie talks to me through the chained door. “Qué pasa?”

“I'm sorry, Ralphie, I know it's late, but is Stephanie home?”

He takes his time deciding whether he'll help me out on this one. He closes the door and I hear him say, “Estephanie.”

The door cracks open enough to show the left side of Stephanie's face. Behind her I hear a low TV and window fan. Her hair is down, she wears sweatpants and a tank top. She squints at the rude fluorescent hall light.

“What?” she asks, unsure if she's in the mood for any more of me.

“You got a second?”

“Everyone's asleep.”

“That's OK, I just want you.”

She shuts the door and behind it I faintly hear her voice, “Un momento.” Then I hear her undo the chain. She comes out with a set of keys in her hand and flip-flops on her feet. She closes the door softly and with one finger points me up the stairs. I'm behind her and can see she's not wearing a bra. When she makes
the turn around the stairs her boobs shake, they're getting bigger, and for the first time I see her body as pregnant.

We climb to the roof, prop open the emergency door with a brick and step out into the brightness of the New York night.

I look into strangers' windows because I don't want to look at her yet. “Front row seat to their lives, huh?”

No response. So I look to her. “Stephanie?”

She turns to me. “Yeah.” She shakes her hair out of her face and I see the muscles flex in her neck; I see her nipples through her tank top, her slightly swollen belly over her sweatpants, and a hardness in her eyes I could imagine turning soft in the presence of her kid.

“There's probably so much stuff about you I'll never know, huh?” I tell her.

“What do you want?”

“I just want to know something …”

“I'm five feet two inches. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.”

I laugh but she doesn't. “You're really kind of amazing.”

“Kind of? This would be a good time to give it all up.”

“OK, you're more than—”

“No, no, no, no, forget that. Tell me
why
I am. Tell me what's so amazing about me. And I don't wanna hear no more wind-chime shit.”

“OK, I had that coming.”

“Go ahead. Tell me.”

“You know what? I don't know. I don't know what's so amazing about you. I don't know what you think. I don't know what you do or why you do it. I don't even know what you look like. I don't have the first clue about you.”

“Finally.” She jabs me in the shoulder hard. “The boy is talking sense.”

“Ouch.”

“Come on now, that was a love tap.”

“Thanks. My shoulder feels big time loved.”

“It should,” she says sincerely.

“I don't know why you're not wanting to stay with me no more. And that's OK, I don't have to, but just tell me one thing.” Now I'm losing my nerve. “Shit.”

“What thing?”

“Ah fuck me, man. Just tell me you believe I give a shit about you. Tell me that whatever else you think about me, you think I can give a shit about a person.”

“I do think that.”

There's something thick floating between us now. And because I have to guess what it is, I say it's respect.

“That's it?” she asks. “That's all you wanted from me?”

“No, not really.”

“Here it comes.”

“It's not like that.”

“What's it like then?”

“I want to know what you want.”

She stops as if she's translating what I said into another language. “What do you mean?”

“I'm just asking what you want. Because these people who been all up in your face and shit, treating you like ass—and I'm sorry for saying it like this, but your mom, your dad, Nelson; I'm thinking they may never have asked you this. I seen the same shit with my sister. It's something I could have asked like a while back and it might have made things—I don't know … I just want to do something that's actually going to help. So what is it that you want? Like in general and specifically.”

Nokey hung a Louie onto my father's block. He swung a U-turn and backed up the driveway pointing downhill towards the parkway. He killed the engine and we all sat there boiling in our own nerves.

“You ready?” Nokey asked.

Dani opened her door.

“Whoa,” I said. “Shut that, shut that.” She closed it. I said, “Where you going?”

She gave me a defiant look. “With you.”

Nokey said, “I don't think that's gonna work.”

“Dani, you have to wait in the car.”

“Why?”

“Come on, I took you this far but there's no way you're coming into that house with me.”

“Yeah,” Nokey said. “That wasn't part of the plan.”

“There's no reason to step foot in there again,” I said.

“And she's not coming in that garage with me. I'm doing this myself. I don't want or need help.”

“Dani, Noke is gonna roll the Cobra down and I'm gonna drive this car. So just hang tight.”

She nodded unhappily and looked through her open window at the second story and my father's bedroom.

Me and Nokey got out of the car and shut the door with the least amount of noise we could. I looked down the street. Light rain danced in the cone of light under the streetlamps. A few porch lights were on. It was silent except for the blood pushing through my head. I looked up to the driveway and said, “Listen, all you have to do is take off the emergency brake.”

“I know.” He was all amped.

“You gotta give it a little brake when you come to the end of the driveway or it'll bottom out. But past that you're good until the parkway without gas.”

“This is cake.”

“The slower you open the garage door the quieter it is.”

“I remember. Let's go,” he said.

“Your cell off?”

“Yeah it's off. Let's go already.” And he walked slowly up the driveway, his eyes on the second-floor windows.

I tried to take each front stair like I weighed forty pounds. I walked around to the side door, the quietest one. I was shaking so much I had to grab the keys with both hands to guide them into the lock. I got it open, stepped inside and closed it.

I held still, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I heard nothing except that rush in my head. I sucked in some air and got hit with a recipe of familiar smells: carpet dust, refrigerator exhaust, fireplace.
Fuck this place.

Darkness peeled off the edges of the dining-room table and chairs. With my hands reaching in front of me I maneuvered around them and into the living room. By the overflow of the streetlights I could see the lamp table. I kneeled down in front and slid the little wooden drawer open and felt for the keys. I couldn't make out the details of the pictures on this table, but I felt them inches from my face, breathing on me.
There was one of Dani taken the first day she came into this house.

She was a brand new kid.

Her eyes were closed.

The two days before the picture was taken my dad and I spent alone in this house. Mom was away and all I knew was her trip had something to do with my new sister. For months they kept telling me,
The baby is coming, the baby is coming
, but were real vague about how and when. The day Mom got out of the hospital my dad picked me up from kindergarten and Mom stood on the front steps, gave me a big hug. She had a peanut-butter sandwich waiting for me in the kitchen. While I ate my mother and father sat at the table staring at me like I was gonna do tricks. I pushed the peanut butter off the roof of my mouth with my tongue.

“How was school, Jake?”

“Good.”

“That's good.”

Then they started grinning.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“No, silly. We're not laughing at you. What did you do in school?”

“We had clay and I made a tall face pole, and Mrs Jaffe said it was a total pole.”

“Totem pole.”

“Yeah.”

“Oooh, that sounds fun.”

“Yeah.”

I ate my sandwich for about another two minutes with them smiling at me the whole time. I dropped the last piece of crust in my dish, picked up my bookbag and made for my room. In the living room I passed by a big wicker basket next to the couch that at first glance looked like it was filled with a blanket. But when
I stopped to check it out, I saw there was a baby wrapped in the blanket. I could only see her face. I felt so victorious because I found the thing everyone had been looking for for nine months. I kneeled down next to her. She smelled like bubble bath and was sleeping so quietly that even when I put my head closer to her, I could barely hear her breathe. I stayed there for a while, alone in the room with her.

Finally, I stood up and called to the kitchen, “Mom, Dad, come here. Come here.” My voice woke Dani up, she started twitching around. Dad came in the room and Mom poked her head around the corner to watch. “Look, she's here. I found her.”

Then Dani cried the first sound I ever heard her make. I looked for validation from my mom that she was supposed to sound like that, that she was working OK. And Mom smiled.

My dad reached into the basket, lifted her out of there, and jiggled her up and down like he was trying to jostle the crying out of her. I got on my toes and looked up at the new life I thought I had discovered and tried to touch her, but Dad pulled her out of my reach and said, “She's mine.”

What can I tell you?

I was five.

I believed him.

 

The keys were in my hand. There were a few papers in the drawer. I couldn't make out which one was the title, so I took them all out, folded them, and eased them into my back pocket—and that was the final move that proved intent to sell.

From behind my head I heard a car engine turning over. It stopped. Then I heard it again. Stuttering, trying to catch. It was coming from the garage. The loud familiar sound pumped sweat out of my body like a nightmare. It was my dad's car. It did
another false start before it caught. Then it revved right through my guts. I thought,
Nokey, what the fuck did you just do?

Through the ceiling above me I heard my father roll out of bed and hit the floor. I'd never been so glad for his messed-up leg than I was right then. I thought my beating did some good after all. I knew there was no way he could have caught us, but I wanted to disappear before he knew who it was. I threw the keys back in the drawer, turned around and ran. I hit my knee hard against the coffee table and sent it sliding across the floor. I broke out the side door and ran to the driveway. The garage was open and Nokey was in the Cobra waving me out of the way.

We both heard a gunshot.

His face exploded with fear, my forearms snapped over my head for protection, I fell forward and sprawled on the blacktop. Noke jumped out of the Cobra and bolted down the driveway toward his car. I hopped up and followed him staying low as I could. My hand was on the passenger-door handle and we heard another shot. I swear I felt the wind of it pass my ear. I jumped in the passenger's seat and slammed the door. Nokey landed behind the wheel. My dad must have been sleeping with his gun next to his bed those days because for the second I took to turn around I could see him aiming it from his bedroom window. Noke fumbled with the ignition then finally turned it, jammed it into drive, and floored it until we were out of range.

I said, “Holy fucking Jesus Christ.”

He said, “Fuckin hell. Oh my fucking God. That did not just happen.”

Then we didn't say another word.

Noke got on the parkway and drove about a mile before he thought to put the headlights on.

I saw no police lights in the rearview mirror and barely a car
on the road, only the occasional pair of headlights hit my eyes from the other side of the parkway. I realized we were safe. Noke slowed down to the speed limit. Rain built up on the windshield. I reached over and turned on the useless wipers, they squeaked to the left.

And then I was fucking enraged.

“What did you just do?” Nokey wasn't talking. “You motherfucker, you fucking answer me. Why the fuck did you start that fucking car?”

“I don't—”

“You stupid shit, you fucked it up. I fuckin knew it.” I pounded a couple times on the dash. “How did you even start it?”

“I hotwired it.”

“You
what
? What the fuckin Christ for?”

“Cause I knew I could. It's a '65. There's no computerized security and I knew that … It worked, didn't it?”

“I had the fucking keys IN MY HAND, you idiot asshole.”

“You didn't tell me your dad had a gun.”

“What difference—”

I heard something from the back seat.

“Shut the fuck up, Nokey. What, Dani?”

No sounds.

“Dani, what?”

In that kind of whisper that she talks in she said, “Something pinched me in the neck.”

I looked back. Her entire right shoulder was covered in blood.

“Oh God,” Noke said, “oh God, oh fuck.”

My intestines went numb.

“We gotta get her to the hospital,” Nokey said. His hands seizured on the steering wheel.

I remember saying,
Fix this
. I didn't say it out loud. I thought I was asking someone—who some people might call God—to fix what just happened.

“Jake, I'm going to the hospital, now.”

“Dani, just don't move. Noke's gonna drive to the hospital. They can fix it.”

She shook her head at me. There was rage in her eyes, she was saying no.

“I know you hate hospitals but that's where we're going.”

She shook her head again.

“Dani, you have to go.”

And then she opened the car door.

She was bleeding from the fuckin neck, we were flying down the parkway, and she actually opened the door like she was gonna jump out.

I reached over the seat and grabbed her by the shirt. I climbed into the back seat, slammed the door shut and held my shirt tail up to her neck.

“She has to go to the hospital, man. If she got hit in the jugular vein, which she might have, they say she could die in like seven minutes.”

“Shut up Nokey, you don't know what the fuck you're saying.”

“It's true, that's what they say.”

“You don't know shit. You fuck up everything, you're a fuckin idiot, you always were a fuckin idiot and you're gonna die a fuckin idiot. I hate every piece of you.”

Danielle fought against me and tried to open the door again. I grabbed her hands. She screamed to be let go. I said, “Dani, stay in the car. Stop moving. You're gonna be OK.”

She shook her head at me, “I'm not going.”

“JT, she has to go to the hospital.”

“Nokey, if you say another fucking word I'm gonna throw you out of your own car and leave you dead on the highway.”

Again she reached for the door handle.

“Goddamnit, Dani, would you fuckin hold still already.”

Danielle looked at me and held a firm pointing finger over her lips, telling me to be quiet. She was thirteen, bleeding from the neck, pulling against me, and inside her there was something steady. Like she'd been expecting it.

“The river,” she said.

“No way,” Noke said. “No fuckin way.”

“Noke, gun it to the fuckin hospital.”

He accelerated, and I pulled Dani's back to my chest and pushed the shirt into her neck. She tried to push me off her with her feet. The car swerved and debris from the shoulder rattled under the floorboards. Noke jerked the car back into the right lane; my hands slipped off Dani's neck, she screamed.

“What the fuck are you doing, Noke?”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Stay on the goddamn road and get us the fuck there now.”

“I got it, I got it.”

Dani stopped struggling against me. She was looking up. Not at me, or the roof of the car, but at something else. Her breath came in and out in little tremors. Her eyes were wide open. “I'm sorry,” I said to her. “I'm so sorry.”

I felt like I could have easily killed my father. And myself while I was at it. I could have rammed my head into a brick wall for about an hour. I could have dove off the bridge and landed face down in the rocks. I hated myself. I wasn't ten. I was seventeen. I could have beat him sober body to sober body instead of trying to get even with a stolen car. I could have done it. Fuck. I know I could have. “Why did he do this to you, Dani?”

I wanted to believe that it was going to be OK, that it was gonna get fixed, that no one would find out what happened. I wanted to think her blood wasn't covering Nokey's back seat, that it was staying in her body.

I felt the motion of the car, but it was like we weren't moving. I didn't know when Dani stopped breathing. I didn't know if
I was cold, hot, if I was there, or if I was even me. We passed highway lights that brightened then darkened Dani's face. Her eyes were still open. I touched one and it didn't blink. Her face was different. It wasn't twisted or fighting or mad or anything. Really, it looked just like sleep.