August and Then Some (4 page)

Grand Central Terminal. Hundreds of people move under the green ceiling of constellations that hear every voice. I walk to the main concourse; the heartbeat in my head reminds me how much I drank last night. I squint at the departures board.
12:07 Hudson Line local to Poughkeepsie departing from track 32, making stops at 125th Street, Morris Heights, University Heights, Marble Hill, Spuyten Duyvil, Riverdale, Ludlow, Yonkers …
I could recite that shit in my sleep, if I slept.

Coke in hand, turkey hero with mayonnaise in mid-bite, I flip around toward my track, and crash lunch-first into a woman hustling to get her train. She glances back and throws me a “Sorry,” with an I'm-too-late-to-be-too-worried face. I wipe the mayonnaise off my mouth … Oh, shit. I vaguely remember walking down Avenue A last night crashing into another woman. Did we crash? No, I think I grabbed her. Probably grabbed her. Maybe she smacked me. Did I get smacked? Yeah. I think I did.

 

On the train I take my last bite, crumple the wax paper, put it back in the brown bag, and lay it on the seat next to me so no one sits
there. I lean my head against the window and try to get comfortable in the seat that was designed by an idiot. My face feels ten degrees hotter than it needs to be.
Beer
, my head keeps telling me with every heartbeat,
beer, beer
… I touch my cheekbone. Yeah, I think I did get smacked last night. The details aren't clear. Probably wasn't as bad as a couple weeks ago when I was walking down Avenue A, saw this girl coming at me, and decided to grab both of her shoulders. I stopped her in mid-stride and her boyfriend asked me if I had a fucking problem. I told him the last time someone asked me that they were in the third grade and still sleeping with their mother. When he tried to shove me I was quick enough to grab him by his wrists and yanked him off the curb smack into a parked car. But I was too sloshed to stop his fist when he came back at me. He only got off one punch because girlfriend was yelling at him to stop. With my ass on the street I told him that he just proved the opposite of what he was trying to prove. It sounded like a good line at the time. It made him turn back around, made his girlfriend grab his arm and yell at him to stop already. Which he finally did. I just wanted to gum up the works of their relationship, separate them for a second, see how they handle drunken scrutiny. Yeah, I'm guessing last night was a milder version of that.

 

Me and Stephanie didn't say much beyond
what's up
last night. We sat up there invisible to the rest of the neighborhood until my first six-pack ran out and I went to the deli for more. I asked her if she wanted one, but she said no. Sad girl.

 

After 125th Street the train crosses the East River, hugs the banks of the South Bronx, and shoots up the Hudson. I see signs fly by with the word Yonkers on them. My heart rate speeds up and my insides try to make a B-line out my ass. This stop always comes too soon. I think about staying on. Taking this train as
far as it goes then hitching a one-way ride north, which is stupid because people don't hitchhike anymore.

I step onto the platform and my t-shirt gets blown in the trail-wind of the train. I watch the train go up the tracks and get smaller until I can't see or hear it.

 

The river is about a mile wide here and seems to separate nature from nurture. I stand on the nurture side with the new apartment buildings and cafés. Cliffs inhabited only by trees stand on the New Jersey side and look down perpetually forgiving the Yonkers side.

I pass a café lined with bay windows that has a new co-op building above it. Right now it's past lunchtime and the place is practically empty. A few waitresses lean on the bar and pick at their fingernails while the television over their heads plays last night's Yankees highlights. A few tables are taken by people sitting across from each other, talking to someone else on their cell phones. This café's valet wears a white shirt and a bowtie, and sits on a stool in a chained-off parking lot that can hold maybe ten cars. He stares at the water and fingers the stack of unused parking stubs.

I walk three blocks away from the water on a street lined with tall brick housing projects. Cages cover the first floor windows, graffiti covers front doors, and smashed lights hang above entrances. The buildings resemble the hospital where my mom worked: flat, only the essentials. Summer-school kids walk by them, dip their hands into bags of Bugles and Doritos. They laugh and talk loud enough that I can hear them over the four lanes of traffic between us. They've hung backpacks from their elbows and attitudes on their faces that explain they can do anything they want, no permission needed. It's like watching me and Nokey a year ago.

A few blocks past that stand City Hall and the Yonkers court-house buildings. The courthouse clock says I have five
minutes to get into the Integrated Domestic Violence building.

My charges have been read. Probable cause and intent to steal and sell have all been established. The trial date is set for two months from now. But I'm being good. I have sought and maintained employment, enrolled in an educational program in pursuit of a GED, am complying with periodic check-ins with the authorities, refraining from possessing firearms, undergoing family psychological treatment, and failing to see where the justice is in all this relentless bullshit.

Family psychological treatment works like this: we all sit in a white, cinderblock-walled room and stare in opposite directions. We pick at the arms of our padded metal chairs as our appointed counselor asks us questions about how we feel and why. My mother cries in that quiet dab-your-nose kind of way and my dad says absolutely nothing.

Today is no different. Our counselor says, “What's going on today?” She's got this low, one-note tone that makes everything she says sound like it's in parentheses.

After she asks what's going on there's a real long silence.

Silence.

More silence.

Mom wipes nose.

Dad picks at chair.

 

Silence.

Short silence.

Short silence.

 

She yells my name as I trot down the courthouse stairs, her voice a perpetual panic attack. I turn mid-step and with my eyes ask what she wants. She settles on the stair above me, a forced sliver of a smile poking through her puffy face.

“You gave our counselor a hard time in there.”

“We all get them.”

If I know my mom, she's now using the obvious as a segue into what she really wants to say.

“Jake.” She preps herself with a deliberate inhalation. “I want you to know you can come home.”

Do I know my mom?

“Home?” I say like she's joking.

“Yes.”

“Where's that?”

“With me.”

“Not an option, Mom.”

She nods her head and purses her lips as if she was expecting a response like that. She reaches up to touch my peach-fuzz hair. “You don't look very good.”

I duck away from her hand. “Me? Look at the eyes on you.”

“That all you've been doing?” Now she looks me back in the eye and I notice a familiar distant gaze, a clear film covering the emotions in her eyes. I recognise it from when she's gotten one of her doctor friends to prescribe her sleeping pills. “Little Xanax too?”

She lets out a sigh so distinctly defeated that I'm sure I'll be able to reproduce it on my deathbed. “How any other way can I sleep?”

“Lot of Xanax. You got any for me.”

“I'll get fired.”

“Oh, please. I gotta get to my train.”

I'm able to take one step down before she says, “Wait.”

“I'm late. Whudda you want?”

She reaches into her shoulder bag and pulls out an envelope.

“I don't need that.”

“But Jake, look at you. Your shoulder bones are sticking out. You can't be eating.”

“I eat great. Thank you.”

“Then take it to go to the dentist or something.” She emphatically extends it in my direction. “I mean what if something happens to you and you have to go to the doctor? Or the hospital? Take it.”

“I'll take some Xanax.”

“I insist you take it.”

“I insist you put it away.”

She drops her arm, still holding the envelope at her side. “You can't do whatever it is you think you're doing by yourself. Our counselor won't say that, but we all know it. You can't take this one alone.”

“I've taken many things alone.”

She shakes her head like she pities me. “Look. You tried something, Jake. OK? And I know it's almost more than I can say for myself. It wasn't the smartest thing, but I get it OK? You wanted to fix things.”

I point directly at her chest and say, “Someone had to.”

For this she slaps my face. Which stuns us both for a few seconds.

“Jesus, this is like the family habit. We don't smoke, but we can backhand with the best of em. I wonder if the courthouse security cameras caught that one.” I do jumping jacks on the stairs. “Hey, coppers. Judges. You getting this?”

And for this I get three slaps in the mouth. Then she vices my face between her palms. “Goddamn you. Stop the fucking sarcasm.” She lets go of me. “Get real. There's things we're not going to say in there. We both know that. But don't you get it? I'm forgiving you.”

“YOU'RE forgiving ME?”

“Yes. And neither one of us can afford for you to not accept that.”

“Why's that?”

“Because we're already family; we don't need to be enemies on top of that.”

I take my time backing off her and taking the steps down again. Behind me she says, “You could stop hating him.”

“I don't.”

“Yes you do. You're afraid of him. He's got a way of scaring people for good. Trust me.”

“I'll take some Xanax.”

Me and Dad would crouch down on the linoleum kitchen floor, only five of his two hundred seventy pounds rolling over his belt. He'd shake the dice in his fist, blow on them and say, “Multiplication,” then I'd call out how many pennies I'd want to bet. I'd put up my change, he'd roll the dice, they'd clink against the wall and stop. “Quick: five times four,” he'd say, then swipe them up.

“Twenty.”

“Right.” And he'd give me my payout.

Again, he'd shake the dice, blow on them and say, “Subtraction.” I always bet five cents on subtraction, it was my strength. He'd roll … a six and a four would come up, I'd say, “Two,” and make an easy score. He'd shake the dice again, blow on them, say, “Multiplication,” I'd bet, he'd roll … “One times one.”

“One.”

“Right. But the house takes your money, because snake eyes means you crapped out,” he'd yell.

“Shhh. You're gonna wake Mom up.”

“I'm a screamer in the tradition of … you know, those people
who scream. The Irish ones. Banshees,” he says. “Nothing to be done about it.”

This was homework.

But often—and it took me a while to figure out why—I winced at his affectionate slaps on the back. At the dinner table I stuck a fork in my palm to dull the gucky sound of him chewing pasta. And I had visions. Him walking into fire. Face cracking. Drowning in shallow water. Me, pissing a poison arc in his direction that would dissolve him on contact.

 

It was just another purple dress with a little gold trim around the neck and hem. But for my five-year-old sister Dani, it was a fairy costume. My mom got her this magic wand to go with it—a little plastic one that lit up and everything. In what Dani called her fairy dance, she'd get up on her tiptoes and take these little ballet-looking steps from one side of the living room to the other. It was like watching Tinker Bell run track. She'd ballet over to you, circle her wand three times over your head and say, “I'm the purple fairy and I grant you a magic purple wish,” then crack you in the head and run away laughing. She'd hit you no matter what you were doing; watching TV, eating, talking on the phone … she'd come into the bathroom and smack me with that thing when I was on the bowl. Cute as she was, she definitely had a little wise ass thing going on.

You couldn't get her into bed unless you turned it into a game. And the game was always some version of this: we'd all be sitting downstairs in front of the TV until our nine-thirty bedtime rolled around and Mom announced it was time to hit the sheets. Dani would say, “You have to find me first,” then run up the stairs into my room and crawl under my covers. Mom and I would walk up the stairs expressing our impossible tiredness and how we couldn't
go to sleep unless we found Dani. We'd open the door to her room and yell, “Dani are you in here?” When no answer would come we'd call for her in Mom's room then the bathroom. Yawning with the crushing weight of slumber we'd say, “Oh well, I guess we lost her. Might as well go to sleep.” I'd sit on my bed right on top of her and jump up like I was startled. “Whoa, Mom, there's something in my bed.” I'd pull the sheets back and say, “Look—a foot.” I'd pull them back a little more. “And there's a leg attached to it.” Dani'd giggle from underneath. Mom would say, “Must be a laugh box attached to that leg.” I'd pull the sheets all the way off. “Oh my god, there's a girl attached to it.” Dani would try to run away, and Mom would grab her, bundle the sheet around her like a sack of laundry, and sling her over her shoulder. From inside the bundle, you'd hear, “You still didn't find me.” Mom would unload Dani onto her own bed and tickle her for about five minutes. Then maybe she'd go to sleep. And if she did it definitely wasn't a full night's sleep.

That's why we developed the knock system.

Our rooms were right next to each other and the headboards of our bed were on opposite sides of the same wall, so you could hear a knock go right through it even if it came from the soft fist of a five-year-old. The system worked like this:

One knock:
Come in.

Two knocks:
Goodnight
.

Three knocks:
What's up?
(This one you used if the other person had accidentally hit the wall when they were getting into bed or something or were making some other kind of unidentifiable noise.)

Four knocks:
All clear
. (This one was usually used right after the
What's-up?
combination.)

If she sent me the one
Come-in
knock, mostly it wasn't really because she had to tell me things. She just wanted to play tent.

When the single knock came, I'd get out this little flashlight
I had on my night table, put it between my teeth, then crawl on my stomach like I was in a combat zone through the hallway and into Dani's room and climb under her sheet.

I remember how big her eyes looked under those sheets, like brown cue balls with lashes like paintbrushes. With the sheet over our heads I'd shine the light on her book and read out loud. God forbid I'd read without doing the voices. No way she'd let me get away with that. Whatever the characters in the book were, a fox, a dog, I'd have to sound like one. This one time I was reading her a story about a rabbit and she said, “A rabbit doesn't sound like that.”

“How do you know? You talk to rabbits?”

“Yeah. Don't you?”

“Maybe,” I said. “What's your rabbit sound like?”

She made this squealing high-pitched voice that woke up our mom. Mom came in the room and said, “Do you know what time it is?” Dani popped her head out from behind the sheet and said, “It's no-parents time.” Then pulled it back over our heads.

Mom said, “Come on, it's after midnight.”

Dani popped her head out again and said, “No parents allowed.”

“This parent's allowed.”

“No,” Dani said, “you can't come in if you don't give the secret knock.”

“I'll give you a secret knock. Now, go to sleep.”

“No knock, no coming in. It's the rules.”

Then Mom pulled the cover off our heads. “The rules are gonna change real fast if your father wakes up.”

That's what it took for Dani to give in. That's always what it took for Dani to give in—the threat of Dad doing something. She looked at me and said, “Put the secret reading light back in the secret place.”

 

I don't know exactly when it started, but sometime around age seven or eight she got real quiet. Hardly ever talked around the house or even at school. And if she did you could barely hear her. Her voice dissolved into this permanent kind of whisper and you didn't know if she was talking to herself or to you. You had to get real close to hear anything. And I noticed she stopped touching people; wouldn't do it with her magic wand or her own hands. Wasn't like we were running the most affectionate household. Dad's affections always came as some kind of open-handed slap to the ass or to the back of the neck—trying to get other kinds of affection from him was like hugging a gravestone. Mom would throw an arm-lock around us sometimes, but Dani wasn't having it; she started squirming away from hugs, turning her cheek away from kisses and stopped sitting on people's laps. And her eyes—I swear they shrunk. The lids laid at half-mast like a camel's.

 

One night—I was about eleven, Dani was seven—I woke up to this bizarre scratching noise coming from her side of the wall. It wasn't knocking, it was scratching. And in my barely awake state, it felt like something was coming after me. When I realized it was coming from the other side of the wall, I knocked the three times:
What's up?
And the scratching stopped. I waited for the four
All-clear
knocks. But they didn't come. So I gave three knocks again:
What's up?
Nothing. Just quiet. I let it go. Figured she was OK, and went back to sleep. A few nights later I heard the same scratching again. This time I knocked once:
Come in.
The scratching noise stopped and she gave me the four
All-clear
knocks. But something about it felt off. So in the morning I said, “Dani, what was going on with the scratching last night?”

She said, “I wasn't scratching anything.”

“Then what was the noise?”

“The noise was scratching, but it wasn't
me
scratching.”

“Then who was it?”

“Men.” She whispered this like it was her big secret.

“What men?”

“Invisible men.”

“If they're invisible how do you know they're men?”

“Only I can see them.”

“What do they look like?”

“They have knives.”

That's when this fast chill ran up the back of me. “What do they do with them?”

“They scratch.”

“What do they scratch?”

“You know … My bed.”

“Do they scratch you?”

“No.”

“Let me know if they scratch your bed again. OK?”

“OK.”

I'm guessing all kids do and say things that seem a little, you know—out there. And everyone lets it go because they're kids. But Dani wasn't being normal-kid kind of weird.

 

It was a finger painting. Different shades of thick red lines smeared over one another. I could see how you might think it was a horizon line at sunset. Before it was dry, Dani took something sharp, maybe the point of her pencil, and scratched lines through the paint. Now, I don't know much about painting, but when a seven-year-old is already going for different textures, you gotta think she's got talent. Or something to say. Or both. Mom hung what she thought was a cute little sunset picture on the refrigerator. It was her habit to
display things that signified normal happiness. But about this sunset, she was way off.

We were eating dinner in the dining room and Dad told me to get him another beer. OK. I go into the kitchen and open the refrigerator where this painting hung. It'd been there for a few months probably. And you know, things hang around long enough (like the Sears bullshit portraits of me wearing argyle and crooked teeth that Mom displayed on the living-room end tables) and you stop noticing them. So I grabbed the beer, shut the door, and there was this goddamn painting staring me in the face, stopping me.

My mother hung it horizontally, but Dani's name was written sideways, going up the page. I moved the magnets that were holding it up, put my fingers on it and spun it around vertical, so her name was at the bottom, right ways up. And that's definitely the way it was supposed to go, man.

You never know when you're going to understand a little more of what's going on inside someone. Looking at it vertically there wasn't any sun in that picture at all, no horizon. But hundreds of unmistakable long red streaks of blood. Dani ran her finger up and down that paper with as many different shades of red as the Board of Education supplied a first-grader. Then she scratched lines into those streaks.

I don't know what made me run upstairs and into my sister's room, but I stood next to her bed, my father's beer in hand, and just looked around. Nothing was strange, nothing out of place. I didn't know what I was looking for, when I pulled the blankets off her bed.

Carved into the wood of her headboard, down near the mattress, were pictures of tiny girls' bodies. Skinny legs and arms poking out of triangle dresses. Little floating stick figures without heads or faces.

Yeah, Dani was seven, but what the fuck? I was only eleven.
I went back down to the dining room, put the beer on the table in front of my dad, and he said, “You grow the wheat yourself?” He looked at me, and I fuckin looked at him, my vocal cords feeling like stone columns.

I might have been fifty percent of one parent and fifty percent of the other one, but seeing the faces of these people I was supposed to love—and worse, answer to—I couldn't recognize one crease, curve or color of resemblance. And those visions of Dad hurting and burning came back.
You son of a bitch. If God really is your manufacturer then I'm gonna sue the bastard for faulty design.

“Don't you say thank you to your son?” my mother asked.

Dad lifted his can. “Here's to us, Jake. There's few what's like us, and they're all dead.”

I said nothing. How could I? I had no idea what was really going on. So I stayed put and pushed food around my plate.

And Danielle. Her face was pointed down at her dish. She was trying to cut her salad with a butter knife that kept slipping out of her hand.

For the record here's a couple other things about my hate. I've tried to kill it, but that's like trying to punch out a fly—the damn thing just bounces off my knuckles and keeps buzzing around my head. And the other thing: it's burning out my own insides.