Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (14 page)

Mom was greasing pans. A thin layer of flour already powdered the radio. A fresh sack of sugar stood on the counter like a tombstone. The table was piled with bananas. Nicky counted them. There were ten bunches.

“Ma? Why did you buy ten bunches of bananas?” Nicky said.

“That's all they had. Now leave me alone. I have to cook.”

Tired and sweaty, Dad came through the door at five thirty. Nicky said, “Dad, have you seen anybody who looks like Castro in the building?”

Dad unfolded his
Daily News
and said, “Yeah, he was smoking a stogie in the lobby. A guy with a beard.”

Mom shouted from the kitchen, “There's a letter from Roy on the coffee table.”

Dad caught the edge in Mom's voice and said, “What's the matter with it?”

“Read it yourself.”

Dad dropped his newspaper and bolted for the letter. He read as he shuffled backward and felt for his easy chair. He finished reading and sat in his chair, the thin slice of paper in his lap. He did not pick up the
Daily News
. He did not turn on the television. He just sat, pulling a grim face. He glanced at the letter again and again, as if he hoped the words would change.

Nicky took a seat at the kitchen table. He watched Mom work. She was sweating and mumbling. “If he thinks I'm calling that floosie, he's bananas. What he ever saw in her is a mystery to me.”

“Mom, I got a question for you. Why would somebody not want somebody they knew, a friend, to come into their apartment?”

“Is this a riddle? I'm not in the mood for a riddle.”

“No,” Nicky sighed. “It's just a mystery.”

“Somebody won't let you into their apartment? They're a friend? Is it that Lester?” Mom said. Mom shrugged. “No mystery. There's only one thing to do.”

“What? Tell me.”

“Mind your own business.”

Nicky thought that was sound advice, especially for this time and this place. He thought they should engrave those words in stone, at the entrance to Eggplant Alley.

For supper that night, Mom served pig intestines, with fresh banana bread for dessert. Seven loaves of banana bread were scattered on surfaces around the apartment. The loaves cooled and scented the air.

After dinner, Dad sat at the table and stirred instant coffee. He spoke his first words since reading Roy's letter.

“What's the matter with that kid, anyhow? Why would he say something stupid like he wants to get into combat? It's a mystery. Did he say he's bored? Bored? He should just do his job.”

Nicky thought, “Sure, Dad. Do as you say, not as you did, right?” Nicky had heard the stories from the war. He knew about Dad's strong urge to fly B-17 bombers. He knew Dad looked wild-eyed at the leather-jacketed pilots on the recruiting posters and quit high school and volunteered for the Army Air Corps. Dad wanted to be in the thick of the war, in the middle of the action, in flak-covered skies, in lumbering crates battling sleek Nazi fighter planes. Dad was turned down because of a bum eardrum and no college attendance. Dad told Nicky that story. Dad
told Roy that story. A million times. Why didn't Dad remember that story?

Mom passed the night wrapping banana bread in double layers of tinfoil. She tried to fit seven loaves into a box only big enough for six and muttered, “If I called her, I'd call her to tell her what I think of her. Call her. Sheesh. Margalo the magnificent. The girl who keeps her sister locked up in the house.”

Dad sat with the television going. The Yankee game was on, but Dad wasn't watching. Nicky knew this, because a Yankee struck out with the bases loaded and Dad didn't flinch. Usually Dad would holler at the screen, sputter about the bums of modern-day baseball, and grumble reverently of the Great DiMaggio. Now Dad's eyes weren't even aimed at the television. Not even close. Dad's eyes were focused on the coffee table, at a spot near the metal Holiday Inn ashtray, squarely on the letter from Roy.

N
icky gazed the
TV Guide
, the latest edition, the one with the actress Ann-Margret on the glossy cover, and felt a strange airiness in his chest. The only other time he had felt this was at first light on Christmas morning.

Ann-Margret, pictured from the waist up, wore a wispy dress that was so low-cut, Nicky thought it could be a nightgown. Her magnificent red hair cascaded onto her bare shoulders and her face was turned to one side but her eyes looked directly at Nicky as he stared back at her. He had come across the
TV Guide
two days earlier, and ever since he could not pass by the magazine rack next to Dad's easy chair without rummaging for a look at Ann-Margret. He studied her face with same sensation he had when he first saw the top-of-the-line Rawlings B-4000 baseball mitt in the glass display case at Gimbels.

Ann-Margret's lips were the color of Bazooka bubblegum. And those eyes. Nicky could not tell if they were green or blue. This time he locked onto them and decided they were blue. On the spot, he decided he preferred women with blue eyes. He searched his memory. Noreen Connolly had blue eyes. She sat in front of him in social studies and he recalled looking into her eyes as she swiveled
in her desk to pass back test papers. Mrs. Murray might have blue eyes. There was also an alley cat with blue eyes that frequented the garbage cans outside Popop's. Nicky gazed at Ann-Margret with a sad and pleasant longing and then he remembered another woman with blue eyes and he felt something drop inside him.

“Margalo,” Nicky said, spitting out the name like a sip of curdled milk. He pushed the
TV Guide
back into the rack and decided the lovely Ann-Margret must have green eyes after all.

No one in the family knew exactly when Roy and the horrid hippie Margalo started going out. The best guess was they hooked up during the long, hot summer of 1967. Mom and Dad, and even young Nicky, first sensed her presence around then.

“I don't know what's wrong with that kid,” Mom would say, before they all found out the answer—the horrid hippie Margalo.

Roy was not his old self. He was turning into someone else. He completely lost interest in the old things. No more Monopoly, water balloons, smoke bombs. No more trips to the roof, walks to Popop's for baseball cards, throwing the squeaky toy for Checkers. The only old game that seemed to interest Roy was stickball—he still spoke wistfully about that, at least—and stickball was extinct.

By the end of that summer, Roy's Roger Maris–style crew cut had disappeared for good. His head became overgrown, like an untended garden. Before long he had a mop-top, in the style of the early Beatles. Dad no longer said “Hi, kid,” to Roy. His standard greeting to Roy became, “Get a haircut.”

Dad and Roy fought endlessly over Roy's hair. When Roy's
sideburns started to creep south of his earlobes, they fought over those, too. During one battle, Dad compared his haircut to that of Moe of the Three Stooges. Roy yelled at Dad and called him a dinosaur. They shouted in each other's faces. Roy was eating a banana during the yelling and shouting. Roy gestured wildly with his hands, and a hunk of banana broke off and found its way down the front of Dad's favorite sports shirt. Dad and Roy didn't speak for two weeks after the Banana Incident.

During this silent, cold snap, Roy came home one early evening and emptied a large brown bag of brand-new 45-rpm records onto the coffee table. Dad was reading the
Daily News
in his easy chair and did not look up. Previously, Roy had purchased exactly one record in his life—“The Ballad of the Green Berets.” But today he had gone on a record-buying spree. There were at least twenty records spread on the coffee table. They cost at least 79 cents each. The old Roy would never blow that much cash in one place.

Nicky wandered to the coffee table.

“Whatcha got, Roy?”

“What does it look like? Don't put your greasy fingers all over them.”

Nicky read the record labels out loud.

“ ‘Peppermint and Polka-Dots,' by the Ajax Dream Factory.

“ ‘Bullfrog Betty Gotta Jam,' by the Funkadelic Limited.

“ ‘Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby,' by Flysie and the Gnomes.”

From behind his
Daily News
, Dad made a growling sound.

Roy clicked on the old hi-fi, a 1950s model, the turntable and single speaker encased in a fake mahogany cabinet. He threw back the lid, slid one of the new records out of the sleeve, and
placed the record on the turntable. The aging hi-fi popped and hissed and Roy's song came on, and right away the Eisenhower-era needle skipped.

“They call me mell … BIP … they call me mell … BIP … they call me mell …”

Dad crumpled the newspaper into his lap.

“What the heck is THAT?” he said. “And why is it up so loud? Lower it.”

Roy bumped the hi-fi with his knee to unstick the needle and said, “It's a record. My record.”

The needle skipped again. “That's right slick … that's right slick … that's right slick …”

“Stupid crappy hi-fi,” Roy said.

Dad bounded from his chair and reached into the hi-fi cabinet. He grabbed at the record and there was the horrible screech of needle across vinyl.

“Your record,” Dad said with a smile. “My hi-fi.”

Roy bellowed, “You ruined my record!”

“That record was ruined the day they made it,” Dad said.

Roy slammed the apartment door on his way out.

“What's gotten into that kid?” Dad said, because this was before everyone knew the answer—the horrid hippie Margalo.

Another day, Nicky was alone in the apartment when Roy came home and walked into the kitchen, giggling. He was giggling like a little girl who was handed an oversized lollipop. Nicky had never seen his big brother giggle.

“What's so funny?” Nicky said, eager for a good joke. Roy always heard the best jokes.

“Don't you see it? The linoleum. It … is … so … cool,” Roy said, his voice throaty. This was followed by more giggling.

“What do you mean?” Nicky said. He looked at the linoleum, which was a faded black-and-red checkerboard pattern. It had been in place since before Nicky was born.

“So … cool,” Roy said, looking down with Nicky. “I like floors. Way better than ceilings, you know?”

“What's that smell?” Nicky said, sniffing, trying to identify the odor that was a mixture of Old Spice and wet grass and heavy perfume.

“Do we have any cream soda? I had three cans of cream soda and I want another. Have you ever noticed the girl on the White Rock label? I mean, really noticed her?” And then Roy slowly walked from the room, giggling and trailing the strange scent. Nicky wondered what on earth was wrong with him, because this was before anyone could guess—the horrid hippie Margalo.

Mom was the first to get a look at her. Mom was walking up Mayflower on a bright fall afternoon. Walking down Mayflower on the opposite sidewalk were Roy and a girl.

“Hanging on to each other like chimps at the zoo,” Mom reported.

“What did she look like?” Dad wanted to know.

Mom shrugged. “Her hair looked a little messy.”

Like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, Mom struck early in the morning, at breakfast, when Roy was sleepy and off-guard.

“So who's the dame?” Mom said, stirring coffee, clanging the spoon.

“Huh? What dame?” Roy said through a froggy throat.

“The one you were glued to, over on Mayflower Avenue yesterday afternoon.”

Roy's face reddened. The muscles in his jaw clenched. But he coolly went on eating Frosted Flakes. And he clammed up like a Mob witness. The only information Mom could extract was that the girl was named Margalo and she was from “around here.”

For Mom, that was something to go on. At least now she could place a name on the foreign presence that had invaded their lives, lengthening their son's hair, twisting his taste in music, poisoning him against the old ways.

One day Mom came into the kitchen as Roy was eating a hoagie. The sandwich had unfamiliar wrappings.

“Where did you get that?” she demanded.

“The May-Po Luncheonette. On the other side of Radford Street.”

“All the way over there? For a sandwich? What's wrong with Lombardo's?”

Mom paused.

“Ohhh, is that where your friend Mangalo told you to get your sandwiches?”

Another day, Mom was sorting laundry and while emptying Roy's pockets, she discovered a book of matches from a place called Louie's Italian Restaurant in south Yonkers.

“You have to go all the way up there to eat? Where is this Mango going to lead you next, Timbuktu?” Roy did not stop wandering far from home, but he was more careful about matchbooks.

By the winter, Roy had developed an oddball habit. By way of greeting, he no longer said the standard “hello.” Instead, he said, “Hey-lo.”

“Hey-lo, everybody,” Roy said, passing through the living room.

“Hey-what? What's with that crap?” Dad said, scowling around the corner of the
Daily News
.

“Three guesses,” Mom said from the ironing board.

Mom and Dad and Nicky wondered what Roy would pull next.

Then came the Blue Castle hamburger incident.

Dad hated Blue Castle hamburgers, and he had brought up his sons to hate them, too. No one knew what grudge Dad held against the bite-sized burgers. It was probably another instance of Dad reading a horror story in the newspaper, probably about some kid who ate a Blue Castle hamburger and dropped dead. That kind of story stuck with Dad forever. After reading a story like that, Dad was more likely to eat a hand grenade than a Blue Castle hamburger.

And on this particular winter evening, Roy came through the apartment door, dripping rainwater, a half-eaten Blue Castle burger in one hand, a Super Max sack of Blue Castle hamburgers in the other hand.

“Hey-lo,” Roy called with his mouth full.