Kids of Appetite (12 page)

I reread the same paragraph for the fourth time, gave up, and closed the book. It took a lot to break my concentration, to pull me from my world of greasers and Socs, knife fights, and young love. The bus to Englewood did the trick (and then some) by combining the worst parts of Dante's nine circles of Hell in a reeking smorgasbord of stale food and sweat and visceral misery. I couldn't wait for the day Baz and Zuz got Renaissance Cabs up and running, and we could kiss public transportation good-bye.

If I'm even here when it happens
.

I sipped the last of my coffee, stuck the empty cup in the pocket of the seat in front of me, and tried to focus on the reason we were here:
Toss me off the Palisades.
Had I not read the Terminal Note myself, I would have assumed Vic's dad had an incredibly morbid sense of humor. But I'd heard the quiet depth and desperation in his written voice, and knew it was far from morbid. Should I ever be so unlucky as to be terminally ill, I could only hope to handle it with as much headstrong candor as Mr. Benucci had. Helping to toss him off the Palisades was the
least
I could do for the guy.

The Palisades were a row of steep cliffs lining a twenty-
mile stretch of the Hudson River. After some discussion, we'd agreed that tossing some ashes off the first convenient overlook would do. Outside, snow-covered trees passed in a silvery blur. Behind me, Zuz snapped in time with the tires of the bus against the reflector lights on the highway. Coco sat next to me, snoring like a bear in hibernation, muffin crumbs all over the front of her jacket.

I shimmied forward in my seat, pressed my face between the two seats in front of me, where Baz and Vic sat.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, yourself,” said Baz.

I couldn't be sure, but over the course of the last few minutes, I thought I'd heard my name uttered a few times. I hopped up on my knees and peered down at the two of them. “You know that makes me crazy.”

“What?” said Baz.

“The whispering. About me. You got something you wanna say?”

They gazed up at me, then at each other. “We weren't talking about you,” said Baz. “I was just telling Vic that Gunther Maywood is the only Chapter who doesn't know he's a Chapter, and how we just trade groceries and supplies for rent.”

“And if your book actually gets published?” asked Vic. “And he reads it? You don't think he'd recognize his own orchard, or name for that matter?”

I'd had this conversation with Baz a few times—it was nice to see it play out with someone else.

“First off,” said Baz, “it's not
if
my book gets published. It's when. Secondly, as I told you before, all names will be changed. And lastly, the man is a recluse. He'll never even know the book exists.”

“What about the Internet?” asked Vic.

I smiled down at Baz, wrinkled my forehead dramatically. “Yes, Baz, what about the Internet?”

Baz sighed, turned toward the window, and mumbled something under his breath. I looked at Vic, said, “I've been trying to tell him it doesn't matter whether Gunther leaves the grounds. He'll find out—”

“We were talking about you,” said Vic, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief.

“What?”

“Earlier. Before we moved on to Gunther, I asked Baz if you ever read anything other than
The Outsiders
. He said I should ask you about your theory.”

“Okay, well, the Hinton Vortex is
not
a theory, it's a fact. The last lines of S. E. Hinton's masterpiece are, word for word, the same as the first.” I grabbed the book, read the first paragraph, then flipped to the back and read the last. “Brilliant, right?”

“Right,” said Vic.

I shut the book, studied its cover. “You know, Hinton started writing this when she was
fifteen
. I'm almost eighteen, look what I've done. Nada.” Greatness had never been an aspiration of mine, but even so, who didn't want to leave a mark? Something that said,
I was fucking
here. Remember me
. “Anyway, I guess you could say I keep reading because I haven't finished yet.”

“The Hinton Vortex,” said Vic.

I nodded. “The Hinton Vortex.”

“Vortex time!” Coco's voice came out of nowhere. I wasn't even sure when she woke up.

“What?”

She slid up a full foot in her seat, enough for her feet to
touch the floor. “Every time you talk about the vortex, Mad, it makes me think of an amusement park ride or something.
Welcome to the infinitous Vortex
!”

“Infinitous isn't a word, Coco.”

“Sure it is. To reflect, you know, the foreverness of a thing.
Infinitous.
”

I slid down in my seat, gazed out the window at the trees. “Coke, I love you, you know I do. But you are insane.”

She shrugged dramatically, leaned over my lap, and looked out the window too. “I'm not the one stuck in the infinitous of a story.”

From the Englewood bus stop it was about a two-mile walk to the bottom of the Palisades Parkway, where we ended up hitching a ride with a girl named Jane. We sat in the back of Jane's SUV while she told us all about Stewart, her long-time boyfriend, now fiancé, who was an “aspiring car rental entrepreneur.”

This, I thought, sounded fairly wishy-washy.

But hey.

I sat in the far back passenger-side seat, and Mad was in the middle-back driver-side seat. Ergo, I had a direct line of vision to the right side of her face, and since I was slightly behind her, I could stare without getting caught.

I was an absolute ace at caddy-cornered-nonchalant-backseat staring, and these were prime conditions for my particular skill set. And so it was, staring at the right side of Mad's face, I thought about her tone of voice when she spoke
of young S. E. Hinton's accomplishments. I watched her flip her hair to one side, all those waves in a single motion—and I wondered how someone who could flip her hair with such angelic efficiency could sound so sad. Maybe it was some sort of cosmic balance, or secret human equilibrium.
Here, you may take this lovely thing, but not without also taking this awful thing. Knock yourself out.

Here's what wasn't a maybe: everything Mad said, every delicate movement she made—from her hair, to her hands, to the way she read a book like it was the last thing on Earth worth doing—was pure verve and value.

If a poem could be a person, it would be Madeline Falco.

And hey. Maybe
that
was the secret human equilibrium.

Jane pulled over at the first official overlook: Rockefeller Lookout. There was a parking lot and a couple of high-tech, quarter-for-use binoculars. It was all very official.

“Thank you very much, Jane,” said Baz, hopping out of the SUV. “And many congratulations on your engagement.”

“Thanks, dude. You guys want me to hang around till you're done seeing the sights? I'm totally fascinated watching people watch things.”

. . .

“That's a pretty strange fascination you got there, Jane,” said Coco. “Anyway, we're not sightseeing. Vic here is tossing his dad off the cliff.”

The look on Jane's face turned rascally. Like, clearly this wasn't her first go at driving a pack of wayward kids up to a cliff so one of them could toss a dead parent into the Hudson.

“Right on, my man,” said Jane, winking and shooting gun-fingers at me.
Peugh! Peugh! Peugh!
“Careful you don't toss yourself over with him!”

As Jane drove off, we stood in an uncomfortable silence. Some people, you spend any amount of time with them, and
things make sense.
Of course
Jane was engaged to an aspiring car rental entrepreneur. I could not speak for the others, but after five or so minutes with the girl, I, too, felt like an aspiring car rental entrepreneur.

I put on the blue knit cap; Mad put on her yellow one, then lit a cigarette, and we all stared at the old SUV as it disappeared down the snowy highway.

Coco reached for Baz's hand. “Frakking freak show, that one.”

Baz just nodded.

* * *

Rockefeller Lookout was approximately four hundred feet above sea level. According to the sign, you could see the following:

1. The Hudson River (Which, uh, I would hope so. It was right there.)
   
2. New York City (Ergo, Citi Field, home of the New York Mets.)
   
3. Henry Hudson Bridge (Great.)
   
4. Long Island Sound (Terrific.)
   
5. Westchester County, New York (Why not.)
   

Posted just below this was another sign urging people to observe park rules. The rules themselves were pretty obvious: do not climb the cliffs, stay on the trails, alcohol is prohibited, and the like. I suppose some kid at some point, after one too many cheap beers, had probably thought rappelling down the cliff would be a rad idea. And I felt sorry for that kid. But I felt sorrier for his parents. Because their house was filled to the brim with green bean casseroles and sideways hugs.

Together we walked toward the precipice of the Palisades. Nothing but a thin metal rail separated us from the edge of the rocky cliffs below. There were no crowds. Probably because it was still snowing. We stepped up to the fence, stared across the Hudson, and saw all five things from the sign. What the sign hadn't prepared us for was the sweeping grandeur of the view. In fact, this should have been included:

6. Sweeping grandeur of the view (Super Racehorse.)

It was a shame people didn't come up here during winter; snowy sights were a thousand times better, the giant rocks of the cliff face either wet or white with the stuff. I was just about to pull out the urn when Coco said, “I need to piss like a lover.”

“You mean like a
mother
,” said Mad.

“Why would I need to piss like a mother?”

“Why would you need to piss like a lover?”

“I don't know, Mad, but I'm about to piss my motherfrakking pants, and we'll find out real quick what it's like.”

“Coco, you'll have to hold it,” said Baz. “There's nowhere to go.”

“I can't hold it,” she whimpered, crossing her legs.

Baz sighed, pointed toward a bustle of snow-covered bushes. “Go ahead then. We'll wait.”

Coco shuffled from one foot to the other. “I need a guard.”

Nzuzi snapped twice, turned, and walked in the opposite direction. Baz rolled his eyes and started toward the bushes with Coco.

I rezipped my backpack. “So Mad and I will just wait here, then?”

But Mad was gone too, smoking next to a nearby park bench. It did not appear as though she was admiring the bench so much as keeping an eye on it. As if it might come to life, shimmy loose its blanket of snow, and trot off down the highway.

I should probably help her keep an eye on that bench
, I thought.

Making my way over, I heard her say, “Memories are as infinite as the horizon.”

“Poetic mood?”

She pointed to a plaque on the bench:

S
YLVIA
& M
ORTIMER
A
LTNEU

MEMORIES ARE AS INFINITE AS THE HORIZON

“What do you think it means?” I asked.

“Got me,” said Mad. “
Altneu
. Strange last name.”

The Land of Nothingness was upon me without warning.

We were in a car. Ages ago. Dad drove; Mom laughed.
Your father is the funniest person I know
. There were mountains. And trees that had just turned colors, so it looked like we were driving into a swirling tsunami of burnt orange and yellow. Mom finally stopped laughing and it was quiet, the peculiar kind of quiet where the leftover energy from the laughter hangs in the air. With some laughter, you just have to let the dust settle. From my seat in the back of the car, I saw my parents' heads. And then Dad's arm reached across the middle console, his hand resting in Mom's lap.
Till we're old-new
, he said. She responded in a whisper:
Old-new
.

Consider this: billions of memories in a brain, each one drowning in a furious river, grasping and gasping for life, a
twine of rope, an olive branch. It's no accident, the memories that last. They are survivors.

“Old-new,” I said.

“What?”

I turned from the bench to Mad. “People always talk about growing old together like it's the greatest, most romantic thing ever. But how often does it end up that way? People grow in different ways. More often than not, they just grow bitter.”

I imagined my father's hand, resting in Mom's lap. And I knew the older they got, the younger they seemed.

“I took two years of German,” I said. “
Alt
means ‘old.' And
neu
means ‘new.' It's the signature from Dad's Terminal Note.
Till we're old-new
.”

. . .

. . .

“So, what do you think it means?” asked Mad.

I looked at my worn-out boots, crusted with dirty salt and snow, and thought about Dad's old New Balance sneakers. “Mom and Dad were here. This is where they found that motto, I bet. Probably stood in this exact spot.”

Mad took a final pull from her cigarette before stomping it out on the ground. “The inevitability of corresponding units.”

“I mean—it's not the middle of nowhere. It's an official stop, or lookout, or whatever. But still. It feels like quite a bump.”

“We can't wait around all day!” yelled Coco behind us, apparently done relieving herself in the bushes. Baz and Nzuzi stood next to her at the cliff's edge, and miracle of miracles, Mad took my hand just as she'd done at the Parlour. As she led the way to the precipice, I felt her up-closeness, thus proving my prior sentiment: some beauties require tragedies.

At the edge, Baz scooped Coco into his arms, and Nzuzi stared across the Hudson. It felt nice not being alone in such heavy things. Nice being with people who knew what mattered: this infinite horizon where time was nothing, where I was at once old and new.

“‘The heavens declare the glory of God . . .'” said Baz, “‘and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.' This will definitely go in the book.”

White snow fell like a polka-dot panorama against the gray sky. We soaked in the silence and beauty of things until, eventually, Mad leaned over and asked if I was ready. And for some reason—I really couldn't say why—I thought of the USS
Ling
. Floating in impotency. And that rock I'd kicked, the one that had hit the deck gun, then plunked into the dark water of the Hackensack River. It was still there. It would always be there.

I thought of all my momentous multitudes. My many
I am
s.

“I am,” I said.

I unzipped my bag, pulled out the urn—wind whipped around, tossing tiny snowflakes into a sort of tornado, swirling around us, up and up and up into the ether.

“We're too far away,” I said.

The edge of the cliff was at least ten feet away, much too far to chuck a fistful of ashes and expect them to clear the brink. The rocks were roped off with clear signs posted every twenty feet or so:
DO NOT GO BEYOND BARRICADE
. One of the signs had been vandalized in pastel colors, so it now read:
DO NOT GO BEYOND BARRICADE
.

“Guess we should go beyond barricade,” said Mad with a grin. Whenever I saw her do this, I felt like a pilgrim glimpsing the aurora borealis.

Nzuzi snapped his finger in agreement, the sound echoing off the surrounding cliffs, and Baz rolled his eyes, and all of it made me want to smile. If I'd had a Northern Light, I would have too.

Mad chanted, “Go-be-
yond
. Bar-ri-
cade
. Go-be-
yond
. Bar-ri-
cade
.”

“Fine.” Baz sighed. “We'll all go.”

On the other side, a flat rock, massive and snow-covered, jutted out into emptiness. From there, it was a steep drop to the water, four hundred feet down.

Baz said, “Everyone, be careful.”

“Ouch,” said Coco. “You're squeezing too hard.”

Baz was imagining green bean casseroles too, I think.

I held the heavy urn in both hands, and noticed the flat rock under our feet had been defaced. It must have been recent; the snow had been cleared off. It wasn't usual graffiti fare, like a skull or a slur; it was a rainbow-colored heart to match Mad's coat.

To match Mad's everything, really.

Suddenly my foot slipped on the ice, and I saw my own death in the water below. Mad grabbed my shoulder and helped me regain my balance while I tried to play it cool. I nodded at her, bent down, pulled out a fistful of Dad.

. . .

“Toss me off the Palisades,” I said.

“Toss me off the Palisades,” said Mad.

“Toss me off the Palisades,” said Coco.

“Toss me off the Palisades,” said Baz.

Nzuzi snapped once.

I pulled my hand back and tossed the ashes . . . directly into the wind. Fusing with the tiny tornado, the ashes of Bruno Victor Benucci Jr. came flying back into our faces
where three curses, two snaps, and Baz's silence fused into one glorious choir of profanity.

“Did any of him make it?” asked Baz, shifting Coco to his other arm.

We each tried to shake Dad from our coats and faces.

“I don't think so.”

Mad picked up a nearby rock the size of a grapefruit, and spit on it so the snow melted a little. “Here,” she said. “Put some on this.”

“Some what?” I asked.

“Some of your dad.”

I sprinkled a pinch of the ashes on the mushy spot, part melty snow, part melty Mad. She scooped up another fistful of snow, and covered the rest of the rock in it, packing it tight.

Hey, Dad. You okay in there?

Yeah, V. Freezing my balls off, but good
.

I heaved Dad right off the cliff, down four hundred feet, and into the Hudson, where he would lie forever. Dormant. Like the rock under the
Ling
. Like me. Like all of us, really.

Coco dusted off her mittens. “Who's hungry?”