Needle Too (3 page)

After Aunt Rosie assumed her position at the very top of the most hated heap her family was soon banished from the Goodman branch of the Comunale tree, which would continue until I was well into my college years and too old to be affected by it anymore—one way or the other. And though there was some other forgettable but immediate reason that would officially initiate the estrangement between the families, I’m certain the underlying cause was that my mother simply couldn’t get over the fact that the sister she disliked and resented since childhood was the one to inform her of what was probably the most humiliating episode of her life. But the sudden and needless disappearance of my cousins and Aunt from
my
life, combined with the sudden and permanent disappearance of my father along with the beatings my mother began administering—heightened a sense of desperation and desolation that would define my childhood until I was around 13 and too big and bottled-up with resentment to dare hit anymore. But prior to that I cannot begin to find the words to describe the staggering sense of abandonment, isolation and
fear
that overwhelmed me after being separated from not only my father, but now also my Aunt and cousins. And, it was magnified by the fact that the kids still attended the same, small, elementary school and we were constantly around each other—while this heavy, restrictive and oppressive cloud hung over everyone. Upon chance encounters I was told by Mother “to be polite and keep walking,” though sometimes Jimmy and I would chat in the schoolyard at lunchtime, but not without constantly craning my neck to ensure
she wasn’t spying on me from behind the bushes. But generally speaking, there would be no interaction beyond an exchange of passing pleasantries. Certainly, the days of shared birthday parties, family dinners at Grandma’s house and trips to Lake George were now a thing of the past, and within a year my Aunt and her family would move upstate. In no time at all I was stranded alone on a horrible desert-island torture chamber in Queens, with no one to confide in besides my two-year-old sister. And of course, impulsive but unforgiving and long term or even permanent estrangements were hardly limited to the sister my mother despised, but other family members including the brother she professed to love. In fact, I can remember more than a few occasions when some poorly thought-out comments resulted in my Uncle John and his family being banished from my life for at least a year or so, one of which continued until not too long before he became ill.

On what would be my final hour living in Central Park, camouflaged behind a thick patch of bushes in one of the park’s more rustic areas, my little lair was discovered just as a summer thunderstorm came bearing down upon the city.

“Hey bro, I really hate to do this to you right now and I SWEAR it isn’t my idea,” said a junky as he peered into my shelter of shrubs and prepared to pay his debt to society by evicting me from my home.

“Say no more,” I told him as I crawled out from under the house of bushes and realized things had finally come full circle.

“I have a list of shelters in Manhattan if you want.”

“No thanks, I’m gonna stay at the shelter in Stamford,” I said as I squinted up at him through the falling rain.

“Really? In Stamford?”

“Yeah…But it’s a
kill
-shelter so
watch out!”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind,” I told him just as the rain began to come down in buckets.

“Hey, why don’t you take these with you,” he suddenly blurted out as he handed me a black raincoat and an olive-colored Stetson hat. “Somebody left’em over there by the rocks and I was gonna try and sell’em, but they’re kinda nice...
don’t you think?”

Typically, I wouldn’t even
consider
wearing anything that belonged to another homeless man, but given my situation and the torrential downpour I decided to break with precedent and share the hat and coat with whatever else was living within them.

“London Fog,” I said out loud as I inspected the collar of the coat and recited the name on the label, which also happened to describe my level of brain activity as I was still reeling from the effects of too much methadone in too short a time.

“Yeah…it’s pretty nice, huh?” he tried again.

“Yeah…it’s pretty nice,” I said with an abbreviated chuckle as I tried to zero-in on just one horrible irony. “Hey man, good luck...alright?”

“Good luck to
you
,” he said and then disappeared into the rain with his trash bag and garbage picker as I picked myself up off the grass, put on my raincoat and hat, grabbed my duffle bag and headed off in an easterly direction. I eventually exited the park before passing the bright-red door of 16 East 80
^th
Street where I lived with Helmer only six years prior. Actually, it seemed more like
sixty
years. So much had transpired since then, so much awful shit from so many different directions. Without reflecting on any
of it for more than a moment I walked past the Madison Pub and continued toward Grand Central Station, bypassing the subway at 77
^th
Street as incurring the cost of
that
commute would make it impossible to afford the final leg of my journey. So, after walking a couple of miles in the rain to the famous transportation hub, I purchased a ticket and proceeded to board the next train departing for Stamford, Connecticut where I took a seat beside someone and closed my eyes.

The train pulled into the Stamford station at around 10 p.m., and as I stepped onto the platform it was clear the bout of nasty weather was approaching tropical storm intensity. I buttoned-up my raincoat and with both hands, tugged on the brim of my hat to better anchor it to my head amidst the roaring wrath of the wind.

As I left the platform and headed into the teeth of the storm I noticed several rows of ramshackle houses adjacent to the train station and my drug antenna immediately went up—I suppose because there were several rows of ramshackle houses directly adjacent to the train station. Without stopping to investigate further, I trudged onward for about a half a mile toward my mother’s apartment.

Within ten minutes I found myself walking up Glenbrook Road and directly into the mouth of darkness. While the rain came bearing down upon me I stood in the parking lot of the condo and looked up at my mother’s bedroom window, where only a single light shone brightly—almost like a beacon alerting weary travelers to the evil and danger that lay ahead. And as the weather continued to fill my shoes, my head was suddenly flooded with memories I’d managed to forget about or, perhaps,
repress
for years.

Before stepping out of the rain and into the fire, while I stood there in a London Fog and a Stetson hat, I looked up at the illuminated room and was reminded of Father Merrin and an image from that terrifying evening back in 1980 when CBS aired
The Exorcist
for
the very first time in television history. It was a night filled with graphic violence, sheer terror and a degree of depravity that would literally take me months to recover from…and the
movie
was pretty fucking scary too.

3

I’m thirsty and nervous.

The bright electric-blue radiating from my digital clock and flooding eyes that are still filled with sleep makes time-telling a mystery. So I squint. Then I sort of close one eye and squint with the other.

It’s 3:08 a.m.

I ALWAYS wake up at this time.
WHY
I
always
wake up at this time I haven’t a clue, but EVERY night—give or take a few minutes—I always do. Sometimes when I wake up like this it’s
worse
.
SOMETIMES
the walls close in on me. Oh, and the
silence
—the silence is deafening, which means that if any
real
noise should splash against the blaring backdrop of nothingness the silence will become…
absolutely terrifying
. In fact, any noise of any kind—my leg momentarily brushing against the fitted sheet, a car door closing, a stray dog barking and of course, the very sound of my own
breathing
—could all become a cacophony of horror stories, each an abridged, imagined, sick side-effect and manifestation of something that used to happen to me when the lights were
on
. But right now it’s only in my head and I
know
this which makes it even
scarier
. But then again, there’s always the distinct possibility that the craziness escaped the bony boundaries of my brain and is actually out there unseen in the darkness—
lurking
—around the winding windowless corridors of a place I call…
home
.

Then suddenly, while lying there in the darkness and the noisy silence of it all it comes rushing back: the storm, the Howard Johnson’s in Douglaston and Mother smearing ice cream and chocolate syrup all over our faces and hair while guzzling margaritas, laughing insanely, insulting staff members and cursing fellow diners who—for
some
reason—seem to take exception to her style of parenting. And then things started to get embarrassing:

“Lady—you’re not planning on driving home tonight, are you?!” a very irritated officer shouted at my mother from across the parking lot in the rain, and though she was on all fours and puking beside the tire of a car that only
looked
like ours, believe me—that’s
exactly
what she was planning. “Because if you set one foot behind the wheel I’m gonna slap these fuckin’ cuffs on you and throw your fuckin’ ass in jail! Is that what you want?!
Huh?!
Right here in front of
EVERYONE?!”

“Oh yes,
PLEASE!!”

“I’m not talking to you, son. Go take your little sister back in the restaurant and wait there a few minutes. And hurry up—she’s cold and soaking wet.”

“But I wanna watch!” I blurted out, perhaps already foreshadowing some future problems with the police.

“How old are you?!” the cop barked at me.

“Twelve!” I barked back.

“Too young to drive.
NOW GET THE FUCK INSIDE AND BRING THE LITTLE GIRL WITH YOU BEFORE I ARREST ALL THREE OF YOU!!”
he roared over the rumble of the thunder as he lost what was left of the patience he had.

“Oh, this is such crap!”

“
WHAT?!
”

“Nothing,” I said and then quietly complied.

Pre-pubescent bravado aside, while standing there with remnants of dessert in my hair I was
totally
humiliated. But suddenly and for the first time that humiliation was fueling the fury because I was just
SO
sick and tired of her putting her hands on me. And though I was older now and bigger and better equipped to defend myself against her attacks
if I saw them coming
, I’d already spent the better part of my childhood wishing it away and by this point was only frustrated and disgusted that it still hadn’t ended. I honestly can’t even begin to recall how many nights I found myself lying on my bedroom floor with a busted lip and bloody nose and praying for the day I’d be all grown-up and finally done with the bullshit. But that day never seemed to come.

Unfortunately, the cop had no clue of my ongoing domestic nightmare and his threat to throw my mother in jail was motivated solely by her inability to function behind the wheel, and what might be
our
inability to function without ventilators. But even so, this would clearly be a
huge
success, with or without the threat of a future on life support. In fact, sending
her
to jail would unquestionably be a Get Out Of Jail card for
me
, because although on these evenings my mother’s behavior could potentially be deadly, it would most certainly be violent and injurious as going out for dinner always involved not only liquor and a drunk and death-defying drive home, but then the most brutal four to six hours you could ever imagine. And of course, since Mother’s recent cancer surgery the alternative evenings spent at home weren’t much better as they usually involved ordering dinner in followed by her swallowing a few beers and then—much like the disaster that unfolded this evening at Howard Johnson’s—a valium or two.

So as far as I was concerned, a night or two of Mother cooling her heels in jail would mean nothing other than a peaceful night of relaxation and uninterrupted slumber for me—and one without awakening to a lunatic sitting on my chest and slapping me in the face. And of course, more importantly, it would also mean not having to worry about what that face would look like in the morning. Like a beaten wife, I constantly had to justify my bruises and cuts to peers with lies that would serve to protect the psycho when they were only intended to spare me from being humiliated at school.

At some point the cop scooped her up off the floor and threw her in a cab, and then collected Celine and me from the restaurant.

“You should watch that mouth of yours,” he advised me as my little sister and I stepped into the taxi. “She’s still your mom. She deserves a little respect.”

“Yeah—sure,” I said while being careful not to roll my eyes.

With that the taxi pulled out of the Howard Johnson’s on Douglaston Parkway, and what was once a weekly dining staple would never again be revisited because of course—
my mother lacked the character, conscience and sense of accountability to make that happen
.

We finally made it back to Cryder House at around 9 p.m., and though I was initially devastated by the fact that once again my mother’s bad behavior would go unpunished, she was
SO
fucked-up and unresponsive that at least for the time being she may as well have been in jail. As the cab pulled up to the gatehouse the security guard took a look at my mother and being not so careful not to roll
his
eyes, called the lobby to inform the doorman of impending disaster. The gate then lifted and the cab was permitted entry as it proceeded up a not-so-steep hill and around a circular driveway that surrounded a fountain and led to the lobby of the
building.

Bill, the doorman, came rushing out and into the storm with a HUGE umbrella to help shield the monster from the rain. I really liked Bill. He was in his mid-fifties, had gray hair and a matching mustache and from around the time I was six-years-old he’d treated me like an adopted son, often taking me to movies and baseball games and all kinds of shit. In fact, I often found myself hanging around the lobby whenever Bill was on duty just to listen to him talk about sports, music, movies and occasionally—WOMEN.