Palisades Park (30 page)

Adele

“Toni?”

She jumped, as if she’d been caught stealing. She turned to find her father standing behind her in his bare feet, wearing only boxers and an undershirt, innocent of the words that would shortly make his heart bleed.

“Where’s your mother? Why aren’t you getting ready for school?”

Wordlessly Toni handed him the letter and the opened envelope. Unable to bear seeing his face as he read it, she ran past him, tears pooling in her eyes, to Jack’s room down the hall.

“Get up!” she said, shaking her brother awake. “Now!”

“What?” he said, shrugging off sleep. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Just get
up
!” she snapped. “It’s important!”

She ran back to the kitchen, where her father was staring almost uncomprehendingly at the letter, as if it were written in Sanskrit, or Greek.

He looked up at Toni. “She’s … gone?”

Toni nodded. “But the car’s still in the driveway.”

Eddie shook his head and, to Toni’s amazement, he laughed.

“She’s just got some wild hair again about getting back into the movies,” he said. “She’ll be back home in a week, don’t worry.”

“No. Dad. She won’t.” Toni hesitated to say more, but who else could? “You don’t know the whole story.”

Jack padded bleary-eyed and pajama’d into the kitchen.

“What do you mean?” Eddie said.

“Mom hasn’t … I mean, she’s been … there’s this man—”

Her father looked as if he’d been gut-punched. “What man?”

“His name is Lorenzo.”

“What about Lorenzo?” Jack asked sleepily.

“He’s run off with Mom,” Toni told him.

“What?”
Jack yelped. “No! That’s not true!”

Eddie sank into a kitchen chair. “Lorenzo who?”

“His last name’s Marques,” Toni explained. “He’s a stage magician who played the park last month. I … saw them together. In his trailer.”

“So? Big deal,” Jack countered. “So they were talking in his trailer, so what? Maybe they were talking about magic.”

“Jack, they were in … in bed. Together.” He was dumbstruck.

“Are you sure of what you saw, Toni?” her father asked quietly.

She nodded. “I’m sorry, Dad. They were in the … altogether.” She saw the hope die in her father’s eyes. “I was waiting until you got back to tell you. I didn’t think she’d just…”

“Why didn’t you tell
me
?” Jack snapped. “Didn’t you trust me?”

“Jack, I hardly trusted myself!”

“What else do you know about this … Lorenzo?” Eddie asked.

Toni recounted everything she could think of, up to and including the fact that he had left Palisades to play the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. She described his car and trailer. When she was done, Eddie stood and sighed.

“Shit,” he said. “I should’ve seen this coming. But I always thought you got ‘Dear John’ letters while you were away, not after you got back.”

“But how—” Jack broke into a sob. “How could she just
leave
us?”

He started crying, and then Toni found herself weeping too. Eddie put his arms around them both and drew them close.

“Ssh. Shh. It’s okay. We’ll be okay. It’s my fault she left, not yours. You understand that? Not your fault.”

“We don’t need her,” Toni said, her grief transforming to anger. “She lied to us. She cheated on you. To hell with her, who needs her anyway?”

Jack suddenly said, “Dad? Where’d
that
come from?”

He was pointing at his father’s right bicep and the tattooed red heart with the name
ADELE
inside it.

“Oh. This.” Eddie smiled sheepishly. “It, uh, seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Toni and Jack couldn’t help but crack rueful smiles.

“I’ll find her,” Eddie promised. “I’ll try to convince her to come back. Meanwhile, you two need to get ready for school.”

“We have to go to school?” Jack said incredulously. “Shouldn’t this be like a snow day?”

“What are you gonna do, mope around here all day? Life goes on.”

“Dad, are you okay?” Toni asked nervously.

“Yeah, sure I’m okay,” Eddie said. Toni wasn’t sure she believed him. “We’ll all be okay. C’mon, let’s get you some breakfast.”

He poured them bowls of cereal and glasses of orange juice, had them shower and dress, and by 7:25 they were on their way down Undercliff Avenue toward the bus stop.

On the way, Toni turned to her brother and said, “Jack, whatever you do,
don’t tell
anybody about this! Nobody needs to know what’s going on. Who knows, she may come back tomorrow and it’ll all have blown over.”

“You really think so? She might come back?”

“Sure. Maybe Dad’ll talk her out of it. Just don’t tell anybody.”

In truth, Toni wasn’t sure that her mother would be returning anytime soon. But she was embarrassed beyond words that Adele had skipped town like one of those cheap floozies you saw in the movies, and she knew that if the kids at school found out, she and Jack would know no end of shame. And so she carried the shame bottled up inside her all day, revealing it to no one, smiling blandly at classmates and teachers when what she really wanted was to shout and curse out her mother in front of the whole world. Jack was right—how the hell could she just
leave
them all?

And then she heard again every unkind word—and they were considerable—she had ever said to her mother, every bit of childish scorn and cruelty she had heaped upon Adele.

“I hate you! I hate you!”

“I don’t want to
be
like you. Your life is
boring
!”

In the middle of gym class she fought back tears, ran to the bathroom, locked herself in a stall, and wept.

Dad was wrong. This was all
her
fault.

*   *   *

The minute the kids were safely off to school, Eddie jumped into action—any action he could think of—to keep the hurt at bay. He showered, shaved, dressed, and within twenty minutes was driving up the hill to Fort Lee and into Palisades’ employee parking lot. The park was closed but hardly empty: in the off-season there was always a steady staff of about twenty-eight workers who kept the park in shape during the winter months. And of course the office staff was at work too. Eddie hiked over to the new administration building, an impressive redbrick structure that any fire would think twice about attacking, where he greeted Margie Cadien, wife of the Bobsled manager, as he entered. “Eddie! You’re back!” she cried out, and soon he was being welcomed by other staff members. When she heard the commotion from her office, Anna Halpin came out to add her well wishes. “You just missed the season, Ten Foot,” Anna said. “It was a good one, too.”

“So I hear from Adele.” He answered their questions about where he’d been stationed during the war, spent an appropriate amount of time catching up with park gossip, then casually mentioned, “Hey, I understand you had a magic act here last month—Lorenzo the Magnificent?”

This brought a chorus of whistles from the women in the office. “He can plunge a sword into me any day of the week,” Margie said, to catcalls all around. “And if you tell Bill I said that I’ll deny it to my death.”

Eddie laughed. “My son kinda took a shine to him, wants to write him a letter—can anybody dig up some contact information for this guy?”

One of the booking staff promptly looked up the entertainer’s file and found the name and address of his agent: Bernard Goldschein, 630 Tenth Avenue, New York 19, NY. Phone: Circle 6-9750.

Eddie bid goodbye to the staff and headed for the nearest newsstand to pick up the latest issue of
The Billboard.
Then he stopped at the bank, where he was surprised to find a total of some five thousand dollars in their savings account, deposited in weekly increments this past summer—the season profits from Palisades. The most recent withdrawal, dated three days ago, was a mere hundred and fifty dollars. Adele could have taken a lot more than that and Eddie would not have blamed her, but she apparently only took as much as she felt she needed to start her new life. He thought of what that new life entailed—the handsome Latin magician who had all the girls at Palisades swooning—and he felt a stab of jealousy, anger, and loss.

He beat back the grief and drove to his onetime employer, Grantwood Lumber Yard. Five thousand bucks in the bank was more than enough to meet the family’s needs until next summer, but Eddie wasn’t taking any chances—and he needed something to keep himself occupied. His old boss, Bill Holahan, was happy to offer the returning vet a part-time job.

At home, Eddie opened
The Billboard
to the “Magic” column by Bill Sachs, which reported on the comings, goings, and bookings of performers in the magic biz. There were items about magicians both renowned and not-so-renowned—Harry Blackstone, Prince Samara, Jack Gwynne, Paul Rosini—but no mention of any Lorenzo, not even a classified ad.

So Eddie simply picked up the phone and called Lorenzo’s agent, Bernard Goldschein, in New York. “Hi,” he said, in the hard-sell tone of one of his park ballies, “this is Ed Worth of Worth Amusements in Ocean City, New Jersey. I operate a small sideshow on the boardwalk and I’m looking for a magician to play a week’s engagement later this month.”

“Well,” the agent replied enthusiastically, “we have several available. There’s the Great Rudolpho, he does a swell variation on the vanishing trunk gag—we’ve got Ron LeRon, his specialty’s the Ten Card Trick à la Leipzig—”

“I was up at Palisades this summer and saw one of your acts, does a great Blade Box—Lawrence something?”

“Lorenzo. Lorenzo the Magnificent.”

“Yeah, that’s it, what’s his availability?”

“He’s playing state fairs in Maryland and Virginia through early October. Sorry. Now, Rudolpho, though, he’s—”

“I really liked this Lawrence guy,” Eddie said, laying it on thick. “When’s the next time he’ll be in the Jersey area?”

“Well…” The sound of pages in a booking calendar being flipped. “He’s playing the Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City in late October. But won’t your show be closed by then, for winter?”

“Yeah, afraid so.” Eddie feigned disappointment. “Well, thanks anyway, buddy, I appreciate it.”

“But Rudolpho or LeRon are avail—”

Eddie hung up with a smile. He could, of course, take the train down to the Maryland State Fair and confront Adele there. But that meant leaving the kids with Ralph and Daisy in Tenafly, and he wasn’t yet ready to publicly acknowledge Adele’s departure. He harbored hopes of talking some sense into her, winning her back—and that might even be a little easier to do once Adele had been on the road for a few weeks, living out of a suitcase, playing every sawdust-covered stage between here and Virginia.

He could wait until the Traymore Hotel in late October. It would also give him time to figure out what the hell to say to her.

When the kids got home from school that afternoon, Eddie consoled them as best he could. Toni seemed shaken but unwilling to talk about her mother’s absence, while Jack responded by throwing out every magic book, deck of cards, and silk handkerchief in his possession. From that moment forward his passion for magic turned into a bitter aversion.

For dinner Eddie cooked fried chicken and French fries, which delighted the kids. They were nearly as delighted the next day when dinner turned out to be fish and chips. The night after that—when it was chicken-fried steak and a side of, you guessed it, French fries—Toni took her father aside and asked, “Dad? Is this all you know how to cook?”

Chagrined, Eddie admitted that it was.

“Okay,” Toni said, “I’m taking over the cooking.”

“Since when do you know how to cook?”

“I’m taking Home Ec. We have a cookbook. I can skip ahead.”

“Maybe I should ask your Aunt Viola for her help—”

“No!” Toni said vehemently. “Nobody needs to know about this, Dad, okay? You’re gonna get her back, so until then,
maintain radio silence.
”

He smiled at that. “I don’t disagree with you. But what happens when your grandma calls for your mom?”

Toni thought for a moment and said, “She got a job as a line dancer. Working for Aunt Minette. In Chicago.”

“Minette’s spending the off-season right here in Fort Lee.”

“Jeez, Dad! Do I have to think of everything? Make something up. Ad lib it!”

Eddie smiled and said he would try to improvise something.

That Sunday, while dressing her first roasted chicken, Toni was appalled when her father reached into the bird’s chest cavity, pulled out its heart and something called a “gizzard,” and announced he was going to cook them “like they do in the South.” He could not be dissuaded from first parboiling, then deep-frying the creepy things and serving them with a hot sauce made of Worcestershire sauce and horseradish. Toni took one nibble and nearly retched, but Jack ate it up enthusiastically along with his father.

But the chicken itself was delicious, and Toni, emboldened, moved on to other recipes in her cookbook. Even Eddie began picking up the book, educating himself on cuisine not requiring hot grease of any kind.

*   *   *

Eddie and Adele’s honeymoon in Atlantic City in 1930 had taken place over Labor Day weekend, the traditional end of summer and beginning of the off-season that saw the city on the sand shrink from a boom town to a virtual ghost town. At least that was the case until ’42, when the U.S. Army leased the city arena for use as a training facility for the Army Air Force, and a sudden influx of soldiers swelled the off-season ranks. Many were still there in October when Eddie drove down to the Traymore Hotel, a grand old edifice whose tan-bricked facade crowned by yellow-tiled domes had earned it the nickname “the Taj Mahal of Atlantic City.” Walking into the airy lobby, Eddie couldn’t help but think of the Hotel Rudolf, in which he and Adele had spent three blissful days. Atlantic City was where their marriage began; Eddie hoped it would also be where he would rescue it.

Carrying an empty envelope addressed to Lorenzo Marques, he walked up to the front desk and told the clerk he had an urgent delivery for Mr. Marques, and could he be directed to the magician’s suite? “We’ll see to it that he gets it,” the man said, taking the envelope, and Eddie, prepared for this, handed him the envelope, thanked him, and walked away.