Skin Games (3 page)

The bike stopped moving and fell to the side.  The old man let go, jumping backwards and I fell sideways along with the bike, hitting my knee on the ground and scrapping my shin along the gritty asphalt.

“Stop being such a wimp!”  My father had managed to shed most of his Irish accent, but when he got angry, it came out prominently.

“I’m trying!” I said firmly, not whining like before, instead my voice was more forceful.  I guess the pain made me bold.  Pain has always made me bold.  I looked down at my shin.  Blood began to run out of the wound.  My knee was scraped up, too, but not bleeding.

The old man did not like backtalk.  His slaphappy grin disappeared instantly.  He yanked the bike out from under me and shouted, “Get up.”

I hopped up, quickly, then bent down and wiped the pebbles and dirt from my sore shin and kneecap.

He straightened up the bike.  This time he held the handlebars with one hand, and the curved end of the seat with the other.  He took a deep breath and then really shocked me by smiling again.

“Let’s go, buddy.  We’ll get it.”

I stepped on and mounted the bike again.  I got a firm grip on the handlebars and dug the soles of my sneakers into the sharp serrated edges of the pedals.

“You can do it.  Come on, Sean.”

Excitement filled me, and I stood up and really put pressure on the pedals.  The bike lunged forward, and my father stutter-stepped to keep up as I sat down in the seat.

The old man was running with the bike as I pedaled faster.  “That’s it,” he said.  “A little more.”

I pedaled even faster, my knees seemingly touching my ears as the pedals brought them up, and the next thing I knew, I looked over and he was gone.  He’d simply let go and stepped aside.

“You’re doing it!” he shouted.

I wobbled with uncertainty, and fear.  But I didn’t fall.  I kept on, pedaling faster, now sort of squatting above the seat to adjust to the low height of the bike.

“Now turn,” he yelled.

Ahead of me was a mass of sound coming from the thruway.  Despite the chain-link fence in between, I suddenly felt like I was about to ride right into traffic.  My heart raced and my palms were sweating.

“Turn.  Turn, Sean, turn.”

The bike wobbled and shook from the fierce wind blowing off the tractor-trailers as they flew by, drawing closer and growing larger in my ever-widening eyes.

“Turn,” the old man yelled again.

And somehow, I fought off the anxiety and impending heart attack, and I turned the handlebars.  It wasn’t clean.  It wasn’t graceful.  I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.  But I did it.

The bike turned and then straightened out.

“That’s it!” the old man yelled.  I swear I had never seen him so excited.

He ran over to me, and I slowed up and then stopped.  I looked up at him.

“Great job, Sean.  You did a great job.”  He patted my back and rubbed it.  It was truly a once in a lifetime moment.

My father was proud of me.  Visibly, noticeably proud.

My confidence grew, and I rounded the schoolyard again, then again.  For several minutes I did laps around the playground.  With each lap my steering was cleaner, my balance steadier.

I had my back to my father when I heard a noise: he shouted.  I jerked the bike around and stumbled, my foot hitting the ground to keep my balance and the bike upright.  I kicked the ground a couple of times, then rode towards him.

Two men were standing over my father.  He’d been knocked to the ground.  I didn’t know who the men were at the time.  But now I know them both well: Vinny Macho and Scrubby Mike.  Vinny was maybe thirty at the time and Mike in his early twenties but otherwise, they haven’t changed much.

Maria fidgets in her chair at the mere mention of the two men.

Scrubby’s foot was pressed across my father’s chest, holding him down.  My father wasn’t struggling, but Vinny Macho kicked him a few times anyway.

“Dad!”  I pedaled over and came to a stop right in front of the three men.

“That’s your kid?” Vinny Macho asked.

“Yep,” the old man said, then wiggled slightly.  Scrubby moved his foot, and my father sat up.

“Nice bike,” Scrubby said.

I slowly moved the bike backwards by kicking my feet against the asphalt.

Vinny Macho shook his head back and forth the way the nuns at Sacred Heart would do to me when I was late for class.

“Where’d you get the bike, Shamrock Sean?”

My father’s red nose and cheeks went redder still, but he didn’t answer.

“We know where you got the bike,” Scrubby Mike said.

“Look guys, I was gonna come see you.”

Vinny Macho started shaking his head again.  Then he sighed and bit his lip.  “You know the deal, Shamrock.  You and Griff stole this off Dusty’s truck, didn’t you?”

“I said I was coming to see you guys.  I just wanted to let the kid ride it.”

“Anything you get off Dusty belongs to me.  You know that.”

“I was gonna kick a piece upstairs.  I always do.”

“The bike’s worth what, a couple hundred?  You give me a hundred and the kid keeps the bike.”

My father stood up and reached into his pockets.  He pulled out a sad wad of bills and counted it.  “I’ve got thirty bucks.  I’m good for the rest.”

“No chance.”

Scrubby Mike started to laugh.  Then he turned to me and said, “Come on, kid.  Get off the bike.”

I stepped back a few more steps.

My old man held the money up trying to give it to Vinny Macho as he said, “Here.  Take what I got.  I’ll talk to Griff and see what he has.  We’ll both come down to the Cucina later with the full hundred.”

“Get off the bike, little Shamrock,” Vinny said.

“Give the kid a break,” the old man said.  He stepped in Vinny’s way and cried, “I’m good for the money.”

With an open hand, Vinny slapped my old man across the face while Scrubby Mike grabbed his shoulder and yanked his arm.

“You don’t step in front of Vinny.”

“Sorry.  Look I’m sorry.”

Vinny slapped my father again.  The snap was loud and my father cringed.

“Please,” the old man said.

Scrubby Mike grabbed both shoulders and brought his knee up into the old man’s gut.  Then he tossed him to the ground.  The old man rolled over and Scrubby kicked him as he tried to curl up.

“Alright!  Take the bike.”

“It’s my bike,” I said.  I have no idea why.  I knew damn well it wasn’t my bike.

“Sean,” the old man said firmly, “get off the bike.  Now.”

I got off the bike, and Scrubby grabbed it and picked it up off the ground, carrying it on his back like a knapsack up a stone staircase to a dark blue van waiting up on the avenue.

There was never a dramatic moment to signal that the old man had left us.  It didn’t happen like that.  There was no knockdown, drag-out fight.  No “Get out of my house and don’t come back, ever!”  There was never a day where my mother packed all his shit and left it out on the front porch.

That just isn’t how it happened.

The way it did happen was he started coming home later and later each night.  Sometimes he’d stay away for days at a time.  The trips to the Bronx Zoo stopped happening.  No more Rye Playland.  No more Six Flags.  And eventually, no more old man.

I guess he just never came home one evening.  I can’t tell you which evening it was.  I’m not sure if my mom even could.  The guy just disappeared.  Never to be heard from again.  At least I never did.  No goodbye.  No so long.

Keeping the house paid for was no easy job for Mom.  We could have sold the house, moved to a smaller place.  But she didn’t want to leave.  It was all she had and she was gonna do everything she could to hang on to it.

The day I first really began to appreciate just how hard it was for Mom was one day when I was in sixth or seventh grade.  I guess I was thirteen or so; a boy turning quickly into a young man and experiencing that growth and inevitable awkwardness that accompanies it without a male figure to guide me.  I had to fend for myself a lot.

I should explain that Mom paid the mortgage on the house by working several jobs.  We rented the apartment to the Griffins, and they were pretty dependable with their share each month.  But there still was a big hole without the old man’s income.  Mom worked for years as seamstress for Bertelli the tailor.  He had a shop on the corner of Tremont Avenue and White Plains Road.  Mr. Bertelli was a fair and decent man and paid my mother a good wage.  But it still didn’t cover all the expenses of the house.

So she took on other work.  She cleaned houses.  Worked at the dry cleaners, and the local market.  You name it.  Any shitty menial job in the neighborhood, my mother’d give it a shot, and believe me, she did.

The problem was Mr. Bertelli’s work was seasonal.  Spring Brides.  June Proms.  Summer Formals.  Bertelli did great in the spring and summer, but oftentimes come fall, he just didn’t have work for Mom.  And as nice a guy as he was, Mr. Bertelli wasn’t going to pay my mother to sit around and do nothing.  So she’d go months at a time without steady work.

It was during one of these awful lulls that she became desperate.  She was a proud woman.  But she was also fiercely independent, and despite her Italian-Catholic upbringing, she was a practical lady.

She understood that sometimes you just had to do what you had to do in order to survive.

I was shooting hoops with some of the neighborhood kids and came home well after dark.  I walked inside and all was quiet.  Most of the lights were off.  Just the kitchen light and one hall light lit up in an otherwise dark house.  I didn’t think much of it.  Didn’t announce myself or call out.  I just walked up to my room.

Several minutes passed, and I became curious.  Was she home?  She had to be in her room.  I walked down the short hallway that separated our rooms.

To this day, I have no idea why I didn’t knock.  I was old enough to know better, to have at least some respect for her privacy.  And yet, living so close, just the two of us, it didn’t seem like a big deal.

I really wish I’d knocked.

Instead, I walked right into her room.  It was dark.  At first, I thought she was sleeping.  But as the hallway light shone in, and my eyes adjusted, I saw the back of my mother’s head.  Her long, curly brown hair hung low, and she was down on her knees.

Then, I saw teeth.  A smile, wide and cocky, exposing perfectly capped teeth, no doubt the handy work of Dr. Berman, also known as Berman the Jew, or simply the Jewish Dentist.  Dr. Berman was a degenerate gambler and often paid up his debts to the local guys with services.

Apparently, my mom was doing the same.  Vinny Macho smiled at me and didn’t say a word.  A bright glean of sweat glimmered off his fuzzy chest as he stood staring at me, his arms gripped around my mother’s head like a basketball.

Mom jumped back and turned.  “Sean.  Close the door.”

And I did as I was told.  But some things, once seen, can never be unseen.

For some crazy reason, Vinny Macho sort of took me under his wing after that.  Maybe he felt bad for me or something.  Maybe my mother just gave good head.  Whatever it was, I started seeing a lot of Vinny around my house.  All my first jobs came through him: running errands, pickups, drop-offs, and occasionally I’d tag along when he’d “do work” as he called it.  I learned a lot, and I learned it fast.

Vinny owned an auto shop on Hunts Point Avenue: full service shop, mechanics and body work.  It was a cavernous, grungy-looking place filled with remnants of cars: old hub caps, various tires, grills, old mufflers and junk.  Certainly not a high-end place.  He had a couple guys who worked inside doing repairs and painting.

I guess I was about sixteen when I learned how the shop made money.  I was helping Jose change the oil on Don Mario’s Black Coupe de Ville when I heard hollering.

“Hurry up.  Hurry up!”  It was Vinny yelling.

The garage door rattled open, and a little brown car screeched into the bay.  Scrubby Mike was driving.  The car was barely inside when Vinny Macho hit the button for the garage door to come down, as he simultaneously opened a garage door on the other side of the shop.  Scrubby jumped out of the car while Jose ran over, and the two of them started moving aside piles of junk that blocked the back end garage door.

Scrubby jumped back in the car, gunned the engine and the car went through the open door into the lot behind the shop.  Jose began putting the junk back in front of the garage door, which was already on its way back down.

“Help me out, Shamrock.” Jose said to me.

I ran over and the two of us blocked up the door.  We turned and through the bay windows on the garage, saw a cop car slowing up.  There were two heads inside.  One was looking in.  Vinny Macho stood in front of the garage.  He nodded to the cops, and one waved, then the car accelerated and buzzed off.

The garage door came open.  Vinny walked in and trotted quickly towards the back.

“He looks pissed,” Jose said.  “Come on.  Let’s finish this car.”

Me and Jose finished up the oil change on Mario’s Cadillac while Vinny chewed out Scrubby behind the shop.

“What the fuck is the matter with you?  You could have brought the heat on us, you dumbass.”

“Sorry, Vinny.  I’m sorry.  He didn’t see me come in here”

I heard a loud smack, and Jose cringed.  Then Vinny said, “Don’t talk back to me.”

There was silence.  Then the door opened, and Vinny walked in.

“You finished with Mario’s car yet, Jose?”

“Almost.”

“Shamrock can finish.  Go ‘round back and help Scrubby with the car.”

“Okay.”

Jose walked to the back, and I twisted the new oil filter in place.

“Hey, kid,” Vinny said.  “You know, you can make some money.  Real money, not this five-bucks-an-hour shit I’m paying you for doing oil changes.”

“Yeah?”

“Toyotas are hot right now.  And easy as shit to hotwire.”

“Really?”

“Let me show you.”
  Vinny grabbed a long screwdriver from a toolbox then took me into the back lot.  I’d never been back there before.  It was a graveyard for old vehicles.  They were stripped of anything identifying or of any value.  Just skeletons for the most part: no windows, no windshields, no headlights.  Some were burned.  Others were part crushed or fully crushed.