The Christmas Kid (18 page)

IT WASN’T A GOOD
idea. Laverty was sure of that. But the girl had insisted, telling him that she couldn’t have this New York week before college without seeing the place where he’d grown up. She could never go alone, she said, and she didn’t know when they’d ever be together in New York again, and, so, after more of this, Laverty had agreed.

Now she was beside him in the rented car, three thousand miles from the house on the hill in Laguna; far from bougainvillea and surfboard summers and horse trails on the Irvine Ranch; far from the great blue lake of the Pacific. She was beside him, the map unfolded in her lap, her blond hair tossed by the river wind, and they were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on a clear fall day and he was filled with dread.

“Now, this must be the East River, right under us,” she said brightly. “Right, Dad?”

“Right. Except I’m not sure it’s a river. I’ve read that it’s an estuary but I’ve also read that it has been cut through at the top, and that makes it a real river. All I know is the water goes uptown and downtown at the same time.”

“Amazing. And your house? Which way is it?”

“Away up there to the right. Where the green is.”

He came down off the bridge, trying to get his bearings; there were government buildings on his right, new and ugly, and over to the left was Fulton Street, where the A&S department store was and Loew’s Met and past them the Duffield and the RKO Albee and the Brooklyn Paramount and the Fox. They were probably all gone now; movie houses were vanishing all over the country, taking the balcony girls with them and the matrons and the gaudy dreams that filled the darkness. Namm’s used to be down there somewhere, and Loeser’s, too; I haven’t pictured those stores in twenty-five years, Laverty thought. And remembered long aisles stacked with clothing, the elegant lettering on the Loeser’s sign, the forbidden whisperings of the lingerie department, the sound of women’s high heels on hardwood floors. And American Indians, all ironworkers, drinking around the corner in a place called the Wigwam.

The dread seeped through him anew. He had seen the photographs in the magazines, the documentaries on TV, showing the desolation of the Bronx and Brownsville, places where people like Laverty once had lived the plenitude of youth. He had long since imagined his neighborhood consumed by the summer fires. And he didn’t really want to see the ruins.

“Now, what’s that thing?” his daughter asked as they stopped at a light. He looked up at a huge glass-brick building on the corner of Atlantic Avenue. “I don’t really know,” he said, “but it’s sure as hell ugly.” And then she said, “Oh, it’s a
jail
. Look, it has bars, and cops outside, and all those women waiting on line to get in. It’s a
jail,
Dad!”

“You’re right,” he said, and remembered the time Shorty and Lahr were arrested for stealing a Pontiac, and everybody in the crowd went to the jail on Raymond Street and waited until they were released on bail; and how they’d all gone down to Coney Island that night to celebrate and they got drunk and started fighting with some South Brooklyn boys in a joint called McCabe’s and Laverty woke up with skinned knuckles and no memory and knew that he wasn’t going to live like this very much longer.

He remembered leaves burning everywhere that fall, in the yards of that neighborhood; and how when the other guys started to leave for the army, or for jail, or for swift, hot marriages, or for the murderous new joys of smack, he had stayed on at Brooklyn Tech, working late, sleeping with his head on the kitchen table, the books stacked around him, hungry for departure. And then when his father died, the dream of escape, of college, of the California he’d seen only in the movies, all of that wobbled, swayed, started to fall, and miraculously remained erect. He wanted to tell the girl, his daughter, about all of that, and maybe he would someday, but not now, not today.

“It’s up ahead,” he said, moving along Flatbush Avenue, passing the street where Diron’s bar was and the Carlton movie house. He pointed to a bricked-up building. “My father used to drink right over there.”

“Was he a drunk?”

“No,” Laverty said, and laughed. “Not a drunk.” He glanced again at the boarded-up place where the bar had been, with its noise, music, laughter. “He just worked himself to death.”

“I wish I’d known him.”

“So do I.”

I wish I could have penetrated the Mayo silence, Laverty thought, the iron restraint. I wish I knew why he wore a hat after everyone stopped wearing them and why he always wore a suit on Sundays, and why he insisted on cloth napkins for dinner in what even he must have known was a slum. He worked for the Transit Authority, and for Bohack’s on Thursday nights and all day on Saturday, and seemed always gray with exhaustion. He wouldn’t move out of the neighborhood, even when at last he could afford to, and later Laverty knew why: the extra money went into the bank and when Laverty graduated with honors from Brooklyn Tech, the money was there waiting for him, the money that took him out of Brooklyn, away from home, and across America, the money that bought his escape.

Laverty had come back only twice: when the old man died, and when his mother followed seven months later. I wish I could have properly thanked him, Laverty thought. I wish I’d really thanked them both.

“Hey, this is nice here,” his daughter said, and Laverty agreed, wondering if he’d made some wrong turn. There were restaurants along the avenue and boutiques and a bookstore and kids on bikes and trees in the side streets. Where were the empty lots, the gutted buildings? He drove on, moving steadily closer to the streets where he grew up. The streets of home. He crossed 9th Street and the hard light etched the buildings more sharply, and he began to fill with memories of a thousand mornings spent walking this avenue. A Spaldeen, he thought. I want to bounce a Spaldeen. Pink and powdery and fresh. Just that. Just a Spaldeen.

“This is it, sweetheart,” he said, pulling the car into a spot beside a bodega. “That house, right there, on the corner. That’s where I grew up. Second floor. Where that fire escape is.”

“Wow,” she said, and got out, and he told her to lock the door, and then he stood alone for a moment on his side of the car. In a way, everything had changed. Rattigan’s was gone, and the old Kent cleaners, and Semke’s meat market, and Mr. B’s candy store, and Our Own bakery, and Sussman’s hardware store. There were no longer any trolley tracks, no electric wires suspended over the avenue, and the Greek’s coffee shop had gone, too, and Bernsley’s heating oil and the variety store. But the buildings were intact. The names had changed, the people had changed. A lot of them were speaking Spanish here, not Yiddish or Italian. But it was here. The neighborhood. Laverty felt his blood coursing through him, the dread gone, excitement lifting him along.

“This looks pretty rough, Dad,” his daughter said. “You think we should—”

“It’s all right. It is. Let’s look around.”

He went into the vestibule of the house where he’d lived his youth. The inside door was locked. The mailboxes were wrecked. He rang the bell of the old apartment, but nobody answered. “Just as well,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the same anyway.”

Then the door jerked open suddenly, and a middle-aged man with watery eyes stared at him. The man wore soiled clothes, and needed a shave, and the girl backed up in fear. Then the man’s face softened.

“Is that you, Jimmy?” the man said. “Jimmy Laverty?”

“Frankie D’Arcy…”

They hadn’t really been close; they’d just been boys in that neighborhood. But they embraced, and stepped into the bright sunlight, talking quickly, names and events and places coming in a stream as they went out into the street. Cubans now lived where the Lavertys had lived, but they were on vacation. “They’re good people,” Frankie said. “Hard workers…” Joe Fish had died, Eddie Gregg too. Joe Dee had four grandchildren now and lived out on the Island…

The girl backed away as the men moved along beside her, speaking a kind of code. She noticed that her father had begun to walk differently, his weight falling heavier on his right foot. He was gesturing with his hands, too, and his words were clipped now, his mouth pulled back tighter against his teeth. Laverty turned to her at one point and saw the abandoned look in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just…”

D’Arcy hurried into a candy store. She shrugged and said, “Maybe we—”

And then D’Arcy was back. “Here you go,” he said. He handed Laverty a Spaldeen. Laverty held it in his hand as if it were something precious, and squeezed it, then rubbed it against his face, and then bounced it. Once. Again. And then he turned, and threw it against a stoop, thinking: I’m home. I’m home. I’m home.

EVERYBODY AGREED THAT THE
best fruit and vegetable store in that neighborhood was run by Teddy Caravaggio. In the summer, the stands and bins outside the store were plump with the products of the earth: oranges, grapes, apples, and melons, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and leeks. The garlic was moist and thick; the basil was always fresh. Teddy’s array of greens and reds and purples seemed lavish and extravagant on that avenue of redbrick old-law tenements.

His customers arrived from the farthest reaches of the neighborhood and some even came back after they had moved to Flatbush and Bay Ridge. When the A&P opened its giant store, Teddy continued to flourish, six days a week, from eight in the morning until eight at night. His prices were a little higher than they were in the supermarkets, but his goods had been chosen by a human hand, not hauled to market by a corporation. All the women of the neighborhood knew this and shopped at Teddy’s with a certain passion. All except Catherine Novak.

“The tomatoes at Teddy’s are beautiful this week, Catherine,” her neighbor, Mrs. Trevor, would say. “Jim would love them.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Trevor,” Catherine would say. “But the A&P’s more convenient.”

Nothing was made of this. In that neighborhood of working people, the few who took time to notice simply dismissed Catherine Novak’s little boycott as a mysterious failure of taste. They all kept going to Teddy’s. One reason for his excellent reputation was that Teddy gave his produce the kind of attention that could only be called love. Some of the women remembered coming into the empty store and hearing Teddy whispering to the tomatoes or the melons. And he gave the store his total attention. Altar boys, rising for the six o’clock Mass, could see Teddy arriving at the store in his old Plymouth to unload the boxes of produce. He’d already spent two hours at the market. Arguing, haggling, choosing. The store had his complete fidelity. He lived alone in one large room in the back, where he listened at night to opera on the Italian radio station while hand-lettering the small signs that he would place in the morning among his beloved parsley, plums, celery, and artichokes.

Nobody ever asked why Teddy Caravaggio lived alone; it was his choice, after all, like the priesthood, and his choice had certainly granted benefits to the neighborhood. In fact, nobody really knew Teddy Caravaggio outside the store. He was a thickset, blocky man, with black eyebrows and thinning hair. He never went to church, and had been too old for World War II and so was not a member of the American Legion or the VFW. Teddy existed only in the context of his wonderful store; he was what he did.

Then one morning in the fall of the year, Catherine Novak’s husband, Jim, fell over at his desk in a Wall Street brokerage house. He was dead on arrival at Beekman Downtown Hospital, and the news shocked the neighborhood. He was, after all, only forty-three, a tall, good-looking Swede. Cops, firemen, ironworkers, and longshoremen might die young, victims of the risks of their trades. Wall Street guys were supposed to die in bed. Even the low-level guys. The wake at Mike Smith’s funeral parlor was packed with mourners; the funeral filled the church; and everyone said that Catherine Novak and her three children faced the ordeal with courage and dignity. If they cried, they did not cry before an audience.

A month after the funeral, the VFW and the American Legion combined forces to throw a beer racket at Prospect Hall for the benefit of Jim Novak’s wife and children. The great hall was filled early, the beer flowed, whiskey bottles and setups crowded the tables, and the band played old songs. Catherine Novak sat with her neighbors at a table near the front of the hall. And then, a few hours after the racket had begun, Teddy Caravaggio appeared at the door. He was wearing a new blue suit and new black shoes. His face gleamed. His thinning gray hair had been freshly cut.

He entered the hall hesitantly, even shyly, and eased over to the crowded bar. The men didn’t know him very well, but the women started coming over, happy to see him. A few were surprised, because they knew that Catherine Novak didn’t patronize Teddy’s store, but they were pleased that he had come in a show of neighborhood solidarity with the grieving widow. He said his hellos, murmured his regrets, sipped a beer. And all the while, he looked through the gathering nicotine haze at Catherine Novak.

Just before midnight, he walked down the length of the hall, staying close to the walls, and came over to her.

“Hello, Catherine,” he said.

“Why, Teddy,” she said. “How nice of you to come.”

“Like to dance?”

She looked around uneasily, her hands moving awkwardly. The tables were empty as dancers moved to a tune called “It’s All In the Game.” She smiled, tentatively, and said: “Well, sure.”

They went out to the crowded floor and began to dance. Teddy moved gracefully, but maintained a discreet distance.

“I’m sorry what happened, Catherine,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do, you know, give a holler.”

“Thanks, Teddy.”

There was an uneasy moment. Then Teddy said: “I never thought I’d dance with you again. It’s hard to believe.”

“I never thought you’d talk to me again.”

“Me, neither.”

“You’re not angry with me?” she said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a little angry,” Teddy said. “But not too much. Not like I was.” He paused. “A long time ago.”

“Yes,” she said. The band ended the first tune, and started playing “Because of You.”

“I’m sorry Jim died,” Teddy said. “But you know, while he was alive he was the luckiest guy in the neighborhood.”

“Teddy, please don’t talk like that.”

“It’s what I believe, Catherine,” he said. “Sometimes I used to come home from the market in the morning, and I’d go out of my way just to pass your house. Sometimes I’d stop at the corner, and I’d look up. And the lights’d be on, and I’d say to myself, look, there’s a real life up there. They live a real life, Jim and Catherine, with kids making noise in the morning and bacon frying and the radio on and everybody getting dressed. I’d see Jim go past the store sometimes in the summer with the kids, and they’d have a baseball bat and gloves, and they’d be going to the park to play ball, and I’d want to cry. Sometimes I’d see you go by, too, with a baby carriage, or on the bus at Christmas, or in the car with Jim and the kids going to the beach. And I’d be sick for a day, or a week, or a month.”

She squeezed his hands. “Teddy, I—”

“Why didn’t you ever come to the store?” he said. “All those years, you never came, even once.”

“I thought that would make it worse. I didn’t want to hurt you, Teddy. I did it once. I didn’t want to do it again.”

“Well, maybe you were right. ’Cause you hurt me real good, Catherine. Worse than a punch. Worse than a bullet.”

“I know,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing, and it was wrong for you.”

The ballad ended; an uptempo Lindy began. Catherine disengaged her hand from Teddy’s and started to walk off the suddenly jumping, pulsating dance floor. He followed behind her. At the table she turned to him.

“Well, thank you, Teddy, for the dance,” she said, forcing a smile. Her features had thickened in twenty-five years; her hair was scratched with gray. Teddy faced her, started to say something, then abruptly stopped. He looked around, as if certain that everybody was watching him; but the beer racket was roaring now, and nobody was looking their way.

“Will you at least come in the store once in a while?” he said.

“Of course,” she said. “I know it’s a wonderful store. Everybody knows that.”

“I gave it everything I had.”

“I’ll come by,” she said, and smiled. Looking directly at Teddy’s aging, decent face.

“Well,” she said. “Thanks again.”

He started to leave, then turned and took her hand.

“I told you I’d wait for you the rest of my life,” Teddy Caravaggio said. “And I did.”

“I know.”

His face trembled, he squeezed her hand, then released it and said, “I’m still waiting.”

Then he turned and walked away, his back straight, looking proud, easing his way through the crowd to the door.