Shepherd Avenue Page 8

  Vic released Angie. Rosemary clutched him and turned away.

  Mel ran home. I felt my own eyes wetten. Angie pushed me forward.

  "Say good-bye to your uncle," he said, as if Vic were going to the gas chamber.

  We shook hands. My shoulder popped when he suddenly yanked me toward him and kissed my cheek.

  "Take care of Mom and Pop for me."

  The impatient driver pumped the gas pedal. Vic looked for his bags. No one noticed that the driver had gotten out and loaded them. Vic got in and slammed the door. He didn't look back or wave as the car rolled away.

  That night Angie came home with a fish-smelling bag. With­out a word he dumped it on the basement table in front of Connie, who was shelling peas. Three confused green lobsters crawled around on the red and white checkered tablecloth. An hour later we were eating them.

  The day after Vic left we heard from my father for the first time.

  Dear Everybody,

  I'm in Maine. It's so cold here at night you have to wear a sweater. Yesterday I went out on a lobster boat with a man and helped him work. We made a fire on the beach and boiled the lobsters. I miss you all.

  Love, Sal

  Connie's hand trembled as she read. "We just ate lobsters," she said. "That's a sign." She passed the card to Angie, who read it and laughed at her notion. He slipped it to me and seemed surprised that I was able to read.

  There was a picture of a lobster boat on the card - my father had gone out of his way to find something to illustrate his words.

  "Why doesn't he call?" I complained. "Damn! He has lots of money, he could call."

  "Watch that mouth," Connie warned. "And don't be fresh."

  "I don't care. He could call if he wanted to. He's just a . . ." I searched for the right word. Connie and Angie braced themselves for the worst.

  ". . . a cheapskate," I finally said. They let their breath out, relieved.

  Angie said, "He's way up in the country, maybe there's no phones."

  "Yeah, sure," I said, tearing up the postcard before their eyes. It wasn't easy - the thin plastic coating over the lobster-boat picture wasn't easy to tear.

  "Was that nice?" Connie asked. "That wasn't nice."

  "Cheapskate," I repeated, stacking the little cardboard squares on the basement table.

  Connie said, "You're both comin' to church with me to­morrow. No arguments. We can pray for both of my sons." Angie nodded. "They're my sons, too."

  Up until this time Connie had always gone to church alone, never nagging her husband because he didn't go. Because he was being so cooperative she didn't hassle him that night when he went out with Freddie, who blew his horn in front of the house. When Angie left she even sighed with relief.

  Then Rosemary appeared at our door with a package of books tied with string. They were for me: she thought I might like reading them, even though Mel had refused to so much as glance at one page.

  She sat and drank coffee with Connie while I sipped cream soda — I'd grown to like the stuff — and soon they were gos­siping about Vic. Rosemary had sent him an apple-and-cin­namon cake, triple-wrapped in aluminum foil. It had cost $3.45 to mail.

  Suddenly Rosemary was weeping, as if over the exorbitant postage. She excused herself and went home.

  Connie was too weary to see the girl to the door. She looked exhausted, hands resting at each side of her cup and saucer, palms up, as if in defeat.

  "Why didn't Rosemary just give Vic that cake yesterday?" I asked. Connie shrugged. She glanced at the sink, hoping, I think, to find dirty pots and dishes for distraction, but the sink was clean.

  At last she rose, got the cream-soda bottle from the refrigerator, uncapped it, and filled my glass. "Eh, and your father too, we don't even know where he is."

  "He's in Maine," I said, a little defensively - it was all right for me to criticize my vagabond father but I felt funny when others tried it.

  "We don't know anything," Connie said. "Maine's gigantic. Salvatore runs away and the rest of the world waits for him."

  She had more to say, and I knew enough to sit still and not milk her for details. Much of my father's life was a mystery to me. On this strange evening, Connie filled in many of the holes.

  She could be a spellbinding storyteller when a certain mood hit her, about as often as Halley's comet streaked across the sky.

  I don't know how much was true and how much she made up, or guessed at, but the details glowed like the sparks a comet leaves behind.

  My father's favorite class in school, like mine, had been art, and he displayed his talents early. At five, he made a crayon drawing of an eagle with extended talons, snaring a trout from a river.

  God knows where he could have seen an eagle in Brooklyn, but his kindergarten teacher was so impressed she laid it under the glass plate on her desk. After that he became the only child in the class entrusted with brushes and paints. The rest of the kids struggled with crayons.

  That teacher, Miss Grayson, kept tabs on Salvatore as he went through the other grades, convinced of his talent. The clincher came when he turned eight.

  "Art Week" had been declared at P.S. 108, and one sunny day the entire third-grade class was taken to Highland Park under the supervision of Miss Grayson, who by then had become the school's art teacher.

  The kids were told to draw objects from nature with crayons. My father drew a large maple tree entirely with dots of color. When Miss Grayson saw that he’d used dots instead of lines and blotches she was shocked. My father told her he didn’t know why he’d he'd drawn it that way. Her tone undoubtedly fright­ened him. He probably thought he'd broken a rule.

  The next day he was summoned from recess to Miss Grayson's room, where she waited with a man in a dark suit. His tree drawing was on her desk.

  The man, she explained, was from the Junior Art Institute of New York. He shook my father's hand.

  "Do you know anything about an artist named Seurat, Sal­vatore?" he asked. (Connie pronounced it "sewer rat.") My father shook his head. He'd never even been to a museum.

  "He was an artist who lived a long time ago. He used a style called pointillism. That means he used dots of color, like you did yesterday in the park. It's a very, very unusual style."

  "I didn't copy," my father said.

  Both adults laughed. "You're not in trouble, son," the man said. "How long have you been an artist?"

  "They started giving us paper in kindergarten," my father said. "I just like to do it 'cause it's fun." They shook hands again, and my father went back to the playground.

  It was far from over. Miss Grayson had found her prodigy, perhaps the one she'd hoped for all her lonely life, for she lived in a studio apartment in Flatbush with a load of books and two cats.

  Early in November she had a brainstorm. She took a bunch of big sheets of white construction paper and taped them into a horseshoe around the art room classroom walls, within my father's low reach.

  She assigned him to do a panorama of the Christmas season. He would have free rein to do whatever he liked. Miss Grayson had a duplicate classroom key made so my father could come in at seven each morning to work. She told the janitor not to bother the boy.

  He had fine hard cakes of watercolors to work with, not the cheap grainy stuff supplied by the Board of Education. He also had a rainbow of colors to choose from, instead of the school's red-blue-yellow quota. Miss Grayson paid for the extra supplies with her own money.

  It was a lot to thrust upon an eight-year-old. No member of his family could have understood what was going on, any more than they could have understood nuclear physics.

  All they knew on Shepherd Avenue was that Sally Boy was busy with something each morning before school. Though they were curious they never asked questions.

  Italian-Americans never interfered with the educational pro­cess. School was untouchable turf, as invulnerable to criticism as the church.

  My father started painting from the first sheet on the far left, and like a m
iniature Michelangelo he inched his way around the classroom. He drew scenes straight from Shepherd Avenue, the shuttered lemon-ice stand and the elevated train.

  Occasionally he put a wreath in a window but this was as close as the work ever came to being Christmasy. Miss Grayson didn't interfere until she saw him painting an enormous brick building.

  "It's the sewing machine factory near my house," he told her.

  "I'm not sure that has anything to do with Christmas, Sal­vatore."

  "You said I could do this any way I want!" he exploded.

  She left him alone, even more fascinated. He worked for two more weeks. There were needle-less pine trees at curbsides, and wrapping paper jammed into trash cans. There was a man walk­ing and holding the hands of his children, both of whom were crying. The curbside snow was gray slush, and when my father reached the final panel he darkened the sky and drew a sliver of moon.

  A fat man in a winter coat burned a pile of Christmas trees at the curb. A tongue of orange-red fire leapt from them. A German Shepherd barked at the flames. The work was done.

  "Christmas isn't always happy," he told Miss Grayson. "This is what my street looks like after Christmas."

  Every class in the school paraded past his work. Elated, Miss Grayson invited her friend hack. He took one look at Sal's panorama and said it should be brought to the attention of a citywide art contest to be held in January. It was a shoo-in for honorable mention, at the very least.

  Miss Grayson asked my father when his parents were going to come by for a look. He shrugged.

  'They don't know about it.''

  She was astonished. "Didn't you tell them what you were doing every morning?"

  "They never asked."

  Miss Grayson phoned Connie and asked if she could come over for a talk - no, I'm not exactly your son's teacher, she said, more like a special instructor.

  In the Shepherd Avenue basement Miss Grayson explained what Salvatore had accomplished and urged Connie to come and see his work. It was about to be entered in a big contest, she added; it was sure to win a prize.

  Connie listened politely. When Miss Grayson finished her speech Connie said, "Yeah, well, he was always good with his hands."

  Miss Grayson's eyes widened. "I'm not sure you quite un­derstand the situation here, Mrs. Ambrosio. This is far more than good hands. Your son has a special talent that could de­velop into something great."

  Connie raised an eyebrow. "My son is a great man?"

  "I think he could he, yes. Given a chance."

  "How great can an eight-year-old he?"

  "Well, I'm speaking in terms of potential. We've got to con­sider his future."

  "We?"

  Miss Grayson forged ahead. "He tells me he's going to be working in a butcher shop soon, after school. I'm not convinced this is a good idea."

  Miss Grayson was treading in shark-infested waters. The butcher was a close friend of Angie's.

  "Nothing wrong with working there," Connie said.

  "No, of course not," Miss Grayson said delicately. "But there are just so many hours in a day. A man must use them to the best possible advantage."

  "But my son is a kid."

  "Exactly my point," Miss Grayson said, sensing checkmate. "He's very, very impressionable."

  She didn't rack up any points using a word such as "impres­sionable." A child was stupid or smart, fast or slow, handsome or ugly. A child had no right to be sensitive, melancholy, impressionable — let him know pain before giving him such a crutch.

  What could be easier than to be a child? Who wouldn't want to be a child again?

  Miss Grayson laid a pamphlet on the basement table. Connie didn't budge a muscle to touch it.

  "This is from the school I'm talking about, where I think your son belongs. It's on Lexington Avenue."

  "Manhattan," Connie murmured. A train to ride, a river to cross.

  "The teachers there deal with children like your son. I would like, with your permission of course - my goodness, shouldn't we be talking with your husband as well?"

  "He's at work. Talk to me."

  "I would like to assemble a portfolio of Salvatore's work and take it to the admissions committee. Believe me, Mrs. Ambro­sio, the process would he a formality. They key thing is your cooperation. If Salvatore thinks his parents disapprove it will certainly hurt his work."

  Connie's jaw tightened. "You call painting work?"

  Miss Grayson nodded solemnly. "The hardest kind of all."

  The visit had been a disastrous humiliation for Connie. Just what was this ability to make pictures, this art? As far as Connie could tell it was a talent you had from the wrist down. You gonna set the table with that?

  Still, she knew her son was different from other kids, more often alone, always a little unhappy. . . . well, maybe not unhappy, but quiet, so quiet.

  Then again, her own husband was no chatterbox, and he made his way in the world as a plumber. Could there have been truth to Miss Grayson's words? What did a dried-out virgin living alone with cats know about the world?

  Such big talk about art, a plaything for the rich. Did artists raise families? Weren't they all queers?

  And what about that one guy, what was his name, the one who left his wife and kids to starve while he painted nude women on an island? Was there nobility in that?

  This woman spoke of Salvatore as if he were the second coming of Jesus Christ, and it frightened Connie. She was not ready to deal with a messiah.

  Before he left for school the next day Connie said, "Your teacher, she says you paint good."

  "She's not really my teacher. She kinda helps me with my art."

  That word again - art!

  "You, ah, like all this art stuff?"

  He shrugged. "It's okay. I get good marks but they don't count on your report card." He was as casual about his skill as Miss Grayson was excited about it.

  Bad times started. Kids in his class teased him about his work. He liked sports as much as anyone else but found himself being chosen last for games.

  It worried him that Miss Grayson was pushing so hard for this special school, and that Connie was staring at him across the supper table as if he were plotting to use his talent against her in some way.

  The Christmas artwork was about to be taken down and shipped to Manhattan for display and Connie hadn't even come to see it. Miss Grayson knew it would be impossible to get her to Manhattan once the work had been moved, so she phoned the house the night before and pleaded with her to come see it. Connie agreed.

  When she got up the next morning she noticed that Salvatore was already out of the house. No reason for concern, he was often up early and gone. When she got to the school gate Miss Grayson stood waiting for her.

  "Now you'll understand what all the fuss is about, Mrs. Am­brosio."

  Together the women went to the kindergarten class. The door was open, and my father was inside. Half-a-dozen empty black paint jars were lying on the floor, rolling around. He had a full jar in his hand and was flinging it at the final panel when the women came in.

  It was all destroyed. Miss Grayson fainted. Connie knelt and patted her cheeks. My father walked past them and out to the playground to play punchball.

  Connie sipped from my cream soda. All that talk had left her dry. "So he grows up, he gets a good job, he quits and takes off. Figure it out." She sighed. "I shoulda let him go to that art school." She drummed her fingers along the side of the now-empty soda bottle.

  "How do you know what it looked like if there was black paint all over it?" I asked.

  "The teacher told me." Connie tapped her forehead. "She memorized the thing."

  "Where are his paintings now?"

  "There aren't any. That was the last thing he painted. He didn't want to touch it no more after that."

  "But the eagle," I persisted. "The tree - "

  "Eh, this is more than twenty years ago." She lifted her hand to dismiss me. The kitchen clock hummed over the refrigerator,
a sound that was always there but suddenly became noticeable. The refrigerator kicked off an extra-loud hum, as if to join it.

  "There's nothing?" I asked. Even to myself, my voice sounded desolate.

  She stared at me, debating something within herself. "Follow me," she said abruptly, rising from the table.

  We walked back to the furnace room, past the hanging pep­pers. Old furniture was stashed here - a three-legged chair, an end table in need of varnish, a rickety ironing board tattooed with burn marks. In one corner was a desk with an accordion-­type rolltop. Connie fidgeted with its handle.

  "Stuck," she said. The fat on her arms jiggled as she tried to force it open. It gave suddenly, the rolltop disappearing with the sound of a flourish down the keyboard of a xylophone.

  Connie waved at the hovering dust. "Twenty years. Like opening a coffin."

  On the surface of the desk was a stack of paper, browned with age along the edges. It looked as if it had been heated with matches to just below the burning point.

  A clear jar contained a bunch of paintbrushes, stored bristles up. If they'd been jammed bristles down, they'd have been destroyed in the long entombment.

  I eyed the goods. "It's just paper. There's nothing on it."

  "I told you there weren't any pictures." She put her hand to her nose and sneezed. "Dust! That’s all that's left."

  She picked up a yellow metal box I hadn't noticed and opened it. Inside were circles of hard colored cakes, hunks of watercolors with tiny cracks, fissures. Each cake was a miniature desert.

  "This is all the stuff that teacher gave him. The brushes, the paints, the paper . . . when he stopped using it I just shut it all up in this old thing."

  "Why didn't you throw it out?"

  "Mind your own business."

  She patted the top of the desk. Her palm came away black with dust. I took the paint box, licked my index finger and rubbed it into a cake that looked maroon. My finger came away blood-red.

  "Still good, Connie." I showed her my fingertip. "Look!"

  "All these years." She shivered, though it was far from cold. I reached for a sheet of paper but it broke at my touch, delicate as the skin of ice on a puddle on the first day of winter. Paper flakes clung to my hand.