A Matter of Love in da Bronx (2 page)

--
Figlio
? I make you coffee? She'd come slippering out in her worn robe; her hair, morning style mournfully loose. Smallish-fattish, huge black questioning eyes; big squishy lips, pudgy cheeks. Pretty, once.

He turned to her, surprised at the unexpected company that brought expectations. He shook his head. After all these years, Ma, no? Why should you make me coffee? How can I let you make me coffee? I shouldn't be here in this house in the first place. I'm a big boy. I should have a place of my own, and I would if you didn't need the salary I bring home week after year. I don't have breakfast here because it's so depressing in this minimal room and then I run less chance of seeing you. And him. How's Pop?

--Your father... She said something. The sins of the father are borne by the children. No. Incorrect. Singular. The sin of the father is borne by Sam. I fix your sandwich?

--No, Ma. Come on! For god's sakes. I know you want to show love but don't you see it comes out like pity?

--You sure?

--It's in my pocket. All done. Go back to sleep. Go back to his bed.

--Yes,
figlio
mio
. You be for supper? Any warmth in her words was lost to the stark room.

--No, Ma. Wednesday. I go bowling with the guys. Internal pinch. Hard to lie to her. Maybe pizza and beer. Maybe. Expect nought, disappoints not.

--You sure? I leave warm for you the supper anyway...

--Sam! Walking toward the toilet.

My father? Up this early? Haven't seen him at this time in years. There's a change for the day. Suppose he could've remembered. Peculiar looking in his long johns, bare feet and bony body; bald; sad face, whiskery. --Morning.

--This weekend. We wax the floor of the school gym. Still toilet walking.

--Pop, I work all week... Disappeared. Behind the door. Slam. Did you really forget, Pa, or are you still making me pay? I'm going, Ma. Watch me go, Ma. It's not too late as long as I'm here! Mental telepathy doesn't work. Not me to you, not you to me! You issued me on this, my birthday and you unable to remind yourself? Am I such a zero in your lives except for counting my pay Friday nights? I can understand him not saying anything, but you? How sweet the martyrdom, yet. The instinct to flee, however, was strong and right, he knew that. He couldn't fast enough make it out the door and down the two tenement flights thick with greasy air. Once out on Van Ness Avenue, he allowed himself to notice: She didn't notice. Say again. Sure, maybe the old man didn't remember, but
how
could she forget what she was doing thirty years ago today? Was I such a disappointment I'd go away if they ignored the day I was born? Maybe a surprise for tonight. Sure. Baloney. Expect nought, disappoints not. Ain't that the truth?

Water droplets sheeting the dawn like a tent made a spiderweb frazzle of streetlamp and auto light. Walk the ghostly block to Morris Park Avenue, then; decide what to do at six-fifteen ayem. Take the bus? Nay. Shank's mare. Neigh. Save the fare. Yeah! That slight sliver of sun's promise wouldn't betray him? Here in the street, he could sense it could, of course it would, so he'll walk past the benches against the high wall on Morris Park until he got to the station at 180th Street. It will rain! So? So challenge fate. If you want something different this day, start out doing something different. The same place waited for him no matter what the transportation: the Sanitary Upholstery Shop, which ran from the East Farms agora to under the elevated train a spit-and-a-half from the Bronx Zoo. Take the bus and be there a half-hour early so it can be stolen by the coistrel? Okay, he'd walk; he'd take the short cut under the el; he'd be at the deli in thirty-five minutes. This doesn't make a change! You haven't taken the bus more than five times in seventeen years! Do it differently! Take the bus! That's different? A taxi would be different. But hardheeled steps of military-like precision carried him from the thoroughfare to the point of stubborn no-return even with the warning of thick and blackening clouds that delivered like the call of the crapshooter: Come drizzle, come rain, come cloudburst! Pick up you overflowing pot! Beg to report, in case you don't know it, it's a sky douche so set up your pace, Sir, walk the faster in the wet; take faster, longer, deeper strides, yank up your collar, button up, tighten your belt. Don't you see you're supposed to be doing that to your life, too? You're getting soaked both ways! I would walk in this stuff for thirty days if I could be irretrievably drawn to a distant shore where I'd be seen no more on pauper's door, or do you pronounce it Papa's? Thoughts hand thick turning like a corkscrew in my brain to pop my atman like a cork from a bottle, so whistle a tune, hurry, before the prayers start and deprive me of my aspiration, too. Do, blindly, do. Go the journey.

In the shop's doorway, he knew, with his cap floating on his head as a dishrag atop rotted seaweed, his raincoat a waterbloated blotting cloth, and his thicksoled shoes tight with squishy-soaked socks, that he was a jerk, a mentally deficient for not taking the bus. What a day to challenge Fate. Pneumonia, too. From deep the pockets he pulled them to see what something palm dry could be, then looked toward the deli, longingly, a block and a half away. He walked to save the fare to buy his breakfast, and if he didn't continue on to there right now, this day's breakfast would be lost to him forever. Every morning, six days a week, he spent the saved bus money for a lemon-filled donut and a bottle of Pepsi which would carry him through--barely--to noon. How would he survive the morning without a thing to eat? He wouldn't. He'd die. He looked again the deli. He closed his eyes and turned away. He couldn't make it, not because he was dreadfully soaked, though physically able, but it would just be too dumb. Instead, he let himself into the mouldysmelling, dampfeeling, bloodraining upholstery shop.

It was one large highceilinged room. Four walls. One held the front door through which he entered. Its huge dirtscreened windows blocked with an assortment of stuffed furniture waiting to be done. Another, to the left, was crammed with bolts of fabric, some of which bore imprints going back to the first War. The third wall, to the right, held bins of supplies: tacks, staples, twine, thread, springs, cambric, welting cord, cotton batting, burlap, nails, sprays, glues, chalk, webbing, spring edge, frame edge roll, grommets, vents, zippers, buttons, button making dies and cutters, hog rings, pliers, bottles, jugs, jars, with something in boxes, some not. The far wall was taken up with a large fabric cutting work table and a sewing machine. Far back on its right, a door led to a one-car garage-sized room where the reupholstery candidates had to stop in the name of the law to be disinfected, sanitized. Also, it held foam cushions and stuffings. Next to that door, the toilet, an exercise in extravagance compared to a dirt hole: a john, a black scabby, cold water sink, and a browny 25-watt bulb that tried to hide the ugly nakedness of the cubicle with its gasping light. Paper was imported with the patron. In the large room, suspended, fluorescent light fixtures held sooty blueish-gray bulbs which worked flickeringly at best with the one or two that worked most of the time over Sam's work station.

Closing the front door carefully, he left a brooklet behind him on the detritus covered concrete floor, maneuvering the obstacle course toward the cutting table. He stripped down to what was decent, and if not dry, damp. What remained were bare feet, moist cuffs rolled up above ankles, damp undershirt--somewhat as he looked sweatbathed and torpid percolating in the summertime broil. Chilled now, though, he shivered and shook spastically, uncontrollably. He made a step, not thinking, and took a tack in his heel. Yelping, hopping. Ouch. Tail against the worktable, gentle probing fingers found the barby blue, taking the hero's route; he pulled it smartly and flung it dripping red to the room. He felt he should swear, though it wasn't his habit. Fu. Fu. Squeeze hard. Fucking bastard! Fucking rain! He apologized to the Rain. To the Air. To unknown Deities. Everyone understood. It was madding. Maddening, too. He winced more at being sensible and slipping back into his clammy shoes. What about breakfast? He'd make do the sandwich. He checked the armpit pocket in the coat. Dry. Reverently, he two-handedly raised the fat-spotted host from deep within to eye level, placing the double-wrapped carcassed body and juices of the pork at the far corner of the cutting table out of the way but squarely in the path of a rising appetite. Coat, hat, shirt, sweater, socks he asked, will you be drip dried by quitting time? He could go bowling, even out for pizza and beer, in cold, wet clothes, but no, not ever could he go and sit in the movies. Even a really hot show.

Sam looked down at himself and smiled.

One potato, two potatoes, sad potato all! How would he ever make it through the day? Like he did all the others. He'd open his hole. Wide. He'd hump out the work. Work! Work! It was his salvation. He'd go and grind, and for once he'd make the quota. He'd show him. “Him” was the one person in the whole and entire world who might conceivably give a shit for Sam Scopia.

Him was Sol Youchah.

He wore either a yarmulke or a spotless pearl grey homburg that matched his hair, and complimented the faded blue wash of distant-looking eyes. He had a huge, angular precipice of an arête for a nose with a tiny rip of a mark for a mouth; craggy lines in sunken cheeks--all framed with unbelievably enormous African elephant ears. He was tall, but so emaciated his old-man all-wool coat sweaters threatened to slip off his bent-like-an-overloaded-wire-hangar shoulders, down over his baggy-assed pants and onto the floor to his black, truant-officer clumpenklotzers. Always with a bow tie. He spoke with a balky accent, half-Bronx, half-Bessarabian; always in complete exclamation points.

--You here!

Sam first heard the two-syllable explosion as he was walking home from high school. Even at this tender age, he was already free of the world's demands, and ignored the command he heard. I don't need anybody, and nobody needs me. You can't take advantage of me because you think I need something. I need nothing! Leave me alone you strange and mysterious being of a grownup.

--Ah nickel! You should feel sorry!

Why should I feel sorry for you? Because you have a delivery to make and need someone to help lug the sofa and easy chair up two hard flights? Get someone else. Don't pick on me! What did you say? I should stop feeling sorry for whom? For me you say! Why you old mockey bastard! I'll take your lousy nickel. Why shouldn't I be mad?

Because this is ah business, the old man said hurtfaced. Ah business is ah business. The contract was made, the job done, Sam paid.

Sol made Sam show him where he lived, and told him to tell his mother what he said: This Saturday! Be ready quarter-to-seven o'clock! You come woik for me! You will make a good woikah!

And he was a good worker. Not just because Sol was a willing and expert teacher who saw the value in a dedicated student. Not just because of the boy's fine Italian hand from a thousand years back that quickly demonstrated an able dexterity. And not just because he was a willing, quick-learning student. More it was because Sam was in need. He had a vast void to fill, and was desperate up to the moment he met the man on how to conquer the demon in and around him. Stickball, bike riding, ice skating, baseball, handball, swimming, and dozens of other doings were available to others, but not to this isolated lad. He was a straight "A" student, but didn't participate in a single extra-curricular school club or activity. He was considered a sainted scholar in Sunday school--for as long as he attended--and conceivably could've been primed and tutored for the priesthood if only they needed someone who could scare the BeJesus out of the Devil on looks alone! There was only so much studying he could do; only so many words to read in a day--until he found a passion in cookbooks. But, even they left an unbearable hollow. He found himself with a desperate need to do something about the dead and decaying time on his hands, and Sol offered salvation and work therapy. Sam gave more and more of his time to the shop. At first, it was just Saturdays. Then, telling his parents he would be out doing things with his friends, instead he'd be there on Sundays, too. Then, the school's vacation days. Then, from morning to night every day during the summer. From the beginning it wasn't a case of Sol inventing work for him to do. Each assignment was vital to the well being of the business which meant, primarily, of course, in the long run Sam's training. Sam's first assignment was to take tacks and staples out of furniture that had to be stripped and cleaned so it could be reupholstered. There were thousands of the little devils in all sizes and all degrees of difficulty to remove. Even Sol offered words of compassion; the task was one great big pain in the ass. Then, as the opportunity presented itself, Sol would teach Sam one small aspect of the trade, then another. Gradually, all the tools and materials and their application, the short-cuts and tricks of the trade became comfortably familiar to him. Soon, even before he started working for him full-time, Sol came around merely to check on his pupil's work; and, finally, the student, now a master mechanic, was showing the teacher some tricks of his own.

Sam was in his third year of high school when he decided to quit school and work full time, much to the chagrin of his guidance counselor, Mr. Higgenbotham.

--Sam! For Cry Sakes! You're I.Q. is 145! Higher than anyone else's in this whole school! You can be anything you want to be in the world! Anything! I can get you into any college in the country on a full scholarship! Doctor, lawyer, whadayawantabe? You're telling me your folks will let you quit school to be an apprentice upholsterer? Are they mad? Are you mad? No! I won't let you do it! He went on musing about many things, none of them valid, because he understood only the what, not Sam's anomalous reasons, the other side that tilted the scale. There wasn't one social reason, not one relationship of any meaning to stay in school. A self-isolated outcast who found the
potential
of being accepted the bed of hot coals on which he walked daily with less and less impunity and greater and greater danger of emotional immolation. Besides, his folks made it plenty clear they could use the money. Not some small bit of pressure coming from his only recognizable basis.