Corky's Brother (29 page)

“I liked Mel real well,” Sarah Jean said.

‘It don't look like him at all—” Corky repeated.

Sarah Jean ran her thumb along the back of my hand and goose pimples started up my right arm. Corky's father was sitting between Corky's mother and Rhoda, talking low to both of them, about how it was going to be a great shock to see Mel this way, about how they should prepare themselves.

His words didn't help. When we got there and walked inside, the moment the two women saw Mel it was as if they hadn't understood until that second that he was actually dead. They both started wailing—totally out of control—and one of Corky's uncles went to them quickly to hold them steady.
I
don't remember what they said or how long they stood there looking at Mel, but I do remember the sounds they both made—not just whimpering and crying and rasping when they tried to stop the tears, but this high-pitched sound, almost like the kind you hear dogs make sometimes. Everybody left them alone with Mel, and when they sat down on chairs away from the coffin, the other relatives began coming forward.

“Once is enough for me,” Corky said to Sarah Jean.

She looked at him, then took my hand. “Come on, Howie,” she said. “You come with me.”

So I went up to the box and got a longer look this time. I still couldn't cry. Everybody around me was, though they all did it softly, but it still didn't seem real to me that Mel was gone. It was as if somebody else was in the box. Sarah Jean cried some and I asked her if she was okay. “I liked him real well,” she said. “Here—help me touch his hand.” As soon as she said that, I said we should leave to make room for some others to come up and see Mel. “Don't be scared,” she said. “Once you touch a dead person, then you feel better—it don't seem so scary after that.” And with my hand on top of hers she reached over the side of the coffin and touched Mel where his hands were clasped on his stomach. “Come on,” she whispered. “You do it, too, Howie. You'll feel better if you do.”

I let my hand slip off hers and I touched Mel's hand but it was so cold and stiff it made me think of the way your own hand feels when it falls asleep—you can touch it, and you know you're touching it, but it seems to belong to somebody else.

A few of the other relatives were standing alongside us now, and from the corner of my eye I saw Sarah Jean's mother approaching us. “He looks right nice,
I
think,” she said when she got to us. Sarah Jean looked at her in this absent way and didn't reply. A woman behind us said something about all the flowers that were around the room and how nice they looked.

“Poor Mel,” another aunt said—the big one who'd comforted Corky's mother. “We all have to travel the same road,
I
suppose, but why so soon, why so soon—?”

“Well,” Sarah Jean's mother said—she said it stiffly, too, even though there were tears in her eyes. “We know where he is now, though, don't we? We can at least be thankful for that.”

Sarah Jean jerked her head sideways and her eyes flared up in anger. Her mother saw the look and repeated what she'd said. “We know where he is now, don't we, Sarah Jean?” Sarah Jean just glared. “I was just repeating to Frank and Margaret about the time when Mel accepted the Lord as his personal savior. It was while he was riding home from town one day when he was a boy on the farm. Reverend Millet had given him a lift—”

Then Sarah Jean did the strangest thing. She started humming. The more her mother went on about the religious stuff, the louder Sarah Jean hummed. It was the same tune she'd been humming when we'd been at Corky's place. It sounded like a hymn and while Sarah Jean hummed it she looked straight at Mel's face, as if she were singing it just for him. The other relatives all grew quiet and Sarah Jean's mother stopped what she was saying. “Don't
you
be singing that,” she said between her teeth, low, but Sarah Jean kept singing. It wasn't humming any more, because she'd let her mouth come open so that it was more like singing without words, with a sweet “ah” sound coming from her. Her mother kept glaring at her and whispering for her to stop, saying she had no right, but Sarah Jean didn't seem to hear her. She hummed through the song twice, softly, and when she stopped, one of her aunts came to her and kissed her on the cheek, saying that God must have given her such a voice just to put Mel at peace. Sarah Jean's mother got more upset then—you could see it in the way she clicked her jaw, as if she were grinding on her teeth—and Sarah Jean only smiled and tugged at my hand. I couldn't move. Her mother's stare had me transfixed. Sarah Jean tugged again. “Come on, Howie,” she said, and this time I followed her to where Corky was standing in back of all the chairs.

“I got an idea,” Corky whispered to us. “How about us three cutting out of here and doing something together?” I shrugged and looked at Sarah Jean. She was smiling, her cheeks glowing. “It's okay,” Corky said. “Mel wouldn't wanna make me hang around all day looking at him and saying a bunch of crap to all these jerks coming to say how sorry they are. Bastards. Half the people who're gonna be here never even knew him—they'll just be doing it for my old man and my mother. Anyway, the funeral's not till Monday—we can come back tonight or tomorrow if you want. I'm just too damned restless today—”

“I like Rhoda,” Sarah Jean said. “She's real pretty—”

“Come on,” Corky said. “Am I gonna go alone, or are you two coming with me—?”

Sarah Jean didn't seem to be listening to Corky. She left us and went to Rhoda. She knelt down next to her and took Rhoda's hand in hers, then said something. Rhoda stopped crying and tried to smile and they talked to each other for a minute. Then Sarah Jean came back. “I told Rhoda,” she said. “Let's go.”

“Sarah Jean—” we heard from behind as we started out. “Sarah Jean Stilman!” Sarah Jean turned and looked at her mother coming through the rooms after us. “I want to speak with you—” Sarah Jean smiled, and she had this real wild look in her eye. “Come on!” she said, excited. “Don't let her scare you. She ain't God.”

Her mother kept calling to us to come back, but the minute we got outside, Corky shouted, “This way!” and we ran down the street together, Sarah Jean between us, the three of us holding hands, zooming in and out of people. When we finally stopped running, way down Flatbush Avenue near the Parkside Theater, we were laughing and out of breath.

“Let's go rowing,” Corky said, and we turned up Parkside Avenue into Prospect Park and walked to where you rented the boats. Corky paid. He did the rowing too, and Sarah Jean and I sat in the back of the boat holding hands. It was still early and the lake was almost empty. None of us said anything for a while, but you could tell how happy Corky was now, not only to be away from the funeral parlor but to be getting rid of some energy. When we were away from the islands, in the big open part of the lake, Sarah Jean took her shoes off and let her feet slip over the side. She started humming again, but she kept laughing to herself while she did.

“You been baptized?” she asked me.

“I'm Jewish,” I said.

“You don't know then,” she said, and laughed again. Then she hummed the tune, and there was something about the melody and the way she did it that made me think it could go on forever. It was beginning to haunt me. “They sing this when you get baptized,” she said to me. “It's a hymn.” Then she started singing, soft and thin, with this calm look in her eyes:
“Just as I am without one plea…But that Thy blood was shed for me…
” She didn't seem to breathe between sentences. I took my shoes and socks off and let my feet trail in the water so that the boat balanced better.
“And that Thou hid'st me come to Thee…O Lamb of God, I come, I come…
” She sang another verse and this time I hummed along with her. What I liked most was the way her voice glided over the words like “am” and “plea” and “Thee”—the ones that carried across more than one note.

“When they baptize you, the preacher, he holds your head under water backwards—that's immersion,” she said. “Corky knows.” Corky nodded and pulled at the oars. I could see his muscles, and sweat dripping along his neck. “Only thing was,” Sarah Jean said, “when they did it to me, this damned preacher, he kept my head under water so long when I come up I bit his hand.” Corky caught his oar in the water and splashed us. Sarah Jean clapped her hands, delighted at his surprise. “My mother got so mad she about died.” Then she leaned forward and spoke lower, smiling the whole time. “That's why she got so mad before, me singing a hymn for Mel and all—she keeps on at me all the time, how I'm gonna be damned eternally, cause I weren't baptized right. She says the devil must of been inhabiting me, me to do that.—But I don't care. I got even with that preacher. You should of heard him howl, everybody come splashing through the water to us. But I got a real good hold on account of I knew I would only get that chance but once—” She stopped smiling. “He held me under for spite, cause he knew I didn't like him.”

“Reverend Millet?” Corky asked. Sarah Jean nodded and Corky smiled. “Mel hated him too,” he said, and then—just like that—Corky started singing too, real loud.
“Just as I a-am withou-out one plea
—” He could hardly carry a tune, but it didn't matter. Sarah Jean and I joined in with him and as we glided across the waters we sang the song again and again.

We stayed on the lake for an hour or two, singing and talking and kidding around—Sarah Jean and Corky had fun roaring out a lot of the hymns they both knew—and then we came in and sat at the boathouse and had some French fries and Cokes. Corky wouldn't let me pay for a thing.

“You wanna see where our team plays its games?” he asked Sarah Jean, and she said she did, so we walked through the park to the Parade Grounds. Corky got sentimental then, remembering how he used to be batboy for a team Mel had been the star on, and he couldn't stop talking about him and about what a great ballplayer he would have been. “Yeah,” he said. “I'd give anything to be able to make the Majors someday—the way Mel would of—” He kicked at the dirt. “Ah, shit!” he said.

“You'll be as good as Mel if you want to,” Sarah Jean said.

He lifted his head. “You think so?”

“Sure,” I offered. “Everybody's always saying how you got the same swing he has—”

“Ah, what's the difference now?” Corky said, staring across the fields.

“You'll be as good as Mel if you want to,” Sarah Jean said again, and the way she said it had a calming effect on Corky.

“What time is it, Howie?” he asked. I told him it was after one o'clock and he punched his fist into his palm. “Hey, I know what—let's show Sarah Jean what the Kenmore's like on a Saturday afternoon—” He put his arm over both our shoulders and started talking about how the RKO Kenmore balcony was famous all over Brooklyn. “They got a maternity ward built right in!” he said, and Sarah Jean giggled. Then Corky explained how all the girls went there together on Saturday afternoons and sat in the balcony, and how the matron never asked your ages, so you could smoke and neck and do anything you wanted. We walked up Caton Avenue, then turned right on Ocean. “Howie's never been here on Saturday afternoon,” Corky said to Sarah Jean when we were at the booth buying tickets, “so you gotta take good care of him—you know what I mean?”

“Howie can take care of himself,” Sarah Jean said, and when she said it she tickled the inside of my palm with her fingertip. I shoved my other hand in my side pocket to keep what was happening from showing, and as we passed into the lobby and started up the steps I was really nervous. It was supposed to be mostly the tough guys and girls who would be there in the dark and I didn't know what to expect. Of our group of guys, Corky was the only one who'd ever been there more than once, and he'd always brought back stories about how girls you didn't even know would let you sit next to them and do wild things.

“I almost forgot,” Corky said when we got to the landing of the balcony. “Wait for me a minute—I gotta get ammunition!” He ran down the stairs, two at a time, and a minute later he was back with a couple of bars of candy. “Come on,” he said, and we went inside. I don't know what I expected, but I was surprised that the seats were only about half taken. There was a lot of smoke and some of the guys had their feet on the backs of the chairs in front of them. There was an old woman in a white uniform standing in one corner, with a flashlight, but she didn't seem to care about anything. “Let me scout the place first,” Corky said, and he walked along the back row, looking down the aisles. Every once in a while you'd hear somebody curse, or make a remark back to the movie screen, but most of the time it was pretty quiet. You could hear girls giggling, and sometimes some arguing. “Okay,” Corky said. “I see one. Follow me—”

Sarah Jean and I followed Corky down a side aisle until we came to two girls who were sitting together. They looked at Corky, then back at the screen. We sat down, and Corky turned to the girl at his left. “You want some candy?” he asked. The girl gave him a dirty look, but this didn't bother Corky. “Ah, come on,” he said. “I ain't trying to be fresh. Honest. This is my cousin Sarah Jean from Pennsylvania and her boyfriend. Come on,” he whispered. “We're sitting next to each other anyway and I got more than I can eat, so we might as well share. Here—your friend can have some too.”

“It's okay,” Sarah Jean said to the girls. “He's my cousin.”

For some reason, this seemed to do the trick. The girls took some candy from Corky and the next thing I knew he had his arm along the back of the seat of the one next to him, and her friend was saying she had to go to the bathroom and she got up and left, and then Corky and this girl were at it. I tried to keep my eyes on the movie—Yvonne De Carlo in a Technicolor Western—but I kept glancing at Corky to see how he was doing and then looking around at the other couples. Sarah Jean hardly moved. She just sat up straight and looked at the movie. My hand began to get sweaty in hers and I took it away and put my arm around the back of her seat. Next to me, Corky was starting to use his hands and I had to fight hard not to keep all my attention on him.