Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (34 page)

Nicky stepped into the house, onto the thin rug, toward Margalo.

“Go away,” Margalo said. She was red-faced and sweaty. Her voice was hoarse, throaty. “I mean it. Don't take another step. Don't say another word. Go away.”

Nicky stepped toward her. “Lemme …”

Margalo turned and ran. She ran like a little girl playing tag on a schoolyard. She hit the staircase and climbed the steps two at a time. From the top of the stairs, she howled, “GO AWAY.”

Nicky heard a door slam.

He clomped up the staircase, also two steps at a time. He ran down the hallway and leaned his cheek against the peace poster on Margalo's bedroom door.

“Margalo …”

From inside came a piercing scream, a wail from somewhere desperate.

The sound of heavy footsteps made Nicky look to his left. Eugene was stalking down the hall.

“What in the name of Janis Joplin is going on here?” Eugene said.

From inside the room came a plea, muffled words spoken by a face buried in a pillow: “Make him go away.”

Eugene glowered at Nicky.

“You, what did you do to her?”

“I didn't … It's my brother.”

“Oh,” Eugene said. He glanced at his sandals for a moment, then looked up into Nicky's face, and shrugged, “Well, he went.”

Desperate, mournful sobbing sounded from the bedroom.

Eugene opened the door slightly. He slid through the opening and said, “Margie, it's me.”

The door closed gently in Nicky's face. From inside the room he heard Margalo's voice, retching and choking and gasping for air: “I wish … I had never … met him. I wish … I had never … laid eyes … on him.”

Nicky walked softly down the hallway. He passed the staircase, without descending. He picked up speed and marched straight into Eugene's room. He stepped onto the mattress and pulled down the Vietcong flag from the wall. He flung open the bathroom door. He jammed the flag into the toilet and flushed it. He waited and flushed again. Water gurgled and backed up somewhere in the pipes. The pipes thunked in distress.

He was breathing hard and sweating now. He grabbed two marijuana plants, one in each hand, and ripped them out of the pots. He tossed the plants onto the rug outside the door. He pulled out every one of them, two at a time. The more he destroyed, the hungrier he grew for destruction.

One thing led to another.

Nicky threw the pots out onto the rug. Pots cracked open. Dirt scattered. Nicky was satisfied. Now he could leave.

Nicky climbed Mayflower Avenue and reached Summit Avenue, and to him the yellow lights of Eggplant Alley seemed as warm as his mother's eyes. Nicky heard Mr. Storch's xylophone and televisions going and water running. The noises were as soothing as a lullaby. He knew he was home, and he shocked himself by thinking, “The finest place in the world.”

Nicky's legs were weak. He shuffled up to the second floor. He could barely walk. He needed help. He knew that his best friend Lester was the only one who could help him. Lester was the only one who knew about the letter that Nicky threw down the sewer. The letter that would have kept Roy out of that airplane. If only Nicky hadn't thrown it down the sewer.

Nicky knew Lester would help.

He thanked the Lord for Lester and rapped on 2-C. The door flew open and Nicky looked up into the face of a middle-aged black man, his hair speckled with gray. Nicky's brain flashed: “What's going to happen next?”

Nicky shot a look at the door number. He was tired and frazzled. His eyes were watery. He thought perhaps he had knocked on the door to the wrong apartment.

The door lettering said 2-C.

“Can I help you?” the black man said.

Nicky breathed hard. Lester must have moved. He said stupidly, “Does Lester Allnuts live here?” And as he spoke, Nicky saw something familiar in the black man's face. It was the eyes. Nicky
had seen these eyes somewhere before. A million times before, behind the thick lenses of black-rimmed nerd glasses.

“Why, sure,” the black man said. “He's my son. Let me guess—you're Nicky.”

The man stuck out his hand. Nicky limply shook the hand.

“I'm John Allnuts. I just got in a couple hours ago. I've heard a lot about you. Come on in.”

Nicky stepped into 2-C and immediately saw why Lester never wanted him to enter 2-C. On the wall inside the door was a framed portrait of Mr. Allnuts, black face smiling, resplendent in his army dress uniform. Nicky noticed the picture frame was scratched, as if the portrait had been hastily thrust into a closet many times.

“Lester is in the shower,” Mr. Allnuts said. “I hear your brother is in the army, too.”

“I have to go,” Nicky said.

Nicky ran up three flights of stairs and burst into the apartment. Mom and Dad were still on the couch, still in their winter coats, now in the dark. Nicky hurried to his room and dropped to his knees at his bed.

He slipped a hand under the mattress and produced the composition notebook left over from first grade. He flipped to the page that listed the five things that ruined his childhood. He slowly ripped out the page. In his silent dark room, the tearing of the paper was like a whisper. Nicky calmly shredded the list into tiny pieces and threw the pieces out the window. The bits of paper fluttered in the courtyard air like confetti. Nicky watched the paper fall and muttered, “Kid stuff.”

D
ays and days passed, but Nicky no longer looked at the calendar. There wasn't a single date worth circling.

Days and days passed, and Mom clammed up and kept busy, working hard at Gimbels, working hard at home. She scrubbed, she scoured, she polished, she baked, she laundered. She organized the button box, rolled pennies, alphabetized the record albums. For the first time in Nicky's life, she knitted (she produced a toaster cover). She strung beaded bracelets again, this time not for the money, but for the distraction. Mom was determined to never sit still, not for a minute.

Days and days passed, and Dad sat still, every chance he got. Dad took the zombie option. He got up, he went to work, he came home and sat in his chair with the
Daily News
in his lap, but he didn't read the
Daily News
. At supper time, Dad ate without appetite. Mom had to encourage Dad to finish his meals, which was a first.

The only sign of life from Dad came once a day, at the moment he walked through the door from the Yum-E-Cakes route, and he sought out Mom or Nicky, and he asked, eyes hopeful, pleading, “Anything?”

Then there was Lester.

The day after the bad news arrived about Roy, the day after Nicky met Mr. Allnuts, there was a shave-and-a-haircut rapping on Nicky's door. Nicky heard the knocking and froze, still as a statue, on the sofa in the empty apartment. Nicky held his breath, so he would not be heard. He did not make a sound, as Lester knocked and knocked.

The knocking grew rapid and desperate, and Nicky played over and over in his mind all the terrible, hurtful, bigoted, hateful, racist things he had said to Lester. Nicky had stuck a million daggers into Lester, and even though he didn't mean to hurt Lester, Nicky had hurt him and he felt vile for it. And Nicky did not know how to face up to his vileness.

The knocking tapered off, weak and futile, then stopped. Then Nicky heard sniffling and sneaker steps clomp across the hallway and fade down the staircase.

The next day, Lester returned and knocked on the apartment door. This time Nicky was at the kitchen table, eating a Yum-E-Cake, and he stopped chewing at the knocking. He heard Lester call, pleading, “Nick-eee, are you in there? Come on, Nicky. If you're in there, please. Open up.”

Nicky closed his eyes. He thought about the word
mulignane
, and the thought made him shiver and wish he could—poof—just disappear from the face of the earth. Then he thought of the joke about the black man who found the genie's lamp, which made
him remember the black kids in the sandbox joke. Nicky felt the Yum-E-Cake trickle up the back of his throat.

“Nick-ee,” Lester called, now begging. “Nick-ee, are you in there?”

Nicky sneezed—he couldn't help it—splattering half-chewed Yum-E-Cake across the table.

Lester fell silent in the hallway.

“I heard that,” Lester said. He pressed his mouth to the door-jamb, and his voice sounded whispery and haunting through the crack. “Nicky. I know you can hear me. Nicky, I'm sorry I hid who I really am. I want you to know that. And I want you to know I'm proud of who I am. That's it. And I guess I won't be coming up here anymore.”

Then there was the sound of slippers shuffling, leaving, fading down the staircase.

Nicky clonked his head onto the kitchen table. He needed a mountain of forgiveness from Lester. And Nicky had no idea how to ask Lester for that much forgiveness. It seemed like too much to ask. It would be like asking someone for his dog.

Days and days passed, and one Friday afternoon, Nicky was on his way to the lobby for the mail when he veered left on the second floor and marched up to 2-C and knocked. It was a spur-of-the moment-move, an impulse, like suddenly leaping into the pool to simple get it over with.

Nicky knocked, with no idea about what he would say to Lester. Nicky knocked and hoped something would occur to him.

There wasn't a peep from inside 2-C.

Nicky returned to 2-C every day for a week. No one came to the door. There was no sound from inside, no shadow under the door.

One afternoon, Nicky brought a Band-Aid to the door of 2-C. He had picked up this trick from a TV cop show. He adhered the Band-Aid to the door and the doorjamb. If someone ever opened the door, the Band-Aid would fall away. Nicky monitored the Band-Aid for a week. The Band-Aid stayed exactly where he had left it, stuck tightly. No one had gone in or out of 2-C.

Nicky searched Eggplant Alley and found Mr. Misener in the basement of Building A. The superintendent was fixing the handles on garbage cans. Nicky asked Mr. Misener if the Allnuts family in 2-C, over in Building B, had moved out.

“How do I know?” Mr. Misener said. “What am I, an information booth?”

One day in the middle of March, Nicky walked home from school, under powder-blue skies, in beautiful bright sunshine. And he wished the warm, spring-like weather would go away and stop breaking his heart.

“I can't wait for winter,” he grumbled.

He climbed the steps into Eggplant Alley. A man in a Western Union uniform scampered down the steps. The man tipped his cap at Nicky. Western Union was the company that delivered telegrams.

Sometimes they brought good news. Sometimes they brought bad news.

Nicky took the stairs two at a time, glancing at the quiet 2-C,
Band-Aid still on the door, as he scurried along the second floor, cursing the heavy textbooks in his book bag.

He was breathless when he reached the fifth floor and spotted a yellow envelope under his apartment door.

His heart thudded as he tore open the envelope and read:

To Mr. and Mrs. Salvatore Martini,

Although United States officials are making every reasonable effort in behalf of the Americans missing or detained in Vietnam there has been no new information since our last contact. Army officials continue to hope that the status and whereabouts of your son can soon be determined. My continued sympathy is with you.

Sincerely,

Sterling Gentry

Major General USA

Sometimes Western Union brings no news at all.

When Mom came home from work and read the telegram, she said, “No news is good news. In a way.”

That night after supper, Dad sat in the living room with the television tuned to
The Music Man
. Nicky was at the kitchen table, eating Yum-E-Cakes.

In the living room, Mom said to Dad, “I like musicals, but this one gives me a headache. How can you watch this?”

A lovely warm breeze rippled the kitchen curtain and softly brushed Nicky's neck. Out on Groton, the tenements glowed
orange in the dusk. The loveliness made Nicky's eyes ache and sting, and Mom entered the kitchen and caught him crying.

“I wish it would snow,” Nicky sobbed, his mouth filled with dessert pie.

“Don't cry, honey,” Mom said. “Count your blessings. At least we have hope. Some families have no hope at all.”

Nicky sniffed and said, “Dad doesn't seem to be counting his blessings.”

“Never mind what your father is doing,” Mom said. She squirted soap into the sink and ran hot water into it. “Worry about what you're doing. It's different for your father.”

“What's that mean?”

Mom leaned both hands on the sink while a mountain of soap bubbles formed under the rushing water. “Your father thinks he should have … He could have … He might have …” Mom shrugged. “Anyway, I think your father is going to hold his breath until Roy comes home. Until he turns blue.”

Nicky blurted, “That was my plan. I'm the one responsible. Not Dad.” The words came out like a violent belch.