Onion Street (17 page)

I had a sick, uneasy feeling in my gut during the entire ride over from Oceanside. It wasn’t that I was scared. I
was
scared. Given my recent history, it made perfect sense to be scared. But it wasn’t fear that was making me queasy. My unease was about something more insidious. It was as if I’d been walking around the last week or so with glasses with the wrong prescription and somebody had switched them back when I wasn’t looking. Suddenly, all the stuff that had appeared to be so out of focus was now clearer, if not quite crystal clear. I could see a way to connect some of the puzzle pieces that had seemed so utterly random and disconnected: Mindy’s warning to stay away from Bobby, the attempt to run Bobby down, Bobby showing up at the apartments above the fix-it shop, the cop on the Belt Parkway letting Bobby go. Even so, many of the events of the last several days still didn’t make much sense. There were plenty of puzzle pieces that continued to feel as if they were from a completely different puzzle.

At least I knew the cop was at home. As things were, walking into a neighborhood dive as an outsider was going to be uncomfortable enough. I never would have risked a visit if there was a chance Wallace Casey would be around. And when I stepped into the Onion Street Pub, I realized the only truly unusual thing about the joint was its name. If not for the few horse-racing-related props — an obvious concession to Aqueduct Racetrack’s proximity — the place might have been any bar on any street in any neighborhood in any borough in New York City. There were a few framed black-and-white photos of jockeys on horses in the winner’s circle at the nearby track, blankets of flowers tossed over the horses’ shoulders. Did the horses ever give a rat’s ass about the garlands and the glory? I doubted it. There was a saddle hung on the wall. A whip and riding boots too. There was a dusty, faded display of a jockey’s silks, goggles, and helmet, but the place didn’t smell like a barn. There was no stink of wet hay or horse shit. There were flies, though. I never understood how in February in New York, every other fly in the city has moved on to that great moldering garbage heap in the sky, yet you walk into any dive bar and
voila
, flies.

Although only two of the three patrons at the bar had lit cigarettes dangling from their slack lips, there was a mighty cloud of smoke hanging in the air like a drawn gauze curtain. Maybe the flies had taken up the habit too. Why not? If the February chill couldn’t kill them, smoking wouldn’t. The two guys at the bar — one about my dad’s age, the other looking old enough to be my grandfather’s father — peered up from their copies of the
Daily Racing Form
just long enough to take another drag on their smokes. Their gray stubbled faces, already sour with lifetimes of defeat, barely registered my presence. The woman at the bar, her blonde updo unmoving as she turned her head, gave me a long, hungry look worthy of Cassius. Apparently, I was her type. I think maybe anybody with male plumbing might have been her type. Almost anybody. Not the two losers at the bar, certainly.

The bartender was a different matter altogether. He’d put his eyes on me the second I opened the door and hadn’t taken them off me yet. He was an ex-Marine type, the kind with a hard blue stare, gray brush cut, and tattooed biceps. He had some mileage on him, most of it the ugly kind. Too young for WWII and too old for Nam, Korea was probably his war. He looked like he was still fighting it.

I sat down next to Blondie and her updo. She was about thirty going on forty, and had a once-pretty face that had seen way too many last calls for alcohol. Not only did she have trouble pushing away from the bar, she also seemed to have the same issue with the dinner table. She had a good thirty pounds on me. Well, maybe not so good. She smiled at me and I smiled back.

“Buy me a drink?” Blondie asked with a bit of desperation behind the come-on.

I looked at her glass. “Sure. What’s that, Scotch?”

“It is, on the rocks.”

I got the barman’s attention, pointed at Blondie’s glass and said, “One more of these and a Rheingold for me.” I threw a five-dollar bill on the bar.

The barman looked about as pleased as a fifteen-year-old kid late to his own circumcision. Maybe Blondie was his girl, but I didn’t think so. He just didn’t like strangers in his place. It upset the balance of the universe, the natural order of things. I decided to prove him right.

“You got a jukebox in this establishment?”

“Yeah, but you won’t like it,” he said, slamming our drinks on the bar.

“Why’s that?”

“No crappy psychedelic hippie shit on it. None of that Motown nigger shit, neither.”

I ignored him. Guys like him, they lived to get you going. They were so miserable and rotten inside, they needed to spew their bile on the rest of the world. I wasn’t in the mood, not yet, anyway.

Blondie took a swig of her Scotch, looped her arm in mine, and said, “C’mon, lover, I’ll show you the way.” She took her drink with her. Apparently the trip to the juke was going to be thirsty work.

My tour guide smelled of too much Scotch and too much perfume — the cheap, cloying kind, like motel soap or lavender and lilac-laced potpourri. I wasn’t sure which was supposed to overwhelm the other. Didn’t matter, really; neither did the trick. The jukebox was at the back of the bar by the bathrooms and next to the cigarette machine. The bartender might’ve been an asshole, but he was an accurate one. There wasn’t a song on the box written by Lennon and McCartney or Jagger and Richards or Smokey Robinson. The Four Seasons was about as radical as the juke got. Mostly there was a lot of Sinatra and Tony Bennett. I was surprised to see some Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis. I guess only blacks who sang for Motown counted as niggers in the barman’s philosophy. When I noticed there wasn’t any Neil Diamond or Simon and Garfunkel on the juke, I couldn’t help but wonder where Jews fit into his racial cosmology. Well, there were two Sammy Davis Jr. tunes. That was a victory of sorts, but it didn’t make me want to raise my fist in defiance and scream, “Power to the people.”

I handed Blondie some dimes and told her to play away. She loved it, and knew exactly what tunes she wanted to play and what numbers to press. Sinatra started singing about a summer wind, pretty loudly too.

Blondie spun me around. “C’mon, lover, let’s dance.”

So we danced, Blondie pressing herself tightly against me. Surprisingly, her touch didn’t seem very sexual. It was almost as if she was just happy for the closeness of another human being. That made it more comfortable for me, made it easier for me to return the embrace. Still, her hair kind of got in the way of full enjoyment. When she rested her head on my shoulder, the scratchy, stiff updo brushed against the skin of my cheek. While it didn’t draw blood, it came pretty close. Her hair was so saturated with hairspray that I would have been afraid to light a match within five feet of her. When Sinatra was done, so were we. I bowed to her and she blushed. When we returned to our seats, I decided it was time to see what I could learn from Blondie.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Angie.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Angie. I’m Moe.”

“Back at you.”

We shook hands.

“So, Angie, I’m curious.” When I said that, she sidled up closer to me. “How did this place get a name like Onion Street?”

She laughed and shook her head at the same time. “People are always asking that who drop in here.”

“And … ?”

She stopped shaking her head, but kept a smile. “The rule is if you don’t know, no one who does is supposed to say.”

“The rule? I’ve never liked rules much. You don’t look like a woman who’s much for the rules yourself.”

“My, aren’t you a clever one? Nice try, but this is my local and you know how it is.”

“I suppose.”

I raised my beer to her. We polished off what remained of our drinks. I pointed to the bartender that we needed another round. Angie seemed quite pleased by this. I could tell, because her left hand was now halfway up my right thigh. The barman put the drinks up, and I fed him another five. He didn’t like me any more than the last time I ordered a drink. If possible, I think he liked me less. Funny how that worked. I was drinking, but he was the one getting nastier. Angie and I clinked glass to bottle, and sipped. I never figured out where I developed a liking for beer. Aaron says it was at his bar mitzvah when our Uncle Lenny gave me a whole bottle to drink. He told me it was grownup soda. What the hell did I know? I drank it. I think Aaron is still mad at me because I fell asleep during the reception.

“Okay, Angie, so you won’t tell me how this joint got its name. How about who owns it?”

She tilted the top of her piled-up hair at the bartender who was at the opposite end of the bar attending to the older loser. “George owns the place.”

“He always so friendly, or am I just catching him on a good day?”

“Clever and funny. I might just have to take you home.”

When I didn’t jump at that line, she said, “He isn’t really so bad. He’s an ex-cop. They kicked his ass off the force. He don’t like talking about it, so don’t go there with him.”

“Don’t worry about that, Angie. I don’t think I wanna go anywhere with George.”

“How about with me?” she wanted to know, sucking down her drink for a little shot of courage.

I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but I guess I knew it would. “Sorry, Angie. I got a serious girlfriend, and she’s in the hospital right now.”

“Oh, that’s terrible.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what Angie thought was terrible, that I wouldn’t sleep with her or that Mindy was in the hospital. She’d been nice so far, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt. “Thank you. She’s recovering, but slowly. That’s kind of why I’m here.”

“How’s that?” Even in those two little syllables, there was increased tension. She waved to George for another drink. He poured it for her and looked at me.

“No more for me, thanks.” I took out my last five and told him to keep the change. Didn’t seem to improve his opinion of me.

When he left, I took out a picture of Bobby Friedman that I’d thought to bring with me. The photo was a year or two old, and I’d had to cut myself out of it. If Angie looked closely enough, she’d see that the disembodied arm slung across Bobby’s shoulders was mine. I didn’t think she was in the necessary state of sobriety to notice my arm.

I pointed at Bobby’s face. “See this guy? The cops think he beat up my girl. Have you ever seen him in here?” So I lied to her, what else could I do? I couldn’t tell her who Bobby really was.

“No,” she answered too quickly, looking around to see if George was close by. “Listen, Moe, you seem like a nice — ”

“They also think this other big guy might have helped,” I said before she finished. “I’ve heard he comes in here.” I described Wallace Casey for her.

She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Moe, leave it alone. Finish your drink and go, please.”

“I thought you said George was okay.”

“This is a rough place, kid. You’re between the airport and the racetrack. The kinda people who come in here … Just take my advice and go.”

Kid, huh? She was trying hard to get rid of me. No one likes getting called kid just after they stopped being one. I meant to take her advice, but I had to get something for the fifteen bucks I’d spent in the place.

“Okay, Angie. Just tell me if you’ve seen the two guys I mentioned in here together. Answer that, and I’ll split.”

She nodded yes.

“More than once?”

She nodded some again.

To give her cover, I screamed, “Okay, be that way. You don’t wanna tell me why this place has such a stupid name, then the hell with ya.”

She winked as I stood. I left the bar, but on my way out I noticed a fly was banging against the front window. It kept banging into it as if the window might vanish if the fly hit it hard enough. If fly heaven was a garbage heap, I thought, fly hell must be an endless series of front windows. Good thing for me I knew how to use a front door, although I have to confess that for a good portion of the last week, I’d felt a lot like that fly.

When I got home, Miriam was the only one there. She told me that Mindy’s dad had called, and that there was a long note by the phone. My little sister, she was the best of us. I don’t know. Maybe because she was a girl or because she was younger, she seemed untouched by my parents’ craziness and failures. She refused to be negative about things, refused to see herself through the prism the rest of the Pragers viewed ourselves through. I just knew she would do good in the world someday.

“Hey, you.” I messed her hair. “What’s been going on with you lately?”

She hugged me and said, “Nothing.” Then she stepped back, twisting up her face. “You stink, Moe. You smell like Aunt Gertie’s hall closet. Do you have perfume on or something?”

“Don’t be a wise guy or I’ll give you such a smack.”

She put up her fists like an old-time fighter. “Sure you will. I’ll show
you
.”

“Oh, yeah?” I put my dukes up too. “Come on, tough girl.” I gave her a light slap on the top of her head.

She kicked me in the shin. “There!”

“Ow! That’s cheating.”

“I have to have some advantage. You’re bigger than me.”

“I’ll give you an advantage right in the jaw, you. Now get outta here and go do your homework, or I’ll kick you in the tush.”

As Miriam said, the call had been from Mindy’s dad. He’d left a phone number with a long distance area code, and detailed directions on how to get from Brooklyn up to the rehab hospital in Westchester County. The note also said Mr. Weinstock needed to speak to me as soon as possible.

“Seventh floor nurses’ station, Nurse Havemayer speaking,” said the woman at the other end of the line.

“Good afternoon.”

“Is it still afternoon?”

“Not for much longer,” I said. “It’s already getting pretty dark outside.”

“Sorry, how may I help you?”

“My name’s Moses Prager and my girlfriend’s father, Herb Weinstock, left me this number to call.”

“You’d be Mindy’s boyfriend then.”

“Yeah, but — ”

“Don’t be surprised, Mr. Prager. We spend a lot of time getting to know our patients and their families. Would you like me to get Mr. Weinstock for you?”

“I’d like that very much. Thanks.”

“I am going to put you on hold. Don’t hang up, okay?”

“Promise.”

A minute later, Herb Weinstock got on the phone. “Moe, how’ve you been?”

“A little worried I haven’t heard from you.”

“I understand, but we had to get Mindy settled in here and see what was what.”

“How’s Mindy doing? Is something wrong?”

“She’s awake, Moe. She’s not talking much yet, but our girl’s awake. She knows who we are and she can make herself understood. She’s a little bit confused about things, but the doctors say that’s normal with injuries like hers.”

“I see you left directions for me. You have any idea of when I’ll be allowed to come up?”

“How about now? Her doctor thinks seeing you would be good medicine for her.”

“I’m on my way.”

• • •

Due north of the Bronx, Westchester County was what most Brooklynites referred to as fancy-shmancy. Certainly, my relatives would have called it that. Westchester had lots of big old houses on big old lots, exclusive country clubs, and not many Jews or “coloreds.” I had little doubt that most of its churchgoing residents gave thanks every Sunday for those three blessings the Lord had bestowed upon them. I think I half expected the road sign welcoming me to the county to be shaped like a bottle of Scotch and to be painted like plaid golf pants.

For all of Westchester’s fancy-shmancy-ness, the first locale a traveler encounters as he or she crosses over the Bronx border is Yonkers, a gritty, working class city, not exactly New York State’s garden of Eden. Yonkers functions as a kind of demilitarized zone between the Bronx and the hoity-toity part of Westchester County, a buffer between the ghetto and the eighteenth green. For that reason alone I liked the place. That, and for its harness racing track. I don’t think I ever realized just how many horse racing venues there were in and around New York City. There was Aqueduct and Belmont, Yonkers, Roosevelt on Long Island, and Freehold in Jersey. But I guess that’s not so many, considering there used to be two racetracks just in my part of Brooklyn. Once upon a time they raced ponies in Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay. Back then, it seems, racetracks were like high schools: every neighborhood had to have one.

Night was in full bloom by the time I drove through the gates and up the long sloping driveway to the hospital parking lot. In spite of the dark, the grounds were sufficiently lit so that I could get a good idea of the rehab center’s bucolic setting. The hospital building itself was a tall, big brick rectangle that looked almost ridiculous perched among the low rolling hills and deep, seemingly endless woods that formed a natural wall around the place. Blankets of white snow still covered the hospital’s vast rolling lawns, even though it hadn’t snowed for days.
Toto, we’re not in Yonkers anymore
.

During the elevator ride up to the seventh floor, it hit me: what if the progress Mindy had made was all the progress she was ever going to make? I was no expert on head injuries, but even I knew life wasn’t like on TV or in the movies. You didn’t just wake up and have everything go back to normal. At a minimum, you lost some of your memory. At worst … I didn’t want to think about that. I knew it could get bad. There was this girl from high school, Gloria, who’d been hit by a car on Ocean Parkway. She’d banged her head pretty bad when she landed, and was in a coma for weeks. Most of her other injuries had healed pretty well, but when she came out of the coma she was like a different person. She was angry all the time. She didn’t like any of the food or clothes or music she’d liked before the accident. I’d been so obsessed with Mindy’s survival that I hadn’t ever considered what might lay ahead for her. Suddenly, I wanted to run. Elevator cars, however, kind of limit your options for egress, so when the doors opened on the seventh floor, I went in search of Nurse Havemayer.

You know how sometimes you’re sure you’ll recognize a person you’ve never met? Well, I thought it would be that way with Nurse Havemayer. I was wrong. I’d imagined the nurse would be kindly, sweet, and portly. Not all that different from my Angie at the Onion Street Pub, only without the updo and whiskey breath. Instead, another nurse pointed to a lovely, petite woman of some exotic Pacific extraction.

“Nurse Havemayer, I’m Moe Prager.”

She saw the question in my eyes. “Havemayer is my husband’s name,” she said, smiling up at me. “My clan name has too many vowels for most other Americans to pronounce. If I couldn’t still hear it in my head, I think I would have trouble with it too. Come, you’re here to see Mindy, not make small talk with me.” She took me by the arm and walked me down the hall. “Now listen to me, Moe.” Her tone was deadly serious.

“Yes.”

“Mindy is doing very well, and her doctors believe she should make a nice recovery.” Her use of the word
nice
in lieu of
full
did not escape me, but I said nothing. “She can speak a little, but no full sentences yet. You also have to keep in mind that she is still a bit confused. She also gets somewhat frustrated at her inability to express things fully. That’s normal. It’s even healthy … to a point. What we don’t want is for her to get agitated. Do you understand?”

“Yep. Don’t get her worked up.”

“Exactly.” She pulled me to a stop and knocked on the door. “Here we are. Her folks are inside. Remember, take it slow.”

I stepped into the room, my heart pounding. Mindy’s folks gave me a big hug both at once, their heartbreaking smiles dissolving into joyful tears. When they released me, I saw Mindy sitting up in bed, a broad smile on her face. And then, just like in the elevator, it hit me. In the few short days since I’d seen her last, my mind had wallpapered over what she looked like after the beating and replaced it with the image of her face as I had known it before: the hazel brown eyes, the full lips, the slightly crooked nose, the perfect jawline, and the curly brown hair that cascaded over her forehead like a storm. But that wasn’t the face I saw smiling at me. Her cheeks were swollen, purple with healing bruises. Her left eye was nearly squeezed shut with swelling. Her nose was no longer just slightly crooked, and a lot of her hair had been cut away. The cuts on her face were scabbed over. As Nurse Havemayer had seen the question in my eyes, Mindy saw the horror. She put her hands to her face and turned away.

As she turned away, I turned to her folks. “Can you give us a few minutes?”

Her mom started to say, “Don’t get her — ”

“I know,” I said. “I won’t.”

When the door closed behind them, I walked straight over to the bed and gently turned Mindy to face me. I kissed her so desperately that I thought my heart might explode. The rest of the world fell away, and there seemed there was nothing between us. It had never been this way for us, not even when I was deep inside her and our bodies were in harmony. I’d never felt anything like it before and I doubted I ever would again. When I eased back, I saw that we were now both crying.

I said, “I love you.”

She blinked her eyes. I knelt by the side of the bed, resting my head on her thigh, her hands on my head. I stayed that way for a few moments until Mindy prodded me to look at her. When I looked up, she brushed my left cheek with the back of her hand. She put her other hand on my heart. No one needed to interpret that for me.

I asked, “Are you okay?”

She nodded yes and smiled. “S-s-oon,” she struggled to say.

“I know.”

Then the smile ran away from her face. “B-bob — B-bobby?”

My heart sank a little. After everything between us, I thought, it was Bobby whom she really cared about. I was right. For girls, it’s always about their firsts. When she saw the dejection on my face, Mindy slowly shook her head no and cupped my face in her hands. It was as if she had read my mind and was saying, “No, that wasn’t what I meant.” It was amazing what people could communicate to one another with only a very few words and gestures. She took her hands away from my face.

“B-bobby,” she repeated, balling her hands into fists and crashing them into each other.

Now I thought I understood. “You were right to warn me. Someone tried to run him over the day this happened to you, but he’s fine. You know Bobby, he’s always fine. He’ll live forever.”

She shook her head and the look of consternation on her face was profound. I knew that look. You grow up a Prager, believe me, you know that look.

“Danger!” The word exploded out of her like a cannon shot.

“Look, I’m good. I’m safe,” I lied, stroking her face to calm her. “I think I’ve sort of figured out some of what’s going on.”

Mindy’s eyes widened, but I couldn’t tell if it was out of fear or curiosity. I opened my mouth to explain that I had tracked down Abdul Salaam, the man who’d put her in a coma in the first place, and that someone had already seen to it that he paid severely for what he’d done. I said nothing, reminding myself that she might not remember everything that had happened during the time surrounding her attack. I didn’t want to confuse her any more than she might already be.

“Relax, Min. It’s gonna be okay. I think I know what happened, some of it, anyway. No one’s gonna get away with anything.”

But instead of relaxing or comforting Mindy, that just seemed to set her off. She shook her head furiously and wagged a finger at me. She struggled to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out. Her face bright red with frustration, she pounded her fists into the mattress. When I tried to hug her, she pushed me away. Tears streamed down her cheeks. I reached over and pressed the call button. Mindy was so caught up in her own world that she barely noticed.

If I’d expected to see her parents come rushing in, harsh judgment on their faces, I would have been wrong. Only Nurse Havemayer walked through the door.

“I’m not sure what I did,” I said, looking up at her like a panicked little boy. I guess that’s just about what I was. “I don’t know what to do.”

“It will be okay, Moe. Mindy is fine, believe me. Why don’t you say so long to her for now. I’m sure she’s tired and frustrated at not being able to say what she wants to say to you, in the way she wants to say it.”

It was only when Mindy stopped pounding the mattress that I realized Nurse Havemayer wasn’t talking to me at all, that she was talking to and for her patient.

I wiped Mindy’s tears away with a sweep of my thumbs. I kissed her on the cheek and she let me hold her. “I love you, Min. I’ll be back soon.”

When I stepped outside the room, Mindy’s folks were nowhere to be found. Maybe they’d gone to get a cup of coffee or a lungful of air that didn’t smell like a hospital. Wherever they’d gotten to, I was just glad they had gone there. I don’t think I could have dealt with their distress or judgment. I was already sick with guilt for upsetting Mindy, and for not loving her fully enough when I had the chance. I may not have slept with Samantha that time at her apartment, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t wanted to. I think I must have spent half the time I’d been with Mindy, thinking about Sam. There had been so many times I was inside Mindy when the woman inside my head was Samantha, so many times when my mouth was pressed to Mindy that it was Samantha’s taste I imagined. The world may judge you only by your deeds, but that’s not how we judge ourselves. Even though I don’t think we can ever know ourselves, not really, we know things about ourselves the world can never know. We know what’s in our hearts. We know our lies and desires. And suddenly I knew something else. I finally knew what I had to do, and I didn’t give a shit about the fallout.