Palisades Park (22 page)

“I want to be a high diver someday too,” Toni said in a rush.

Something shadowed his friendly eyes and Ringens’s manner changed. “Well, that’s all well and good,” he said, more guardedly, “but you still have a long time to make up your mind what you want to be when you grow up.”

“Oh, but I
know
this is what I want to do! Can you tell me how you—”

“Glad you enjoyed the show,” Ringens interrupted, suddenly cooler, and brushed past her. “Thanks for coming.”

As she watched him go, Toni puzzled at the sudden turnabout in his manner—had she said, done, something wrong? All she wanted was to ask his advice. But maybe he thought she was being too forward. Or he didn’t think she was really serious about being a diver. Whatever it was, it didn’t stop her from attending as many of his performances as she could over the course of the next month—but she didn’t try to approach him again.

*   *   *

On a sweltering afternoon in July when the electric fans in the French fry stand were doing little more than churning the humid air, Adele lifted the frying basket out of the sizzling oil and was startled to see, through a cloud of greasy steam, the last person she expected to find standing on the other side of the counter.

“Dad?” She poured the just-finished fries into a bin, wiped her hands on her apron, and hurried up to the counter. She glanced around for her mother, but Marie was not in evidence. “What brings you to Palisades?”

He smiled, but it seemed like a nervous smile. “I went for a walk down Palisade Avenue, and next thing I knew, here I was. Anyway, do I really need a reason to stop by and say hello to my only daughter?”

“No, of course not.” She tried to think of the last time Franklin had come to the park and realized it had been at her wedding on the Carousel, nearly thirteen years before. “Why don’t we get a bite to eat together, it’s almost time for my lunch break. Jim, cover for me, okay?”

“S’okay, boss,” Jim agreed amiably.

Adele took Franklin to the Grandview Restaurant overlooking the Hudson, but he appeared disinterested in the breathtaking Manhattan skyline or the sailboats plying the river like gulls two hundred feet below. He was fidgety, restlessly drumming his fingers on the table as he studied the menu. They ordered roast beef sandwiches and a couple of Cokes. Franklin put the menu aside and his gaze seemed to bounce nervously around the room without really settling on anything.

“So you really walked all the way here?” Adele asked.

“Just needed to stretch my legs,” he said. “A man can go crazy sitting on a couch all day. Say, the Schencks don’t still own this place, do they?”

“No, they sold it to the Rosenthals years ago.”

He nodded. “Thought so. Did you ever meet Eddie Mannix?”

Adele admitted she didn’t know the name.

“I went to school with him in Fort Lee. Tough little guy. The Schencks hired him as a bouncer, eventually he became general manager.”

“Is that so?”

“He asked me to come work for him. In the publicity department.”

“I never knew that,” Adele said, surprised.

“Oh, sure. This was 1914, 1915. I said no, of course. I was making movies.” He stopped drumming his fingers and flexed them nervously. “The Schencks took him with them when they moved out to the Coast. Now he’s general manager of MGM—can you beat that?”

Adele didn’t know what to say to that.

“When I was looking for a job after the war, I gave Eddie a call.” He glanced away. “He never returned it.”

Their sandwiches and Cokes arrived. Franklin took a few bites of his, then lost interest in it, his agitation painfully clear.

“Toni’s swimming in the pool,” Adele said, trying to change the subject. “Why don’t you stop by and say hi, I know she’d love to see you.”

Franklin nodded, but his attention was elsewhere. After a long moment he said quietly:

“You make all these decisions in your life, and they all seem like the right decisions at the time. You think you’re doing the right thing. And it’s only later that you realize, no, they were exactly the wrong decisions, and instead of bringing you what you wanted, they only carried you even farther away from your dreams. And somehow you’ve got to live with that.”

He was clenching and unclenching his right hand. Adele reached out and cupped his hand in hers.

“Daddy, you
did
do the right thing. You did right by your family. There’s no use dwelling on what might have been.”

He stared at her. “Tell me you don’t,” he said.

Adele flinched. She couldn’t find the words to reply.

Franklin pushed aside his barely-eaten sandwich and said, “Guess I’m not hungry.” He stood. “I’d best be getting home. Marie will worry.”

He kissed her on the top of her head, like he used to do when she was a little girl. “Bye, honey.” Before Adele could think of a way to keep him there, he was gone. She tried to finish her sandwich, but quickly found she had lost her appetite as well. She paid the check and left.

On her way back to the French fry stand, she glanced over at the pool across the midway, looking for Toni, who had worked her way up to the ten-foot diving board, much to Adele’s distress. She didn’t see her daughter, but to her surprise she did catch a glimpse of her father—as he was exiting the Casino Bar next to the pool, on his way to the Hudson gate.

She stood there, chilled to the quick on a hot sultry day, then hurried over to the Casino, where Harry Shepherd was filling in at the bar. “Harry,” she said, disquieted, “that man who was just in here, did he order anything?”

“Just a beer,” Harry replied. “Why?”

Adele blinked back tears, the pain in her father’s heart filling her own.

More than once that day, Adele found the tears again welling up, but pretended it was the steam from the frying basket making her eyes water. This didn’t seem to convince Jim, who, when the park closed at midnight, asked, “Adele, you okay? Something wrong with your dad?”

She locked up the cash register and forced a smile. “Not much gets past you, does it?”

“Hard to miss. All day you’ve looked so blue, I wanted to check to see if you were still breathing.”

She laughed. “Thanks, but I’ll be okay.”

He still didn’t look convinced.

“Look,” he said, “once we’re done here, why don’t we go over to Joe’s? Coffee’s on me.”

“That’s sweet of you, Jim, but I’ve got to get home. My neighbor’s been watching the kids.”

“Okay. But if there’s ever anything I can do…”

All at once his hand was touching her waist.

“I mean, I know it must be tough, running this stand on your own, and with two kids to boot…”

Adele found herself quick-frozen to the spot, but the touch of his hand felt warm—too warm. For a moment she welcomed it—then sense won out over sensation and she slapped his hand away.

“Don’t you
ever
do that again,” she said.

“Look, I was just trying to—”

“I know what you were trying to do,” she told him, “and if you ever try it again, you’re fired.” She fought to keep herself, and her voice, from trembling. “You
got
that?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, backing off. “Sorry.”

“Now drop the awnings and let’s get out of here.”

Jim did as he was told, she locked up the stand and hurried away toward the parking lot before he could say another word.

In her car she sat with her hands trembling on the steering wheel, jammed the key into the ignition, and went careening out of the lot, not sure who she was angrier with—Jim, for having exploited her trust, or herself, for wanting him, if only for a moment, to do just that.

10

A
DELE AND
M
ARIE WERE ABLE
to keep liquor out of the Worth home, but Franklin easily circumvented this by doing his drinking outside the house, in one of the many taverns and roadhouses along Palisade Avenue. Marie kept the car keys in her possession at all times so Franklin would not commit vehicular suicide, but this meant he often staggered home dead drunk for all the neighbors to see, which added a new dimension of mortification for Marie. She and Adele, along with Dr. DeCecio, begged Franklin to stop, to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, but Franklin only withdrew further into himself, in final retreat from his battle with life.

After the incident with Jim, Adele contrived reasons for Toni to help out with the stand, and the buffer worked, keeping Jim at a safe distance. One morning in late July, as mother and daughter arrived as usual around 10:30
A.M.
, they were making their way across the main midway when Minette Dobson hurried up to them and asked, “Have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Laurent Schwarz,” she said. “Roscoe’s son. He’s dead.”

Toni lost her breath, like the time she had belly flopped and had it knocked out of her. “What!” she said when she could breathe again.

“How?” Adele said, equally stunned.

“Killed in action, I think. In the South Pacific.”

“Oh, God,” Adele whispered. “Is Roscoe here?”

“No, he’s at home. Anna Halpin’s covering for him.”

Adele took Toni’s hand and they reversed direction, out the front gate and down two blocks to 740 Palisade Avenue. Toni felt numbly unreal, as if she were dreaming something new and terrible. As the two of them walked up the steps to the Schwarz home, Adele saw in the front window a red-and-white ribbon emblazoned with two stars—one blue and one gold. Adele fought back tears as she rang the doorbell. It was answered by Roscoe, whose own eyes, Adele saw at once, were red from crying.

“Oh, Roscoe,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

He nodded, as if unable to speak, and took them inside. Roscoe’s wife, Hazel, was trying to comfort their four daughters, ranging in age from nineteen to twenty-six. They had all been crying, and looking at them, at the grief in their pretty faces, Toni felt anxious and afraid.

“Oh God, Hazel,” Adele said as she embraced her friend, feeling Hazel’s sob as she held her. “What happened to him?”

Toni remembered playing in this house, playing with toys belonging to Laurent, eight years older than her but amused by this little girl who rejected his sisters’ dolls in favor of his toy trucks.

“He was stationed in American Samoa,” Roscoe said quietly. “He wasn’t even in combat. Some fellow fell off a landing barge and Laurent jumped into the water, trying to rescue him. But he … didn’t make it.”

Toni said in a small voice: “He died?”

Roscoe nodded. “Yes, honey. He did.”

“But he died a hero,” Adele said. “Trying to save someone’s life.”

“He was a good boy,” Roscoe said, an almost unbearable sadness and pride in his voice. “He always tried to do the right thing.”

He broke down into tears, unmanned by grief, his wife clinging to him. It was all too much for Toni. Terrified by the naked pain and loss all around her, she turned on her heel and ran out the front door.

She heard her mother cry out “Toni!” but she didn’t stop, couldn’t bear being in that house a moment longer. She raced down the street, unwilling to face the truth that Laurent was gone, that she would never see him again, and afraid to voice the fear that really drove her away from the Schwarzes and back through the bright welcoming gates of Palisades Park. In here she could find refuge, in here there was laughter and merriment and the roar of a roller coaster to drown out the sound of a grown man weeping.

But the park wasn’t open yet, there were no roller coasters to occlude the sadness in her heart, and she didn’t know where to run to. She stood there in the center of the midway, longing for the sound of a calliope.

“Toni?”

She turned to find her mother, winded from chasing her down.

Adele put a hand on Toni’s shoulder. “Are you all right, honey?”

Toni grabbed her in a bear hug and clung to Adele as if she were a tree in a hurricane.

“Don’t let Daddy die,” Toni said as she burst into sobs. “Please, Mommy, I don’t want him to die, I want him to come home!”

Tears welled in Adele’s eyes as she held tight to her daughter. “Daddy won’t die, sweetie,” she assured her. “He’ll come back to us.”

Toni collapsed into helpless tears, terrified that what had happened to Laurent might happen to her father—knowing for the first time that it
could
happen to her father—as she wept into her mother’s chest.

*   *   *

Espíritu Santo was a big island compared to the many tiny atolls, barely more substantial than a mirage, scattered like freckles across the face of the South Pacific: fifteen hundred square miles of volcanic rock and coral terraces, fringed by tall coconut palms and white horseshoe beaches. The climate was hot and humid, but the air was sweet, scented by frangipani. Eddie’s barracks was one of dozens of Quonset huts clustered like mushrooms along the shore, amid palm trees bent by gentle trade winds.

Not so gentle was the clangor that awakened Eddie on his first night on Santo, around midnight—along with the cry of the watch officer, calling, “Condition Red! Air raid, everybody out!”

Eddie slipped on his britches and jumped to his feet, but the men around him just groaned their dismay and slowly, almost lackadaisically, rose from their cots. The guy next to Eddie’s didn’t even bother to get up, so Eddie poked him. “Hey! Fella. Air raid, get up!”

“Aw, hell,” the man said, opening his eyes reluctantly, “it’s just Piss Call Charlie, that’s all.”

“Who?”

“I was havin’ such a nice
blonde
dream, too,” he said in a soft Southern drawl. “Goddamn Japs.”

Eddie and his bunkmates straggled out of the Quonset hut, where the watch officer was sounding the alarm by banging a length of pipe against an empty acetylene tank. From above came the drone of a plane circling overhead, its engine audibly different from the engines of American fighters.

In pitch darkness they stumbled to the ditches in which they were told to take shelter. “What is it up there,” Eddie asked, “a Japanese Zero?”

Stifling a yawn, the Southerner nodded. “Ol’ Charlie swings by ’bout once a week, drops a couple bombs in the bush—unless there’s a full moon he can’t see for shit, it’s darker out here than the inside of a turd.”