Palisades Park (52 page)

“Oh—sure,” she said, just as quickly. “I want a family, someday, kids. But I also want to keep diving.”

“You mean … even after having kids?”

“Sure. Even if it’s only playing summers at Palisades. Why not?”

Jimmy smiled and said, “Well, you
do
have a loan to repay.” They laughed, quickly returning their attentions to their fried shrimp and cod.

The relationship became more passionate with the proximity of hotel rooms, though always just stopping at the door, with Jimmy driving home afterward. One night, though, in the midst of a blinding thunderstorm that canceled Toni’s evening show, they decided that driving back was too dicey, so Toni invited Jimmy to sleep on the couch in her hotel room.

Toni got into her pajamas in the bathroom as Jimmy, in boxers and undershirt, threw a blanket and pillow onto the lumpy couch. They smiled awkwardly at each other, then she said, “Well … g’night, I guess.”

“G’night.” He gave her what started out as a light goodnight kiss. But they both quickly became more amorous, Toni wrapping her fingers around the nape of Jimmy’s neck—

And then a little voice inside told her
Stop,
and she suddenly pulled away. “Wait—no,” she said, breathless, “maybe this isn’t a—good idea…”

“Uh … okay,” Jimmy said, confused.

“I mean … maybe it’s too soon. Maybe we should…” She stopped, sighed, then decided on the truth: “Jimmy, I’m just … afraid. That you’ll be disappointed when I tell you that I’m not a … a virgin.”

She said this last so softly he strained to hear it.

He gazed at her soberly and she braced herself for rejection.

“Toni … I’m sorry, but…”
Oh God, here it comes,
she thought. “I’m afraid you may be disappointed to learn … neither am I.”

She looked at him, nonplussed, until he broke into a laugh. She happily laughed along with him, and then he cupped his hands around her waist, pulled her to him, and they took up where they had left off.

*   *   *

The last “bird,” as Bunty Hill had put it, came home to roost in January of 1953, when a convicted gunman serving time in state prison testified before the State Crime Commission that in 1935, after being wounded in a waterfront shootout, he was given shelter from pursuing authorities by Chief Frank Borrell of Cliffside Park. The accusation was page-one news in
The New York Times
; Borrell denied ever knowing the man.

Then, on the morning of March 12, Toni was at home reading the morning paper as her father was bringing in the mail. “Hey, Dad,” she said, not without a certain glee, “the Chief’s been indicted.”

Looking distracted, Eddie said, “What?”

She read aloud: “‘Frank Borrell, the easygoing police chief of Cliffside Park, New Jersey, was indicted yesterday, along with a cousin and two members of his police force, by the Bergen County rackets grand jury … charged with having protected the gambling empire of Frank Erickson, who is serving eighteen months in prison, and lying to the grand jury.’” She whooped. “Get this: Erickson rented two buildings from Borrell’s cousin, Patsy, yet the Chief says he never knew about them and Patsy claims he’s never even spoken to Erickson … even though his son collects Erickson’s rent. Hah!”

Eddie appeared to barely listen to any of this. He sat down at the kitchen table and tossed down one of the envelopes he had just brought in. “Look at this,” he said tonelessly, and Toni glanced over at it.

The return address read
UNITED STATES ARMY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

“Oh my God,” Toni whispered.

Eddie stared at it as if it were a venomous snake coiled an inch away.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Toni said.

Numbly, Eddie picked up the envelope, tore it open, and took out a letter. Toni watched as his face seemed to show first relief, then shock.

“What? What does it say?” she asked.

“It says that … Jack is coming home,” he said flatly. Before Toni could react, he added softly, “On a medical discharge.”

22

E
DDIE AND
T
ONI WAITED
as Jack’s train pulled into Newark’s Central Station, not knowing what to expect when its doors opened and Jack walked out. Would he even be able to walk? “Medical discharge” could mean anything, and in the week since Eddie received the Army’s cryptic letter he had feared the worst. Would he be crippled? Blind? Disfigured? In a wheelchair, on crutches, or missing an arm, a leg, an eye? The fact that they hadn’t received a letter from Jack himself only amplified his anxiety.

“At least he’s still alive,” Toni said, reading her father’s face perfectly.

The train braked to a halt and within minutes was disgorging passengers, largely civilian with a scattering of khaki-clad soldiers or white-uniformed naval personnel. Some of these did, in fact, wear visible badges of injury: an eye patch, crutches, a face half swathed in bandages, the absence of a limb. Eddie braced himself for the worst.

“Look!” Toni cried, pointing. “There he is!”

Emerging from a train door about fifty feet down the track was Jack, carrying a duffel bag and wearing his khaki-and-olive-drab Army uniform and garrison cap. From what Eddie could see, he still had two legs, two arms, two eyes, and walked with no perceptible limp.

“Jack!” Toni called as she took off like a bullet toward him. “Jack!”

He turned and looked in Toni’s direction, saw her, and seemed to smile. Eddie, following, thought it a thin smile at best—as thin as Jack himself appeared. Toni ran up to him, threw her arms around him, and hugged him. “Oh God, Jack, thank God you’re okay!”

Jack didn’t return the hug and even seemed a little uncomfortable with it. “Hey, Sis,” he said quietly. “Thanks, but—gimme a little air, okay?”

“Oh. Sure,” she said, letting go. “God, it’s good to see you again.”

“Good to see you too,” he said, a little weakly.

Eddie came up, outstretched a hand. “Welcome home, son.”

Jack just stared at Eddie’s hand, his eyes betraying something like panic, and did not take his father’s hand.

“Thanks, Dad,” he said, hefting his bag nervously from his left hand to his right. “It’s … good to see you. Good to be … back.”

The way he said it, it sounded almost as if he wasn’t sure of either.

“Well, let’s get you home,” Eddie said, reflexively taking Jack’s bag from him. Startled, Jack stuck his hands in his pants pockets.

Jack spoke little as they made their way through the terminal and out to the car, so Eddie and Toni filled the silence by updating him on doings at the park and the bar. Jack slid into the backseat, Eddie and Toni in front. As Eddie keyed the ignition he said, “Hey, they finally finished the turnpike. It goes all the way up to the George Washington Bridge.”

“Uh-huh,” Jack said, leaning his head back on the seat. “God, I’m tired. Feels like I haven’t slept in days.”

He closed his eyes, and within minutes he was out for the count, sleeping through the manifold wonders of the New Jersey Turnpike.

*   *   *

Eddie had left Lehua in charge of the bar for the night, so when they reached home, he and Toni prepared the kind of dinner they figured Jack hadn’t had in a while—grilled steak, baked potato with sour cream and chives, and homemade split-pea soup. While they were cooking, Jack settled back into his old room, then walked around the house, looking out the windows at the Manhattan skyline or at the Palisades. He turned on the television set, watching
Howdy Doody
for a minute or two with a look of bemused wonder on his face—the same look he gave to everything in the house, including the kitchen where Eddie and Toni were working. He stood in the doorway, hands in pockets, and said quietly:

“I can’t believe this is all—real.”

Eddie looked up from stirring the soup. “What do you mean, Jack?”

“A few weeks ago, I was in a—a snowy foxhole in Korea, my feet freezing, ducking low to avoid burp gun fire while I took potshots at Chinese troops up the hill.
That
was real. All this—just doesn’t seem real to me.”

“It will,” Eddie assured him. “Takes time. Is it really as cold over there as they say it is?”

“Colder. Forty below on a good day. So cold your canteen bursts. Your feet never get warm because they sweat inside their Army-issue, Mickey Mouse rubber boots, and then the sweat freezes in the boot.”

“My God,” Toni said.

“Frostbite kills as many men as enemy fire,” Jack said. “And when a man dies in that kind of cold, his body just—freezes solid. Stiff as an ironing board. I saw men stacked up like—”

He caught himself. “This—this isn’t dinnertime conversation. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie said. “Sounds like you saw some … awful things.”

Jack made no reply.

“Soup’s on,” Toni announced. “Let’s eat.”

They sat down to dinner, Jack last, and for several moments he stared at his plate with a mixture of longing and hesitation. Then, slowly, he took his hands out of his pockets and reached for a spoon with his right hand.

Toni noticed first: Jack’s hand was trembling like a leaf in a storm, so badly it appeared to be an effort to even lower his spoon into the soup. And when he did raise it, the spoon shook off half the soup before it could reach his mouth. Toni didn’t want to stare but couldn’t help herself.

Eddie felt as if he’d had a stake driven into his chest.

Jack switched the spoon to his other hand, and this time he was able to get something close to a full spoonful of soup to his mouth. “Left hand’s a—a little better than the right,” he said.

“Jack, my God, what happened?” Eddie said softly. “Some kind of … nerve damage?”

“Something like that,” Jack said, eyes downcast, concentrating on trying to finish his soup without spilling half of it.

“Were you … shot?” Toni asked in an atypically small voice.

Jack shook his head.

“Mortar strike?” Eddie asked.

Jack looked pained to speak of it. “A mortar was involved.”

“But there’s something they can do for that, right?” Toni asked, ever the optimist. “They can operate on the nerves?”

Jack put down his spoon, picked up a fork with his right hand and a knife with his left. He used his trembling right hand to anchor the steak as best he could, then sliced off a small piece of meat with his left hand. It clearly took an effort; perspiration beaded his forehead.

“No,” he said in response to Toni’s question. “But they say it—may get better with time, and rest.”

He chewed his steak with nothing like the pleasure Eddie and Toni had hoped he would. Eddie’s heart was breaking.

“You know, Jack Rosenthal—Irving’s brother—has Parkinson’s disease,” Eddie said. “I’ll ask Irving for the name of Jack’s doctor. Maybe he can suggest something—”

“I’ve seen enough doctors, thanks,” Jack said flatly. He managed another piece of steak, then, embarrassed, let his knife and fork drop back on the table. He stood up. “I’m not really hungry. I’m sorry, I know you went to a lot of trouble. But I’m just going to go lie down for a while.”

He hurried away from the table and out of the kitchen.

For a long moment there was silence in the room … then Toni began to cry. She made no sound, but tears streamed down her cheeks and her chest was wracked with sobs she couldn’t vocalize. Eddie went to her, wrapped his arms around his daughter, and let his own tears fall.

*   *   *

Toni woke around one
A.M.
to the sound of floorboards creaking in the hallway. She got up, passed her father’s bedroom—he was sound asleep, nothing short of a tree falling on the house could wake him—then past her brother’s, which was empty. Hearing footfalls on the back steps outside, she returned to her bedroom, pulled on a winter robe and slippers, then opened the back door and hurried down the steps.

She peered around the corner of the house into the side yard, where she saw Jack, fully dressed, standing in front of a metal barrel in which their landlords, the Murphys, would burn leaves. Jack threw a handful of oak leaves into the barrel—even from here Toni could see his hand tremble, giving the leaves a shaky spin as they spiraled into the big metal drum. After a few more handfuls he reached into a pocket—and took out a book of matches. He held the book in his left hand as his right tore off a match, then struggled to strike it against the matchbook. He missed it once, twice, swore softly, then finally got the match to ignite and tossed it in.

The leaves burst into flames, which spouted up, sucking oxygen from the air with a fiery inhalation. Toni, concerned, started toward him. At her approach he started, spun round, then saw it was her and let out a breath.

“Jack?” she said, coming to his side. “What are you doing out here?”

“Getting rid of stuff,” he said, and bent over to pick something off the ground. He came up with a handful of comic books—
Captain America, Sub-Mariner, Plastic Man, Detective Comics, Superman.

“What?” Toni said. “You’re not going to—”

But he did, tossing the half-dozen or so comics onto the fire, which crackled and surged as it fed on the old, dry pulp paper.

He bent down to pick up another handful, but Toni stopped him, gently putting a hand on his arm. “Jack, don’t. You’ll be able to draw again someday, I
know
it—we’ll get you the best doctors in the country—”

“This isn’t about that,” he said, shrugging off her hand. He stooped to pick up more comics and pulp magazines:
The Shadow, Doc Savage, Human Torch, USA Comics, All-Winners Comics, Blackhawk.
They shook for a moment in his hand, then he tossed them into the fire.

“Jack,
why
?” Toni asked as his old four-color dreams turned ashen.

“They’re all lies,” Jack said tonelessly, watching the corners of
Blackhawk
and
The Shadow
blacken and curl. “That’s all they are—lies.”

Toni stared helplessly as he threw the last of his comics onto the pyre.

“Jack,” she said softly, “what the hell happened over there?”

“If I tell you, Sis,” he said, “then it’s not just in my head anymore, it’s in yours. And I’m not about to do that to you.”