The Christmas Kid (6 page)

THERE WAS A DOUBLE-PARKED
panel truck on 52nd Street near Ninth Avenue, and a sanitation truck trying to squeeze by, and a line of backed-up cars from Jersey, their drivers leaning on the horns in the cold, anxious morning. Then one of the sanitation men came around from the front to see whether the squeeze was possible. He was very calm. He gave soothing signals to the people in the cars and then estimated the room the truck needed to pass through. I knew him. Sonny Rosselli.

“Hey, Sonny!”

He turned and I waved and he came to my car and peered at my face, as if trying to remember. I told him who I was and got out of the car. He embraced me and then the Jersey drivers were crazed again, and I told Sonny I’d pull around the corner after he got the truck through the morning slalom.

Sonny Rosselli. Thirty years ago, he’d been Sonny Rosselli the poet.

“Hey, listen, I’d love to talk to ya,” he said. “But I can’t leave the truck. I’m off at half past eleven. Can I meet ya someplace?”

“The coffee shop next to the Music Hall,” I said. “Eleven thirty.”

All morning I thought about Sonny Rosselli. I had met him in the seventh grade, when he moved to our Brooklyn neighborhood from the Bronx. He was a good stickball player, a strong, curly-haired son of Sicilian immigrants, with a beautiful sister and two older brothers. He was lousy in math, but he could write like an angel.

“I love the way these words sound,” he’d say. “
Shore,
I mean. ‘Shore’ sounds like a
shore,
know what I mean? Like the ocean’s comin’ right up there and making that sound. Shooore.” He liked “meadow,” too, and “dusk,” and “dark.” And soon he began to string these words together and make poetry. I don’t remember any of the poems, and perhaps they weren’t any good; I remember that Sonny’s major ambition was to have a poem published in Nick Kenny’s column in the
Daily Mirror
.

“Look at
this,
” he’d say, showing me Nick Kenny. “Listen to what these guys do wit’
words
.”

We had a nice Xaverian brother named Rembert in the seventh grade, and he must have realized that Sonny Rosselli was special; he gave Sonny a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus, and gave him passing grades in math as long as Sonny kept making poems. He explained to Sonny that there were people called poets; that was their job; they wrote poems. And Sonny started saying that maybe when he grew up he could be a poet.

“Imagine,” he’d say. “You write poems all day and they pay you for it!”

That spring, the miracle happened. Sonny Rosselli sent a poem to Nick Kenny and Nick Kenny published it. It was about love, of course. And Brother Rembert had to fight back tears as he held up the
Mirror
for all of us to see and then read us that poem. We were all rough kids from the wrong side of Brooklyn, but one of us, at least, had made it. Sonny Rosselli was a celebrity. A poet. An honest-to-God published poet.

His great moment didn’t last. The other boys teased him brutally, making swishing gestures at him, talking with pursed lips as they read off the verses. Sonny was confused; why wouldn’t they want to hear something beautiful? He fought three separate schoolyard fights on one afternoon, hurting his hands. He won all three, but he left the last one in tears.

“They’re so
dumb,
” he said later. “They’re so
stupid,
know what I mean?”

He didn’t show his poems to everybody now; he took them to Brother Rembert, and a few of the other kids; but he didn’t get up to recite in class. He didn’t talk about becoming a poet, either. In that neighborhood in those days, you could say you wanted to be a cop or an ironworker, a fireman or dock worker; you never said you wanted to be a poet. Then one Friday, Nick Kenny published another poem. Sonny Rosselli was embarrassed. Even afraid.

“I hope my father don’t see the paper,” he said. “Or my brothers.”

That Monday, he didn’t come to school. I went around to his house in the afternoon and his mother said he wasn’t feeling well. I looked past her and saw Sonny. His face was swollen, and there was a bandage over his left brow. I didn’t find out for three more days that when he came home that Friday night, his father had beaten the poetry out of him forever.

“He says poetry’s for fags,” Sonny explained later. “Maybe he’s right.”

We went to different high schools, and then I went into the navy and he joined the army and we lost track of each other. And now, on this late morning years later, we were sitting in a booth in a midtown coffee shop, eating scrambled eggs. He told me about his life: a nice wife, three grown-up kids, a house in Queens Village that was almost paid off. His brother Frankie lived in California. His sister married a cop and was a grandmother already. His parents were still alive, living in Bensonhurst.

“Do you ever write poetry any more?” I asked.

“Nah.”

“You sorry you didn’t follow it up?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

He looked out past the booths to the street. Traffic was jammed. Three Rockettes from the Music Hall hurried in and took a booth together.

“Maybe I was born ten years later, it would’ve been different,” Sonny said. “Maybe I could’ve gotten into rock and roll. I
know
I could write as good as them guys.” He laughed. “But who knows? It’s a long time ago now. And, hey, it’s not the most important thing in the world. I’m
alive,
right? My brother Charlie got killed in Korea. I’m still here.”

The Rockettes finished their coffees and left. Sonny ordered another cup. The waitress took our plates away.

“The truth?” he said quickly. “I never forgave my father. I tried. I used to say to myself he don’t
know
any better. He’s from the
old
country, all he knows is
work
. Work is what you do wit’ your
back,
your
hands
. Everything else is stealin’. He meant right. But if he ever said to me, ‘Sonny, this is beautiful, this poem,’ I would’ve lived another life.

“I mean, I don’t mind my life. I love my family. I do honest work. But if he’d’ve been wit’ me, maybe I could’ve taken the rest of it. The crap from the neighborhood, I mean. I was a kid. I didn’t want to be different. I used to think, jeez, I got this
thing,
like a
gift
. And how come God give me this thing? But maybe I didn’t deserve it. Maybe that was why I gave it up so easy. Get what I mean?”

He played with the coffee, and then asked me a lot of questions about my life, and I talked about accidents and luck, kids and a marriage, disappointments and mistakes. We finished our coffees and paid and went out into the cold morning.

“It’s gonna snow soon,” he said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“Yeah.”

“I love a snowstorm,” he said. “I love how quiet it gets. I love the way everything stops. I love the way all the dirt and the garbage gets covered up, and we got this great big beautiful white city all around us. I always used to take the kids for walks in the snow. Show them how the trees looked and the way the wind makes these sculptures, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do.”

We walked toward Seventh Avenue, where the sanitation truck was waiting. He had made a life of cleaning up the mess left behind by humans, and I wanted to thank him, but didn’t know how.

“You know this guy Yeats?” he asked. “The greatest, isn’t he?
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree…
I used to read him to the kids when they were little. I’d turn off the TV and then I’d read Yeats. I’d make them repeat the lines. I’d try ta explain what the guy was
gettin’
at, even when I didn’t understand myself. I’d say, it’s like a
song
. It’s like
music
. Like some beautiful
music
. And you know something? They loved it.” He laughed. “They loved me standin’ there and readin’ that Yeats. Oh, wow, did they love that.”

I realized suddenly that his eyes were brimming with tears. “I gotta go,” he said quickly. “Someone’ll say I’m, you know, malingering.” He hurried away, and climbed up on the truck, waved, and was gone with a rumble and a clanking of gears. A cold wind blew in from the river. The sky was the color of steel. It felt like snow, all right. I walked quickly to the west through the crowds, thinking of Sonny Rosselli and his lost gift, his poet’s lovely heart, and the astonishing gifts he gave his children. It began at last to snow and the city huddled in the great white silence.

CAVANAUGH BOUGHT THE CAR
at a city auction on Atlantic Avenue. It was a pale-blue two-door 1979 Chevy with only 21,000 miles on it, and the $800 price was a bargain. After finishing the paperwork and paying cash, he drove the Chevy to a car wash, had it cleaned inside and out, and then went home to Bay Ridge. That night, after dinner, he stood up and faced his wife, Marie, and his daughter, Kelly, and with a grand flourish handed the younger woman the car key.

“Oh, Daddy,” Kelly said. “I don’t be
lieve
it.”

“With an A average at Hunter,” he said, “you deserve it. Besides, I don’t like that you have to use the subway. All I ask is you drive safe, you use the safety belt. No drinking, you know. No speeding.”

“Daddy, I’m twenty years old,” she said, trying to smother her irritation. “I’m not a kid.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “But you never know what happens you get some numskull in the car. Come on, take a look.…”

The three of them pulled on coats and went outside and down the block. The car was parked in front of a grocery store, and it gleamed in the light.

“I love it!” Kelly said. “I want to drive it, right
now
.”

“It’s late,” Cavanaugh said. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. Take it out tomorrow. A nice long drive. Out on the Belt. Jones Beach, someplace like that.”

“He’s right, sweetheart,” her mother said. And that settled it. They went home, and Kelly called her boyfriend, Mike, and made a date for the morning. She said, “You’re gonna love it, Mike.” He said, “I’m sure I will.”

The next day Kelly and Mike took turns driving the car. They went to Coney Island for hot dogs; they strolled in the bright cold sunshine on the winter beach at Riis Park; they drove into Nassau County, stopped for coffee at a Howard Johnson’s, drove back. Before dinner, they sat in the car and necked. They agreed to meet later that night and go to a movie. Kelly said she wished a drive-in was open. “I’ve never been to one,” she said. “I just see them in movies.”

“We’ll go every weekend next summer,” Mike said.

That night, driving home from Manhattan, where they’d seen
Terms of Endearment
and Kelly had spent three full minutes crying in the lobby, they first noticed the smell.

“What’s that smell, anyway?” she said, opening the window. “It’s like Starrett City in here.” She checked the emergency brake; it wasn’t engaged. “Wow…”

“That smell isn’t rubber,” Mike said. He was driving now. “It smells, I don’t know,
disgusting
.”

The smell was loamy, decaying, rotting. They opened both windows and let the cold winter air blow around them. Mike turned off the heater. The smell remained.

“It’s like maybe an animal is caught in the engine or something,” he said. “Maybe a rat or something.”

“Well, pull over and let’s look.”

They stopped on Fourth Avenue and Mike got out and opened the hood. He peered into the engine, tried to look under the chassis, saw nothing. He opened the trunk. It was empty.

“I don’t know what the hell it is,” he said. “Tomorrow, when it’s light, we’ll go over it with a fine-tooth comb.”

The next day, the smell was gone, but Kelly and Mike examined the car in a gas station run by one of Cavanaugh’s friends. There were no traces of dead animals, no forgotten fruit or plant that might have rotted or decayed. The engine was clean, the chassis in good shape. On the floor of the trunk there was a faint outline of a stain, but it gave off no odor. Kelly wet her fingers from the station’s water fountain and rubbed them in the stain. There was no smell.

“Jeez,” Mike said, “maybe it was
me
.”

Kelly laughed. “Get out the Right Guard.”

“I guess I better.”

Kelly reported all of this to Cavanaugh, who smiled and dismissed the problem with a small wave of his hand. “Maybe it was one of those inversions you read about,” he said. “You know, from the stuff they’re always burning in Jersey and it floats over here and gives us diseases? Otherwise, how does it drive?”

“Like a dream,” Kelly said. “A real dream, Daddy.”

That night, as Kelly and Mike drove from Brooklyn to a party in Manhattan, the smell returned.

“Oh, God,” Kelly said. “What’ll we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ve gotta do
something,
Mike!”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me, Kelly. Okay? I didn’t make the thing smell. And it’s
your
car!”

“But what if the smell
sticks
to us?” she said, her voice rising as Mike drove the Chevy across the Brooklyn Bridge. “What if it gets into us? And we sit at dinner tonight with these people, and we
stink
?”

“Just say we’re from Brooklyn,” Mike said, smiling.

“It’s not funny!”

He slammed the dashboard with an open palm. “Stop! Okay? No more! I don’t want to hear about it! If you’re worried, we’ll park and grab a cab, take the subway. Okay? But stop talking about it!”

They drove in silence to the party, and Kelly remembered a year when she was small and her father had taken then to Florida, and one night they drove on a road through a swamp, and the swamp smelled like this, too: rotting, dense, fetid, full of slimy things that died in the dark. Somehow…corrupt.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as they parked on an industrial street in SoHo. The party was in a loft down the block. “I just…It’s such a nice car. I wanted it to be perfect.”

“Look, Kelly, let’s forget it, okay? I don’t want to discuss it.”

She got out and slammed the door hard. “You are a real ass.…”

“Hey, why don’t you go to this party on your own? Okay? They’re
your
friends and it’s
your
car, and maybe without me around you won’t have to worry about the
stink
!”

She leaned on the fender and started to cry. Mike put his arm around her. “I’m sorry, baby. I really am. I am. Let’s just…We’ve gotta get rid of this car.”

But Kelly Cavanaugh didn’t get rid of the car. The next day she had it scrubbed again, steamed, cleaned. She had the mat removed from the trunk, replaced with a new one; there was some kind of stain on the metal beneath the mat, as if a chemical had burned its way into its surface; but nothing that should create an odor. Driving away, the car smelled fresh and clean.

And then at night, the fetid breath of the swamp once more engulfed her.

She went to her father and told him. He laughed, she protested, then he promised to see what he could do about getting rid of the odor.

“It’s not a matter of cleaning, Daddy,” she said. “There’s something else wrong with the car. It’s like it’s, I don’t know…cursed.”

Cavanaugh blinked. “I’ll check it out.”

The next day he called the city auto pound, trying to learn the history of the car, and got nowhere. He called a cop friend, gave him all the relevant numbers, said nothing about the smell, told a few jokes about firemen, laughed, hung up, and went about his work. Late in the afternoon, the cop called back. He had the history.

“The weird thing is this,” the cop said. “The car was found out at Kennedy Airport in the fall. No plates, no ID marks. Probably stolen somewheres, out of state. Dropped off here. But here’s the thing: there was a guy in the trunk. With three bullets in the head. A doper, they figure. He’d been there maybe a week, so I guess he was a little ripe.”

Cavanaugh thanked him and hurried home. He was watching the news when Kelly arrived from school. He turned down the sound.

“We’ll sell the car tomorrow, honey,” he said. “And get a new one.”

She looked at him and smiled. He turned back to the news.

“I mean, what do you need with a car that smells, right? We’ll get another one.” He hadn’t smoked for four years, but he patted his shirt pocket, looking for cigarettes. “So how was school?” he said. “How’s everything going?”