five

My grandfather had a lot more money than I’d imagined. He took numbers in his shop and made loans to his customers for decades. There were piles and piles of cash in a safe he kept in the basement of his house. The lion’s share of this booty went to my mother. I think she got even more than my grandma did, but it may have been that Grandma Betty felt sorry for her and wanted to give her a chance to start a new life.

Right before Labor Day, my mother and I took a taxi to East 52nd Street in Manhattan. The block dead-ended to a high ridge with the East River and the FDR Drive flowing below. It was a very ritzy block, even I could see that and I knew jack shit about the city. There was a Rolls Royce idling near the corner on First Avenue. A chauffeur wearing a hat was sitting behind the wheel which was on the wrong side, the British side. It was the first Rolls I had ever seen in my life.

We walked up to a big brick building. A friendly doorman let us in and handed my mother an envelope that bore her name scrawled in black ink. The smiling doorman said his name was Kenny. He had a string-beany Dick Van Dyke type of frame and a very young face. His uniform was too big for his body and he looked like a kid wearing his old man’s clothes.

Kenny showed us to the elevator and rambled on about the heat and the impending rain. He seemed like a good guy even if he was a bit of a blabbermouth. He left us alone at the elevator and my mother pressed 6. Inside the envelope was a key that let us into apartment 6K at the end of a long hallway.

The living room was empty and had shiny wood floors. The windows looked out onto 52nd Street. We could see part of the river and the Queens shoreline. My mother showed me the bedroom that was going to be mine.

She went to the bathroom and I stood alone in the center of the room. There were two windows that faced the back of the very wide building just south of ours. All I could see were windows, maybe a hundred of them. A big wall of eyes or one big fly eye that was trained right at me. I could see people behind some of the eyes. I could watch them go about their daily lives. It was a strange sensation and I felt like it was wrong to be watching them. But apparently they didn’t care. If they wanted privacy they could pull down the shades.

I waited for my mom in the kitchen. She was in the bathroom for a long time and I started to worry. I killed time looking through the drawers and cupboards but all I found were some chopsticks. She finally came out of the bathroom and asked me what I thought of the place.

The idea of moving scared me. The rooms were big, the building in a fancy part of town; it was all too foreign. And my mother hadn’t told me anything about what our life here would be like. There were too many unknowns: Where would I go to school? Was she getting a job? Was it a temporary move and we’d go back to Queens in a few months? Or did my mother meet a new guy at some point and he was the one renting the apartment for us and now she was going to open one of the closet doors and Jerry or Jim or whoever the fuck would appear and introduce himself as my new father? I was scared of all the questions and even more scared of the answers.

I opened the refrigerator, expecting it to smell bad. It didn’t. I took that as an okay sign. There was nothing inside except an open can of Coke. I emptied it into the sink.

My mother asked me the same question again: “What do you think, Mitt?” She was the only person who called me that.

“It’s nice” was all I could manage to say.

She sat down Indian style in the middle of the living room and asked me to sit across from her. I did and then I noticed that she was still on the pills.

“I think we owe it to ourselves. No?”

She waited for me to reply but I didn’t.

“We had a rough year and I think a new beginning would do us both a world of good.”

Still no answer from me.

She stared at me and smiled. She did have a lovely smile. And if a drug was responsible for it, well . . . so be it. Pills or no pills, I think she was genuinely happy that day.

As for me, I can’t really say I was unhappy. Yes, I was afraid, but I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t going to miss anybody from my neighborhood. Maybe Willie a little bit. Maybe not. I wasn’t so attached to anyone except my Grandma Betty and my mother assured me we would be seeing her at least once a week. I mean, we were only fifteen minutes away from Jackson Heights by taxi or train. But psychologically it was another story. For me, the East River may as well have been the Atlantic Ocean.

“When do we move in?” It was my first real question about our new life. It would also be the only one I asked that day.

“The movers are coming Friday morning. We have a lot of work to do, Mitty.”

Friday. Wow. She was wasting no time.

We took the elevator back down to the lobby. A different doorman was on duty. He smiled at us as we walked toward him but his attention was immediately drawn to the entrance. A short, skinny guy dressed in all black with big dark sunglasses and very short bleached-blond hair stumbled his way inside. He had on a black leather jacket even though it was ninety degrees.

He smelled bad. Like cigarettes, booze, BO, cheap perfume, and something like kerosene or the gas from a stove with its pilot light out. I was sure the doorman was going to throw him right out. He looked like the junkies I would see hanging out by the Roosevelt Avenue subway station hustling change for a token or a shot.

But I was wrong.

The doorman motioned to my mother and me to wait a second as he graciously greeted the man in black. “Hello, sir.” He smiled as he said it.

“Hey, Arthur,” the guy mumbled in a low voice. No doubt he was fucked up on something. “I might be getting a package in a little bit. Send the kid right up.”

“Will do, sir.”

He may have been high but he certainly belonged there. The doorman actually tipped his hat as the skinny guy propelled himself through the lobby in jerky spurts. He came right toward us and my mother and I had to move quickly to get out of his way. I don’t think he even knew we were there.

As he passed us I saw that the hair on the back of his head had a cross shaved into it. Not the Jesus cross but the cross the German army wore as medals. The Iron Cross. I watched as he went into the elevator, pushed a button, and then sat down on the floor Indian style, just like we had done minutes ago. He slumped his head down like he was exhausted and disappeared behind the closing door.

“So we’ll see you Friday?” the doorman said to my mother.

“Yes, Friday.” Mother looked at her shoes.

“Anything I can do for you, please let us know.”

My mother thanked him.

“Welcome to 446 East 52nd Street!”

He held the door open and we walked out onto our new block.