“My parents don’t know I climb the slate roof above my room all the way to the top,” I tell Howie through bites of an Elvis sandwich: bacon, banana, and peanut butter. “It’s four stories. Probably the highest spot in the neighborhood.”
“Well it’s there. Isn’t that the point, Mallory?” he asks.
I nod, feeling trusting enough after eight days with him to reveal my Secure Position—the roof ledge four stories over Chestnut Street that only I know how to get to.
We finish lunch and head up to my room and slip out the south-facing window to the flat roof where Gretchen and I kissed. But I plan to take Howie higher: just to our right, sitting in the open air, a segment of the upper roof hangs precariously, begging to be summited. You just have to jump to get to it. And if you can make it, you can climb to the Secure Position, balance on its forty-foot peak atop a single line of copper, and see the entire city.
“You have to jump,” I explain, pointing to the edge of roof just out of reach.
“Jump? You’re more rebel than I gave you credit for, son of Jefe. That’s a fucking fall.”
“Do you want to try it?”
“Hell, yeah,” he says, slipping off his sneakers, leaping nimbly on bare feet to the slanted section and starting the crawl up to the peak.
I keep my Pumas on and follow. We position ourselves unsteadily at the center of the copper casing where the back and front roofs join. Turning to the north, we look down at the quiet expanse of Chestnut Street. Falling back the way we had come would probably be survivable—we’d just tumble over the edge and drop to the pebble roof outside my window. But one wrong move forward and there’s nothing between us, the bricks of the walkway below, and the emerald moss growing thick between them, but not thick enough to cushion our crash.
“Look over there.” I point to the harbor. Howie shifts on the edge, drawing a rectangular Sucrets tin from his pocket, snapping open the lid, and slipping a half-smoked joint and a book of matches from within.
“That is fucking beautiful. Look at that. The Atlantic.”
We stare silently at the whitecap ripples of Salem Harbor. Sailboats bob and pitch between the power plant and the rocky split lip of Marblehead.
“Maybe this is the view that made Melville conjure his great white whale. His unattainable demon dream. You know, while he was shacking up with old Hawthorne here? Hard to believe that this beautiful scene inspired Melville to write the most boring book I ever read in my life. But I’ll never forget how they made oil from blubber now, will I? Poor old sperm whale.”
“Sperm whale.” I look away, hiding a twelve-year-old’s grin.
“I never understood that myself. First of all, it’s in the head of the whale, not the dick. Second, it’s supposed to have the consistency of wax, so it’s more like smegma than jizz.”
“Smegma?”
“A bummer for the goyim. You and I are exempt, son of Israel. One painful snip, one get-out-of-smegma-free-for-life card.”
“Then what’s jizz?”
“Nectar of the gods. Fruit of my loins. Pancake syrup for the pussy.”
“I…”
“It’s sperm, little Jefe. Just a fancy handle.”
“I never had any,” I confess.
“Oh! Yeah, well, it’s coming, just hold on. There’s plenty in your future.” He takes a hit and speaks while holding his breath, eyes starting to water. “I promise.”
We could just as easily be talking about movies or comic books. It doesn’t seem any different when Howie brings sex up. Papa tries every once in a while, just to see if I “Have any questions?” but I always answer “No.” One rainy Sunday afternoon my father came down from a short “nap” and joined me on the front steps. We sat together, not speaking for a few minutes. And then he said, “You know, you’re too young to have sex right now, but when you can, you’re going to love it.” Gah!
Howie loses his balance for a moment and laughs, grabbing my shoulder and steadying himself. “I’m catching up on my Hawthorne. Salem tourist and all. You know what he said about this place? He said all sinners that weren’t worthy of hanging should be sent on a pilgrimage to Salem and forced to spend time here.”
“Guess I’m a sinner, then.”
“Ha! I’m no literary genius. I just read that last night in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter. Hysterical. I think Hawthorne was all about the seduction of life. He didn’t like it here because everyone was so goddamned puritanical. Very 1950s. Very McCarthy-esque. So he did what any great artist should do: flipped the townies the bird. You know what that book is about, right?”
I shake my head.
“A minister diddles a hot local lady, and then they try to keep it a secret. She’s married to a geezer who she thinks is lost at sea. She’s all alone and she ends up having the minister’s baby and no one knows who the father is but they know it can’t be the old man, so they make her wear a red letter A on her chest. A for adulteress. And Hawthorne understood how fucked up this prude shit is. Plus, he had some personal history with prejudice—his ancestors, two sisters, had to sit in the town meetinghouse and wear forehead bands because they were lesbians.”
“The sisters?” I can barely keep up.
“Yup. With each other. Those headbands were supposed to let everyone know that they had had incestuous relations. You can’t make this shit up,” he snorts. “Hawthorne would have been so free love if he were alive today. As soon as he got rich, he was out of here.”
“I don’t blame him. I mean, I’m kind of getting used to it. It’s better with you guys here.” Howie smiles warmly at this. “What was your high school like?” I ask him.
“Two years of hell. Then two years of happiness, mostly because of Mary Beth Scanlon.”
“Who?”
“Shiksa goddess. Magical mystery tour of fantabulousness and first vagina I was ever permitted to touch.”
“Was she mad?”
“With lust. Such a bad girl! I mean, not bad, but she was willing to do things the other girls weren’t. And she was good at it.” Like Gretchen. “I didn’t play well with the good girls back then. I was a tubby sperm whale, you know. Big enough to have boobs. It’s not a good thing. Especially in high school. So stay trim, young fellow. Stay trim.”
“You’re skinny now.”
Howie lies back against the slate, exhales deeply, looks out at the big sky. His flat, barely hairy belly rises and falls. Exposed. Rugged. Ridged by muscle. He rubs it lovingly. “This? This didn’t just happen. I worked my ass off. And took two months off of school to do it.”
“Your parents let you leave school for two months?”
“It was that, or buy a bra. I didn’t give them a choice.”
Fat Howie. It’s like saying Fat Fonzie. And this other part. I didn’t give them a choice. How does that work? I get a choice between muesli and Grape-Nuts and that’s about it.
I roll to him and stare.
“You have to kick the shit out of your demons,” he says. “This one I beat into submission. That one…” he points to the swelling Atlantic, “that one still needs work.”
“What do you mean?”
“I love to look at that ocean, you know? But I still can’t go out on it. Not since my first trip at sea.”
“Were you a sailor?”
“Well, first I was a crewman for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. You believe that? Me! I got a girl pregnant, she needed an abortion, so I got a job at the Pittsburgh public television station working on a kids show. They call that irony, amigo.”
How many questions can I ask, just about that sentence? “How old were you?”
“Second year college dropout.”
“You dropped out of school twice?”
“Well, one was a voluntary leave of absence. It’s a blur. But I was working in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and my college roommate called. He’d been canoeing the Miami river and met a guy who asked him to crew a forty-nine-foot yacht for a retired Russian millionaire going from Nassau to the Galapagos Islands. My roommate was from Utah and knew bupkes about sailing. But we both knew Adventures in Paradise. You know that TV show?”
I shake my head, trying to stay aboard his train of thought.
“Adam Troy, handsome, dumb, on a schooner with seven gorgeous women sailing the South Pacific searching for adventure. So I said ‘Let’s go!’ And I’m on the plane heading down to meet them, reading about jib, stern, all that sailing stuff. I grew up in Pittsburgh, for Christ’s sake. Near the Monongahela River. It was a fire hazard that your parents told you to stay the hell away from. That was as close as I got to sailing. It was NOT Mahblehead. Believe me. But then I’m there and it’s Adventures in Paradise. We dove in the harbor the minute we got there and everyone on the dock was laughing at us because that was where the ships dumped their bilges. But we were just happy. Until…” He shakes his head and swallows like he’d rather spit. “On the seventh day we hit the open sea for the first time. No more harbor to harbor. And there’s nowhere to drop anchor, so it’s just like a roller coaster. UPHILL. DOWNHILL.” Howie leans back, eyes popping, then lurches forward toward the street below. “That’s when I start puking.”
“Oh no,” I laugh, trying to imagine it. The ocean has never been anything but an inviting playground for me. Preston Beach, down the road from Grandma Wini’s house with its soft waves and rich tidal pools of anemone and starfish. The endless sandy stretches of Plum Island and the warm rivulets that last until the sea returns to wash them away.
“You don’t know puking until you’ve done it for two days straight. You don’t care if you live or die. And then, on the third day, a storm kicked up in the middle of the night. No sky, just clouds and darkness, and the wind’s blowing and it’s three in morning. I’m at the wheel and the old Russian comes up screaming, ‘Why didn’t you call me? Climb the mast! Fix the sails!’”
Howie’s hand shoots skyward, as if the mast is right before us and he looks to the top and shakes his head, no. “The Russian’s getting panicky, which was a clue to me and my roommate that the shit was hitting the fan. He starts wailing at us, ‘We’re going to hit the reef! We’re going to hit the reef!’ I look and I realize he’s right. We ARE going hit the fucking reef and miss the channel.” Howie stands and staggers, feigning a loss of balance but the act of doing it, so high up here, brings the terror and the risk of his story to life for me.
And then, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, he extends his left arm forward, draws the right back and strikes a perfect, balanced pose on the copper ridge of the roof. The wind lifts his hair gently and his nostrils flare as he inhales deeply, a beautiful California surfer catching the 31 Chestnut swell.
“There was this accident of life,” he whispers. “We caught a wave and surfed over the reef and landed in the harbor, completely safe.”
“That’s. So. Pissah.”
“That’s one word for it,” Howie shrugs, sitting back next to me and putting a hand on my shoulder. “I was so terrified of the idea that I could have fallen off that boat and fallen off the face of life and no one would know what happened to me. Me. Class president!”
“You were class president?” I ask, but he stares silently out to sea, adorned in clothes only a man of great confidence could wear, meditating on thoughts only a man of expansive mind (with mind-expanding accessories) could imagine. Whatever he sees out there, it is big. I haven’t yet found a friend in this city, but I have found my hero, flying high over the streets of Salem not with a cape, but with an amazing pair of silk pants.
“I never felt so weak. But when forces so much greater than you step in—Mother Nature, Father Time, Brother Death in his black hood—you can’t blame yourself for being scared. But I did. I did,” he confesses. “It took me a long time to be able to tell this story, hombre.”
Howie spits in the palm of his hand, extinguishes the joint with a faint sizzle, and returns what was left of it to the Sucrets tin. He looks back at the ocean, raises his arms over his head, and shouts at the top of his lungs: “NICE WORK, YAHWEH! KEEP IT UP!” Then he turns back to me: “Let’s go see your mamacita.” He throws his legs out in front of him, inches his butt forward, and slips down the warm slate shingle slide, taking the ride I’ve only dreamed of and disappearing over the edge. A moment later I hear a gravelly thud on the flat roof below. “All good!” he calls. “Hit it. I’ll catch you.”
I look down the long, gray stretch of roof, waiting. “I can’t see you,” I call.
“If I back up, I won’t be able to catch you, now will I?”
I shiver pleasantly at the prospect of sliding full speed, but the idea of missing him altogether is unnerving. Usually, I shimmy carefully on my butt, hang off the edge, and drop to the flat roof. But I’ve always wanted to let go and ride that wicked slope. If I do it right I’ll land feetfirst on the newly minted makeout zone outside my bedroom window, like Howie just did. But if I misjudge or slip too far to the left I’ll miss the flat roof altogether and it’s Ding dong! Road pizza delivery for Frank!
“Can you see my hands?” Howie yells. He jumps and I see his fingertips appear briefly at the end of the roof then disappear as he lands back on the gravel below, out of sight.
“Yes!”
“Aim for them. Come on! I gotta pee.”
“OK,” I answer, letting myself slide slowly forward, the rubber of my heels dragging at the slate but doing little to slow me once I really start moving. I lift my feet and abandon my fear as the speed fills my chest with a warm rush that makes me feel I can fly. I shout the first word that comes to mind, the curious word Howie had uttered at the top of our little world just a minute before: “YAHWEH!” as the soles of my Pumas plow into his face. My palms break part of my fall, ripping open in a half dozen spots as the pebbles dig into the skin.
“You mutherfuckinglittlecocksuckingfuckeryoufuck! FUCK YOU!”
* * *
Dinner that night is beef bourguignon, zucchini potato pancakes, and Brussels sprouts. I hate Brussels sprouts. Papa calls to let us know he’s still at the office. Mama shrugs and starts to serve.
Frank joins us, a jolly replacement for Papa with his rounder frame and shorter moustache. He takes my father’s place at the head of the table and offers a word of thanks for the meal, and for his landlord family.
Howie, face swollen and woozy, makes fun of me for not eating the sprouts, taking some from my plate and filling his cheeks with them.
“Baby, you are the most handsome chipmunk I have ever seen,” Carly says, scratching under his chin as he rolls his eyes in satisfaction.
“Looks more like W. C. Fields with that shnoz,” Mama giggles.
There it is again. I know my mother as serious, attentive, self-sufficient, and super smart. But silly is a new one.
“Oy! These zucchini pancaketh!” Howie says, his mouth full of them. “You are a miracle worker. You are!” he yells. Mama shakes her head and blushes. “You are a miracle worker and I am Helen Keller. You’re Anne Bancroft and I’m Patty Duke.”
“Howie, you’re ridiculous,” Mama says. “It’s zucchini pancakes.”
Howie looks thoughtfully at her. “Maybe you’re Anne Bancroft and I’m Dustin Hoffman.”
Carly smacks him. I am lost. Again.
As dinner concludes, I roll a greasy sprout off my plate and let it drop into my lap, then flick the big spongy marble under the table to a panting Atjeh. It lands with a faint thump and is followed by the gobble of the wolf dog.
“Did you just waste a Brussels sprout?” Howie asks.
“No,” I say, shooting him a don’t snitch on me look that he should understand.
“A beautiful Brussels sprout made by the Hunan Princess?”
“No,” I repeat hotly.
“Eat it,” Howie points at my plate. “You haven’t had any. You must try, niño.”
“I’m eating,” I object angrily.
“Man can’t live on beef bourguignon alone. Try this,” says Howie holding the green sprout in front of my face and shaking it. I want to barf. “This is good. This is good for you. Try it.”
“Howie,” Frank says softly, recognizing my discomfort. “Let the boy be fickle. It’s better than being bitter. He looks up to you.”
Carly smiles at this and rubs Howie’s back.
“Whoa,” Howie says, visibly blanching. “Did I just pull a big brother?”
“You kinda did, lover,” Carly says with a firm tenderness.
“He would do it to me,” Amanda says, not looking my way. “He deserves it.”
“No one deserves it,” Howie declares, standing. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. That may be a part of me, that kind of macho-man, bully bullshit. That’s some old shit. I don’t know why it cropped up but I AM SORRY, niño. Will you accept my apology? It’s true.”
I look at Frank, who nods, a glow rising under his five o’clock shadow.
“Sure,” I say, realizing that this is the first time a man has ever apologized to me for anything. The ones I know don’t do it. But Howie just did.
“Let’s-a play-a some music,” says Frank, adopting a Godfather accent. “The whole-a-family’s together.”
Carly puts a new album on the record player. She, Amanda, and Mama start swirling around the dining room together, pulling me and Frank in as Cris Williamson and a choir of women’s voices grow stronger and louder.
Love of my life I am crying,
I am not dying,
I am dancing.
Howie joins and we all whirl through the house, music following us on Papa’s multi-room sound system, voices rising as we master the chorus together. The idea that you could be crying for joy instead of sadness suddenly seems right. It is the first time I have ever danced in this house.
The song ends with the full-throated choir promising, “And we will sing for a long, long time!”
Everyone is flushed, a little winded, laughing. I think, Maybe we’ll stay here, like this, together after all.
* * *
The next morning, I wake to the hum of warm and easy voices coming down the hall. It’s an exotic sound for a Tuesday morning on Chestnut Street, usually marked by Mama’s ritual shriek from the first floor to the third, calling for a timely departure for school that never happens.
I swing off the bunk, pull on a sweatshirt, and wander down to Howie and Carly’s room, only to find everyone gathered in the bathroom. Amanda is perched on the toilet. Mama, Carly, and Howie have squeezed into the tub, each holding a personal pot of paint and a dribbling brush.
“Where’s Papa?” I ask.
“Work,” Mama says. “You slept late. Look what Howie did.” She points to a painting just above the edge of the tub. It’s a brownish bird—a cross between a hawk and a robin?—assuming a protective stance on a rock beside the recipe for Mama’s zucchini potato pancakes which Howie has carefully transcribed in black and pink oils. “Yield: Six to Eight Servings.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Howie explains. The gauze is gone and the swelling’s down, but his eyes are black and blue. His S’s have returned.
“Can he do that?” Amanda asks.
“I think he just did,” Mama says, smiling. A fait accompli instead of a cause for concern. Instead of a highly organized, paint-by-numbers project there is a spontaneous, splattered, rainbow-infused mural on the wall of our guest bathroom and Mama is laughing, not fretting. She’s kissing Carly on the cheek. Hugging Howie. They’re all hugging. Again. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Mama smiles.
“So are we,” they say in unison.
We fill the wall with as many creations as we can before we eat breakfast. Amanda paints a portrait of Bunny Yabba. David draws a stick figure of Mama. I make a vampire flying over the zucchini potato pancake recipe with blood dripping from his fangs and two bats on either side of him. Mama paints a list of her top five mystery novels, then joins forces with Carly to paint a garden of flowers with a fountain at the center. We’re going to be late for school, but I don’t say anything. You don’t bother the Hunan Princess when she’s happy.