Leaving Brooklyn Read online

  He pushed farther in and there was a slight searing, then a deep ache. Something dreadful was going to happen to my body, a splitting. Any minute.

  “Stop, really.”

  He stopped. “Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.” He reached around and began fingering me in front and my body started moving without my wanting to, little shudders. “Ah,” he said.

  I was moving with him, going somewhere I had not dreamed people could go, way beyond books. I was nothing anymore except the moving and knowing I would die of this or be punished for it. For there must be something truly wicked in me, to be always ready to be interested. He pushed farther in and it hurt again.

  “No, stop!” I almost called out his name, but not quite.

  He stopped and his hand stopped too. I was bereft. I gave a little cry.

  “Well, what do you want, Audrey?”

  Now that he was still, the pain was gone. The only pain was the absence of his hand touching me.

  “Oh please,” he whispered again. “Say do it.”

  He was lying to me. It was not a situation for “please.” He could do whatever he wanted and he knew it.

  “Just… just do…” The words wouldn’t come out.

  “No, Audrey.” Not a tone you could say “please” in. A stern teacher, or my mother holding fast to her terms. “Not just for you. But I’ll stop everything if you say so. Do you understand?”

  He began moving again, slowly and carefully, and as his hand came back to me I gasped and burst into tears, and that was how it went. I couldn’t tell if I was shaking from the sobs or from the pleasure, and after the choked noises in his throat and after he slipped out and fell beside me, I punched his couch, then turned around and punched him.

  “What are you, some kind of pervert or something?”

  He caught my wrists. “Do you really think so?”

  “I don’t know what I think. I don’t know anything anymore.” Hearing my words, I knew why he felt guilty.

  “If you don’t know by now… No, I’m not some kind of pervert. I just wanted to show you something.” He held my wrists in one hand as if to show me, too, how useless was my flailing about. “That’s what you wanted all along, isn’t it? A thorough education?”

  “I don’t know what I wanted.”

  “I think I did my part pretty well, assuming you wanted to find out all about it. A little something off the beaten path.”

  “Oh, how can you say things like that! I didn’t want anything! I didn’t even want the goddamn lens.”

  “Well, I want something, dammit.” He let go of my wrists. “I want you to remember me.”

  “Oh!” Something shifted in my head and I felt a settling of vision, as when a dizziness begins to pass. Or as if my eyes were seeing together, merging for the first time. What I saw was him. He was a person, like me. He wanted to be remembered, to have a place. All of a sudden I wanted to kiss him and say the kinds of words he said, but I couldn’t, not after what he had done. “I would have remembered you anyway, without… that. But you also wanted to hurt me, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t intend to hurt you.”

  “I didn’t say you intended to. I said you wanted to.”

  “Very fine distinctions for a little girl.”

  “Don’t be patronizing.”

  “You’re the patronizing one. You’ ve always been. All right, maybe I did want to hurt you.”

  “But why?”

  “Why do you think? You’ve hurt me.”

  “Me?” I rose up on my elbows to look down at him. “I haven’t done a thing.”

  “You’re exactly right. That’s how you hurt.” He stood up. “Let me have a look at the lens before you go.”

  “I don’t have it with me.”

  “You don’t?” He studied me for a moment, went to his desk, and reached under some papers. “You should have it checked from time to time. Your eyes are still changing. I’ll give you the name of another doctor.” He looked funny, leafing through his address book stark naked.

  “Another doctor? Ha! Just what I need. No thanks, I think I’m very well used to it by now.”

  “As you like. You can tell your mother I said you don’t need to come anymore, and don’t forget to use the cleaning solution. You can get it at any drugstore. Call me if it ever starts to hurt. Or call someone.”

  “Could I have one of those?” I pointed to the box on his desk.

  “What for? A souvenir?”

  “I said I’d remember you. No, I just want one. You gave one to that man before me.”

  “Don’t play games with your eyes, Audrey. You can do damage, fooling around.”

  “I won’t. I’ll use it for a costume or something. A pirate. It’s a useful thing to have around the house.”

  He plucked an eye patch from the box, stretched the elastic, and flicked it over to me. It landed on my stomach. I ran my fingers over the black buckram and held the patch up to my good eye, then my bad. I was so intrigued by this new toy that I would have put it on right then, only I didn’t want to hear him scold.

  “Is it okay if I make a phone call?”

  “Sure, go ahead.” He was gathering his clothes. Suddenly he stopped. “Who are you calling?”

  “My mother. To say I’ll be late. You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “Not entirely. One word from you could destroy me.”

  “I’m not that kind of person.”

  I sat down in his swivel chair and picked up the phone. I had a plan. I was about to stage a scene, fantastical, born of too great a strain, too wide a sundering. I was going to talk to my mother in our ordinary Brooklyn way with the eye doctor close by, naked—the reverse of the telephone scene she had staged at home two weeks ago. He would be looking at me, maybe even touching me, while I told her I was finished studying with Arlene. In this way, at last I could bring my two worlds together, just as double vision, worlds side by side, can be corrected by a lens that fuses them. I was the one connection between the worlds; my voice humming over the wire would be the audible lens through which they merged. I needed this, even if only for a moment. And my mother, with her single vision, would never know what I had accomplished. She would never know the adventure of my life, in which I was giving her this vicarious role. Only the eye doctor would know.

  But as I was dialing he went into the bathroom to dress. I suppose he did trust me to some extent, and he was no voyeur. My plans were ruined, everything stayed split. I heard the water running, and then my mother answered the phone.

  “It’s me. I’m leaving in a while. We had a lot to go over.”

  The eye doctor is washing, I was saying to her in another, secret voice. If my bad eye had had a voice it would have spoken these words. He’s washing the traces of me off his… everything. He’s rinsing out his mouth, rinsing me off his tongue and gums and the soft epithelial tissue inside his cheeks.

  “Oh, Audrey, I was wondering what happened to you. We were just eating. I’ll leave supper for you on a plate, ’cause I want to clean up. They ’ll be here in less than an hour.”

  “Okay. Don’t worry, Arlene’ll walk me to the subway.”

  I’m sitting in the eye doctor’s chair with no clothes on. Oozing onto the chair… If you only knew…

  “All right, ’bye. The studying go all right?”

  “Fine.” I can still feel him in me. Every opening. I’m very warm, Mom. Very.

  I dressed quickly and wanted to rush out. It was over. I hated elaborate good-byes. But he took me in his arms and kissed me, stroked my face and hair and murmured words about not forgetting me. Just as in the movies. And I did my part gracefully enough, I thought.

  My things were in the waiting room. He actually held my coat as I fumbled my way into it—I hadn’t enough practice to do that with grace. It was painful to change, under his gaze, into a gawky schoolgirl, looping a scarf around my neck and hoisting a loaded book bag over my shoulder. I couldn’t risk speaking—I was afraid I would cry, I felt so
sorry for both of us, so cleaved and bleak, and my life evaporating before my eyes. How could I return to Brooklyn, where this didn’t exist? But where else could I go?

  Halfway down the hall I turned and waved. He was in the doorway, his hands raised and flat against the frame as if holding it up. His shirt was rumpled and his tie loose around his neck. He looked younger than he had ever looked, very young, almost of an age for me. I fled to the elevator.

  The snow had stopped, leaving the sky velvety and clear, with frosty stars. Everything was lightly covered, and the sounds of cars and footsteps and doormen’s whistles were all softened. I put the eye patch over my good eye. I would walk to the subway that way, half blind, with the white city shimmering hazily around me. The glowing globes of street lamps expanded and broke into starbursts, dazzling and blinding me with splinters of light. In between the lamps were impenetrable stretches of darkness—I couldn’t see people approaching until they were nearly on top of me. I stretched out my arms for balance, the way we used to do playing Blindman’s Bluff at birthday parties. The church was a huge amorphous mass, its fine points and articulations lost in blur and darkness: a cave, not a haven. The headlights of cars were blinding too, bearing down on me like monster eyes; crossing the streets was madness. I needed to find my life, not lose it. I took off the eye patch and hurried to the subway.

  I had forgotten to be afraid of the subway, and in fact there was little need for fear. Close to seven o’clock, rush hour was over. I found a seat, tugged Anna Karenina out of my book bag, and didn’t look up until my stop, which I could feel by the length and rhythm of the ride, the intervals between the Brooklyn stations I no longer needed to count—they were imprinted on me like the stages of phylogeny are imprinted on the embryo: Clark, Borough Hall, Hoyt, Nevins, Atlantic, Bergen, Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn Museum, Franklin, Nostrand, Kingston, Utica.

  It was snowing again. I put the patch over my bad eye and saw clearly the usual sights: the central mall and wooden benches of Eastern Parkway, the neon sign of Dubrow ’s Cafeteria lit red for evening and the lonely men still huddled over their coffee, the lingerie shop, the newsstand, all with the patina of tenderness snow gives the world. Just what I would have seen with both eyes. My bad eye’s talents weren’t needed here.

  I switched the patch. A test. Could my bad eye get me home? Was it of any practical use, or were its talents good for nothing but adventure and trouble?

  Not much of a test. I knew Utica Avenue so well I could have walked it blindfolded. The Sugar Bowl, where people from school might be sipping ice cream sodas as I passed; Laurel and Hardy ’s drugstore; the lighted marquee of the Carroll Theatre announcing, through the falling snow, this week ’s movie. I couldn’t read the title, but whatever it was, I was sure the characters kissed and parted, kissed and parted.

  Traffic was sparse. In the deep distance, splatters of red and green alternated on wavy poles. I crossed easily and turned down Montgomery Street, where one building had a short cut to East New York Avenue, useful on cold days. You took the elevator to the basement, went through a dimly lit corridor past the boiler and piles of garbage, and emerged in the back of the candy store, saving a block. But no, it was too dark and deserted for that corridor. I chose the long way, outdoors.

  Suddenly there in the snow, only minutes away from home, a feeling of limitless buoyancy flowed through me like breath. It seemed I might leave the earth and sail up unimpeded, as the snow around me was sailing down, and float right over Brooklyn up to where the stars drifted—I couldn’t see them but they were there. I didn’t want to float away, though; I was so enraptured that I wanted to remain here on earth, or maybe just a few inches above, and dance. Everything seemed perfect and right; the world, glistening and abundant, unfurled its rightness and perfection—how come I hadn’t noticed before? Of course I would have everything I wanted, my life would be all I dreamed. And even if it weren’t, it didn’t matter; nothing that could happen mattered; it was enough to be alive on this moist and spinning globe. Every flake of snow tingled on my skin, joyously cold and hot at once. There was not even any more death in this miracle of a world, just wave after wave of life and motion. This was too good to be true, I knew. I had been touched by something beyond the palpable. It came from nothing that had happened to me today or ever, beyond circumstance, out of nowhere, a gift that wouldn’t last, but I wanted it to last as long as such gifts could. I wanted to prolong it and also to let it be, not touch it for fear of shattering it. I didn’t even stop walking. No change must break the enchantment. It would end any second, but I would remember and hold it, an intimation of what might be, and because it was so beautiful I knew remembering it would be heartbreaking.

  It lasted longer than I had dared hope, so long that I was dazed with gratitude, and then it started slowly to dissolve, and when I neared the corner and saw the figure of a man approaching, it vanished abruptly as though it never was.

  I switched the patch to my right eye so that I could see. He wore a pea coat and wool scarf, and was tall and broad-shouldered. His hands were dug into his pockets as he lumbered along with his head down, a man lost in himselfAbout thirty feet away, he looked up, noticed me, and slowed down. His mouth opened slightly. He raised a hand and my stomach bounced. Then settled. Bobby! If he hadn’t come along I might still be in bliss.

  “Audrey! Long time no see. What happened to your eye? Did you have an accident?”

  I pulled off the patch and stuffed it in my coat pocket. “No, I ’m fine. A doctor gave it to me for eye exercises. Didn’t you ever notice something wrong with my right eye?”

  “No.” He kept grinning and rubbing his gloved hands together. “Maybe I should’ve looked harder. So how ’ ve you been? I don’t see you in the store much these days.”

  “No. Busy, you know. School and all.”

  I asked after his wife, Bobby, and the baby. Wondrously, I remembered his name—Donny. I had seen him crawling around the store last summer, making little mountains out of sawdust. He was a handful, Bobby replied, and Bobby was pregnant again.

  “It would be nice to have a girl this time. You know,” he said wistfully, “someone to sit quietly on her daddy’s lap. Donny is never still for a minute.”

  “Even girls don’t sit very long,” I said, and we stomped our feet in the snow.

  “You certainly are looking great, Audrey. You’ve grown up.”

  “These things happen.”

  “An answer for everything. Same old Audrey.”

  “Well, I think I ’d better go on home. Good seeing you.”

  “Listen, what do you say to a cup of coffee somewhere first? Talk about old times, catch up. Maybe you can give me some advice.”

  “About what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m thinking of getting a job. This working for my father is a dead end. I don’t want to sell chickens all my life. And Bobby ’s not the type who’ll want to do what my mother does. Come on. You’ll warm up.”

  “I wish I could, Bobby, but my mother’s expecting me and I’m late already. They’re having a card party.”

  “So give her a call.”

  “What are you thinking of, the Sugar Bowl?”

  “Nah, it’s filled with all those kids. I’ll take you to the Blue Feather.”

  That was a local bar whose dark windows displayed a blue neon feather. No one I knew had ever crossed its murky threshold. It was a joke around school: What sorts of primitives frequented the Blue Feather and what unknown caverns of Brooklyn could they come from?

  “Oh no, I think I’d better not. Thanks anyway.”

  “Some other time, then. Let me walk you home, at least.”

  Bobby sounded even less like a book than the eye doctor at his worst. I had read many novels of unrequited love at long last rewarded, of joys arriving too late. The women in the novels were always brimming with exaltation or regret, but I felt nothing.

  “Did you really never notice my eye?”

  “No. But I’m n
ot very observant. Let’s see.” I faced him and opened wide. “I can’t see anything wrong.”

  “It’s probably too dark,” I said.

  “Well, nobody’s perfect. I grew up with my mother, so little things don’t bother me. You hardly notice if you really care about someone. So do you have anyone good at school? Is Memling still doing American History? He used to sing ’The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ when he got to the Civil War. Every single stanza.”

  “They retired him last year. He must’ve gone out singing. I managed to get Carlino. You know, Pre-Marriage for Senior Girls? I was on the waiting list and then they opened another section by popular demand.”

  We were at East New York Avenue, a huge two-way thoroughfare with no traffic lights and a stream of whizzing cars, even in the snow. Bobby grabbed my elbow—“Come on! Now!”—and we raced across during a short lull. Only half a block to my house.

  “You girls are the lucky ones. All we ever had was Hygiene. You know what they told us? Fellas, you have five thousand shots in you. Don’t waste them.”

  I must have looked startled, for he quickly added, “Oh, excuse me, Audrey. That just slipped out.”

  “It’s okay. I can take it.” I almost countered with Mrs. Car - lino’s definition of Petting, still in my book bag where it had lain all day, through classes and Arlene’s eye makeup and the subway and the doctor, but I knew enough not to.

  “So how old are you now? Around eighteen?”

  “I ’ll be sixteen in two months.” We paused at the snow-covered steps in front of my house. Tomorrow my father or I would have to shovel. Not enough to have school closed, though, unless it kept up all night.

  “No kidding? You could have fooled me. Jailbait.” He chuckled and tweaked my nose. “A pretty girl, out on these dark streets so late… ”

  “Oh, come on, Bobby.” I frowned. “I’m going in.” He raised his hand the way my father did, to ward off assault. “Jeez, I keep putting my foot in my mouth, don’t I? No offense. Listen, I remember when you were in kindergarten and came into the store holding your mother’s hand. You were a cute kid. My mother liked you too, the way you used to watch her do the chickens.”