newspaperman’s camera, slung from his shoulder on a strap, making its own separate arc as he toppled.
He was timing it perfectly—his fall and the oncoming train. The train that, despite the terrible sound of the brakes, did not stop.
And then, another arc. My hand reaching up and pulling off the glasses.
But it did not matter if I turned the entire world into a blur.
The train, nothing more than green motion, flew past me. Right through the spot where my father had been.
When it came to a stop, everything went silent, as if the sunburnt families, the soldiers and their girls, me, were waiting for a signal. And then, I heard a screaming that might have been the echo of the brakes inside my head, might have been the soldiers’ girls, might have been me.
The rest I recall in pieces. The families and soldiers’ girls staring at me. A sweating, red-faced transit cop, getting down on one knee, his face too close to be in focus, asking if my father had jumped.
“It was a bald-headed man with an inner tube,” I told him. “An inner tube he should have turned in for the war.”
The red-faced transit cop asked me for my address, and when I said nothing, he suggested I think on it for a while, and went to talk to a couple of soldiers.
Instead, I thought about a flattened Chuckles wrapper that was next to my Keds. Wondered whether the person who’d thrown it there had saved the black one for last—the way I did—because it was his favorite. I thought about that black Chuckle long and hard, hoping to erase my address from my mind, so I would never have to walk out of this subway station without my father.
But sooner or later, I must have told the transit cop my address, because I remember walking up the stairs of the station with him, everybody else stepping back like I was some kind of bad luck.
• • •
I knocked on our door, because my father had had the keys. When my mother opened it, she looked at the transit cop, and then at me. She was wearing a white shirt with no sleeves, and her black hair was brushing across the top of her shoulders at the place where her shirt ended and her tanned skin began. She was smiling, showing us the gap between her front teeth, but already, her smile was losing some of its tension.
I wanted to push the transit cop back into the hallway, shut the door on him, as if that would stop what he had to say from coming into the house. But I could hear him speaking my mother’s name over my head.
I couldn’t watch what would happen to my mother’s face when the rest of what he had to say traveled across the air to her. I pushed my way into the apartment, ran down the hallway, past the living room, where my father’s green armchair sat, still pushed close to the radio. I went into my room and shut the door.
Then, as if the only thing that had been keeping me upright had been the presence of other people, I collapsed to the floor as if I was Superman knocked down by Kryptonite.
I squeezed myself under the bed and pulled out the box of sweaters, tore through them until I found the code-o-graph. I wrapped my fingers around its thin, metal edge, clutched it as tightly as I could, as if this thing from the radio, this object my father had gone to so much trouble over, possessed the power to bring him back.
I lay on the floor, hot cheek pressed to the linoleum, taking shallow breaths. All my colorful organs—blue lungs, orange kidneys, red heart—were turning black and withering inside me. All of them, one by one, as if I was dying from the inside out.
Five
M y father was waked with an empty coffin. Two men from Dunleavy’s Funeral Home carried it in, then balanced it on sawhorses in front of the Silvertone. The coffin was made of the same cherrywood as the radio, and it and the Silvertone looked like a matched set. I had to stop myself from believing that from now on it would live in our apartment instead of my father.
After the men from Dunleavy’s left, Aunt May
He was timing it perfectly—his fall and the oncoming train. The train that, despite the terrible sound of the brakes, did not stop.
And then, another arc. My hand reaching up and pulling off the glasses.
But it did not matter if I turned the entire world into a blur.
The train, nothing more than green motion, flew past me. Right through the spot where my father had been.
When it came to a stop, everything went silent, as if the sunburnt families, the soldiers and their girls, me, were waiting for a signal. And then, I heard a screaming that might have been the echo of the brakes inside my head, might have been the soldiers’ girls, might have been me.
The rest I recall in pieces. The families and soldiers’ girls staring at me. A sweating, red-faced transit cop, getting down on one knee, his face too close to be in focus, asking if my father had jumped.
“It was a bald-headed man with an inner tube,” I told him. “An inner tube he should have turned in for the war.”
The red-faced transit cop asked me for my address, and when I said nothing, he suggested I think on it for a while, and went to talk to a couple of soldiers.
Instead, I thought about a flattened Chuckles wrapper that was next to my Keds. Wondered whether the person who’d thrown it there had saved the black one for last—the way I did—because it was his favorite. I thought about that black Chuckle long and hard, hoping to erase my address from my mind, so I would never have to walk out of this subway station without my father.
But sooner or later, I must have told the transit cop my address, because I remember walking up the stairs of the station with him, everybody else stepping back like I was some kind of bad luck.
• • •
I knocked on our door, because my father had had the keys. When my mother opened it, she looked at the transit cop, and then at me. She was wearing a white shirt with no sleeves, and her black hair was brushing across the top of her shoulders at the place where her shirt ended and her tanned skin began. She was smiling, showing us the gap between her front teeth, but already, her smile was losing some of its tension.
I wanted to push the transit cop back into the hallway, shut the door on him, as if that would stop what he had to say from coming into the house. But I could hear him speaking my mother’s name over my head.
I couldn’t watch what would happen to my mother’s face when the rest of what he had to say traveled across the air to her. I pushed my way into the apartment, ran down the hallway, past the living room, where my father’s green armchair sat, still pushed close to the radio. I went into my room and shut the door.
Then, as if the only thing that had been keeping me upright had been the presence of other people, I collapsed to the floor as if I was Superman knocked down by Kryptonite.
I squeezed myself under the bed and pulled out the box of sweaters, tore through them until I found the code-o-graph. I wrapped my fingers around its thin, metal edge, clutched it as tightly as I could, as if this thing from the radio, this object my father had gone to so much trouble over, possessed the power to bring him back.
I lay on the floor, hot cheek pressed to the linoleum, taking shallow breaths. All my colorful organs—blue lungs, orange kidneys, red heart—were turning black and withering inside me. All of them, one by one, as if I was dying from the inside out.
Five
M y father was waked with an empty coffin. Two men from Dunleavy’s Funeral Home carried it in, then balanced it on sawhorses in front of the Silvertone. The coffin was made of the same cherrywood as the radio, and it and the Silvertone looked like a matched set. I had to stop myself from believing that from now on it would live in our apartment instead of my father.
After the men from Dunleavy’s left, Aunt May
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