Raising Jake Part 15

"Jake. There's something you should know about this school."

"You're not enrolling enrolling me here, are you?" me here, are you?"

"No, no...Thing is, I never finished."

"What do you mean?"

My tongue is sticky. I try to swallow, but can't. "I dropped out in my senior year. I'm a high school dropout."

I sound like someone standing up at a meeting and declaring himself an alcoholic. Jake stops rubbing my back. His mind is totally blown.

"Dad. Jesus! You're a high school dropout!" You're a high school dropout!"

"It's something even your mother doesn't know about, and I'd like to keep it that way, all right?"

"I'll keep my mouth shut."

"Your mother has a Ph.D., so between us it sort of evens out for you."

"Why'd you drop out?"

"Let's just say I was going through a troubled time."

"Dad. You're amazing! amazing! No diploma, and you had a good career and everything!" No diploma, and you had a good career and everything!"

"I don't know if I'd go that far. n.o.body ever asked to see a diploma at the Star, Star, I can tell you that. All they wanted to know about was whether I could knock out fifteen paragraphs on a windswept fire in Canarsie in time for the bulldog edition." I can tell you that. All they wanted to know about was whether I could knock out fifteen paragraphs on a windswept fire in Canarsie in time for the bulldog edition."

"Well, I'm proud to be following in your footsteps."

"Ohhh my G.o.d, don't say say that!" that!"

I start crying all over again. Jake takes me in his arms, and actually rocks me back and forth. What a father-son weekend this is turning out to be! Jake has cried in my arms, and I've cried in his, and we're not even halfway through Sat.u.r.day!

I feel as if I'm never going to be able to get to my feet again. I'll die right here on this stoop, across the street from the school where my formal education ground to a halt. I'm done, cooked, finished. It's going to take a miracle to get me back to the land of the living.

And then a miracle happens.

It's something I hear before I see, the loud, metallic snap of a lock across the street. The front door of the school is opening, a millimeter at a time, it seems, and then at last an ancient man steps outside, preceded by the broom he is clutching.

He's bent at the waist and cloaked in an old-fas.h.i.+oned priest's frock, a dresslike thing with b.u.t.tons the size of gumdrops. His feet move like the feet of a child's windup robot, a shuffle step with minimal lifting, but he's moving with determination.

He lifts his goatlike head to regard Jake and me, long ears quivering, scant hair feathery atop his pink skull. His face is expressionless as he studies us through the biggest, thickest pair of eyegla.s.ses I've ever seen. But he doesn't waste much time wondering who we could be. This man has a job to do. He clutches the broom in both hands, squares his shoulders, and begins sweeping yellow leaves toward the curb.

And then it hits me, and I all but fall to my knees over the splendor of the miracle before us.

"Oh my G.o.d," I say, more to myself than to Jake. "It's the Walking Holiday!"

His real name, I remember, is Father Brian Walls, and if I'd given him a thought over the past thirty years, it would have been about the certainty of his death soon after I left the school. But here he was, broom in his bony hands, doing what he'd done when I was a Holy Cross student-sweeping up the front of the school.

Jake senses the sanct.i.ty of the moment and whispers, "Why do you call him the Walking Holiday?"

"Because he was such an old man when I went to this school, we all figured we'd get a day off when he died."

"He sure screwed you, huh?"

"Yeah. Me and thousands of other guys since the cla.s.s of 1974."

"How old is he?"

"I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. You'd have to saw him in half and count the rings, I think."

We watch him work. Father Walls is doing the best he can, but the leaves are not cooperating. Most of them resist the bite of the broom bristles, staying behind as he plows onward toward the curb. But it doesn't matter that he's doing a s.h.i.+tty job. What matters is that he's alive, he's out there, a man who's certainly within a whisper of his hundredth birthday, or maybe even past it and gunning for two hundred.

I'm gripped by a weirdly optimistic sensation, watching that old priest at work. Somehow, some way, my son is going to be all right, and so am I. I reach over and squeeze the back of Jake's neck.

"Let's walk," I say.

"Hang on, Dad. Maybe we should offer to help this guy sweep."

"No! That would kill kill him! Don't you get it? In his head, he's the only man in the world who can do it right. You take away his task, he might as well be dead." him! Don't you get it? In his head, he's the only man in the world who can do it right. You take away his task, he might as well be dead."

Minutes later, Father Walls decides that his job is done, though he's managed to sweep a total of maybe a dozen leaves into the street. He shoulders the broom like a rifle and baby-steps his way back into the school. The door booms behind him with an echo that goes right through me.

"Okay, the show's over," I say. "Let's go."

I lead the way around the back of the school past the athletic field, where I heard the words "We Got Sullivan" innumerable times. It's a dirt field ringed by a running track, and the only person there is a fat kid in a full sweatsuit, puffing around the track in an obvious effort to lose weight.

"He shouldn't be doing that," Jake says. "He's too heavy. He'll wreck his knees."

"He'll find that out the hard way."

"No, he won't. Wait here."

Jake calls to the kid, who slows down to a waddle and meets Jake at the fence. Jake seems to be giving him serious advice, and then he says something that makes the kid laugh out loud. They high-five each other before the fat kid hobbles off to the showers. Jake returns to me with a grin on his face.

"What'd you tell him?"

"The truth. That he'll grind his knees into bonemeal if he keeps this up. Told him to use an exercise bike to drop some pounds before he starts running."

"He could have told you to go f.u.c.k yourself."

"That was a risk I was willing to take. Got to take some chances in life, Dad."

"What made him laugh?"

"I told him the girl he was trying to impress wasn't worth spending a lifetime in a wheelchair."

"He found that funny?"

"It's all in the delivery, Dad. Now come on. Show me where you lived. I want to see the house."

"It's the next stop on the tour," I say, but as it turns out we run into a bit of a detour on the way.

We walk a few blocks in the direction of my old house when suddenly my heart begins gonging away in my chest. Jake sees that something is wrong, and he's actually frightened by the way I'm breathing.

"You okay, Dad?"

"I just realized something."

"What's that?"

I point at a small brick house across the street from where we're standing, a house fronted by a ragged lawn and wildly overgrown privet hedges.

"Is that your old house? It looks abandoned!"

"No, that wasn't my house...."

Should I tell him? Maybe not. And then it just bubbles out of me. "That's where I lost my virginity."

"No kidding?"

"I wouldn't kid about that."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

I was seventeen years old. My mother had been dead for a few months, and I was working for Napoli's World Famous Pizza, making endless deliveries on a bicycle. It was a big old clunker of a bike with fat balloon tires and crooked wheels and an oversized wire basket on the handlebars, big enough to hold six pies at a time. was seventeen years old. My mother had been dead for a few months, and I was working for Napoli's World Famous Pizza, making endless deliveries on a bicycle. It was a big old clunker of a bike with fat balloon tires and crooked wheels and an oversized wire basket on the handlebars, big enough to hold six pies at a time.

Sat.u.r.day night was always our biggest delivery night, and the night with the most problems. People were usually half in the bag when they called in their orders and often totally bombed by the time I arrived with their pies. Usually there was a party going on and they had to take up a collection to pay me, with a lot of stupid arguing over who owed what, and who still owed from the last time. I'd be standing there in the apartment hallway like an idiot while all this went on, but on the advice of old man Napoli I never handed over the pizza until I had the money. That was the surest way to get a door slammed in your face.

I was tired. Napoli made the best pies in Flus.h.i.+ng and I'd been on the go nonstop since five thirty in the afternoon. Now it was past midnight, and this was my final delivery of the night-four sausage and pepperoni pies to the top story of a five-floor walk-up.

I could hear music and screaming and laughter from above as soon as they buzzed me into the vestibule. It was a shabby building, the walls starved for paint, the linoleum floors crowded with banged-up baby carriages. An old lady on the second floor opened her door and glowered at me as I approached. She was obviously the closest thing this building had to a guard dog, and none too happy about the noise from above. She wore curlers and a hair net and she clutched at the lapels of her bathrobe to keep me from sneaking a peek at her withered b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Whaddya, bringin' 'em food at this this hour?" hour?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You tell them to pipe down!"

I ignored her, kept climbing, and paused to catch my breath at the door before knocking. I had to knock again, harder, to be heard above the racket. Suddenly it opened, and a fat, balding young guy with a cigar jammed into his mouth was grinning at me.

"Pizza's here!" he shouted. "Come on in, kid!"

I knew immediately that this was a bachelor party. I hated these things, knew I'd probably have to go through h.e.l.l to get paid, but what could I do?

I followed him into a room so thick with smoke that I could hardly breathe. There were at least a dozen cigar smokers there, twenty-somethings with a smattering of thirty-somethings, all standing with their backs to me, shoulder to shoulder in a sloppy semicircle. Empty beer bottles were everywhere, and I looked in vain for a place to set the pizzas down. "Where do you want these?"

"In a minute, in a minute. First enjoy the show, kid."

"What show?"

He nudged one of the guys aside, pushed me into the gap. "This show!" he cried.

I blinked my watery eyes and saw a girl in a white cowboy hat, white skirt, and white boots dancing around a young man sprawled in a lounge chair, obviously the man due to marry in the morning. The men were whooping and yelling so loudly that they drowned out the stripper music coming from the girl's pathetic little boom box.

But the girl could hear it, or at least she pretended she could. She whirled and strutted and pointed an admonis.h.i.+ng finger at the groom to be. It said MANDY in silver letters across the front of her hat, so the guys began chanting "Man-dee! Man-dee!"

Off came the halter top, off came the white skirt, and just like that Mandy stood naked before us, save for the hat and the boots.

This was the first naked woman I'd ever seen. I was unaware of the fact that I'd tightened my grip on the pizza boxes, hugging them as if they were a life raft. Mandy was blond haired and blue eyed, maybe two or three years older than me. She was dazzling but not beautiful, but the point was that she was there, there, in the flesh, almost within touching distance. I watched the rest of her blurry-fast routine, which ended with her blowing kisses to the crowd as she deftly picked her clothes up off the floor. She ducked into another room and within seconds she emerged wearing a trench coat that went all the way to her ankles. Without another word or gesture to the catcalling crowd, Mandy the stripper scooped up her little boom box and was gone. Obviously she'd been paid up front, unlike me. in the flesh, almost within touching distance. I watched the rest of her blurry-fast routine, which ended with her blowing kisses to the crowd as she deftly picked her clothes up off the floor. She ducked into another room and within seconds she emerged wearing a trench coat that went all the way to her ankles. Without another word or gesture to the catcalling crowd, Mandy the stripper scooped up her little boom box and was gone. Obviously she'd been paid up front, unlike me.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Mandy has left the building!" said one of the guys, and they all laughed at that.

"Here, kid." The fat guy who'd let me in stuffed some bills into my s.h.i.+rt pocket, took the now-cold pies from me, and pointed at the front of my pants.

"Hey!" he said, "looks like somebody got a little excited here!"

I looked down. Streaks of pizza oil ran from my crotch to my thighs. I'd been squeezing those boxes even harder than I realized.

They exploded in laughter at the sight of me. I made the cardinal sin of not counting the money as I ran for the door and dashed down the stairs, thinking maybe I'd catch up to the stripper, half wanting it to happen, half fearing that it would.

But she was gone, and so was the delivery bike I'd left in front of the building. Somebody had stolen the f.u.c.king thing.

I couldn't believe it. That old clunker was such a hunk of junk that I couldn't even imagine anyone wanting to steal it, so I never bothered with the wheel lock that old man Napoli provided. The double bang of the stripper and the bicycle theft had me numb. I began the long walk back to Napoli's, wondering what I was going to tell him, wondering where the stripper had gone, wondering if "Mandy" was her real name and how often she stripped. I wondered if she had a real job as well, or if she was just a stripper. It was amazing to me that a woman could do something like that for money. I didn't think it was wrong, just amazing.

I took the money from my s.h.i.+rt pocket and counted it. The tab for the four pies had come to forty-eight bucks, and the guy had slipped me three twenties. Twelve bucks, the best tip I'd ever gotten. If the bike hadn't been stolen and my pants hadn't gotten f.u.c.ked up, this would have been a h.e.l.l of a good night.

Napoli was in a bad mood when I got back, eager to close up shop. He was about sixty years old, one of those lean, surly Italians whose eyes grew narrower with suspicion each and every year of his life. All those years of pulling pizza pies out of hot ovens didn't do much to improve his personality.

"Hey, Sammy. What'd you do, get lost?"

I wasn't about to tell him that I'd stopped to watch a stripper. "They took a long time to pay."

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h b.a.s.t.a.r.ds." This was one of his favorite expressions.

I gave him two twenties and a ten from my wallet, and he gave back two dollars in change. I didn't want him knowing I'd gotten a twelve-dollar tip. It would hurt me the next time I was due for a raise. He gave me my weekly pay in cash, and then I had to tell him.

"Mr. Napoli-"