The Great Jeff Read online

  You’ll say you never judge people for that kind of stuff, but that’s not true. You judge everything and so do I.

  CHAPTER 8

  SWEPT AWAY

  An hour-plus later, we poured off the train into a sea of bodies. I got separated from my mom right away by three or four guys in suits who danced their way between us.

  “Jeff?” she called, but I had to move with the crowd or be trampled. The platform roared. We finally squeezed like toothpaste through a tight arch, into the biggest room I’ve ever seen.

  Grand Central Terminal. You know what I mean. It has a great barrel ceiling about a mile above you, blue like a sky, with faded constellations of gods and animals. That painted sky was pale and cold, and its gods were so far away and getting farther as they faded into the fading blue. It made me feel tiny to be under it, a speck to be swept away by all the noise. Other people raced across the open floor, knowing exactly what they were doing and where to go.

  When I turned, Mom wasn’t anywhere behind me. My chest thudded. Was this what it would have been like if I’d left her on the platform before? At the little station was one thing, but here in New York? Now what? I seriously didn’t have a dollar in my pocket.

  “Jeff.”

  She was standing by the ticket counter, waving at me, unconcerned. I tried not to show anything in my face.

  “That ceiling,” she said. “It’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “How do you think they clean it?”

  She laughed. “Same as I would. Not at all.”

  I laughed, too. “You need the bathroom?”

  “No, you?”

  “Nope. Let’s go.”

  We didn’t know the subway and didn’t want to waste money on a cab or a limo, so we walked. It was twenty-something blocks from the station to my dad’s apartment, the sideways ones long but the up-down ones pretty short.

  The wind came coldly between the buildings both ways.

  The city smelled peculiar. Asphalt and exhaust and burned onions and cigarettes and a little bit of fresh air. I couldn’t imagine living here day after day like my father did. New York is a giant ball of noise, and after a few minutes you feel trapped inside it. I imagined my lungs dying with every breath.

  We were halfway there when all of a sudden Mom froze on the sidewalk and let people bump and flow around her.

  “I can’t do this, Jeffie—”

  “Not again, Mom, please.”

  “I’m afraid of what I’ll do if that woman is there.”

  “She won’t be there,” I said. “I told you. Dad’s jerky, but he knows we’re coming. Plus, why would she want to see us? It would be so messy. I’m going to tell him straight out what he has to do. The promises he made to us. To me. I have to tell him. We’ll tell him together. Mom, it’ll be okay.”

  She closed her eyes as if she were going to cry but didn’t, then nodded slowly, her eyes still shut. “You’re a good boy.”

  “The best of the best,” I said. I actually hooked my arm in hers and we tramped along the sidewalk like at the end of a movie. After another few blocks, I saw the sign for his street, and acid rose up my throat.

  We turned the corner. The numbers went slowly, and the buildings seemed to get dirtier the farther we walked. There was a dead tree in a little squared-off area cut into the sidewalk and a pyramid of garbage bags. Then I found a mop, just lying in the gutter, tooth-marked and smeared with dog droppings. Tell me what happened there, will you? We finally stood in front of his building.

  My dad lived above a shop that sold incense sticks and brass bells and little Buddhas. I knew that, but my mom had never visited.

  “Oh lord, lord,” she mumbled, shaking her head in disgust. “Let’s ring the bell or whatever they have here. Jeff, you go find it. I need to check my face.”

  While she was doing that in a compact mirror—“You cracked the glass, you little bum. You cracked it when you knocked my bag at the station, you little bum”—I climbed the stone steps to the main floor.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I was nervous.”

  “And now?”

  “Still nervous.”

  “I’m happy for you. And you’re not a bum. I’m sorry.”

  I laughed it off, because we have such a fun relationship, Mom and me.

  Next to the door was a box with the names of the occupants. Dad’s name wasn’t there, but his girlfriend’s was: D. Franzic.

  “Should I ring?”

  “Give me a minute.” She smoothed her eyebrows in the cracked mirror. “All right.”

  I pressed the button.

  CHAPTER 9

  ANOTHER MOM

  A long minute later, a buzz came from behind the door and the lock clicked. I glanced back at Mom and we moved into the lobby together.

  It was narrow and dingy and dark and smelled of incense and fuel oil. It was cold, too, almost colder than outside. The walls were stained. Flaps of paint had chipped off, so you could see the plaster beneath. There was a broom in the corner and a dustpan and wastebasket, which I guessed was for the tenants to sweep up the latest junk that blew in from the street.

  My heart was pounding fast. I shifted from one foot to the other from nervousness, as if my veins were filled with coffee. When that happens, and it’s happened before, I jerk around and do dumb stuff, all electric and jittery. People probably think I do it on purpose. I tried to breathe slowly.

  Behind me, Mom was standing with her back against the door.

  “You’re not going to bail on me, are you? We’re going up, right?”

  She nodded her head, then shook it side to side. “This is a bad idea. Let’s pick up some food. I need to walk around and catch my breath.”

  She grabbed the door handle just as a door squeaked open on an upper floor. A face peered down the staircase. It wasn’t Dad or his girlfriend but a woman older than my mom. She had gray hair. She leaned over the railing. “Hello. Are you here for Deborah? She’s my daughter, but she’s not in right now.”

  “No, my dad,” I said.

  “James Hicks,” my mother yelled up hoarsely.

  The woman tilted her head, then looked back at something I couldn’t see. She came around the railing and we heard her footsteps on the stairs, stopping on the landing above us.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Jim isn’t here. I mean, anymore. He left two or three days ago. I have an address Deb asked me to give anyone who came asking. Do you want that?”

  “He’s not here?” my mother said. “He told me he was here.”

  “It’s just been a couple of days, really,” the woman said. She spoke each word so clearly, I felt I was drowning. “Do you want his new address?” she repeated.

  “Did he say we were coming by?” Mom asked.

  “Not to me, maybe to Deb.”

  “She threw him out, didn’t she? I knew she would.”

  “We’ll take the address,” I said. “Please.”

  The lady stepped down another few steps and handed me a piece of paper. My mom shriveled with each step the woman took—I felt her doing it, creeping back like a shadow—and by the time I thanked the lady and turned, Mom was deep in the corner by the broom. She wouldn’t show her face.

  “Don’t be creepy, Mom,” I whispered.

  “Do you want me to tell Deb anything?” the lady asked. “You’re his son? Jim’s boy? Jeffrey, is it?” She sounded like a teacher.

  I looked up at her. “Thanks. No. I mean, yes, I am. It’s Jeff. But no. You don’t have to tell her anything.”

  “You know,” she said, “after everything, I rather liked your father.”

  My mother gasped. “After everything? Oh my God.”

  “We’ll just get going,” I said.

  You’ll think I was being pretty cool and mature this whole time, handling things like a grown-up might, but I was barely able to stand and was only saying what I’d heard on TV. When I took the note, I watched my fingers shake as if I’d caught one of Mom’s ha
ngovers. The lady was so nice.

  We went out the door into the wind and Mom put her face into her hands. “Oh, my lord, I can’t do that again. Your father gets thrown out by his girlfriend, and… let me look at that”—she took the note with the address on it, squinted, and nodded—“I knew it, into a stinking worse hole than here. I can’t, Jeffie. I just can’t go there.” Still shaking her head, she turned. “I’m hungry. I have to eat.”

  “Well, I don’t,” I lied. “I’m going there.”

  “No you are not,” she said, clutching her bag. “Jeff, I’m not giving you one red cent—”

  “I don’t need money. I read the address. I can find it. Streets up and down, avenues right and left.” I stepped back from her. “People can help me if I need help—”

  “You will not do this!” she shouted.

  “Oh yes, I will. Go on and eat. I’ll meet you at the station around two or three so we’re still off-peak. I’ll tell you what he says.”

  I said all this walking partly backward from her, partly forward to keep myself from bumping into somebody. She called after me, but she was crying and it came out muffled. I saw her take a step toward me, then freeze, then just watch.

  I watched her, too, until I got to the end of the block, then I turned the corner and was gone.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE APPLE

  By this time the sun was high up, but hidden on the back sides of buildings and dropping angles of light along the sidewalk. It was cold but not freezing. The windy streets actually calmed me, pushing me forward and back at each crossing. I was glad I had my backpack. It kept the cops off me. I looked like one of those rich students hopping around between classes. I was feeling all right.

  I was all right, I mean, until I came within three blocks of his new apartment and realized my brain was twisting in knots.

  First of all, my dad’s old apartment wasn’t where he was living. So, was he dodging us? If he wasn’t dodging us, he hadn’t called Mom to tell her the new address, which meant that he was dodging us. Except he gave Deb and her mother his new address, so maybe he wasn’t. Unless he just forgot we were coming, which was more likely and worse, because it meant he didn’t care. See me or not see me—it didn’t matter.

  I slowed my steps. “So what’s the point?”

  A sharp dusty wind gusted down his street, blowing my words away. I ducked into an entryway to get out of the blast and nearly trampled a guy crouched on the doorstep.

  “Sorry,” I said, and made to move on, but he reached up and held out an apple in his dirty fingers.

  It was weird. I wanted to run but he wasn’t asking for anything. While I gawked at him, he buffed the apple on his sleeve and held it out again. His eyes were milky when he looked at me. “I got it at the kitchen,” he said. “Too much acid.”

  He didn’t seem threatening or “off,” so I took the apple.

  “Thanks. I’m here to see my dad.”

  He folded his arm back into his coat and tucked his head into his collar like a bird. His shoes were different. One was brown leather; the other was a sneaker.

  I stepped back into the wind and walked the rest of the way, eating the apple before tossing the core into a trash bin and wondering how fast someone becomes a bum. How far do you have to fall to eat in a soup kitchen? Was I already on my way to being a bum? A jerky ex-father, a jobless mom who likes wine, doing lousy in a school I hate?

  How many steps do you need?

  Dad’s building was on the north side of the block. Four stories, dirty brick. Sucking in a couple of breaths to try to calm myself, and failing, I climbed the stairs to the front door. My legs felt like lead. There was a list there, too. Hicks was scrawled under another last name. A roommate? I pressed the buzzer. Apartment 404. There was a little microphone grill, so I expected him to answer, but he didn’t.

  “Dad, it’s me,” I said into it. “Dad?”

  Just static, then nothing for seconds while I stood there looking like a junior bum.

  I rang again.

  I rang a third time.

  There was no buzz in response, but the door clicked. I entered the tiny lobby. It was neat, swept, warmer than the first. I took a shoe box of an elevator up to the fourth-floor landing and followed the numbers down the passage.

  Before I got up the nerve to knock, his apartment door opened.

  CHAPTER 11

  ALL ABOUT ERICA

  My dad isn’t a tall man, but standing there in the doorway he was taller than I remembered. I expected more of a wreck, actually. Pajama pants, barefoot, food stains down a bulging T-shirt. But no. He was clean-shaven, not usual for him, and his button-down shirt was tucked into jeans. Skinny ones. Not wanting to, I smiled. Maybe it takes longer than you think to go from man to bum.

  “Hey, Jeff.” He gave me an awkward long hug. I remembered that right.

  “You look like you’re going out?” I said.

  “Well, yeah, soon. But Colleen called. Deb’s mom.” He looked past me into the hall toward the elevator. “Where’s your mother?”

  “Waiting at the station. She was… wasn’t feeling well. But I wanted to come.” I stepped inside and saw a pink sweater draped over the back of a chair. I thought of tight sweaters and Courtney Zisky. “Is someone here?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  I felt my shoulders go heavy as lead. “You have a new girlfriend already?”

  He closed the door behind me and shrugged a bit. Then he did a little showman wave at himself. “Hey, when you look like this…”

  Jerk, I thought. “Uh-huh.”

  He dropped his hands. “Anyway, she’s sleeping. Erica. She’s been sick a few mornings, actually.” He nodded nervously to the left. “I’d be working otherwise. I guess we’re both playing hooky. Erica’s one of the reasons Deb and I… Well, you get it.”

  My stomach did a weird tumble. Yeah, I got it. He’d left Deb for this other woman. I was mad and it came out that way. “Seriously, Dad, what are you, fifteen? You’re a grown-up father. What are you doing getting girlfriends like you’re young? You’re not.”

  “That’s enough—”

  “No. First you cheated on Mom. Then you cheated on Deb? You can’t even keep the family you left your family for.” It came out quick like that, like from a movie.

  His eyes iced over, another thing I remembered. “Don’t get smart with me.”

  “Too late.”

  “Well, just…” He shook his head, glanced around, moved the sweater. “Look, sit down. I have to tell you about Erica. There’s something you need to know—”

  “I hate when people tell me that!” I turned my face away. “If I need to know it, I’ll know it. I came to talk to you about important stuff. Family stuff. Me.”

  I sat while he went through a bunch of faces and shifted around on the couch until he sat forward, to be honest and close with me. I felt like spitting on the floor.

  “Look, Jeff, I know you’re not happy, but you know all this. I stayed at home as long as I could. It didn’t work out.” He said this with a slice of anger in his voice, but softly, so he wouldn’t wake her up. His hands stiffened in his lap. His eyes looked suddenly tired, not bloodshot like Mom’s, just tired, as if he wasn’t sleeping. “Your mother’s not even the point now. You heard what I said about Erica. Lately, she’s been pukey in the mornings.”

  “So what? Mom’s pukey, too. I’m pukey in the mornings. You get that way when you don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You’re not that simple, are you? You get it, right?” He nodded to her room.

  “I’m supposed to ‘get’ way too much of what you’re saying, Dad.” I was suffocating in that room and wanted to be pissy. “So maybe just use your words and tell me.”

  “Okay, smarty, I’ll spell it out. Erica’s pregnant. She’s not feeling well and is sleeping it off. It started a couple of weeks ago, then she called to tell me the other day and Deb answered and well—”

  The inside of my chest went cold
. “She’s going to have a baby?”

  “You are a genius. Yes. So that’s why I’m here. I’m not a bum, you know.”

  “No, but we are, Mom and me. She lost her job, and we need help. Money help.”

  “Right, I know, I talked to her. Check that: I listened to her scream for twenty minutes. But here’s the thing—”

  “No, no, here’s the thing. We need money. Mom is late on the rent, and you know she’s not going to get another job. Not right away. You know her. She’ll try, but she’s already started… she’s drinking more. Or maybe I just see it more. Anyway, you have to contribute.”

  That was a legal word, a court word. Contribute.

  “I do,” he said. “I have been, child support. I had a problem over the summer, which your mother is being okay about right now. But I’m trying to send every cent the court told me to. Even if I wanted to do more, I can’t. Not with this going on. It’s all I can manage. You’re not a bad kid”—whatever that had to do with anything—“but I can’t increase it now. Not more than the court says. It’s, hey, it’s your mother’s duty to have a job. They don’t call it wife support.” Twinge of a smile. He was proud of that. “Look, maybe in a year or two when things get stable. But not now.”

  “A year or two? I’ll be dead.”

  “Calm down, Jeff.” He stood. “I’m making a pot of soup. You hungry?”

  “I hate soup.”

  “Hold on.” He trotted into another room. I heard stirring. He came back, sat down. “So…”

  “So… why did you leave us, really? I mean why did you leave us in the first place? It wasn’t all Grandpa, and it wasn’t all… Deb…” I whispered her name.

  Deb Franzic suddenly seemed like one of the good people in all of this. And she was good. She knew enough to kick him out.