“It’s not crap…”
“No, it’s not,” she said, this time in her teacher voice, her line-up-at-the-door-and-get-ready- for-next-period tone telling me to drop it. I could, and would, continue to dismiss her praise, but in that private corner everyone keeps in the back of one’s head, Kelly’s words were already in lights, flashing across the face of a Broadway marquee. As much as I tried to hold back, as many times as I told myself you gave up that life you make pizza now, pizza, pizza, pizza, part of me was already in New York for Opening Night, as if all the years in between had just been me, asleep as usual, loitering in the lobby of a mediocre dream.
“Hey, isn’t that your bag?” Kelly said.
On the luggage carousel, a black suitcase looped toward us, its side slashed open at the zipper, the top and bottom bound precariously by an inch of tattered thread. Somewhere on the long chute from the plane to the terminal my bag must have collided with a sharp edge. My clothes spilled out as I grabbed the bag and yanked it from the conveyer, shirts, socks, and underwear littering the carousel as I struggled for control of the bag. Kelly reached out to help, but all she could salvage was a single T-shirt before the rest of my clothes began another sad loop.
And so we waited, side by side in the Newark Airport Baggage Claim, while my socks and underpants rode the carousel a second time, my suitcase beside me like a stabbing victim found dumped at the side of the Turnpike.
I kissed Kelly’s cheek. “Welcome to New Jersey.”
-4-
Three years had passed since I’d last been home, unforgiveable really, considering that Uncle Dan was the only family I had. When my screenwriting career tanked, I’d thought about heading back to New Jersey, even more so when Kristin and I had split. Maybe it’s time to go home, I’d think each time I drove near the beach, disappointed and a little pissed off that the ocean was on the wrong side, the Pacific refusing to be where the ocean belonged, to the East, off the coast of Holman Beach, a quarter-mile from Jaybird Pizza and everything I’d known for the first twenty years of my life. I felt pride for what I’d built in California, but even when Kristin and I had bought a house in San Diego, talked about kids and school systems and rising property values, it had still felt temporary, as if it were only a question of time before I’d return to my native habitat.
At least I was good about staying in touch. Uncle Dan and I talked every Sunday, more for the familiar music of each other’s voices than anything else, but lately the conversation was all about the Jaybird. Rare was the call in which he didn’t offer me the business, his beloved pizzeria mine for the taking.
“Say the word and I’ll retire and get the hell out of your way. It’ll all be yours when I die anyway, right?” He’d always pause, waiting for me to say “yes.” “Right? Remember, if you shut down and sell the ovens, I will haunt your ass until the end of time. And you’d better not sell out to some Pakistani who doesn’t know a goddamn thing about pizza. This is where you belong, right here, with me.”
I didn’t believe him about being ready to retire. The Jaybird was all he knew, and he’d probably hang on for as long as his hands could knead a fresh roll of dough. Yet I knew he wanted me home. He never said it outright, but it hurt him that I chose to make pizza in San Diego rather than back home, at The Jaybird, with him. When I moved to New York for the theater, and later to L.A. to write scripts, it made sense to him—you couldn’t be a screenwriter in Holman Beach. But pizza? You could do that anywhere, and where better than at the pizzeria he’d built and carried on his shoulders for almost forty years, the place where I’d learned my trade, the one place on Earth where I was loved the best? Over the last few months he’d been especially persistent, letting me know that he was eager for my help.
“There’s an old man living in my bathroom mirror,” he said, “and I think he’s me.”
“You know I miss The Jaybird,” I said, another way of saying that I missed him. “But it’s not that easy.”
“You give that woman too much power over you.”
And there she was again: Amy, the elephant in every room.
“You don’t understand,” I said, but of course he did—he understood perfectly. I changed the subject. “Why don’t you come out to San Diego for a while?”
“The last time I was in California, they shipped me off to Vietnam. No thanks.”
“The war is over, Uncle Dan. I think it’s safe to visit.”
“The war’s never over,” he said, his way of ending any conversation he wanted to avoid. Uncle Dan never talked specifics about his war experiences except to say that part of him was still there deep in the jungle waiting to be shot. That was it—you didn’t ask him anything more. Even the name of the pizzeria—The Jaybird, an odd name for a New Jersey pizza joint—was strictly off-limits. Since I was five, I’d been badgering him about it—why The Jaybird? Why not Dan’s Pizza? Marcino’s Pizza? But the closest he ever came to telling was a brief reference to an Army buddy from New England who’d loved pizza.
“Hey, it’s safe for you to fly here, too,” he said.
“I’ll think about it. Maybe in a few weeks…”
“Here’s an idea. I’ll sell The Jaybird to Amy for a buck and let her run the place. You’d be back before the first Sicilian made it out of
