probably no different from what my parents might have shown had Jenna ever met them and visited where I lived in Washington Heights. My mother worked. Hers didn’t. My father owned a business that had him traveling through three nearby states several times a month. Jenna’s father managed a business on City Island that his family used to own. My mother was the strong family matriarch. Jenna’s father ruled because he was a chauvinist.
Tommy Harding liked to boast that his father was once the unofficial mayor of City Island. The Harding family had been there almost five generations. Tommy took over the title by default after his father died, and was inordinately proud of it. He wasn’t a very big man; slender, a chain smoker, and a big storyteller. Not a lot of formal education, but by no means a stupid man. Mrs. Harding was almost invisible the few times I visited. She kept a clean if unimaginative house. There was a lot of crochet and quilted accents. One was a framed
As much as I was a little bit afraid of Tommy Harding and his big ego, I was more fascinated by his stories of life on the island, what it used to be like. Jenna once confessed, embarrassed but honest, that she thought her father was probably prejudiced. He’d told me that his best friend in the navy was black. But I wondered what he said about me behind my back after leaving his house.
I came to believe that Jenna’s father treated me with the generosity of someone who felt perfectly safe in his universe, and was assured he was far better than I was. Jenna had two brothers. One who’d left right after high school to join the marines. The other had simply moved to a different boating town in Maryland. I wondered if in either case it was to get out of the shadow of their father. Jenna was the baby of the family, a distinction that held pros and cons, and that would ultimately decide her future.
And then Brody entered the picture.
Jenna and I met him at the start of our junior year when he’d transferred in to finish his senior year. He was tall, athletic, good-looking in a bad-boy, smartass way, even though he was neither. He was also an unknown. Neither white nor black, nor Latino, Brody was classic Heinz variety. That meant, whatever racial mixture went into his makeup, the end result was a guy who stood out, drew attention, seemed bigger than life. He had the open personality and charm of someone who went by his own rules but tried hard to get along.
Brody became my friend, the kind of male friend that is only possible when you’re sixteen, and when you have something in common. In our case it was ambiguous background and heritage. Like me he had a curiosity about people, places, and things that made us fearless. But Jenna fell for Brody in the way of a young girl whose heart can be captured, true and fast, just once in her life.
Their romance became public domain, and everyone in school followed its development with personal interest. The other boys wanted to know how long it would take Brody to score. The other girls upped the ante and did what they could to get Brody’s attention for themselves. I was witness to all of it, awed and deeply jealous that no one ever looked at me or sought me out the way Brody and Jenna did for each other.
Yet he wasn’t a player. There was, however, something a bit dangerous and tense about him, like a predatory animal who had very tightly drawn parameters around his space and himself. Even Jenna hadn’t picked that up about Brody, her eyes glazed over with infatuation, and defiance.
Once, Brody and I got to talking outside of school. We’d been let out early because of teacher meetings. Jenna hadn’t bothered coming at all. I felt aimless and not ready to head back home to take up my role as babysitter to my younger siblings.
“So, Jenna didn’t come in today,” he said. He rolled the one spiral bound notebook he ever used, and forced it into the back pocket of his jeans.
“She said it was a waste of time just for a few hours. Anyway, it’s a long bus ride from City Island,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. If I’d known I would have skipped to be with her.”
I looked at his profile. “You’ve been over there? To City Island?”
“Sure. Lots of times.”
“With Jenna?” I thought of her father and the boundaries he’d laid down.
He laughed. “Before I ever met her. I use to fish off the pier near the bridge. I once tried to get a summer job at the marina. Jen and me, we get together and walk around Orchard Beach Park. I have to do the right thing. I want to meet her folks, see where she lives. Let them know straight out Jen and me are together. I love City Island. I could live there.”
“How come?”
“’Cause it’s small. It’s surrounded by water. It feels like home. Kind of cozy and safe and cut off, know what I mean?”
“Like your home?”
“Not where I live now. Where I’d like to live one day.”
“But there’s nothing there. There’s nothing to do but eat. Jenna even says so and she liked growing up there. It’s so different from the rest of New York.”
“Maybe that’s why I like it.”
“Maybe your family could move there.”
“I don’t have a family. I live in a group home. My last foster parents moved before the school year started. I didn’t want to go with them to Norfolk. I was old enough. I could decide to stay on my own.”
I looked at Brody more closely. I was afraid to be too nosy and ask the questions that would give him a history and fill in the blanks.
“Aren’t you afraid to be by yourself?”
“I’ve always been by myself. It could have been worse, I guess. I always knew I was really on my own. I don’t know why my real mother gave me up. I don’t know who my father is. Bottom line, I have to take care of myself.”
“Doesn’t that make you mad?”
“I used to be, but now all I want is my own life, my own place, and to do what I want. I’ve been working part- time near boats and water since I was fifteen. South Street Seaport promised me something full-time when I
