turned out not to be true. Worse, Jenna appeared as much in the dark as I was.
So, what had happened to Brody Miller?
Had he crept away alone to lick his wounds? Been threatened to stay away from Jenna and City Island? Had he given up on his dream and moved somewhere to create a new one? Was he hiding in the military, always looking for a few good men, and the only place that would give him a home, no questions asked?
The fair was still in high gear, the beautiful weather bringing out more people than the sidewalk space could actually support. Many had given up and drifted into nearby cafes and restaurants to get out of the heat. I stopped in my tracks and was grabbed by another thought.
What if, as I’d believed for so long, Brody was still here. Just not
I turned around and began walking again. This time I was looking for a sign that would point the way to one of the other small islands just off the north shore of City Island.
It was called Hart Island. Well-known, but not often discussed. There was a ferry that went over, but no one ever went there just to visit.
I found Fordham Street, which cut through the middle of City Island at its widest point and extended to the ferry stand. I walked there and then stood on the dock staring out at Hart Island. I really don’t understand why I continued to believe, deep in my soul, that Brody’s final resting place was over there. In any case, this is where it ends.
With no family or real address, with only a name known in a very small circle, it would be so easy for him to disappear. With no record of his existence, there would certainly be none of his passing. Like so many others who never fit in anywhere, a final home may have been made for someone once known as Brody Miller in Potter’s Field.
A VISIT TO ST. NICK’S
BY ROBERT J. HUGHES
I could have found it in my sleep, I could have made my way by touch, or even sense, through the turnstiles, to the trains, to the seat, my seat, the one at the middle, the one that let me out closest to the Fordham Road exit, the one I’d considered my stop, my station, my neighborhood, for too long. But I kept my eyes open. I wanted to see how it had changed, I guess, I wanted to see how it had not, and how twenty years had wasted away—twenty years of my life, my half-life.
It was all so new to me. Again. This life, this freedom, this air. Even the fetid smell of the sweating subway station, even the feral rats that nibbled on the black and glistening garbage bags, even the putrefying corpse of a drunk wheezing on the end of the oily platform, they all meant freedom to me. In the car, they all meant the world had gone on. The big-busted Latinas in their halters with their hoop earrings and stilettos, perched on the benches giggling, half women, all girl. The attitudinous black boys, boastful and wary, manful and scared, sitting with hooded eyes in the corners. The plaid school kids in clutches, the Laotians, the Vietnamese, the Cambodians, whose features I couldn’t figure, whose Asian geographies had populated the place when some more of the Irish had seeped out in the recent past. But not all of them had gone. Not my mom. Not my sister. Me, yes. My brother, of course, gone. This had been mine once, this neighborhood where all I saw was squalor, all I savored was stench, and all I felt was opportunity slipping away. This was now mine again, at least in time, for an hour, for two, for today. For more, though. For more. Always, for more.
My neighborhood. My home, once. My home never again. My home was far away, had been, for too long, for too needlessly long. And all because I’d been afflicted with stupidity, and never thought about repercussions. I’d never figured that a victimless crime would eventually have one. We are all victims, somehow, sometime, somewhere. No matter. But though I would never live here again, I had to come back just for now.
The train pulled out into the air and became an el, and the light made me feel, as always, as if I had just discovered grace. The sun blossomed over the rooftops. A few people on the car took out cell phones, and began to shout over the din, din themselves. At Fordham Road, I stepped down again onto the street. I cupped my hand over my brow and got my bearings. Not that I needed to. But I wanted to survey the shifting landscape. The stores were different, but the sidewalk held the same hubbub, now less Irish, now more other, less pink, more beige. The views I had thought vivid faded as my memories met new banks, aging bodegas. There was that White Castle, still going, still open twenty-four hours. Mike’s Papaya, too, dusty and yellow. There the 99-cent store. And there the Mega 99. There the pawnbroker, now with debt solutions in seven languages. And new nail and hair palaces. China Nail. Beauty J. Fordham Nails Ltd., tatty and limited indeed. And the restaurants: Centenario V, Comidas Latinas y Mariscos, Excellents II. English must have been new for them once, but twice? I’d taught ESL upstate, part of my good works there, my rehabilitation. If good had meant anything. It got me here, then, partly, it helped my release. But here, I still didn’t know. I gazed again. There, on the corner, the little bakery, and across from Devoe Park a white van, El Rancho, selling
Across University Avenue at the Fordham Road intersection stood those stately gray twin bell towers. Positioned between them above a stained-glass window, a cross, small and unnecessary, punctuated the hot blue sky, as if anyone needed reminding that this was a church. St. Nicholas of Tolentine. Unwelcoming below were the same wooden doors still blistering paint a shade of iron-rich dried blood. My church. My parish. My grammar school. My baptism, my communion, my confirmation. My
I noticed on the sign outside that mass was beginning in ten minutes. I looked over to my right at Devoe Park, where a listless player was shooting hoops, his ball hitting the court in lazy thuds. I ascended the seven heavy marble steps. A Latino man was more sure than I and, coming up behind me quickly, held open the creaking door. I nodded
It was sticky here in the muffled light. A fan at the back whirred, faint against the humid afternoon. Two stained-glass windows on the right side near the choir loft were cracked open at the bottom, under a scene of Jesus speaking to the elders. His early years. When he was filled with promise. Millennia until they’d discovered speed and
