Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost (11 page)

A few blocks farther the driver hung a left onto Frankfort Avenue.  It seemed like just yesterday that I’d lived in the canyon of tall brick tenements before us.  The building I grew up in was only three more blocks away. 

We passed the schoolyard where all the bad-asses used to sniff glue and
Carbona
Cleaning Fluid.  Across the street from it, the little Associated Food Store where I had my first part-time job was gone.  I’d stocked shelves and lugged heavy egg crates there when I was fifteen.  For the first time in many years, I could now see in my mind the pretty blond girl who used to come in three times a day to peek down the aisles at me.  But I saw another thing, too.  Something I didn’t want to.  It was me, planting cold beer and cigarettes in with the trash before taking it out some nights. 

Then I noticed the dry cleaning store.  And I recalled dropping bloodied shirts off there—more than once.  It had been a mixed up time in my life when I was getting into far too many fights.  Sure, I was young back then.  But how would
He
feel about these things I was now remembering?  How would they influence His decision when he was ready to decide my fate? 
How many other things had I done that crossed the forbidden border between mischief and trouble? 
Would more dark events come back to me—worse things?

As we made our way closer to my old place, I wanted to block all that out.  I tried to bring back different memories . . . better ones of the twenty years
since
my departure from this neighborhood.  But I couldn’t bring back a single one.  All I could do at this point was hope I’d turned myself around—behaved decently, and possibly made some retribution.  Time would tell, but it was running out.

“It’s right up here,” I whispered to Ernest.

Again he looked at me as if he knew exactly what I’d been thinking, and much, much more.  Maybe he did; maybe he didn’t.  But I didn’t like the way he looked.  I swallowed hard, pulled my eyes from him and turned them to the back of the driver’s head.

“It’s right up here,” I said.
“Fourth building on the right.”

“I know,” the taxi driver came back.  “I know exactly where it is.”

Sure
, I thought
.  How the hell do you know?

Slowing down as we approached the building, he added, “I know because He told me.”

I jerked my head toward Ernest.  He shrugged his shoulders.  Then he spoke for the first time. 

“I told you. 
You never know
.”

The cabbie then put the transmission in park, rested an arm atop the front seat and looked back at me. 

“Of course there is no charge for the ride,” he said. 

“If you’re in on this,” I said to him, “how come you gave me a hard time when Ernest first climbed into your cab back at the Waldorf?”

“Because this was one of His tests.
  I cannot divulge any more than that, only that this was a test.”

The cabbie was now speaking in a much more amiable tone than when he’d picked us up, and I realized that he was a pretty decent guy after all.

“Well,” I said as I reached for the door handle, “thank you for the ride.”

“You are welcome, but wait a moment.  Don’t get out just yet.  I must ask you a question.”

“Okay, sure.  What is it?”

“Look closely at my face.  Do I seem familiar to you?  Do you think you have ever seen me before?”

“No.  Not that I can recall.  Why?”

“Because you have been in one of my taxicabs before,” he said with an ironic smile.

“Really?
 
When?”

“More than twenty years ago.  I was the one who took you and your friends from Manhattan to that park we passed a while back.  I was the driver you did not pay.”

“
Nooo
shiii
. . . .  I mean . . . .  You’re kidding me.”

“No, I am not.  Do I look like I have much of a sense of humor?”

His white smile then spread cheek to cheek.  It was a relief to see.  Feeling somewhat off the hook now, I had a good hearty laugh.  So did
he
and Ernest.  I then got out of the cab, walked to the driver’s open window and shook his hand.

“Thank you my friend,” I said.

Still with that smile on his thin face, he said, “Have a nice day, Jack.  Go now, see your old home.”  Then he drove off.

“Ernest, can you believe that?” I asked, joining him on the sidewalk.

“You bet I can!”

We just stood there looking around for a couple of minutes.  Across the street there were lots of kids playing in the junior high school’s big asphalt schoolyard.  Outside it on the sidewalk, four mothers talked in front of the fence.  Their small children suddenly began to scream as the bells of the day’s first ice cream truck could be heard coming up the avenue.  I looked beyond the kids and their mothers.  On the other side of the high fence were the basketball courts where I’d played a thousand games.  The metal backboards, flush against the wall of an apartment building, took me back as well.  I could again see old Missus Grabowski’s angry face scowling out her fifth floor window.  On mornings when we had dared to dribble and shoot before eight o’clock, she’d sit up there waiting for an opportune time.  Then when we weren’t paying attention, she’d empty a full pot of hot water down us. 

When that thought dissipated, I rolled my eyes down the block a ways.  The Christian Scientist church still stood there.  And I remembered the countless summer nights when a mob of us teenagers would hang out on the wide steps—carrying on and listening to music from all the girls synchronized radios.  When that vision ran its course, I turned away from the church and laid a hand on the mailbox alongside me.

I said to Ernest, “When I was a kid, I used to love to climb on top of this thing.  I’d sit up here and be taller than any grownup that ever walked by.  I felt like I was on top of the world.”

Ernest silently nodded.  Then he turned his head and eyes to the two big iron and glass doors to my old building.  In a tone close to solemn, sensing the trauma of my homecoming, he asked, “Are you ready to go inside, Jack?”  

Nodding slowly, I looked at those doors.  “Sure,” I said.  “Let’s do it.  Let’s go up to apartment 3-C.”

I pushed through the heavy door and held it open for Ernest.  We then climbed the three wide steps to the
building’s
inside entry doors that opened into the hallway.  As I now held one of the doors open for Ernest, I did a quick study of it.  The Carole Loves Jacky that a young teenage girl once carved into the wood was now gone. 

Making our way down the hallway, we passed six, brown metal doors.  All had the number one and a letter on them, 1-A through 1-F.  We then entered the lobby, and I looked around for a moment.  There were four more apartments on the far side and one small door that opened to a room the size of a phone booth.  I looked inside.  The old garbage chute was still built into the wall.  I thought back to the countless nights when, after dinner, I’d fed brown paper bags full of our family’s trash to the basement incinerator’s waiting flames.

Stepping back into the lobby, I pointed to two iron radiators along the far wall and told Ernest, “When it was cold outside us kids would sometimes come in here and sit on those for a while.”

Nodding his head, he said, “I can understand that.  Nobody likes a cold ass.”  We shared a chuckle before he added, “I sure had my share of those back in Oak Park.

Ernest then stepped toward the elevator.  “We might as well go up to your floor now if you’re ready.”

I didn’t answer right away.  I was eleven years old again.  The unreliable elevator was stuck between two floors again.  My pal Dino and I were going up to my place, and this time it stopped just before we got up there.  We jimmied open the door, and there was the shaft’s solid brick wall before us.  Raising our eyes together, we both saw a two foot opening at the top.  It was the third floor.  Dino and I pulled ourselves up there and started crawling out.  And at that very second that we pulled our ankles out onto the worn tile floor, the elevator started going down—quickly and with the door still open.  One second earlier and it would have severed us both at the ankles.  Two or three seconds earlier and it would have cut our young bodies in half. 

From that day forward, I always had an elevator phobia.  I’d only get into one if it was absolutely necessary.

“Do you mind if we walk up, Ernest?”

Giving me a puzzled look he said, “Sure . . . we can do that.”

As we approached 3-C, a small girl with yellow pigtails and excited blue eyes came out of the door next to it.  Carrying what looked like a brand new
doll,
she scooted by us and scampered down the stairs.  Obviously old Mister Brody no longer lived there. 

Turning back to the door I’d lived behind for two decades, I gave it a good once over.

A silent moment passed before Ernest asked, “Are you going to knock on it, Jack?”

“I don’t think so.  I don’t want to bother whoever lives here.  Don’t know if it would do any good if I did.”

Again Ernest waited.  We heard music inside.  It sounded Oriental—an instrumental.  It was light and soothing. 

“You might learn a few more things about yourself,” Ernest nudged now.

With the weight of what I’d already learned about myself leaning heavy on my mind, I said, “I’m not so sure I want to.  Anyway, what’re the odds whoever lives here is going to invite me in to snoop around.”

He took a deep breath, exhaled and rubbed his temples.  Looking down at a small black mat that did not say “welcome,” Ernest came back, “Even the long shots come in occasionally.  Go ahead.  What have you got to lose?”

When he looked back at me I nodded.  “Yeah, what the hell,” I said and knocked three times, slowly.

We could hear footsteps coming now, very light ones.

Then the door opened slightly.  A petite Chinese lady with ancient eyes cautiously peeked out beneath two brass safety chains. 

“Yes?  What is it you want?”  

Feeling like a fool entering my plea through a four-inch opening, I said, “I’m very sorry to bother you, ma’am.  But I . . .
well,
I used to live here a long time ago.  I grew up in your apartment.  I feel kind of foolish but was wondering if there’s any way you’d allow me to see the place one last time.  Like I said, it’s been many years.  I’ve left a lot of memories in there, and well . . . I’d love to bring them back.”

She then looked me up and down for a few long seconds.  I felt the guilty suspect in a police lineup.  Finally she peered back into my eyes, drilling into them this time.  Her small brown eyes narrowed more than they had when she’d first peeked out.  Then she let me have it with both barrels.

“YOU CRAZY MAN!” she yelled.  “GET OUT OF HERE!  YOU NO COME IN HERE!  GO!  GO!  OR I CALL POLICE RIGHT NOW!”

Man, did she turn out to be one heck of a door slammer.  BLAM, right smack in my face!  Tiny as she was, she heaved that thing so hard that the noise rang in my ears as it resonated in the hallway.  On the other side of the door, three bolts quickly slid closed, and my scolding continued in rapid-fire Chinese.

“Thanks for all your encouragement,” I snarled at Ernest.

He stared at me, and I stared back.  Then we both lost it.  We just cracked up.  With the agitated old lady still carrying on inside, it was then our turn to scamper down the stairwell.  Like two mischievous teenagers, we laughed hysterically all the way.  By the time we made our way down the first floor hallway to the building’s entrance doors, my abs ached as if I’d done two hundred sit-ups.  We didn’t even begin to calm down until we stepped back out onto the sidewalk.  For a moment we just stood all hunched over out there with our hands at our sides and tears in our eyes as we tried to catch our breaths.  And when we did, I knew I’d had enough.  I told Ernest I was ready to go back to Manhattan. 

We could have taken a bus to the taxi stand on Main Street, but I felt like getting a little exercise.  My partner said he was game.  He didn’t mind walking and seeing a little more of my old neighborhood.  With my sense of direction in working order now, I decided to take a short cut.  We made our way through the maze of towering buildings, passed a Jewish temple, and finally came up to Roosevelt Avenue.  When we turned there, I froze in my tracks. 

As if the cement sidewalk had hardened around the soles of my shoes, my legs would not move.  I could feel the warm sun beating on my face and on the top of my head, yet a cold chill prickled both my arms.  Suddenly my mind came alive with yet another whirlwind of memories.  Along with them, an entire stash of images flashed through my head.  They were pictures of a person—just one person.  She was someone I hadn’t been able to bring back until now.  Holding
my arm out against Ernest’s chest to keep him there, I stared at the second building up on our right.

“Good God, Ernest!  That’s where she lived when we first met!  Right there on the second floor,” I pointed, “the windows closest to us.”