From Rockaway Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PROM NIGHT

  1: THE BLOOD PART

  2: AUTHORITY

  3: BEING “IT”

  4: LETTERS

  5: THREE’S A CROWD

  6: TILT-A-WHIRL

  7: VACATION

  8: AT THE MOVIES

  9: HAT WALK

  10: MOVING MATTERS

  11: CRUISE TO NOWHERE

  12: LIMBO

  13: THE MURDERERS’ CLUB

  14: THE BRASS BALLS BRIDGE JUMPERS ASSOCIATION

  July 6, 1987

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author...and Swell

  Praise for Jill Eisenstadt’s From Rockaway

  Also by Jill Eisenstadt

  Newsletters

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 1985, 1987 by Jill Eisenstadt

  Excerpt from Swell copyright © 2017 by Jill Eisenstadt

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Lee Boudreaux Books / Back Bay Books

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  leeboudreauxbooks.com

  Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., August 1987

  First paperback edition published by Vintage Books, May 1988

  First Lee Boudreaux Books / Back Bay Books ebook edition, April 2017

  Lee Boudreaux Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Lee Boudreaux name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

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  “The Blood Part” by Jill Eisenstadt was originally published in The Bennington Review.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Blackwood Music Inc. for permission to reprint excerpts from the song lyrics “Nowhere Man” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Copyright © 1965 by Northern Songs Limited. All rights in the United States, Canada, and Mexico controlled and administered by Blackwood Music Inc. under license from ATV (Maclen). All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.

  ISBN 9780316506328

  E3-20170316-NF-DA

  To Joe McGinniss

  Prom Night

  THE LIMO DRIVER, Russ or Gus, has a bald, tan head and a line of whitish crust on his lip edges. He does not try to hide his disgust—“Kids today.” Drives like he’s in a bumper car down at Playland, like he’s doing some huge favor—“Carting brats around town.” And has nothing at all to say besides “When I was your age…,” “The world has gone haywire,” and “At this rate, you’ll be lucky to make twenty intact.”

  In the backseat, a pile. Limbs and hair, smushed corsages, empty, rattling champagne bottles, and pot seeds. Timmy and Alex, Peg and Chowderhead, having long since tuned out Russ or Gus, discuss who will get the Polaroids afterwards.

  The camera does belong to Chowder’s mom, but Timmy was acting photographer, Alex is the only one leaving for college, and the pictures star Peg, in that violet chiffon gown, before and after the big tear, when her toe got caught. She somehow forgot to lift the dress; stepped out of the limo and right on through it. One perfectly smooth motion that she then managed to re-enact for the camera, exactly.

  The decision about the pictures is made tougher still by the fact that no one cares that much (to insist on keeping them) yet everyone cares enough not to drop the subject. A resolution seems impossible until Russ or Gus pipes up and suggests making copies. Copies?! You’re a genius, thank you, thank you.

  Timmy moves to snap a few shots of the back of the driver’s neck, which he’s been involuntarily watching for hours now. It is fat and wet and jiggling. It is overflowing out of an incredibly dirty, white starched collar. Timmy is sure it’s the place where all the guy’s bad shit is concentrated. “I mean, imagine having to carry that around every day. Flesh knapsack.”

  Alex frowns. “You’re talking too loud.” Peg is busy examining her split ends. Chowderhead says it’d be a helluva lot worse to have no neck, like Lefty.

  They are zipping down Cross Bay Boulevard. Russ or Gus takes advantage of their attention to launch into yet another sermon on “years ago,” as if no one had parents to supply that.

  “Years ago, we had proms in gyms.…” Racing past THE PORK STORE, TUX TOWN, PIZZA CITY. “We couldn’t just go molesting any pretty girl that happened by. We had chaperones.” Flying at such a clip that Howard Beach is a glimpse, a smell—air getting fresher, saltier. “Do you know how long I saved up for my prom? Do you know how many floors I washed to buy a corsage?” Into Broad Channel, where people live in the water, in houses on stilts, and where Peg once, during a fight, invented the popular insult “Shut up or I’ll untie your house.”

  “No bozos back then, we were clean. No highfalutin ideas about—”

  “Beach!” Chowderhead reminds him as they swerve onto the bridge back toward Rockaway. “We wanna be let out at the beach.” That inflexible law stating that each prom night must end with a sunrise.

  “Listen, wise guy, I’ll stop when I damn well please. We were at least taught some respect. We knew our place.” Becoming totally reckless now, his whole body facing them. Could mean into the bay the hard way.

  “I see. Well. May we please, sir, be dropped off at the beach, sir. It seems to be our place, sir.” The words made doubly comical by Chowder’s flat, pink face. Though sun-burnt to shit at the start of every summer, he still can never get that sunscreen thing together, or else he forgets. It’s no big deal. Minor, he says, if you consider all the other redhead torments.

  There’s a wave of nervous giggling. Alex, squirming between Timmy and Peg, drinks the vodka swill straight, thinks, this driver is on the edge of a nervous collapse. She cannot face, Jesus please no, the idea of dying before ever even leaving Rockaway.

  It is dark still and sticky. Timmy, with his whole head and half his torso out the window, sees Queens glow far off and, closer, gnats, moths, mosquitoes, flying up to taste the bridge lights. These he prefers to all those unhappy fishermen who stand at the edge of the bridge gawking at the limo. How can they keep going, knowing that if anything’s biting (unlikely), it will be too polluted to eat? And insects, they are also definitely superior to the sudden sight of Sloane’s bashed-in Dodge Dart following the limo again.

  Although Sloane has not attended the prom, he has gathered a crew—Bean, Artie, Lefty, Louie the Lump, and, naturally, Schizo, his lifeguard mutt—to go everywhere the prom-goers go, including the Staten Island ferry, where they got extra obnoxious with that disappearing ink stuff, which, as it turns out, disappears better on some fabrics than others.

  But no one else seems quite as bothered by it all as Timmy does. Maybe because he’s wearing and worried about Alex’s dad’s tuxedo, or maybe because he’s upset that he won’t be graduating, since he, like that car full of dirtbags tailgating them, dropped out a year ago. For n
o real reason.

  Inside the limo, they’re still talking “back when.” Peg, with her blond, nearly white head in Chowder’s lap, goes on and on for the benefit of—who knows? It sounds almost like a rap song.

  “I’ll bet all those girls at your prom were virgins. I’ll bet they drank fruit punch and did all their homework because they had to get ready for church, eat all the food on their plates, brush their hairs one hundred times when they woke up, and when they kissed their mothers in their nightgowns they meant it, and when they said the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag witch’s-honor Girl-Scout’s-honor cross-my-heart-hope-to-die-stick-a-needle-in-my-eye they meant it, and knew all their multiplication tables without flashcards, backwards and forwards and in French, Spanish, Italian, Swahili.…Alex, man, wouldya stop yawning already?”

  Alex smiles, though slightly nauseated with the feeling that she has just gotten her period, shit, in her white dress and when she’d begun considering having sex with Timmy tonight. For fun. For old times’ sake.

  When she’d bought the prom tickets she hadn’t known she’d be breaking up with him. She’d never really expected to get into college and especially not with a scholarship. Which just goes to show—never try to assume or predict, things will always happen differently. Even when whatever is gonna happen happens, it will appear to be different from the way it actually is. For instance, Timmy, next to her, with his just-hatched-chick hair, honest brown eyebrows, flair for making anything he wears, even tuxes, look like pajamas. He didn’t mean it when he said love. An elaborate fling was what it was; quickly simmering to average, then fair, then habit, then a goddamn drag. Whereas real love would be simple. It might shoot up and down until it spontaneously combusted, but it would not, could not, just dissolve.

  This thought makes her want to chew her lip, but she’s made a resolution to try not to. It scares her to think that everything ends up divided into Before and After: Before and After school, Timmy, prom night. You can look at the Polaroids that way too—prom night, Before and After it got dark, they got smashed, Peg’s big tear, Alex got her period. Like those pictures of people who have lost fifty pounds but are somehow wearing the exact same outfit both times.

  It’s fine with Timmy that Alex is staring at him, but he wishes she didn’t have such a sad mouth on. He could do all kinds of nice things with that mouth if she’d let him. She was probably already forgetting their pact fantasy to be together one day in a bed, like grownups. They had made love only in his showerhouse, in his car, in his backyard. And now no more.

  Chowderhead says it is four-thirty. “Time to exit this prom hearse.” And they are finally cruising up to the boardwalk, perceptible sighing, they’re alive!, scrambling to gather from the seat and the floor what’s left to ingest, as Russ or Gus pulls up onto the curb to make sure he’s sufficiently noticed.

  Timmy spots Seaver, the old bum who’s their friend, doing wheelchair wheelies by the beach wall. Without a word they all jump out of the limo and run to circle him. They all try to talk to him at once. So much to say—about Manhattan, the way it looked from high up in the Time-Life building, sparkling, the moment when Alicia McHenry’s name was drawn randomly for prom queen and she was found passed out in the lobby, the ferry ride, the after-hours blackjack place, and, how could we forget, Russ or Gus, the fearless kamikaze limo driver.

  To all this Seaver simply nods. He is a survivor of adventures only rumored because he has no tongue to tell of them himself. He can wheelchair as fast as anyone can run and can throw a wicked screwball, and has fish heads tattooed all up one side of his body. Chowder is trying to show him the Polaroids but it’s much too dark, which Seaver manages to get across by shaking his head, by holding the photos up close, then away, then up close.

  “OK,” Chowder says, “forget exhibit A, check out B,” pointing dramatically to the hole in Peg’s gown.

  Seaver bobs his head around, then wheels over and sticks his hand through, softly squeezes one bony knee. Chowder starts chanting, “Easy access, easy access,” and clowning with Peg’s dress too. Because it’s obvious that Seaver is only being friendly. Because Peg in any dress is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

  There’s a fire on the beach where all the prom people have silently scheduled to meet. And wouldn’t you know, Sloane has screeched up in his Dodge Dart, whooping and bellowing to join in. Following him, his animal, Schizo (ugly mixture of Lab and pointer), yapping like he’s been fed speed (likely), and then Bean, Artie, Lefty, Louie the Lump, definitely on the prowl tonight, the excitement of all those rampant necklines.

  Timmy vows to himself that he will not allow them to interfere with his good time. He admires the June tan that Alex got special for the white dress, white teeth, soft, small, unbearably lickable shoulders. And she is jumping over the beach wall now, on the sand, bending to remove her stockings slowly, man.

  “You’re whipped,” Chowder says, watching Timmy watch Alex.

  Chowder just doesn’t understand.

  Peg’s pissed. This Russ or Gus guy, paid in full, is still sitting there, staring. You’d think he’d be thrilled to leave, the way he bitched. Some sort of weird punishment, is it? And for who—them or him? Or out of gas maybe, bored, lost, tired, psychotic? There is nothing she can see that is particularly fascinating or exotic to look at here.

  She tries ignoring him, then throwing shells at the windshield, and, as a last resort, running up and sticking her tongue out. That works. He drives off. Peg removes her shoes to jog after him, shouts, “So long!…Let’s do it again some time soon!…You’ve been too too wonderful, really great!”—thinking as the car rounds the corner how her father would have taken down the license plate number and filed a complaint.

  Chowderhead is massaging Seaver’s neck, singing “How’s about a date?” to the tune of “Eyes Without a Face.” He’s known for the amusing way he fucks up songs. Could be that something’s really wrong with his hearing, since it’s been going on for years now. Back in Catholic school he ended up inventing some truly blasphemous hymns, and Louie the Lump claims that when “Stayin’ Alive” first came out he caught Chowder mouthing “Chicken Delight, Chicken Delight” in all seriousness.

  Peg whispers Chowder’s new mixup to Timmy, and he to Alex, who claps. Timmy watches her move closer to hear more clearly, thinks he can tell exactly how she feels, biting her lip while she leans on the wheelchair arm. She’s working on holding the laughter back but it shows, it’s all over her face, shiny, anxious, the size of his hand. Oh, Chowder could not possibly understand.

  “When’s this sunrise supposed to go on?” She scans the beach, which Seaver can’t get down onto from the boardwalk unless he’s carried. “Dontcha feel like we’re in some magazine?” she asks as she pulls over her head one of the stockings she’s taken off. “Ya know, on the beach, in formal wear?”

  But no, no one does know except Seaver, who immediately makes a noise like a cat scream and begins posing. Classy. Innocent. Sexy. Carefree. Amazing, this drunk, crippled, half-deranged bum giving his impression of glamour.

  “When do I get my massage?” says Peg. “I’m the one who paid for the prom tickets, tipped the driver, bought the pot, and I don’t make nearly as much money as you guys.” Which reminds Timmy and Chowderhead simultaneously that they have to go lifeguard in about four hours.

  “Boo hoo hoo,” Chowder says, because Peg’s a lifeguard too and makes plenty. Then he switches to rubbing her neck, much nicer, almost too familiar—rubbed, kissed, hugged by him off and on since Catholic school.

  Timmy is telling Seaver about the umbrella girl dancing in the Peppermint Lounge. Red plastic raincoat and nothing, no thing on underneath. Seaver bares what is left of his teeth and gives the thumbs-up sign.

  “She was ugly,” Alex says. “Cellulite.” She remembers that she thinks she’s gotten her period and grabs Peg to come for a walk. They’re only a little ways onto the beach when Bean runs up, picking his ear and babbling about a parakeet that flew into his window
, said, “Good bird, stupid bird,” and got sexually excited over the color green. They leave him there still yakking.

  By the time they find a safe wall to pee near, there is a crack of light on the horizon, the faintest line, cantaloupe color over the edge of Playland. And no, Alex does not have her period, but Peg does—figures, she always gets hers first, which Alex attributes to Peg’s having a stronger personality. Alex wants to ask what to do about Timmy, if it’s mean to sleep with him when they’ve broken up for good. But she only wants Peg to say that she should, so she doesn’t ask.

  “I guess I gotta go home for a sec,” says Peg. “Shit.”

  But Alex offers her house, it’s closer, and, besides, she’d like to take Scrapy, her dog, out for a walk.

  So they race. And because Alex knows Peg’s faster, she compensates by crashing into her every few paces, their dresses tripping them until they give up, giggling.

  “Shhhh,” at the back door. “My dad’s probably up watering the plants or something.”

  When they get back the boys are naked. They’ve gone swimming. Seaver’s beginning to doze off, with Alex’s father’s tuxedo draped over his wheelchair.

  “Where’ve ya been?” in unison, dripping.

  Timmy is acutely aware of the limited darkness left. If he doesn’t get some action going soon it will be too late, make that too early.

  “Let’s just say the Good Humor man came.” Lame joke from Peg. “Hey, idea. Whataya say we play statues? That’s what we used to do waiting for the ice cream truck, remember? Let’s play.” She tackles Chowderhead, tickles him until he says OK, he’ll play, but only if he’s allowed to stay naked.

  “I forget the rules,” Timmy says.

  “Fake it.”

  “My dress,” Alex says. “My mother.”

  “Take it off.”

  “Any beer left?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Well, then, let’s go!”

  But it’s nowhere near as easy as it used to be—leaping around on dry sand in a gown, in the heat, and when you can barely even see your hand in front of you. Trying to stay frozen as one or another ridiculous statue, when all you’ve been doing for the last ten hours is drinking, Scrapy sniffing at your crotch, and the penalty for moving being three Hail Marys in pig latin. Ailhay Arymay. Ailhay Arymay. Ailhay Arymay.