—
There comes a point, even in the summer, when you want the season to end.
That evening, Danny, Jackie, and I were in the living room, watching MTV. If you watched the channel for long enough, the programming cycled through the same set of videos, but that did not (as yet) blunt our fascination with any of them, our determination to memorize every close-up of the climactic drum fills and guitar solos, these teaching a whole generation how to play air guitar and how to vogue. Nor did it diminish every tiny pleasure we took in certain moments we’d memorized. Of Stevie Nicks, for instance, blatantly blowing her lyrics as she lip-synced with Tom Petty in “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,”
the duo dressed in black, and Nicks, with her witchy frizzy blond hair, reminding me of Naomi. Like Sam, the lead singer of the Buggles (“Video Killed the Radio Star”) wore Elton John glasses, and his keyboard player made it appear that the height of virtuosity was to play two synthesizers at once— “We can’t rewind,”
I sang, to Danny and Jackie’s delight, “we’ve gone too far!”
During the guitar solo on “You Better Run,”
Pat Benatar would shake her head and rake fingers through her hair, and it was part and parcel of my transformation that nearly every rock song was so obviously about sex that I wanted to cover Danny’s and Jackie’s still-innocent ears. As for “In the Air Tonight,”
what did the lyrics mean? Where was Mom? Dad? Oren? “The hurt doesn’t show,”
sang Jackie, a thumb to her mouth in place of a mic, “But the pain still grows,”
Danny sang, picking up the line. “It’s no stranger to you and me,”
I roared. And while they played the air drums and danced like little go-go girls, I went outside to feed the fish.
It was dark in the yard, and after feeding the koi I walked to the lawn’s center and faced toward Manhattan, which I missed, which like my heartsickness glowed above the hedges and killed the sight of the stars. And then I heard Sam and Naomi fighting. The back of the Shahs’ home, as I have mentioned, was more glass than brick, and at night it was a tableau vivant. I turned around to see the girls dancing to The Who’s “You Better You Bet,”
and then looked up to the Shahs’ bedroom on the second floor.
They’d gone straight to verbal haymakers and weren’t even trying to keep it down for our sakes. They followed the argument, or it followed them, from their bathroom and back to the bedroom, where it was Naomi who went for the sword first. Sam wrestled for control of the saber back, their two sets of hands upraised and firmly gripping the handle, as if they were trying to touch their twelve-foot ceiling with the blade’s tip. Sam, who managed to wrench the weapon from his wife’s clutches, now raised it above his head; Naomi, reaching out in protest, backed toward the door, screaming at him, and then ran. Downstairs, Danny and Jackie were still dancing, the TV’s volume blasting the Pretenders’ “Tattooed Love Boys,”
the pair of them headbanging in front of Chrissie Hynde’s face, before freezing at the sound of Naomi’s scream.
As if practiced—as if they knew this was not a drill—the girls dashed behind the curtains, their backs visible to me in the windows.
And into this room the husband and wife appeared: Sam still with sword in hand, marching patiently around the coffee table, which Naomi, also marching around, kept between them.
She bolted, finally, out of the family wing, with Sam right behind her, shouting as he followed her through the dining room.
Here she turned to fling some of their china in his direction, the plates gouging the wallpaper as they broke against the wall, and then made her way into the kitchen, where I next spotted her walking backward again, now brandishing a chef’s knife, which she clumsily threw at her husband, its blade dinging on the tile, before she raced into the sunroom and, using the same strategy as earlier, placed the tulip table between them.
With one hand, Sam tossed this aside.
Naomi, surrendering, fell to her knees.
But Sam let the weapon fall at his side and covered his face.
At this, Naomi stood.
Over Sam’s shoulder she spotted me and, sensing rescue, made for the door to the yard.
He too turned and, spotting me, yanked her collar and threw her to the floor and, picking up the saber, marched in my direction.
He pushed the door open.
Naomi screamed, “No!”
When she tried to follow, he turned and shouldered the door closed on her pinkie, which got caught in the jamb.
The top half of her finger separated at the knuckle and bounced into the koi pond, where it floated for a second before one of those soft mouths rose to the surface, and ate it.
I ran.
Around to the front of the house, I fled, pursued by Naomi’s howl. I stopped on the street, looking at the other houses. I didn’t know any of the Shahs’ neighbors. I didn’t even know if the Shahs knew their neighbors.
The door of the garage was still up.
I opened the door of the Ferrari, pulled the visor, and caught the keys before they landed in my lap.
I dropped the car into gear and burned so much rubber I couldn’t see their house in my rearview mirror for the smoke.
I’d made the drive into the city so many times with both Sam and Naomi I knew it like a commuter.
And I knew the peace and quiet that attends the solo commuter’s trip—the time it gave me to collect my thoughts, which were, in my manner of coping back then, entirely unrelated to what had just happened.
Passing Flushing Meadows, I spied the Unisphere, that giant globe, and considered how few places I’d been to in my life besides New York.
The Observation Towers, topped with their flying saucers, these World’s Fair structures, run-down and rusting and in need of restoration.
Manhattan came into view from the Queens side.
When he was my age, did Dad marvel at its skyline as I did now? Is the city ever more wondrous than when seen from afar, at night? When the sky is black, when its buildings’ outlines are rendered invisible? There are more windows in New York than people, I thought.
How to begin to calculate such a number? I turned on the radio.
Dad’s commercial for Bell telephone played.
Reach out, he said, and touch someone far away.
Coming over the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, the Roosevelt Island tram rose into view on my right, but the car was empty.
Was this how adults fought with each other?
At our building, I pulled into our empty parking space and cut the engine. The needles slammed shut against their pegs.
I said hi to Carlos, the night doorman, in the lobby. “Long time no see,” he said.
Standing before our apartment’s door, I reached between my shirt’s collar and, from where it hung on its ball chain, produced the key.
I had never been so happy to be back in my own bed, I thought later, lying in my top bunk. I had never been so happy to be home.
Dad shook me awake the next morning—I’d slept in, I could tell, by the angle of the sunlight on the building across the street. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
I hugged his neck, which seemed gargantuan and smelled of Skin Bracer. I let him carry all my weight, and when he tried to ease my grip, I clutched him harder.
“Craziest thing,”
he said, as I held him. “I got in just now from D.C., and guess what? There’s a goddamn Ferrari in my spot.”