Chapter 10A

Martha said over the phone, "I think it's about time you came to New York, if you still want to."

"Why this sudden change of mind?" I asked.

"Sudden? I've been thinking about it for months. I figured you could handle the shock of New York by now."

I chided her, "Listen, that typewriter you sent me -- I promise to use it 'till I wear it out, but... it's a very expensive present. I can't let you pay for it. I owe you."

She said she'd purchased it in New York at a low price that I could never match in Memphis. She said that, if I really wanted, I could make up for the cost of the typewriter. "I tried to save some party money for your visit, but it's impossible. You have enough on your own to make it a real vacation instead of a trek. And you can pay me back for your present by treating me too, now and then."

"Deal."

"And promise me, Steven... while you're here... be my friend."

I had no idea what she was getting at. Lack of space in her pad? Too much activity, too many things to see? "Okay," I said.

"Don't say okay, if you don't mean it."

"Okay." I took a long, deep breath. "How long can I stay?"

"How long? Well... It depends on how much you've saved up."

I said right away, "All summer."

I heard her laugh hilariously on her end of the line. "My lord, Steven! You mean three *months*?"

"How much money do I need?" When she told me, I thought my legs would give out. I said gloomily, "I don't have that much. I have the time, but I don't --" I stopped, so disappointed that I thought I'd crack up like a little baby, and she must have heard it in my voice.

She said forgivingly, "Oh, hon, I know--I just know you couldn't possibly have that much saved up, and I can't get very much time off for you, I work all summer. But..." I heard her sigh irritably. "Oh, don't make this so difficult for me."

I asked, "Two months?"

"Well, I... Steven. Are you sure you have that much in the bank? I mean, two people can't eat cheaper than one."

"I have that much." It was a white lie, maybe a slightly gray lie, but I was desperate.

She said slowly, "Are you telling me just a tiny, tiny lie?"

I offered again, "Seven weeks."

She teased, "Now, Steven... ?"

I waited. Why not all summer? I might even be able to get a job up there part time and help her with the rent. Anything! Anything to get out of Memphis.

She said, "Steven, if you really do have enough saved up for two months, and if we can get your folks to go along..."

"They'll go along."

"Well... You know, I told my girlfriend Ronnie downstairs that she might have to watch out for you for a couple of weeks on days when I'm at work. I didn't tell her it would be for..."

I waited again. I heard her shuffling around at the other end of the line. Finally, she said, "Okay. Two months." Then she said, "But you have to promise me you have enough saved."

"Okay."

"Don't say okay if you don't--"

"Okay. Okay. Okay."

Getting to New York required planning, and some tricky politics with Tony. At first he refused to allow me to spend my money on the trip. He grumbled, "If that friend of yours wants to see you so much, why don't she come home and visit her own folks, and you -- with her own money? And what the hell are you gonna do up there for two months?"

Despondent, I called Martha a few days later and explained the problem.

She was disappointed. "I see you two still have problems getting along," she said over the phone. "I wish I'd known about that. But don't get into total warfare with him. From what you're saying, I think you really need to be away from those problems for a while. Don't worry, just be patient. We'll find a way."

I was so angered at Tony's refusal to let me at my own money that I sat at my desk one evening and wrote a long list of the many things I hated about him, citing a detailed history of his "criminal" acts against me. It was a scathing document that I hid in my desk.

Unfortunately, I was dumb enough to not destroy it after venting my spleen. My mother found my invective while cleaning my room.

One day when I came home from school she entered my room wearing a darkly reproachful look and sat with me on my bed. We had our very first -- and last -- long, intimate chat together.

She urged me to be more understanding of Tony. He didn't really hate me. He grew up in a large and very poor Italian family in a poverty zone in Memphis and literally had to fight his brothers and sisters for food. He worked long and hard, he moved us out of the housing project, and he sacrificed his own needs to pay my tuition at Christian Brothers instead of sending me to a public school with inferior academic and social standards.

Then she told me the truth about my own father, Steven senior.

When my dad was in training in 1943 in Tucson, Arizona, he lived with another woman. He wrote home saying that he wanted a divorce and that he didn't want to have anything to do with me. When I was 18 months old my Mom and Daddy Joe brought me to Tucson. They urged my dad to live up to his responsibilities and to wait at least until the War was over to see if he still wanted to dissolve the marriage. They reminded him that as a Catholic he was morally bound to try to work things out. My father relented. He came back to Memphis on his way to the European front and made Mom pregnant with my sister. Months later, he wrote a letter the night before his fatal bombing mission, saying that he feared he was going to die because he had been volunteering for too many dangerous assignments in order to complete his tour more quickly. My mother told me she felt he must have realized that his behavior had been some sort of death wish, that he did not want to return to raise his son and daughter.

As she told me this I sat rigid and silent. After she left me alone in my room, I wept. The model on whom I had based my own resistance against my stepdad had been destroyed forever. And so had the trust I'd placed in relatives who had woven the legend of Steven senior. But this did little to reconcile with me with Tony. I disliked him as much as I ever did, especially after his refusal to allow me to visit Martha.

A few days later at breakfast, after Tony left for work, Mom perked up and said, "Guess what? Tony's gonna let you go to New York. But you have to promise not to spend every dime you've saved."

I stared at her, surprised and happy and confused. "But why did he change his mind?"

"Martha Jane called me and we had a talk about how seeing New York would be good for you. She asked if she could talk to Tony about it, and I said yes. And then your cousin Rena called here."

"Rena?"

She explained patiently, "Your cousin. Rena. You don't remember her? She grew up across the street from Josephine Louise. Rena's an airline stewardess in New York. So Martha Jane called, and then Rena called. And both of 'em kept tellin' me it would be so much like a real education for you up there. So... they both called Tony, and on top of that they had him talk to your friend Brother Edmund at Christian Brothers, and he thought it would be a good thing for you, and..." She sighed, winded by her own rambling. "It just seems like everybody was talkin' to Tony, on and on and such, and so..." She concluded, breaking into laughter for the first time in many weeks, "Your old girlfriend and your cousin sweet talked him into it! They really ganged up on him!"

I thanked her. And for once I was truly thankful for having so many cousins. I was not crazy about the idea that I was unable to negotiate with Tony on my own, but I thanked her. I actually gave her a quick hug. And I did ask myself if her apparent relief was caused by her desire for Tony and I to have a friendlier relationship. And when Tony came home that night, I gave him a somewhat more subdued thanks that included a perfunctory handshake.

But these gestures were the maximum that I was willing to concede to either parent. The people I wanted to hug and thank even more were Martha and Brother Edmund and my long forgotten cousin Rena.

I spent the next several weeks working at my three jobs to stash away more travel money. When the Commercial Appeal held sales promotions I badgered the people on my news route until some of them took temporary delivery just to shut me up. And I put in extra time on the delivery bike, working my tail off after school on weekdays as well as the usual weekends. And when summer vacation started, I put in a full 12-hour day at the market, six days a week. On July 4th I earned an extra forty bucks at a watermelon sale held at one of my uncle's grocery stores. And I cut some lawns for relatives when I had the time to spare.

And finally, on Friday, July 5, one day after the rest of the country celebrated America's independence, I celebrated my own freedom as my folks drove me to Memphis Municipal Airport to meet my flight to New York. Accustomed to hiding my feelings, I concealed my nearly unbearable excitement and anticipation behind a mask of calm and reticence as my luggage was tagged and loaded at the ticket counter. Looking bored wasn't all that difficult; in my excitement I had not slept more than an hour all night, despite sweating all day at the watermelon sale and getting up at 3 A.M. to help my substitute on the paper route.

I had not expected the departure committee that met us at the airport. In those days, an airplane trip to New York was as exotic an event for my family as a trans-Atlantic cruise. Aunt Frances, Uncle Johnny, Mama Rose, Josephine Louise, several aunts and uncles, a dozen cousins and other kin from both the Ricci and Lobianco families had come to see me off, occupying an entire section of the waiting room.

Aunt Frances had no conception of airline travel. As everyone chattered and waited, Aunt Frances sat dabbing at her eyes with a hankie as tears ran down her face. When asked why was crying, she pointed out the window at one of the airliners parked near the terminal building.

She sobbed, "Your daddy was killed in one of those!"

Uncle Johnny swore quietly, "Hell, Frances," and spent most of his time comforting her.

My stepdad said, "You don't look very excited about goin', Speedy."

My mother laughed and told him, "I know he doesn't look all that excited, but I bet he is. Look at him; whenever he looks like he's not thinkin' about anything, it means his mind is goin' a mile a minute. Just like his Uncle Frank."

I received some liberal kidding about that, along with Josephine Louise reminding me, "Now, don't you let New York go to your head. I hear Martha Jane lives in some kind of luxury building up there with a doorman and everything."

Mother said, "Well, I hope they have a doorman. His cousin Rena said Martha Jane has one. I hope so, I don't wanna worry about him gettin' mugged for two months."

Soon it was time to embark. At the boarding gate I had so many relatives to kiss and hug that Josephine Louise had to remind everyone, "Stop all this kissing or he'll miss his plane!"

I kissed Aunt Frances, who was still crying. The last person I hugged and kissed was Josephine Louise. She whispered into my ear, "Be careful. And don't lose your virtue in the big bad city!" I grinned at her and thought: if she only knew! Waving a last goodbye, I slung my borrowed flight bag over my shoulder and headed for the plane, with Aunt Frances wailing pitifully behind me and Uncle Johnny grumbling, "Shit, Frances. Cut it out."

I found my window seat, removed and folded the suit jacket I wore, and loosened my tie. As the prop-driven plane roared off the ground I wondered how my father felt when his B-24 climbed into the air. But most of my thoughts were about Martha. Should I let her see me wearing my glasses? I thought not. I removed them and hid them in my spectacle wallet. I worried about the few brownish adolescent pimples that I'd tried for two weeks to eradicate. Maybe she wouldn't notice. After a while the pilot announced that we were cruising at a few hundred miles per hour. Hell, I thought, couldn't we go faster? Try as I might to stay awake, the previous day's hard work and lack of sleep had me nodding off.

Five long hours later, I was confronted with the unimaginable bustle of LaGuardia Airport. I walked out of the airplane and across the short length of tarmac, and past the arrival gates into a huge, crowded, pandemonious lobby. I craned my neck in all directions searching for Martha. How would I ever find her in a crowd like this? I considered putting on my eyeglasses, but I didn't want Martha to see them.

She was standing on the ledge of one of the panoramic viewing windows, her head several inches above the crowd. When I spotted her she'd just caught sight of me and was beaming at me and waving both arms. When our eyes met, she yelled "Steven! Stay there!" She hopped to the floor, disappearing into a roiling ocean of heads and shoulders and elbows.

Then she was walking toward me with outstretched arms. Her auburn hair was pinned back, her face stretched with a wide, elated smile. She wore a white, starched, open collared blouse, a dark red pleated skirt, and matching heels. She looked as fresh and clean as new snow. And her hazel eyes, bright, electric, eager and happy, had me in a state of instant nuclear meltdown. Almost knocking me down, she hugged me fiercely and squealed, "I'm so happy to *see* you!"

My eyes moistened.

Breaking our furious clinch with a cheerful grunt, she held me at arms length and looked me over. "None of that, young man! That's no way to start a vacation -- save all that until you find yourself on your way back to Memphis! Stop, now, you'll make me cry, too! Oh, I knew you'd do this to me!" She hugged me again, really hard, and then held me at arm's length again. "Now stop it, let me see you. Stand still. *LOOK* at you! And look at those shoulders! Steven, you're gorgeous!"

Regaining my composure, I placed my hands around her slim, belted waist. I said, "A few hours a week at Liberty Cash Grocery Number 23 was all it took."

"Well!" she said, robustly pulling me against her, "You forget all about that. You're on vacation, hon." She gave me a loud smooch on one cheek. "No delivery bikes here. Just noise and buildings and --" she chuckled -- "trash and muggers and psychopaths. Oh, my, look at you! I can't get over this!"

She hustled me into the baggage area. "This is the New York art of waiting for your luggage," she announced sarcastically. "No matter what you do or where you go in New York, expect a waiting line." We waited for my bags to appear, and she asked me what they looked like and she asked me if I had my wallet pocket button closed tight, and she warned me about pickpockets, and she asked me about folks back home, and between each snatch of hurried conversation she would hug me or squeeze my hands in hers. After claiming my two suitcases she rushed me outside so we could take our place in a long, snaking line of people at the taxi area. "And this is the art," she announced, "of waiting for a taxi back to town."