Mark Chiusano - Marine Park - Stories

Ed had always been a good basketball player; it was the only thing he had talent for. He’d been born, sometimes it seemed, dribbling. His daddy encouraged him. It’s a white man’s game, he’d say. Don’t you forget that. And with the three-point line, who could say it wasn’t? Ed was a born shooter.

At the Marine Park courts, he left his bike behind him, and walked out into the open, his jeans tight against his legs. Who’s next? he asked a black man who was wiping sweat from his forehead with a rag.

• • •

Ed found a good three, and they had next, and it was only two points left. He had a Hasid on his team, and the fat black man. It seemed like the team they were up against had been on court for days. One of them, in a Fordham jersey, dunked for the second-to-last point.

I’ll take Fordham, Ed said, when they got on the court. The black man shrugged and fell in down low. The Hasid put a hand up to check his yarmulke, and took the man on the wing. Ed, who had the ball in his hands, was ready to check it. All right, Ponytail, let’s do this, Fordham said. Just shut up, Ed said.

Fordham scored first, and he did it easily, juking left against Ed, and it was all Ed could do to stay on his feet. One, said Fordham. But then he passed it off to a teammate, who missed his shot. Ball, Ed called, from the top of the key, and the Hasid shrugged and gave it to him. He didn’t have to think about it, he just caught and shot. He didn’t have to look. He could hear the cleanness of the ball going through a rim with no net. Two, Ed said.

It’s only one, Ponytail, Fordham said. We play by ones here.

• • •

Check, Ed said. Ball in, agreed Fordham. He checked in the ball. Ed passed it to the fat black man down low, who immediately passed it back. This time Ed didn’t just shoot it — he waited until he could look Fordham in the eyes. Look at me, his eyes said. This is the beginning. And then he shot, one fluid motion. Three, Ed said. Nigger, can you count? Fordham asked.

Ed got the ball back. He scored twice more, and then Fordham started calling things.

• • •

Travel, he said. Ed had taken half a step and a dribble toward the wing. Get out, Ed said. Respect the call, said Fordham. Ball never lies. And he tapped the ball out of Ed’s hand, took the test three, sunk it. Ed gave up possession.

The next one was carry. Carry, called Fordham. Man, get out of here, Ed said. Fordham just cocked his head to one side, until Ed passed him the ball for the ball-never-lies shot. He made it. Ed let him take it.

Then charge. All his years of street ball, nobody’d ever called a charge on him. He’d barely tapped Fordham on his way to the middle. Come on now, Ed shouted, let’s be reasonable. His fat black teammate piped up, Yeah, come on now, that wasn’t much of a charge. You fucking people, Ed continued, spitting. Hey now, the fat black man turned on him. What’s all this? You people, Ed said again. You ruin everything. Can’t play with you for nothing.

The Hasid had edged off the court.

Fordham was holding the ball dangerously against his hip.

I think you better leave now, Fordham said. You better get off my court.

Yeah, I’ll head, Ed Monahan said. Just my kind of day, he said. He walked over to where he’d locked his bike up, but it was gone. Faggot, Fordham said from behind him.

• • •

It’s not a long walk home for Ed from Marine Park to where he lives, south and east and close to the water. Along the way he thought about many things — people on welfare, stealing his money. Having kids at seventeen. Popping them out on the rest of us. He thought of his no-good girlfriend, Margie, and what little use she was to him. Just four days ago she’d spent the night, woke up with her naked body beside him, her hips touching his. But he slept with his jeans on. She woke up and took them off.

Ed unlocked the door to his house, locked it behind him. He had many locks, many latches, and he latched them all up. In his sink were the plates from his TV dinner the night before. He left them. He went into his bedroom and opened his phone.

Four rings. Margie didn’t answer. He hung up before it could go to voice mail, sat down on the bed and called again. Four rings. She didn’t pick up. Her recorded message came on, and Ed listened to her voice. He lay back on the bed, and let his boner rise against his jeans. He called her again, and listened to her voice. He rolled over on his side, reached for his bedside nightstand. He took out a condom and his daddy’s gun.

Jeans off, he felt freer. His bedroom door was open, as if company might arrive. He eased the condom on, felt his back straighten in pleasure as it went all the way down. He held the gun in his left hand, his penis in his right. The gun was heavy, in his bad hand. He was, of course, right-handed. Sharp three-point shooter that he was, even the great Ed Monahan couldn’t masturbate lefty.

There came a time when he fell back full against the bed. His right hand continued doing its business. The gun, in his other hand, lay flat against the mattress. He felt heavy, in a way he hadn’t all day. He arched his back, searching for the space above him. When he came, he watched it happen, watched the condom’s inside get painted white, watched it shrink and collapse. Vindicated, he let the gun slide to the floor. There was a low, warm light through the window. He didn’t need Margie. He knew that now. It was silly of him to think otherwise. He didn’t need anyone. He was enough. He could make a new world, just out of him, right here.

We were supposed to go see a movie, get coffee, return calls, kiss, be alone, share a meal together, sleep on the same side of the bed, date, turn the radiator lower, find a studio, get two keys, move out for a while, get coffee, talk, see other people, get drunk, take a cab back to your place at two in the morning, fuck, return calls, date our friends, be angry, run six miles on the sidewalk, take a vacation, try again; get sunburned, sleep on the same side of the bed, reminisce, copyedit, get fired, find new jobs, move to San Francisco, eat only in Italian restaurants, get engaged, wear rings, wear black and console your mother, move back to Brooklyn, find an apartment, have your mother move in, be unhappy — paint the windowsills, drag your fingernails across the floorboard, over the socket with a dusting rag — be parents, buy diapers, find preschools with appropriate learning philosophies, read science books, play classical music, hire babysitters, write Christmas letters, go on family vacation (hate Disneyland, ride It’s a Small World twice, because the kid loves it), go home, drive to rock concerts with your college friend Stanley, lock the bedroom door, go to Little League, scratch blood on our chests when the kid gets a concussion, play three-way catch, kick soccer balls, gain weight, go to funerals, move to Boston with the office, tell the kid he’ll like the new school, buy a basketball hoop, be pulled from your mother in assisted living, drink two glasses of red wine at dinner, watch you drink no wine at dinner, stew, be bored in Boston — me walking alongside graveyards, discovering poetry cafés, coming home alone at four in the morning — drive the kid to school, take online classes, go on family vacation, have sex, write longer Christmas letters, watch a De Niro movie that hasn’t been on in a while, buy a leather jacket and walk along the water, standing one foot leaned behind the other, watching people, watching men, tell the kid it’s not about him; make money, go on family vacation, argue on the balcony while the kid texts, come back, reminisce, edit applications, share a meal, bring your mother home, take prom pictures, shake the kid’s hand, bring the girlfriend on a weekend trip, feel the kid cry, explain love, put the kid’s head on our chests like we used to put ours, unpack the car on a college campus, walk around with college sweatshirts, watch the kid not turn around, wait for the kid to call first: buy books we don’t need any longer, pick grass stems by the river, press our names into each other’s backs with our fingers sitting on a park bench, stand at a gas station and let the gas drip, go see a movie, get coffee, return, kiss, be alone.