Mark Chiusano - Marine Park - Stories

Nice day, he said. Thinking about going to get the oil changed on the Toyota.

Aurora patted him on the back of his neck, got the orange juice out of the refrigerator.

Nice day for a drive, he said. Or a boat ride. Haven’t taken her out in a bit.

Sure, she said, and then she knew.

Just really one of those days, no? Nice morning days?

Like out on the lake in Canada.

Sort of, he said. But it’s nicer here. Everything is clearer.

True. She poured him some more juice.

• • •

When Vincent got to the candy store at two the next afternoon, the CLOSED sign was already swinging on the door to the shop. He went in and there was Benducci, sitting behind the cash register.

You lost a little hair, Vincent said.

It’s the insurance payments, said Benducci as he came around the counter to say hello. They embraced, Vincent’s palm on Benducci’s back. He could feel the skin over his bones.

They used to do them together, the jobs. Benducci was younger, and they always sent him with Vincent because Benducci was the muscle, on the off chance that something went wrong. Benducci had this Italian surname, but his family had been in America for generations, uncles of his always telling stories about the way it was before the guineas got here. They were a southern family. Benducci had a southern belle sister that everyone in the neighborhood knew: her name was Everleigh, a family tradition. An aunt far back on a plantation used to sign her letters, Everly Yours.

They sat on the stools. Vincent spread his arms and laughed.

Look at me, he said. I’m too old for this garbage. He pointed at Benducci. You too.

Come on, sixty-five is basically sixty, and then you’re in your fifties, he said. And that’s just middle-aged.

That’s the optimist talking.

Honestly, I haven’t done a job in years, and I got excited. He opened his hands. Who else would I call?

Vincent walked around to the Coke machine and took a can. Benducci eyed him. You gonna pay for that?

Vincent put a quarter on the counter.

They’re a little more now.

So. Under the Parkway Bridge, seven thirty?

Just offshore, right where people fish.

They’ll be no one on the bridge?

I’m heading over right now to put up some signs and talk to people.

Anyway, no one ever notices.

Benducci didn’t answer.

Anything I should know?

Should be fine. The boat’s a twenty-footer, they’ll have two handlers too. No cops. Any cruisers, we split. Supposed to be important that the drop point doesn’t get found, it’s the last warehouse in Red Hook that the cops don’t know about. But if it stays clear tonight it won’t be a problem, we can see all the way to Breezy Point.

Vincent rubbed his knee and drank his Coke and kept his head nodding while Benducci was talking.

• • •

She followed him out to the candy store. She took the Chevy, gray and easy to miss. Parked it two blocks up on the opposite side of the street, watched the entrance from her side-view mirror. Then she drove to Good Shepherd church to go to confession.

When was your last confession, my child?

Jimmy? It’s me.

Rory?

The booth was dark, and there was a piece of pink gum stuck on the underside of the seat. It was always Monsignor Jim at this hour of the day, and he’d been doing it for years, since back when the pews were full every Sunday. Jim’s brother was a police lieutenant, and he’d been working with Aurora since the beginning.

How do you know it’s a boat job?

He was talking with Benducci, that’s all they’d ever do. They always leave after dinner.

Aren’t you guys a little old for this?

Isn’t that what you tell the kids when they punch their brothers?

No, I tell them to read the smutty magazines.

That’s not even funny, Monsignor.

They were quiet for a moment, and the church was quiet the way it is on Tuesday afternoons. Aurora could hear people walking by outside the stained-glass windows.

I’ll tell my brother, he said. Don’t worry, they’ll stay far back and just figure out where they’re going. His side of the box was silent for a moment. Strange, he said.

Aurora looked at her watch. There had been one time when she almost told Vin, after a job one cold December right after Salvy was born. They sat together on the porch when he got back (she had been in the kitchen; he came in from the “groceries,” said he needed a little fresh air) and they watched the gray clouds on the water. It wasn’t pretty that time of year, but it was powerful. The sky always so heavy. She had her hand around his arm and she almost confessed everything. They could have found a way to make it right. But the words were wrong, and the two of them so recently parents. So she made him a sandwich, and then Tommy was born, and they grew up, and Vincent went out on the boat less and less, until he didn’t go out at all. And when it was all over, what was the point of telling stories?

Did I do the right thing coming? she said.

The Monsignor breathed into the screen.

Do you feel that you’ve done wrong?

Sometimes.

Do you regret lying to your husband?

Of course.

I can’t imagine what it was like.

Aurora didn’t answer.

When it’s over, make Vin a cup of coffee. And then tell him five times that you love him.

The Monsignor opened the screen. She looked at his face, bulbous and sweaty, and she realized suddenly how old he’d become. It was easier to think of him only as a voice. She opened the door. That’s ridiculous, she said as she left.

• • •

It was one of those evenings after a hot summer day, where you could be sitting in the living room, the windows open, and all of a sudden the sound of the rain on the concrete. Outside, the streetlights blinking with the force of the rain. What could you expect in the morning but the trains all stopped, flooding the tracks — the abovegrounds, this far out in the borough? Cars stuck in the middle of Kings Highway, or under the F train high-rises, the Gowanus seeping onto dry land.

Dinner, Vincent doing the dishes, excusing himself to Aurora watching television to say that he was taking the Napoli out for a quick fish. Him on the boat, kicking it away from the wood dock, his fishing pole on his right, which he moves to the back once he’s out of sight of the house, when he picks up Benducci in a blue sweatshirt.

She is sitting in the kitchen sipping coffee. This rain, she thought. He’ll get soaked.

She’s wearing a leopard-print blouse and tight black slacks, because that’s what she likes to wear around the house.

He’s feeling the cold now in his bones, but Benducci tosses him another coat and gives him a thumbs-up, says be careful of the swells.

She’s sitting in bed with a book. She can hear the gutter flooding on the roof, and the window is that color of purple with the sun going down and the clouds and thunder. She is beginning to feel worried about Vincent seeing the police cruiser.

He’s out past Deep Creek now, Dead Horse Bay, where there had been a glue factory once and they say you can still find the scraped-out hooves of horses buried in the dirt. You can just see the lights of the few cars by the Belt Parkway and, up ahead, the bridge, then thin Rockaway and the Atlantic.

The storm has become tremendous. She puts on a windbreaker and bangs the door shut. She forgets her wallet. She runs back in to get it. She walks quickly down the street, starts dragging her legs because it’s not quick enough, to the Chevy, to drive to the open water. She gets in, fumbles with her keys, her hand on the passenger headrest while she backs up. Floors forward. She is moving now, and no one is out, the rain’s too heavy — she can hardly see even with the wipers. She’s on Flatbush Avenue, hitting all the lights. She is flying past Floyd Bennett Field, where Charles Lindbergh landed when he got back to America. The batting cages, the football fields, here the bridge coming up in front.