Tara Ison - Rockaway

“I didn’t see you anywhere.”

“I was way in back. Russell came over to say hi.”

“Good, I asked him to take care of you.”

They both gaze straight ahead; Tony, Sammy, and Frankie are still joking around with Russell.

“Do you still have to go finish up anything?” she asks.

“No, I’m okay. It’s good to just sit a minute, you know, come down from it. Whatever. Be peaceful. We’ll go to dinner now, with the guys. Maybe we’ll go to Elaine’s.”

Be scared of me, she thinks. Go on. Be, just a little, terrified. “I sort of got you a present,” she says after a moment.

“Yeah?” He smiles slightly at her.

“Yeah.” She slides his jacket off her shoulders, and twists away from him, facing the passenger door. She tugs sideways at the V-neck of her shirt until her left shoulder slips up through the neckline, and turns her show of naked back toward him. “I wanted to do something whimsical.”

She thinks she hears him smile, then turns to look and sees him laugh, a warm little laugh of delight. Low on her left shoulder blade is a faux India ink tattoo in Art’s meticulous cursive script: Marty Zale & The Satellites , garnished with musical notes and a floating G clef.

“I like this,” he says. He’s very pleased.

“It isn’t real,” she says. “Just temporary.”

“This is good. A side to you I haven’t seen.”

“Good,” she says. “Then we’re even.” She turns back to look out the window again, leaving her shoulder bare. She feels even before he does it his hand reach out and his finger trace the tattoo, gliding slowly over the letters on her skin. Then down below the triangular slope of shoulder blade, the smooth, still-perfect skin of her shoulder blade, to first up then down the sides of her spine, then high across the nape of her neck, tracing her collarbone, her throat, places where the tattoo is not.

SARAH FINDS THIRTY-two-ounce plastic bottles of aloe-vera and ginseng moisturizer with alpha-hydroxy acids on sale at the drugstore on 116th Street; she buys three of them, so that every night she can coat herself thickly in forgiving, rejuvenating lotion, let her dry skin drink it all in while she sleeps. She buys baby oil to smooth on in the shower, and a pumice stone to grate her elbows and heels — rubbery bits of epidermis on the tile floor — and a loofah for husking the backs of her thighs. A cleanser made of ground apricot seeds, for sloughing her face free of dead cells. Tiny ampoules of pure Vitamin E, to puncture and squeeze the healing, erasing oil out of. She buys a new pack of razors, for keeping her legs shaved to an infantile satin. She stands for ten minutes or so contemplating the SPF in various sunscreens, and finally chooses a 35—lax enough to maintain a healthy, youthful glow, but still enough, she decides, to block out all the aging and cancerous rays. A white plastic trapezoid of Johnson & Johnson dental floss; Rembrandt toothpaste with special whiteners. She looks for white cotton gloves in the ladies apparel shops to wear overnight on her lotioned hands, but can’t find any. At a fruit stand next to the Pickles and Pies Delicatessen she buys lemons to squeeze into her hair, the whiff of them bringing a fading, lemony moment, her mother doing that when she was a very little girl, squeezing and combing fresh lemons into her hair, the juice dripping down her bare, chicken-bone back, tossing the lemon rinds to grind up in the sink’s garbage disposal so the kitchen would smell fresh. Then sending Sarah out to sun, or all of them heading off to the beach. But her hair was bright then, anyway, the natural blond of little girls’ blond hair, the kind that tones down, fades, has faded over time to a mousy dun. She hopes the lemons will bring all the brightness back.

DINNER AT ELAINE’S was not what she’d expected. Tony and Frankie came with them, hyped up from the Playland gig, drumming their thighs like bongos, springing in their chairs. All three of them still wearing their doo-wop suits, their black fedoras cocked at smug angles. Marty let his hand wander down her back as he guided her to the table, then ignored her once they were all seated. The guys audited every song of the Oldies show, every note, Rabbi, that was sweet, I’m telling you, that last song, what you did, beautiful man, Frankie, we gotta work on that chorus, Hey, you guys see Nathan in the audience, did he show, or what? They crooned to each other over their rigatoni — she couldn’t decide if she was present enough for them to be serving as audience, or was simply the generic and negligible girl with the band.

The place was empty, harshly lit; she’d imagined the scene from Manhattan , Woody Allen and dewy Mariel Hemingway glowing in soft-filtered black and white, heads together, an intimate twosome amidst a glamorous throng.

Instead, Tony suggested new songs for their repertoire, Frankie argued, and Marty nodded, contemplating, serious and absorbed as a high court judge. No one spoke to her. She asked the waiter for another glass of wine, ate a twenty-two-dollar endive and goat cheese salad, hoped the ridiculous Marty Zale & The Satellites inked on her shoulder wasn’t staining her shirt. Tony announced he wanted to go back to Marty’s that night, right then, work on that one bit — Rabbi, I’m telling you, you gotta hear it with the music — while it was still fresh. Frankie argued, and Marty decided Yeah, they should. He inquired if Sarah didn’t really want dessert, did she? Tony and Frankie were already tensed to go, the balls of their feet scraping the floor, and Marty was gripping the arms of his chair; just to punish all of them, to insist on her presence in the room, she ordered a chocolate soufflé. It took forty-seven doo-wopping, table-tapping, jostling minutes to arrive and she ate it languidly, breaking its puffed crust with her spoon so it sagged, lathering it with whipped cream, letting the flavor of each long mouthful absorb her fully, exclusively.

They drove back to Rockaway. Marty pulled up to Nana’s house; Sarah opened the door, stepped out, and waved good-bye while he was in mid-argument with Tony over a proposed shift in their harmony. He nodded briefly at her, said Yeah, bye, glad you came, call you tomorrow, but the next day he didn’t.

The days went by.

She called her parents, to check in, as she’d been meaning to; her father had just returned from his twelfth in a series of thirty radiation treatments, and described for her, again, in detail, getting his groin tattooed for it, how they’d marked him with indigo dots to help line up the machine for the lasers. There’s just a little burn during the actual treatment, he told her; the only thing to really hurt, so far, was getting the tattoo. Mainly he’s tired from it, wiped out, not all there, only played nine holes this morning, No, your mom’s fine, I guess, looks like she’ll get back on the transplant list, we’ll see. . how’s your painting coming, honey, we miss you, where do you get those little square batteries for the smoke detectors, your mother can’t find them, we’re hoping there’s no fire while you’re gone, when are you coming home? He began to describe for her how the medication turns his urine a bright cherry red, but she cut in to say she had to go, she’ll call them again soon, really. Her mother got on the phone to say Your father’s no help at all, I’m sick, too, I’m yellow, you should see, what is he blaming me for, my head is throbbing, we miss you, honey, I got an overdraft notice from the bank but it makes no sense, I need you to go through the statement with me, we love you, how’s your painting coming, when are you coming home? She said she’d call again in a few days, Really, yes, I promise, I love you, too, and hung up.