“Not you.”
“I’m what you’d call the contented type.”
“You certainly are.”
Ahh, the memories…I walked on past P.S. 94, the local public school I had not attended. But the P.S. 94 schoolyard was special because it was where I’d tasted my first beer one Saturday night when I was fifteen, out by the seesaws with Jimmy Nailer and Tommy Gordon, who’d swiped three cans of Rheingold from his father’s cellar refrigerator. I drank the beer and walked home dizzy, chewing a triple-wad of Dubble Bubble grape gum to mask my breath….
“My God, Mickey, is that you?”
I turned to see a woman with her hair up in curlers under a kerchief, her wrinkly hand straining to keep a cocker spaniel on a leash from chasing a squirrel. It was Eileen Kavanagh, whose windows I used to wash for walking-around money.
I offered my hand. “Good to see you, Mrs. Kavanagh.”
She clasped my hand with her free one, a pink lipstick smile stretched across her hawklike face. Suddenly, the smile collapsed.
“Why are you here?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Is somebody dead?”
“Oh! No, nobody died. I’m just visiting.”
In Little Neck nobody comes home unless it’s to bury a loved one. At least that’s how Mrs. Kavanagh figured it. She was a real estate agent, and if one of my parents was dead, their house might go on the market, and she’d want to be on top of that.
She jerked on the leash, told the dog to sit still. “Staying long?”
“A while.”
“Your mother never mentioned it.”
“Well, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Hmmm.”
The wheels were turning. Once she got back to her house she’d start phoning around about her Mickey DeFalco sighting, eager for the real story. I had to distract her, keep her from digging for more….
“How’s Mr. Kavanagh?”
Her cheeks went slack, as if she’d just heard a tasteless joke. “He died six months ago.”
“Oh, my God, I’m sorry.”
“Your mother never told you?”
“You know, I’m sure she did, but…” I tapped myself on the forehead, maybe to let her hear how hollow my skull was. “I forgot. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank God your mother was there.”
“My mother?”
“At Eruzione’s. Let me tell you something, Mickey. That mother of yours really knows how to handle people when they’ve lost a loved one. She knows just what to say. It’s a gift, I tell you. A gift. Either you can talk to people at a time like that, or you can’t. Your mother can.”
I knew Mrs. Kavanagh was right. My mother is great in situations involving dead people. It’s the living who’ve always given her trouble.
The dog squatted to pee on the grass. Mrs. Kavanagh gave the leash another yank to get him out on the curb, and I used the moment to escape.
“Nice seeing you, Mrs. Kavanagh.”
“Welcome home,” she said, and coming from her it sounded almost like a threat.
I had to get out of the damn neighborhood. I quickened my stride along Northern Boulevard, shocked at the way things had changed. The Asians had found their way to Little Neck—nail salons and neck-massage parlors, and even an acupuncturist whose sign promised cures for everything from baldness to bad breath. Ponti’s Pizza had become part of the Domino’s Pizza chain, and the old Carvel ice cream shop had given way to a tattoo parlor. The movie theater where Lynn and I used to go was now a check-cashing place, with a scowling attendant behind a Plexiglas barrier. Bernstein’s soda fountain and candy story was gone, replaced by the dreaded Starbucks my father had been ranting about.
Soon I crossed the border from Queens into Nassau County, the town of Great Neck: bigger houses, bigger lawns, bigger taxes, bigger attitudes. The roar of lawn mowers drew me toward a cul-de-sac I’d never been down before, but I had a feeling, just a feeling….
The sound of the mowers grew louder with every step, and then there it was, the battered red truck with J. P. FLYNN LANDSCAPING sprayed in white stenciled letters on the rusting driver’s door. An equally battered green trailer was hitched to the truck, jammed full of gardening equipment. Two guys I didn’t know were pushing lawn mowers across a spacious front yard, while a gray-haired guy I did know squatted to fill the crankcase of a hedge clipper with oil. As in the old days, a Marlboro dangled from the lips of my old boss, John P. Flynn, for whom I’d toiled for two summers during high school. He didn’t hear me approaching.
“Jesus, these are the same mowers I pushed around. Invest in some new equipment, for God’s sake.”
He squinted up at me, and then his eyes went wide in recognition. “My God! Look who it is!”
He stood to greet me, wiping his hand on a rag before extending it for a shake. “What the hell are you doin’ back here, superstar?”
“Visiting.”
“Yeah? How’s life with all the movie stars?”
“Actually, Mr. Flynn, I never really met any.”
“Yeah, bullshit!”
A second thrill went through him, like a spasm, and he reached out to squeeze my shoulder. “Jesus Christ, it’s you! My one and only rock star!”
I nodded, shrugged. “Sweet Days” was hardly a rock song, but what the hell.
“Mick, you look good. Heavier, but good.”
“You look good, too, Mr. Flynn.”
That wasn’t exactly the truth. His face had grown seamed and his belly, once a slight bay window, was now more like a tire inflated to the bursting point. He knew I was lying and waved me off.
“Ahh, I’m just glad I’m on the other side of the hill, goin’ down. This is my last summer with the lawns, Mick. Me and Charlotte are movin’ to Florida in November.”
“Good for you.”
“Carmine Eruzione ain’t gettin’ any o’ my money. No disrespect to your mother. I hear she’s great over there.”
He dropped his Marlboro butt, ground it out on the sidewalk, and gestured at a young Hispanic kid struggling to push his lawn mower through the tall grass. The red bandana on his head was soaked through with sweat and he breathed heavily through his open mouth.
“See this guy? He’s out every night ’til all hours. Nice enough kid, but you can’t do that and work for me. Hungover. Dehydrated. He’s stoppin’ to drink from every hose along the way. I feel bad, but I gotta let him go.”
“Could I take his place?”
The words were out before I could stop them. Flynn grinned, then his face went slack when he realized I was serious.
“Hey, Mickey. You all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m good. But what I said before about visiting…well, it’s going to be a long visit. See, I moved out of L.A. It just wasn’t working out.”
He stared at me as if I’d just been in a car wreck, and in a funny way it was even worse than the looks I’d gotten from my parents. Of all the guys who’d pushed lawn mowers for this man for the past thirty years, I was the one who’d gone out and done something big, and now suddenly