the piping near his biceps jumped.
Grace and Freddie arrived at the end of supper to catch a ride to the ballpark with Angie. Even Johnny Gallo stopped by, wiping his hands on a rag before shaking hands with Vic to wish him good luck.
Rosemary never came over before a game. She and Mel were waiting for us at the Franklin K. Lane bleachers when we all got there.
Vic was the same height as my father but he looked squatter because of his thickly muscled build. Shirts buttoned all the way up pinched his neck, nearly strangling him.
But he looked slimmer in a baseball uniform, graceful and confident. It was the end of his season but he was hitting an astonishing. 500. He was the center of attention even during warmups with his teammates, joking and laughing, making lightning throws to first base with easy, almost casual motions.
Angie intently watched the practice session, as if it were the actual game. Connie sat back, arms folded under her breasts, a stance she maintained throughout the game.
Mel pointed at Vic. “Now you’ll see a real ballplayer,” she bragged, as if he were her uncle. “I’ll bet he gets us free tickets when he’s with the Yankees, Joey.”
Rosemary sat with a woolen shawl across her shoulders, knitting needles and ball of yarn in hand. She made it clear that she was in no way a baseball fan but in all ways a dedicated woman, loyal enough to endure nine innings of boredom.
She turned to me with a smile and said, “What are you reading this summer?”
“Nothing.”
The smile vanished. “Nothing? No books?”
I shrugged. “There’s no school.”
“That’s no reason to stop reading.”
I just stared back at her. She shook her head as if I were a terminal case. “You sound just like Mel,” she said sadly. “I have wonderful books to lend, if you’d like them.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing I’d never take her up on it.
Lane won, 12 to 3. Angie sat still through his son’s two diving catches on the infield dirt, his two singles, and even his eighth-inning home run, afraid that he’d jinx Vic by cheering.
That homer was something to see, a white missile soaring into the growing dusk and bouncing on the street beyond. Head bowed, Vic made the slow, heavy trot around the bases to the screams of Freddie Gallo. Mel grabbed my shoulder and couldn’t stop shaking me. Rosemary, who had dozed off, asked crankily, “What happened?”
Nobody answered. I remember wanting to tell the strangers behind us who the hero was, that I shared a bedroom with him. For the first time in my life I wished I was someone else.
When the last out was made — a pop-up to Vic, fittingly enough — the team swarmed him, instead of the winning pitcher. Seconds after the catch Vic tore himself away from the guys and trotted to us, scrambled up the bleachers, and dutifully pecked Rosemary on the cheek.
“Be right back,” he promised, hustling back to the field. His cleats left deep scars on the seats.
True to his word, Vic returned moments later, having changed from spikes into sneakers.
“Hey, Vic, come on!” one of his teammates shouted.
“Can’t!” he called back, gesturing at all of us. He gave one spike to me and one to Mel, allowing us to knock the dirt out of them.
“Ah, come with us for a little while,” the teammate persisted.
“I gotta go!” Vic yelled, sounding sort of timid. When the game ended so did his magic.
The ride back to Shepherd Avenue was crowded, with Mel and Rosemary added to the car. The inside of the car had a nice smell to it, a workman’s smell — grease, epoxy, cement, and other things Angie carried to his jobs.
Vic sat in front, wedged between Angie and Rosemary. I sat on Freddie’s bony knees. His beer breath blew warmly past my ear.
“That was your longest homer yet,” Freddie said. “Madonna mi, when it went over the fence I swear it was still climbin’.”
While the rest of us chorused our agreement Rosemary said, “You should have taken a shower, Vic.”
“School showers are filthy,” Connie said. “In five minutes he’s home in his own bathroom.”
Awkward silence. Mel said, “The singles were good, too.”
“Yeah, well, that pitcher stunk,” Vic said, uneasy with all the praise being heaped upon him.
Angie patted Vic’s knee at red lights. We got a quart of lemon ice at Willie’s and ate it on the porch. Vic took five minutes to shower, coming out with his wet hair slicked back. Freddie described his titanic homer to any passerby willing to listen.
The commotion excited my bladder, and when I went to the bathroom Vic’s clothes were all over the floor. He’d obviously yanked down his pants and his underpants at the same time — it looked as if he’d vaporized while standing there. Crowning the pile of clothing like a cherry on a sundae was the athletic cup I’d placed against my nose during my first hour in Brooklyn.
How long ago it seemed, and yet it was only a matter of days! It was getting hard to remember the last time I’d been in a room alone.
On my way back to the porch a man in a loose green bathrobe stood in the middle of the staircase leading upstairs.
“Vic win?” he asked. I nodded. “Good,” he said, and climbed back up, blinking eyes as blue as my father’s.
That was my official meeting with Agosto Palmieri.
By the time I got back outside, Vic, Rosemary, and Mel had left, and things were a little calmer than before. Vic was on Rosemary’s porch, practicing his diction lessons to sharpen his skills as a future sports announcer. As Rosemary did her knitting he read consonant-clogged sentences aloud. She corrected him without looking up from her work.
Freddie left minutes later. Angie and I knocked off the rest of the lemon ice. When Vic returned and went in to bed Connie finally let it out.
“And I suppose that girl smells like a rose all the time.” Rosemary’s shower remark had been recorded and filed indelibly.
When I went to bed a little while later Vic was fast asleep, his arms folded over his eyes. I stared at his heaving form, trying to figure out how a pile of bones and muscles cooperated to hit a baseball such a terrifying distance.
CHAPTER FOUR
WITH breaks for lemon ice Mel and I found things to do all day long, without plans.
My father had sneaked fifteen dollars into my pocket before leaving, a fortune spread over a summer. Punks sold at ten for a nickel, and a child with a lit punk had power. You could light a firecracker, or search for red ants in the cracked bark of sooty maples. A touch of the glowing, slow-burning punk tip turned an ant into a hissing ash.
When it got too hot to do anything we sat on
