Arbitrary Stupid Goal Read online

  The thief takes fifteen dollars from my mom, forty off Tommy, twenty off my dad, and hands Jeff back his ten, saying, “You need this more than me.”

  My parents went out and ate lobster that night. If ever anything upsetting happened, we ignored it and went out to eat.

  Pink and blue bathrooms at The Store

  For a while we had a shopping routine at a strip mall in Paramus, New Jersey.

  The strip mall had a supermarket next to a dark arcade filled with cabinet video games and pinball machines.

  Mom would give us kids ten dollars each and we would disappear into the dark as our parents shopped for The Store and home.

  My brothers played as many games as they could, running from game to game. Danny’s favorite was 720°, a skateboarding game that always ended with your character getting attacked by killer bees.

  All of me and Minda’s quarters went to a game called Zookeeper, in which you had to build walls to keep animals from escaping.

  Fifty dollars seems like a lot to drop in the 1980s, but it was a deal to keep us from asking to buy all kinds of crap in the supermarket, and the bonus of some quiet.

  Also, the way my parents spent money defied gravity. They spent fifteen hundred dollars on an Apple IIC for Charlie when he was 9, because he asked for it.

  Once we were coming back from playing Zookeeper and got in a car accident.

  Fire trucks showed up fast, and the chief cut our battery wire so the car wouldn’t explode.

  It was noisy, flashing lights and all that.

  As the car was being pushed out of the street, my dad said to my mom, “Are you hungry?”

  We were in the Meatpacking District. At that time the only things in the neighborhood were people getting laid in empty meat trucks and Florent.

  Florent was a restaurant, but people went to it for the waiters more than the food. They all acted like they were onstage, twirling, shouting, and singing, performing a mix of spoken-word poetry, stand-up, and sashay.

  The seven of us left the groceries to melt in the car and walked to Florent. We had a great time, ate some couscous and left the waiter a huge tip. By the end of it all I felt lucky we had gotten in a car crash.

  The Store was open from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. There weren’t all-night grocery stores in the Village. But my mom and dad were close with their customers, so they gave them sets of keys. The customers could go in The Store any time of night. Take what they wanted and just write it down. Most of the customers had floating credit with us.

  The city may have been more dangerous, but it was a less hostile place. Everyone knew each other. The rent stabilization laws were hard for landlords to beat, so people weren’t forced to move out. They lived on the block forever. And that forever built a neighborhood.

  Once, though, there was a crime wave.

  Gabe and Rita kept getting robbed at night. They didn’t keep any cash in the shop after the first time, so the thief stole silk shirts and pinking shears.

  We got hit every week, too. The Store had a small window on Morton Street with an exhaust fan, and giant picture windows that looked out on Bedford Street.

  Someone tiny kept crawling in the fan window at night, stealing cigarettes and cash. And when no cash was there they stole cigarettes and meat. Finally my dad put bars on the tiny window.

  Next time the crook just shattered one of the picture windows. It cost three months’ rent to replace, and in the end my dad wished he hadn’t put the bars in.

  In order to protect the big windows, my parents installed metal roll-down gates. It stopped the robberies, but the gates were so difficult and loud to raise that The Store had to stop being open twenty-four hours.

  A woman named Nancy lived across Seventh Avenue by the taxi garage. She had a boyfriend my dad calls “Fagin.”

  He calls him Fagin because the guy ran a “school” out of Oliver Twist. Each week a van would unload a bunch of kids, and Fagin would tell them what places in the neighborhood to hit and how.

  There was really nothing to do except for Gabe and Rita to get gates as well. Everyone on the block did, and the crime wave ended.

  Our roll-down gates were like giant washboards that would make a kind of hillbilly music when they were pulled up and down. I couldn’t open or close them till I was 15, but me and my sister always prepped the gates for my dad. We’d unlock the padlocks and pull the pegs—or the reverse at night, throwing them in a brass bucket that was full of dings and dents.

  Willy never got stuck up. No one would pull that shit on him.

  But he was robbed.

  He won a competition in Missouri to play Crown in Porgy and Bess on Broadway.

  He and Yvonne took the train to New York on one-way tickets, paid for by the producers of the opera. When he showed up to the theater they told him they were sorry, but his skin was too light to play Crown.

  It wasn’t news to him. He was always too light or too dark.

  It never stopped him from going to auditions. He’d come in The Store singing, practicing, serenading.

  My mom would sing to wake us up for school.

  ♫ “Rise and shine! And give God your glory, glory! Rise and shine!” ♪

  But the way my mom sung it was awful. We would all cover our ears and leap out of bed. Her song was a threat, like: if you don’t wake up, I am shipping you kids to a Christian cult in Waco.

  If Willy had sung it, we would have woken up and sat mesmerized.

  The thought of Willy singing “God’s glory glory” makes me cry.

  In the cabaret circuit Willy was a big fish. The whole club would hush when he sang. He did a trick where he’d hold a note forever. The note would be pure and echo off the walls, adding to itself over and over again.

  But he wasn’t happy to be in the small pond, and was always searching for a big break.

  All my dad wanted was to stay in his small pond.

  There were two businesses on Morton Street. Both were grocery stores. That’s how and why my dad decided to run a grocery.

  The owners asked the same price to buy their businesses, even though one store was twice the size of the other. The larger one had newer fridges and more inventory. The smaller one was half a block closer to Willy’s stoop.

  My dad chose the smaller one.

  My parents wore aprons and wrapped cold cuts in wax paper. They sold Wonder Bread, and mayonnaise. They rotated the milk and butter, putting the newest stock in the back.

  An old cash register would ring every time a sale was made. It seemed like a regular store.

  But it really wasn’t.

  My parents were freethinkers, keyed into gonzo journalism and drugs.

  The grocery store they ran was a wonderful, fucked-up cartoon version of a general store. Even Mr. Magoo could see it; there were a hundred and two clues.

  Prime retail space was taken up by a big rocking chair that was often filled with Willy.

  Whatever my dad put near the door got shoplifted. So he created a community bookshelf. Take a book leave a book, or just take a book.

  On Wednesdays my parents gave away plastic dinosaurs to kids. You didn’t need to buy anything, really, you just needed to walk by and be under 12.

  Everybody seemed to know each other’s name, and if they didn’t, my mom or dad introduced them.

  The biggest clue was the feeling of the place. It wafted at you that my mom and dad loved stocking cans on the shelves. And it was cool if you just wanted to buy some Brillo pads or Ivory Snow, but that wasn’t all you were supposed to get out of the exchange.

  Also, there were the antique gumball machines that took up half the counter. They all worked and cost a penny each. If one jammed, the world stopped, and my dad wouldn’t slice baloney till it was fixed.

  It started small. A red Pulver machine found at a flea market—the wall-mounted type that used to be found in every subway station. The machine had a smiling cop made of pressed tin holding a sign. When you put your penny in, the sign turned from �
��stop” to “go,” and a piece of wrapped gum dropped down.

  It was just that one machine for a while, not such a big clue.

  But then my dad found Billy the Baker Boy. He found him at a junk store in New Jersey.

  The machine looked like a kid’s drawing of a house, with a roof made of gumballs, and a big window that revealed a chef whose hand was permanently attached to an oven door.

  After you put your penny in and turned the lever, Billy would open the oven, scoop out a gumball, drop it into a trough that was connected to a pipe; then the gumball would drop out of the pipe into your hand.

  The machine was special. It wasn’t an ironic interpretation of life. It was life. Billy was at work, he had a job. His job was, when you put the penny in, he had to get you a gumball. It wasn’t make-believe like the cop machine; Billy really did his job and you got a gumball as proof.

  And with that my dad was hooked. Everywhere he went he looked for gumball machines.

  He subscribed to a monthly magazine called Antique Trader. The magazine was, at its heart, classified ads. He would scan the coin-operated section like a junkie.

  “What is wrong with those assholes looking for frogs and ceramic owls? I can’t believe those jerks wasting their time when there are all these great gumball machines.”

  Pikes Peak was a trapezoid-shaped machine. You had to get a metal ball to defy gravity by turning one knob back and forth just so. It didn’t give gum. If you won you just got your penny back.

  There was a nickel machine. It held chocolate-covered peanuts in a big glass dome. When you turned the knob it would play “Pop Goes the Weasel,” and it wouldn’t give you your peanuts till the end of the song. The last note of the song was the sound of peanuts hitting the trapdoor. The song was so long that when the peanuts finally came it was a shock, like a jack-in-the-box.

  My dad had to start rotating the machines, because there wasn’t enough room. Nights were spent winding and greasing the clockworks.

  Not only were the machines mostly a penny, but if a customer asked “Do the machines work?” my dad just handed them twenty pennies.

  He didn’t care that the machines were worth money, that they were antiques and sometimes one of a kind. The machines were there to be played. He loved them and took care of them like they were his children. Sharing their small pleasures, movements, and minor victories with whoever walked in.

  “Get the fuck off my machine. Get the fuck out,” my dad would shout.

  That was if you were lucky.

  One little girl was particularly rough with a machine. My dad told her parents, “If she hits my machine like that one more time, I’m gonna hit her just the same way.”

  The girl and her family never came in again.

  As soon as my dad started having kids he stopped buying gumball machines.

  The machines were still in The Store, but the collection started to shrink rather than grow.

  I remember my dad selling them when we needed money, like a rainy day fund—if my brother needed a root canal or a compressor broke. But my dad says he just sold them because after we were born, he all the sudden didn’t give two shits about them.

  Eventually the gumball machines were sent to the basement, and replaced with some new clue that The Store wasn’t a regular store.

  Yvonne was a hole you threw money into.

  Even though she was pretty much married to another guy named Louie, Willy and her never divorced. They were separated for sure, but they didn’t sever ties till she died.

  Dad would tell Willy stories about the butcher, and Willy would tell my dad about Yvonne.

  She was always trying to get Willy to do something risky, dangerous, stupid, or evil, but he never stopped talking to her.

  Yvonne and Louie lived in Harlem. Louie ran a travel agency that catered specifically to black people. It was one of the first agencies to do that, so he did really well.

  Louie was pussy-whipped, and the money just went straight into the Yvonne pit.

  Willy would go up there a lot. I don’t know what he did. But I know Yvonne gambled, did coke and amoral acts, because that is all Willy wanted to talk about with my dad when he got back to the Village.

  Yvonne died playing poker. Collapsed on a card table, face full of chips. She overdosed and had a heart attack in the middle of a hand.

  “I guess she died happy,” was my dad’s response to the news.

  What a stupid fucking bitch doing coke with a heart condition, Willy replied.

  But my dad knew he was shattered about it.

  Coke and amoral acts may just have been what my dad liked to hear about. And maybe that’s why Willy didn’t talk about the other stuff.

  The other stuff was likely music.

  Willy was wrapped up in it all his life. My dad had no interest.

  When they talked about Willy playing Arthur’s Tavern, they talked about his regular gig in winter as a spotter.

  Customers would come to the club wearing big, heavy coats. There was no coat check; this was the Village. Everyone hung their coats on a row of hooks at the back of the room.

  Willy would sing a set, but he also hung out all night.

  Even onstage he was watching the room, trying to spot a type—a man or woman that came in wearing no coat.

  After he spotted one, he’d track them till they left, making sure they didn’t leave with someone else’s coat.

  The stories Willy told my dad about singing at the Five Spot were mostly about how the bartenders stole. You could be standing right next to them and have no idea. The stories always ended with a universal truth: there is nothing anyone can do to stop a bartender from stealing.

  They talked about anything but music.

  And I wonder if Willy’s pond really was so small.

  The Arvell that Willy hit with a pipe as a kid was Arvell Shaw, Louie Armstrong’s bassist. A lot of the boys that beat up Willy went on to become famous musicians. St. Louis at that time was crawling with talent and clubs. Willy became a figure in the scene.

  When he met Yvonne they became the heart of a musicians’ clique.

  I can’t imagine anyone cooler than Willy.

  He must have seemed like he was from space with his red hair and freak voice. A voice that sounded like Paul Robeson’s, only softer. But just as powerful and sad.

  Then add to him the uninhibited Yvonne, who was nut-sack-busting gorgeous. There is a photo of her I remember. She wore pearls, a low-neck blouse, and Egyptian-style eyeliner. She was mixed race with smooth skin that was darker than Willy’s.

  They were hot shit.

  And this didn’t change when they got to New York. They fell into the same type of circle, but even more talented and hip. The “we ain’t no Eskimos” Charlie from building 40 was Charlie “Bird” Parker.

  I know nothing about jazz, but I know who Charlie Parker is. He is the top floor.

  THE TOP FLOOR

  “That’s nothing, tell Jason he’s a pussy,” Zack says, and turns his arms over at me. Burns and scars line them. The scars are exactly like mine, except he has more. Milky Way–shaped marks that are concentrated below the wrists.

  “It’s out of hand. You need to talk to your dad. You need to figure something out,” Jason told me last night, the fourth thing he said after three weeks away. “You should wear a long-sleeve shirt” was the fifth.

  Zack stops cooking for a second, turns, and says, “When you get home just tell Jason … this is a fucking kitchen.”

  That is what I told Jason last night, followed by: A long-sleeve shirt standing in front of a 350-degree slab of steel? I’d rather get burned.

  I don’t notice them.

  The marks have been on my arms for half my life. Longer than I’ve been with Jason.

  He notices them every so often. Not in a sweet concern for my well-being, more in “be careful, you stupid idiot.”

  Zack calls out to my dad and says, “Jason is being a pussy.”

  My dad answers th
at Jason has the right to be a pussy, equal society, modern era, etc., and asks Zack if he stirred the chili.

  At 10:00 a.m., the doors to the market are unlocked. Customers file in.The weekend regulars are already seated. They have snuck in through the maintenance door. Some of them got here before me. Half of them were here yesterday when we opened at nine.

  The Store has been in the Lower East Side for ten years. Credit should forever go to my sister for finding it a new home planet.

  The Store is not the same, but neither is New York. Neither are we. My father is 74. Some days he is on. It is difficult to keep up, and everything he cooks is light-years beyond my ability. Other days he sits in his chair talking to customers and gets up to cook only when he has to.

  And when he has to, it is a shit show.

  Not the food. My father is the shit show.

  Physically turning from the cutting board to the griddle is a challenge. He’ll forget ingredients—title ingredients, like the cashews in Patsy’s Cashew Chicken.

  If I reach behind him to get bread, he will explode because I’ve broken his concentration and now he can’t remember what he’s put in the dish.

  Worse than the explosion is the whimper.

  The shit show whimper is the sound of my dad holding back tears, praying that the Ten Condiments sandwich will not topple over. It is a sound that could make stones cry.

  The safest, kindest thing to do is stand off to the side and not cook—be there if he needs anything. This is what Zack does. But Zack has a gift for being chill.

  I have no such gift. It is a special kind of torture for me.

  When the rhythm is good, and my father doesn’t have to pee, the three of us cooking together is the best. I live for it. I’d die for it. I arrange my life around it.