Chapter 25

 

                            Fairlawn looked bleak in sunlight, an upscale Levittown development into which the Jewish had settled, then transformed into an upperly middle class island amid a sea of mostly blue collar towns, with Garfield, Elmwood Park, Hawthorne and Saddle Brook pressing in on every side. Despite its own pretentions, Fairlawn looked little different than the other towns, bearing the same style houses along the same tree-lined streets. In summer, the lawns looked a little green for the extra care they got and the window boxes and gardens overflowed with a few more flowers. Yet each house stood in similar proximity to the others, front doors facing the street, back doors looking out towards the back doors of the houses on the streets behind, windows on either side facing off against each other like dualists. Of course, the owners had struggled to made their little castles seem more unique, planting hedges or fences, painting their little empires in bright yellows or pinks. Some even altered the shape of their buildings, adding porches to the front and wings to the rear. Yet glimpsing them as he drove, Maxwell registered only their similarities.

                He had recalled the married sister's name while in St. Joe's emergency room, each stitch artificially healing the wound Hutch had given him. Once free of the doctor's healing hands, he rushed to a telephone book and rifled through the listing until he came to Suzanne's sister's married name.

                The landscape was not unfamiliar. Maxwell had come here to visit Suzanne's sister once before, though Suzanne had made the pilgrimage a number of times during the years Maxwell had lived with her, reestablishing a connection with a part of her life she'd believed lost when walking out of her father's Midwest house years before that. Suzanne's sister had left the Midwest, too, in the same huffy rebellion as Suzanne, refusing as Suzanne had to blow to the whims of her father's tradition. In fact, Lydia's rebellion that struck the old man more viciously, she had chosen to marry a Jew -- a circumcised savage (to his mind), who had made it impossible for her to ever return, even in the Biblical sense of a prodigal son.

                Lydia had not liked Maxwell, seeming to believe Suzanne could have done much better for herself.

                "A musician?" Lydia had said to Suzanne in more than audible whispers from the kitchen she meant for Maxwell to overhear, as he sat squirming in a living room where the couches and chairs were covered in plastic and the tables polished so heavily the air above them stank of lemon oil.

                "What's wrong with his being a musician?" Suzanne asked, loud enough to leave no doubt as to whom they argued over.

                "You can do better," Lydia said. "That's what. How is a musician ever going to take care of you properly?"

                "My God, Lydia, you sound like father. I don't need a man to take care of me. I can do that for myself."

                "You say that now. But you'll regret it later. You have to find someone who's secure, whose feet are planted firmly on the ground -- not some wandering minstrel who'll pick up and leave you the moment the thought hits him."

                "You don't know Max," Suzanne said. "He's not like that."

                "Isn't he? Wait until he has to make a choice between you and his music, then you'll see that I'm right. I can guarantee he'll let you down. All his kind do."

                "His kind? You make him sound like a cow."

                "Wandering wolf is more like it?"

                "What would you have him do to prove himself, propose marriage?"

                "That would be more of a commitment than you have now."

                Maxwell sighed and gripped the steering wheel a little harder, the palms of his hands beginning to sweat. It was not hot in the car, with his breath leaving circles on the windshield as proof. Even now, years later, he felt guilty about not asking her to marry him, or at least, agreeing to accompany her to New York City where he might have warded off the more evil influences she had encountered there, the jealousy of the East Village artists against any intrusion from New Jersey.

                They had hated her from the start, just as they would have hated Maxwell, doing their best to tear down her confidence. He could have resisted them better. He knew how little merit their arguments held. But at the time, he would not even consider it.

                "We're not ready for marriage," he said. "Neither one of us has made it yet. We're still both starving artists. What kind of life would that make? We'd be at each other's throats, fighting over the lack of money. Let's just work at our art for now, then later we can make the commitment."

                "My sister was right," the infuriated Suzanne yelled. "You’re just another gypsy, with me today, with someone else tomorrow."

                While this wasn't their last conversation, or the one that finally destroyed their relationship, Maxwell recalled it the most vividly when thinking back to that time, blaming Lydia for helping to sour everything. He recalled refusing to return to Fairlawn for fear Lydia would pile even more fuel onto that already smoldering fire. Even now, as he turned the car onto Lydia's block, he felt the old bitterness.

                The building stood high up off the street, one of a series of ridges which rose street by street from the river gorge. As with the houses on either side of it, Lydia's house had a low concrete wall along the front, with a large hump of grass rising on an angle to the foot of the porch. A long set of concrete stairs divided this hill, rising from the slate sidewalk at the bottom to the point at which the wooden porch stairs started at the top. To the right, a driveway rose as precipitously.

                Cracks showed in the walk and stairs, with streaks of rust showing at the drain holes in the wall at the bottom. The driveway's asphalt had grown grey over the years, with deep crevices spreading wide enough to swallow a wheel. As he rose, he noticed the house had also deteriorated, paint pealing near the foundation. His feet sank as he mounted the porch stairs, and threatened to poke through the weakened wood of the porch -- gray paint long blistered away leaving the wood a victim to the weather. A trail showed across the surface from the repeated daily trips the mail man made from the stairs to the mailbox just above the doorbell.

                To the right, the porch swing Maxwell had once admired, hung by a single chain, its other arm leaning against the porch like a drunk. Although no light showed inside, the broad windows allowed him to glimpse the once proud interior, a hall of paneled wood that had testified to Lydia's success previously, but now bore all the semblance of a tomb.

                "You have to admit my sister does things right," Suzzane once said. "She didn't just move off the farm the way I did, she climbed up the social ladder, too. Daddy must have had a fit, caught between envy and rage. While she married a doctor the way she wanted, it was a Jewish doctor."

                The decay made Maxwell wonder if he had come to the right house after all. How could someone have fallen so far in so few years? What happened? Prominent doctors didn't live like this.

                Even the door bell button had cracked, its shattered lens staring at him like an eye with a cataract. He pushed it, it stuck a moment, sending a repeated heavy ringing alive inside the house. Maxwell had to use his thumb nail to disconnect the button and cease the ringing of chimes. Then, something stirred inside, footsteps resounding as they approached the door. Then, the door curtain lifted and a curiously startled face peered out, frowning at Maxwell, struggling to identify him.

                It was Lydia.

                Maxwell lifted his hand, gesturing for her to open the door. If she recognized him, she made no sign, but vanished for a moment long enough to snatch off the main lock, opening the door only as far as the chain would allow.

                "I don't know if you'd remember me, my name is..."

                "I know who you are," the woman said coldly. "What do you want?"

                "I'm here because of Suzanne," Maxwell said.

                "She doesn't live here any more."

                "I know. I have her. She was living on the street and needs help."

                "Suzanne always needs help," Lydia said. "The only time I hear about her any more is when she's down and out."

                "But she really does need help."

                "We've tried helping her," Lydia snapped. "And each time, she comes back, she's deeper in trouble than she was before. We can't help any more. My husband is ill and we barely have enough to take care of ourselves. Go tell her to sponge off of someone else."

                *************

                "So where's the guitar?" Patty asked, holding the door open just enough to assault Maxwell with her stereo music, "and what happened to your face?"

                "Your boyfriend had some of his boys beat me up," Maxwell said. "And while they were at it, they smashed my guitar."

                "My boyfriend?"

                "You know, The Boss."

                Patty's face grew crimson. "He did that to you?" she snarled, slamming her glass on the table so hard an ice cube popped out. "I told him to quit scaring my men away."

                "You mean he's done this before?"

                "Over and over."

                "Why?"

                Patty stared at him. "Even you can't be THAT dim, Longfellow."

                "I am. Tell me."

                "He wants me back. He figures if he can keep me away from anybody else long enough, I'll come crawling back to him."

                "Will you?"

                "I wouldn't give that scum bag the satisfaction," she said, grabbing her clothing from the back of a chair, yanking her pants on, then her shoes.

                "What are you doing?"

                "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm getting dressed."

                "What for?"

                "We're going to see him and straighten this shit out.,"

                "We are?"

                "Don't tell me you're afraid of that blow hard?"

                "Of course I'm afraid."

                "But you came to see me anyway. That's like asking to have him hit you again."

                "I know." Maxwell admitted. "But I don't want to rush off and confront him where we might get ourselves in deeper than we already are."

                "He won't do anything with me there," Patty said. "Deep down, he's just a big coward. That's why he has other people do his dirty work for him. The only one he's hit for himself is me. Now come on."

                ***********

                Patty directed Maxwell west, not along the highway, put up through the side streets that followed the old water raceway, which once served the mills. He could see the back of the county jail two blocks east as they passed, and then the top of St. Joseph's Hospital, that ever-expanding parade of brick that ate up that part of the city, block by precious block. Then, he turned up Valley Road in the direction of Clifton, passing a few blocks with Clifton on one side and Garret Mountain on the other, his car struggling to climb the long rise that he once called Cannon Ball Hill.

                Maxwell had wandered through this area often as a kid, caught up in awe at the rich estates that stood side by side by side, but admiring one more than all, a red stone wall surrounding the best of all -- Lambert's Castle. Until that moment, Maxwell had presumed the place abandoned or serving as cheap storage for county road maintenance.

                "The Boss actually lives here?" Maxwell said, taking note of the change of gates -- new bronze bars replacing the rusted ones he remembered.

                "Of course," Patty said. "Would I bring you here if he wasn't."

                "How do we get in?"

                "We wait. Someone will come."

                Someone did, one of the myriad of characters, with whom the boss surrounded himself, this figure the white version of a half dozen others Maxwell saw scurrying around inside, dressed in pants too large for him with unlaced booths and an over large sweat shirt that would have better fit three men. The figure signaled for Maxwell to roll down the window, which Maxwell did.

                "This is private property," the man said, a gold front tooth catching briefly in the light.

                "It's all right, JoJo," Patty said. "Let us in."

                "Miss Patty?" the man said, bending down to squint at her passed Maxwell. "Is that you?"

                "It's me. Let us in."

                "I don't know about that. You ought to know the Boss don't like nobody bringing in no strangers -- especially when you don’t' call in advance."

                "Then why don't you go and ask him, JoJo," Patty said. "I'm sure he'll say it's okay."

                The figure slipped back into the dark, easing though a narrow gap in the gate.

                "There's a guard house just inside the gate. It has a telephone," Patty explained. "This won't take but a minute."

                "You sound every sure of yourself," Maxwell said.

                "Of course I'm sure, he loves me, and will put up with you to see me. He might even think I've come to beg for your life."

                "Have you?"

                "I don't beg for nobody."

                True to Patty's prediction, JoJo reappeared, this time yanking open the gate wide enough to admit the car, waving them through like some off-kilter version of a traffic cop. Patty wiggled her fingers at him as the car rolled by, the man and the gate soon lost to the darkness behind as the headlights highlighted other renovations from the graveled driveway to a low wall that Maxwell recalled as rubble.

                This place and the cemetery had always served him as personal retreats. Few other kids ever came here as often as Maxwell had. Most, too, had come here only in bright daylight, to use the castle as backdrop for games playing at King Arthur's round table. But the moment the long shadow of twilight began to fall over the structure, they fled -- believing wholeheartedly the legends of the old man who supposedly still haunted the structure.

                While it was those very tales that drew Maxwel here for the first time, it was the strangeness of the place that kept him coming back, its exclusion from the adult world. He could come here and think, without fear that police might haul him home. During those years, he had come to claim the abandoned property as his own, wandering the paths along the vast estate. It was Maxwell who uncovered most of its secret treasures: caves no gang had marked, springs that bubbled to the surface with water so sweet he could hardly drink tap water afterwards.

                It was to this place Maxwell led Puck after Red Bone had failed to find him a place to hide, after the shooting in the cemetery had made it impossible for them to remain hiding there.

                The image of the bum's exploding head still made Maxwell shiver all these years later. Maxwell remembered Puck growing sick, the LSD or the murder giving him a fever, his teeth chattering so loudly Maxwell could hear their echo the vast empty chamber of the ruins as they two boys scurried through the gate.

                "Why did you kill that old bum, Puck?" Maxwell asked, the LSD making the imagine linger in his mind. He was near the point of freaking out.

                "Because it was fun," Puck said. "Now will you shut up about it. I'm sick. I don't need you ranting at me. I hope this place you're taking me too is arm. I can't believe how cold I feel."

                "But the old man didn't do anything to us."

                "He could have told the cops we were there."

                "He was too drunk to tell anybody."

                "I said shut up, all right!" Puck growled, clapping his hands around himself. "Damn it. We should have robbed somebody to get some booze."

                "That old man might have family somewhere," Maxwell said. "They might even miss him and call the police themselves."

                "Let them," Puck said. "We're not there. We're here. You didn't tell me if this place has heat. God damn that Red Bone anyway. All of his God damn connections and he couldn't get me one small room. What does he care that I might be dying of pneumonia? Now we're out there hiding in the Goddamn woods. What do I look like a Goddamn fucking bear? "

                "The place isn't heated," Maxwell said.

                "Oh great!"

                "Well, if you hadn't shot the old man, we could have stayed in the graveyard."

                "We didn't have any heat there, either," he said.

                "Well, if it's any consolation, we can start a fire," Maxwell said.

                "Are fire? You want the fucking cops to see us?"

                "The cops won't see it. Not if we fix it up inside one of the old fire places. The whole building is stuffed with them, one in every room."

                "Won't the cops see the smoke?"

                "Not at night," Maxwell said. "Even in daylight, nobody lives close enough to see. This place is always safe this time of year."

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