26 - Labor Day

Dave's voice this is over the cheap plastic walkie-talkie we used to speak to each other late at night only I'm not home in my room, I'm under the awning of the coffee shop across the street, waiting and watching as Dave's mom packs their station wagon for their annual trip to the shore.

“Is she gone?” Dave asks.

“Not yet,” I say, watching as she closes the rear door and hustles her kids into the car, more shepherd than parent, her expression strange, not angry over Dave's refusal to go this year, sad, scared and a I look I least expect from a woman like her.

Then the car pulls away in a puff of smoke, exhaust that lingers in the air long after the car has reached the top of the hill and disappeared over it on its way down to the highway.

“Are you coming down?” I ask through the radio.

"You'd better come up," Dave says. I'm not quite ready,"

Dave is never quite ready. So, I hurry across the street to the door next to the jewelry store and up the stairs inside to the hall that is all windows on one side looking down onto back yards of houses and  the lives Dave and I  can only envy, not quite live, filled with swings and abandoned toys, blown up swimming pools and bicycles, a perverted toy land Dave and I mock but wish we had, too.

Dave's apartment door isn’t locked. I feel like an intruder each time I come in. This time I feel cold, the air chilled by a long new air conditioner’s churning away in the front window, a gift from one of Dave's mother’s friends, Dave tells me. So is the new Sony TV larger than the tiny one his mother usually huddles around night after night to watch color on Million Dollar Movie, and the stuffed leather chair, forming a little alcove in a larger and usually messy room that is not messy now, even though Dave's father isn’t  back from the hospital until after Labor Day.

His mother’s trip to Seaside is such a fixed ritual, we set our own calendars by it the way we set clocks ahead or back in spring or fall, a sign of changing seasons and a sad return to the routine of school and the chilly approach of winter.

She has made this trek for as long as any of us can remember, from when her father took her there is a little girl, and she's made the family endure it ever since becoming a mother.

Dennis and Debbie love going just as Dave once did, though over the last year or two he's begged his mother to let him stay at home, feeling Seaside is a place for kids and he's not a kid anymore. What he really hates is meeting other kids from up here who pick on him, casting the usual insults.

It's not that he doesn't like the shore; he just doesn't want to go with his mother and his sister and his little brother, which becomes the essence of my plan. With them away for the long weekend, his mother won't know Dave isn't here at home, won't know about our going south on our own, and if we're careful won't see us on the beach looking at the girls Dave won't look at while with his mother.

How to get Dave out of going with his mother required me giving him all the best excuses I’ve used to get out of things at school or with my uncles, nearly surefire routines that mostly work for me and I’m sure Dave's mom I hadn't heard of any of them the way my teachers and uncles had; I was pretty sure one of them would work for Dave.

I find Dave packing a backpack with an assortment of stuff not on the list of stuff I said we'd need   -- toothbrush, spare socks, a hair comb, while telling me he doesn't know why his mother gave in.

“She kept telling me how important this is to her,” Dave says, his voice so sad he might as well be crying. “She said she had something she needed to tell us, but we needed to be together to hear it. She’s even picking my dad up from the hospital and she never does that.”

“What do you think it means?” I ask, but Dave won't say. He stuffs his backpack even when he's run out of stuff to stuff it with.

“Still she let you stay behind,” I say after Dave's stays silent for a long time.

“She didn't want to; she didn't like it.”

“Did she get mad?”

“No,” Dave says, “She just sounded hurt.”

“And that's all?”

“No,” Dave says, then is silent again and sad and Stuffs the bag with stuff he's already stuffed it with and taken out, “She said she's pregnant.”

“Pregnant? You mean like she's going to have a baby?”

“That's what pregnant means.”

“I know what pregnant means. I just never imagined it would happen to your mother.”

“Well, it happened before you know. I mean she came up with me and Dennis and Debbie.”

“I mean again. I thought you was too old or something.”

“She's not that old.”

“Okay she's not too old. So, what's the problem?”

“She doesn't know how to tell my father.”

“Well, he has to have some idea. I mean it does take two.”

Again, Dave is silent, almost finished packing what he unpacked and ready to unpack again if I don't stop him. So, I stopp him and say, “This doesn't affect us does it our plan will it? We're still going down the shore?”

“I'm scared she'll find out. I told her what you told me to tell her -- that I'm not feeling good and the long ride would only make me feel worse. But it would kill her to find out I lied.”

“How is she going to find out?”

“What if she sees us down there?”

“How is she going to see us? You said yourself she goes out to where the kids hang out and then over by the rides. We're going over to where the girls are.”

“She could.”

“She won't,” I say. “So, come on. God it's cold in here.”

“Momma likes it cold,” Dave says. “She usually makes me shut it off when she leaves, she's always worried about the electricity.”

“My uncle's, too -- though we don't have air conditioning, they make me turn the lights out. Are you ready? Can we go? The bus leaves in a half hour and we still have to get up to Lakeview Ave to catch it.”

“Yes. Just let me get a soda,” Dave says and goes to the new refrigerator next to the new stove both located in the alcove under the rising stairs.

“Don't tell me. Those are gifts, too?” I say.

Dave nods

“Let's go,” I say.

Dave grabs his bag. We go out, letting the door slam behind us- a loud sound in the otherwise silent house. Even the yard in the back is quiet, pools, bikes, toys abandoned for the necessary ritual that marks The unofficial end of summer, the way  Memorial Day does it's beginning --  each forming the boundaries of our real lives the way shoes enclose our toes, too tight during the school year yet let loose during these precious few months only to be contained again by routines we struggle to survive and the punishments inflicted when we do not comply.

Down the stairs we go, trying to remain silent to as not to disturb the old man in the other apartment or even the ghosts of things we know still haunt this place and these blocks from when our elders lived here and the elders before them.

On the street, even the truck traffic Dave loves so much has ceased or diminished, their tribute to the rapidly irrelevant union movement the holiday was created to honor.

Then across Vernon, near Ollie’s drug store, Dave grabs my arm.

“Promise me, we’ll get back before my mother does,” Dave says. “I have to be here when she gets back. She has to think I've been here the whole time.”

Don't worry, I got it worked out,” I tell him. “I checked all the bus schedules will be here in an hour before she gets here.”

Then Dave looks back, his face takes on an expression of agony.

“What now?” I ask.

“I left the air conditioner on.”

“Leave it. We don't have time to go back.”

“I can't leave it run all weekend. She'll see the bill and think I left it on deliberately.”

“All right, I'll hold your bag. Run back and turn it off. But we'll have to run after that if we expect to catch the bus.”

Dave thrusts his bag into my arms then runs, long strides like a clumsy racehorse, carrying him across the burn past the liquor store and jewelry store to his door where he stops, then as if he has turned to stone, loses all movement and just stands there, staring at the door then up at the window out of which the body of the air conditioner hangs.

I shout for him to go in. But still he does not move. I shout again. He glances at me, a helpless expression crossing his face -- the kind of look I see at night in the faces of the raccoon I catch when I turn on the porch light.

I shout again and still Dave does nothing

An exasperated breath oozes out of me, unintended full of fury, and finally deliberately, without haste -- since I know we're already missed the bus I wanted -- I make my way back across Vernon to where like one of the metal statues outside Paterson City Hall Dave stands looking.

“Well?” I asked, breathless despite my deliberate pace. “When are you going to go inside?”

“I don't have my keys.”

“What?”

“I must have left them inside.”

“Well let's go up. Your apartment door lock’s is so flimsy I can probably get us in.”

“This door is locked, too.”

“This door is never locked.”

“I locked it,” Dave says. “I figured we'd all be going away all weekend.”

“Damn,” I say, looking at the Lock nearly as flimsy as the one Dave's apartment but it's in the open and too obvious to jerry-rig. Too many cops patrol the border between Clifton and Paterson, especially on a holiday like this, when too many people are away, and thieves see Clifton homes as easy pickings.

 The vision of a Labor Day getaway to a beach, full of bikini clad girls, fades in my head and is replaced by one of me and Dave behind bars.

“We have to get upstairs somehow,” I tell Dave and stare past the air conditioner to the fire escape the ladder hanging too high above the sidewalk for even the Dave to reach. But I figure we can get to the roof and then climb down to Dave’s bedroom window. those locks are even cheesier than the ones on the doors. But that, I know, is no easy chore though I know it might be possible to get there from the back where another fire escape comes down into the alley between the yards and Dave's building.

“It'll be alright,” I tell Dave. “There's another bus in an hour. We’ll catch that.”

I really want to just shuck off the whole air conditioner thing and head for the bus stop now.

But I know Dave. I know he’ll moan about not getting back his keys, and the electric bill the whole way to the shore and the whole time we’re there, and so we won't have any fun and almost no chance of meeting any girls. So, I am committed to this bit of burglary and lead him around the corner past the front door of the liquor store to the alley next to that, an alley with a tall gate with barbed wire at the top and a lock so big it looks like it would be better fit for Fort Knox.

Fortunately, the fence between the alley in the neighbor's backyard is less formidable and I start down the driveway only to have Dave grab my arm and whisper what about the dog.

That stops me.

At the best of times the dog disliked us, probably because the family that owns it thinks we are thugs and tend to call the cops when they see us doing anything they think of as suspicious.

“They wouldn't leave the dog here if they went, away would they?” I asked Dave.

He shrugs.

In my way -- closer to the low fence and gate to the yard -- a tricycle sits near the fence just inside the gate. The pool -- a blow-up thing looks deflated in the center of the yard. I see no dog. I hear no dog. Yet his scent is everywhere and so are his droppings marking his territory.

This smaller gate needs no lock with a dog inside. I lift the rusted latch, cringing when the metal squeaks loud in the silence of the day, rattling my nerves as I slip inside - Dave a step behind me like an overly large shadow, his step matching my step as we cross the yard to that part of the fence that separates the alley from the  from the yard.

I get a toehold in the fence when I hear the growl. I leap over the fence and into the alley just as teeth snap in the area where I stood.

Dave does not move, imitating the same statue he had in the front of the house, assuming the role of a possum when -- with a dog like this -- possum is the wrong animal. A cat or squirrel or bat or something other quick-witted animal might do, but that Dave is not quick-witted or quick, yet for some reason the dog doesn't see him or care, continuing to growl at me through the fence.

I don't know whether to tell Dave to run or jump or just stand still. I say nothing and wait, still holding the bag he thrust at me in front of Ollie's drug store. Then, I bang this against the fence. This makes the dog even angrier teeth and snout pressing through the square gaps in the cyclone fence, trying to squeeze through and when that doesn't work, the dog leaps, trying to get over the top the way I did.

In a stroke of inspiration Dave then makes his move, long strides bringing him to the fence then over before the dog realizes what he is doing and can react.

The frustrated dog snaps the air at me, and then him, then me again. But it is clearly defeated. I glanced at Dave and he at me, and we laugh.

I can't reach the bottom rung of the lowest ladder to the fire escape here, but Dave can and after a tug, he brings it down to the ground where I start to climb it. The ladder shakes under me, rust raining down on Dave's upturned face.  I feel the joints loosen with each step I take, unstable, unbalanced, ready to rip loose at the least excuse.

I tell Dave to wait to mount until I get to the top. I reach the rear windows to the long hall that runs along the back of Dave’s building, and see the two doors inside, one to Dave’s apartment, the other to the grumpy old man that lives in the apartment next to his. But these windows don’t open, and I climb the rest of the way to the roof, calling back for Dave to come up. The ladder and the fire escape to which it is attached rattle under his assent even more than with mine.

On the roof, the air feels cool on my face, filled with the sizzling scent of Labor Day cookouts from someone grilling on Second or Third streets, from some yard where the family was unlucky enough not to be able to go to the shore.

Dave finally reaches the roof and stands beside me staring over the Crooks Avenue side in the direction of Paterson, the corner store where we get coffee for his mother and my uncles, The White Leaf Cleaners at the bus stop we sometimes use when we are too lazy to walk the tracks to get downtown. A few cars make their way up Crooks Avenue, some pulling over to get a last-minute case of beer for their lawn party.

I stare down at the front fire escape, which is even more unstable than the one in the back, bolts to the building at the top missing or nearly pulled out.

“I'm going to have to do this alone,” I tell Dave. “I'll be lucky to get down this without the whole thing falling down. If you try and we'll both be on the street looking up like we were before.”

Dave protests, telling me I don't know how to turn off the air conditioner or where he put his keys.

I tell him to tell me how and, reluctantly, he does.

Then I step out onto the metal floor of the top of the fire escape, swaying like a pirate caught in a very rough sea, in my grip real flakes of rust come off and bite into the palm of my hand.

Dave stares at me as I climb down the ladder, the way I do when I drift out into deep water at the Clifton Pool, he suspecting the worst as I do -- since I can't believe I am doing what I'm doing just so Dave's mom won't yell or feel hurt -- to turn off an air conditioner that is  a gift from someone I don't know, for reasons I can't imagine, the hum of which grows louder with each step I take down to Dave's  bedroom window.

I try to open this, but the window is too stiff after too many years unopened.  And knowing Dave's mom, she possibly nailed it shut to keep Dave from escaping.

I keep going.

Down, down, hand over hand, foot under foot, each move shaking the whole world so I cannot tell if I am swinging on the fire escape or the rest of the planet is. This isn't like the quarry where -- if I clean hard enough to a rock I won't fall. Here the mountain itself rattles with each move, each breath, so a sneeze might become a death sentence.

The air conditioner sounds like the sea to me, and when I get to the window beside it, it drips from its filter down off the side of the building to the sidewalk below, a crying icon my mother would appreciate more than I do.

Before leaving, Dave managed to lock the window I need to access. The lock is weak, a good shake breaks it, yet at the same time, rattles me and my precarious footing. The whole fire escape comes off the building a few inches and, for a moment, teeters, making up its mind whether to settle back against the building or tumble with me clinging to it down to the street.

When the rickety metal settles back against the building, Dave calls down asking if I'm all right.

“No,” I tell him, then gingerly open the window and slide through on my belly into the cool dark interior.

Despite being cleaner than usual, the apartment still stinks of the trash and humanity it usually contains.

I shut off the air conditioner first, then begin the hunt of the places Dave says he might have left his keys. This brings me past his mother's sacred alcove where her new chair sits across from her new TV and on the table where her ashtray sits, a handful of greeting cards display hearts and words of affection. These did not come from Dave's father.

I find Dave's keys on a small table near the door. I grab them and leave by way of the door into the hall where I can still see the frustrated dog on patrol in the yard below, sniffing at the place where Dave and I came over the fence.

Then, I charge down the stairs and out the door to the street where I look up at Dave, who still stands guard at the top of the fire escape. He cannot follow me down.

“You'll have to go down the back way,” I shout.

“Are you crazy”? Dave yells back. “What about the dog?”

“I’ll distract it,” I say. “It's the only way.”

Dave's face tells me what he's thinking, how he would rather spend Labor Day weekend on the roof than challenge the jaws of death a second time.

After a little coaxing, he agrees and vanishes out of sight and I make the quick trek around the block to the neighbor's driveway and the gate, beyond which the dog waits, not yet watching me on this side, watching where Dave has to come if he is to escape the roof.

Dave stares down at me, waiting for me to make my move, a move I'm scared to make, not certain I might be trading my blood for Dave's.  I already feel the teeth tearing flesh in my imagination.

I watch Dave to descend the fire escape ladder, his long limbs stretching out spider-like with little jerks as he takes each rung.  Finally, he reaches the ground in the alley and the dog is on him snapping at him through the gaps in the fence, savage, unrelenting, mean even, yet not evil, acting out of some aspect of its own nature we who watch it do not fully comprehend, we struggling to make sense of what we do.

I shout.

But the beast locked onto Dave’s scent doesn't even look at me.

I rattled the gate still no response from the dog.

I open the gate and ease inside, needing for the beast to breathe my sent so as to release Dave.

I am exposed, vulnerable, deliberately, and this scares and confuses me. I do not understand why I do it or why -- when the beast still has not smelled me -- I step closer.

“Get ready to jump and run,” I tell Dave.

I never take my gaze off the dog.

Then the dog turns its gaze, a look of recognition registering deep in his eyes, not just from my last escape, but for all those times when I stood beyond his reach, taunting him from the window above or from the safety of the street beyond the gate.

Now, I am not safe. I am not protected by window or gate, and my scent gets fixed in his nostrils as he snorts and moves one paw in my direction, a precursor to an attack I cannot survive.

“Come on, Dave!” I shout. “Do it now.”

 Dave leaps onto the fence, then over it and into the yard.

 The dog freezes, looking at me, then at Dave, our scents mingling among the smells of dog poo and grilled meat and the car fumes from the traffic on Crooks Avenue. Then, in a rush, Dave leaps, long legs carrying him past the dog to me and beyond me, and then beyond the gate, with me tagging behind him -- now his shadow the way he once was mine -- both of us slamming the gate closed just as the dog leaps against it, snarling, snapping with the intense disappointment that continues even as we retreat to Vernon then to Crooks. the two of us giddy as if drunk, hurrying off towards the holiday we now feel we deserve.

“We got to remember to get back before momma does,” Dave reminds me and I grumble my accent, but I don't mean it.

I stride side-by-side with Dave, thinking of the apartment we just left, and the parade of gifts and a handful of cards on the table near the chair full of hearts, and sentiments not sent to Dave's mother by Dave's father, and I think of her picking up Dave's father from the hospital to have him share their end-of-summer celebration, to tell him the good news about the new baby -- I know we won't be getting home from the shore before her and I know she will feel hurt when she finds Dave is not there at home to greet her, me and him gone on an adventure of our own when she needed him to share the good news as a family -- and I know I don't care if she feels hurt in fact I want her to.

“Come on, Dave,” I say. “If we hurry, we can catch the next bus.”

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