YOUR GIBES, YOUR GAMBOLS, YOUR SONGS

From Fox Chase Review

 

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WE HAD SCRAMBLED up the slope, grabbing at trees and ivy, and were crouching above East River Drive, a pair of gargoyles in the cold. A fence had stopped us. Below the ridge, the two cars were smashed. “Stay low,” Connor hissed. Already new headlights were bearing down from the north, slowing quickly as they came upon the wreck. “And, goddamn it, Tony, stay here.”

           

We gripped the fence to steady ourselves in the dead leaves and schist. It was three o’clock in the morning.

 

“We didn’t have to run,” I said.

 

He was quivering.

           

“Are you cold?” I said. “Or is that just affective memory?”

           

“Shut up.”

           

Along the roadway, hazard lights flashed in a daisy chain.

           

A driver shot out onto the pavement, his phone at his ear. Leather coat and silver bracelet, he bent to peer into the Honda. He did not speak into the car. He marched to my Oldsmobile’s crumpled hood.

 

“My father gave me that car,” I said.

 

“Shut up.”

 

“So he wouldn’t have to drive me to college, I think.”

 

The man in the road shouted to the others emerging, their breath visible in the cold. “No one’s in this one.” He pointed at it, backing away. “Nobody.”

        

"Oh hell,” Connor said.

           

“Look around,” the guy commanded. “Look.” Then he was talking with 911.

           

Three others went to crouch beside the upset vehicle just as the first guy had. They reached carefully through the broken glass. Car lights piled up in either direction, despite the hour, red and white beads on an abacus wire. Some newcomer honked at the rear.

           

But how this first guy on the scene was adrenalized, phone up and elbow jutting, having his woman stay in the car. He barked to the other sleepless people come out to look halfheartedly for Connor and me, along the edges of the road, up and down the empty bike path, over the short rock wall which dropped to the Schuylkill. None yet looked up the dark east slope where Connor was picking his way along the ridge. I followed him.

           

And how the road had been entirely empty as we sped beneath its measuring lamps, Connor pleading with me, be reasonable. Be patient. And how then the white car appeared, the one I had been waiting for, had made myself ready for hours ago. My reaction flew on impulse. My ears were still ringing.

​

He found a gap where the fence met a rock retaining wall and hoisted himself around a spray of barbed wire. I shadowed him, some ghost already. My head was bleeding. My right hand felt broken below the ring finger. “You’re hurt,” I said to him.

           

The grounds of Laurel Hill were darker, quieter than the road below. Towering limestone shone through the branches like shards plummeted from the moon. He dragged himself behind a plinth, blew out a deep breath, and began to pee. “Could you see anything?” he asked quietly.

           

“Anything like what?”

           

He didn’t look at me. “The driver.”

           

“No,” I said.

           

“Why would you do that?” he said. It was nearly a moan. “Got to deal with you first. They’re down there, and we’ll worry about him later.”

           

“Her,” I said.

           

His eyes went warily to me. He scowled at the cemetery’s winding lane. “We’ve got to talk. You know you do, Tony. Talk to me. Let’s stay here awhile. Settle it down.”

​

“Why are we even running?” I asked. “It’s an accident.”

 

“It wasn’t an accident,” he said. He couldn’t stand still. He hauled his left leg like it was chained to a cinderblock. We went slowly like that through the cemetery’s stones and bare shrubs until he reached a low sarcophagus where he could sit. He rubbed his knee and lay back. “I want to hear some things from you first, before we deal with them. I suppose you want me to say I’m sorry.”

           

There wasn’t a cloud up where he was looking. The stars saw us. We saw the stars. They never said anything.

 

“You’re going to have to do something,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

           

“We are,” he said. “Quit smiling.”

           

“Great,” I said. “See? I don’t even know when I’m smiling anymore.” My voice was as it had been all evening. “I’m done, Connor.” Even the thought didn’t seem worth the breath. I tried again, just to see if I could make it sound any different. “Done.”

           

“Stop it. Not yet. You’re still someplace else. Get with me.”

 

I shook my head for him. “It doesn’t matter.”

           

“It does matter, you ass. It matters to me. Your head’s bleeding.”

           

I touched it. “It’s alright. This hand’s broken, though.” I held it out in the moonlight.

           

“They can fix hands. We’ll get that fixed.” He sat up. “It’s going to be okay.”

           

“Sure,” I said.

           

“Goddamn it. No more of this whatever bullshit. That’s a serious mess down there, and you’re still up here singing goodbye cruel world crap. Come off it.” He pushed my chest.

           

He touched me.

           

He pushed me again.

           

I made a fist in one pocket. In the other, my right hand was tender and swelling. “How’s your leg?” I asked.

           

“It hurts. Like you care.”

           

“Broken hurts?”

           

“I don’t know.” He winced. It wasn’t an act. “It’s alright. We need to get some basics straight, okay? With you. So we can get to dealing with other stuff like bones and cops.”

           

I listened for sirens in the wings.

           

“I insist you stay alive, and I insist you start talking to me about how you’re going to. Seriously.” He went on.

           

And he went on.

           

And, good god, the whole evening had already been filled with talk. Talking wasn’t what I needed, nor what he wanted. What he wanted was for me to cut to the part where I’d say what he hoped to hear, and at least then it could be over for him, at least for tonight. I had been through all this before. With him before, and with his wife, when he insisted. I had talked and listened to people, in earnestness and oblivion, to where even in their variety they all returned to the same chorus, before. Had cried on the shoulders of fellow actors, had sought counsel, had tried the prescribed reuptake inhibitors. Had gone to church, had bought running shoes, had read the recommended self-help publications, secular and non. Had volunteered, pressed shirt and clipboard in Rittenhouse Square and a summer with the children’s drama camp. I had borrowed a neighbor’s dog for a week, while she went away. Had invested poorly in a series of romances. Count the ways. I had found some comfort in alcohol. I would never get what I needed.

           

“So, come on,” he said. “Come on. Help me.” He held out a hand. “Help me, Tony.”

           

I recognized it as some dare, a salesman’s gambit, but I gave him my good hand and tugged him to his feet. Our noses were inches apart before he turned. I stood there as he trudged through the frost toward the cemetery’s south section, his limp like that when we met at audition, eight years ago, competing for Richard III. “How dost thou feel thyself now?” My voice carried.

           

Center City’s skyline popped over the trees, an electrified version of the obelisks around us.

 

“Um,” he paused. “Faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me.”

 

“Where are you going?”

           

He stopped but didn’t turn around. “It’s just a waste pleading with you, isn’t it? What do you care where I’m going? You tried to kill both of us down there, Tony. Not just yourself, but me. And at least a third person. Do you feel anything about that at all?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

           

The cemetery lane twisted up and down knolls, and he struggled, sidling, when he had to climb one. I trailed him slowly, feeling a moment like the gunfighter watching his wounded enemy—his betrayer or former captor, someone—claw pathetically across the desert.

 

There were the sirens now.

​

He folded himself at the waist to catch his breath.

​

“Is it the asthma? You’re exhausting yourself. You need to get to a hospital.” Or I was like those statuary people at the dog park. The watchful parent at the playground’s edge. “Get a cab,” I said. “Leave me here. No one will know you were in the car.”

​

He made it to the stone bridgeway which crossed the canal-like stretch of Hunting Park Avenue, where it sinks through the divided cemetery toward the river. He peered back in the darkness. I don’t think he could see me.

​

“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” I said.

           

“Mm. You just forgot I was in the car. And the other-”

           

“It doesn’t matter.”

           

“I can’t say it was an accident.”

​

We studied the space between each other. He looked afraid. Traffic flashed beneath the bridge, detouring around our crash by the river. He considered it a moment, considered the railing, and turned back to me, even more frightened. “Let me help you across this thing.”

           

“Help me?” I knew what he meant. I came to him, and he threw his left arm over my shoulder, almost a headlock. His coat smelled like cigarettes and his fingers were cold at my neck. We hobbled like that to the other side of the bridge, neither of us looking over the edge out of some deference to the other. We passed the mausoleum there. “Where are we going?”

           

“I don’t know.”

           

“I mean it, I wasn’t trying to kill you.”

           

“Of course, I was just incidental. Jesus, that’s your apology? That other person could be dead.”

           

“We’ll get you a cab,” I said.

           

We went up the next rise. He was leaning against me, the longest we’d ever touched, and I thought of the first time I held a man’s hand, the soft tapping of his fingers on my knuckles beneath the tablecloth, wrapping set-ups in an empty restaurant. At each step I could feel Connor trying to think of what else to say, and part of me wanted to help him, feed him lines, but I suppose not part enough. He had nothing of his own to give me. When we got to the southernmost edge of the cemetery and the path began to circle back to the middle, I suspected he would, out of obligation, just keep us walking like this for hours, monks worrying our beads, until some new encouragement or ultimatum struck him, or he felt enough time had passed to ply me with the old ones, or the sun simply came up and everything played itself out as it must.

​

But he didn’t turn us back.

​

He stepped into the frozen grass and went through the path gate at the corner. He paused a moment and beckoned me.

           

“I should stay here.”

           

“You come with me.”

           

We stepped into an overgrown parking lot, shielded from Ridge Avenue by large trees. The ice puddles gleamed blackly.

           

“What’s this place?” Connor said. “I’ve never been here.”

           

“Robin Hood Dell.” I pointed to the small sign.

           

It was Fairmount Park’s old amphitheater, the one built before the Mann opened on the river’s other side. Its turnstiles had been poorly barricaded, and the place had clearly seen some demolition. Gnarled rebar sprung from broken concrete. But even in the dark we could see how the frosted grounds sloped down to the proscenium. If there had been seats, they had been ripped out. The dirt was staked and graded and covered with straw, planted for spring. This was renovation coming. Or renovation halted.

           

He passed me and began the descent. “Looks like some place.”

           

I thought I heard him whistle.

           

One weathered row of hard plastic seats was left down near the front. I sat. Connor clapped his hands once and pulled himself onto the stage. He turned to face me, drew a breath, cleared his throat. He extended an arm at me, palm up. “This same skull, sir, was his, sir, the jester’s.”

           

“We were made for the other part, Connor.”

           

His stiff arm did not tremble. “Alas, poor Yorick.”

           

“Alas,” I agreed. “Those lips I have kissed I know not how oft.”

           

He flung it to the crowd. He gave me a look and tried another. “There are those with guns, hombre, and those who dig.”

           

“You dig,” I answered.

           

“I knew that you could...”

           

A quick tour of our old barroom riffs, for us, always, more chorus than limelight. Two players who never got their break. Two men growing old. We weren’t even meant for each other. How would he tell it to his wife now?

           

He was singing the opening to the Bee Gees’ song in falsetto, which made me smile. The wind sent leaves across my shoes. I watched them scratch along, stiff and curled, cicada husks which fell from the trees by the lake back home.

           

“You still sing very well,” I told him. The unhitched seats wobbled as I nestled in my coat. I crossed my legs together tightly. The white Honda had swerved away when I swerved toward it. It caromed off the concrete barrier protecting the bike path and back into us.

           

“It’s such a good feeling,” Connor sang. “Such a wonderful feeling…”

           

Decades of performers must have brought their show to this Robin Hood Dell, and as Connor played the fool (for me? for himself?), I deliberated the unknown lot of them, my mind tripping through seasons, ratcheting like a trading card pinned in a bike wheel. He slowed the tempo with snapping fingers and began On Broadway. If it’s how he wanted to while our last hour, so be it. He sang with gusto, did a bouncy one-legged dance. He swept his arm over us, played to a phantom crowd rather than meet my eye. He sang into his fist like he was Neil Diamond. “Thank you. Thank you. My leg feels better,” he assured us. “Oh, it feels better. It’s a beautiful night, folks, and I feel good…”

           

He quit. He looked at me, his madness gone.

​

Performances here were held in warm weather, of course, not this bitter air. Summertimes. And the people in their summer clothes must have pressed through the turnstiles up there, where the orange hurricane fence was stretched, as the sun set over the river, and there was probably a haze of cigarette smoke as the orchestra tuned up. Mosquitoes maybe. News of wars and wars’ ends. Smells of food from baskets or vendors. When I was a kid, there was a sundae and shake stand on the highway at the outskirts of town, where the handsome boy whose name I can’t remember sold toaster oven sandwiches­ we’d carry home in white paper bags over our handlebars. My father and my sister and I would eat them at the flaking picnic table, in the backyard, where he parked his backhoe. Penny with the burns on her arms. Listening to FM stereo through the kitchen window screen, the stereo my mother had saved for months to buy herself, for Christmas. And the bugs would start chirping in the cornfield. And so she would turn up the music, rebroadcasts of metropolitan pops she had promised me, beamed from another world, as she wiped the counters and folded our socks, as she tied the trash bag and counted her pills. And when we wadded up the foils, my father hollered, hey, come on, Annette, the game’s on, switch it to the baseball, this boy needs to hear some baseball, where’s his cards? And she lowered her head to the window and spoke to the yard something better for her he didn’t hear.

           

The helicopter’s spot beat the night like a cane.

           

Connor, overwhelmed by the rotors’ thud, had stopped pleading and sat down right where he was, center stage, in the cold, his hands covering his face. The chopper dropped closer. He pulled his good knee to his chest and put his head down. His shoulders tugged. Twenty yards apart, swallowed by sound, we were very still. It came loud and throbbing over the fence, and the pale straw began to flurry.