Kissing the Beehive

A few residents didn't fit the description. They were mostly white-collars who worked in Manhattan and commuted so they could own a decent house, a yard and some green around them. One rarely seen couple who lived way up on Pilot Hill drove a Rolls Royce, but they had no kids and whenever we encountered them they were like aliens from another planet.

At the other end of town was Beacon Hill, the only apartment complex. For some unknown reason, a good number of Jewish families lived there. I remember in sixth grade going to Karen Enoch's apartment when I was deeply in love with her. The first menorah I had ever seen was on their dining room table. I told Mrs. Enoch it was a beautiful candelabra that reminded me of the one Liberace had on his piano in his TV show. Later that day she tried to explain Hanukkah to me, but all I understood was it was Christmas times twelve.

I grew up in a small American town in the fifties. Part of the reason why I didn't have much to say about my childhood was simply because nothing much happened. No one grew their hair long, the only thing you protested was having pot roast again, drugs were only a whispered rumor, and any guy who behaved any differently from the norm was a fag. We played a lot of sports whether we were good or not. Most of my friends were named Joe, Anthony, John. Most of the girls we sweated and dreamed about were generally the kind who peaked physically at seventeen but then quickly started looking like their mothers once they got married far too early.

Driving through the center of town, I passed the police station and was tempted to go in and ask for Fra

At the end of the small commercial district, Main Street curves steeply down and ends at the railroad station and river. As I took my foot off the gas and let the car roll down the hill, I remembered the many times I'd walked to the station from our house. All dressed up and full of expectation for a day in New York, I'd saved my allowance for weeks and had an agenda worked out to the minute. I'd be going to the Automobile Show at the Coliseum or a wrestling match at Madison Square Garden, sometimes to the Broadway Sports Palace to spend all my money on the arcade games. Lunch would be a hot dog and coconut champagne, or a stringy two-dollar steak at Tad's Steaks. New York wasn't frightening then. A twelve-year-old wise guy could walk around Times Square alone and the worst that would happen was a panhandler would come up and ask for a dime. I was never afraid to be there and thought of the city as a kind of flashy friend with a toothpick in his mouth.

I drove over the bridge that crossed the railroad tracks and took a sharp right toward the station. Some enterprising soul had built an expensive-looking steak house at the river's edge. I felt a spurt of dismay to think life had gone on here without me all these years. Who did they think they were, changing the landscape that had once been mine? Part of you thinks you own the terrain of your memories: A law should keep things looking just the way they were.

I parked the car in front of the station and got out. A moment later, the express train from Chicago blew down the track toward the city. As it passed in a violent whomp of air and a thousand metal clicks, the world inside its cars was once again all romance and possibilities. The train we took from Crane's View to New York was always a local. It stopped twelve times in its easygoing ramble before pulling into Grand Central Station. Commuters took our train, old ladies going to the matinee of Hello, Dolly!, thirteen-year-olds in pants that were too short, purple V-necked sweaters and wearing enough Brylcreem in their hair to give the family car a lube job.

Sighing, I looked toward the water and saw a young couple playing Frisbee while a dog chased back and forth between them. It was having the time of its life. Every few throws they would let him catch one. He'd run around in a crazy triumphant dance before they wrestled it back and sent it flying again. It's interesting how many times in life you'll have a deeply sad moment only to be reminded an instant later that things are okay. I watched the couple. They sent out such strong waves of happiness that I felt them where I stood. The girl whirled around in a circle and threw the Frisbee as hard as she could. It came right at me and dropped a few feet away. I started toward it but the dog rushed over and I stopped. So did he. He stood inches away from the bright red disk, but looked up at me as if I was in charge.

"Go get it. It's okay."

He tilted his head in that classic "Huh?" look dogs have that makes me laugh every time. "It's okay. Get it."

He snatched it from the ground and tore off in the opposite direction. I started toward the water.

"Excuse me? Could you tell me what time it is?"

I don't know how long I had been standing there, looking at the river and remembering. It seemed the night was ripe for reveries. Whatever, I came out of the trance and looked first at the girl, then my watch. "It's a quarter past nine."

"Are you all right?" She had a sweet face, all concern.

I looked at her and tried to smile. I didn't know what to say.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I found the girl's body?"

The person I loved most looked at me and smiled the smile I would remember on my deathbed. Her long brown hair fell in a perfect part over her shoulders and her thin nightgown had little birds on it.

She shook her head. "That's one of the things I like about spending the night with you. In the morning you always tell me a story I never heard before."

She was sixteen years old going on thirty. I reached across the table and caressed her cheek. She took my hand and kissed it.

"It never ceases to amaze me you're my daughter."

Cassandra Bayer frowned. "Why? What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly that. How did your mother and I manage to hatch such a good kid? Your mom's lived a life that would make a nun blush. I've got more neuroses than Woody Allen. Yet here you are – solid, smart, fu

"Maybe my genes skipped a generation." She picked up the bottle of spooky black nail polish and went back to work on her thumb.

"Can I paint my nails black after you?"

She rolled her eyes and groaned. "So what about this body you found?"

I got up and poured myself some more coffee. Without looking, she extended her cup to me. I filled it and looked at the top of her head. "I have a good idea: Why don't you shave your head and have DAD tattooed there? That would go with the nails and then I'd really know you loved me."

"I know a girl who got a tattoo down below."

"What? What'd she put there?"

"A lightning bolt."

I looked out the window, trying to absorb that one. "Cass, sometimes you tell me things that make me feel a hundred years old. I mean, I'm pretty hip for a guy my age, you've said so yourself. But if I went to bed with a woman and saw she had a tattoo there, I'd call the police."

"I don't think you'd want to go to bed with this girl, Dad. Her name is Spoon and the only thing she eats is lamb. It's some kind of new religion, like the Malda Vale."

"What do Spoon's parents say about that?"

She finished her thumb and screwed the cap back on the bottle. Her gestures were all so delicate and precise. "Are you going to tell me about the dead body or not?"

"Okay. When I was fifteen, a bunch of us went down to the river to swim."

"You swam in the Hudson River? Dad, that place is glowing with pollution!"

"Yeah, well, I'd rather swim in a dirty river than tattoo my genitals! Anyway, it wasn't so bad back then; just a little smelly. But we didn't really go to swim. All the cool girls went there in their bikinis. Someone would have gotten beer, everybody'd be smoking Marlboros, there'd be a portable radio . . . WABC with Cousin Brucie. It was nice. I always think of it as the day of 'A Hard Day's Night.' I'll tell you why in a minute. Joe O'Brien and I were the first there."