Jupiter up to Dyckman Street with it at the exact time he had.
I went to the kitchen and got the scissors, cut away just enough of the wide, blue sky to make the photograph fit into the little window of my code-o-graph. Then I slid out Captain Midnight’s face and replaced it with my own.
The next morning, I walked out into the September wind wearing the stiff, new Thom McAns that were the color of Aunt May’s Victory Pudding, and carrying my leather schoolbag as if I was on my way to P.S. 52. At the corner, I turned in the opposite direction and headed toward the subway.
• • •
Weeks went by and nobody from P.S. 52 tried to get in touch with us.
Once I ran into Mrs. Krinsky from apartment 1A, coming out of Mandelbaum’s with an armful of groceries, and she asked me where I was going in such a hurry.
“School,” I told her.
“Isn’t it that way?” She pointed with her chin.
“I’m going to a special school. For people with bad eyes.”
“You’d better hurry then,” she said, clutching her bags to her chest, as if they might cover her embarrassment.
And a couple of times, I thought I spotted a very small man smoking a cigarette following me as I slipped into the subway at the corner of Broadway and Dyckman Street. But I could never trust my eyes, and he seemed very small for a man, so I figured I’d imagined him.
It’s possible a call came when no one was in the apartment—or that my mother never picked up the phone—because every time it rang, she hurried away from it, as if that would prevent any bad news from finding her. And if a letter had been sent, it’s possible it was lost in the mail. It was wartime after all, and there was a lot of mail. It’s also possible that nobody at P.S. 52 wanted to talk to us about the reason I hadn’t returned to school. Nobody wanted to come to our apartment and knock on our door and ask if it was about what had happened in the 42nd Street subway station.
• • •
As the leaves turned and the weather grew colder, I searched all five boroughs of New York City for a Nazi to bring to my father. I broke in the Thom McAns walking the stone floors of Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central, ate countless pieces of Automat coconut custard pie, and used up every one of my mother’s nickels. One day I rode the subway all the way out to Coney Island and stood on the boardwalk in the salted wind staring at the gray sea, hoping to spot the periscope of a Nazi submarine. Another day I wandered Central Park in the slanted light of late autumn, crunching leaves the color of my mother’s clothes, eavesdropping on every park bench conversation.
When I got discouraged, I pulled out the code-o-graph and looked at the photograph of myself in the little window.
It began to get truly cold and I spent less time on the street and in the park, and more time on the subway and in the Automat and the train stations. I followed a man in an overcoat who was following another man, a man in a suit. I followed them out of the West Fourth Street subway station and around a corner, where the man in the overcoat punched the man in the suit, knocking him to the sidewalk, getting blood on the front of his jacket. The man in the suit did not seem surprised to have been hit by the man in the overcoat. He shook his head and wiped at the blood with a handkerchief. Another day, I followed a tall woman in a fur coat to a brownstone near Gramercy Park. While I was standing outside, debating whether to write down her address, she came back through the door, dressed as a man.
I was always right about the people I followed not being what they presented themselves to be. But I was never right about them being a Nazi spy or saboteur. And some nights, even with the code-o-graph in my hand, even staring down at that photograph, I began to believe that the war would go on forever and I would never find a Nazi for my father.
• • •
At the end of October a transit
I went to the kitchen and got the scissors, cut away just enough of the wide, blue sky to make the photograph fit into the little window of my code-o-graph. Then I slid out Captain Midnight’s face and replaced it with my own.
The next morning, I walked out into the September wind wearing the stiff, new Thom McAns that were the color of Aunt May’s Victory Pudding, and carrying my leather schoolbag as if I was on my way to P.S. 52. At the corner, I turned in the opposite direction and headed toward the subway.
• • •
Weeks went by and nobody from P.S. 52 tried to get in touch with us.
Once I ran into Mrs. Krinsky from apartment 1A, coming out of Mandelbaum’s with an armful of groceries, and she asked me where I was going in such a hurry.
“School,” I told her.
“Isn’t it that way?” She pointed with her chin.
“I’m going to a special school. For people with bad eyes.”
“You’d better hurry then,” she said, clutching her bags to her chest, as if they might cover her embarrassment.
And a couple of times, I thought I spotted a very small man smoking a cigarette following me as I slipped into the subway at the corner of Broadway and Dyckman Street. But I could never trust my eyes, and he seemed very small for a man, so I figured I’d imagined him.
It’s possible a call came when no one was in the apartment—or that my mother never picked up the phone—because every time it rang, she hurried away from it, as if that would prevent any bad news from finding her. And if a letter had been sent, it’s possible it was lost in the mail. It was wartime after all, and there was a lot of mail. It’s also possible that nobody at P.S. 52 wanted to talk to us about the reason I hadn’t returned to school. Nobody wanted to come to our apartment and knock on our door and ask if it was about what had happened in the 42nd Street subway station.
• • •
As the leaves turned and the weather grew colder, I searched all five boroughs of New York City for a Nazi to bring to my father. I broke in the Thom McAns walking the stone floors of Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central, ate countless pieces of Automat coconut custard pie, and used up every one of my mother’s nickels. One day I rode the subway all the way out to Coney Island and stood on the boardwalk in the salted wind staring at the gray sea, hoping to spot the periscope of a Nazi submarine. Another day I wandered Central Park in the slanted light of late autumn, crunching leaves the color of my mother’s clothes, eavesdropping on every park bench conversation.
When I got discouraged, I pulled out the code-o-graph and looked at the photograph of myself in the little window.
It began to get truly cold and I spent less time on the street and in the park, and more time on the subway and in the Automat and the train stations. I followed a man in an overcoat who was following another man, a man in a suit. I followed them out of the West Fourth Street subway station and around a corner, where the man in the overcoat punched the man in the suit, knocking him to the sidewalk, getting blood on the front of his jacket. The man in the suit did not seem surprised to have been hit by the man in the overcoat. He shook his head and wiped at the blood with a handkerchief. Another day, I followed a tall woman in a fur coat to a brownstone near Gramercy Park. While I was standing outside, debating whether to write down her address, she came back through the door, dressed as a man.
I was always right about the people I followed not being what they presented themselves to be. But I was never right about them being a Nazi spy or saboteur. And some nights, even with the code-o-graph in my hand, even staring down at that photograph, I began to believe that the war would go on forever and I would never find a Nazi for my father.
• • •
At the end of October a transit
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