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  The Test

  Copyright © 2014 by John Lansing

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any way without written permission from the publisher, except in cases of brief quotations in reviews.

  Contact Chris Sulavik

  Tatra Press LLC

  4 Park Trail

  Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520

  [email protected]

  www.tatrapress.com

  Cover design by Mimi Bark-Weiss.

  Book design by Isabella Piestrzynska, Umbrella Graphics.

  Distributed by Midpoint Trade Books.

  Published in the United States of America.

  ISBN: 9780989835244

  Contents

  Copyright

  The Test - By John Lansing

  About the Author

  The Test

  By John Lansing

  Nothing prepares you for the role of family elder, except time in. There’s no master class. No choice, I thought, as I drove down Long Island’s Southern State Parkway. I knew every square foot of the route, though I hadn’t lived there in years: veer to the right at Exit 20, up Grand Avenue, right on Demott, then hang a left onto Coolidge. I was dropping the keys off at our old house.

  Shredding my parents’ legal papers, finalizing their estate, and preparing their home for sale was brutal. We make choices in life as to what’s important, but God is the final arbiter.

  Or was it my third ex-wife, who was waiting with bated breath in Los Angeles for her share of the proceeds?

  I left home in 1967 to attend college on the West Coast. And, like a lot of transplants, I stayed. I’d been back to visit many times for holidays and such, reconnected with some old friends on social media, but I knew this was the final farewell.

  Baldwin had gone through its share of turmoil over the years. Twenty-three-thousand people coexisted there now. A solid mix of whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. From my life experience, change is a non-starter without labor pains.

  La Bella Notte was conspicuously missing from Grand Avenue. Most of the iconic Italian family restaurants had been replaced with fast-food joints. Danny’s Haven, which made the best pizza on Long Island, had been bulldozed, replaced with a Friendly’s Ice Cream. Second-generation Italians didn’t want to go into their fathers’ businesses. And so it went.

  Back in the early 60s, Terranovas still had a two-acre plot, next to Danny’s Haven, where they grew apples, corn, tomatoes, melons, and the sweetest strawberries I’d ever tasted. They’d sell their produce at a modest stand directly across the street from the Baldwin Volunteer Fire Department.

  Gene Molloy, Greg Fryzel, and I were thick as thieves that summer before our sophomore year in high school. We’d slip out of our parents’ homes on sweltering nights, go skinny dipping in a neighbor’s pool, and then sneak up Grand Avenue at 2 AM and walk barefoot through the loamy garden soil, gorging ourselves on Terranova bounty.

  Grand Avenue might have lost some of its charm, but the neighborhoods tucked away off that main drag remained eerily intact, as if frozen in time.

  Gene Molloy grew up a few blocks away from Terranovas. My friend had the biggest heart in the world, and it gave out when he was 31. I entered UCLA searching for an identity. Gene found his in crystal meth.

  I joined the LAPD in the 70s with a degree in criminal science, hell bent on making a difference. The jury’s still out on that one. It was too late to save my good buddy, and that’s a burden I’ll carry to the grave.

  Gene always had my back. And, as I think about it, he and Fryzel were there the night I danced with the one pure love of my life. Before politics, and expectations, and possessions became part of the equation.

  A lifetime ago. Funny, we were just kids. I thought I had all the answers, and was too young to know better.

  I’m not one to dwell on the past, or my own mortality, my line of work and all. But lately, I’ve started to wonder if I was on the endangered species list.

  With 30 years under my belt, I could retire from the force any time I wanted with a good pension. But I had a feeling that might do me in. I stunk at golf, hated fishing, and if I wasn’t plugged into an interesting case, I’d start eating myself alive.

  I felt dispassionately about the sale of my parents’ home until I pulled my rental Chevy Malibu onto Coolidge Avenue and glided to a smooth stop in front of our white, shingled, split-level. The sudden flood of emotion and the gut-wrenching feeling of loss surprised the hell out of me—as if I’d veered off course somewhere down the line.

  I glanced over at the brick steps leading up to the small front porch, and could almost hear a 45-RPM disk slip down the multiple-changer on the family stereo, the needle settling comfortably into the worn grooves. It played one particular cut and I felt like someone was standing on my heart. What memory served was the echoed, tremolo sound of the Ventures playing Telstar.

  •

  It was early November 1963. Baldwin was beautiful in the fall and then brutal until the first snow. The air was thick, damp, and the scent of onions blew out of exhaust fans in the suburban kitchens we passed on Coolidge Avenue. My stomach growled, and I was reminded that maybe I should have eaten dinner before trying to chug a six-pack on the way to the dance.

  I would turn 15 in a month and, at four-eleven and a half, was toothpick thin. My father barked a derisive laugh as he gave me the once over before I left the house and told me a sharp wind would knock me on my ass if someone didn’t punch me in the face first. Reasonable retribution, he thought, for my sarcastic attitude and wise-beyond-my-years tongue. What did he know?

  We were armed and dangerous. My friends and I spent hours in front of our bathroom mirrors prepping for the weekend dance, combing our hair back over one ear again and again until it was set and perfect. If it was slicked back over both ears you were a rock and not a prep. We still had boys in our high school who majored in shop class and sported DAs—long hair combed up in the back to look like a duck’s ass. Very West Side Story.

  Our shirts, called ponchos, had a V hem that we wore out over peg-legged pants that snugged a quarter-inch above polished, black, pointed shoes exposing socks that matched the color of our shirts. Purple was cool. Lime green was de rigueur.

  Long Island teenagers walked in packs of threes and fours through the pitch-black night, the only light emanating from street lamps that created eerie moving shadows as the cold wind rattled through brittle tree branches. But there was electricity that night, a charge in the air.

  Rain had turned to ice, and the red and burnt-orange leaves that had brilliantly marked the changing of the seasons now lay dirty, brown, and rotting. They blanketed black ice on the sidewalks below old-growth trees like practical jokers.

  Everyone in my crew carried their own prerequisite six-pack of Schaefer beer. I straggled behind, periodically dumping some of the foamy brew, silently watering the neighbors’ lawns before hurling the empty aluminum can clattering onto the street with as much bravado as I could muster—all in an attempt to save face, prove I was one of the guys, and could handle my liquor. Clearly I could not, but my friends Gene Malloy and Greg Fryzel were too self-absorbed at the moment to notice.

  Girls. Girls. Girls. At the dance. Fifteen minutes away and counting.

  We drained the last of our brew, belched loudly trying for harmony, enjoyed the moment, and then hid the empties in a neighbor’s bushes on Stanton Avenue before cutting up Grand, the main thoroughfare through town.

  Beer, Old Spice, and raging, youthful testosterone fueled our anticipation, gave us attitude and a spring in our steps as we made our way past the train station and up into South Baldwin. We were gonna knock ’em dead.

  •

  I huddled on the sidewalk outside the hall next
to Gene and Greg, who tore a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum into threes. We popped the pieces and chewed furiously before cupping our hands over our mouths and checking our breath. Then we checked one another’s through clouds of icy vapor, which set off a laughing jag. When we finally settled down, good to go, we stepped up onto the grand porch of the Knights of Columbus Hall as if we belonged.

  The hall was large, old, and white shingled with green shutters, a structure which would have seemed more at home down south and was in dire need of a paint job. But it had elegant bones and was set off in front with an oversized American flag and a Revolutionary-War-era cannon planted on the brown winter lawn greeting visitors.

  Fryzel punched me in the arm in nervous anticipation of having to back up his macho rhetoric with real communication with the opposite sex. I, of course, returned the favor as we checked our hair in the reflection of the picture window next to the huge, green, front door. Fully satisfied, we sucked in a few deep gulps of the cold air and strode into the hall.

  Colored pastel spotlights haloed a live band playing a raucous version of Twist and Shout by the Isley Brothers. And there we were, in a cavernous room filled with teenagers. And for that one moment in time, we ruled.

  The air was filled with the smell of perfume and cheap aftershave. Paper cutout decorations made in art class hung on the walls and strung across the ceiling in graceful arcs and…girls. Lots of them. Painted angels.

  But here was the hitch. The angels were all on one side of the hall and we, the boys, were all lined up on the other. I can’t explain how it happened. It was as if some unnatural magnetic force pulled the sexes to opposite sides of the room.

  The three of us stood there bobbing our heads to the music, trying for cool, checking out the action without being too conspicuous. One thing was definitely for sure—the walk across that burnished hardwood floor to ask one of those painted flowers to dance was going to be the longest of my life.

  Gene Molloy was all-Irish with a thick shock of brown hair combed back like a Kennedy. A quick smile, blue eyes and easy manner, he was my one friend who had made it to first base and was looking to score a home run that night.

  Greg Fryzel was second-generation Polish with a nose that rivaled his pointed shoes and a biting sarcastic view of the world. We thought it was a defensive posture because his dad was a garbage man. Like anybody cared.

  That’s right: in the early 60s we had garbage men and not sanitation workers. Some of the upper-middle-class kids had maids, not housekeepers. Janitors were janitors and not maintenance men.

  This was one year before the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and 75 million viewers witnessed the British Invasion that would sweep the nation and become the soundtrack for a social revolution.

  America was on the cusp of great change, but Baldwin, Long Island, with a population of just over 17,000, had its own issue to deal with.

  The recent arrival of its first black family.

  There wasn’t an adult in the township who wasn’t acutely aware of that statistic and, more specifically, which block the family had moved onto, and relieved beyond belief if it wasn’t theirs. The prevailing wisdom disseminated at all of the canasta and bridge and investment clubs in town, all the barber shops, beauty salons and clothing stores, revolved around the stereotypical notion that if you sold to one black family, more would surely follow and real estate values would plummet, destroying life in Baldwin as its residents knew it.

  Now, the second daughter of this pioneer family was a stunner. Her name was Vida. The most beautiful and exotic young girl I had ever seen. I took every opportunity to cross paths with her in the hallways. But seriously, I wasn’t sure if she knew I was alive. So I figured I’d get really lucky that night, or make a total fool out of myself. A chance I was willing to take.

  She wasn’t hard to pick out in the crowd. I saw her standing across the room next to the Sternlieb twins and her older sister, Angela, who were juniors.

  The pink lights turned her skin into a pale mocha, and I started across the floor without plan one, other than I wanted to get close enough to ask her for the next slow dance.

  And then I was there. Standing next to Vida. And my mouth started moving.

  “Could I have the next dance, preferably a slow dance until I warm up some?”

  Vida looked surprised I was asking her and not one of the twins. She smiled, a small nervous smile until her sister turned to see who was interrupting the girls’ conversation, and then Vida shook her head no. It was definitely a no.

  “Oh, okay,” I said too quickly, my voice rising in pitch.

  I stood motionless for a millisecond, steeling myself for the awkward, embarrassing walk back when the band chose that precise moment to take a break.

  They slid on a scratchy 45 version of the Shirelles singing Soldier Boy and announced they’d be back in five. Now, I had to endure the nervous laughter of the twins, the suspicious eyes of Vida’s sister, and the jostling of the lucky bastards who stood swaying and moving uncomfortably on the dance floor as I made that torturous walk back across the gymnasium floor.

  I was forced to confront my buddy Fryzel, whose back was turned, but whose quaking shoulders told the whole story. Fryzel would never cross the floor, not in the entire evening. But the guy never saw a moment of weakness he wouldn’t exploit.

  I passed Gene pawing a bottle-blond cheerleader from Baldwin Harbor. He brushed her long, straightened hair away from his mouth, smiled with glazed, contented eyes, and gave me a thumbs-up. Good for him.

  I joined the rest of the lonely hordes and tried to figure out what the hell had just happened. Yes, Vida was beautiful and maybe out of my league, but that had never stopped me before. After all, my grandfather told me I could achieve anything I wanted in life if I put my mind to it. And Vida did avoid eye contact when she shook her head no. Maybe she was just shy. I had inside intel that a schoolmate from Queens had broken her heart. Well, I was sure that I would never be that crass or insensitive, and that her heart would be safe with me.

  Fryzel made a concerted effort not to grin but failed miserably. Irritated, I made a beeline into the men’s room to regroup.

  •

  I peed into a long metal trough filled with ice chips and tried to see how many I could make dissolve when a drum solo thrumming through the paper-thin walls snapped me back to the mission at hand.

  The wooden slat walls were covered with carved initials of ill-fated couples from dances past. I washed up and looked into the pockmarked mirror and fought the urge to run my hand through my longish brown hair that was swept behind my left ear. The Dep gel I had used to slick it back rendered it harder than the black plastic comb strategically placed in my rear pocket. Not bad, I thought. Maybe worth another try.

  Fryzel did say that life at home for my dream date was explosive. A lot of yelling, he was told. Well, I could relate to that. I had never gotten through a meal without the sound of M-80s going off. My father loved to crack me in the back of my head as he walked to his chair at the head of the dinner table. Thought it was funny. I had just gotten over a radical nervous twitch from the experience and knew that I sure as hell wouldn’t let anyone else feel that teenage rage.

  And, oh, by the way…I could really slow dance. I watched American Bandstand every Saturday morning and knew in my heart of hearts that my moves were as good as theirs.

  Okay. One more time. Soldier on.

  The lights were dimmed and slipped from white to pink and then a deeper shade of purple as I worked my way through a sea of swaying couples. My foot got stomped on by Clancy, a porcine football player whose hand was slowly snaking under his date’s mohair sweater. I stifled a yelp and spun on him, but the big guy seemed totally unaware that he was the cause of my painful grimace and newly acquired limp.

  So I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I was on a mission. And, just as I moved up next to Vida, the song I knew I could dance to, ended.

  Dead silence.

  M
y embarrassment was covered by a smattering of applause from the couples standing on the dance floor. I froze, trying to force the red blush overtaking my face from becoming too blinding. And then pretty Vida turned my way. A vision in a lime-green skirt and beige angora sweater. Her clear, almond eyes blinked just as the twins’ and her sister’s heads snapped in our direction.

  But this time, ignoring them, Vida said, “We’ll dance to the next one, okay?”

  “Sure. Good,” I managed, relieved my voice hadn’t cracked.

  I couldn’t hear the music at first over the sound of my heartbeat. The first issue was where to dance. And not a small matter. It had to be far enough away from the prying eyes of her friends, but not so far as to be awkward. Who was I kidding? I was so self-conscious, I thought every eye in the room was on Vida and me.

  We moved to the center of the dance floor, and the band was playing a slow version of Telstar off the new Ventures album. The high-school trio had a limited repertoire and fared better with instrumentals. The spacey vibrato sound of the lead guitar suited my mood perfectly, although I was worried the rhythm might make a smooth execution dicey.

  I gently took hold of Vida’s hand and snugged my other around the small of her back. Her hands were dry and elegant, with long slender fingers and nails painted a pale pink. She slid her arm around me making my stomach jump, and we started moving to the music. Back and forth. Not too close, but damn close enough.

  Vida stood a full three inches taller than me, and when I finally got comfortable enough to look up into her eyes, we smiled nervously, and then laughed. I thought, well, I’m not really sure what I thought, but I knew I was deliriously happy having this vision in my arms.

  My feet seemed to take on a life of their own and there was no stepping on toes, until I looked beyond her gaze and realized that, indeed, almost every eye in the Knights of Columbus Hall was trained directly on Vida and me—and not all of them admiring our dance moves. In fact, I saw some strangely unsettling anger.

  I paused for one, nervous, self-conscious second, lost my rhythm, and came down hard on her instep. I instantly sputtered an apology and from then on carefully studied my feet instead of my dance partner. Vida recovered sooner than I did. I was sure I could hear Fryzel’s cackle from across the room, but I didn’t care. I was transfixed, and soon the room and the glares disappeared.