Excerpt from Louis’s Son August 13 2006

This is a piece I wrote as a prose exercise to help me get my thoughts out for a script. By the end of my time at the writer's residency I was staying at I decided I wanted to write a book. There have been so many times that I sat down to write a screenplay and desperately wanted to write prose- it is only this year- 10 yrs after graduating from a film program that I realize that i love film- but I'm not sure I really want to or can make films. Its like learning you want a divorce. You end up having nothing in your life. How do your experiences quantify in the terrain of a constant visual tournament I play with my words and my computer skills.  Recently I sent this piece to a journalist as a template of what kind of storytelling I do.  I was happy to hear these compliments (which I've heard before) Your work is harrowing and humorous at the same time.  I'm pretty sure thats how I would describe my life. With the added addition of one more H = Humbling.

Without further ado ENJOY MY SHORT STORY! I don't normally publish my fiction.

It was extremely hot that day. Every time you looked out the window at the streets the spirits were dancing up from the pavement in sultry curvatures of steam.  I changed my shirt three times and ran ice cubes across my head as I stared out the window.  I sat hours waiting for the old man across the street to turn on his bathroom light.  I wanted to go over and sit with him and have him serve me his blackberry brandy that he brewed in his tub but I didn’t want to wake him.  Sometimes he would get me so drunk that Ma would have to cross the street and walk me home. 

I sat with Old Grandpa Falcone for hours.  His English was pretty rough; he mostly spoke kitchen Italian interrupted by short whistles through his missing teeth.  I liked thinking I was his best friend.  He never left the house- his old back was bowed and his nimble fingers arthritically frozen in some form of piano playing that no one would ever hear.  Poor old guy!

His son, Mr. Falcone or  “the dad” ran the “business.” His beautiful daughters never seemed to have boyfriends. Even my older brother, Michael, the equal opportunity lender, as Pop use to call him, refused to take Rosalie Falcone to the block party.  She practically begged him on our stoop. She stood there like an angel in a sweet fuzzy lavender sweater that encased her every breath.

Ma really didn’t care that she was a shiksa or that she wore her skirts too short.  It was more that no one really ever knew who the hell the Falcones were.  Worse still, they were the only family on the block who never needed anything from Pop.  Ma was mostly indifferent on all days, but if you didn’t have any business with her Louis than she had no way of knowing whether or not she could trust you.  She just cancelled you out.  She was real good like that.  The Falcones lived across the street from my Ma her whole marriage, which was practically her whole life.  Her Louis, my Pop, would bring the old man medicine in unmarked boxes, wholesale from the Pharmacist on Snyder and 81^st.  Would you believe he did it for free! Pop never asked a dime- he was good like that.  But sometimes “the wife,” Mrs. Falcone, whose first name we could never pronounce, would make Michael plates of Pasta when he came home too late to stir up things in our kitchen. I bet Ma knew. Still, my Ma, old Rosy the riveter, she didn’t care. She was loyal.  She had no idea where the Falcones got their flour, coffee, furniture, gasoline…anything!  But she knew that they never asked Louis for nuthin- for her the matter was done.

That night, no one had a light on.  It was just too hot.  The elders sat in the dark playing violins singing Yiddishkeit songs that creaked from their backyards into my room.  No one else stirred. You couldn’t cook, play spades, or watch T.V. if you had one.  The neighborhood buzzed with anxious patience and hope.  Soon it would pass and the bay breeze would come lift up the leaves and make you feel good about Brooklyn again. 

The worst part of it all was the strike. The garbage smelled so bad my eyes would water the moment I leaned too far out of the window.  It had been a week already.  My Pop organized all the dads and the older brothers into a human pulley system that deposited the garbage into Danny Weinberger’s dad’s truck. They did it in shifts. People applauded from their windows.  Danny, along with Paul Cusimano loaded all the garbage into the dumpster out by Sheepshead bay.  They took an eternity to return from down at the end of the block.  They absolutely had to jump into the bay after each shift.  They returned all wound up, water beading about their muscles and their shirts glued to their ribs.  It was great summer for those guys.

Pop gave them each  $20 to get them to start loading that evening.  Ma was really mad. She shrieked at him:  “So? Now you’re the mayor of this schtetl?’ I should want for something because you’re the only schmuck gracious enough to pay Danny and Paul?”  At this she handed Paul and Danny each a trough of Blintzes without averting her eyes from Pop.  It was not their fault that the neighborhood was a bunch of schnorers. I heard Pops grab her and spin her around the table.  He always shushed her by swinging her into his own made up dance.  He sung to her, “By meir bis dushane, by meir bis dushane means I love you.”  Those were the only words he knew. 

Paul and Danny snuck out. They tossed the blintzes in the trash.  They were both sick of Yid food.  I think it was midnight already.  Time had forgotten all of its rules that day.  I think Ma and Pop were the only ones still up in the house. My little sister was at a sleepover at Michael’s house.  Grandpa Falcone put his bathroom light on.  I thought the late hour would forgive me running in my shorts over to his side of the street.  But the old guy was fighting with someone.  He sat on his toilet, barking to the windmills till finally, his large son: Mr. Falcone moved out of the shadows and into the windows.  He was handing his aging father a mug full of brandy from the tub. It splashed the walls and made the flies swarm near the droplets.  Old man Falcone kept saying his son’s name: Arturo, Arneldo, Antonio, we never knew exactly what is was- even though his wife was always screaming it from their kitchen. We did not like Mr. Falcone. He was the kind of guy who looked like he was on the verge of hitting someone but then something backed him off.  That something wasn’t kindness. Grandpa Falcone was not pleased with his son.  The ol guy threw the mug in his son’s face.  The loud crash broke the heat and sent chills through the air.  I was scared that he’d see me across the way but I couldn’t move.   Imagine picking on that 90 yr old dethroned guy. I bet once he ruled the Falcones with an iron fist but now?  Now he has a crapper for his throne. He just sat there brewing brandy and dreaming of his funeral march in the old country.  He’s resting peace-less somewhere in Queens now.

Mr. Falcone left his ol man sulking upstairs and stormed on to the street.  Danny and Paul were locking up the truck when they caught wind of Mr. Falcone’s stare. They were frozen. Paul’s hand instinctively guided Danny back by the shoulder, which Danny shuddered off embarrassed by Paul’s gutlessness.  Mr. Falcone looked west towards the bay.  At that moment a Garbage truck appeared out of the abyss whizzing by without its lights on. It went so fast that a wind rustled the curtains guarding the second story windows.

Mr. Falcone shook his head laughingly as then the truck just wiped him from the picture.  Like a snapshot thrown away- he was gone from the moment.  His body flew far and fast.  No one even heard it land.   I imagined the folks in the next neighborhood over lifting the human scraps of our tragedy in confusion; Mr. Falcone was somehow both ours, and the strange wiseguy on the street. It just did not seem right that some Brownsville guy should find the body of a Falcone from East Flatbush. 

The Garbage truck did not flinch, even for moment. It sped out of our street as quickly as it came.  A howl came out of young Danny.  He was on fire! No one had ever died on Ralph Avenue of anything but old age and SIDS. Life came at the beginning and left at the end when G-d said so.  I looked across the street to see what the old Grandpa thought but his light flickered out as soon as I could make out the white of his guinee tee. 

Word spread fast about Mr. Falcone.  Everyone fled to their stoops.  Although Arturo Vincente Falcone was a Catholic Ma lit a Yartseite candle and left it burning in the window the next evening.  Soon the rest of the block followed. Within two days the street had cooled off but it glowed warm amber by the light of the yellow wax mourning candles in every Jew’s window. Ma was good like that.