Saturday in the City
Carl Boon In a lazy bar off Route 18, Jackie remembers the city, her father’s green Ford edging through the Holland Tunnel, the bricks, the rain, Canal Street’s expanse like a hundred lit angels dancing on a dime. She was seven. It was 1957 and the Yankees would lose the Series. Joey cried in the backseat; no one could believe the radio. But there’d be dinner at Marlon’s and a movie and Aunt Sadie’s funny-smelling couch, the adults drinking bourbon from smoky, blue glasses and Uncle Ray’s cigar. It was good to be seven in the city with a stack of Mickey Mouse Club coloring books. And colored pencils from Feldman’s instead of crayons-- this is what the city meant. And she loved looking at Manhattan from the window, the taxi lights in the rain, the men in their telescope hats, the ladies in their pillboxes. Falling to sleep as the adults caressed the night with gossip and booze, she sought to recall the façade of St. Patrick’s and her mother’s level eyes, hating to go home, hating gray Piscataway on a Sunday afternoon. |
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