“First off, when you’re falling more than twenty feet, you don’t know diddley-squat about what’s floating around you. You could hit Jimmy Hoffa for all you know. You don’t know how deep the water’s gonna be. Make like you’re blind. A leap of faith.”
I got quiet. I got cold, even though the night was hot, and when I shivered, poking through my Danskin, my nipples mortified me. He wore only pale, unpatterned blue boxers. No shirt. No one was around, so it was okay, he said. He figured cops wouldn’t hassle us at 1 a.m., so we went then, in the small hours. It was to be our secret.
The distinction between secrecy and privacy. A tough one.
The sky was yellowish and bearing down, pressing the low roofs of the attached houses with green awnings beyond Seaview Avenue, closing in on the Pier’s hot concrete. He asked, all sympathetic and paternal, “Getting cold feet?”
“What are you? High as a kite on drugs?” The question had been popping out of Canarsie’s parental mouths.
“Then pay attention. I’ll explain it as many times as you need, but I’ll only demonstrate once.”
“Why?”
His features clustered to a pinch of nose and lips — a disgusted look, I thought, standing with my squinched-raisin nipples and ignorance. “I’m not allowed to jump in even once. I can’t go twice. They’d cart me to jail if they knew you were doing it, too.” I was dry ice, frozen and burnt. “Learning how to fall is the most important thing you’ll ever learn, and they won’t teach you that in school. The trick is to do exactly what doesn’t come naturally. When you’re falling, you won’t be able to see or even think, but if somehow you can, try to fall wherever the water’s deepest.”
“But then I’ll drown.”
“Drowning’s always a risk, but that’s a swimming problem, not a falling problem. And if drowning is your main concern, you lucked out big time, because you can only drown if there’s a miracle and you survive the fall and the hit. The deepest water is furthest from shoreline. Assume the water isn’t deep enough to stop you bashing yourself against the shore bottom. Hit bottom with your head, you break your skull. Hit bottom with your legs, they snap like Pick-Up Sticks. Go for the deepest part. Stay away from all objects, especially anything that supports the bridge.”
“Then there’s nothing to hold onto. To help me. Float.”
“This is true. Nothing to help you out, but also nothing to smash yourself into. All kinds of garbage collects near bridge supports. Sure, a little raft would be nice to find, but you’re more liable to find something a lot bigger and a lot harder than you are. Then you’ll pay.” He turned around, looked behind himself. “Checking for John Law. Coast’s clear. Okay now. Jump feet first. Stay straight. If you aren’t perfectly straight, you’ll break your back when you hit.” I was trembling, and not because of the extreme temperatures my skin had touched. He said, “I thought you wanted this. What’s with the Gloomy Gus punim?”
“I’m just listening.”
“Totally vertical. Feet first. Squeeze your feet together tight. And your butt cheeks.”
“Butt cheeks?”
“If you don’t squeeze your cheeks, water’s gonna rush in. Screw up your insides. Internal damage and such like.”
“Rush in where?” What fun, to watch a big strong man squirm. I knew where he was talking about, that it embarrassed him to talk about it. I knew that things could go inside that place just as things could come out of that place. “Rush in where?”
“Into your insides. Your tummy. And you’ll get one helluva stomachache. Always make sure to cover your privacy real tight.” Outside his boxers, he cupped his hands around his parts, like I was some guy at a row of urinals.
“Why? Why should I? Why should I cover my privacy?”
“You just have to.” I wanted to watch him wriggle out of this one. I remembered how one winter, when we’d gone to see the human polar bears go swimming at Brighton Beach, I’d asked him why men had nipples. He’d blushed and changed the subject to his favorite: ironwork. And a few years earlier, I’d asked him where babies came from. Flustered, pink-faced, without a trace of levity or irony, he said, in a voice possessed of an untainted, artless sincerity never heard out of grown-ups’ mouths, “Ummmmm, you should ask your mother.” My question was sufficiently stress-provoking to make him forget that I didn’t have much of a mother to ask, and that if I did ask the mother I came from, he and I wouldn’t have been having this conversation. This situation.
“Just do what I tell you and remember to protect your privacy.”
The thick yellow sky pushed down on my skull and brain. “First you said I couldn’t think or see straight. Then you said to remember to cover my privacy. How’m I gonna remember if I can’t think?”
“Trust me.” To trust someone who kept checking behind his back did not come easy.
“Explain why you did that.” I pointed, accusing his shorts of something. The idea of his parts poked out; the idea of his sheltering hands obscured the idea of the bulge. “Izzat fair? You said you’d explain it however many times, then you don’t explain it, not even a tiny bit?” He looked around frantically. “Dad, we’re alone, but it doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause everything’s all wrong.”
“Wrong? What’s wrong? I’m steering you wrong?”
My talking-out-loud voice said, “No,” but my thinking-inside-myself voice bawled, You already did. This was supposed to be something else. You’re pulling a change-up on me and you don’t even say you’re sorry. I started crying, then I stopped myself.
“I know it’s scary, Butterfly,” he cooed, all kissy-face-buddy-buddy. “I’ll demonstrate. Better to learn by example.” He plopped onto the concrete and lay flat, flat everywhere except for the forcefully un-flat, trace afterimage of the ghost in his shorts. “Another thing to know. Remember how we make snow-angels?”
“That’s winter. In the snow. It’s summer now. Everything’s different.”
“Pretend with me. As practice.” He spread his arms and legs apart, wide. His pectorals and deltoids emerged, tautening, hardening, and his boxers gapped, puffed, and puckered in places I thought would’ve worried him if he hadn’t been busy trying to get in good with me — after he’d rooked me, no less. His arms and legs described arcs on the concrete. “While you’re falling, making snow-angels in the air generates resistance and slows down your plunge.” He flapped his limbs like a dying bug, too stunned to flip from his back onto twitchy, kicky legs.
I was done. No more pretending. No more practicing. I wasn’t lying down on hot concrete, no way no how, to make fake snow-angels in the summer. I was done bench-pressing, too, because falling lessons, and all the practicing building up to it, had always held zero promise. For me. I said, “This is C-R-A-P crappola.”
“I don’t like that word.”
“Well, tough titties. I don’t like this. I don’t even think I like you. I’m going home.” As if it would work this time, I said it again — I’m going home — as if I had any say at all in the matter. He appeared embarrassingly eager to scuttle like a caught cockroach off the Pier, but if he hadn’t been ready to leave, if he’d wanted something else, somewhere else, or something more, I would’ve been stuck. I had no keys. I wondered whether it was accurate to call it our house if only one of us had keys.