just stared at him. How, as a four-year-old, could I say, It sounds like the merciful palm of the Lord, soothing all my unspeakable childhood angst and misery. Can you make that sound, Dad?
“How does it go, Joey?”
“It just goes.”
I was dismissive enough about it that my father knew he had to change gears.
“Hey,” he said. The timbre in his voice changed. He pushed my sister and me closer together. “You guys know Credence Clearwater Revival?”
“No. What’s that?”
“It’s a rock and roll band and they have a song about Big Wheels.”
He had my interest. I said, “They do?”
“Yeah, they do. I’m not kiddin’ you.”
“How does it go?” I asked.
“Here. It goes like this.”
With his head hovering over mine, he started to sing, a soft ballad rendition of “Proud Mary.” He didn’t quite hit all the notes, but he knew every word. He sang about how I shouldn’t lose sleep worrying about how things might turn out. And about how there was a river somewhere with people who knew how to live. They all rode big wheels. If you went there, it didn’t matter if you were poor or sad or alone because these river people were happy to give. And there was a fiery woman there named Proud Mary. The chorus of the song played like a mantra in my head and faded me out to sleep. Big wheels keep on turnin’ … big wheels keep on turnin’ … big wheels keep on turnin’.
THAT SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Catherine and I came back to Verona Avenue with a firm agenda. “Mom,” Catherine said. “We want to sleep at Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernie’s tonight.”
“Listen, I wanted to talk to you kids about that.”
That sentence was death. There was a certain tone our mother used when she was about to spring bad news on us. As soon as we heard it, we tried to cover our ears with our shoulders.
“Catherine is going to be starting kindergarten in a few weeks …”
And there was the other tone. The everything-is-going-to-be-all-right tone that not even our mother believed. This was bad. “… and that means that she has to be in school in the morning. And Uncle Ernie has to go to work and Aunt Marie can’t drive all the way up from the Bronx and take you to school, sweetie. So you kids can’t sleep over there anymore.”
I said, “Can’t they sleep over here?”
“No, they can’t, Joey.”
This was really friggin’ bad. In three days, we lost a potential stepfather, a swimming pool and four immediate family members. Not to mention two houses—the dream home Raymond was going to give us, and the one Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernie already had given us.
That night, before dinner, I took my Big Wheel out for a ride. I spun out a few times along the side of the house, but that wasn’t helping me out of the state I was in. I rode to the front of the house and sat there on my low-rider plastic tricycle. I stared at the street. My eyes defocused on the asphalt. For a moment, my mind became empty, until a green car came down the hill of Verona Avenue and broke my stillness. I watched it the whole time it idled at the intersection. When the light changed, it took a left on Central Park Avenue and I followed it with my eyes until it was out of my sight. I looked up the hill it had come from, looked back at my grandparents’ house, stood up and carried my Big Wheel four house-lengths up the hill.
As soon as I got on the seat, I started to roll down the hill. I wasn’t ready for that. I tried to stop the front tire from turning by jamming my feet on the pedals. And I did stop it. But the decline was so steep, I started to skid down the hill anyway. This, I couldn’t stop. I looked to the bottom of the hill and saw the cars going by on the avenue. Holy shit. I started to pedal in order to stop the skid, but soon I couldn’t keep up with the speed of the wheel. I took my feet off the pedals and that’s when I understood the power of gravity. The wind got loud in my ears. I looked down. The pavement was a gray and black blur and the pedals were rotating as fast as pistons in a car engine. My eyes were tearing. From the wind, I think. And when I crossed the last driveway before the intersection I pulled that brake harder than I’d pulled anything in the past four years and sent myself into a spin of more than two complete revolutions before I stopped.
In my dizziness, I could see my mother running at me. The traffic light behind her turned red, and made her hair look like it was in flames. I thought the ride I just took was scary, but I didn’t know the true meaning of fear until I looked into her face. The only questions she had for me pertained directly to my sanity. “Are you crazy? You almost got yourself killed!” With one hand she held the Big Wheel off the ground and with the other hand hit me on my ass. The slaps came in conjunction with the words she emphasized. “HOW could you DO such a STUPID THING?” She dragged me into the backyard. “That’s it! You’re not riding this friggin’ thing ever again! You hear me? EVER!”
I sat on the walkway crying, as my mother went into the house and then returned with a rope. In pure horror, I watched her tie my Big Wheel to the fence that separated the houses. “And you’re never goin’ in the street, either. OK? Now get off the floor, clean yourself up and get in here and eat dinner!” Then she slammed the door.
My sister, who had been watching this whole scene from the patio, decided it was better to say nothing and slowly went in the house and sat at the kitchen table. I couldn’t stop crying. I looked over to my favorite toy. Not only had she tied it up, but she left it lying on its side. It looked like an injured animal about to die in captivity.
That night, we sat through the quietest dinner in our family’s history. There was no yelling about how much room the neighbors’ cars were taking up on the street or about how we needed to finish chewing before we spoke. Or about clogged gutters. There was no talk about how good the food was or if we wanted more. And there was no back-scratching afterward. When we finished, Catherine and I watched TV on the patio until our mother came outside and said, “It’s time to go to sleep.”
I lay in my bed for a long time listening to the adults coursing through the end of their night. Catherine knew I was still awake.
“I’m sorry I have to go to kindergarten,” she said.
“It’s OK.”
“I don’t wanna go.”
“You’ll have fun.”
“I don’t know.”
A LITTLE WHILE later, I woke up and saw a king flipping a gold coin in the air. He caught it and slapped it on his wrist like he was calling heads or tails. He pointed to the window. I went to it and looked down. There was Ray standing on the back patio holding a puppy. I turned back and caught the last moment of the king’s robe as he left the room and started down the stairs. My mother was asleep in her bed. I grabbed my blanket and went down the staircase. At the bottom, I turned left toward my grandparents’ room. Through their doorframe, they looked like a Dr. Seuss illustration—stick legs and two bulging stomachs under a cover. In the hall was a pair of shoes with nothing in them. In the kitchen, dinner dishes were on a drying rack, looking like they were about to move by themselves. The only background noise was the hum of the refrigerator.
I walked out the back door, onto the patio. There was no Ray, no king, no puppy. Just my Big Wheel still on its side. I went over and stood it upright. I lay down next to it, put my head on the seat and pulled my blanket over me. I was tired. I wanted to sleep. But I wanted something more. What I really wanted was an all-inclusive sleepover party. And when I shut my eyes, I saw everyone I wanted to invite. A picture came to me of my dad singing to me. My mother was giving me a bath and my grandfather was carving a turkey. My grandmother was dumping pasta in a colander. I saw my Cousin Dina on a swing and Vicky was trying to tie her shoe. Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernie were at their dinner table and Ray was driving in his Cadillac. Catherine was sleeping right beside me. Also, there was a swimming pool.
I