left to my chest.
âI was afraid you werenât coming,â I said, still not believing it was really him.
âWhy would you think this? Never doubt me, boychik.â His voice was strong and true. I wouldnât doubt him.
âCome on, now, fella.â He put his arm around me, and we walked off toward the subway. Still shaken from his greeting, I chafed from the tightness of his arm around my neck, but did not want him to let go. I was proud to be walking down the street in Brooklyn with him. Of course he had come.
We didnât talk too much on the train. He asked me how I was doing, how my sister and mother were doing. They were fine, I told him. I was struggling hard to remember that he was my father, the same man who had once lived with us, danced with my mother to the radio in the kitchen, and taken us all to Greenpoint on Sundays to eat cheese dumplings and potato pancakes.
He wasnât part of a Middle Eastern fantasy. He was a real man, with strong arms and a little potbelly. He tucked in to the Daily News , and I pulled a schoolbook from my backpack.
We picked up a pepperoni pizza and a two-liter bottle of Coke on the way to his apartment from the train station. Alojzy placed the pizza on the coffee table, the only table in his one-bedroom apartment, and we ate straight from the box. We washed our pizza downwith mugs of Coke. Alojzy poured arak into his, and the sweet licorice smell filled the room as we ate. Above the couch was a large black poster, bearing the coat of armsâlike logo of the rock band Queen. The only other decorations on the wall were a plastic Israeli flag and an old snapshot of the four of us in Central Park, when I was about six and my sister maybe ten. Like the flag, the photo was held on the wall by bits of black electrical tape. When I went into the bathroom to pee, I saw a faded pink bra hanging on the shower curtain rod.
The apartment felt very small at first. It was not really much smaller than our old two-bedroom in Manhattan, but living on Long Island had already warped my sense of scale. There was hardly any furniture besides the coffee table and couch in the main room, and the bed in his bedroom. The rest of the space was packed full of cardboard boxes and stacks of books. They were mostly large hardcovers, in piles so dense and tall I thought of them as integral structures, not stacks of individual objects. I asked Alojzy if these were all books that he had read.
âNo, no,â he said. âIn my life Iâve left behind two entire libraries. I wouldnât risk another. I read a book and let it go.â
âSo whatâs all this?â
âMerchandise. Got to make money, kiddo. Youâll learn that sometime. Hey, take a look at this.â He pulled out an old leather-bound atlas from the middle of a stack and showed me the various places he had lived. I could locate Israel by myself, but wasnât quite sure where Poland was. It turned out it was tucked in the shadow of the USSR.
My father had a small TV, which sat on one of the stacks of books, and we watched the TGIF lineup of sitcoms on ABC. I followed the plots, while my father made comments about the teenage actresses.
âYour girlfriend look anything like that?â
âI donât have a girlfriend.â
âA good-looking guy like you? Not even one girlfriend? I find that very hard to believe. You got your papaâs charm. You must drive the girls crazy.â After a few shows, and a few more araks for my father, he turned off the TV.
âLook, I know I ainât been around lately, buddy.â
âOkay.â I wished the TV was still on.
âNo, itâs not okay. Itâs gonna change. Because Iâm your papa. But listen: Itâs never been that I donât love. Iâm father, of course I love. Itâs just, Iâve had my life. You see, I am the wandering Jew of Europe.â He saw my confusion. âItâs an old story
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley