“How come?”
“’Cause it’s small. It’s surrounded by water. It feels like home. Kind of cozy and safe and cut off, know what I mean?”
“Like your home?”
“Not where I live now. Where I’d like to live one day.”
“But there’s nothing there. There’s nothing to do but eat. Jenna even says so and she liked growing up there. It’s so different from the rest of New York.”
“Maybe that’s why I like it.”
“Maybe your family could move there.”
“I don’t have a family. I live in a group home. My last foster parents moved before the school year started. I didn’t want to go with them to Norfolk. I was old enough. I could decide to stay on my own.”
I looked at Brody more closely. I was afraid to be too nosy and ask the questions that would give him a history and fill in the blanks.
“Aren’t you afraid to be by yourself?”
“I’ve always been by myself. It could have been worse, I guess. I always knew I was really on my own. I don’t know why my real mother gave me up. I don’t know who my father is. Bottom line, I have to take care of myself.”
“Doesn’t that make you mad?”
“I used to be, but now all I want is my own life, my own place, and to do what I want. I’ve been working part-time near boats and water since I was fifteen. South Street Seaport promised me something full-time when I graduate, but I’m thinking how cool it would be to find a job on City Island. Then I could really stay.”
Brody had always struck me as a guy who said what he meant, and knew what he wanted and pretty much how to get it. But what I wasn’t hearing was where did Jenna fit in? Was she just a stepping-stone to his need to belong somewhere?
His self-confidence was amazing, and it made me wonder if there was some great advantage to having to build your own life, create your own family from the ground up. To not be afraid of the world, not be afraid of being told no. City Island must have seemed like a cosseted haven to him, the safe harbor at the end of the crazy world he came from, where kids were discarded like garbage.
Brody was already eighteen by the time we started our senior year. He looked and behaved older than most of us, which was part of his attraction. We still didn’t know yet how combustible those kinds of traits could be. Awesome to us, threatening to others.
We all had to plot and plan how to get together on Friday nights and weekends for parties and occasional trips into the city to a club. Elaborate lies were created that tested the boundaries of our lives, our families, our communities. Brody had no such concerns and became our de facto leader. I know for me it changed the idea of how big and complicated the world was beyond my own neighborhood. For Jenna I think it was more confusing. How far was she willing to go before she had to turn back home?
“My father is going to kill me,” she inevitably moaned on each new adventure. Like the one that took us to Staten Island, another remote outcast of a place.
In the spring before graduation, Jenna’s parents insisted on hosting a birthday party for their daughter in the tiny backyard of their home. The idea both embarrassed and frightened Jenna, but everyone looked forward to the evening, hoping that the Hardings were cool enough to just disappear so that the real party could go down.
I got there too early, and sat on Jenna’s bed and watched as she finished dressing and did makeup and decided on a pair of cute but treacherous high heels. Her friends started arriving in earnest around 8:30, quickly spilling into the front yard, and the street to the side of the house. Some boy who’d once dated Jenna, before she’d left the island and met Brody, actually showed up, his presence blessed by her father. Goodlooking but, to my way of thinking, too much like a Tommy-in-the-making.
By 10 the party was on, but Jenna was nervous and excited waiting for Brody to appear. Me too. It was such a mixed party that everyone thought Jenna’s folks surely knew about Brody by now. Her father especially was jovial and in good spirits, joking with the boys and drawing lots of raucous laughter. Gracious and flirtatious with the girls, drawing whispered comments like, “He’s kind of cool.” Music and voices and laughter floated like a breeze and wafted over the neighborhood.
Brody arrived a little before midnight, making an entrance that was not soon forgotten because of its simplicity and class. Those are my words. There are some who might give a slightly different spin. In any case, some kind of energy shifted in the yard. With it came anticipation.
Jenna, who had been giggly all evening, ran to greet Brody n a way that left no doubt they were an item. Before greeting anyone else, Brody presented Jenna’s mother with flowers. She was so startled that she barely managed a thank you before escaping into the house with the bouquet. For Tommy Harding, Brody had a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. Brody shook Tommy Harding’s hand and thanked him for inviting him to the party, and into his home.
The ice had been broken.
The critical initiation had been passed. Brody was in. All of us closed around him and Jenna like the good buds, comrades, classmates that we were. It totally excluded her parents.
From his pocket Brody took out a delicate chain necklace with a sparkling gem pendant dangling from the center. Jenna turned so that he could fasten it around her neck. We woowooed like a team cheer while Jenna kissed Brody her thanks, and her love.
Given a real choice, I’m not sure that Jenna’s father would have included Brody Miller, and it seemed to me Brody was an unwelcome surprise. Brody wasn’t just another high school friend, he was a young man. He was not just another guest, he was seeing Tommy’s daughter.
The music and laughter continued, and so did the drinking. At one point I noticed that the cake had been brought out and placed on a sawed-down tree stump that served perfectly as a small table. On previous visits to Jenna’s house her father had always complained about the stump, promising to dig it out and get rid of it one of these days, while admitting that it had its uses, like now. The appearance of the cake was a good sign. By 1:30, 2 at the latest, the party would be over and we’d all leave. I wouldn’t have to bare witness to whatever humiliation Jenna’s father was making a case for, as he watched his little girl enjoying herself.
Jenna and Brody held hands, or put their arms around each other. Sometimes they danced, swaying together, hip to hip. Facing each other, the intimacy in their gaze naked and exposed. They looked great together. Years later I’d recognize that Jenna and Brody were setting an example and a standard for our own possibilities in love.
Tommy Harding drank too much. Mrs. Harding tried to draw him aside, away from the party that was not meant for him. Too late, Tommy’s insecurities surfaced and he set out on a course aimed directly at Brody Miller. He suddenly stumbled across the yard, grabbed Brody’s arm, and jerked him around, squaring off.
“I don’t appreciate you comin’ in here and taking over my daughter’s party. Who the fuck are you anyway? Don’t touch her.”
“Daddy!” Jenna gasped in genuine shock.
The crowded yard grew silent so quickly it was as if we were all holding our breath, waiting for this moment.
Jenna’s father and Brody were chest to chest. Brody had the advantage by about three inches. Standing with yet another beer and a cigarette in one hand, Tommy used the other to jab a finger in Brody’s face. Brody took a step back. Jenna was holding his arm. That only infuriated her father more.
I closed my eyes before the first punch could be thrown. All around me people were on the move; standing way back, or pushing through the side gate onto the street. I heard a lawn chair scrape against the flagstone ground and then fall over, as did a bottle that broke. I heard Jenna screaming at her father to stop, her mother wailing like a Greek chorus. I heard Brody quietly telling Tommy Harding to calm down, but I was waiting breathlessly for the tipping point. Brody’s next suggestion that maybe he should leave was overridden by Jenna’s declaration that she was going with him. That sealed it. Both were cut off by a sudden crunch and a thud, a grunt. A highpitched scream rose over the music.