Godzilla's Eye

Published Laurel Review, Summer 1996

 
                                                                                       Godzilla's Eye

 I coulda swore it was her back there, Annie Whitestone, in this little Japanese car--right where I turned onto the bridge. The opening caught me by surprise. It don't happen that much anymore, not like it used to. There was a time when traffic would be closed off two, three times a day to let ships pass through, heading up the river or out to seas, but the ships have mostly disappeared up river. The piers and warehouses where they docked have gone to rot. Burnt down. Collapsed into the river.

 If you look off to the right you can see Dodge Steel from here--what's left of it, the windows in the wall facing the river all hollow and dark, the yard full of old tires.

 That's where Pop worked.

 Me and this bridge, we go way back. And Mom and Pop, they used to drive across here, maybe three, four nights a week to play cards, like religion. I used to think that's why they called it bridge, cause the only other people I knew who played it lived across the river in New Jersey.

 Mom, she had this dream about living in New Jersey, like if they kept driving over the bridge maybe someday they wouldn't come back but I guess it just wasn't in the cards. I think Pop just went along for the ride. Grandpop McPherson, he didn't play no bridge. His game was poker.

 Pop was like, you know, an accountant or something, and Grandpop McPherson used tell him he was too good for the neighborhood. You belong in a nice white Christian neighborhood! he'd say. Down by the river they was mostly Polish and Irish. The McPherson's were Irish too but Presbyterian. 

 What are you talking about? Pop would say, the Polacks are Christian.

 No they're not, he'd say, they're goddamned Catholics! But when it came to cards, Grandpop McPherson was strictly nondenominational.

 He'd sit in the park and play poker or pinochle with these three old Italian guys who couldn't hardly speak English. They'd play for hours and not say a word, my grandfather chewing a cigar and his three friends smoking cigarette after cigarette. Bridge, now that's something else, a horse of a different color, something they did in New Jersey. Something that meant Mom and Pop would be out of the house three four nights a week. I hated it. 

 On nights they'd be gone I'd sit up in bed and watch it rise up outa the dark, this bridge, watch it drift like a cloud over the river right through my window, watch it float in the air over my bed like a shadow. It scared me so bad I could hardly breath, but Jesus, it was something beautiful! Even how it scared me was beautiful! I'd lie there and hope it would never end, but it seemed the more I'd try to hold on to it, the more it would slide away, arch up its back like a cat and float across the sky of my room the way those strings and flecks you see when you stare into bright light will drift across your eyeball, always falling outa focus, pulled off screen into that dark rim at the edge of what you can see. 

 Sometimes it would be like I was dreaming and I'd sit straight up in bed shivering with cold and trying to catch my breath like I was drowning. I called for Mom but she wouldn't come. She'd be gone. Away. Over there on the other side of the bridge.

 I was five or six when we moved and they were just building Lincoln High School. I remember sitting on the front steps of that house on Aldine watching the bricklayers going back and forth on a scaffold, which was a ways off so even though you could see their arms going you couldn't make out what it was they were doing--only that if you watched long enough the walls rose up like by themselves under their hands like music. I thought; that's what I want to do when I grow up.

 My big sister, Kate, it made her mad she had to leave the old neighborhood like it was my fault or something. But then she was always mad about something. She used to tell me she was going to turn into a cat and jump on my face in the middle of the night so I couldn't breath and I believed her. Mostly she just acted like I didn’t exist and when we got a little older that wasn't so bad. It go to be a way we had, almost like love.

 I used to sit on the floor in the hall when she was taking a shower. She'd come out the bathroom wrapped in a towel, step around me like I was old laundry. When she got to her bedroom she'd leave her door open a crack and there'd be this ray of light spill out across the floor. I'd stand there looking in from the dark hall, that bar of light at my feet, watching her pose in front of the mirror, the towel at her feet, twisting her body this way and that, checking herself out from different angles. Sometimes she'd turn and look my way and our eyes would catch and we'd stand there, seeing and not seeing, and I'd watch her fade out of sight like the lights on the bridge I could never touch.

 Me and Jeff Bradshaw were still best friends back then. We used to hang out in this place in our basement garage. We called it The Club. That's where we'd go to talk girls. 

 The basement was full of junk: tools, broken furniture, boxes of clothes--even the body of an old Nah Rambler that got us all the way to California and back one summer vacation: it was great!

 There was this clear spot at the back, like a hidden room, just big enough for a couple kids to stand up in. We used to stash junk in this hole in the floor back there--a drain covered with an iron grate: steel bearings, friction motor cars, stuff like that. When we got older, it was dirty pictures Jeff would swipe from his old man. We'd light a candle and sit on the floor and look at those pictures and talk about girls we knew. Jeff would get so excited his cheeks would turn red and his forehead go white. We could talk our way through the whole eighth grade in an afternoon, do every girl in the neighborhood--like conjuring up holy visions! Anything female was fair game--anything, that is, but Annie Whitestone.

 I can tell you to this day the first time I saw her; it was raining, middle of the term, seventh grade--her dad had been in the military or something and they'd just moved to the neighborhood. She wore this army green hooded rain slicker that was much to big for her so you couldn't tell if there was a boy or a girl underneath... until she pulled it off.

 Maybe it was the way she moved, more like a woman than girl. I mean she seemed too old for seventh grade--but if you took a better look, you'd see she was really small for her age, really young, kinda skinny and light as a bird; it was like your eyes were playing tricks on you to see her I swear to God. Her mother was Japanese or Korean or something and she was real pale and her hair was black against her face. Standing up against the slate chalkboard with her white pleated skirt and plain black sweater she was like a drawing, all black and white and silver--or a movie with all the colors hid behind the screen. I remember how she held that raincoat at arms length watching it drip, a puddle of rainwater spreading at her feet and her free hand behind her back like she was getting ready to take a bow. When she was satisfied mosta the water had drained off, she gave the slicker a couple little shakes, looked up at the class for the first time, fixed her eyes on each kid one by one with a look that made the boys snicker and squirm and the girls go stiff in their seats. 

 The desk in front of mine used to be Jeff Bradshaw's but we were always talking and getting in trouble and the teacher Mrs. Mackey she finally got fed up with us and made Jeff sit the other side the room so when Annie showed up, that was the only empty desk in the class--like fate, ya know?

 Annie had this birthmark on the back of her neck. It wasn't real obvious or anything, like a smudge of chalk. Sometimes when she'd be staring out the window daydreaming--it must of been daydreaming cause there was nothing to see from where we sat but a blank patch of sky. That mark would turn from dust to pale ginger to rose. It gave me such a feeling when I saw it change that way the hair on the back of my own neck would stand up the same place the mark was on hers, like there was some connection. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to crawl up on the desk top on my hands and knees and lean over and lay my face up against it and never have to move again... but all I could do was look, froze to my seat.

 Annie carried a box of colored chalks--a shiny black box with a sliding lid and a single blood red chrysanthemum painted on the side. When the weather was nice, she spent lunch hour and recess drawing on the sidewalks and I'd hang
around, you know--looking like I had some business or other, but the only business I had was to watch her and that's what I did. I'd watch her every move, the way she'd work in one color at a time so as at first you couldn't tell what it was she was drawing. Then the colors would begin to work together and it would come into focus and all of a sudden there'd be a bird, a sailing ship, a dragonfly wide as the sidewalk or an eagle with wings like a rainbow, every feather in its own color--and while she drew, she'd sing to herself like there was nobody else around. Like a little child.

 The first time Jeff started in on Annie Whitestone--when we were talking girls at The Club I told him to shut the fuck up. He thought I was joking and kept at it. I sorta went crazy. I grabbed the closest thing to me, which happened to be an old snow shovel hanging by a nail on the garage wall and swung it at him sideways as best I could in that space. I remember how it looked, like a blur. Like lines in the air. He halfway blocked with his arm and ducked. The ducking wasn't such a good idea. Instead of catching him in the ribs he got it right in the mouth. He stood there looking at me eyes big as moons--neither one of us quite believing this was real.

 His upper lip was hanging by a flap so his teeth showed even with his mouth shut--blood running down his chin. My heart was going two-forty. What if the tire iron had been where that shovel was? I would of got myself in real trouble. It wouldn't have been so good for Jeff Bradshaw either. 

 At first it was funny. I wanted to laugh--the way he looked--sort of like this cover from a vampire comic book I'd left on my bedroom floor. But then I started getting real warm, like I was sucking up all the heat of the room and everything else was left froze around me. Jeff, he just stood there like he'd turned to ice, and then I beat it--crawled right over top the Rambler, ran up the stairs and through the kitchen. I remember there was a pot on the stove, cabbage or something boiling away and these curls of steam fogging the window and when I got outside everything smelled like cabbage and melted snow. My glasses fogged over and I ran that way almost blind what seemed like forever. By the time they cleared and I could see again I was way the hell down Frankford Avenue somewheres past North Catholic and too out of breath to move, bent over from the stitch in my side. I held my glasses with one hand and braced myself with the other on my knee until my lungs stopped burning and when I stood up and looked around, I swear, I could have been on another planet the way everything's in black and white with the sun real low so looking south on Frankford the people in front of you are like black ghosts, light wrapping around their bodies in halos, stabbing at our eyes in steely blades. The bricks on the street side of the walk gleamed almost white, the rougher surface of the concrete squares on the inner side of the walk soaked up light and color both--all black, white, silver and gray. There is the thunder and clang of passing trains, radios blaring from stores. Stuff was running through my head like crazy, like pictures on a screen what's lost the sound, but you know, I don't feel bad anymore--I feel good. I don't give a fuck about Jeff and his bloody mouth, you know? It's like I thinking--Annie Whitestone, if she coulda seen me, she'd be proud, and it's like everything in the world is mine, and everything is fine, and I'm 200 miles tall chewing on the fucking moon, light up a cigarette with the fucking sun! It was like that all the way home. I had this feeling and it kept getting better. Trains were going by over my head; melted snow dripped down from the tracks, ran along the curbs in dirty little rivers. It was one of them February days that can fool you to think winter's already over. Real warm. The air soft and humid. But it don't smell like spring. More like cooked cabbage. Pitted black crusts of snow edged the sidewalks stuck with dog crud, cigarette butts, torn pages of Sunday comics from weeks back. Like I'd died and gone to fucking heaven, so fine, so fine!

 It was dark when I got home. I came up through the alley and saw them. I couldn't believe my eyes. At first it was hard to make them out, two shadows pressed into one, then I recognized the darker shadow. It was my sister Kate and the lighter shadow was this guy I never even saw before pressed up against her, all over her. They were leaning up against the garage door and too much into what they're doing to notice me. The guy, he's got his hands down her pants! It was like my feet wouldn't move--like one of them dreams where someone is chasing you and your legs are made of lead. For a few seconds I stood real still. When I was sure they hadn't noticed me, I dropped down behind a couple of trash cans slow and easy so I could watch from between.

 I don't know what it was. It was weird. I was crazy inside I swear to God. I couldn't take my eyes off them. I'm bent down there shaking all over and whispering to myself... then I hear what it is I'm saying! Annie Whitestone! Oh my God, I'm whispering Annie Whitestone's name! Holy Jesus Shit, I'm saying, I wanna do that with Annie Whitestone, oh God I gotta do that, get my hands down Annie Whitestone's pants please God, don't make me wait long! Don't make me wait! And even while I'm saying this, under my breath like, I could feel growing around me like a wall raising itself by its own music, a bright blind wall I'd never see around or through, a space like a river and all the bridges have fallen down like a stack of cards in a high wind. I had this thought, so terrible and beautiful I broke out in a sweat, and there were little lights circling in front of my eyes like when someone hits you good across the bridge of your nose.

 I mostly stayed away from Annie Whitestone after that. If I'd see her in the hall at school I'd look the other way so she wouldn't know. I thought about her all the time. I drew in my notebooks--this picture of a dagger piercing a heart and blood dripping form the point and I'd put the letters A W on the blade but I never wrote on the heart. 

 And there was this dream. I'd dream that ginger rose mark on her neck, 
dream she gave it to me and it got lost and I couldn't find it no matter how I looked. Sometime she'd give it to me and make me swear on my life, on my mother's life, that I'd hold it safe until she asked for it, but when I held out my hand to take it, it would change into a cat and the cat would sink its claws in my palm and tear at my fingers with its teeth and I'd grab it by the throat and throw it against the wall so I knew it was hurt too bad to save. I didn't want to kill it and I didn't want to hurt it more but if I tried to pick it up, it came at me biting and clawing at my eyes. I'd whack it but it refused to die.

 In high school, she was still good at art. She didn’t draw on the squares no more, but her pictures would show up pretty regular on the walls in the hallways. I'd look at them when nobody was around. She liked drawing with pen and ink and brush--black ink on white paper, but it was like the colors she used to used were still there shimmering under the lines. I'd follow her home, walk past her house like this was my normal route. At night I'd come back and stand in the dark and stare up at the windows wondering which one was hers. But we didn't go out. There were other girls, but not her, not Annie Whitestone. Not the whole time we were in school Not till Jeff Bradshaw's graduation party.

 Jeff's Mom and Dad were divorced and his Mom had left him alone to spend the weekend with her boyfriend at the shore. Jeff promised her he wouldn't have anybody over while she was gone, but as soon as she left he was on the phone. He must of invited half the school. The basement was all fixed up: red bulbs in all the lights, tubs of ice for beer and soda, wires from the stereo in the living room strung down the stairs for music. It was so dark and smoky I could hardly see across the room. Like climbing down into a cave. Jeff, he was laughing and carrying on like the prince of trolls. I thought I could see that little white line on his lip glowing in the dark. There were cases of beer, bottles of Southern Comfort, salsa and chips. Pretty soon dope's being passed around and by ten o'clock, the party had spread through the rest of the house. Kids we didn’t' even know were wandering in and out like they owned the place.

 I'd almost stayed home. Wasn't in the mood for a party. I sat down and popped open a beer so as not to look outa place but otherwise I'd made up my mind to sit this one out. Kinda keep an eye on things. That's just what I was doing when this figure comes drifting outa the smoke, and suddenly, right there in front of me, like a ghost rose up from another world, it's Annie Whitestone, looking me square in the eye!

 She leaned over and squinted to see who I was. I'm not sure she recognized me. I don't think she even remembered my name. She started dancing to the music, moving her hips real sexy. I just sat there watching, but she reached down and pulled me up by the hand and we danced. In and outa the shadows.

 I don't know if it was her or me, but the next thing we're on the sofa all over each other. I think she'd had a little too much to drink. Anybody else woulda been happy outa their mind making out with Annie Whitestone climbing over me like I was a jungle jim; she'd turned out to be this fine looking girl, but I kept thinking about that time in the back yard watching my sister Kate. I felt like I was drowning, like a swimmer tangled in the lines that are supposed to save him.

 After a while she pushed me away--and we sat there staring after the ghosty figures coming and going in the haze. Someone offered me a joint. I took a good hit and was about to pass it on but Annie, she gave me this look so I handed it to her. She drew herself up real straight, like a queen on her thrown, took a long drag, but when she inhaled her eyes opened real wide--then it's like she'd been shot or something. She doubled over gasping for breath, white as a sheet--even in that light I could see the color drain from her face.

 All I knew is I had to get her outa there. I pulled her arm over my shoulder and headed for the door--like I was some fireman you know, come to save her from a burning house. We pushed our way between dancers, spilling beer cans and paper cups full of butts as we went and my feet tangled in the speaker wires going up the stairs and I banged my shins good but I didn’t' stop till we were upstairs and out the door catching our breath on the front porch.

 You know how sometimes you don't notice the noise in a place until you get where it's quiet again? That's how it was. We closed the door behind us and stood there like two divers come up from some black hold of the sea, amazed by air.

 The only sounds were from traffic in the distance and the patter of rain in the trees. The music coming up from the basement seemed far off and dim. I stood there to give her a chance to catch her breath. It was allergies she said, asthma, gasping between every word; it musta been the herbs. But the warm air and rain would help. It would be better soon. 

         After a while we started walking, real slow at first cause even a little movement brought the wheezing back. This took getting used to. I get nervous when I have to poke along. But I put my arm around her waist and pretty soon I wasn't thinking abut how slow we were going. Pretty soon I was walking like we had forever. 

 The rain was so soft it didn't get us wet much but it made our faces gleam in the street lights. There were tiny beads of water on Annie's hair and eyebrows and her eyes were shining. The asthma gave a kinda scared look to her face like a little kid and when I remembered what we were doing at the party--the way I'd been touching her, I went hot all over with embarrassment and shame.

 When I opened the door to our house, it was dark inside. All the lights off. Then I hear the TV and there's the blue flicker on the wall from some black and white movie, but nobody's home. My sister Kate, she must of gone out and forgot to turn it off. We stand behind the sofa and watch for a minute. It's Godzilla--one foot in the river one on dry ground, moving his eyes this way and that. A suspension bridge sways back and forth between his legs and fire blows from his mouth. Cars, people, everything begins to tumble into the river. The monster stops and takes in the view, turning his head with little twitch jerks first this way then that, then there's this close-up. His eyeball, like a round mirror. You can see the whole city shinning in this eye.

 I took Annie's hand and led her into the kitchen and when I turned on the light it startled me to see her--like she'd appeared outa nowhere. I couldn’t' think of what to say so I asked if she wanted something to drink and she said yes, so I took out a couple glasses and poured us each a Coke.

 Annie sat there at the kitchen table stirring the ice with her finger. The color was coming back to her face little by little. At first I was thinking--she wasn't, like, you know, that pretty. Not close up under the light. Not like when I seen her from a ways off--across the street or outside in the dark in the rain. Her hair was stuck flat to the side of her face; her eyes were puffy from the smoke at the party. But the more I looked--I don't know, maybe it was just breathing that dope from Jeff's basement, the way it comes back at you for a second round, but it was like Annie was changing before my eyes, like a light rising up from deep inside and my heart was going like crazy.

 We didn't talk much, not at first. Mostly just sat there looking: me at Annie; and Annie at the ice cubes in her glass.

 I picked up a pinochle deck that was lying on the table, dealt out two hands. I asked her if she ever played. She says, no--cards are boring. And I said I heard different, and she says, what do you mean and I said I heard she goes to play in this bridge club.

 --Oh, she says. That's bridge. That's something else.
 
 I remember this conversation like it was on tape. I don't know why. To tell the truth, I was beginning to lose interest. I was beginning to get irritated with the subject, if you know what I mean. When I didn't say nothing more she asked me what I wanted to do, like for a living. Because it was graduation and all. I looked up at the ceiling into the light and then I closed my eyes, and when the red glow began to give way I could see them again like I was only five years old, those workers raising up the walls of Lincoln High School when we first moved into the neighborhood. Like music. I could hear it, filling the kitchen, everything swaying before me like a bridge of dreams.

 --Well? she said.

 I opened my eyes to see if maybe she'd disappeared, but she was still there.

 --Well? she said again.

 --A bricklayer, I said. 

 Annie sat there, this stupid smile. That's nice, she said, stirring the ice with 
her finger. The room got real still.

 I sat there fidgeting with my glass, turning it round and round, watching how the ice cubes floated in the same place no matter how the glass turned. Annie, she was looking at me and I'm looking at Annie, shaking like a leaf and I think I never seen anything before or since--as beautiful and terrible as Annie Whitestone wet from the rain sitting at our kitchen table in that house on Aldine.

 We didn't talk much after that and what we talked about I don’t remember. But when it was time to go, as we were passing by the door to the basement, I stopped. She asked me what I was doing. When I didn't say nothing, she kind of smiled. Looked down at my pants. You want to fuck me, don't you? she asked. Making fun of me in my own house.

 --There's something I want to show you, said, taking her by the hand.

 I opened the door and reached in to feel for the light switch with my free hand, then began to lead her down the stairs. Dad was always talking about fixing it up down there, and the Rambler was long gone but it was still pretty much a junk heap. We made our way around boxes and broken furniture to a clear space blocked off by a couple old file cabinets, pretty much the same as it was back in The Club days.

 A ray of light slanting between the file cabinets fell across a tire iron hanging on a wall next to two nails where the snow shovel used to be. At our feet, crossed by the same bar of light, was the iron grate. 

 Annie was being real quiet. Like she was daring me to do whatever it was I was thinking of. She watched me like an eagle. I bent down and worked the grate loose from its seat, dropped it on the concrete next to the hole. I could see her wince when it hit the floor. 

 I didn't see no water bugs, but careful just in case, I reached into the hole and pulled out a piece of paper, crumbling at the edges and folded into a little square. I felt it to see if it was dry, then struck a match and held it to the corner of the paper. When it caught, I dropped it back into the hole. Orange sparks rose up on little curls of smoke and fell again at our feet like black snowflakes.

 I looked at Annie. I looked at her eyes, her black-ice eyes; if I could of set her on fire with my eyes I would of done it, turned her to ash. I should have been angry--this high horse bitch, but all I wanted was to fall down on the ground and wrap my arms around her feet and beg. I wanted to cry like a baby. Instead, I grabbed her arms and squeezed so hard I could feel the bruises growing under my fingers. There was this look of shock on her face, but only for a flash, then she fixed me with such a look! No pity, this fucking bitch! No mercy in her soul, I swear to God!

 We stood like that, face to face. Not a word. There were little tears of pain in her eyes but not a hint of fear. It's a good thing too. A damn good thing.

 I loosed my grip just a little.

 --Are you finished? she said, her voice cool and hard, but there was a quaver I could hear underneath. There was that much. I'll say that for her. At least there was that.

 I led the way upstairs. She followed.

 Annie didn't say nothing the whole way home. We walked along and the steets were so quiet, the only sound was our own footsteps. Her face was shining and wet again, like when we came--only it wasn’t' raining anymore. We got to her house and it felt like we stood there a long time.

 --Thanks, she says, this funny look on her face.

 --For what? I say.

 --You know... with a little shrug. And for just this second she don't look hurt or angry or nothing and the ice in her eyes melts, and she just looks at me, right into my eyes, my soul... and then its over and she turns and runs up to the door and lets herself in. And me--I stand there looking. Watching the place where she was. Where she used to be.
* * *
 Now and then I'll drive by there, where she used to live, even though I know they moved away years ago. Sometimes I'll get off the el and as the train pulls away there'll be this face in the window--like a black and white drawing. I don't suppose it's really her back there in that car--no more than those other times.

 There's a fog coming in over the water now. With the sun getting low you could think the fog was smoke and the river underneath was fire the way it curls up around the rails, red and gold. Pieces of bridge disappear into wisps of cloud, like licks of flame.

 The ship coming through the bridge now--I can't even see it for the fog, but I swear to God it's the one in Annie's picture, the one I burned that night. It's passing through the open bridge gliding out of the fog--an old time sailing ship rising like from a pillar of smoke with spars and lines and banners floating in the last streak of sunlight and on the bow, I'm telling myself, there's a heart pierced by a dagger--like a tattoo: Annie Whitestone, it says, written on the heart, and up above higher than the ship's masts, higher than the towers of the bridge, there's the mooon shining like a mirror over New Jersey in the black sky like a huge eye beaming back the world--and everything is in it--the bridge, the river, the passing ship... the whole fucking world in his eye.