He was pacing before the fountain. I’m sure you remember the way he used to pace. He was dressed in civilian clothes: brown wool pants, a light blue nylon sports shirt, and a dark green Harrington jacket. The clothing hung loosely on his frame. He was awfully thin.
I approached him. “Hi, there.”
“Hello,” he said.
I wasn’t certain if I should shake his hand. He didn’t seem sure of protocol, either, so we did nothing but stand with our hands in our pockets. I’d never seen a man more uncomfortable.
I gestured to a bench and asked, “Would you care to sit down and talk with me for a moment?”
I felt stupid—as though I were offering him a chair in my own home, rather than a seat in a public park.
He said, “I’m not good at sitting down. If you don’t mind, can we walk?”
“I don’t mind at all.”
We started walking the perimeter of the park, under the lindens and the elms. He had a long stride, but that was fine—so do I.
“Frank,” I said, “I apologize for running off the other day.”
“No, I apologize to you.”
“No, I should have stayed and heard you out. That would’ve been the mature thing to do. But you have to understand—meeting you again after all these years gave me quite a start.”
“I knew you would walk away when you found out who I was. You should have.”
“Look, Frank—all that was long ago.”
“I was a stupid kid,” he said. He stopped and turned to face me. “Who the hell did I think I was, talking to you like that?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I had no right. I was such a stupid goddamn kid.”
“If we’re going to get down to brass tacks about it,” I said, “I was just a stupid kid, too. I was surely the stupidest kid in New York City that week. You may recall the details of the situation in which I had found myself?”
I was attempting to introduce a little levity, but Frank was all business.
“All I was trying to do was impress your brother, Vivian—you gotta believe that. He’d never talked to me before that day—never took notice of me at all. And why would he talk to me—a popular guy like him? Then all of a sudden, there he is waking me up in the middle of the night. Frank, I need your car. I was the only guy at OCS with a car. He knew that. Everyone knew that. Guys were always wanting to borrow my car. Well, the thing is—it wasn’t my car, Vivian. It was my old man’s car. I was allowed to use it, but I couldn’t give it to anyone. Here I am, middle of the night, talking to Walter Morris for the first time—a guy I admire with all my heart—telling him that I can’t give him my old man’s car. I’m trying to explain all this from a dead sleep, and I don’t even know what it’s all about.”
As Frank spoke, his native accent thickened. It was as if, by going back in time, he was going back deeper into himself—even deeper into his Brooklyn-ness.
“It’s all right, Frank,” I said. “It’s over.”
“Vivian, you gotta let me say this. You gotta let me tell you how sorry I am. For years, I wanted to find you, tell you I was sorry. But I didn’t have the courage to look for you. Please, you gotta let me tell you how it happened. See, I told Walter, I can’t help you, buddy. Then he deals me the facts. Tells me his sister’s gone and got herself in trouble. He needs to get her out of the city, pronto. He says I gotta help him save his sister. What was I gonna do, Vivian? Say no? It was Walter Morris. You know how he was.”
I did. I knew how he was.
Nobody ever said no to my brother.
“So I tell him the only way I can lend him the car is if I drive. Thinking to myself, How am I gonna explain the mileage to my old man. Thinking to myself, Maybe me and Walter will be friends after this. Thinking, How are we gonna just walk away from OCS like this, in the middle of the night? But Walter sorted it all out. Got permission from the commander for both of us to leave for a day—for twenty-four hours only. No one but Walter who could’ve gotten that permission in the