Live Wire

“Get the hell off me.”

Dad was out of breath.

Myron and Mickey both snapped out of the stun and helped him to his feet. His face was flushed. “I’m fine,” Dad said with a grimace. “Let go of me.”

Mickey turned back to Myron. Myron was six-four, and Mickey looked to be about the same. The kid was broad and powerfully built—every kid today lifts weights—but he was still a kid. He jabbed Myron’s chest with his finger.

“Stay away from my family.”

“Where’s your father, Mickey?”

“I said—”

“I heard you,” Myron said. “Where’s your father?”

Mickey took a step back and looked toward Al Bolitar. When he said, “I’m sorry, Grandpa,” he sounded so damn young.

Dad had his hands on his knees. Myron went to help him, but he shook him off. He stood straight and there was something akin to pride on his face. “It’s okay, Mickey. I understand.”

“What do you mean, you understand?” Myron turned back to Mickey. “What the hell was that all about?”

“Just stay away from us.”

Seeing his nephew for the very first time—like this—it was surreal and overwhelming. “Look, why don’t we go inside and talk this out?”

“Why don’t you go to hell?”

Mickey took one last concerned look at his grandfather. Al Bolitar nodded, as if to say all was fine. Then Mickey shot Myron a hard glare and ran into the darkness. Myron was about to go after him, but Dad put a hand on his forearm. “Let him go.” Al Bolitar was red-faced and breathing hard, but he was also smiling. “Are you okay, Myron?”

Myron touched his mouth. His lip was bleeding. “I’ll live. Why are you smiling?”

Dad kept his eyes on the road where Mickey had vanished into the darkness. “Kid’s got balls.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Come on,” Dad said. “Let’s go inside and talk.”

They headed into the downstairs TV room. For most of Myron’s childhood, Dad had a Barcalounger, reserved specifically for him, the kind of dinosaur of a recliner that was eventually held together with duct tape. Nowadays there was a five-piece sectional called the “Multiplex II” with built-in recliners and storage areas for beverages. Myron had bought it from a place called Bob’s Discount Furniture, though originally he had been resistant because Bob’s radio commercials were four steps beyond grating.

“I’m really sorry about Suzze,” Dad said.

“Thank you.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Not yet, no. I’m working on it.” Dad’s face was still red from the exertion. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Where’s Mom?”

“She’s out with Aunt Carol and Sadie.”

“I could use a glass of water,” Myron said. “How about you?”

“Okay. And put some ice on your lip so it doesn’t swell.”

Myron headed up the three steps to the kitchen, grabbed two glasses, filled them up from the overpriced water dispenser. There were ice packs in the freezer. He grabbed one and headed back to the TV room. He handed a glass to Dad and sat in the recliner on the right.

“I can’t believe that just happened,” Myron said. “The first time I see my nephew and he attacks me.”

“Do you blame him?” Dad asked.

Myron sat up. “Excuse me?”

“Kitty called me,” Dad said. “She told me about your run-in at the mall.”

Myron should have known. “Did she now?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s the reason Mickey jumped me?”

“Didn’t you suggest his mother was something”—Dad stopped, searched for the word, couldn’t find it—“something bad?”

“She is something bad.”

“And if someone suggested that about your mother? How would you have reacted?”

Dad was smiling again. He was riding some kind of high from the adrenaline rush of combat or maybe pride in his grandson. Al Bolitar had been born poor in Newark and grew up on the city’s tougher streets. He started working for a butcher on Mulberry Street when he was just eleven. The majority of his adult life was spent running an undergarment factory in Newark’s North Ward near the Passaic River. His office, as it were, loomed above the assembly line floor, all glass so he could see out and his employees could see in. He tried to save the plant during the riots in 1967, but the looters burned it down, and while Dad eventually rebuilt it and went back to work, he never quite looked at his employees or the city the same again.

“Think about it,” Dad said. “Think about what you said to Kitty. Suppose someone had said that to your mother.”

“My mother isn’t Kitty.”

“You think that matters to Mickey?”

Myron shook his head. “Why would Kitty tell him what I said?”

“What, a mother should lie?”

When Myron was eight years old, he got into a pushing fight with Kevin Werner outside Burnet Hill Elementary School. His parents sat in the school office and heard a stern lecture from the principal, Mr. Celebre, on the evils of fighting. When they got home, Mom headed upstairs without saying a word. Dad sat him down in this very room. Myron expected a fairly severe punishment. Instead his father leaned forward and looked him dead in the eye. “You’ll never get in trouble with me for getting in a fight,” he said. “If you find yourself in a situation where you need to step outside and settle it, I’m not going to question your judgment. You fight if you have to. You never run away from it. You never back down.” And as crazy and surprising as this advice may have seemed, Myron had indeed backed down from fights in the years to come, doing the “prudent” thing, and the truth—a truth that probably explained what his friends described as his hero complex—was that no beating hurts as much as backing down.

“This is what you wanted to talk to me about?” Myron said.

Dad nodded. “You need to promise me you’ll leave them alone. And you already know this, but you shouldn’t have said what you did to your brother’s wife.”

“I just wanted to talk to Brad.”

“He’s not around,” Dad said.

“Where is he?”

“He’s on some kind of charity mission in Bolivia. Kitty didn’t want to give me the details.”