My father came to visit us in Brooklyn just the one time. We had a dirt-cheap lease on the parlor floor of an old brownstone at DeKalb and Washington that first winter after 9/11–kitty-corner from the park.
“I think the twenty-fourth is the best time for a visit” is what he said to me over the phone. “Those special days around the birth of Christ. We can get Chinese and go to the movies anytime we want without any gentiles crowding up the fucking lines.”
“You’re aware of what just happened with those airplanes around here, though?” I said to him. “With the terrorists and everything? The holidays this year are kind of a wash.” But he said he was coming anyway. “All that horror was only in Manhattan” is what he told me. “Nobody had the balls to touch Brooklyn or Queens.”
