Winner
of the 2017 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize
"The
Brass Ring"
By
Keith
Haymes
My friend Gina always grabbed the brass ring, literally.
You’ve heard the expression “grabbing the brass ring”? It derives from a contraption that dispenses
rings within reach of carousel riders as the mechanical horses go around and up
and down. Most of the rings are iron with an occasional brass ring. The riders
reach and try to grab the rings. The grabber of the brass ring wins a free ride
or a small prize.
When we were little
kids, growing up on West 5th Street in Coney Island, we’d often walk
up Surf Avenue to West 12th Street and ride B and B Carousel ,
grabbing for the brass ring. There was usually a group of about six of us, boys
and girls. Grabbing those rings, while going around and up and down on a
carousel was trickier than it sounds. It
was even tough for adults, let alone a bunch of grade- schoolers, but Gina
always grabbed the brass ring. Gina was more daring than the rest of us, barely
holding onto the pole and leaning way out to reach the rings. She was even brave
enough at age 10 to hold her hands up
high over her head on the Cyclone roller coaster, while the rest of us held on
to the safety bar for dear life. Gina was also the strongest swimmer of the
group, having learned from her two older brothers, who were the best swimmers
in the neighborhood. Her oldest brother Steve eventually became the head
lifeguard at Manhattan Beach, and was famously able to swim across the bay to
Breezy Point in the Rockaways.
Gina was a cool kid and
a leader among us kids, but as adolescence came around things began to change
for Gina. You see, Gina was always overweight and as we grew out of hide and
seek and began engaging in the hormonally charged games of spin the bottle, or
run catch, and kiss, Gina was the one that got left out. Certainly, none of us wanted to intentionally
hurt her, but hurt her we did. In a popular song of the time, Janis Ian learned
“at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens”. Gina learned at twelve, that
love was meant for Judy and Linda, and not her. Linda was a pretty girl who’d
developed young and even had the interest of the older boys. Judy, Gina’s best friend, was impossibly cute,
with deep dimples and a cleft chin. I don’t think that there were any of us boys
that didn’t have a crush on her.
The summer of 1977,
when we were fourteen, was the Summer of
Sam in New York City; the summer when
the notorious Son of Sam was shooting and killing young women in lover’s lanes
around the city. In our apartment building, Brightwater Towers, that summer is also
remembered for something else. Gina’s
brother Joey was four years older than us. Unlike his straight –arrow older
brother Steve, Joey was a wild one. He was using drugs and running the streets.
One day that summer, Joey dove off of the Steeplechase Pier in Coney Island. It
was not an unusual feat for the strong swimmers of Coney Island to perform, but
Joey dove into only a couple of feet of water, and broke his neck. Was it a
miscalculation, drug induced stupidity, or too awful to contemplate, an attempt
at suicide?
Joey survived, and was brought to Kings County Hospital. A
group of us went to visit him. He lay in the bed, immobilized in one of those
halos drilled into his skull to maintain traction. We spoke awkwardly and
wished him well. Joey whispered to us
that in the next room over was the latest victim of the Son of Sam, Robert
Violante. Robert and his girlfriend, Stacey Moskowitz had been parked on Shore
Parkway in Bensonhurst, when they were both shot at close range. Stacey died.
Robert survived but was forever blinded in one eye. That night David Berkowitz
received a parking summons that lead to his arrest as the Son of Sam killer.
Stacey and Robert were his last victims. Curiously, we all took a peak in at
the bandaged victim in his bed, surrounded by stunned family.
A few years later, I
was a young NYC Police Officer assigned to the 66th Precinct in Boro
Park. I frequented a bagel store on Avenue J. Lots of cops ate there. The bagels and coffee were good and the
couple who owned the store loved the police. I found out that the detectives had treated
them with compassion when their daughter; Stacey Moskowitz, Robert Violante’s
girlfriend, was murdered in 1977. I thought
back to that visit to Kings County Hospital. It felt like it was so long ago; a
different time, and a different place. Actually, it had been only seven years.
Eventually, the Moskowitz’s sold the business and moved to Florida. The
reminders of their daughter, all around them were too painful. As I grew older,
I realized how fresh those wounds were for that couple. What had seemed like
decades to me, must have felt like moments to them.
Gina and I didn’t hang out together in High School. The girls
and guys from our building developed different circles of friends. The guys
stayed in the neighborhood, hanging out at 3rd Street Park and the
Trump Village Shopping Center parking lot. The girls, Gina and Judy in
particular, spent a lot of time with a group of tough Italian guys on Kings
Highway. We all remained friendly, since we still lived in the same building
and spent days at the pool in the summer.
Gina began to change
though; to become visibly unhappy. Rumors were swirling and she was gaining a
promiscuous reputation. Her parents fought
a lot and eventually divorced. There was no hiding that hers was a volatile
household. From Andy’s apartment next
door, we could hear the shouting whenever her father was around.
One night when I was
around seventeen, my parents were out, and as usual this was an excuse for me
and the boys to hang out and drink beer in my room. This night, while fiddling
with the radio dials, I discovered that if I turned the dial all the way to the
left I picked up somebodies cordless phone conversations. Cordless phones were
new at the time and they worked by radio waves. After listening for a while, we
realized that it was Gina’s phone. Did I; did we; life-long friends with Gina,
warn her to change her phone. Did we stop eavesdropping? No. We were jerks, and
as jerks we continued to get together, drink beer and listen to Gina’s
conversations, hoping to hear something juicy. We never did, but Gina
eventually found out. She could not have known what we did or didn’t hear. I
heard she was devastated, wondering what we might have heard, though she never
confronted me, and I never apologized.
Our relationship
remained the same, always friendly when we found ourselves both hanging out at
the same Sheepshead Bay bar or a Bay Ridge disco, but never seeking out each
other’s company.
Gina and I both turned 21 in November of 1983. That winter I
was at my girlfriend’s house in Gravesend, when I got a frantic call from my
mother. She was screaming, “Gina went out the window!” I was confused. My friend
Billy also had a sister named Gina and I needed clarification. “No, Gina went
out the window, I see her lying there”. I
knew who it was at that moment. My family lived in apartment 2F and Gina’s in
8F. My mother was looking down into the snow covered concrete, at the
motionless body of a child she’d known since she was 5 years old, who had
played with her son, who had eaten at her table.
I went to Coney Island
Hospital, where they had taken Gina. When I got there, I flashed my badge and was
let into the emergency room. I arrived just in time to see the doctors stop
working and pronounce Gina dead. I went out to the hallway. Judy was crying
hysterically. I hugged her tight and cried along with her. That night, Gina’s
mother joined the same club as the Moskowitz’s. The club nobody ever wants to
join; the club in which the members wake each morning to the fresh horror that
their baby is never coming back.
It was explained to me
that the family was engaged in a shouting match and Gina simply ran to her room
and jumped without warning.
Who knows what drove Gina
to suicide? Depression, I guess. Certainly, I wasn’t the reason but I’ve often
thought though, that I also never gave her a reason for hope. I was supposed to
be her friend. Life was knocking her all over the place. Did I offer her comfort? No. Did I defend her
when rumors were spread? No. What did I do? Listen in on her phone calls; for
laughs. What an asshole. I’m still
sorry, Gina. I’m glad that I got to see
you grab the brass ring.
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