Following which, the rest of Corky’s visit with his Uncle Sean Corcoran goes relatively peacefully.
7
In Memoriam
A drink? dying for a drink but before leaving for Lake Erie Park Corky and Sean Corcoran barricade the blown-out window at the rear of 1043 Roosevelt, nephew and uncle working deftly and, as the minutes pass, companionably as a team replacing the flimsy sheet of plywood and across the plywood nailing boards horizontally, like bars. It’s as if the two, working wordlessly, have operated as a team of carpenters pressed into emergency service together in the past: the younger, the nephew, lifting boards each in turn and holding them steady across the plywood sheet while with quick short expert blows of his hammer the elder, the uncle, drives two-inch spikes into the boards securing them in place. Bang! Bang! Bang!—the harsh happy percussive hammer blows, the pleasantly mild sweat of short-term carpentry. When the job doesn’t require more than two bottles of ale, there’s nothing like it.
Sean Corcoran had once been a union bricklayer but an expert carpenter too. Like Tim Corcoran. Like many of the Corcoran men. When Corky lifts a hammer, it feels good. Like he’s come home. The weight of the hammer in the hand, the smell of fresh-sawed lumber, that good sensation of hammering in nails, spikes: how swiftly can you lay boards in without slackening your rhythm a single time without a single bent nail or missed blow.
Corky remembers his father working sometimes with his carpenters, the nonunion men, removing his coat rolling up his shirtsleeves but not taking off his tie. The sound of the men talking together, laughing. The banging hammer blows, the smell of the wood, fresh-sawed pine.
Stone cold sober? You poor prick.
Sean Corcoran who’d been drinking ale for hours before Corky’s arrival is drinking ale now, a bottle of Molson’s close by as he’s hammering; he tells Corky, when at last he’s willing to speak directly to Corky, to get a bottle for himself out of the icebox—Sean’s of a generation rapidly vanishing still says “icebox.” Poor Corky swallowing hard mumbles, a dip in his voice like he’s embarrassed, no thanks I don’t want an ale right now, so Sean says, a beer, then? and Corky mumbles no, not right now and at this point Sean actually pauses in his hammering to look at his nephew, making no comment except by way of the stare of his pale-blue eyes, that expression of disbelief, disdain with which one seasoned alcoholic regards another wishing to deny the bond between them.
Corky considers telling his uncle he’s going to sign up for AA in the morning. But, the way the old man’s looking at him on the verge of a scornful laugh, he doesn’t have the nerve.
Sean snorts bemusement or disapproval, reaches for another spike. The moment passes.
The spikes Corky’s uncle is using are used, not new, like these fairly filthy boards of uneven length discovered in a disorderly cobwebbed stack in the garage. (The garage!—such a mess of ancient accumulated trash, there’s no doubt rats have infested it.) So there’s no smell of fresh-sawed lumber nor any tactile pleasure in stroking these splintery boards but, when the job’s finished, the bars in place, both men stand looking at it with approval.
Corky doesn’t want to think how crazy and sad this is, how pathetic an old man nearing eighty barricading himself in his house, but it’s preferable to the Rube Goldberg shotgun at least. So he’s enthusiastic when Sean says, with a chuckle, “Let’s see the black buggers break in my house now.”
Corky manages a weak laugh. The next logical step is to barricade every first-floor window, and why not the second-floor windows too since burglars can use ladders but best not to think of that. He says, agreeing, “Yeah, it’s a real deterrent.” Pausing eyeing his uncle with that air of incredulity tinged with respect Corky’s grown into with the old man, the way you’d approach a stallion long past its prime but capable still of outbursts of temper and violence—“So you won’t need the shotgun, right? You can keep it where it is, right?”
After the accidental explosion, in a panicked flurry believing that one of the neighbors would call the police, or come over to investigate, Sean removed the shotgun from the ladder, took up the shells, and, paying no heed to Corky who was trying to talk sense to him, hid everything—gun, shells, twine, ladder—in the trash-filled basement beneath a tarpaulin stiff with dirt.
Strange: no neighbor called the police, apparently. Still less came over to investigate.
How Irish Hill has changed. Christ!
Sean who’s wiping his sweat-beaded face on his shirtsleeve, finishing up his bottle of ale with quick thirsty gulps maybe hears this and maybe doesn’t. For a long time, since his fifties at least, he’s been partly deaf in one ear, or seems so; hearing what he wishes to hear and not hearing the rest. But if you raise your voice he’ll be pissed as hell. Once cutting his daughter Lois to tears when she’d spoken loudly and clearly at him so Corky doesn’t want to risk that now, now he’s on the old guy’s good side apparently.
Still, before they go to wash up, Corky brings up the subject of the shotgun again, asking Sean where he got the gun, does he have a permit for it? Has he ever used it? Sean shrugs off these questions like they’re gnats swirling around his head and Corky persists would he really want to use a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun on another human being, and it could be a kid, knowing the kind of damage it would inflict?—seeing again in his mind’s eye vivid and terrible as if it had been yesterday his father’s collapsed and bleeding body, and believing that Sean must be envisioning that sight, imagining it, too. But Sean pauses in heading upstairs, affable-seeming, bemused, now his hot temper has been temporarily quelled, lays a hand on Corky’s shoulder and says, “Corky, you’ve got a good heart, but you don’t know shit.”
Corky stares up at the old man climbing the stairs favoring his left leg too surprised and hurt even to mutter under his breath Fuck you too.
He is hurt, that’s the one thing he prides himself on: his savvy.
And he’d thought, God damn it, his family especially the older ones really admired that in him—how he’d raised himself up from practically nothing, how he’d made himself “Corky Corcoran” the way you’d make yourself an athlete by training, endurance, sheer stubborn inviolable will. Not to mention his business success—he’s a millionaire! And his political success. And his social success. He’s an intimate friend of the Slatterys.
Fuming, planning to ask Sean what the fuck he meant by that remark when the old guy comes back downstairs but, when he does, spruced up for their outing together—Sean’s wetted and brushed his steely-white hair, hasn’t shaved but has washed his face so it’s pink-glowing in the cheeks where the capillaries have broken decades ago, and he’s wearing an almost-fresh white cotton shirt, a snap-on moss-colored bow tie that looks as if it’s made of vinyl, the same baggy gabardine trousers but a blue serge suit coat that looks as if, many years ago, it might have buttoned across his hard little potbelly—and he’s carrying a straw fedora with a red band—Corky hasn’t the heart.
Shit, why provoke a quarrel? Corky guesses he loves the old bastard.
When, at 1:43 P.M., Corky and Sean climb into Corky’s car parked at the curb, it’s like they’re on TV being watched by any number of neighbors: across the street, next door in the former Culligan house, and, at 1041 Roosevelt, where on the crumbling brick porch and in the cracked asphalt driveway are standing not only the dumpy woman with the two small children and the bare-chested young man in biker’s leather but a fat teenaged girl with breasts like muskmelons sagging in a halter top and a squat bald suspicious-squinting guy of about Corky’s age.
So many onlookers, a dozen or more, having heard a shotgun go off in a neighbor’s house, but not calling the cops. Don’t want to get involved—that’s it?
Irish Hill’s changed. Forever.
Corky who on principle believes you should always be on civil terms with your neighbors, or get them to think so, smiles and waves at the hillbillies next door who stare impassively at him, not a flicker of response. Sean growls disapproval.
Corky says, “So the Hennesseys sold their house, too? D’you know your new neighbors?”
Sean makes a snorting noise. Half-sullen and half-prideful, buckling his seat belt fumblingly, “Don’t know nobody anymore, and nobody knows me.”
Christ, that’s depressing. Corky wants to make a joke but can’t think of one.
The first time Sean Corcoran’s been a passenger in Corky’s new Cadillac and he peers about, frowning. His nostrils, wide, bristling with stiff white hairs, inhale deeply the rich leathery interior. But taking in too the cracked windshield, the scraped hood that looks as if a giant cat has scratched it. No comment, but Corky knows the old man’s thinking he banged it up drunk-driving.
Corky says, “I’ve been having a fucking rotten time lately. But I think my luck’s changing. In fact, I know it is.”
Sean makes a snorting noise like he’s bemused. Like saying, No shit!
Corky drives west along Roosevelt to Dalkey down the hill to South Erie. Keeping up a bright cheerful line of inquiry with his uncle—how’s he been, how’s the family, grandchildren, aunts, uncles Corky hasn’t seen in years—and Sean responds with grunts, shrugs, silence. Not much to say about his children, nor even the grandchildren but he always was hard to talk to like you needed a secret key to open him up. After Tim’s death. Losing the business, going to work for the city, on the payroll until retirement. Drinking. Aunt Frances’ sickness, death. At the funeral Sean was sullen-drunk and Corky vowed he’d never see the s.o.b. again in his life but here we are. Fewer of us now. Soon no one to remember.
Why did my father die, why did it happen the way it did.
Did it happen the only way it could or was it a way that might have been altered. Tell me!
An infinity of alternative universes. But if you’re in this one this is the one you’re in.
Corky’s plan for today’s outing is to treat Sean to lunch at the Seneca House where Sean knows the owner, an old Irish-American of his generation, it’s convenient since the Seneca House is near Lake Erie Park where they can watch the parade and attend the Memorial Day ceremony; then they can swing around to Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery which Corky hasn’t visited in a long long time; then to Holy Redeemer Hospital to visit Corky’s Aunt Mary Megan. (Corky telephoned another of his Dowd aunts to determine, under the guise of asking whether Aunt Mary Megan is seeing visitors, whether she’s still alive.) Uncle Sean seems agreeable to all this, nodding and shrugging as if giving himself up to Corky for the day. Or maybe there’s an ironic cast to his passivity like Corky’s doing too little for him, and too late.
You little pisspot. Who wants your charity.
When, after about ten minutes, Corky’s questions run out, Sean ceases speaking. Stingy with words as he’d been stingy with affection through his life. And stingy with money, even when he’d had it. Lois and Tess playing up to him, saw him mainly at meals, and Pete for a while, until Pete dropped out of high school and went to work at Curtiss Wright, started making more money than his old man. Corky never tried to suck up to Sean Corcoran: not his son.
Aunt Frances was the one who’d loved him: Jerome. No blood relation of hers but she’d loved him, who knows why. Skinny-homely kid, freckle-faced, reddish monkey-fuzz covering his body. Young-looking for his age but that’s deceptive. Never was young after his father’s death only young-seeming. His body sprouted hair under his arms and at his crotch, his genitals grew like tropical fruit, filthy thoughts clotted his brain but you’re my good boy Jerome, you’re my sweet boy aren’t you Jerome, Aunt Frances said, and she’d meant it. Not knowing him. If she’d known she’d been revulsed but she hadn’t known, women never do. The weakness of women, no civilization without it. Why Corky loves them, pities them. Jesus I’m dying for a drink.
Wanting to jack himself off, too—that young cow with the tits hanging practically out of her, what’s it, halter top. And her ass in tight blue jeans. IQ maybe a moron’s, moony look to her staring at Corky Corcoran in his spiffy clothes, fancy Cadillac. Corky thinks maybe if he could see himself, like on TV, a fleeting image, he’d respect himself. Envy?
But gnawing his lower lip, he’s feeling sad. So suddenly. Uncle Sean beside him at last and nothing to say. Those years, lost. Half his life lost. Remembering Pete, their room together, the Big Ben alarm clock, you’d never think the clock face was detachable from the mechanism, the very hands, but of course that makes sense. A human face, too, detachable from its brain.
Poor bastard Pete: a serious drinker, too. Runs in the family, no escaping it. But I’m going to escape it. Laid off from Curtiss Wright just a kid in his mid-twenties with a wife, sweet-dumb Catholic girl and they’d had three babies in rapid sequence just like the Church ordered then the marriage broke up, Pete enlisted in the Army, went to Vietnam where he really got fucked up. Now out in Fresno, CA, working, Corky guesses, as a laborer though Lois and Tess are careful to call it “in construction.”
Out of the silence like nerves strung tight Corky hears himself saying in a bright-ebullient voice like he’s fielding questions at an open session of the Council, “It’s been a helluva long time since we’ve gotten together, eh? My fault I guess I’m always so damned busy—” as Sean Corcoran, straw fedora now on his head pulled down just a little too far, sits stiff staring out the web-cracked windshield, “—but I think of you a lot, Uncle Sean. I really do. All you did for me. When I was a kid. When—” squinting ahead, he’s on South Erie approaching Grand Boulevard why’s it taking so fucking long to get to the Seneca House, “—after—it happened. And you and Aunt Frances took me in. Maybe I couldn’t appreciate it then exactly, you know how kids are, how I was, but, Jesus, I know now. Which is why—” stone cold sober you’ll never get through the afternoon, you sorry prick, “—I’m kind of worried about you, these days? Living alone in the old house? I know this is none of my business, Uncle Sean, for sure it isn’t, I know I’ve butted my nose in where it wasn’t wanted in the past but like I said I’m kind of—worried. If you wanted to sell the house and move I can help you, no commission, we can list it without putting a For Sale sign out front—the neighbors don’t need to know your business, right?” a long pause as Corky’s stalled in traffic at the intersection with Grand, traffic’s being rerouted because of the fucking parade and Sean stares out frowning, there’s that weird fierce look of an old man’s eyebrows where individual wiry-white hairs spring vertically out of wiry-gray-grizzled horizontal hairs, look at me! talk to me! God damn you! I love you!—“I agree with you the neighborhood is dangerous, but—rigging a shotgun like that! Even having a shotgun in the house! That’s dangerous, too. You can’t shoot people even burglars without just cause and assuming they’re black kids it’s your ass that’s going to burn, believe me. So I was thinking—put your house on the market, I’ll try to get you the best price possible, and—”
There’s Dequindre, thank God the Seneca House is in the next block, Corky’s running at the mouth not knowing what the fuck he’s saying wanting to make it up to his uncle, years of ignoring him, taking offense at the old guy’s remarks, easy to do. The way he’d written Charlotte off without telling her when, in Miami Beach, he’d needed to fly back to see his aunt and Charlotte hadn’t wanted to come, though might have come if he’d explained to her what it meant to him, what Frances Corcoran meant to him, now she’s dying and I’ll never see her again and I’m losing it. He’d written Charlotte off, and he’d written Sean off. Cold-hearted s.o.b., Corky Corcoran.
Turning into the cinder drive of the fake-redwood Seneca House unable to acknowledge what his eyes immediately absorb: parking lot’s empty, fucking place must be closed. Memorial Day afternoon and the fucking Seneca House is closed!
“Shit!” Corky says. “This is disappointing.”
Glancing sidelong at Sean who does in fact look disappointed—sulky. Like a kid who’s been hiding his hopes, you only learn it when his hopes are dashed.
This famous, or notorious, old Irish tavern dating back to the
early 1900s and before that a stagecoach stop, once a favorite hangout of Tim Corcoran’s, one of Corky’s places too though no use kidding himself it’s anything now but a crummy neighborhood saloon. Shabby exterior, dandelions pushing up through cracks in the pavement, even the unlit red-neon SENECA HOUSE is peeling its paint. It occurs to Corky suddenly, his uncle’s old friend Davy Kiernan is long dead!
Corky, asshole, has been mixing him up with his son. Who’s no spring chicken, either.
Sean Corcoran sighs, makes a snuffling sound. Like this is what he’d expected. The straw fedora, new to Corky’s eye, gives the old man a jaunty-arrogant look. At first glance you think here’s a dapper dude, if Caucasian, then you look closer and see his age—the flushed-wrinkled face, wattled throat, pursy lips. Why do the lips of the elderly begin to retract? Yet, Corky’s thinking, you have to hand it to Sean—for an old guy soused two-thirds of his life he doesn’t look bad. Not bad at all. Came close to croaking a half dozen times, weeklong benders and a few arrests for drunk and disorderly and hospitalized and detoxed (supposedly) and discharged and off the bottle for anywhere between six months and six days then back again, curse of the Irish. Drinking makes you a better man until that hour it makes you a shithead-loser, like love gone wrong but for Christ’s sake can you live without love? You can’t. And if you can, it’s not worth it. And in any case Sean Corcoran has outlived his good wife who drank rarely and never smoked and he’s still going strong and Corky’d bet ten to one he isn’t going to make it to age seventy-seven.
What I Lived For Page 66