As she spoke, it became clear that while she was ostensibly addressing my father, she was also talking to me, his chief ally and helper, and every now and then she’d fix me with a look that suggested she was counting on me in this regard, usually concerning something she believed he’d forget or not be very good at. I recognized these gestures as votes of confidence in me, sure, but they also seemed like small betrayals of him, and I found myself looking down at the step I was perched on, ashamed, unwilling to acknowledge my father’s shortcomings. I was embarrassed, too, of my suspicion that a mere boy might possess a deeper understanding of what she was explaining than he did, even though he obliged her by nodding enthusiastically at everything she said, occasionally even winking or grinning at me, as if to suggest that this was what we’d been waiting for, pardner, this right here, your mother figuring it all out. Now there’d be no holding us back.
The slender advantage we had at Ikey Lubin’s, she explained, was that people could get in and out quickly, and time, she claimed, was just another form of money. When people went to the A&P out by the highway, they had to spend thirty minutes, whereas they could save twenty-five of them by darting into our little store. They wouldn’t do it if Ikey’s was a lot more expensive, so the trick was to convince them that the time they were saving more than made up for the marginally higher prices. Part of the brain, she admitted, would know this wasn’t true, but this wasn’t the part that counted. Also, it was imperative to remember that all items sold at our store were not equal. People would mostly go to Ikey’s for things they’d run out of—milk, bread, toilet paper—and so these had to be priced within a few pennies of what the supermarket charged, even if that meant we didn’t make any money on them. What we’d mark up were the things they didn’t need and wouldn’t make a special trip for, things they’d buy on impulse since, what the hell, they were already there. The entire store, she maintained, should be arranged so that whatever people needed most was located in the rear and they’d have to pass everything they didn’t need both going in and coming out. The most overpriced items—candy, batteries—should be placed as near the register as possible.
It was also important to remember, she continued, that men and women were different. Women had money to spend but little time to waste spending it. No woman would want to enter Ikey Lubin’s if she had to run a gantlet of indolent old farts lounging around the cash register swapping lies. She looked meaningfully at my father when she said this, knowing how much he liked having the Elite Coffee Club fellows in his store, even though they never spent any money to speak of. He felt they lent the place an air of commerce. If my mother hadn’t suggested it now, it would never have occurred to him that they might actually be preventing commerce. “The Coffee Club don’t hurt nobody,” he said, defending their communal character. “If a woman came in, they wouldn’t say nothing.”
“I know that, Lou,” my mother said. “They’d just stop telling their off-color jokes and stand there looking gutshot and wait for her to leave so they could start talking again.” Which was pretty much what happened on those rare occasions a woman stopped at Ikey’s.
“What do I do? Tell ’em they can’t come in no more?”
My mother looked like she considered this an elegant solution, but instead she said, “Move them around to the other side of the center island. Put a coffeepot over there on the counter and make them buy that, at least.”
“Charge them for coffee?”
“Don’t put it that way. Say the first refill’s free. The main thing is to keep them away from the door.”
Across the street a mangy dog trotted by the market, stopping to lift a leg and pee into the produce bin where the cantaloupes would’ve been if the market were open. When he finished, the mutt glanced over at us with what, if I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn was a grin before trotting off up the hill. I watched him go while my mother explained the rest of it—how we were going to have to stay open later, maybe until ten or eleven at night, and after church on Sundays.
“I ain’t afraid of hard work, Tessa,” he said. “You know that. And Louie here’s a darn good worker, too.”
“After school only,” my mother reiterated, before I could volunteer for greater servitude. “He’s got his homework after supper. And only Saturday or Sunday, not both. This child needs to have a childhood.”
“I’m not a child,” I said.
“Says who?” she asked, smiling at me for the first time in forever. Telling us how everything had to be from now on out seemed to have cheered her up a little.
“Says me,” I told her, smiling too, glad we were a family again and that I didn’t have to be mad at her anymore.
“I almost forgot,” she said, turning back to my father. “I bought you a present.” She got up and went inside, returning a moment later with a black handgun, the long barrel of which she pointed at my father, who went pale. “I should shoot you for buying that store,” she said, suddenly serious again. “You know that, don’t you?” Then she flipped the gun in the air, catching it by the barrel and holding it out to my father, who regarded the thing as if it might be rigged to explode if he touched it.
“I don’t think nobody’s gonna rob us, Tessa,” he said weakly.
I stared at the weapon, fascinated by how small the hole was that the bullet would have to squeeze out of.
“That’s not what it’s for,” she told him.
My father and I stared at each other.
“It’s an air gun,” she explained. “It only shoots pellets.”
At that moment, right on cue, the same dog came trotting back down the hill, flanked now by two other mangy curs. They trotted in formation right down the middle of the street, paying no attention when my mother rose from the steps and headed across the intersection to meet them. The lead mutt trotted right up to the same fruit bin, but when he lifted his hind leg this time, there was a muffled pop and he leapt like a circus animal, hanging there in the air, contorted, for a full beat. He returned to the sidewalk no wiser, though, frantically chasing his haunch and growling frightfully, as if whatever had bitten him might still be there with its mouth open. The other two dogs were surprised, but neither seemed to connect this sudden fit of madness to the object my mother held in her hand, now pointed at them. One of them watched curiously as the first continued to growl and chase his tail, then grew bored and lifted his own hind leg, whereupon there was another discrete pop and then there were two dogs dancing and spinning and yelping in front of Ikey Lubin’s.
The third dog now regarded my mother and the gun with genuine suspicion. You could almost see the animal’s thoughts scrolling slowly across his feeble, conflicted brain. On the one hand there was the very real need to pee, not to mention the deep and abiding habit of doing so in our fruit bin. On the other there was the fear born of recent, albeit secondhand, experience. He looked back and forth between his suddenly lunatic companions and my mother, started to cock his leg, then reconsidered, staring at this woman for a long time before trotting off down the block, checking over his shoulder every so often to see where she was. His companions followed along, deeply resentful at this inexplicable turn of events.
When they were gone, my mother returned to where my father and I sat on the porch regarding her, at least in my case, with new eyes. “Don’t let anybody pee on your melons, Lou,” she said. “That’s my last bit of advice for today.”
And with that she went inside.
AFTER DINNER that night we all watched Ed Sullivan together, like the family we used to be. When it was over, my father grew restless and took the transistor radio out on the porch to listen to the country music he favored. After a while we heard him turn the radio off, and then the porch steps groaned under his weight. I went over to the window and peered out through the blinds and saw him pass beneath the streetlamp on the corner, fishing his keys out of his pocket and letting himself into Ikey Lubin’s. I waited for the lights to come on and was surprised when they didn’t. I coul
d tell my mother knew exactly where he’d gone without having to look.
“What’s he doing?” I wondered out loud.
She continued to stare at the television screen. “Just looking at it,” she said. “I suspect he’s really seeing that store for the first time.”
I didn’t like her implication that my father didn’t really see what was in front of him, and I felt some of my recently surrendered resentment return. I did want to know more about what she was thinking, though. “Will it be okay now? The store?”
“No,” she said without hesitating. “It just won’t fail as fast.”
“I think it’ll be a success,” I said stubbornly.
“I hope you’re right,” she said, sounding like she meant it. “He doesn’t know what else to do, anyhow, so I guess he’ll have to do this.”
“You could help,” I said.
She looked at me hard, then. “I am helping,” she said. “You must know that much.”
“I mean help him,” I said, knowing exactly what she was getting at, “at the store.”
“I can’t help him, Lou,” she said. “I have to help us.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Please don’t ask me to explain what you already understand,” she said, meeting my eye. I was the one who looked away.
That night, in bed, I heard my father return, and shortly thereafter my parents’ voices began to filter up through the heat register. I heard only part of what was said, but enough to know that their conversation meant the end to the worst of their recent conflict. Their new covenant came at a price, though. Above the store was an apartment that Ikey had always rented to the sort of people who, according to my mother, belonged in the West End, people who saw nothing wrong with sitting out on their rickety porch shirtless on hot summer nights, who hung over the railing and hollered down to people who pulled up at the curb below, honking the horns of their ancient, rusted-out Buicks and Pontiacs. The flat was vacant now, unrentable to decent people until we could find the money to make repairs. “I’m not leaving this house, Lou. It was bought with my parents’ money. They knew better than to give it to us, but they did anyway. I’m not moving in above that store. Not ever.” When my father started to protest that he had no such intention, she stopped him cold. “Don’t ever tell me it might be fixed up nice. That living above the store would be more convenient. That we could be happy there. Don’t ever do that.”
My father, of course, promised he wouldn’t.
DIVISION STREET
MY FATHER’S LOSING his dairy job and buying Ikey Lubin’s at least resolved the issue of where I’d go to school that fall. When he heard of our intention, Father Gluck paid us a visit and tried to dissuade my parents from taking me out of St. Francis, reminding them that it teetered on the brink and couldn’t afford to lose good Catholic students like me. We had, he said, an obligation—to our faith, to the diocese, to the good sisters who taught us. He addressed these remarks to my father, perhaps in the hope that he was the one who required convincing. “My only obligation,” my mother told him, deftly dispelling that misconception with a single pronoun, “is to this family. St. Francis will have to fend for itself.”
“You don’t mean that—” Father Gluck began, but my mother cut him off.
“But I do.”
The priest, deciding on another tack, turned his attention to me. “You’ve done well at St. Francis.” He was smiling benevolently, but I’d never liked the man, the way his eyes bored into you as if you’d done something wrong, or were about to. “You’ve been happy there? You like the sisters? Sister Bernadette takes good care of you?”
I allowed that all of this was true. A priest was saying it, so what choice did I have? And I did like Sister Bernadette, though it was also true I’d lately told my mother often that I’d be glad to get out from under her too-watchful eye and I was looking forward to public school. I suppose I might have repeated all of this to Father Gluck but, coward that I was, instead held my tongue.
“And you’re feeling better now?”
I glanced over at my mother. Had I been feeling poorly? I saw her eyes narrow dangerously. My father looked as perplexed as I was.
“Those public school boys did a bad thing to you, didn’t they?” Father Gluck said, his smile even more empathetic now, as if the incident at the trestle had been on his mind more or less constantly since it happened.
“Don’t you dare try to frighten him,” my mother said, her hands starting to tremble.
The priest regarded me for a beat before turning back to my mother, a pause apparently intended to suggest that he was unused to taking orders, particularly from a woman. If so, he must have been even more surprised when another command came right on its heels.
“And don’t try to frighten me.”
“Tessa,” the priest said, now showing her his benevolent smile. “I’m not the enemy.”
When my mother looked away, unable to meet his eye, I suddenly feltill. She’d begged my father to call the rectory and tell Father Gluck not to come, after he’d cornered my father at Mass on Sunday—my mother staying home to nurse a cold—and explained that he wanted to discuss my leaving St. Francis with all three of us. “Tell a priest he can’t come?” my father had said. “How am I gonna do that, Tessa?”
“Okay, fine,” she conceded. “But I swear to God you better not take his side.” So far my father hadn’t said a word, but she now seemed to realize she was on her own, the poor woman. Raised Catholic, she had no reason except perhaps her own rebellious nature to believe she could do battle with a priest and win. I could see she was lost, an apology forming on her lips, when Father Gluck made an unexpected and welcome mistake. “We both want what’s best for Luce—” he said.
I saw my mother stiffen. The man had started to call me by my nickname. Was it my imagination, or did the blood drain out of his face when he realized what he’d done?
“I have a small discretionary fund for emergencies…,” he went on, trying valiantly to regroup. “I’m sure we can find some compromise.”
But my mother had risen to her feet. She crossed the room, took the priest’s half-full coffee cup and stood looking down at him. She was trembling all over now, whether in rage or fear or a combination of the two I couldn’t tell. I saw my father’s jaw drop, and I suspect mine did as well.
When my mother spoke, though, her voice was surprisingly steady. “The compromise is this: we will continue to attend Mass on Sundays and drop the envelope we can no longer afford onto your collection plate. Unless you’d prefer we didn’t.”
Father Gluck turned back to my father, who made the mistake of looking up at that moment, and the two of them shared a look of devout commiseration.
“The compromise,” my mother continued, “is that from time to time your housekeeper will stop at our store and buy a quart of milk.” Then she went over to the front door, opened it and pointed across at Ikey Lubin’s. “We’re located on the same street as Tommy Flynn, so she shouldn’t have any trouble finding us.”
“Tessa,” Father Gluck replied, reluctantly getting to his feet. “I’m disappointed—”
“Join the club,” my mother told him. “We’re disappointed, too. My husband was disappointed to lose his job. When we were living in Berman Court and Lou wanted to be an altar boy and you didn’t select a single one from the West End, he was disappointed. As for my own disappointments, don’t even get me started.”
It took my mother about twenty minutes to stop shaking after Father Gluck had left. She paced back and forth between the kitchen and living room like a caged animal, stopping, opening her mouth to speak, then closing it and pacing again. My father remained seated during that whole time as if he didn’t trust his legs to support him just yet. “Don’t look at me like that,” my mother finally said, then shot a look at me. “You either.”
“I ain’t sayin’ you were wrong,” my father conceded. “It ain’t that. It’s just…he was offerin’—”
“A loan. It was a loan he was offering, Lou. We’d have had to pay it back. With interest, if I know him.”
“I ain’t sayin’—”
“He’s lucky I didn’t go get that gun.”
At this my father’s eyes widened, and he looked over at me as if I might confirm what he thought he’d heard her say. Who was this person who looked so much like his wife but was acting like a crazy woman? A few days earlier, when my mother had produced that pellet gun and calmly shot those dogs with it, he couldn’t have been more astonished. Well, now it turned out that wasn’t quite true. Here was that same crazy woman—an impostor, surely—expressing regret that she’d missed a golden opportunity to shoot a priest.
She took pity on him then, which would’ve been good except this meant it was my turn. “Laugh” was her suggestion to me.
I must have looked as confused as my father, because she looked up at the ceiling and muttered “Dear God” before fixing me again. “That’s what you do when something’s funny; you laugh.”
It took me a moment to realize what she meant. The idea of seeing Father Gluck leap in the air like that dog had, with a cold steel pellet chewing on his big fanny, was funny, I had to admit, and part of me did want to laugh. It was a small part, though, and the bigger part was still too scared.
JUNIOR HIGH was where the lives of both West and East End kids began to merge with those of Borough kids. The school itself was located on Division Street, which ran perpendicular to Hudson, our main commercial thoroughfare. The irony that it should represent the border between west and east in our asymmetrical town didn’t strike me until I was an adult, but even then I knew that Division Street was real and to cross it meant something. The eight square blocks of downtown Thomaston were themselves considered neither one nor the other, but most businesses there, regardless of which side of Division they were located on, catered to either an East or West End clientele. (Borough residents tended not to shop in Thomaston at all but rather “down the line,” as everyone referred to Albany and Schenectady.) We had two of everything. Two jewelry stores: a cheap one for West Enders, a slightly more upscale store for us. East End women like my mother generally shopped at Cheryl Lynn’s House of Fashion, whereas West Enders had Elsa’s Dress Shop. For men’s and boys’ there was Calloway’s, which displayed in its window a tiny sign advertising the Botany 500 line my grandfather had always favored. My father hated to spend money on clothes and often snuck into Foreman’s, the cheaper West End store, then told my mother he bought the shirt or pants in question at Calloway’s, but she always knew better. That she could tell where he’d bought something after he’d removed the tags and thrown away the bags was akin to knowing which thimble the pill was under in a street scam. It was just the damnedest thing.
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