“No sir.” Noonan had started to offer his hand, but saw now there was no point.
“Then how did that happen?” Mr. Beverly demanded.
Noonan squinted at him, trying hard to follow his logic. Under the circumstances, mentioning the sleeping bag didn’t seem the wisest strategy. “It was an accident,” he said. “I’m sorry about last night. We should’ve called, but Nan was pretty upset—”
“Upset?” her father said. “Did you touch her?”
It was the imprecise nature of this question that caused him to hesitate, and in that pause Mr. Beverly intuited the truth, or something like it. Immediately Noonan saw the man’s intention to throw a punch and then, in the next instant, the punch itself. Because he was still holding on to the handle, he was able to lean back without slipping. Mr. Beverly’s wildly thrown fist, encountering nothing but air, spun him around on the slick incline, then both feet flew out from under him, and he landed flat on his back, his head cracking on the packed snow before he disappeared completely under the car. Alarmed, Noonan peered over the windshield, expecting him to slide out and stand up on the other side, but instead a groan issued from underneath.
He carefully backed up to the front wheel, then got down onto his hands and knees to look underneath. It seemed Mr. Beverly’s overcoat had snagged on the undercarriage, and he was looking straight at Noonan, as if for an explanation. “Ohhhhh,” he moaned.
“Let me go around the other side,” Noonan said. “I’ll pull you out.”
But when he got there, he saw that Mr. Beverly was perfectly centered beneath the vehicle. By lying on his stomach, he could reach him, though not with enough purchase to yank him free. “Mr. Beverly?” he said. “Can you move at all?”
His head, apparently, since he was staring at Noonan again. “Shoulder,” he groaned. “Dislocated. Happened before. Call ambulance.”
He had to ring the doorbell three times before Nan’s mother answered, her sleeves rolled up, her forearms wet. “She’s in the bathtub,” she said. “Washing off your filth.”
“Right,” Noonan said. “Your husband said to call an ambulance.”
“Where is he?”
He pointed under the car.
“You ran over him?”
“He slipped.”
“You’re a monster.”
“No,” Noonan said. He wasn’t feeling good about himself, it was true, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t warranted so harsh an assessment.
“Wait here,” she said. “Don’t you step one foot into our house. Do you understand me?”
He nodded, and Mrs. Beverly went over to stand next to the car. She wasn’t the sort of woman who got down on her knees in the snow. “Jack,” she said sharply.
“Ambulance” came her husband’s voice.
“Did that boy do this to you?”
“No,” Noonan called.
She ignored him. “I’m calling the police,” she told her husband.
“No. My fault. All my fault.”
“Of course it’s all your fault,” she said. “What do you think I’ve been telling you for the last twenty-four hours. This is all your fault. My God, what kind of man are you?”
“Hurt.”
Mrs. Beverly marched back to the house, and Noonan held the door open for her. “He can just stay there for all I care,” she said.
“Would you like me to call the ambulance?”
“I’d like you to leave here and never return.”
“Okay,” he said. “Except—”
“Go. Get out. Now.”
“That’s my father’s car.”
“So walk.”
“He’ll want it back.”
Mrs. Beverly considered this for a second, then screamed, louder than he’d ever heard a woman scream, “Get out of here! Get out! Right this minute!”
Noonan walked up the drive, past his father’s car. When he heard the front door shut behind him, though, he turned around and cautiously returned to the car, getting down on his hands and knees again.
“Did she call? The ambulance?” Mr. Beverly said, staring at him.
“I don’t know.”
He nodded. “I’m going…to pass out, I think,” he said, and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” Noonan said. Standing up, he glanced back at the Beverly home one last time. In what he guessed must be her bedroom window, Nan was standing in a pink robe. He waved goodbye, in the sense of so long. She too waved goodbye, in the sense of goodbye.
THE BLIZZARD HAD DUMPED just under three feet of snow, the worst storm in several winters, but by seven-thirty that morning, as Noonan made his way through the snowbound streets of the East End on his way to Ikey Lubin’s, the sun came out, and the sky was a robust shade of blue that augured spring. People who’d come out bundled up in heavy coats to tunnel through the monstrous snowbanks now shed them in favor of bulky wool sweaters, and even so their foreheads glistened with sweat as they worked. The warming sun was welcome, but it made the snow heavy and slippery, difficult to shovel. Still, everyone seemed to be in a fine mood, convinced that winter had delivered its final blow. Several people called out greetings as Noonan trudged by in the middle of the street, and though he tried to share their good cheer, it wasn’t easy. His girlfriend’s father had just tried to punch him, injuring himself in the process; her mother had shrieked like a banshee and called him a monster. Worse, as soon as he got to Ikey’s, he was going to have to call his father and explain that he’d left his car in Mr. Beverly’s driveway with him pinned beneath it. And then there was the serious stuff. Last night, he’d had sex with a girl he not only didn’t love but didn’t even like very much. If she got pregnant…as if to complete this thought, church bells began to ring. It was Sunday. Somehow he’d forgotten that.
Business at Ikey’s was brisk. People were too snowed in to drive any distance, certainly not out to the A&P. By the time Noonan arrived, Lucy and his father had cut a tunnel from the store’s entryway to the street, and Big Lou, looking pale and tuckered out, was all too happy to surrender his shovel to him. Midmorning, Dec came down, brutally hungover, and surveyed the situation. “Damn,” he said. “I was hoping you’d be done with this Eskimo shit by now.”
“Well, we’re not,” Lucy told him.
“I can see that,” Dec said. “You don’t mind if I just watch, do you?”
Tessa then came out with another shovel from the storeroom and handed it to him without a word.
“Sunday’s my day off,” Dec reminded her. “Did you forget that?” But he took the shovel and headed over to the parking lot, where they hadn’t even begun yet, and stood there for a good solid minute before throwing up violently into the snow and causing Noonan to wonder who’d be sick next.
Tessa nudged him with her elbow. “See?” she said. “You aren’t the only damn fool in the world, are you?”
Maybe not, but that’s exactly what he felt like. Nan had been right. Except for Dec, the Lynches all seemed to know about last night. Throughout the morning Lucy had been watching him out of the corner of his eye, and Noonan couldn’t tell if his friend was disappointed or just plain scared, knowing what the consequences might be. At noon, Tessa insisted they take a break, heaping paper plates high with cold smoked pork chops and both macaroni and potato salad. Noonan scarfed his down and allowed himself to be talked into seconds. Big Lou, still looking pale and weak, ate little before pushing his plate away.
“You all right, Biggy?” his brother said. “I ask because you look like hell.”
“I don’t seem to have no strength,” he told him.
“You never did,” Dec replied. “Even back on the farm you always managed to give me the heavy end of everything.” Then he turned to Noonan. “Were you at Murdick’s last night?”
“No,” he said. They hadn’t made it inside, so it wasn’t much of a lie.
“Damn,” Dec said. “I just had this really vivid recollection of you and Cupcake being there.”
; After lunch they went at it again. It seemed like every time they made a good, wide opening in the snowbank, the plow came by and shut them in again. There was room for only eight cars in Ikey’s tiny lot, but three feet of snow in an area that size was a stupendous amount, and by the time they’d finished clearing it Noonan’s bad wrist was throbbing. The pain was strangely welcome, though, and the ache helped him locate the rhythm that hard physical labor demanded, his efforts becoming economical and compact, each swing of the shovel having just enough force behind it to propel the wet slippery snow onto the bank. Though Lucy matched him shovel for shovel, he noticed happily that his friend wasn’t taking full shovelfuls and that sometimes the snow he flung came sliding back down the bank at him. Midafternoon, Dec, bent over at the waist like a cripple, said, “Girls, I’ll leave the rest of this to you,” then disappeared upstairs.
When they finally finished the parking lot, Tessa told Noonan to go home, that he’d done his part, but he knew the Lynches were still snowed in across the street, so he followed Lucy over there, and they began again. At one point Lucy heard the phone ringing inside and went in to answer it, telling Noonan to rest for a while, but he kept working, as if good-faith exhaustion might appease the angry, jealous God who decided whether small-town girls got pregnant or not. The pain in his wrist was worse now, and that, too, was fine.
Across the intersection people continued to traipse in and out of Ikey’s, parking in the lot he and Lucy and Dec had cleared by hand, and for some reason, watching this, he felt a welling up of emotion he didn’t immediately recognize as pride, perhaps because there was so little justification for it. Was it possible to achieve such intense satisfaction simply by shoveling snow for a corner grocery? Right then, leaning on his shovel, he felt almost weak with gratitude for the long day’s labors, proud not only of himself, but also of the Lynches, even Dec, for their daily devotion to Ikey’s. Last night he’d given Nan a guided tour of the West End world that had both fascinated and frightened her. He’d taken secret pleasure in showing her the hard realities she’d been sheltered from, but that had been a very different sort of pride from what he felt now, because in truth he no longer belonged to that West End world any more than she did. And this morning, returning Nan to the Borough, it had struck him that he didn’t belong there either. When her mother had screamed at him to get out, he remembered thinking she had every right to do so.
But here, right here, was a place he could belong, or at least was worth belonging to, where he’d always be welcome, even if he ended up as dubious a character as Dec Lynch. Back in November, Sarah was in tears at the notion that something might happen to Ikey’s. At the time her fear had seemed melodramatic, but now he understood. She was taking a stand against her father’s values. Noonan didn’t know anything about Mr. Berg’s novel, but he was certain nothing like Ikey’s was in it. No, he was drawn to extremes, both philosophical and dramatic. The poor black man who dreamed of fish and whose wife played the number appealed to his grand sense of racial injustice, because these people never had a chance. That they thought they did deepened the irony, and oh how Mr. Berg loved irony. On the other extreme were the grand dreamers—the Gatsbys and the Ahabs—who were determined either to conquer or to tear down and reshape whole worlds. In class they’d also read Death of a Salesman, though it was clear Mr. Berg didn’t care about Willy Loman. He was simply pitiful. Small men with small dreams didn’t interest him, even when their dreams demanded enormous faith and endless forbearance. Ikey Lubin’s was a small thing. A small, good thing. You could count on it much like you could count on the Lynches, not for what they didn’t have but for what they did. Was it something like this—some small, good thing—his father had been yearning for when he invested in Nell’s?
“That was Nan,” Lucy said when he came back outside and picked up his shovel.
“Really?” he said, surprised. If Nan was calling Lucy, then maybe, even if she was done with Noonan, she still wanted to be friends with him and Sarah. That morning, when she’d waved at him from her bedroom window, he’d gotten the distinct impression she was blowing all of them off.
“She said nothing happened last night,” Lucy said, grinning and happy now.
“Is that right.”
“She said you almost did, but then you decided not to.”
He nodded.
“That was smart,” Lucy said, and Noonan could tell his friend was every bit as relieved as if he himself had been the one in jeopardy. “She and her mom made up, too,” he added.
Noonan doubted this could be true but didn’t say anything.
“They’re flying to Atlanta tomorrow for a whole week,” Lucy went on. “There are some southern colleges her mother wants her to visit. One’s in Atlanta, and they’re going to drive to the others.”
He wondered if that meant Mr. Beverly would remain behind. Maybe they’d just leave him under the car.
“That’s the only bad part,” Lucy went on. “I was hoping she’d go to school here in New York. That way you guys could keep seeing each other. She really likes you, and you like her, so…”
They continued to work, Lucy chattering happily away, reenergized by his belief that sex had been avoided, that all was well. Noonan couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Nan had shrewdly selected him as the best person to lie to, the person most likely to believe her, also knowing that he’d do his best to convince others. Lucy would always be the sort of person you’d lie to. Something in him wanted you to, so you could tell yourself you were doing him a favor. The first person he’d set out to convince would be Sarah, which was all to the good. All day long Noonan had been worrying about what she’d think of him when she learned he’d slept with Nan just hours after that kiss on the landing.
That last night’s secret might be safe for a while should have cheered him, but it didn’t, and exhaustion, held at bay until now, finally set in. Suddenly he could barely keep his feet, and every time he tossed another shovelful of snow his throbbing wrist felt ready to snap like a dry twig. It was early evening when they finally finished the driveway, and as they were crossing the intersection, a photographer from the Thomaston Guardian took their picture, dragging their shovels behind them like a couple of twelve-year-olds. At Ikey’s he went into the tiny, unheated washroom out back and there sank heavily onto the freezing toilet seat, too tired to rise, his mind scrubbed clean, his body numb. At some point he half realized something was going on out front, some flurry of activity in the store. Had he actually dozed off in there?
That must’ve been what happened, because when he returned everything in the store had changed. Sarah was there, and Lucy had taken her in his arms. Big Lou, at the register, had silent tears tracking down his cheeks. Tessa wasn’t scolding her husband for being sentimental either, and it was this, even more than Dec, shaking his head at him from across the room, that proved this was serious, whatever this was. His first guilty thought was that Sarah’d had an attack of conscience. She’d gotten home yesterday and realized that it hadn’t been “just a kiss” after all, but a terrible betrayal. Because of course she’d kissed Noonan back. He remembered now that her lips had parted, welcoming him. He was smiling, remembering that, when she noticed him standing there, and their eyes met. In that instant he knew he’d been wrong, that this wasn’t about him and had nothing to do with the kiss. Nor had Nan called her to report what he’d done. This was something much bigger, far worse.
“It don’t make no sense,” Big Lou said, causing Noonan’s heart to sink, because this was what he always said when something was horrible, or unfair, or unexpected, something that didn’t fit into his overall scheme of things or conform to how he thought the world should operate.
It was Tessa who finally took him aside. The night before on the South Shore, in the same blizzard that had buried Thomaston, Sarah’s mother’s new husband had lost control of their car and hit a tree. He, apparently, had died on impact. Her mother, who wasn’t wearing a seat belt, had been hurled throug
h the windshield. Her injuries, on a normal night, wouldn’t have been fatal, but the wreck hadn’t been discovered until morning, and by then she’d bled to death in the snow. They’d both been drunk. Sarah had been out when the call came, and when she returned home her father was feeding the pages of his novel into the fireplace. And so she’d known even before he told her.
A car pulled up at the curb, and its horn tooted just as Mrs. Lynch finished relating all this. It was his father, and Noonan knew why he was there. It was Sunday, his night to tend bar at Nell’s, and he should’ve been there an hour ago. “You go on,” Tessa said when he told her. “I’ll explain. We’ll take care of her.”
He knew they would. All the Lynches, even Dec, not just Lucy. He again recalled yesterday’s kiss and thinking that in the instant his lips had touched Sarah’s everything had changed, but saw now that he’d been wrong. It was, as Sarah had said, just a kiss. When she realized he was standing there and looked into his eyes, he’d seen that for Sarah the kiss had never even happened. She’d held his gaze only briefly, then turned away.
“MAX HAS YOU all prepped,” his father told him. “Don’t forget to thank her.”
Noonan said he wouldn’t. His father was clearly not happy with him, and who could blame him? He’d waited for him at the diner that morning for over an hour, before giving up and eating breakfast alone. Then, after Noonan had finally called to explain what had happened at the Beverlys’, he’d had to have Max drive him to the Borough to retrieve his car. Now he had to come fetch him for his shift. But arriving at Nell’s in the middle of an argument wouldn’t do. Willie could tell and would be upset, so they rode in silence all the way.
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