by Ron McLarty
It was snowing and cold, but as long as the oily Providence River was open, the Brown crew rows. They take rowing very seriously, which is good because of the timing of Bethany’s jump, but I think it’s stupid. But what do I know? I never went to college.
So it was snowing and pretty gray out. It takes a tremendous cold spell to freeze the Providence River because of the oil and dry-cleaning fluid and crap that has poured more or less relentlessly into it for two or three hundred years. This day, while it was cold and snowing, it wasn’t part of a prolonged cold and the crews were whipping through their workouts, beginning with a two-mile run from the campus on the east side to the boathouse a half mile up from the Red Bridge.
Bethany had a part-time job at Grace Church working in the thrift shop. The old ladies who volunteered there were members of our church, and the work was pretty easy, so my parents thought it might make a nice transitional situation for Bethany, either to a more real job later on or maybe even another try at college. She also took a dance class at the YMCA, and I think that later, the work she did in that class showed itself in the ever-growing intricacies of her poses. They became amazing, not only in the absolute stillness she made for herself but also in the astounding whirls and leaps. A madness almost forgivable.
My sister drove her little Renault Dauphine out of the church parking lot, through Weybosset Square, and headed home via the Washington Bridge. We never can be sure of what happened exactly, but it seems pretty likely that somewhere between the square and the bridge, Bethany’s voice got hold of the car and headed her away from the old Washington Bridge and toward the rust red of the Red Bridge. She parked on the shoulder of the road. The passenger door was open, but for no apparent reason, and Bethany could not give us one either. The trunk was also open. It was a front trunk, as the engine was in the rear of the car, and Bethany had taken off all her clothes and folded them neatly on the spare tire, as if part of the plan was to return to get them.
The coxswain on the Brown crew that was heading toward the bridge was named Sheila Rothenberg. It’s the coxswain’s job, I found out, to steer the boat and keep a single rhythm going by using a little megaphone. Racing boats aren’t set up for the rowers to turn around and glance at what direction they’re going in. The rowers’ purpose is to row in an enormous stretch and pull, and there is simply no time for worrying where the boat was headed. That was Sheila Rothenberg’s job. She was a junior at Pembroke, which was really Brown, but in those days it was considered classy to have a division of the college just for women. At least that’s what Sheila Rothenberg told me. Our family saw her maybe six times, because Mom and Pop were trying to figure out what happened. I thought it was enough that it had happened and they should leave it alone, but I surely liked this Sheila Rothenberg, who had the nicest breasts I had ever seen and never wore a bra.
Here it is. The crew had passed under the Washington Bridge, where they did a wide turn before they shot up and away from the Providence Harbor toward the Pawtucket line. These boats fly, and the training for races, which they were doing, consisted of all-out, full-blast rowing until the crew almost died. There were one-man crews, two-man crews, four-man crews, and eight-man crews. Sheila Rothenberg’s crew was eight-man, and, as I said, they were flying up the river. Sheila was concentrating on straightening out the heading by directing a stronger pull from her left rowers when she looked up and saw Bethany. At first she thought it was a statue, because she was about two hundred yards from the bridge and Bethany had gone into a pose. It must have been a good one, because Sheila could not see any movement at all except her hair blowing. My sister once tried to explain her poses to me. She said she was always trying to be completely still. More than completely, actually. Bethany told me that if she could stand so even her heart didn’t beat against her chest, everything, everywhere, would be all right. But, God, I hated her poses. I hated them.
When Sheila got about seventy-five yards out, she could see it wasn’t a statue but my naked sister, and before she could yell, “Stop rowing!” Bethany flew out from the metal girder at the top of the bridge and back-flopped into the icy, oily, polluted, horrible Providence River.
The clippings from the Providence Journal, December 28, 1962, say this:
Twenty-Year-Old in Death Leap Saved by Brown University Crew
A twenty-year-old East Providence woman attempted to take her life yesterday afternoon by leaping into the Providence River. Apparently the young woman had removed her clothing, climbed to the top of the old Red Bridge, and hurled herself into the freezing water. Luckily, a crew from Brown University’s rowing team pulled the woman to safety.
Then the paper quoted a couple of the guys and made them sound like heroes. The truth was, though, that the crew had hurt her worse than the fall. Sheila had trouble getting out her “stop” command, and when Bethany bobbed to the surface, the boat popped her in the head. It opened a huge gash over her right eye and broke her nose. I’m not saying it was their fault, because they did rescue her, more or less, but they became another link in the chain of nice people who, trying to help, changed my sister’s face.
My pop wanted all the facts. He became like a detective. He had to know when. When did she leave the Grace Church Thrift Shop? He had to know why. Why did she make that turn off Weybosset and over to the Red Bridge? All of it. Every night Pop would come home from the tankers, drive Mom to the Bradley Hospital, where Bethany had to go again, and from there start his rounds of investigation. He spoke to each crew member, to the cops at the scene, drove the route to the Red Bridge, parked his car, and walked to the spot where Bethany had started to climb. To say that his beautiful girl was crazy was not enough. There had to be more. There had to be an answer among the embarrassed college kids and the matter-of-fact cops.
Most of the time I went with him. I suppose I was worried about him, but I didn’t have to be. Being the detective got him up and moving and pumped a lot of energy into him. Mostly it was really good to see my pop like that. He was a guy who didn’t need much of anything—baseball, a few beers—and it was hard for him to be emotional, like it’s hard for me, but I think including me in the investigation was his way of saying he loved me and stuff.
The last time we talked to Sheila Rothenberg was at a coffee shop on Thayer Street in Providence. Thayer cuts the Brown campus in half, so it’s always packed with smart kids walking around. Sheila was very nice to Pop. She smiled and told him there really wasn’t anything to add and that she sure hoped Bethany would be okay. Sheila had on a gray T-shirt that said BRUINS. Her nipples, I remember, were kind of pointing up, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. In 1962 all the smart girls at high school wore ponytails, and it was wonderful to see one on this pretty college girl. She was smoking a Marlboro, and the filter had lipstick all over it. I didn’t smoke, but when my pop went to the bathroom, I asked her if I could have one. I put it behind my ear, the side that my pop couldn’t see, and looked thin and cool. She told me that she understood how concerned Pop was, but she had told him everything she possibly could. Six times. She wouldn’t be able to meet with him anymore and would I tell him later on? I said of course. Then I asked her if she’d go out with me. Sheila Rothenberg laughed so hard her coffee came out her nose.
9
Mom and Pop were buried in one grave in Swan Point. My pop had already had their names put on his parents’ big marble headstone, so all I had to do was order the dates. Count kept going on about how economical my pop always was, and how much sense it made to use one grave, and what a terrific location my folks had. I kept thinking how odd it was to see the three-hundred-pounder standing over my pop.
The service at Grace Church was nine-thirty that Thursday morning. Then we proceeded to Swan Point for the burial, and then everyone came over to Mom and Pop’s house for a sort of informal luncheon and jokefest. Aunt Paula had come to the house and woken me up around five so she could get ready. I had gotten very drunk after the last viewing of Mom and Pop, so I wasn�
�t much help, but Aunt Paula really didn’t need much. She’d brought a sliced ham and a sliced roast beef, and a big pile of potato salad, and deviled eggs, and mushroom salad, and macaroni salad, and Swedish meatballs, and pasta salad, and rye bread, and Jell-O with bananas, and her famous light brown butterscotch brownies with almonds instead of walnuts. I drank some beers so I could clear my head for the service.
The Count was master of ceremonies. He’d told everyone at the church and everyone at the cemetery that after the graveside prayers were recited, there was going to be a get-together at the house. Maybe sixty or seventy showed up. Count was beside himself.
“Great turnout,” he whispered to me. “Let me get a head count. This is great.”
Some members of the Socony local baseball club came. The catcher, Billy Pierce, and Junior Bobian, who was probably the most famous infielder in Rhode Island history. A division of the East Providence Little League was named for him. The Junior Bobian Division. Armando Fecabini came, too. He was my pop’s best friend, and it’s hard to even think about him, because in New England, and in our home, it was good, very good, to keep things inside. Your emotions were contained. That was why God gave us skin.
But Armando Fecabini’s emotions were uncontainable. He was desolate. I can see him sitting in front of my pop’s little TV in the kitchen watching old Bilko shows and wailing, while all around him people listened happily to the Count’s endless stream of Irish, Portuguese, Italian, black, Puerto Rican, Chinese, women-with-huge-breasts, men-with-twisted-dicks, and girls-that-could-suck-bowling-balls-through-garden-hose jokes.
“Can you get that guy outside?” the Count asked me quietly.
“He’s mourning.”
“I know he’s mourning. I’m mourning, too. Only I’m mourning quietly and not ruining it for everyone else. He’s upsetting your aunt.”
I knew Armando Fecabini, and his sobbing was not upsetting Aunt Paula. If Count didn’t upset her, nothing would. Count looked at me, then pointed to Armando.
“It’s too much,” he wheezed. Then he turned around to Mr. Almatian, my pop’s insurance guy.
“So they put this donkey schlong on this old man in Miami. . . .”
I took Armando outside onto the screen porch.
“How are you holding up?” he asked me.
I stood there, 279 pounds and three six-packs into the party with that damn pinch in the middle of my chest. I lit a smoke. “I’m really, really good.”
“I’m going to miss them.”
“I know.”
“Your father was the best. The best. I don’t know.”
We stood on the porch, like men do when they talk to each other, looking away at some imaginary horizon. I wondered where Bea and Norma were.
“What do you hear from your sister?”
“I don’t hear anything from my sister.”
When I went back to the party, Bea had arrived alone. Her eyes were still beet red. I went downstairs into the new part of my pop’s basement, where he had put linoleum tiles and knotty pine walls, and poured some vodka into my beer glass, because the beer was getting me kind of logy. I sat down on the old pink couch and stretched my legs and drank my drink. I smoked a little, and then I suppose I dozed off, because when I finally stood and went upstairs, most of the guests had gone except for Bea, Armando, Father Fred from Grace Episcopal, and the legendary Junior Bobian. It was almost six when the last one left. I helped clean up, looking out the sink window for signs of Norma. Then Aunt Paula and I loaded up their station wagon with her bowls of leftovers, and the Count piled in for the ride home.
“The big fifty-incher. The color console. Any plans for it?” Count grunted, getting comfortable behind the wheel.
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t have any plans.”
“Well, if you don’t want it, I’d take it.”
Aunt Paula got a little teary, and then they were gone. And the others were gone, too. Armando Fecabini was the last to leave, and I walked him to his car.
“Me and your father sat on the big rock where the Riverside Nursing Home is now. Then there was nothing, except it was high and you could look out over the beginning of the bay, and me and your father sat on the rock and watched the big hurricane come into East Providence. Riverside first. Our mothers used to push our carriages side by side. I remember stealing cigarettes, me and your father, out of your granddad’s shirt pocket.”
He sat in his big old boat of a car and rubbed his eyes.
“Well . . .” he said.
“Better hook up your safety belt.”
“Yeah. I’m never gonna go anywhere without my belt hooked up.”
I walked down the asphalt driveway to the back porch. “Smithy,” Norma called, rolling out of her driveway, into the street, and into my driveway.
“Hi, Norma.”
“Everybody leave?”
“Yes.”
“I waited until everybody left. Is that okay?”
“Sure.”
“I brought the mail,” she said, nodding to her lap and two weeks’ worth of Mom and Pop’s mail.
“Thanks. Do you . . . want to . . . eat something?”
“Like what?”
“There’s lots left. Salads and meat and stuff.”
I was still a little drunk, and I was worried that my breath smelled old and stale, so I kept brushing at my mouth. Norma looked at the steps onto the porch.
“I don’t let people lift me and my chair. I’ve got my house arranged so I don’t need any help.”
“I didn’t . . .”
“Ramps and pulleys. I do for myself.”
“I could . . . bring something outside. I could . . .”
“I’d let you lift me onto the porch, Smithy.”
I suppose I could have pulled her up the stairs, but I was drunk and stupidly bent down and lifted her, chair and all, in a kind of aluminum embrace. I pushed open the screen door with my butt and swung Norma Mulvey onto the porch. It was filled with chairs, and all of Mom’s plants were set in a far corner, where Aunt Paula felt they would get sun and be easier for me to care for.
I stood for a moment, maybe longer than a moment, with my arms full of Norma and her chair. Somewhere across the backyards of the side street, a dog barked. I remembered our embrace. I realized that Norma was looking right at my fat face, and I thought of my breath and quickly put her down.
“The porch,” she sighed. “I remember helping Pop put the porch on. He gave me a pencil to stick behind my ear for measuring, and he gave me a piece of wood, a hammer and nails, and said, ‘Hammer those in, Norma.’ And when I finished, he’d give me another piece of wood and more nails.”
“I remember,” I lied.
“Your mother would put ice cubes in the salad, and sometimes we’d sit out here and have hot dogs and beans and salad and listen to the Red Sox.”
I needed to brush my teeth. My old breath was burning me.
“Maybe they’re playing now,” I said.
“You think so?”
I went into the house. When I turned the corner and was out of Norma’s sight, I ran upstairs and brushed. I ran back downstairs, grabbed Pop’s radio off the kitchen table, and plugged it in to the porch outlet.
“I follow the Sox,” Norma said, rolling to where I fiddled with the dial. “I don’t know if they’re on tonight. Try 620.”
I could barely hear her, because my heart was pounding from running up the stairs, but I got 620, and the game was on. Norma smiled and backed up a foot, as if that would allow her better listening. It was the top of the eighth inning, an afternoon game that ran into the night. Their afternoon games often ran into the night. It’s not a put-down to say our Sox have been in a stall, more or less, since 1919.
“Romero takes forever on the mound,” Norma said between pitches. “He adds forty minutes to a game. Clemens just throws. One, two, three. I love Clemens.”
We listened for a minute. I wasn’t the fan I should have been. I knew enough to talk t
o my pop about the Sox, but after some beers it’s all the same. I played the game, too, for Pop, I suppose, but as a distraction mostly, and I was pretty good for a high-school beanpole. I had this real deceptive throw from third base, which was my position. I had the look of a kid who couldn’t reach first, but I had real zing on the seed.
“One of the things I’d like to do is go to Fenway and see a game in person. I had a chance to go last year, with the architectural company I was doing some drafting for, but . . . I don’t know. I figured it would be a big hassle for them and ruin their Sunday.”
“You should have gone, Norma.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. They wouldn’t have invited you if they didn’t want you to go.”
“I don’t know.”
We sat still for a while and listened to the play-by-play and the crowd murmuring in the background.
“After a while nobody came, Smithy.”
I looked at Norma sitting in her chair next to me, looking straight at the radio. Ellis Burks popped to third.
“Sometimes I’d look out the window there—the one you can see from the porch, with the venetian blinds—and I’d see Pop sitting here listening, and I wish he would have come and got me.”
Boggs was still with them then. They all loved him, and they all hated him. The announcer described his at-bat. I couldn’t take my eyes off Norma. She had on a jogging suit with a huge sweatshirt and hood that hung off her neck and over the back of the chair. Her lips were a little apart, and I could see her teeth.