by Lisa Jackson
As Daegan grew, he understood more about his position in the world—or his lack of it. His father came and went in the dark hours of the night and seemed a mystery to Daegan. Though his mother insisted that Frank Sullivan was a wonderful man, a good provider, and handsome as the day was long, Daegan didn’t believe her. Too often after Frank had spent several hours in her bedroom, she’d ended up crying as he left and every so often Daegan noticed bruises on her arms and neck. Once she even had a black eye, but she didn’t blame it on Frank Sullivan. Instead she claimed she’d been clumsy and bumped into a door. Daegan didn’t believe her.
Out of a sense of morbid curiosity, Daegan wanted to know more about his father and his family, Frank’s legitimate children. Daegan spent hours watching the Lincolns, Mercedes, and Rolls Royces drop off their precious cargo at the private school only a few blocks away. Though both institutions were overseen by the same bishop, there was a definite line drawn between the haves and the have-nots, the factory owners and the workers. Nowhere was the social chasm more visible than the stoplight between St. Mark’s Elementary School and Our Lady of Sorrows, a newer brick building built a little higher on the hill, closer to the church and therefore, Daegan reasoned, closer to God. Which was all just as well, he decided, as the years clicked by, because the farther he was from God, the better.
On some Sundays as the church bells chimed, he sneaked up to Our Lady of Sorrows, climbed a big elm tree that shaded the parking lot, and viewed the chauffeured car as it rolled to the front entrance. Daegan always hoped for a glimpse of his father—the man who never saw his mother in the light of day, a tall man with broad shoulders, stiff spine, and copper-colored hair. A man who had never, not even in his late-night visits, ever once slid more than a disgusted glance in Daegan’s direction.
His children—real children—were always with him as was his wife, a small woman with a flat chest and lines around her mouth that suggested she didn’t smile often. Maureen was never without a wide-brimmed hat that shaded her face, dark glasses to hide her eyes, and a fur coat wrapped around her slim figure. Mama said Maureen Sullivan drank all the time and could barely sober up to stumble into the church on Sunday mornings.
The kids, two girls and a boy, looked more like their mother, all blond and pale, than Frank, whose complexion, Mama said, reminded her of Tony Curtis. Frank’s other children, with their polished shoes and expensive clothes, were serious, never talking or laughing together. As the family walked along the sidewalk to the church, they didn’t touch or even speak, but at the doorstep, with a quick, sharp command from Maureen, Frank’s legitimate children linked fingers and Frank, frowning distastefully, took Maureen’s gloved hand in his without uttering a word.
Daegan wanted to puke. So fake. The girls, Alicia and Bonnie, wore perfect dresses with matching hats, and Frank’s boy, Collin, was always dressed up in little suits and bow ties. Daegan told himself he was glad he wasn’t one of Frank’s real children, glad he didn’t have to have a woman like that bossing him around, glad he didn’t have to wear a stupid-looking tie and prim little suit…but he would have liked just one ride in the shiny car. Just one.
Once, when Frank paused to stub out his cigarette beneath the elm, Daegan screwed up the courage to spit on him, hitting him square on the top of his oiled head. Hardly daring to breathe, Daegan then cowered behind the elm’s thick trunk.
“Damn birds,” Frank growled as Daegan smothered a smile and prayed to God he wouldn’t be seen. He hazarded a peek and grinned to himself as Frank wiped his shiny hair with a monogrammed handkerchief. Hucking spittle at Frank was as close to communicating with his father as Daegan had ever come.
Each time Frank planned a visit, Daegan was warned by his mother to always feign sleep, never speak to Mr. Sullivan, and never, ever open the bedroom door, no matter what he heard.
He hadn’t been able to stop, though, not when he’d heard his mother moaning and crying one night, whimpering as if she were in excruciating pain. Biting his lip to fight his cowardice, Daegan had climbed off the sleeper sofa, walked boldly across the tile floor, and pounded on the locked door. All noise, crying, sniffing, growling, and squeaking of the mattress, suddenly stopped. The apartment became immediately still except for the constant drip of the kitchen faucet. Daegan’s knuckles hurt and he was about to reach for the handle of the door when he heard a round of obscenities.
Daegan froze.
“Dumb little shit,” Frank sputtered, the bed making noise again. “I guess it’s time to teach that kid a lesson.”
“Frank, no—” his mother cried. “He’s just worried about me. That’s all.”
“Well, he’s bothering the hell out of me.”
“He’s just a little boy.” Then more loudly, “Daegan, honey, babycakes, you go back to bed. Everything’s okay. Go on, now.”
Daegan could barely swallow, his mouth was so dry. If he were brave, truly brave, he would open the door and try and protect his mama from whatever Frank was doing to her.
“I hate him lurking around—spying on us, looking at us with those damned eyes. He needs to know how to behave, and for Christ’s sake, don’t call him anything so sissy as babycakes. You want him to grow up into some kind of fag?” There was a jingle of keys and buckles and Daegan imagined his father, with his bulging arm muscles, reaching for his belt.
“No!” Mary Ellen whispered frantically. “Oh, Frank, no—please, don’t hit him, please—”
Daegan’s throat turned to sand but he didn’t give up his vigil and pounded again. “Mama?” he croaked.
“Dumb little bastard. I think it’s time he learned who his father is—how I should be treated, that I pay for that goddamned school he goes to and this shithole of an apartment!”
“No, no, no!” She was panicking, her voice breathy. “Come on, honey, he’s quit pounding on the door, hasn’t he? He’s probably already asleep.” Daegan, his mouth tasting foul, backed slowly away. “Here, let me make you feel better,” she said in a voice that was low and whispery—an ugly voice Daegan didn’t want to think of as belonging to his mother. It made her sound nasty. “That’s better, baby. Come on, I’ll make you feel good.” Again the sound of buckles jangling.
There was silence for a heart-stopping moment. The drip continued. Outside a cat cried, then the hoarse whisper of Frank’s voice. “Sweet Jesus,” he said. “You know how to do it, don’t you? Damn, but you’re good. I don’t think I can hold back—oh, kitten, oh God.” A long slow groan followed, almost as if Frank Sullivan were in some kind of severe, but ecstatic pain. “What you do to me…oooh…that’s it. More, more, more. Take more. That’s it, baby. Keep doin’ me. That’s iiiiit.”
The back of Daegan’s legs collided with the sofa. His jaw worked. Squeezing his eyes shut until they hurt, he fought the hot tears that burned against his eyelids. He should do something, anything to save her from having to act this way. Then it hit him. His mother was doing it for him. Because she loved him. How many times had she told him that she was saving her money so that he could have a better life, so that he wouldn’t have to work twelve-hour days huddled over a sewing machine doing piecework at a big factory like she did—not that he would, of course. The men didn’t sew. They had higher-paying jobs filling boxes, stacking crates, loading trucks, but he—Daegan O’Rourke—would have better because she willed it so. He was, after all, Frank Sullivan’s son. The blood flowing through his veins was a wealthy shade of blue.
Shaking, Daegan crawled back to the fold-down couch that served as his bed. Above the cushions a picture of John F. Kennedy was hung reverently next to a portrait of the Virgin Mary with her arms spread wide, a halo glowing around her head.
Daegan huddled under the blanket, his head pushed into the pillow as he tried to block out the sounds of rutting from the bedroom. Fists clenched, he concentrated on the noises of the city—horns blaring, tires spinning, people laughing and yelling from the tavern beneath their apartment, the low belch of a foghorn from a ship in the
harbor, the scratch of mice in the walls, anything, anything but the moans of pleasure and pain that erupted from the bedroom.
Feeling like a coward, he tried to sleep and woke up later to hear his mother pouring a drink. They—his parents—were standing in the kitchen in the dark, the lights of the city allowing enough illumination so that Daegan, even through nearly closed eyes, could watch them.
Frank was standing behind her, his head was bowed into her shoulder, his arms firmly around her waist, pulling her buttocks tight against him. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier—about the boy.”
Never did Frank refer to him by name.
“If only you’d love him.” Her voice had that forlorn, world-weary tone Daegan had come to hate.
“I’ve tried to, Mary Ellen, really I have. But he’s so different from my other kids. I’m not much good with them, either.”
“But Daegan’s special.”
“Probably. So are the others. Christ. It’s all so goddamned complicated.”
She twisted in his arms and handed him the drink. “He needs a father, Frank.”
“I know, I know, kitten, but it can’t be me.”
“He’s your flesh and blood.”
“So you say.”
“You know it. He looks just like you.” A pause. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips. “You love me, don’t you?” she wheedled and there was a weighty pause that nearly broke Daegan’s heart.
“You know I do.”
“Let Daegan know you care.”
“I—” He slid a glance over at the divan and Daegan squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t know how.”
“But you know what it’s like. Your father—”
“Was a self-centered son of a bitch. We addressed him as sir; he never smiled. Since I was third in line, I didn’t count much—not even when William was killed. He sent me to boarding school at six and in the summers I was away at camp.”
“So you know how it feels to be ignored by your father.”
“Listen, baby,” he said gently and Daegan chanced opening one eye a crack. “You have to understand something. No matter what I feel about you—or the kid—nothing’s ever gonna change.” He kissed her on the neck and shoulders before sliding the strap of her negligee downward and pressing his lips to the top of her breast.
Daegan nearly threw up. Why did she let him touch her that way? Why?
“I want you to marry me, Frank.”
“I’m already married, you know that.”
“Divorce her.”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t love her.” Another breathless, silent heartbeat.
“What’s love got to do with marriage?”
“Frank, please—”
“She’d take me to the cleaners, Mary Ellen.”
“You’d still be rich and we could be together.”
“You just don’t get it, do you? This”—he motioned broadly to the apartment and Daegan—“isn’t what it’s all about.” He glanced around the dingy room and scowled. “I’ll get you a better place.”
“I don’t want a better place. I want you.”
“Oh, baby, quit dreaming, would ya? I’ll try to be nicer to the boy, get you into a bigger apartment, but I’ll never divorce Maureen.”
“But I love you.” There were tears in her voice, and Daegan cringed.
“That’s why I keep coming back.”
“But you sleep with her.”
“Not much. I already told you, we have separate bedrooms. Most of the time her door is locked.”
“And when it isn’t?”
“Then I go to her. She’s cold as a fish, just lays there like a statue, her legs spread, her eyes shut, her mouth turned down at the corners, but she thinks it’s her duty to sleep with me once in a while. I don’t really get it, but I do it.”
“I wish you never touched her!”
“Do you? Why don’t you show me how much?”
She giggled. “Again?”
“That’s why I come here, baby.” Lifting her off her feet, Frank carried her into the bedroom and kicked the door shut.
Daegan hated the nights his father came visiting, detested feigning sleep at the sound of Frank Sullivan’s heavy tread and the smell of smoke, whiskey, and cologne that followed the big brute of a man into the apartment.
Daegan always knew when Frank was coming over. The apartment was cleaner than usual, and he was told to do his homework quickly and eat a hurried meal of macaroni and cheese and creamed corn while his mother spent hours getting ready, listening to Frank Sinatra records, wearing her best dress, nylon stockings with seams up the back—the kind Frank liked—and heels that elevated her four or five inches. She washed and set her red hair, then worked feverishly plucking her eyebrows, and applying foundation, rouge, lipstick, and God only knew what else from a dozen jars and tubes.
When her hair was combed just right and her earrings in place, she splashed perfume over her neck and shoulders, all because Frank was coming over to spend a few lousy hours in her bedroom humping her and drinking whiskey before leaving as quickly as he’d come, slinking down the stairs and driving off in his Jaguar to the three-storied house on the hill to his wife and real children.
His mother didn’t like Frank’s wife. “Maureen Smythe—a snob, let me tell you. Oh, she gave Frank a son, but the boy’s not strong and handsome like you—takes after her side just like those two snot-nosed daughters with pale skin and pinched faces. But me…I gave him a beautiful son who looks like him,” she’d said proudly despite the tears standing in her eyes. “A strong, beautiful, good son.”
Daegan hated it when she called him beautiful, hated it even worse when she reminded him that he was Frank Sullivan’s bastard. He wasn’t even sure being good was all it was cracked up to be. Being good was a helluva lot of trouble and not much fun.
By the time Daegan was in the seventh grade, Lucas Bennett was already shoplifting records from the local store and some of the kids were making out. Sandy Kavenaugh, a tenth grader who lived in a dingy apartment on the other side of the alley, bragged that he’d gotten all the way to third base with Kristy Manning, but then the girls always fell for Kavenaugh.
It didn’t take long for Daegan to discover that walking on the right side of the law wasn’t all that exciting.
At eleven, he started stealing cigarettes and smoking them with his buddies in the littered baseball field behind St. Mark’s. By the time he was twelve, he was swiping hubcaps while carousing at night and had already sampled from the priest’s stock of wine in the sacristy when, as an altar boy, he was supposed to be cleaning up after service. The temptation of sin was opening to him as he reached adolescence and he was embracing every minute of it.
During lunch break in the eighth grade, he was lucky enough to slip into the cloak room with Tracy Hancock—a tenth-grade girl with pillowy breasts as big as cantaloupes. He’d kissed her with his open mouth, felt her lips part eagerly, and had thrilled when his tongue had touched hers. She’d nearly sucked it out of his mouth and he wondered how much farther she would go. He took a chance and she started breathing fast and didn’t slap his hands away when he felt her up, his fumbling fingers reaching into her stitched cotton bra and grazing soft, willing flesh. Her nipples felt like warm little buttons and his cock was so hard it ached as it strained against his fly. He couldn’t think, just moved with her, and his mind was blazing with the images he’d seen in a tattered copy of Playboy that Sam Crosby kept hidden in his backpack and loaned out for a quarter a night.
Tracy panted in his ear.
He pushed up her sweater and tore at the buttons of her blouse, anxiously shoving the white fabric away with his sweaty hands so that he could look at her breasts—and they promised to live up to their reputation. Pale skin with a faint webbing of blue veins just beneath the surface. Her face was red, her mouth open, her eyes glazed as he rubbed a hand right over her bra. “More,” she whispered anxiously, writhing on the floo
r.
He was afraid he might come in his slacks. Impulsively he’d kissed her collarbone and she moaned, her legs wrapping around his middle. Then, with thick fingers, he unlatched her bra and saw the famous Hancock boobs in all their glory. Huge and white, with little pink nipples that stood proudly at attention. Heaven. He was in heaven. She arched upward, inviting him to touch her even more, proud of the biggest bra size in all of St Mark’s.
They felt so good. They filled up his hands as he rubbed. “Good, that’s good,” she whispered from the back of her throat. So hard he felt like he was about to explode, he started kissing her and tasting her and licking at her nipples. With a soft moan, she started moving her hips against him, practically begging for it as he suckled. His blood was pounding in his ears, his crotch aching. Oh, God, were they going to do it? Right here in the cloak room with nuns in the lower hallway and pictures of Jesus hung near the door?
He reached under the waistband of her skirt, felt her shiver in anticipation, and touched a warmth so divine he thought he might die and go to heaven. Tracy’s fingers worked at his fly. Oh, God, oh, God, oh—the sound of leather scraping against wood caught his attention. Footsteps. Coming fast and hard. Tracy didn’t seem to notice, she was sprawled beneath him, her legs in knee-high stockings spread wide. Instinctively, he yanked her sweater down, hiding her tits. There was a sharp, judgmental gasp as the hangers and coats parted with a whoosh.