“Agreed. But he was probably sick of her commie relatives getting all her attention. And you know that without a fresh scandal and someone to tell it to, he’d have died. He encountered Eileen Mackey– more than encountered as she told it. And being who he was, he couldn’t keep a secret.
“After you moved away, I saw him a lot. He let me know I was his grandson. There’s a play, possibly a movie here. If somebody with financing was interested, you could write it. I could play our grandfather.”
When Eddie talked about this, I ignored him, refused to discuss his idea for a drama about my family that I hardly ever saw. Eddie took to calling us cousins. “You two getting your incest zest on?” Suze asked.
He had a nice review in an Off-Broadway play set in Irish Hell’s Kitchen. Then, one day he came home looking stunned.
“I got a part in this TV movie that’s shooting in New York. I play a psycho. No lines, just crazy face and screen time.”
As I recall, I congratulated him. But it ground my insides. He was much better at what he did than I was at whatever I was doing. We mostly weren’t speaking by the time another call came and he went out to Hollywood.
Just before he left, I dreamed that my grandfather looked down with a serious face I’d never seen, and spoke to a maybe nine-year-old Eddie who looked up at him wide-eyed. “A joke or a song will win you a smile and a kiss. But send someone a dream like this one I’m showing you and it will be with them forever.”
I remembered the dream when I awoke, and as was promised it’s been with me ever since. When I opened my eyes, Eddie was there, smiling and ready to leave. For some time I’d wanted him gone but suddenly I didn’t want that. On parting, he said, “I’ve found no others like us.”
Part Four: Dirty Old Town, I Want You Back
Over the years, Eddie Mackey became Ed Mack, had a fine career as a character actor in movies, played killers with a touch of poetry, cops with faulty consciences.
He did stage work, made it a point to return to New York every couple of years. Eddie would mention the script and I’d ignore him.
On a visit in the ’90’s, his marriage to the actress Terri Javier had gone bust when her career eclipsed his, and I’d broken up with a club owner who loved a younger guy.
“Nothing else we’ve tried works,” he said. “But we could be brothers.” I smiled and found a bit of comfort there.
A few years ago, we had a great nostalgic afternoon at an outdoor café on Central Park. He told me, “Sometimes in LA, I’ll get a flash of light in the corner of my eye and I turn and catch a glimpse of your grandmother.”
And I said, “My mother told me that my grandmother once said that she’d married her husband for his dreams and nothing more.”
◉ ◉ ◉
A few weeks ago, Ed announced he’d be back in town. The e-mail this morning, after his dream, begged me to attend an event in the evening.
It started at seven with me seated in a theater at Transvision Cable’s Columbus Circle offices. This was a press event staged for New York’s publicity machine. The occasion was the third-season rollout of the Emmy Award-winning series Dirty Old Town.
As you’ve doubtless seen or heard, DOT spins a fictional version of Boston crime a couple of generations back. The world is one of aging neighborhoods, corrupt cops, the code of silence, and the rise of Whitey Bulger.
Within a few episodes of its initial season, DOT returned to me the city in which I grew up. I watch it alone because it makes me cry.
In front of a big screen, a panel of directors, actors, producers, cameramen, and techies sat facing us. The former Eddie Mackey was at the far end of the row.
I attempted to catch his eye but couldn’t. Using my magic didn’t feel appropriate.
On the screen, MTA cars rattled along elevated tracks in a landscape of three-decker houses. A producer described the pains that went into bringing elevated trains and the old low-rise“ city skyline back to life through the miracle of computer animation.
Location scouts talked about finding just the right corner store to use as the front for a numbers parlor. A stretch of shore in New Jersey became Revere Beach in its full, seamy glory.
We viewed dingy apartments and rainy shots of Dorchester Boulevard dolled up with old bar signs and seventies cars. There were snowy views of everything from the State House to the dog track at Wonderland. “No need to fake the snow,” a director testified.
The visuals ended with a guy shot and falling headfirst over the wooden railing of a third-floor porch.
Most of the panel had California sheen. Eddie was also well turned out, but his dented nose and his haircut would not have looked incongruous back in our Boston. His eyes were alive but a bit remote. They never focused on me.
The producer introduced the panel in turn. Each had a little something to say about their place in the series. Eddie came last despite his Golden Globe Award.
When the producerit came to him, he said, “Last and foremost, our very own Ed Mack who as Jack Scanty, ‘The Repairman,’ takes the blood and tears of a city and turns them into leprechaun gold.”
The Repairman was on-screen in a scene from the first episode of the upcoming season. It was set in a mid-20th-century den: sports trophies on shelves, a stag’s head on the wall along with photos of boxers, racehorses, and naked ladies. A man, presumably the late owner, sat pitched forward in a swivel chair. His face was flat on a desk blotter, which had a dark, growing stain.
Wearing gloves, Scanty flipped the man’s hand off the phone he’d reached for. “What misunderstanding made him think he could make a call?” Scanty asked someone unseen. That absence allowed Eddie to make each viewer feel they were the one being addressed.
The Repairman went through drawers, pulled out an envelope, and said, “Jesus! With a wad like this, I’d have put distance between myself and the scene of my felonies.”
He tossed the envelope to the unseen accomplice and went back to rifling the desk. The actor famously improvised his soliloquies. Scanty spoke pure Boston with the slightest suggestion of a brogue.
He said, “My early life got saved by a mug so Irish, no one in the city could identify me from among the other ten thousand young Micks up to no good and wearing the same face I sported.
I was slick, I was hard, I was so dumb I’m amazed I’m still alive.” He shrugged, half-smiled, and was working on the combination lock of a safe as the scene ended.
Hardened media members broke into applause.
The scene roused my nostalgia in a couple of ways. The den reminded me of a certain Beacon Hill sugar daddy. And Eddie sounded a bit like my grandfather.
The actor stood and said to the audience, “Let me tell you a little story.” I sat stunned as he launched into a McGabber I wrote years ago and forgot.
“I lived in the D Street Projects in South Boston right at the start. A few years later was a different story, but at first it had its share of cops and firemen and GI’s back from the war.
“My Uncle Bill, the cop, lived there with his wife, over near Saint Peter’s Church, and they were expecting their first kid. One day when maybe my parents were busy, I was sent over to hang around with my Aunt Claire. Uncle Bill came home in uniform for lunch and brought his partner Kelly with him.
“My uncle went into the kitchen and was talking to my aunt. I was in the living room and they were speaking in whispers, arguing. Probably it was stuff I shouldn’t have had to hear. Kelly, who was this big, beefy guy with a constant half-smile, maybe thought to distract me. He was sitting on the couch and had taken off his belt and holster, laid them beside him. I stared wide-eyed and he took the police special out and nodded. I came forward and he handed it to me butt-first. I held it with both hands but I was just six years old and the weight carried my arms down.
“The barrel was pointed at the floor and I was ready to drop it when
Uncle Bill came in with two bottles of Narragansett. ‘You emptied it, right?’ he asked. Kelly slapped his forehead and my uncle relieved me of the gun, looked back to see if my aunt had caught any of this.
“If she had, no word of this was said and it was never referred to again. In retrospect, this could have been an exciting day for Mrs. Callahan downstairs if I’d dropped the piece and a bullet had gone through her ceiling.”
There was some laughter and applause and seemingly for the first time, Eddie spotted me, came down off the stage, and took my arm. As I stood, he said, “Those words come from this cousin of mine, a great writer who’s working on a project with me.” People looked my way. The producer shook my hand briefly.
We descended in a crowded elevator. Passengers gave sidelong glanced at Ed Mack. I thought of the sleep I’d lost and the way he’d appropriated my story.
“Bill was my uncle,” I said. “Did you ever meet him?” Hearing myself, I sounded like I was six.
Looking a bit amused, Eddie said. “I know a place right around the corner.”
The time of dark Manhattan bars where guys got loaded and sad is gone. We settled into a nicely lit, quiet place. Eddie ordered a Jameson and water, I got an ice tea.
A couple of patrons were clearly trying to remember why he looked so familiar. The bartender whispered the reason. Ed Mack pretended to ignore all that.
Smiling like a bully he murmured, “I keep thinking of you walking to school in that yellow raincoat.”
That dream had violated an unspoken truce: we didn’t impose our magic on each other. He was taunting me and I was pissed enough to whisper my grandmother’s invocation.
Inside him, I found a jumble of memories along with heavy doses of anger and fear. At the center of all this, I saw a doctor diagnose him with stomach cancer. Through Ed’s eyes, I watched my expression change from anger to shock. I broke the connection between us.
“I’m too big a coward to actually say the C word,” he said and looked ashamed. “Please keep this to yourself. The producers of Dirty Old Town are about to back the movie. Our grandfather is a part you were born to write and I was born to play.”
Eddie wasn’t through with me. Suddenly I saw the two of us as kids on a crowded Subway platform. A great roar came out of the tunnel and a giant gold chariot pulled by tigers appeared. Our grandfather in his motorman cap was in the driver’s seat. The crowd parted to let us climb aboard and with a crack of the whip, off we went.
“Please say you’ll help me,” he asked. Stunned, I nodded. “Sweet dreams to us both,” he said and departed before I could speak.
Part Five: “The Last McGabber.”
“With dreams and disease, Eddie won me over. In the next few weeks, he sent shots of twentieth-century Irish Boston. It was black and white parades, first communions, barrooms, and wakes. Surprised at how much I missed a world of which I’d seen nothing more than parting glances, I wrapped a story line around my grandparents and two small boys in 1950 South Boston and threw in flashbacks.
“I got clips of the film as it was shot and saw Ed Mack as our grandfather in all his glory and wearing a hat as no one else could.
“We talked often by phone. ‘We may be disgusting old men but in our youth we were touched by magic,’ he told me. ‘I doubt if there will be any more like us when we go.’ And the voice was so close to our grandfather’s that I shivered.
“He came to New York after shooting was finished and there was talk of taking the film to Sundance and other festivals. It was a lovely spring day and we walked through the streets with him speaking in a brogue, waving a walking stick and greeting everyone who passed us. A daycare center’s-worth of small children went by and half of them turned and tried to follow Eddie.
“He rounded a corner and staggered. I caught him before he could fall. Getting him to a bench and then into a cab was easy. There was nothing to him. ‘You’re not taking care of yourself at all,”’ I said.
“‘I was afraid of getting well,” he told me. “My being sick is the only thing I’ve ever done that hasn’t made you loathe me.”
“He laughed when I cried. And then we switched roles. It was the last time we met.”
Last night I told Suze that I was calling his eulogy “The Last McGabber.” And she said, “There will always be another one.”
This morning, she just called to say the car that will take us to Kennedy Airport en route to L.A. will be downstairs in five minutes.
I’ve put a copy of this McGabber in my luggage. I stick another one in my jacket pocket and have one to give to Suze.
All this, the eulogy, the flight, Eddie Mackey’s Memorial Service, is done to dim my awareness that for the first time since I was five, I’m alone without magic in this world.
END
Carnival Nine
Caroline M. Yoachim
One night, when I was winding down to sleep, I asked Papa, “How come I don’t get the same number of turns every day?”
“Sometimes the maker turns your key more, and sometimes less, but you can never have more than your mainspring will hold. You’re lucky, Zee, you have a good mainspring.” He sounded a little wistful when he said it. He never got as many turns as I did, and he used most of them to do boring grown-up things.
“Take me to the zoo tomorrow?” The zoo on the far side of the closet had lions that did backflips and elephants that balanced on brightly colored balls.
“I have to take Granny and Gramps to the mechanic to clean the rust off their gears.”
Papa never had any turns to spare for outings and adventures, which was sad. I opened my mouth to say so, but the whir of my gears slowed to where I could hear each click, and I closed my mouth so it wouldn’t hang open while I slept.
◉ ◉ ◉
What Papa said was true. I have a good mainspring. Sometimes I got thirty turns, and sometimes forty-six. Today, on this glorious summer day, I got fifty-two. I’d never met anyone else whose spring could hold so many turns as that, and I was bursting with energy.
Papa didn’t notice how wound up I was. “Granny has a tune-up this morning, and Gramps is getting a new mustache. If you untangle the thread for me, you can use the rest of your turns to play.”
“But—”
“Always work first, so you don’t run out of turns.” His legs were stiff and he swayed as he walked along the wide wood plank that led out from our closet. He crossed the train tracks and disappeared into the shadow of the maker’s workbench. Tonight, when he came back from his errands, he’d bring a scrap of fabric or a bit of thread. Papa sewed our clothes from whatever scraps the maker dropped.
The whir of his gears faded into silence, and I tried to untangle the thread. It was a tedious chore. The delicate motion of picking up a single brightly-colored strand was difficult on a tight spring. A train came clacking along the track, and with it the lively music of the carnival. Papa had settled down here in Closet City, but Mama was a carnie. Based on the stories Papa told, sneaking out to the carnival would be a good adventure. Clearly I was meant to go—the carnival had arrived on a day when I had more turns than I’d ever had before. I gathered up my prettiest buttons and skipped over to the brightly painted train cars.
It was early, and the carnival had just arrived, but a crowd had already formed. Everyone clicked and whirred as they hurried to see the show. The carnies were busy too, unfolding train cars into platforms and putting up rides and games and ropes for the acrobats.
I passed a booth selling scented gear oil and another filled with ornate keys. I wondered if the maker could wind as well with those as with the simple silver one that protruded from my back. A face-painter with an extra pair of arms was painting two different customers at once, touching up the faded paint of their facial features and adding festive swirls of green and blue and purple. “Two kinds of paint,” the painter called to me, “the swir
ls will wash right off with soap.”
It was meant to be a reassurance, but it backfired—the trip from the closet to the bathroom took seven turns each way, so soap was hard to come by. Papa would be angry if I came home painted.
“Catch two matching fish and win a prize!” a carnie called. He was an odd assemblage of parts, with one small brown arm and one bulky white one. His legs were slightly different lengths, and his ceramic face was crisscrossed with scratch marks. He held out a long pole with a tiny net on the end, a net barely big enough to hold a single fish.
“Don’t they all match?” I leaned over the tub of water to study the orange fish. They buzzed quietly and some mechanism propelled them forward and sent out streams of bubbles behind them.
The man dipped the net into the water and caught one of the fish. He flipped open a panel on its belly, and revealed a number—four. “The fish are numbered one through ten, and you’ll get to pick three. Any two of ‘em match and you win!”
I eyed the prizes—an assortment of miniature animals, mostly cats, all with tiny golden keys. Keys so small that even I could turn them, so there’d be no need to wait each night for the maker to wind them up.
“Take these buttons in trade?”
The man laughed. “No, but if you didn’t buy any tickets I’ll let you work for a play—a turn for a turn, as they say.”
Unlike Papa, he could see how tight I was wound, and he put me to work hauling boxes from his platform to a car on the far end of the train. The work was satisfying, and it let me gawk at the rest of the carnival. When I was done, he handed me the net. “Any three fish that catch your fancy. Good luck!”
The net was long and hard to handle, but I dipped it into the water. It came up empty and dripping. Fishing was not as easy as the man had made it look. I tried again, and this time brought up a fish that whirred loudly as it came out of the water. The man pushed in a pin to stop the gears and flipped open a panel to reveal the number 8.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2019 Page 28