Pittsburgh Noir

by Kathleen George

  But the big excitement for us was hearing Malcolm tell about his old Aunt Sally and her dog. The old lady lived in Troy Hill but kept up with the news of the neighborhood because she still had distant relatives living at the top of the street. Her family had lived there since it was known as Allegheny City, and in fact she still owned the building the bar occupied and the house next door that she rented out to a welfare family. That always graveled Malcolm, he’d go on for a good hour about how the house next door was going practically rent free to that family on the roll when he could get three or four times more for it if he had any say about it. Also, he lived upstairs over the bar, and the people renting the house next door were a noisy bunch with that girl of theirs bringing men back to sit on their stoop at all hours. It was going shabby, no argument about it, and becoming an eyesore for the neighborhood.

  “‘Look at that dawg. That dawg is dead, Aunt Sally,’” he told us he’d say to the old lady, hoping she’d get the idea for herself. She was close to the dog, about all she cared about. He’d visit her every Sunday, but more than a social call, he’d come to check out her breathing since she was connected to some oxygen. “‘Everything connected okay?’ I ask her, sometimes I turn up a valve to make her eyes pop. It can’t be too much longer,” he’d say like he was holding his breath under water and then pour himself a shot of the Old Overholt he kept mostly for himself. None of us favored the whiskey, as one shot nearly equaled the cost of three Rocks, and then its sipping time was short.

  He’d bring his aunt little gifts he’d somehow collected at the bar. One time he brought her a package of fruit jellies that was a promotion from the beer distributor, but they weren’t a success as they got stuck in her dentures and her mouth almost had to be pried apart. That was a good laugh. “Some sight, I tell you,” Malcolm said, adding fuel to our amusement. He figured he was her closest relative, and she had no one to leave her properties to, so why not him? So he’d get cleaned up on Sundays, maybe grab a package of peanuts from behind the bar, and head up to Troy Hill to sit with her through the TV shows she watched. The Christian Hour was a favorite, followed close by a program on family antiques people brought in to have their value assessed, and Malcolm would say he’d sit through all these programs, yelling comments into her one good ear and trying to avoid the dog. The nuts got stuck in her teeth.

  The dog’s name was Mitzi and she looked like a mop head that might have swept up all the floors of the Salvation Army. And it was clear she didn’t like Malcolm, and had even peed on his shoes one Sunday during the The Christian Hour. He couldn’t understand the relationship between her and Aunt Sally; he’d tell us how she would hug the little animal, even give her a whiff of the oxygen now and then like it might cement the bond between them. “But I don’t care,” he said one afternoon good-humoredly. “A little baptism now and then is good for the soul.” He put one foot up on the sink behind the bar like some high school athlete being a regular guy. “When I get down to Boca Raton in all that sunshine, I won’t care if that little mongrel has taken a dump on me. I’m going to leave all you bums behind.”

  So Malcolm had his plans for after Aunt Sally passed on. He’d sell the bar and throw the welfare people out and sell that house too. It was hard not to feel happy for him about his future; he’d get so excited about his prospects that his foot on the sink would start jiggling, and once or twice he even forgot to ring up a brew.

  But when would this good fortune take place? Every Sunday he’d greet her and she’d be all rigged up with her various tubes and the oxygen pumping into her like she was a ten wheeler going west. Mitzi would be scampering about, raising up the dust, a creature gone mad with her own prospects, and the programs would be blaring on the TV. Well, it was no place for a sane man, Malcolm said, and a test of his endurance. Some of us sympathized with him and all enjoyed the scene as he rendered it. Then it was suddenly over.

  The report in the Post-Gazette mentioned the oxygen and that a spark of some kind had set off the explosion. There was speculation that Mitzi might have loosened a connection in her play with Aunt Sally, and Malcolm in his report to the investigators mentioned that the dog had been especially active during his visit that Sunday, running up and down and all over her owner like she was a garden ornament. He said he must have got out of the house just in time, because he had been on the front steps as it blew, one window in her bedroom went completely out, and when he ran back in, there was nothing he could do. He did pull Mitzi out from beneath the bed. “I won’t try to describe what I saw,” he told us. “It’s a sight I’ll never forget.” He shook his head and looked at the Pirates calendar taped on the mirror.

  So there was a lot of talk and investigations, one special note in the P-G of how Malcolm had saved the dog. He had taken her over as her lone survivor and was something of a hero. The police asked him a lot of questions and even questioned some of us—especially Jerry. Apparently someone had told them that Malcolm had talked to Jerry a lot about the blast in ’Nam that had crippled his lungs. Of course, all of us knew about that—Jerry talked about it often, sometimes to a fault. Meanwhile, Mitzi took up residence at the Buena Vista, and she was a cute little thing the way she went up on her hind legs to greet you when you came into the bar, pawing the air, her tiny eyes bright inside all that fluffy fur. It was as if she had always belonged in the bar, belonged to us. Meanwhile, Malcolm was busy consulting with lawyers about Aunt Sally’s estate—he’d give us full reports. He must have spent much of the fall downtown. And the cops kept coming around too, until finally they just quit, and Malcolm signed a lot of papers. “Here’s the ticket to Boca Raton,” he told us one afternoon, holding up a bunch of legal papers that he asked me to witness, which I did gladly. I didn’t read them, that sort of mumbo-jumbo is not in my line, and he set up a round for us to celebrate.

  Then a whole set of new lawyers and officials began to show up, looking at the bar, taking measurements, and talking to the family next door. It turns out that Aunt Sally had left the whole kit and caboodle to that television program, The Christian Hour. They kicked out the welfare family next door and put the house up for sale. It was snapped up quick by a couple that looked like people off a cereal box—and with a child of about two. And they in turn hired lawyers to start the works turning to close down the place, saying the Buena Vista was a “public nuisance.” All of which came as news to us because we weren’t loud or disorderly and most of us were vets. All through it, Malcolm kept up his spirits like a guy on a sinking ship, but I guess the final blow came when this bunch of people walked in one afternoon and started measuring the bar and the back of the place where they planned to put a kitchen. All of us were told to find a new place to go, including Malcolm who had to pack up his things as well.

  I kept Mitzi, and the two of us make pretty good company for each other.

  HOMECOMING

  BY KATHRYN MILLER HAINES

  Wilkinsburg

  He stepped onto the platform at the Pennsylvania Railroad Station and heard the Veterans of Foreign Wars Band strike up the national anthem. Mothers and fathers, children and wives had come out to see the returning soldiers. He scanned the crowd for Lorraine, but the mass of humanity crowding the platform did not include her. He felt his spirits sink. He’d tried to persuade himself she would come.

  As soldier after soldier passed through the station and onto Hay Street, the sounds of the band were broken up by a new cacophony: honking horns, ringing church bells, whistles from the mills and locomotives. There was joy all around him.

  My God, how women had changed—the shorter skirts, the bare, smooth legs, what seemed to him garish makeup, and then the confidence with which they took over the streets. She was changed now too. He knew it from her letters.

  And her not being here—

  Still, in spite of what he knew, he waited. He hung back near the entrance of the station, trying to avoid the flood of people that wanted to push him across Hay Street toward the new municipal building. The
humidity was overwhelming—already his dress uniform felt damp. The clock above the train station crept toward the half hour. From his vantage he could see the trolley cars as they followed the yellow line up and down Penn Avenue. They paused and unloaded their passengers. No Lorraine.

  After an hour’s wait, he started up Ross Street, following the familiar path home. He passed the post office, Buke’s Grill, and the Ross Avenue Methodist Church, where he was baptized and married. He passed beneath the shadow of the Carl Building where people streamed in and out, on their way to and from doctor’s appointments. His heart pounded. He tried to ready himself for the confrontation.

  Oaks lined the road, shielding the Queen Anne and Romanesque houses from the harsh summer sun, houses similar to the one he was now headed toward. They had bought it a few months before he was called up, thinking it the perfect place to raise a family. Plans—oh, they’d made them. He was supposed to land a job at Westinghouse, just like his father had. They’d buy a brand-new car at Bauman Chevrolet. He would join the Elks and volunteer to coach one of the sandlot football teams. Lorraine said she’d volunteer for their church and the Young Women’s Christian Association (he was passing their building right now). They’d put their children, when they came, into scouts and the youth orchestra.

  None of those plans had presupposed the war. Or men who didn’t go to war.

  Lorraine had cried the day the telegram arrived. She cried at everything, happy or sad, granted, but she loved him then. Or so he thought.

  He didn’t know anymore.

  His bag was heavy. He wanted to stop, but he kept going. A couple walked in front of him, hand in hand, the guy’s blue jacket casually tossed over his shoulder. The man turned slightly and offered him a polite nod before turning back to his companion. The woman was talking, talking, filling the man in on everything he’d missed and everything they’d do now that he was home safe. The man listened in silence, a curious smile on his face.

  His arm ached where a bullet wound permanently puckered the skin. He paused and massaged the muscle, then wound up his shoulder like a pitcher on the mound. He’d been soft before the war; now he was lean and sinewy, his face permanently creased by things he’d seen that he wished he could erase from his mind.

  The neighborhood had changed very little in four years. There were trinkets of patriotism everywhere he looked: Old Glory waving from poles, starred flags winking from windows, flowers chosen because of their hues of red, white, and blue.

  He was a hero. He’d killed four enemy soldiers, maybe more. He’d found out he was tough.

  A woman tending her garden looked up at him and smiled. “Welcome back,” she said. He fought to remember her name. Mrs. Parker? Porter? She had a yippy little dog that got loose whenever it rained. He’d called the dog warden on her because of the urine pooled on his front porch. Now the woman was smiling. A new beginning, courtesy of the anonymity provided by the U.S. Armed Forces.

  Letters—him trying to be the man of the house no matter how far away he was. Don’t forget to open up the damper on the furnace. You can’t let a week pass without starting the car or the engine will choke, especially in the winter. Don’t pay for a subscription if you’re not going to read the paper every day. Tell the milkman to cut the order down to a pint. He thinks now she hated those letters.

  She wrote asking him to talk about himself. He didn’t. He didn’t know what to say about k-rations or the men he humped with who had nicknames like Bug and Hickory.

  He kept walking and he felt his stomach drop when he passed Roger Cleveland’s family home. She didn’t have to say it in the letters. He just knew, the way you know a thing like that. They’d been best friends, Roger and him, until he was called up and Roger was declared 4-F.

  He turned the corner. He was only two blocks from home. The image of his house remained crisp in his mind, everything about it, every inch of it. Lorraine wrote to him about it, things she was doing to the house and yard. She had hoed the earth on her own, turning the yard into a victory garden to help with the war. The first attempt didn’t work. The seeds got washed away by torrential rain. She’d started again a week later and her efforts were rewarded with lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

  He continued up the street, surprised to find that he now conquered with ease the hilly road that had once left him breathless. Some of the neighborhood had gotten shabbier—well, the men weren’t there to fix things—porches cried for paint, sidewalks were choked with weeds, roofs needed new shingles to replace those blown off during a flurry of earlysummer storms.

  Lorraine had painted the inside of the house too, he knew. She’d shown him what she’d chosen by dabbing the V-mail with the wet brushes, turning the austere government-issue paper into stationery colored mint-green (living room) and a sunny yellow (kitchen). She did the work herself, she said. He didn’t believe it. The news ate a hole in his stomach.

  Don’t do any more. Wait till I come home, he wrote.

  In answer, she explained that staying at home, being a wife with no husband to tend to, was driving her crazy. Do you miss me? she asked in another letter. I had a dream last night that you were with another woman. She was a pretty nurse you met at the officer’s club.

  At first this letter confused him. Then he realized the question was really a … sort of warning, or maybe a permission, because she didn’t want to say what was going on with her.

  It wasn’t pretty young nurses the men turned to, but prostitutes. And at first he didn’t, then he did.

  Her letters grew briefer. Mr. Palmer lost two apple trees in last week’s storm. We have a hornet’s nest under the front porch eaves. Roger stopped by. He’s working at U.S. Steel now. He told me to tell you hello.

  He was powerless from far away, so he played the guilt game. You might want to mention the hornet’s nest to Roger and see if he can take care of it for you. I’d hate to think of my girl getting stung.

  The next letter said nothing about the hornet’s nest. She told about how she had to wait in a line that stretched two blocks if she wanted to buy butter at Kregar’s. Isaly’s no longer sold meat on Mondays. Toppers Newsstand was operating twenty-four hours a day now. I’m going to get a job. All of the mills are hiring women.

  Don’t, please, he wrote. Mills are dangerous.

  For a while he didn’t get a response. Then: You’re right. Of course you’re right. Roger said the same thing. In fact, he says the women are paid barely a pittance, nothing compared to what the men make.

  Roger Cleveland. Friend turned enemy.

  The Tinsley boy hasn’t cut the grass the last two weeks. It’s starting to look like our house has been abandoned. Do you think I should ask Roger if he would be willing to mow it?

  As his time overseas came to a close, her letters arrived less frequently. It was, a friend in his platoon assured him, something every man experienced as the war dragged on—the foothold they had at home had weakened. He’d been at war longer than he and Lorraine had known each other, five times as long as they’d been married. “Just divorce her,” his friend said. “Don’t look back.”

  “Or kill her,” another man said, laughing.

  “No. Kill him. Whoever took your place. Kill him.” And that man was not laughing.

  As he continued up the street, he spotted his house and saw the lawn was trimmed and neat. When he got closer, he saw the porch floor was swept, its varnish fresh enough to catch his reflection. The windows sparkled from a recent cleaning.

  He half expected to see someone else’s name on the mailbox as proof that the place was no longer his. But Boyer was still there, painted in his sure hand within days of moving in. And when he lifted the box’s lid, the mail inside bore his name, some bills addressed to him, a postcard from him. The one that told her which train he’d be arriving home on.

  He pulled his postcard from the box. For a moment, his heart lightened. She hadn’t even seen it. Could she be out of town? Had she taken the mill shift after all? />
  He reached above the doorframe and found the spare key he had always kept there. He slid it into the lock and was surprised to find the once stubborn latch open with ease.

  “Hello?” he called out as he stepped inside. “Lorraine?” He dropped his duffle to the floor, then dragged it behind the sofa. A reconnoiter. He walked around, looking. He felt like an intruder. The previous day’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sat folded on the coffee table, the page with the radio schedule faceup. A coffee mug was there beside it, still half full of the weak chicory mix she drank to start her day. Bright red lip crème smeared the rim of the cup.

  In the kitchen he felt the coffee pot. No, cold.

  Through the window above the sink he glimpsed the backyard where the lawn lay freshly mown. The garden was going strong.

  On the table lay the letter he’d sent announcing that he’d be stateside soon. He’d guessed at his date of return in that note and Lorraine had underlined this three times in dark pencil.

  He left the kitchen and crept up the stairs, not sure what he was expecting to find. The second floor was, like the rest of the house, immaculate. The guest room bed was clad in a quilt he’d never seen before. The bathroom was pin neat, except for a razor sitting on the sink.

  He knew. He’d known. But what to do about it?

  A door opened downstairs. He slipped off his shoes and crept out of the room and into the hallway. From his vantage he could see Lorraine framed by the front door, the taxi that had deposited her pulling away from the curb. She carried a box of groceries and a cosmetics case she used whenever they went away on overnight trips. She shut the door with her hip and proceeded to the kitchen. His heart jumped. He loved her, he still loved her. He could hear her as she moved from room to room, setting down the box of groceries and her bag, switching on the radio, kicking off her shoes. He tiptoed down the stairs and hugged the wall of the parlor so he could better observe her. She was wearing a day dress he didn’t recognize—black with white polka dots. Her hair was long. She looked … good.