“I think I’m gonna take a walk.”
Lena looked concerned. “Did I say … Was it … ?”
“No, Lena, you’ve been a pal. All of you have.”
But as Nick rose from the table, ready to step outside for some air, to dwell on whether he should head back to the city or maybe relax for another day, Johnny raced in and grabbed his waist, weeping. Nick was about to tell him not to worry, that he wasn’t leaving, before it occurred to Nick what vanity it was to think that he meant that much to Johnny. There was a crash of knocked-over furniture in a far room as Esposito stumbled behind, barking at his son angrily for a moment before he looked at Nick, his eyes also watery.
“John! I told you to wait! You never—Ah, Nick. I’m so sorry. There was a call, Nick, from work. Not about work. They said they tried to get you….”
There were the saints, always, but Nick had no interest in them. People, that’s all they were. Better of course, but people still. Not straight to the top, either; Nick was held back by the presumption, put off by the abstraction—Holy Agony, Holy Cross, Holy Name of Jesus, Holy Rosary, Holy Trinity. Forget about the further superlatives, Most Holy Crucifix, Most Holy Redeemer, Most Precious Blood. Something in between, high and low, a woman you could talk to—Mary, Help of Christians; Our Lady, Queen of Angels; Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs; the city was full of outlets. There were the old-world hometown angles, in the ward-boss put-in-a-word-for-you way—Don’t I know your uncle? Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Lourdes, of Loreto, Mount Carmel, Pompeii, and Vilnius. Plus there were the theme channels, available to anyone with the need, in the mood—Our Lady of Good Counsel, Our Lady of Peace, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Victory. And these were only the parishes on the island of Manhattan. In the Bronx, there was Our Lady of Grace, of Mercy, of Refuge, and of Solace. In Brooklyn and Queens, Our Lady of the Cenacle, of China, of Consolation, of Miracles, of Perpetual Help, of the Angelus, of the Blessed Sacrament, the Miraculous Medal, the Presentation. What more could you ask for? In the worst weather, you had Our Lady of the Snows. It was not yet winter, but warmth had gone from the world. All the same Lady, all different ways of making conversation. Staten Island was a ferry ride away, for Our Lady of Pity; Our Lady, Star of the Sea. Nick closed the phone book. There was no point in calling any of them. He was from Good Shepherd; they were. That’s where it would be.
When his father died, Nick thought mainly of his mother. He didn’t feel bad about that. His father had been such a light traveler that his going from being there to not being there seemed a less radical transition than most. Nick’s sense of his father was still fresh. Whereas his mother’s absence was so long-standing that she was becoming obscured, covered over in hazy layers of memory like coats of varnish, the deepening amber beautiful but not true. Nick wanted to strip the image down, wipe it clean, to see her again as he had known her. Scraps of story and song came back—a cabbagy smell in the kitchen, falling asleep on warm skin. Never angry, not once. For days after, Nick could hear the sound of her voice, and images of her played in his mind—her soaping a mustard stain from a white blouse on the side of the tub; giving him a penny, saying it was lucky; the time she chased a fly with a swatter until it flew out the window, into the alley. She told him after that she might try out for “your Yankees,” which made him sick with laughter. A powerful help, she had called him. He had never forgotten, even when he’d failed to believe it. He saw her again, more clearly than he had in years. She and his father were together now in heaven, the priest said. Nick had trouble seeing that, but there was no point in arguing.
His father had gone to sleep and not woken up. He had asked the super, Mr. Barry, to come by to fix the hall light, which had started to flicker. Mr. Barry had said he’d drop by later, around two. He found the door open. When he went in, he found Mr. Meehan in his lounge chair. It looked like he was napping, but he couldn’t be wakened. The cops were called, and then the precinct called Nick, but his cellphone wasn’t on. Six messages from Lieutenant Ortiz, two from Napolitano. Lena was profusely apologetic about having told Nick to call home the day before. He knew that she wasn’t the one who should be sorry, the one who would be. That he had left Allison in order to care for his father was a half-truth that both he and Allison had been able to live with, at least for a while. But Nick’s last thirty-odd hours as a make-believe uncle should have been spent as an actual son.
The building seemed dirtier when he walked in, more graffiti scribbled on the walls, the plaster cracked. When Nick closed the apartment door behind him, he wanted to go back out. The lounge chair was in recline mode, the footrest extended, as it had been only when occupied. The TV was on, tuned to a cooking show, with a sexy brunette tossing pasta in a pan. His father wouldn’t have watched that, not even if it had been a special on stew. It must have been the cops assigned, waiting for the ME, the morgue truck. The ME could take a while, he knew. Another job, another DOA. You had to pass the time somehow. He pictured a bored rookie on the couch, flipping channels, his father dead in the chair beside him. Before he could become indignant, Nick remembered how often he had done the same. If there was no family there, what was the cop supposed to do—genuflect, tear his shirt, ululate? Nick should have been there, here, himself. Nick put the TV on mute. He did not turn it off for days.
Nick felt tired, and thought about lying down but decided against it, afraid he’d hear the voices in the pipes, afraid he’d be too glad to hear them. He went to the bathroom, to wash his face. Certain small objects became heartbreaking: a toothbrush in a glass, a threaded needle on the table, beside a little black button. He choked up when he saw them, reflecting that they had been deprived of their purpose, orphaned, and he nearly sobbed at the word. He threw them out so he wouldn’t have to see them. Beside his father’s bed, a stiff plastic suitcase had been laid out, hard navy-blue half shells on hinges, empty. The trip home, sooner than he’d thought. It was a comfort to imagine that his father had died making plans, reengaged with life, ready for something new; it was not a comfort to think that even the prospect of a holiday had been too much for him, too wild a ride. The Meehans did not thrive on change, had little talent for adaptation.
Nick went out to find Mr. Barry, who was in the alley, setting aside the paper and glass for recycling. He was a dim, sweet-natured man, long-faced, with a tight, thin-lipped mouth made for bad news. He pulled off a work glove and shook Nick’s hand.
“A fine man. He will be missed.”
Nick nodded. He hesitated before asking him anything, as if there might be some overlooked detail, some clue. His father must have died sometime after ten in the morning and before two in the afternoon, the day before. Had Nick felt anything then, some rend in the psychic fabric? No, he’d been napping, watching TV. Mr. Barry saw how he struggled with the question, and ventured a response. “He didn’t suffer.”
Nick smiled at the preposterous claim, mindless and kind. And yet he was decent to say so, and probably right.
“He was lucky to have a son like you.”
Mr. Barry’s upper lip trembled as if he might be stifling a sneeze, and Nick clasped his hand again. The remark was delivered with far greater authority than the medical opinion, nearly ex cathedra. How many late-night calls had Jamie made to his father from hospitals and jails, shrieking and pleading? How golden the Meehans’ luck must have seemed to the Barry family. Nick went back inside to make coffee, a whole pot.
The phone calls to the funeral home, his father’s union. He found the address book and called overseas, to Ireland, speaking to cousins he hadn’t seen in decades. Three calls to Allison before he had the courage to leave a message. The neighborhood would tell itself. He picked a suit, a tie. The wake was one night, the funeral the next day. A lot of cops, more people from Nick’s generation than his father’s, showing their faces. “Yes, it was sudden. No pain.” “For the best, yes.” “God’s hands.” Jamie Barry came to the funeral parlor, with a new haircut and clean clothe
s, looking surprisingly sober. Nick tried to muster a compliment, but it escaped him; Jamie offered condolences and left quickly. Daysi came to the wake, Allison to the funeral. Nick hadn’t arranged that—Allison had been out of town, the planes delayed by weather—but he was relieved by their separate attendance. Esposito and Lena urged him to come back home with them afterward. The boys were too young to come for this, it was felt, but they had made cards, with crayon and construction paper, hearts and angels. Nick was still on sick leave, had a week of bereavement leave after that. He wanted to go back upstate—it had been a sweet refuge—but the time had passed.
On the morning of the funeral, Nick was about to get into the shower when there was a knock at the apartment door. He couldn’t think who was supposed to come—no one ever visited, except possibly Michael Cole—and he grabbed a towel and his gun before padding down the hall. The floor creaks gave him away, even as he stood to the side and listened.
“Nick? Is that you? Are you there?”
Allison. They’d agreed to meet here, and though she was fifteen minutes early, Nick had forgotten altogether. He didn’t want to open the door as he was; he knew he wasn’t supposed to look his best today, of all days, but this was too much.
“Allison! Hang on. I’m sorry—let me just get—”
“Nick, I have to use the bathroom.”
“Hang on. Sorry—”
When he unbolted the door for her, both of them were struck by the sight of each other. Allison wore a black suit, and her chestnut hair was held back in a tortoiseshell clip. With her sunglasses on, she had a foreign-movie chic, the sexy assassin, cyanide in a secret compartment in a stiletto heel. Her poise, her composure, were so beautiful, nearly as beautiful as when she would lose both, snorting with laughter like a truck driver, then covering her mouth with her hand, like a schoolgirl in church. She looked at him again, laughed again, shook her head in apology.
“My God, Nick. You look like—I can’t even say. You look like you spend time in a really dangerous steam room.”
She giggled again, despite herself, and then brushed past him toward the bathroom—“Sorry. I really do have to go.”—rushing unsteadily on her heels, punishing the old floorboards with them. At least it hadn’t been awkward to see each other, Nick thought. He went to the kitchen and put the gun on the table. He rinsed out two cups, had begun to clean the coffeepot when Allison came in. She looked at him, smiled, and then embraced him. It was so warm and easy, the way they held each other, and though Nick had anticipated some kind of best-behavior, dignity-in-sorrow cast to their interaction, he hadn’t expected to be reminded of how it felt to have her hands on the bare skin of his back.
“I’m so sorry for you,” she said, and it was a moment before Nick realized what she meant. She had taken off her glasses, and Nick studied her eyes, whether they looked weary or worn. No. Maybe, a little, even though her face was unlined. Allison examined Nick’s face, too, although she could not tell the grief of the day from the older vintage.
“Thanks. Let me make coffee.”
“No, I can. You have to get ready.”
She touched his cheek, stepped aside for him to walk to the bathroom. In the shower, Nick tried to think when she’d been here last. A long time ago; beyond that was too much effort to fix a date. The apartment might as well have been a safe-deposit box where his father had been kept. His father would come to see them, or they would all go out. Would she know how to use the coffeepot? In their apartment, they had an espresso machine, which Nick had thought affected, aspirational, like the leather couch, until Allison had mentioned that she’d grown up on Cuban coffee. Fancy-pants things, like the pasta maker, still in the box in a cabinet, or windows that actually let in sunlight, that showed more than the other side of the alley. Nick turned off the shower before he could think too much about the kind of place where he belonged. He dried off and walked to his room, where he’d hung his suit, shirt, and tie from the edge of the top bunk. Allison was there, too, holding up the tie, turning to him as he entered.
“This? Really?”
It was blue and gold, diamond-patterned. Nick had thought it conservative, sufficient. It was a tie.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s wrinkled, and it has a stain. The rest of it, too. You’re not an assistant principal, Nick, and you do have some nice stuff.”
Nick smiled, because there was neither dry self-consciousness nor damp sympathy in her voice; she was being useful, doing what needed to be done, helping when he needed help. She looked at him, and he nodded. The closet door was already open, and she stripped the dry-cleaning plastic from several garments before selecting a suit, a shirt. Had she bought them for him? Probably. Nick didn’t care. He was glad to see her, to watch her, and be taken care of, at least like this, for now. She held up a handful of ties in the weak light, examining them for blemishes before plucking one out.
“I can’t really see. Can you? Come here….”
So natural how she slipped her arm around his waist, led him to the window. Allison raised the yellowing shade a few inches, yanking at the string. Nick blinked at the alley, the secondhand daylight too strong for his eyes this early. They inspected the tie together, which seemed again to Nick to be sufficient.
“Isn’t that better?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“See, was that so complicated?”
“No.”
“Nick, I’m so sorry….”
They looked at each other and kissed. Allison lowered the shade. Nick was careful taking off her jacket, laying it on the bunk with his own suit, but neither was careful after that. As they tumbled onto the bunk bed, they looked at each other and almost laughed, then didn’t look again. It was so good to be with her, even with pity, though it was not that. Yes, it was pity. They were sad to see it go, knew that it was gone, even amid the assaultive joys on the old mattress, the kicked-aside pile of dingy sheets. The giddy double cheat of it, nearly strangers and still husband and wife; this was a ride. This was a ride, and that was the pity. After, they dressed quickly, without speaking.
Church was a blur—qui tolis peccata mundi—then bagpipes and bells, a hundred handshakes, firm or frail. Incense inside, cigarettes out. All had gone as it should have, the incidental touches of beauty, ancient forms for grieving, praise, acceptance of mystery at the heart of things. Roman ritual and Irish weather—tumbling dark clouds, gentle rain, sudden sunlight, clouds again. The white cloth taken from the dark casket loaded into the back of the hearse. There he was; there he goes. Nick was not unwounded, not unmoved, but he guarded against the emotions that might sweep him away. He understood his father better now, as a kind of chieftain of mourning, an old hand at it, knowing he hadn’t enough tears for today, and he might need more, later on.
On the ride to the cemetery, Allison took his hand and squeezed it in the back of the limousine. Nick squeezed Allison’s hand, then let go. He wondered which kind of silence this one was, the old and trusting kind, where there was no need for words, or the newer one, where they were just bankrupt of anything to say. It seemed silly to rent a limousine, but he was not going to drive, let alone hail a livery cab outside the church, haggling in broken Spanish over the price. Would his father have been delighted by the lack of fakery and fanciness, or would he have been insulted by the thrift? A city bus, like the ones he used to drive, that would have been the thing. Allison took his hand again, gripping more firmly than expected.
“Why’d you smile?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
The hand left his again, touched his shoulder, then trailed away. It would be the second kind of silence, it seemed.
“Didn’t Mike Quill live around here?” Allison asked.
Quill had been the leader of the transit workers in the fifties and sixties. He’d been an Irish immigrant who’d led a strike that had nearly crippled the city. The old man had loved him. It was the perfect remark for Nick, a gift she could have shopped for, apt and c
asual, personal but passing. A reference to city history, with intimate connections. This is what Nick gave back:
“Yeah.”
The hand came back and rested on Nick’s, gently. They moved onto the highway by Van Cortlandt Park, following the hearse. A police car from the precinct led the cortège, and a half-dozen cars followed the limo. Nick had discouraged most people from making the trip, but Esposito and Lena, old Irish ladies from the block, a few others, were not to be deterred. A post-cemetery lunch was traditional, but Nick had no appetite. He hated this, all of it. Could it have been worse? Yes, of course, always. Nick thought of Malcolm, not just orphaned but handcuffed; and then he remembered how, despite it all, Malcolm had lifted his eyes to admire, “Even a day like today …” Yes, it could have been worse; Nick realized that a felon with jail breath had faced the same moment with far more courage, more soul than he could muster.
His phone rang, from the blocked number. Nick looked to Allison, almost smiling, knowing who it was not. Any distraction was welcome, even this.
“Can you talk?” the voice said.
“Depends on who you ask.”
There was a pause on the end of the line, uncertain whether it was a joke, and who it was on. When conclusions were drawn, offense was taken.
“You’re playing games, Meehan. You’re playing them with the wrong people, on the wrong side. This is dead serious, and you’re out somewhere, off playing games. You have no idea what we know.”
Nick smiled for the first time in days.
“Hello? Are you there?”
Nick didn’t answer, knowing he didn’t need to, not caring if he did.
“Meehan, I think you should know, this will get done, with you or without you. You have an opportunity. You are not necessary.”
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