Another Way to Play

by Michael Lally

  when the kids would do the cruel things

  kids can sometimes do, I would think of Jackie Robinson and I

  would try to be heroic like him,

  and sometimes it worked. Even when they called me a jerk

  and a race traitor and all the rest,

  because when we played stickball and each took on the persona

  of our favorite players, I would

  pick him, and the other white guys would berate me and try to

  get me to react the way I usually did,

  with my fists or my murder mouth or something that could be

  turned to their amusement as long as

  I was out of control. But when I took on his name for the game,

  I took on his dignity too, and it

  got me through their petty prejudices and opened up a whole new

  world. Sometimes it even worked with

  the girls. Until they too began to feel compelled to make

  fun of one of their race who was inspired

  by a man whose face was handsome and intense, but happened

  to be denser in its reflection of the sun

  then one of us. Jackie Robinson was the guide to the

  outside world for me, his example let me see

  that what I was taught was not necessarily true, and what I

  always suspected I knew might be. He gave

  me a way to go beyond that world and to go deeper into me—

  and when I came back, what I had learned

  helped me to see that even the people I had left behind knew

  these things too. When my cop brother

  and my cop brother-in-law and my cop uncle and cousin and

  boarder in my mother’s house denounced

  the riots in the ’60s always in racist tones, I’d confront

  them about the black friends they often

  had in their homes and they would say, that’s different,

  that’s L.J. he’s my friend, he’s not one

  of them. Or when I’d point out how they often dressed and

  spoke and drove the same cars and hung

  out in the same bars and all the rest, they’d get hurt like

  I had turned into some kind of foreigner,

  one of those old time Americans who didn’t understand and

  tried to grandstand with their liberal ideas

  when they lived in wealthy enclaves and never had to deal

  with the reality of our streets. They’d tell

  me they didn’t think they’d ever meet one of their own kind

  as blind to what was real as me and then

  they’d try and make me see that they didn’t have anything

  against the Jews and Blacks and Italians

  and homos and even the rich, because they all had friends or

  even in-laws that fit those labels,

  they’d try to tell me it’s about being true to who you really are

  no matter how far your people have come

  or haven’t come, and then they’d tell some story about how

  it used to be and then they’d ask me

  how come I never wrote those Damon Runyon stories about them

  or more importantly about my father—

  they figured I didn’t bother because I got too far away

  from what I’d been—when I moved

  away from the old neighborhood after my father said I was

  no good for wanting to marry a

  black girl and having too many black friends—and then,

  when I finally came back again,

  so many years after I left him—this time we didn’t

  fight—because I asked him about

  Boots and Mary, whatever happened to Louis the Lip or

  Two Ton Tony—he talked all night

  & it finally felt alright with him—he talked about how

  his mother had been a “live out maid”

  when he was a kid—we never talked about politics or the

  division that had driven us all into

  fear and insecurity—I listened, he talked, and after I

  left he called me up & asked if I had

  enough to get my kids Xmas presents this year—I said I

  did—I never took a dime from him

  before, why should I start now—one of my sisters called

  and told me because it was the only way

  he could say I love you—so I called him back & said hey,

  I could use two hundred & he said

  it’s yours—& I took the kids to see him with the

  gifts his money made possible—

  he was watching sports on the TV—and all of a sudden he

  brought up Jackie Robinson—

  how he always admired that man’s dignity & a few days later

  he called up the only brother he

  had left and told him to take him to the hospital—

  the doctor called my sister &

  told her there’s nothing we can find, we’ll keep him

  overnight and send him home—

  & of course he died & this time when they tried to bring him

  back he refused—hey, I don’t know

  why he wanted to die—that was a lot of years ago—all I

  know is when I saw Field of Dreams

  I started to cry—I didn’t even know why—my father and

  I never even tried to play any game—

  but hey you know I’m not ashamed to carry his name—I hope

  he feels the same.

  HOLIDAY HELL

  I always worked on Christmas. Well

  not always, since I was about 13.

  My father had this home maintenance

  business, which meant we cleaned up

  after rich people and fixed things in

  their homes. There was always a lot

  to do around Christmas, including

  selling trees out in front of the

  little hole-in-the-wall store front.

  We had this one special customer who

  got this special fifty-foot tree every

  year. On Christmas eve, after his kids

  went to bed, my brother-in-law the cop,

  Joe Glosh (short for Gloshinski) and me

  would drive up with the tree and put it

  up in the middle of this swirling kind of

  Hollywood staircase, wiring it to the

  banister here and there until we got it

  steady and solid, ready for the silver

  dollar tip we always got. My brother-

  in-law would always wonder why the best

  tree we ever saw always went to a Jew who

  didn’t even believe in Christmas, right?

  Then he’d drop me back at the store and

  go home while I waited there alone just

  in case somebody might be waiting til the

  last minute to buy a tree. Usually no one

  was, and when it turned midnight I could

  call the local orphanage and they’d come

  by for whatever we had left, which my

  old man would let me give them for free and

  then I could walk or hitchhike the few miles

  home. When we were little my sisters and I

  would exchange our gifts before we fell

  asleep, because we all lived in the attic

  together. The coolest thing was waking in

  the morning with this sound, like crunchy

  paper, and realizing it was our stockings

  at the foot of the beds that our ma had

  always somehow got up there without us

  catching her, and we’d get to open up all

  our stocking stuff before we woke the rest

  of the folks, our older brothers and grand-

  mother and the border, Jack, and our mom

  and dad. Then we’d all open stuff and go

  to Mass and come home for the b
ig dinner.

  But by the time I got the attic to myself,

  cause my brother-in-law and that sister

  got a place of their own and my other sister

  joined the nunnery for awhile, I got to

  working for the parks department too,

  because my old man didn’t pay me, figuring

  I worked for room and board, so I had these

  other jobs, and the parks department had a

  busy day on Christmas cause all these kids

  would come down to the park to try their

  new sleds or skates and I worked either on

  the hill or on the pond as a sort of guard

  and coach and general alarm man. I used to

  love seeing a wreck on the hill so I could

  slide down the snow on my engineer boots,

  the kind motorcycle dudes wear now, showing

  off my teenaged skill and balance for the

  teenaged girls who might be watching. I

  don’t remember ever falling down, it was

  something I was totally confident about. Now

  that I think about it, I guess working on

  Christmas wasn’t so bad, even though I always

  kind of felt sad anyway, especially after I

  started dating black girls and knew I couldn’t

  take them home or share the holidays much

  with them, but there was always something sad

  about Christmas anyway, once you were over five

  or maybe ten, how could it ever live up to your

  expectations again? I also dug being a

  working guy though, you know? Even today

  when I see young working guys going by in

  the backs of pickup trucks I catch their eye

  and feel like I know what’s going through

  their heads, because of what was going

  through mine, which was, any time now I’ll be

  out of this, a big star or wheeler dealer or

  intellectual or anything that means a kind of

  success you couldn’t guess when you look at

  me here under these conditions, cause now,

  I’m a mystery to you, you don’t know who I

  am, you think you can categorize me but you

  got no idea who I might be someday, or the

  the richness of the life I live inside, and

  you’ll never know what it’s like to be as

  cool as I sometimes feel when you look at me

  and see a guy from some kind of ethnic mystery

  you can’t comprehend except in the most simplistic

  terms, and who is so free he can work in public

  and get dirty and sweat and wear his hair greasy

  and his tee shirt rolled and know you would never

  mess with him unless you’re a woman and get a whim

  to find out what it’s like to give a piece of ass

  to someone from the working class—I dug the

  kind of coolness of it, of knowing I was a lot more

  than these ordinary citizens could comprehend,

  that I could be sexy in ways their men were too

  restrained to be, that I could be threatening in

  ways their men would be too frightened to be, that

  I could get down and dirty and not give a fuck

  what I looked like in public, even though I knew

  I looked cool, that I could be inside a life and

  world they could never even guess the intensity and

  romanticism and pure exhilaration of because it

  didn’t depend on material goods and worldly

  success but on loyalty and honesty and standing

  up for yourself and all the rest of your kind

  when you were put to the test—hell I used to

  love looking back into their eyes and thinking

  some day they’ll be so surprised to find out

  what was going on in my head when I put it in

  a book or on film or tell them about it in their

  bed—so even though I came home late for the

  big dinner and my fingers and toes all froze

  cause guys like us could never make a fuss about

  the cold by wearing scarves or gloves or any of

  that rich kid stuff, and maybe I’d get a little

  drunk when nobody was looking and try to get the

  phone into the closet or somewhere where I could

  be alone for a few minutes to call some girl

  they might call colored and wrong, and end up

  later that night sleeping on the floor of the

  kitchen with the new puppy so he wouldn’t keep

  everyone awake with his scared yelps and in the

  morning scandalize my grandmother when she found

  me in my boxer shorts the puppy asleep on my

  chest and she’d rouse me and make me get dressed

  but not without telling me I was just like my

  father, I didn’t have any ashes, which was her

  way of implying I didn’t have any ass to speak

  of, and then I’d help her get her stockings over

  her crippled legs and have something to eat and

  go to work again, maybe this time on the pond,

  where I’d get to slide across the ice to rescue

  stumbling teenaged girls while “Earth Angel” or

  “Blue Christmas” blared over the loudspeakers

  and in my heart, knowing for sure I was going

  to be a part of some important history, and I

  was—and still am.

  20 YEARS AGO TODAY

  We were a couple of kids

  with a kid—weren’t we Lee—

  ever since this topic came up

  I’ve been thinking about you—

  but not like I usually do,

  I’ve been remembering what it was

  that kept us together, the glue

  that made it look to others

  like our marriage worked—

  I used to think it was the anger & sex—

  I never talked much about love

  I guess—and

  after all the experience since us

  all the lovers and living together

  being married and being in a “relationship”

  the flirtations and infatuations

  the romances and affairs and rolls

  in the hay and pokes and fucks and

  fantasies, what do I know about it Lee?

  I went out with a woman last week,

  intelligent, accomplished, attractive,

  a great body, like yours only harder,

  that’s the way most of them are now,

  at least out here, they all work out so much,

  but this one does it with ballet,

  you’d have dug that too, but she’s

  taller than you, she could actually do

  it if she wasn’t already successful

  at something else not quite so demanding

  or deforming—anyway, we had a nice enough

  time, but she’s still in love with somebody

  else and I guess I am—or was—too—

  but that never stopped me with you,

  even though you knew—

  I remember how understanding you were about that

  before we got married, but then after

  you said if you ever saw her on the street

  you’d cut out her heart and I believed you would

  —back then it somehow seemed good

  to be with someone that passionate and crazy,

  both of us acting so lower class city street tough

  as though we weren’t just a couple of kids

  afraid the world might really be too rough

  for us after all, what did we know heh?

  anyways, those were the days Lee—

  things hadn’t gone all wrong,
/>   we were still getting along—

  making love every night,

  and I don’t think we’d begun to fight yet—

  like about John Lennon leaving his wife—

  something you were sure I was going to do to you

  when I became that successful too, which

  everyone seemed to think was inevitable back then—

  well, not everything we thought would happen came

  true—at least not for me & you—

  remember how all those predictions about me

  always ended with “if he lives that long”—

  everytime I got in my old telephone van and turned

  the key, I had to take this deep breath first,

  then curse the rightwing assholes who sent me

  death threats in the mail, with pictures

  of crosshairs aimed at the back of my neck,

  or descriptions of my van blowing up or my

  house burning down—those guys

  probably went on to work for Reagan and

  Bush & Quayle, but that’s a whole

  other story you don’t want to know about—

  what I’m trying to get out now is the fact

  that I hardly ever write about you and me Lee

  and all those years we spent together—

  and of all that time, maybe February 1969 was the

  highlight, you were still jealous of everyone

  but they didn’t have you on the run and never

  would—and I was really being good—you know

  I never cheated on you, not once in all those

  early years, despite your fears and mine—

  even that time that girl said I had with her,

  I don’t know what that was about, maybe just

  that I was in the papers a lot then and she

  somehow wanted to be a part of that—what do

  I know Lee, I got girls younger than our

  daughter after me now and it’s just because

  they want to read their poetry at Helena’s—

  I don’t even want to get into that either—

  hey, Lee, what I’m remembering is a night so cold we

  have to wrap our baby in her little snow suit

  to sleep in, cause all we got is this one little

  oil stove in the middle of the quonset hut

  we were living in, yeah, the kind with the

  ruffled corrugated tin in a semi circle—

  so what little heat there was hovered

  over our heads in the very middle of the house,

  the only place I could stand straight up anyway—

  I remember the water in the diaper pail had a thin

  layer of ice on it in the morning, but that

  night, we got naked under tons of covers and

  those old quilts you dug so much, reminding you

  of your mother’s country roots, we were