She leaned in, glanced quickly from Brian to her father. “Daddy? Daddy, Mr. McHugh is here for his two o’clock appointment with you. I checked, Daddy, he’s on your appointment calendar.”
“Well, tell him to cool his heels until he’s sent for, goddamn it.” Crowley’s mouth pulled down as he watched his daughter duck out into the hallway. He cocked his head to the side and studied Brian, whose face was still turned toward where Mary Ellen had been.
He coughed loudly, caught Brian’s attention fully. “In deciding whether you’ve been shafted or favored, O’Malley, consider this. When a bright lad makes sergeant, the shield is his; when he makes lieutenant, the shield is his. When he makes captain, the Department is his. Take the exams, lad, take the exams.”
He struggled to his feet with less difficulty than before, and Brian stood up. Crowley glared at him with a new intensity and the bantering tone was gone, the playfulness was gone, and a cold, raw sound came into his voice. He seemed a total stranger to anyone Brian had previously been confronted by. Before him was a tough, ruthless, bitter survivor.
“It’s customary, O’Malley, when someone’s done you a favor, to say thanks for it.”
It was ultimatum, not needle or sarcasm or taunt. It was real.
Brian knew instinctively that a smart reply at this point would destroy him. He sensed, without the slightest doubt, that he was not a match for the power of Patrick Crowley.
It didn’t cost him as much as he would have thought. It hardly cost him anything at all.
“Thanks, Mr. Crowley,” he said thickly.
Crowley held it for several seconds with satisfaction, absorbed it like knowledge: the admission, acceptance, recognition. Then the moment broke into fragments of movement, bodily adjustments, sighs, slight groans, curses at knee joints and shoulder pains. His face relaxed, became familiar again.
“On your way out, O’Malley, tell McHugh to get his ass in here. You’ll recognize the man by the fat bulk of him and his nervousness of manner. Goddamn, but I hate a man to be early for an appointment almost as much as I hate him to be late.”
The bantering, friendly tone was back. Crowley, as Crowley, was back and Brian, sensing safety again, said to him in a tough wise-guy voice, “Right, Mr. Crowley. Oh, by the way, I’m taking Mary Ellen roller skating Saturday night.”
Crowley’s eyes brightened, glistened; he turned his head to the side and grinned. “Well now, and isn’t that fine. Yes, indeed, that’s a fine thing for young people to be doing. Roller skating. Yes.”
As he walked down the long, winding hill, back to the elevated for his trip downtown, back into reality, Brian was lost deeply in thought. Christ. Holy Christ. He had just thanked old Patrick Crowley for keeping him from getting third grade. The old bastard just came right out and admitted it and Brian had listened to him and actually thanked him.
Yet what the old man had said made sense. What didn’t make sense was why he bothered. Why he took an interest in Brian at all. That’s what didn’t make any sense at all.
On their very first date, Brian realized that Mary Ellen Crowley was like no other girl he had ever gone with. Her total innocence and expectations that he would treat her protectively made him feel strong and superior and mature. He talked more than he had ever talked in his life, for she was a good listener, who hung on every word and glowed at him.
Carefully, he related anecdotes about his job; he altered and censored incidents which might amuse her, careful not to offend. His desire to reach out for her and to press her to him, to hold and caress her, was different from other urges he’d had in the past. It was removed from blatant sexual desire, and while physical, it was part of the encompassing feeling that he must shield her from all unpleasant moments and knowledge.
Mary Ellen Crowley was the embodiment of all the virtues he had been taught through all his parochial school years. She was what girls were supposed to be.
He could not help but think of Mary Ellen as he stood beside Francis Kelly and witnessed his marriage to Marylou Delaney. He experienced an inexplicable feeling of guilt, not for anything that had ever passed between them, but because he felt sorry for Francis Kelly with a long lifetime ahead of him as Marylou’s husband.
The Kelly apartment was too small and too hot and too crowded with celebrants who drank and ate too much too early in the day. Francis’ mother, her face damp and flushed, pulled Brian close to her and embraced him with a special significance; he was part of Francis’ past now and her momentary sadness contrasted with the jaunty cheerfulness of the little flowered hat which sat at a slight angle atop her newly permanent-waved iron-colored hair. Absently, she yanked at the stiff corset which was clearly outlined beneath the peach lace dress.
“Oh, Brian,” she said, “wasn’t it a lovely ceremony, all the girls comin’ down the aisle and you lads standing there, so handsome and tall?” Mrs. Kelly wiped her eyes with a little lace-edged handkerchief, turned, distracted by relatives who were demanding more food.
Someone placed a drink in Brian’s hand and waved a plate of food in front of him. He was clouted on the back by uncles of the groom who’d known him since he was four or five years old, carefully looked over by female cousins, hugged indiscriminately by neighbors as though this was his wedding day.
A hot, damp hand pressed on his neck and he turned to face Marylou Delaney, now Kelly. Her bride’s veil, held by black bobby pins, perched in the mass of her thick dark hair and framed her wide bright-pink face like parted curtains. There were lipstick smudges on her cheeks, where enthusiastic kisses had been placed by girl friends and relatives. Her own mouth was shiny with dark lipstick. Her eyes moved from Brian’s mouth to his eyes, then lingered on his lips as her red tongue moistened her lower lip.
“Well, well,” she said in a husky, insinuating voice, “if it isn’t the best man.”
He moved slightly so that he was free of her touch. “Nice party, Marylou.”
“How about a good luck kiss from the best man, Brian? Seems to me you didn’t get to kiss the bride.” She lowered her voice to a thick whisper. “Last chance, Bri.”
“Sure, Marylou.”
He leaned toward her, aimed at a spot between two clearly defined lipstick stains, but Marylou twisted her head, raised her hands and locked her fingers behind his neck and pressed her lips against his.
For one dizzy, confusing moment, he encountered the fullness of her mouth and absorbed the richness of the various emanations of her. She tasted of cheap make-up and sweet perfume and wilted flowers and deodorant cream and sweat and food and whiskey and heavy musty satin. Her strong tongue slid between his parted lips, created a secret between them, which her hands, locked tightly on the back of his neck, emphasized.
“Hey, how about a handshake for the groom?”
Brian pulled back abruptly, faced Francis Kelly’s beaming smile and flushed goodhearted innocence, which shone from his slightly glazed eyes. Brian’s lips tingled with the taste of Francis’ bride. In a burst of confusion and forced heartiness, he hugged his friend in a strong embrace. They exchanged words which neither could hear because of all the noise around them; it was part of an expected established ritual, as was the whole noisy and exhausting celebration.
Brian was glad his family had gone up to the lake right after Francis Kelly’s wedding. It was nice having the apartment to himself for a change; he had to work a four to twelve and could sleep late in the morning, which was good. It had been a long day.
Brian sat, head resting against the stiff antimacassar at the back of the easy chair, long legs extended, shoeless feet on the hassock. He felt the contour of the cold brown bottle of beer between his palms, drank without thirst, felt lazy and warm and too tired to do more than gaze in the darkened room at the shadows on the ceiling of the living room.
It was curious and it struck him as curious that the vaguely suggested patterns of cracked plaster and shadow had changed through the years, though in reality, physically, they remained the sam
e. He was the one who had changed. What had been a large-bodied, small-headed dinosaur now, under his languid, thoughtful gaze, became some indefinable sexual object: imponderable, illusive, exciting.
The airplane near the corner, which had carried him across cloudless skies in roaring pursuit of fame and glory, now, as he dreamed and drifted, became an extension of himself, of that mysterious part of his body which occupied and preoccupied vast stretches of his consciousness. His right hand relinquished the bottle, moved and touched lightly, held gently the quick-rising cylindrical hardness, so ready to respond.
He experienced a detached sense of wonder rather than the urgent conscience-destroying need which sometimes consumed him.
He shook his head, puzzled at his sexuality: an imaginary design on the ceding of the living room could stir him.
His fingers slid up and down, not holding, just tracing. Mary Ellen. Did she know that this was what happened to a man? Had she any idea at all? He wondered what she’d think, how she’d feel if he took her hand and gently, carefully, taught her to explore.
He wanted to be her teacher, to lead her slowly through the ritual of physical awakening but without destroying her total innocence and total purity. He didn’t know how he could possibly attain both of those opposing goals; in achieving one he’d destroy the other. He wished it would somehow be all right but he knew it couldn’t be.
He wondered if Mary Ellen Crowley had even the slightest idea of what tremendous self-control he exerted in her presence. He wanted her to know, yet that knowledge too would infringe upon the complete innocence with which he endowed her.
He closed his eyes and remembered the dreams he’d been having recently after tense and careful dates with Mary Ellen. In sleep, freed totally from the control over which he’d felt so proud, there was nothing gentle or kind or considerate or careful or instructive or loving about him. He mounted her roughly, urgently, brutally, selfishly, explosively and her face beneath him was always remote and serene and trusting and it maddened him that her expression never changed. At the moment of release, just immediately prior to waking, he sought her face but it was never Mary Ellen who stared back at him. It was either Marylou Delaney, with her lipstick-smeared smirk of a mouth, or Debbie Gladner, with her cold, superior, untouched and unrelenting stare.
Brian held the beer in his mouth for a moment, swished it around his teeth and swallowed. He shouldn’t be thinking of Marylou, not on her wedding night.
He wondered if girls had wet dreams or sex dreams, if they ever experienced that combination of release and guilt, desire and disgust.
He wondered if Mary Ellen ever thought about him deep into the night when she hovered between wakefulness and sleep. He pictured her clean and cool and peaceful and calm in a crisp white-and-blue nightgown with panties of cool blue or clean white and beneath that garment the triangle of hair would be the color of moonlight.
He wondered how many men had screwed Rita Wasinski since the last time he’d screwed her.
Brian stood up abruptly and felt hot shame flood his face. To think of Mary Ellen one instant and Rita Wasinski the next was sacrilege, vile and dirty, as though he’d masturbated in church or in front of a statue of the Holy Mother.
The beer on an already too full stomach, the heat of the airless June night, all made him feel heavy and dizzy. He went into the bedroom, stripped to his shorts in the dark and eased himself onto the bed.
Rita Wasinski came to him. Memory of her warm, giving body, with all its shared secrets and joys and excitements, engulfed him and in a confusion of unbearable desire not just Rita but other faces and bodies intermingled, intertwined, engulfed him.
All previous innocent, controllable, easy speculation turned into the urgency of that hard, demanding, relentless need and he couldn’t excuse it. It was no wet dream. It was a conscious grasping of self and a conscious conjuring of girls he had had and girls he had never had and then it was over and he was left with his self-loathing and his hot, wet, sticky, empty exhaustion.
“Oh, Christ,” Brian whispered. Oh, Jesus, I’m getting too old for this.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
IN AN ODD WAY, Mary the Widow returned to life, even though it was a very limited, circumscribed life, through the death of her cousin, the nun. Sister Louise Matthew lingered for a long and painful time at the understaffed hospital run by the Sisters of the Order of Perpetual Help in Yonkers, New York.
When Mary O’Malley, newly recovered from a bout with the bottle, encountered the pale, small death mask, a miraculous transformation came over her. Her cousin’s normally severe and reproachful gray eyes confronted her with an unspoken plea which reached the depths of Mary the Widow. It was arranged that she stay on and assist in the nursing of her dying cousin. The Mother Superior decided it would be a good way to keep Mary off the bottle and at the same time serve a useful purpose.
As it turned out, Mary the Widow indeed found a purpose in life, and if the finding came late, it was a wonder that it came at all.
There was no task she did not perform willingly, lovingly, eagerly and with a quiet, soft affection that the dying nun found comforting beyond words. Her illness was such that her body filled the room with the most unbearable stench. Even the most stoic and dedicated nursing Sisters betrayed by some flicker of nostril, some unconscious downward turn of lip the repulsion for the form of death which systematically claimed Sister Louise Matthew’s earthly portion.
But not Mary the Widow. It was as though nothing could touch her. She found life in the fanatical dedication to the dying woman and a slight, sweet smile played about her lips and she hummed softly as she went about the most onerous tasks of cleaning the ruined patient and removing soiled linen and clothing. Her long hands, bone-thin from years of semistarvation and self-neglect, caressed the damp pained brow, placed an escaped lock of oily gray hair inside the starched white nun’s cap and found nothing distasteful. She did not have to steel herself to her service; devotion to task flowed from some vast reservoir within her. The years of formless waiting and mourning for the dead young husband were over. She no longer felt the terrible need to search inside the alcohol confusion and murkiness of her brain for the lover who would come no more.
A peaceful awareness of purpose, the first she had ever experienced, filled her, and when her cousin finally died, it was Mary the Widow who prepared the body with love and dignity.
She moved without grief from the dead cousin to the next sickest patient in the small hospital. Without anything having been discussed or decided, Mary O’Malley took up residence with the Sisters of the Order of Perpetual Help. The nuns regarded her with a special affection. They had seen her through the terrible years of her torment and now she was more dedicated and selfless than any of them. She was, in effect, their own private miracle.
When John O’Malley, home on leave from the Navy, came to visit his mother at the hospital, she regarded him serenely, touched his brow lightly, as though to seek out signs of death or disease. When her fingers came away from his cool, firm, healthy flesh, it wasn’t exactly disappointment that she felt, but rather a lack of interest. Her special mystical call came from the presence of Death. Youth and health held nothing for her. She smiled absently at the tall, heavy-set young man but felt no sense of connection with him and was slightly puzzled when he clumsily embraced her and said that he wouldn’t see her for a long time because he was going overseas.
She wondered where she had seen him before. She knew she had, somewhere, but it was all very vague and probably locked in that strange, hazy past which drifted through her mind sometimes late at night or early in the morning.
She told him that she hoped he had a very pleasant trip and he promised to send her picture postcards from everywhere he went She said that would be very nice indeed and thanked him.
“Well, she’s a damned nut if you ask me,” the old woman said, though no one asked her or intended to ask her opinion of Mary the Widow.
“I think it’s fi
ne, John,” Margaret told her nephew, “that your mother is with the Sisters like that. It’s strange how things work out, isn’t it?” She leaned hack slightly and regarded his large, steamy face. “If you don’t look fine in your uniform, all grown up. I swear I wouldn’t know you.”
They all acted strangely, all except his grandmother. They watched him, measured him, commented on how much he’d changed, though he hadn’t changed at all. Lost some weight, hardened through the belly and chest, but he was still John. That was what he wanted to tell them but he didn’t know how.
“Stop standing there with your hat on your head, you big fool,” his grandmother said. “Do I still have to teach you manners?”
He swiped at his hat quickly and grinned, grateful to her. He put the hat on Kit’s head, pulled it down over her eyes and she clutched at it, begging to keep it.
His uncles and aunts and cousins all came and fussed over him. He felt uneasy, the center of all their attention. He ate and smiled and nodded and answered their questions quickly and was grateful when Brian took him to McCaffery’s for some beer and then his uncles came and his older cousins.
They drank whiskey and got him to drink whiskey, which Gene and Matt and Peadar slugged down with beer. But Brian and John and Billy O’Malley, who’d just joined the Marines, couldn’t keep up.
John’s head spun on his shoulders and sweat dripped from his forehead and his legs felt funny, all unconnected and soft. He laughed at everything and his uncles kept punching him on the shoulders and slapping him on the back. And they kept congratulating themselves on how he had turned out, how they’d been right all along, getting poor Johnnie here into the Navy.
John laughed and agreed with them and laughed. Suddenly he grabbed Brian’s arm and they rushed into the men’s room. His mouth filled with a terrible full taste and he vomited and apologized to Brian and vomited some more. Brian held on to his arm tightly and kept telling him it was all right, okay, kid, okay, and John went back with Brian to the bar.
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