“Really. What am I supposed to do about it?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Except I’m messed up.”
“And now you’re back in time for me to cook my own birthday dinner.” She folded a towel.
He started to say something, but she said, “For me it was a relief. I only had one baby on my hands.”
His eyes went to Christine, who was in an infant seat on the floor. He made a sound for the baby.
“She’s three months old,” Dolores said. “I estimate that for one third of her life, so far, she hasn’t had a father. Congratulations.”
He picked up the baby and talked to her. Dolores sat with the wash. A black nylon headband pushed her light brown hair off her face as she bent over the wash basket. She was cold and humiliated and she told herself that she didn’t know whether she wanted him or not.
“I’m not going to drink for a while,” Owney told her.
She concentrated on the wash.
“In fact, I might not take a drink for the rest of my life.”
Her answer was a deep breath.
“I figured out something. That I don’t notice what I’m doing to myself. From now on, I know that I have to look out.”
When she didn’t answer, he said, “Well, at least I did that. I’m messed up.”
He kept talking and her mind drifted. She thought of the bedroom window, which her mother had done with cold water and vinegar and then had rubbed so clear with chamois cloths that ordinary daylight became blinding when it reflected off the glass. It became just another square of sky to a bird, a cardinal, which flew into the window with a thump that startled Dolores. The cardinal flew out into the back yard, turned, and came straight back at the window, slamming into it beak first. The cardinal dropped like a stone, but quickly worked his wings and was gone. Fifteen minutes later, the bird crashed back into the window.
Her husband made her think of that sound. He starts flying, she thought, and doesn’t look where he’s going, either. Am I supposed to sit here and listen until I hear him hitting himself against a wall?
Owney was saying, “I can’t figure out what I did.”
“Well, I did some thinking,” she said.
“If I talk to you, maybe I can figure out what I did.”
Talk, she thought. Whenever he has anything personal to say, he waits until the third paragraph before he even gives you a hint. And he’s better than his father. The father hasn’t talked to the mother in twenty-five years. Dolores thought of Owney’s mother, who had spent three hours with her earlier in the day and couldn’t talk about anything except supermarket prices.
Now Owney put the baby back and went into his pocket and brought out a pink rock.
“I want to give you this before we get into a war here and I forget about it. I got it for you on the job today. The engineer told me that it’s at least a billion years old.”
She looked at it and said nothing.
“See the black lines running through it? The bands. Now, this is what the engineer told me. The bands came from pressure and heat when something happened a billion years ago. Continents collided with each other. I’m the first person to touch this piece of rock since the earth had an explosion or something a billion years ago. Go ahead. Touch it. That makes you the second.”
She touched the rock with her right hand. Her fingers felt the rough surface and ran along the black banding. A primitive feeling ran up her arm. She gripped the rock, which was the size of an ashtray, with her thumb and forefinger, the way you hold something you want to scale into the water at Rockaway.
Since Dolores was seated when she scaled the rock at his face, it did not have the force she wanted. But it caught him, all right, even with his reflexes, and he always had the quickest body movements of anybody she had ever seen. Caught him on the left side of the forehead and caused his eyes to explode.
“What do you call that?” Owney yelled.
“The best I can do instead of a gun.”
“Now what am I supposed to do?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she said, her hands going back to the wash.
He spun and went out of the kitchen, but turned and walked to the bedroom. She stayed at the kitchen table and heard him take off his work clothes and then pad out to the bathroom. The shower went on.
Twenty minutes, she said to herself. You made yourself feel better for a second and he gets twenty minutes to hide.
She looked at the baby. Where am I going to be next year with you? Am I going to be sitting here like this? She shook her head quickly.
Later, she put on a pale yellow Christian Dior nightgown, from Loehmann’s in Lefrak City, and got into bed with her back to him. The space between them, over which no foot would slip, was insignificant in width, but as a boundary was as effective as a desert.
Most of her thoughts were on getting back at Owney. She thought of going to work on a job that would get her home at six at night, in time to bathe the baby and put her to bed. Her mother could mind Christine while she was gone. Meals, she thought, would consist of anything that could be eaten by hand. She liked that idea. Give away the knives and forks, and just keep paper napkins for pizza.
She felt his hand on her side. She moved her body further to the edge of the bed. The hand now slid under her arm and was about to touch her breasts when she shifted her entire body and went onto her back. The hand withdrew.
“Where do you get the nerve?” she said.
“I like you when you’re mad,” he said.
“I never heard of such bullshit.”
He put his right arm across her body and now his chest was atop hers and his mouth reached for hers. Her head turned to the left and she held a hand up.
“Stop.”
More of his body weight began to spread onto hers. Now her voice was sharp.
“If you don’t stop.”
He hesitated and then the weight was gone from her. She rolled onto her side and kept her eyes open, a sentry in the night, until she heard him asleep.
8
I’M HERE TOO LONG now,” Sharon the barmaid said. She shook her dyed-black lion’s-mane hair. “Just because I got here late today, they don’t send no one in to relieve me. Look at it. Nine-thirty and Sharon is still here. Sharon got better places to be.”
“You have a date, someplace to go?” Owney’s father said.
“To some other bar.”
The woman who had been sitting all evening with Owney’s father said to the barmaid, “You meeting somebody?”
“Oh, I have a date,” the barmaid said. “Sharon is going to stand at the bottom of the el steps and wait for her date to come off the train. He’s coming from the Sherry Netherland Hotel in the city. He’s got five thousand bucks in his pocket, and he’s riding out here to spend it on Sharon on Jamaica Avenue.”
“He’s only got five thousand?” Owney’s father-said.
“I didn’t tell him to bring any more.”
Her arm reached out, and she picked up a bottle of Scotch and poured herself a shot. She looked around the old bar, which had six listless customers. In front of her, Owney’s father sat sideways on his stool, facing the woman who, since late afternoon, had sat two places away from him. Her grocery bag, with its packages wrapped in meat-market paper sticking from the top, remained on the bar, alongside the ashtray.
“Are we just going to sit here all night?” the woman said to Owney’s father.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve had enough time here to decide something.”
“All I know is that I needed to relax today. I work in a cramped-up place all day. I needed to take it easy.”
The woman said, “Ever since I come in, you’ve sat here with your feet hooked onto the rung of your stool. I don’t know what you consider being cramped up.”
“Saloons are the best as long as you’re not working in them,” the barmaid said. “At least in another place I could have somebody serve me a drink,” she sighed.
“That’s the only place I’d be, another bar. I might as well face it. I was born to live in a bar. I had no chance. Not the way I was brought up.”
“Where are you from?” the woman with Owney’s father said.
“A nice place,” Sharon said.
“What nice place?”
“East New York nice place. I was in love with the boy next door. I even went to his funeral when he got killed.”
“Then you went into a bar after the cemetery,” Owney’s father said.
“And I never came out.”
“Good a place as any to spend your life.”
“I guess so. I got myself three husbands out of it. I guess that’s a couple more than most girls get.”
“That’s three more than what I got,” the woman said.
“Well, I sure got three,” Sharon said.
“How?” the woman with the packages said.
“I picked out weak guys and I told every one of them that I was in love with them before they said anything to me. They didn’t want to hurt my feelings so they said they were in love with me, too. Then we got married.”
“Then the trouble started.”
“Because the three of them were so weak that you couldn’t live with them. The last one was supposed to be out stealing for me and he’s so gutless he was dryin’ dishes. You ready for another?”
The woman put a hand over her glass. “I got to go home.”
“I’ll have one,” Owney’s father said.
“You’re not coming with me?” she asked him.
“Are you going?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not,” Jimmy Morrison said.
The woman looked at the packages wrapped in paper from the butcher shop. “You’re not hungry?” she said.
“No.”
“You’re just going to stay here?”
“I need to relax.”
“Oh. Terrific.”
She looked at him as he sat across from her in the smoky air. Then she stood up, said, “See you around,” picked up her bag, gave Sharon a nod, and walked out.
Outside, at the top of the el steps, O’Sullivan gave a start as he heard the barroom door swing open. He peered through the metal banister spokes.
“Here’s his broad,” O’Sullivan said. The baseball bat was in his hands.
Behind him, Old Jack said, “Put on the mask. Here, get the hat on, too. Junior, go start the car.”
O’Sullivan pulled a ski mask from his jacket pocket and wiggled his head into it. He reached back and the old man put a leather machinist’s hat into his hand.
“Why do I need these things?” O’Sullivan said. “I want the bum to know where it came from.”
“Who wants somebody else in the street to see a face?”
O’Sullivan grunted. He pulled the hat down over his silver hair. He resented the mask and cap, but he reminded himself that he was wearing the same black suit he had worn the last two times he had been to the tunnel job to see Jimmy Morrison, The guy better recognize the suit, let him know exactly where this is coming from, O’Sullivan said to himself.
Then he saw the woman carry her paper bag down the street and nobody was following her out of the bar.
“Alone,” O’Sullivan said.
The old man said, “This does it. I can’t wait here no more like this.”
“We’ll wait five minutes more, Old Jack,” O’Sullivan said.
“We go now,” Old Jack said.
Rather than give O’Sullivan the chance to argue, Old Jack walked down the el steps. O’Sullivan followed, using the baseball bat as a walking stick. “I’ll wait one minute here,” O’Sullivan said. He eased up to a doorway next to the bar entrance.
The old man made a face. “We’re going to come around with the car and that’s it. Then we go.”
Inside the bar, Owney’s father sipped his drink.
“She’s mad at you again,” Sharon said.
Owney’s father stared into the mirror, swallowed the rest of his drink, and began to pack for the trip home. He carefully put his cigarettes into his shirt pocket, assembled his money, pushed a couple of bills and a pile of change across the bar at Sharon. He was surprised to see how late it was. Makes it hard to find a cab, he told himself.
He stood up. “I got to get home,” he said.
Sharon nodded. Somebody down at the end of the bar needed a drink and she walked slowly down to the man. Owney’s father walked to the door.
“Yo!” Sharon called to him.
Owney’s father didn’t turn around. He held his arm up in a farewell wave and pushed the door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk into the spring night. He was looking to his right, down the empty avenue, for a cab, which he didn’t expect to see, but he was looking for one anyway. Looking to the right. As the barroom door he had pushed open swung shut, here was O’Sullivan, the old hat and ski mask covering his silver hair, furious from hours on the el steps. He swung the baseball bat left-handed, swung it with his wrists, shoulders, and hips all moving in one piece.
Owney’s father felt something and started to look into the bat, which hit him across the mouth and on the chin. Two of his front teeth went out and a third down his throat; his eyes went up into his head as he pitched forward onto his face. Blood bubbled onto the sidewalk.
Now O’Sullivan swung as if chopping wood, bringing the bat whizzing down from his left shoulder. He cursed to himself as the first swing landed low on the back of the head and didn’t cause the head to split open. O’Sullivan pulled the bat back and now the door swung open and Sharon stood with Owney’s father’s cigarette lighter. O’Sullivan swung the bat in her face. For an instant, the barroom door was in his way, or at least was distracting, but he caught her on the forehead and she went straight back against the now-closed door and then fell to the sidewalk like a wet towel.
He was about to bring the bat up again, and this time he was going to put his whole life into a swing that would split Owney’s father’s head open forever, but then he thought for an instant about the two of them being on the sidewalk and for sure somebody else walking out from inside the bar to look for the barmaid. Quickly, he bent down and went through Morrison’s pockets until he found the wad of money. At least I get paid.
Carrying the baseball bat like a walking stick, O’Sullivan went to the car idling at the curb, got in, and pulled the ski mask off his flushed face as Junior drove the car away.
After the phone rang that night at 11:30, and an unmodulated voice said that his father was in the Wyckoff Heights emergency room, Owney went first into the drawer with his shirts and pulled out a blue turtleneck to cover the long scar, still bright red. The shirts were on one side of the drawer. Alone on the other side was a cardboard box that had stenciled on it “Medal of Honor and Holder One.”
He was still pulling on the shirt when his legs began to run down the hallway to the front door. Dolores looked out from the kitchen, where she had the baby squalling in one arm. She had the phone in her other hand.
“I’m coming,” she said. He didn’t answer and was out the door and down the alley to the car. As he backed the car out, he scraped the side of the house. His wife was at the curb in a robe. She jiggled the baby. As she slid into the front seat, the baby’s wail caused Owney to stiffen.
“What do we do with her?” he said.
“Don’t worry about her.”
Owney made the run down Central Avenue with his hand on the horn. When they reached Wyckoff Heights Hospital, he double-parked and ran through the waiting room past Dolores’s mother, who stood with her hands out for the baby. Owney’s mother sat like a statue. Owney heard Dolores running after him.
In the emergency room there were a policeman and a nurse and Owney called out, “Morrison?”
“He’s up in X-ray,” the nurse said.
“Where?”
“Upstairs. You can’t go up there. Why don’t you just sit and be comfortable. It’ll be a few minutes.”
Owney wa
s through a doorway and up the stairs to a dim hallway that had gray walls. His father was on a cart with his mouth and chin distorted by swelling. Blood covered the lower half of his face. His eyes opened, looked at Owney, showed no recognition, and then closed.
“You’re all right,” Owney said. “I can see from here that you’re all right.”
A doctor stood in a small room that had banks of lights on the wall. He stared at X-rays. Owney stood in the doorway and Dolores pushed alongside him. “What is it?” Owney said to the doctor.
“She’s a strong girl. She’ll be all right,” the doctor said.
“No, I mean my father, Morrison.”
“He’s a pretty strong fella, too. I didn’t see any fracture. I can’t tell about the bleeding, but his reflexes are good. The pupils are not dilated. Of course, we’ll have to run some tests. But I’m not uncomfortable about him now.”
“What do we do with him now?” Owney said.
“Take him upstairs to a ward and watch him. Why don’t you wait downstairs?”
Owney went outside and stood with one hand on the cart. Dolores bent over the father and whispered to him: “We’re here and you’re going to be fine.”
Now the door to the X-ray room opened and they wheeled out Sharon, the barmaid, whose bare feet stuck out from under the sheets. Owney stepped over to her. “You’re fine,” he said. Her black hair was matted and the swollen forehead was an angry welt.
“It must’ve been a baseball bat,” the attendant said. “If it were metal, the skin would have split. No, this was a baseball bat. You got a big welt, but the skin didn’t break.”
He kept one hand on the cart, alongside his father’s shoulder, until they were upstairs. The attendant didn’t want Owney touching the father, but Owney put his arms under his father and helped lift him into bed.
The nurse looked at Dolores, who stood in a gray plaid robe with the yellow Christian Dior nightgown showing under it.
“Are you a patient?” the nurse said.
“She’s my wife,” Owney said. His hand went out and touched Dolores.
They stayed in the doorway, while doctors walked in and out and nurses peered, until there were footsteps and then voices and approaching them were two detectives.
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