“—isolate themselves, withdraw.” I finished the thought. “They might even disappear.”
“They might, Mr. Prager, but don’t be seduced by simple answers.”
I stood and thanked her for her time. She was, she said, glad to answer hypotheticals any time they might be useful. I promised to keep that in mind.
“Mr. Prager,” she called after me.
“Yeah, Doc.”
“How is Nancy?”
I thought of a few smartass answers, but opted for a safe: “I think she’ll be fine.”
February 5th, 1978
I’D WAITED PAST rush hour to leave, using the extra time to listen to a big-band anthology I’d inherited from my dad. As I listened, I pictured my mom, replete with curlers and ragged house dress, teaching Aaron to jitterbug and cha-cha before his bar mitzvah. My downstairs neighbor was in a less nostalgic flame of mind and banged his disapproval with a broom handle against the ceiling. Good thing for him I wasn’t reminiscing about my bar mitzvah when I spent hours teaching my mom to twist and mash potato.
I called Aaron. No one was in. I called Miriam to see how she was doing since the night Ronnie had treated the dying baby. I avoided asking any direct questions about that night. After the usual small talk I asked her if, when we were growing up, she noticed that I had any weird habits.
“You’re my big brother, Moses. When I was little I thought everything you did was wonderful. By the time I was ten, I thought everything you did was weird.”
“And now?”
“The last time I checked,” she said, “I was still older than ten.”
Apparently, she had regained her equilibrium. I gave her my love and hung up. Since the meeting with Dr. Friar, I’d spent hours dissecting the idiosyncracies of everyone from my maternal grandfather to my second-grade teacher. As my Aunt Sadie used to say: “We’re all a bissel mesghuga.” We’re all a little crazy. It was comforting to know Aunt Sadie and Dr. Friar agreed. When I was about a block away from my building I caught myself wondering if I’d locked the front door.
The drive up to Dutchess County went pretty quickly. The sun was bright and old drifts of snow outside the city were still beautifully white. I stopped at a family farm to buy an apple pie and wound up with two. I made a second stop at a florist shop, bought a half-dozen roses and headed for Rico’s house.
I wanted to make a peace offering to Rose Tripoli. Over the years I’d seen too many friendships fall by the wayside and I was determined to not let that happen with Rico and me. I thought maybe I could build on the pleasant phone conversation we’d had the other day. If Rose and I got to sit alone together for an hour, I thought, she might see me as less of a threat. I hoped she could learn to distinguish me from what she viewed as dangerous baggage carried over from Rico’s first marriage.
The fact that Rose Tripoli was a blood relative to the Maloneys didn’t exactly work against my dropping by. Unlike Rico, she would have witnessed the family in action over the course of many years. Maybe she would be willing to share a word or two about family secrets. Even if she had no direct information, there wasn’t a family branch in the world that didn’t speculate, often too loudly, about the other branches.
From the first unanswered ring of the front doorbell, I sensed my brilliant ploy would have the net effect of adding two apple pies to my waistline and six roses to the trash. Still, I did all those silly maybe-she’s-in-the-shower-and-didn’t-hear-the-bell type of things people do. I rang at the front door a few more times, banged the brass knocker, rang at the back door, cupped my face with my hands and peered through several windows and rapped my knuckles on a basement window before conceding defeat.
Snowmen tipsy from thaw and refreezing marked my progress as I rolled slowly down Hanover Street. In spite of the snow and the bare-limbed trees, I could almost smell fresh cut grass, barbecue smoke and see touch football games in the road. Situated on half-acre lots, the modest houses, no two of which added together would equal the square footage of Nancy Lustig’s, were of three styles: shingled L-shaped ranches, clapboarded colonials or saltbox Capes. Some of the residents of Hanover Street had done variations on the theme. One of the ranches had a second floor, white aluminum siding and solar energy panels on the roof. Two of the saltboxes sported shed dormers. Several of the colonials had added rooms above their two-car garages.
Yet, as I read the address numbers off the mailboxes, I knew the Maloney house—regardless of its style—would be untouched. No ugly solar panels on their roof, nothing showy, nothing to attract unwanted attention. Everything would be old style and impeccably maintained. The driveway, walkways, entrances perfectly clear of snow and ice and not one inch shoveled that did not have to be. Inside, there might be simple crosses on the walls, maybe a rendering of a favored saint, but they’d have no Mary on the half shell or bathtub Jesus on their lawn. Close to the vest. Everything close to the vest.
Twenty-two Hanover Street was everything I thought it would be. Even the lack of numerals on the mailbox proved me right. Pulling into the snowless driveway of the tidy ranch, its cedar shakes painted a deep, joyless green, I wondered if it had looked much different the day Francis Maloney purchased it. Only on a house so drab could rain gutters and down spouts stand out so prominently. As a small concession to brightness, there were several white window boxes adorning the front facade.
Some people might have been surprised a man like Maloney, a man who had risen to a county commissioner’s post and who wielded obvious political clout, would still live in such a modest house. I wasn’t. At the academy, an instructor once said that some guys became cops for the badge and the gun. Some, he said, do it for the authority and responsibility the other clowns think they get from the badge and the gun. Francis Maloney, it seemed, liked the responsibility and authority of his position. Not all powerful men need to rub it in other people’s faces. That made two things about the man I respected. Still, I didn’t anticipate kissing him smack on the lips anytime soon.
Hoping he was out and his wife in, I grabbed an apple pie and the roses. As I stepped up onto the little concrete slab of a porch, I saw the first hint the Maloneys actually lived here. For encircled by the aluminum filagree on the old storm door, was the letter M. And in spite of my suspicions, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it was already there when they moved in. Just as I rang the bell an oil delivery truck pulled up next door. My head was still turned, watching the oil man unreel his truck’s hose, when I heard her hello.
“Hi,” I said, turning back around. “I’m—”
“We sort of met the other night,” she interrupted. “Do you—”
“I hardly recognize you without your peacoat.”
“You remember.” Her face brightened.
If I hadn’t remembered another thing about her, I wouldn’t have forgotten that thin-lipped smile. I nodded my head at the oil truck. “It seems we have this oil tank karma.”
“No dead body this time.” Then, noticing the flowers and pie, her expression went numb. “Is something wrong? Did Patri—”
“No. Take it easy. No news.”
She put her hand to her heart. “I’m sorry. Come in, Mr. Prager.”
“Moe.”
“Come in, Moe.”
She emptied my hands and showed me where to hang my coat. I tried not to let it bother me that only one of us knew the other’s name. I decided to not break up the momentum by airing my grievance. She disappeared into the kitchen.
“These roses are lovely. I’m just putting them in some water. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Great. Thanks.”
“Dad’s not here,” she shouted above the running water. “He’s in the city today. Ma’s over at the church. Go on into the living room. This won’t take a minute.”
Well, okay, now I knew she was Patrick’s sister. I’d already tentatively come to that conclusion, but she still had me at a disadvantage.
“You know,” she continued as I walked into the living
room, “Dad was pretty impressed that you were there that night before everyone but the cops. It’s not easy to impress my dad.”
Her words barely registered. I was somewhat in shock, for unlike the exterior of the house, what I saw in the living room came as a complete surprise.
“Oh,” I heard her say upon seeing my face, “you didn’t know. Well, welcome to the shrine. Guided tours are free.”
Atop the dull green carpet, on either side of the big picture window, sat twin oak and glass display cases reaching nearly to the ceiling. The one on my left was filled with ribbons, rings, medals and trophies. It was an impressive collection, especially the trophies. There were gold-plated baseball players of various sizes waiting in eternity for pitched balls they would never hit or hit balls they would never catch. There were silver-plated basketball players, bronzed bowlers, lacrosse men, pewter hockey sticks and wrestlers. But it was football trophies that predominated.
The display case on my right, however, was, to an athlete, someone like myself who had played organized sports his entire life, far more impressive. For in this case was an assemblage of game balls the likes of which I had never seen. As in the trophy case, they were balls from many sports with football trumping the others. Trophies, medals, ribbons and rings are nice, but they’re usually awarded by leagues or judges or committees. Game balls, on the other hand, are awarded by your teammates and coaches. Game balls are the ultimate gesture of respect and are therefore more meaningful than any hunk of metal. Third-string quarterbacks get Super Bowl rings, but never game balls.
“There are more packed away,” she whispered sadly.
“Patrick must be some—”
“Not Patrick,” she cut me off. “Those are Francis Jr.’s.”
And as if my eyes had just then learned to focus, I saw that many of the trophies and game balls bore the name Francis X. Maloney or Frankie J.
“Here, Mr. Pra—Moe, turn around,” she urged, gently touching my shoulder.
On a shelf above the unremarkable couch, its cushions suffocated by heavy plastic slipcovers, was an American flag bundled in a tight triangle. On either side of the flag were gilt-framed photos of a handsome, clean-shaven man in his early to mid-twenties. He resembled the poster picture of Patrick, only he had an athlete’s neck, a fuller face and the icy blue eyes of his father. In one photo, Francis Jr. posed in formal Navy blues. In the other, he sported pilot fatigues. Along with the flag and photos were a watch, cufflinks, commander’s bars, wings and an open medal case. The medal itself was somewhat obscured by the other personal effects. A semicircle of small flags—American, Irish, State of New York, Navy, Dutchess County—framed the shelf. It was, as she had said, a shrine.
“His F-4 was shot down over the Ho Chi Min Trail in ’72, not long before the cease-fire. My parents died with him that day.”
“What about Patrick?” I wondered.
“What about him?”
“Look, sorry, this is a little embarrassing. What’s your name?”
She smiled at that, stuck out her hand: “Katy.”
“Okay, we’re even now.” I held onto her hand a little too long.
“Come on,” she said, leading me toward the kitchen, “let’s go talk.”
We stepped into the less rarified air of the kitchen, back to a place where expectation and reality were more closely aligned. The old fixtures, the black-and-white linoleum, felt comfortable somehow. The apple pie I’d brought was out of its box on the kitchen table next to a simple blue vase that held the roses. It took us a few cups of coffee to get back to my question about Patrick. First, we made small talk; the weather, my knee, the wine shop. She was thirty-two, the eldest child. Francis Jr. was a year younger. She’d gotten married a few months after he was shot down.
“Jesus,” she laughed, her eyes lost in the past, “it was like a second funeral. I shoulda known right then and there Joey and I were done for. I think Ma was so cried out, she couldn’t muster happy tears. And Dad . . . It was like Francis’s ghost held his other arm as he walked me down the aisle. ‘Taps’ would have been more in order than ‘The Wedding March.’ ”
“You’re divorced?”
“It was the best thing, really,” she said, the glaze of the past gone from her eyes. “We didn’t have kids. Joey was a good man and a good provider. Handsome, too. But you don’t marry a man because he gets the most checks in the very good boxes on a survey. At least, I’ve learned, you shouldn’t. No, they say that marriage’ll kill the passion in any couple. From my side of things, there wasn’t any passion to begin with.”
They had lived with Joey’s parents, which hadn’t exactly worked to stoke the embers of any romance between the newlyweds. After the separation, Katy moved into Manhattan. She had a sublease on part of a loft in SoHo. She worked as a graphic designer for a midtown ad firm.
“I’ve been splitting my time between the city and here. My company’s been very good about time off.” I told her I’d seen evidence that she wasn’t the only artist in the Maloney family.
“I’m not half as talented as Patrick,” she shook her head, “but he lacked—lacks a passion for it.”
“Passion, huh? There’s that word again.”
I wondered if it was Katy who had first taken Patrick to Pooty’s. She had indeed and was duly impressed I had figured it out. I’d be a liar to say I didn’t enjoy her admiration. None of the other hordes of investigators had asked. She had always to volunteer that information. Nothing ever came of it. Katy had taken him there a few times over the years to try and encourage him.
“It’s an—”
“—artists’ hangout. I know. Beck’s Dark on tap and a great jukebox,” I said and told her I was surprised I hadn’t seen her there myself. I recounted the tale of my failed date with Susie the actress.
“Her friends really asked to touch your gun? God,” she slapped the table, “I think I would have been more tempted to show them the bullets, if you know what I mean.”
“They weren’t quite that annoying.”
I told her I’d heard her father had been on the job. Before I ever got around to asking about it, she warned me right off the topic. The subject was taboo. She couldn’t remember anyone ever laying down the law about it, but, she said, they all understood that to broach the subject was an invitation to a beating. As Nancy Lustig had been quick to defend Patrick, Katy was quick to say her father hadn’t really made a habit of hitting them.
“Maybe Francis, a few times. Patrick . . . I think maybe once or twice. We knew he was a man not to threaten lightly.”
“I asked before about how Patrick had taken his brother’s death.” I finally got back to where I’d started. “I’ve got an older brother. I told you about Aaron, right?”
“He of the wine shop to be?”
“That’s him,” I confirmed. “He’s much better with money. He was better than me in school and all. Hell, he even skipped a grade in Hebrew school. Not that that’ll get you a discount on the subway or anything. He wasn’t a football star or fighter pilot, but I still felt like I lived in his shadow. I’m not that familiar with the New Testament, but did Christ have like a younger brother? Because if he did, Patrick must’ve felt like him.”
“Patrick loved his brother.”
This wasn’t going to be easy. I told her I loved Aaron, but that I resented him as well. All I wanted to know was how Patrick had reacted to Francis Jr.’s death. Part of him, I offered, must have felt a sense of relief.
“I suppose I see your point, Moe,” Katy admitted, grudgingly. “But on the other hand I think he felt naked and unprotected. Frank had been a wonderful big brother to Patrick, his best friend in a way. Patrick could always disguise his—I’m not explaining this well.”
“Keep trying,” I urged.
“Okay, it’s pitch black.” She waved her hand as if a wand removing all light from the room. “You look up into the heavens and your eyes catch sight of a gloriously bright star. Every night you gaze up and there
’s that enchanting star. You come to set your course by it. One night, though, you look up and the bright star is gone,” she snapped her fingers, “its light snuffed out. Then, once the shock’s worn off, you force yourself to look back up. There, just a little further east in the night sky from where the extinguished star used to shine, you notice a new star, a smaller star. Its light is pretty but not nearly so dazzling as the other’s. And you realize the little star’s not new at all. It’s always been there, its light overwhelmed by the glory of the other.”
“So,” I said, “Patrick was comfortable being the little star.”
“You see, until Francis Jr. was killed no one around here put much pressure on Patrick. My Dad can be a pretty fierce task master and not exactly cuddly.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“But he’s not a stupid man. He never expected Patrick to follow in Frank’s footsteps. Who could?” she shrugged. “And Ma had the best of all worlds for an Italian mother: a perfect son who supplied her with endless bragging material and a sensitive, quiet, devoted son who didn’t object to her occasional smothering.”
“But when Francis Jr. was killed, Patrick was exposed.”
“I don’t think my parents could help themselves. Even me, I think I was just as guilty. Suddenly he was forced to bear the weight not only of the meager expectations the world had for him, but of the enormous ones we had for his brother. Patrick went from being a voice in the chorus to lead tenor without singing lessons. So you see, unlike you and your big brother, Patrick didn’t really have to compete with his until Frank was dead. Somehow, Moe, I don’t think he viewed Frank’s death with a sense of relief.”
We went directly back to small talk from there and there wasn’t much of that. We pretty much finished our last cup of coffee in silence. I asked to see Patrick’s old room. Katy pointed the way and let me explore on my own.
It looked like any boy’s room, maybe a little neater than most. That, I thought, probably had more to do with his mother’s housekeeping than with his obsessive-compulsiveness. There was a high school pennant, a pennant from Hofstra, another from Annapolis. There were even some trophies: one for fencing, another for Little League baseball and a few for track. He’d been a miler. There was a Sylvester Stallone poster above his desk. Above his old bed, however, was a flawlessly painted reproduction of Francis Jr.’s dress uniform picture so prominently displayed in the living room. I found the initials PMM painted in one corner. Either there was nothing else to see or I just wasn’t seeing it.
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