Gods of Wood and Stone

by Mark Di Ionno

  The boys went after school to sweep up the glass, and on Saturday, with rakes, work gloves, and leaf bags. Angus asked the boys to clean the graveyard of leaves and twigs, dead flowers, and Christmas grave blankets.

  “While you’re at it, study some of the gravestones. Look at the names and dates. Understand that all these people once walked where you walk today, and that someday, you will seem as lifeless and distant to a future generation as they do to you,” Angus said. “What lives on are ideals and traditions and the places we form those things. Like churches. The church is evidence of our existence. It gives us immortality.”

  Reverend Angus, having made his point, then departed.

  “Reverend Anus,” Eddie Spallone said. “Reverend Ang-hole.”

  After a few hours, the minister brought them some lemonade. The boys sat on the grass as he rambled on about the church’s history and its patriot pastor, Reverend James Caldwell, whom the British tried to kill during the Revolution. Instead, it was his wife who was gunned down on the steps of the parsonage before they burned the church down.

  “Her murder, and the burning of our first church, didn’t dissuade the Fighting Parson,” Angus said, going into sermon mode. “Instead, with his wife not yet buried, he rallied the Americans at the Battle of Springfield a few days later, and they drove the British out of New Jersey once and for all. He was a true American hero; a leader of mythic proportions in his time, who remains the most famous person ever to come from our town.”

  Grudeck remembered how bored he was with the whole thing. He just wanted to get the work done and get out of there. He had a Little League double-header that day.

  Now Joe Grudeck drove past the triangular park on the south end of town, where there used to be a big “Welcome to Union” sign sponsored by Liberty Dairies. The sign was above a 3-D billboard, a kitschy Jersey landmark with two protruding plastic cow heads coming out of it, even though there were no dairy farms within fifty miles of Union. It advertised Liberty’s milk and ice cream products, and was a bulletin board for town news, especially high school sports, spelled out in headline style. Grudeck’s father took pictures of some.

  COLONIAL CONF. CHAMPS!

  Farmers beat Linden, 4–0. J. Grudeck, 2 HR.

  STATE CHAMP!

  Grudeck repeats hvywgt win.

  FARMERS BEAT E-BETH!

  Grudeck 3 TD in T-day game.

  Later, the Liberty Dairies bosses added another banner below “Welcome to Union.” It said, “Home of Red Sox star Joe Grudeck,” later amended to “Home of Baseball All-Star Joe Grudeck.”

  The cow-head sign came down when Liberty Dairies closed in the ’90s, replaced in the triangular park with a tasteful and upscale “Welcome to Historic Union” sign, this one with a cannon and a picture of the old church and a Stars and Stripes in the background. It was all very clean and Colonial; no high school results, no mention of Grudeck.

  But as Grudeck drove by on this day, he saw a wide plank of wood nailed to the bottom of the sign, with hurried, hand-painted black letters that said, “Home of Joe Grudeck, new Hall of Famer.”

  He wondered if Reverend Angus was still around. So much for your Reverend Caldwell, Grudeck would tell him. I’m the most famous person who ever came from this town.

  * * *

  THE HOUSE ON STUYVESANT AVENUE was his parents’ first, and only. “Stay put and pay down your mortgage,” his father always said. “That’s how you build security.”

  Grudeck had no such worries. Or permanence. After rookie camp, he was off to Waterloo, Iowa, to finish the year in A ball. The next summer, he started Double A in Louisville, then Pittsfield, Mass. By the end of the season he was in Pawtucket, with the Triple A Red Sox, in the International League. It was on a bus trip to play Syracuse that Grudeck first visited the Hall of Fame with his team, never dreaming . . .

  As a minor leaguer, Grudeck lived in motels, at reduced rates, that had sponsorship deals with his teams. In Louisville, he tried rooming with two teammates but they were slobs, so back he went to the Motel 6. In Pittsfield, he rented a room from an old couple who took in minor leaguers and came to every home game, but their chumminess made Grudeck squirm. He moved to a Budget Inn on Route 7. In Pawtucket, he stayed at the Marriott Residence Inn a few blocks from the ballpark. When he was brought up to Boston in August, he kept the room and drove fifty miles to Fenway. He bounced between clubs the rest of that season and started the next year at Pawtucket, too, but was called to Boston in July for good. He lived in residential hotels, arranged by the team in his first couple of years, then rented an apartment in a Tudor building in Cambridge, not far from Fenway, then moved into a modern condo in Back Bay, and finally, when he was a star, bought a renovated townhouse in Beacon Hill.

  Each time he moved, he paid someone else to do it, lock, stock, barrel. Sal arranged the utilities and paid his bills, and hired decorators to make the place nice. Grudeck’s only instructions: “Nothing too girly.”

  Two of the decorators were recent graduates from Boston’s School of Interior Design; both beautiful—one compact and dark, the other willowy and blond, with that summers-at-the-Vineyard look. After they set up his house, they put their imprint on his bed, couches, recliners, kitchen counters, bathroom vanity, and wherever else they wrapped themselves around Grudeck. Both swore they never got involved with clients before. The girl who did the townhouse got a little too comfortable. She made suggestions for high-end furnishings she “absolutely loved,” knowing there was no limit to Grudeck’s budget or boundaries to his absent taste. He said no, suspecting a gold digger. When she asked for a key to Grudeck’s place, so she could wait for him on home-game nights, he cut it off right then.

  “Why?” she asked through tears.

  Grudeck made it quick.

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he said.

  Polish cleaning ladies came twice a week to change sheets, do laundry, and wash dishes, even when he was on the road. It was the routine, never interrupted. If he had a girl over, which was often, he left sex-soiled sheets on the bed until the Polish ladies came. If he brought a new girl home before the cleaning ladies came, well, so be it. Grudeck took perverse delight in that. He didn’t know why exactly. He’d always heard from married teammates that wives could sniff out other women on them, even after they showered. Not changing the sheets, Grudeck reasoned, was his way of marking his territory. Truth was, he liked living alone back then. He slept with his big body spread out on the bed, without having some girl’s head pressing on his shoulder, making his rotator muscles sore, especially his throwing side. He liked not being nudged because he was snoring, and not stifling his curses when charley horses gripped his calves or foot arches in the middle of the night. He liked ripping gas in the morning, spared of female admonishment, as his bowels grumbled from postgame clubhouse buffets of chicken parm, baked ziti, chicken and broccoli stir-fry, and sandwiches.

  One of the Polish ladies had an attractive daughter, late twenties. They surprised him once on an off day, while he was still in bed. “Mr. Joe,” the mom yelled as she unlocked the front door, as she did most times to no answer. “We clean.”

  He yelled back “okay” and stayed in bed until the door opened and the girl appeared. She turned flush and tried to exit. “Oh, sorry, Mr. Joe,” she said through a thick accent.

  “No, sweetheart, it’s okay.”

  She began to dust the room and wiped down the surfaces. The girl, uncomfortable at first, relaxed and smiled over at him several times, first shyly, then with the confidence of a woman in control. She wore snug jeans and a T-shirt and knew Grudeck watched her butt wiggle and breasts shake as she cleaned. He told her she was very pretty, and when she looked over, she saw he was tenting the sheets. Her eyes stayed on it and her eyebrows flashed up with a giggle. Grudeck knew the deal was done. Grudeck reached for his wallet and extracted several hundred-dollar bills.

  “Do something nice for me,” he said.

  She giggled a litt
le more, took the money, held up one finger as if to say “Wait a minute,” and left. She returned with the vacuum cleaner, yelled something in Polish to her mother on the first floor, then shut his bedroom door. As she bent to plug it in, Grudeck came up behind her, naked and fully erect, and reached around to undo her pants. She turned the machine on, and it wailed with cover noise, as she squirmed her jeans over her ass and down her thighs. He all but picked her up and knelt her over the bed. She reached back and guided him in. She was dry and it was a little rough, but eventually moistened. His head was spinning with the suddenness, and easiness, of it all, and he lasted only a minute or two before he pulled out and finished by rubbing it between the cheeks of her ass and exploding on her back. He rolled off, she got up, went into his bathroom, and wiped herself clean. He heard the toilet flush and then she was back, pants up, and proceeded to vacuum. He got back under the covers, and when she was done, she wrapped up the cord and said, “Thank you, Mr. Joe,” and left.

  It was the first time he’d paid for sex. No pressure. No guilt. Just sex. Easy, bodily function sex.

  Now, twenty years later, he was still at it. When he moved into the club, he zeroed in on a Hispanic waitress named Darlena. He’d been there only a few weeks and was nervous about looking like a hound among the members. But he didn’t want to go home alone every night, either.

  Darlena was no kid, maybe mid-thirties, but with smooth mocha skin, a fit body, and a pleasant service smile. She called him Mr. Grudeck, and the times she waited on him, he left a large cash tip, usually two fifties folded and peeking out from a coffee saucer. They made small talk as she looked nervously around the room, but she let out scant details of her life; single mom with two preteens in Catholic school, up from Perth Amboy, worked here and a yacht club on Raritan Bay, ex-husband a deadbeat. “Maybe I can help,” he said, and let it hang there. She didn’t object that night as he left her a two-hundred-dollar tip.

  The next time she was on, Grudeck waited for her in the staff parking lot, standing in the shadows by the kitchen Dumpster. She came out, undoing the fitted black jacket the waitresses had to wear.

  She didn’t seem surprised to see him when he made himself known or when he said he’d had a few drinks and asked for a ride up the hill to his condo. As she drove the old Corolla, Grudeck reached for his wallet and pulled out two hundreds.

  “You could have called a cab for less,” Darlena said.

  “I could have walked. I wanted to talk to you about something,” Grudeck said, then added, “We’re both grown-ups, right?”

  She laughed and said, “Uh-oh. I think I know where this is going.” But she didn’t seem angry, or tell him to go fuck himself.

  “Look, I don’t want to insult you. You’re a hardworking woman, and I’m a guy who’s . . . alone. We can have an arrangement. Nothing weird. Just normal.”

  “Normal prostitution,” she said, and now he thought she might be pissed.

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” he said. “I’d call it mutual generosity. Between friends. You do something nice for me, and I’ll do something nice for you.”

  She laughed again. “I tried dancing once, but I’ve never been a whore.”

  “Don’t say it like that. I don’t want you to be a whore,” Grudeck said. Joe Bullshit. “It’s not like that. I want to help you; I see how hard you work.”

  “Then what exactly do you want?” she asked.

  “Just enough to help me relax,” Grudeck said.

  “Hand only?”

  “Just enough.”

  It was just that at first, two times a week. They had signals. If Grudeck was alone at the bar at closing time, it meant his door was open. She would let herself in, and flop down on the bed, and wait. Or he would call her cell right before she got off. He was never rough, or forceful, but she moved from hand to everything in a matter of weeks and Grudeck increased the tips. And he was a very good tipper; enough to pay the tuition at Assumption and her rent most months, and eventually buy a used BMW. And she would always leave as stealthily as she came, right after he fell asleep. She would take the hundred-dollar bills he left out and lock the door behind her.

  * * *

  EVERY OFF-SEASON, for his entire career, he returned to the Stuyvesant Avenue house, a modest but solidly built Cape Cod. Early in his career, he’d have Thanksgiving and Christmas at home, and knock around town until spring training. After he discovered golf, he came home for the holidays but took a few weeks here and there in Hilton Head or Palm Beach. He’d return to Union for two weeks before “pitchers and catchers” in February, and when the season opened, he’d unlock the door of his Boston place and find it just the way he’d left it, cleaned twice a week, even during the off-season.

  Grudeck drove to his parents’ house; it looked the same as long as he could remember. Brick-faced first floor, wood siding up top, painted white.

  When he was in high school, his father spent one weekend to frame and Sheetrock the second-floor walk-up attic, converting it into a long bedroom. Grudeck had to pretty much live down the median of the room, where the ceiling peaked. In the low eaves, his father put a desk and bookcases, which mostly held trophies and ghostwritten sports autobiographies for teens. The room now remained much as Joe Grudeck left it before rookie camp, a museum diorama to his youth athletic triumphs. The only significant difference was the bed. His boyhood bed, a sturdy twin, became too small and too unsteady for Major League Joe. In his first full year with Pawtucket, Joe had his mother order a queen-sized mattress set and the deliverymen squeezed it into a corner of the room. He asked her to order a new bed for his parents, too, and they went around and around before she finally relented.

  It was a few years later—his first time as an All-Star—he asked them to look for a bigger house up in Summit or Short Hills, the best neighborhoods around, but they refused.

  “This is where we live, Joey,” his mother said. “Why move? And then drive all the way down here for church? Or to see our friends? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  So he paid to improve the house. He had the electric, plumbing, and heating upgraded throughout, including central air. A few years after that, he sprung to expand the kitchen with all new appliances (including laundry so his mother didn’t have to go down the basement stairs), and added a master bath off their bedroom with a Jacuzzi, which they never used.

  He offered to have the house sided, but his father liked the look of the wood. So every few years, Joe Grudeck would pay to have it painted, inside and out. Every five years or so, he’d offer to move them, or redo all the fixtures, or buy new appliances, but they always refused.

  “Save your money, Joey,” his mother said, and Grudeck tried to explain to her just how much $5 million a year was. “Ma, I could buy you ten new houses for that. Let me buy you one, and I’ll put the money for the other nine in the bank.”

  After his dad died, Grudeck offered to move his mother into a luxury condo in downtown Millburn. She said no.

  “Your dad is gone. That’s enough change for now. I’d rather be alone here, where I’m used to it.”

  He offered to buy her a dog for companionship.

  “Like I need someone else to clean up after now.”

  He offered to pay for a housekeeper.

  “I don’t want some stranger cleaning my house.”

  They went through it all again when he retired and moved to the golf course. He again suggested a dog. She sniffed him out.

  “Lookit, I know you’re busy, Joey. I don’t expect you to come around every day now you’re retired. I don’t need a dog. Truth is, I have plenty of friends, and plenty to do. Puhl-lenty.”

  That was true. While Chuck Grudeck never stopped being “Joe Grudeck’s father,” Sylvia Grudeck had stopped being just “Joe Grudeck’s mother” a long time ago. When he left home, she stopped being a spectator in his life and went on with her own. Active, is what they call ladies her age, but that was too passive a word for Sylvia Grudeck. She was busy. She ran t
he Rosary Society at St. Joe’s, and volunteered in the literacy program at the Hannah Caldwell School library. She got involved in the Union Historical Society, even though as “an Italian who married a Polack” she at first thought she’d be out of place among the “blue-haired ladies.” But then, Union didn’t have many blue-haired ladies.

  In all those places, she was known for her contributions and vitality, released from being just “Joe Grudeck’s mother.”

  All those years, Joey’s sports kept her from creating the normal rhythms she wanted in her house. Family dinner, Saturday housecleaning, Sunday church, all came second to Joey’s games. Her life was spent on bleachers, in cycles of blending seasons. Football started in summer’s last heat and ended in finger-numbing cold. Wrestling filled the daylight hours between bleak mornings and early nightfall, in dimly lit gyms, followed by the dash to freezing cars in dark parking lots. Baseball began with spring’s lingering chill and went through to Jersey’s oppressively sticky summers. Then football was back. She was the packer; lunch and snacks, water bottles, sweatshirts and gloves, oh, and seat cushions. All those hours on aluminum or wood planks gave her hemorrhoids. She was a spectator, jammed in among many, trying to find the right angle for comfort on unforgiving seats, or sitting in fold-up field chairs that made her hips ache. She used the hours Joey was at school for the lonely work of running her house, and shopped to make wholesome meals. But many times food would go cold on the stove, when Chuck and Joey came in late from practices and admitted they “grabbed something” on the way home. She mopped the day’s muddy cleat marks, only to have tomorrow’s brought right back in. She washed and dried and folded Joey’s uniforms for the next game and the next and the next.