Gravesend

by Boyle, William

  “Let me tell you something. The day Nicky was born, I should’ve been overjoyed. I should’ve been there at Marylou’s bedside. I wasn’t, man. I was at a fucking bar. Her mother kept calling me, saying, ‘Get to the hospital.’ One more, I kept telling myself. Then the guys found out my kid was on the way and they kept buying me rounds. I was so drunk I didn’t even go to the hospital. Woke up in the back of my car. It all started right there. That was before I shot the guy, too. It’s just in me.”

  “Pop hasn’t been great, but I’ve been a bad son.”

  “You do for him.”

  “I do, yeah. But I don’t want to. Everything’s pulling teeth. And now, these last couple of days, I’m lucky I didn’t kill him the way I spoke.”

  They were quiet again. It wasn’t even noon. On a Monday. Pretty much every self-respecting person was out in the world working. Hauling trash, conducting trains, butchering meat, fighting fires, teaching, doing construction, whatever. And here they were. Fucked. People to pity. Not even noon on a fucking Monday. No wonder the Irish girl gave them that Spaghetti Western death stare.

  Conway let his mind wander. The other day, on the way to Hawk’s Nest, he’d thought about running away to Nova Scotia if things went well. He had always wanted to go there. He’d seen a spread on it in National Geographic one time in the OLN library and he thought it looked like the end of the world, peaceful desolation, and he started dreaming of it as some sort of paradise. He started thinking again that, however this went down, maybe that should still be his goal. Get there and get right. Try to live.

  Conway took the bus home, a little wobbly. He’d left McKenna at The Wicked Monk, where the bartender, sensing that he was mostly harmless, took a shine to him and started to bust his balls. McKenna probably had some far-flung notions that Irish would let him fuck her, but Conway knew there was no chance for that. The girl had simply adjusted and was starting to treat McKenna like a regular.

  Hyun was on the bus again. Running numbers. Always running numbers. Whatever that meant. Conway thought it sounded like something people did in the Twenties and Thirties but not now. And Conway wanted to know, if it was illegal, why did he ride the bus? He also had questions about Mr. Natale. A legend in the neighborhood, Mr. Natale had to be at least seventy now. He always wore a vintage DiMaggio or Mantle jersey and track pants, a gold chain dangling in the cottony tufts of his chest hair. He had ties to Gotti and Gaspipe Casso and the Genovese family. The rumor was that he’d been the one, back in the Seventies, who’d shot Eddie Russo outside the Loew’s on Eighteenth Avenue.

  But Conway said nothing. Drunk but not drunk enough.

  Another call came from Stephanie and he ignored it.

  He got off the bus and walked home. Readying an apology for Pop. He could see the way it would play out otherwise. He’d say he was sorry because he didn’t want it to be like everything McKenna had described.

  Maybe it’d be different, though. Maybe some shit would be healed between them. It was worth a shot.

  To Conway home didn’t feel like home anymore. It felt like a subway station at four in the morning. Sketchy. Uninviting. He opened the door and took off his shoes. The house alarm was set, thank God he noticed, and he shut it off, punching the password, 71239, Pop’s birthdate. He went into the kitchen, guessing Pop had wanted him to trip the alarm as some sort of punishment or something, figuring he wouldn’t remember the password.

  The TV was on in the living room. Conway could hear it, some early afternoon game show with its buzzes and blips, Pop probably only half-watching, in and out of sleep, rocking in his recliner.

  Conway started a pot of coffee, thinking he’d bring a cup in to Pop as a peace offering. As he spooned Folgers into the percolator, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that the bathroom door was closed. He guessed Pop was in there. He turned the flame on under the percolator, rust-brown from ages of burnt coffee and too-hot gas.

  In the living room, Conway waited for his father and the coffee. The TV was blaring, so loud Conway hunted for the channel changer to turn it down. No luck. He remained in noise.

  The coffee was boiling, bubbling up at a rapid pace. Conway shut the gas and took the percolator off the stove and put it on a wood block. He poured two cups, non-dairy creamer and sugar for Pop, black for him. He went over and knocked on the bathroom door. He had been in there a long time now. “Pop,” he said, “I made coffee. You coming out?”

  Nothing.

  Conway tried the door. Locked from the inside. Fuck. He went straight to worst case scenario: Pop dead on the toilet or in the shower or slumped over the sink. He pounded the door. “Pop, open up. Come on.”

  A chance remained that Pop was merely giving him the silent treatment. Fuck else could it be?

  “Come on, Pop. Open the door.”

  He wanted to call McKenna, felt like he couldn’t face this alone, but he thought better of it. He rammed the door harder now, with his whole body, leading with his shoulder and following with a hip-check and a kick.

  The slide lock finally snapped, taking some wood with it, and the door opened in. Pop was in the shower. It looked like he’d fallen forward going to put the water on. He’d hit his head on the edge of the tub and opened a large gash over his forehead. Conway figured it must’ve happened hours before. The bottom of the tub was layered thickly with blood. He didn’t move fast. Didn’t even think to call 911. He went over, picking up Pop’s limp wrist, felt for a pulse, and confirmed what he already knew: Pop was gone.

  Conway kneeled over and stroked his father’s back, trying not to touch the blood. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I remember more from before Duncan died, that was a lie. I remember that game we used to play, you’d hide that snow globe in the basement and I’d have to find it. I remember you getting out the BB gun that time we saw a mouse in the kitchen and me sitting next to you on the stairs all day waiting for the mouse to show so you could shoot it.”

  He didn’t cry. His face felt shattered.

  “I’m sorry, Pop,” he said again.

  He kept saying it.

  How Pop fell was a thing Conway really didn’t want to imagine but he couldn’t help the scene from coming to mind. Distraught, wandering around the house, Pop had decided to take a shower. Getting in the tub, no mat, he was reaching for the water on unsure legs—that right leg had been bothering him for years—and he lost his footing. He fell forward. Hit his head. Everything went starry. Blood covered his eyes. Or maybe it was more difficult than that. Maybe Pop had a heart attack and passed out. Or, worse yet, maybe something had snapped in his hip when Conway pushed him the night before. Maybe he fought through the pain, not wanting to go to the hospital.

  Whatever had happened, Pop deserved better.

  Conway thought about calling McKenna again. He decided not to. He decided not to call anyone. He went to the bedroom, got a clean white sheet, and covered Pop up. The blood started to seep through the edges of the sheet pretty quickly, so he got a comforter, the thick beady yellow one from Pop’s bed, and put that over him, too.

  The TV was on low, something that wasn’t normal in the house, Conway flipping through the channels and settling for some reality show on MTV. Not Jersey Shore, but something like it. Tanned, cut guidos making asses of themselves in a pool in Hollywood or Miami. Cut to the confessional room: one of them saying, “I’m a lonely person. A very lonely person.”

  Conway sat in Pop’s recliner, nervously tapping his foot against the floor.

  Telling people about this would mean a lot of attention. There’d have to be arrangements made. A service. A funeral. It was too much.

  He’d closed the door on Pop.

  And now he closed his eyes.

  It was Tuesday afternoon when he woke up. He’d slept for almost a full day. He thought Pop dying in the shower might have been a dream, but he got up and saw the bathroom door closed and knew that it wasn’t.

  He heated up and drank the whole pot of yesterday’s coffee, all the way
sober for what seemed like the first time in days.

  His phone rang. Stephanie. He picked up. “What, Steph?”

  “Is this a bad time?”

  “No.”

  “I just wanted to check in.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “Why don’t you meet me somewhere? I think you need help. I think you need to talk to someone.”

  Conway thought about it. Maybe a distraction would be good. “Where you want to meet?”

  “How about the Roulette Diner?”

  “Fine.”

  “Should I pick you up?”

  “I’ll walk. I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

  He closed the phone, put the percolator in the sink, and blocked the bathroom door with a chair. Not that anyone would be coming in the house. Even if Pop started to stink, there were no too-close neighbors to smell it. The whole house was theirs. Conway started to think of it as Pop’s casket. Maybe, after everything was done with Ray Boy, Conway would just burn the house down with his father’s body in it and hit the road for Nova Scotia.

  The Roulette was a pretty far walk, over on Sixteenth Avenue. Conway’s head was a blur. It was gray out, low fifties. He walked under the El on Eighty-Sixth again and listened to train sounds. People walked around him, mostly Chinese, some Russians, with grocery bags and foldable shopping carts and babies in their arms and cell phones, hustling to and from banks and markets. He passed the Optimo on Bay Parkway where he used to buy porn magazines. He started when he was twelve, going in there trying not to look like a scumbag. The Indian guy behind the counter, he could really give two shits, but Conway went through the motions anyway: putting that day’s New York Times down on the counter with copies of Hustler, Leg Show, Barely Legal, whatever else looked legit. The Indian guy got to know Conway pretty well, tried to make small talk with him, but Conway never wanted to strike up a friendship. He couldn’t help but imagine the guy picturing him at home, jerking off over the toilet with one of the magazines balanced on the tank. Pop used to go to that place for lottery tickets and tall boys too, so that was another reason Conway had wanted nothing to do with the Indian.

  Before Duncan died, Pop used to go up to a coffee shop on Twentieth Avenue for foil-wrapped bacon-and-egg sandwiches and coffee two or three times a week. The building where that coffee shop was now was split between a Russian Internet cafe and a pho joint. Conway passed it and remembered going to the coffee shop with Pop. It was called Jolly’s, the name in red-script neon in the window, and it was owned by a fat Sicilian named Carlo who everyone called Jolly. Conway and Duncan would sit in the glossy wooden booths with Pop and they would unwrap their sandwiches and Pop would read them stories from the Daily News.

  Another place he passed, a Gold’s Gym now, used to be a garage where Pop worked as a mechanic. Pop told many stories about that place, how he was the best mechanic in the neighborhood for the few years he did it, how Chevy wanted to hire him for the place they had on Coney Island Avenue, and then Pop would take out his business cards and show them: FRANK D’INNOCENZIO, MECHANIC, CLIPPER JOHN’S GARAGE, 1982 86th STREET. Conway probably still had one of those cards, tucked away in a drawer or closet somewhere.

  On Eighteenth Avenue, right before the El turned away up New Utrecht Avenue, was the funeral home where Duncan had been laid out. CAPELLI’S, the letters in somber white tiles on the black storefront. Under that: A family funeral home, est. 1963. Pop had gone to school with the guy who ran it, Fabrizio Capelli, and he’d given Pop an old buddy’s discount on Duncan’s wake. It cost eight grand. Eight grand. That number had always astounded Conway. He couldn’t believe it cost anything. Who would charge a friend that much money to lay out and bury his son? Then there was the church and ugly Holy Garden on ugly Long Island. Early on Conway was aware how people will charge you for anything and wring money like blood from the wet cloth of suffering.

  Conway remembered being in the funeral parlor. Duncan laid out. Open casket because most of the damage had been internal. People bending over him. Flowers everywhere. Hands on his shoulders. Smell of formaldehyde. Grizzled old men patting the back of his hand, their hairy knuckles brushing his nose. Wailing ladies in mourning bear-hugging him, their flowery perfume the worst smell of all. Duncan looking so young with rosy cheeks and a glass-smooth chin. The whole thing like being inside a memory that wasn’t real. Conway remembered Pop that day, gone in the eyes, ghostly, top button undone on an unpressed suit, ready to collapse, finally—all these years later—collapsing in the shower. Maybe the shock of losing both sons now—Conway dead to him after all—was simply too much to let a man stand straight anymore.

  The neighborhood was the story of Pop’s life, even more than it was the story of Conway’s or Duncan’s. He had gone to school at Most Precious Blood. Had been raised on Bay Thirty-Eighth. Went to Coney Island on weekends and holidays. Rode the bus. Scratched lotto tickets outside the Optimo. Got his newspapers at Augie’s. Bought Duncan and Conway Spaldeens at Jimmy’s. Got pizza at Spumoni Gardens, sitting on a bench outside and munching on a square slice, chasing it with a chocolate ice and maybe bringing a pint of spumoni home. He’d met their mother at a mixer in the Most Precious Blood basement. He’d walked his Nonna and Nonno to church every Sunday morning. He’d gone to his brother Ralphie’s on Stillwell every Sunday for a touch of Johnnie Walker Red. He never strayed far from the neighborhood, unless he took a bus to Atlantic City from Bay Parkway or went to some bullshit family event in Jersey. When he went to Duncan’s parent-teacher conferences at Our Lady of the Narrows, it was the first time he’d ever been in Bay Ridge, just a couple of neighborhoods over. No reason to go, he’d always said, just a bunch of goddamn Micks. He’d never been to Manhattan, never been to the Bronx for an in-the-flesh Yankee game, had no desire to visit Queens (hell for?), and—only after Duncan died—made a trip to Holy Garden on Long Island where he’d bought two plots back in the Seventies because they were dirt cheap. After Duncan’s death, his range got even smaller. Home. Church. That was it.

  Conway saw Pop everywhere and in everything.

  Even the Roulette Diner, when he walked in, reminded Conway of Pop, who had taken him and Duncan there for pancakes after church two or three times. The place was glittery, with Naugahyde booths and mirrored walls, and the servers looked desperate in their dress-up best.

  Stephanie was at a booth by a window overlooking the parking lot. She had makeup on, black squiggles around her eyes, a thick inkiness in her lashes, rouge blotted on her cheeks. She was slurping on a milkshake and watching a Hasidic Jewish family outside, husband, wife, four kids, load up their hulking green Olds: carriage, bags of groceries from Pathmark, a stack of library books.

  Conway sat down.

  Stephanie leaned across the table and tried to read his eyes. “You don’t look okay,” she said.

  “I’m just tired,” Conway said.

  “You need help. You need to talk to someone.”

  “You keep saying that. I’m talking to you. Here. Now.”

  “I’m a start, but you need professional help. At least talk to Father Villani like I said. I talk to him all the time. He’s a very gentle man. He gives good advice.”

  “You’re what, thick? I’m not talking to Villani.”

  A tense silence hung in the air. The waiter came over and Conway ordered a Dewar’s to settle himself down. He was shaky from all the coffee he’d had. Stephanie said what the hell and ordered a gin-and-tonic.

  “I drink now,” Stephanie said.

  “That’s nice.”

  The waiter brought their drinks back and put them on yellow cocktail napkins covered in recipes. He asked if they wanted food and Stephanie ordered disco fries for them to split.

  Stephanie said, “Did you used to come here as a kid?”

  “Just a couple of times,” Conway said.

  “I used to come here with Nana Dirello all the time. She’d get me a Belgian waffle and a milkshake.”

  “Pop brought us here tw
o or three times, me and Duncan. I was just thinking about it.”

  Stephanie winced at Duncan’s name. “I’m sorry, Conway.”

  “For what?”

  “Ray Boy Calabrese. Everything. I know that’s what’s going on. Ray Boy’s back and—”

  “Really, Steph, you don’t know anything.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “You know how I feel?”

  “I’m sure I do.”

  Conway downed his Dewar’s and rattled the ice around in the bottom of the glass. “Do me a favor and change the subject.”

  “I don’t know what to talk about.” Stephanie sipped her gin-and-tonic through a coffee straw. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Tell me about Alessandra.”

  “What about her?”

  “You’ve seen her since she’s been back.”

  “A few times.”

  “Just tell me about her. Anything.”

  “Well, I thought we were going to live together. Just me and her. I was finally gonna get out of my house. I was excited. But today she calls me for a ride. Wants me to pick her up in Queens. Something about she can’t take the subway from there because it’ll take too long. I pick her up at another woman’s house.” She lowered her voice. “Alessandra’s a lezzie or at least part-lezzie.”

  “So this was her girlfriend?” Conway said.

  The waiter brought back the platter of disco fries and set it between them. Conway ordered another round of drinks. Stephanie reached out for a gravy-slathered twist of fries and started munching.

  “Just a girl,” Stephanie cupping her hand over mouth, “she slept with.”

  Conway, angry, grabbed a couple of fries and stuffed them in his mouth, but they tasted pasty and he spit them out into his cocktail napkin. He needed his scotch. He pictured Alessandra fucking some other blurry-faced girl, using what, a strap-on the way they did in girl-on-girl movies he’d seen? Behind the girls, he saw Pop, curled up and bleeding on the floor, dead. And he saw Ray Boy sitting in the corner of the room, watching, his hoodie snapped low over his brow.