by Dennis Smith
The door squeaks when we open it. It is so dark that it is hard to cross from one roof to the other along the six buildings that are all the same in our row on 56th Street. There is a small wall, less than two feet high, separating each building, and I trip over the first one and cry out.
“Shhsh,” Johnny whispers. “You have to be quiet.”
I squint my eyes until they get used to the darkness. It is about nine o’clock, and I am thinking that there is school tomorrow. Maybe I can stay out for another half an hour and my mother won’t notice.
The Hotel Sutton is across the street. It looks like a mountain of lights from up here. We can see into the rooms looking over the parapet. But I only see men who are on the telephone or reading. Someone is watching television.
Everybody seems to have a television now, but we still haven’t gotten one, or a phone, either. The welfare doesn’t allow them, my mother says, but I don’t know why we couldn’t hide them and add them to our famous list of secrets.
“I wish I had binocs,” Johnny says.
“What’s binocs?” I ask, wondering why he knows so many things I don’t.
“Like they look through in the navy pictures, you know, to see if any Jap kamikazes are coming.”
Johnny is lying across the roof edge, and I am thinking that he is getting his clothes dirty because I know no one ever cleans up here.
“C’mon,” he says, “lean up here, and you can see better.”
Suddenly, I hear the squeak of a roof door opening, and I am hoping that we don’t get caught up here on the roof. No one is allowed. If I get caught, I don’t know how I will ever explain anything to my mother. What would I say? That I was up on the roof to play cards? To talk with Johnny? She will know for sure that I came up here to do something I am not supposed to.
“Shhsh,” I whisper as Johnny slides down from the roof edge. “Let’s take cover.”
We run to the other side of the roof and wait in the dark to see who is coming. We are crouched low by a wall that looks over an alleyway. I can see, two roofs over, that a guy is there with his dog. Johnny sees him, too, and puts his mouth by my ear.
“If that dog comes over here,” he says, “I am going to throw him off the roof.”
“Shhsh,” I say, “he won’t come if he doesn’t hear you.”
We are kneeling down now for more than ten minutes, until finally the guy takes the dog back into his building.
“Whew,” Johnny says, “that was close.”
I stand to take the stiffness out of my legs. It is like I’ve been kneeling for an age at a High Mass. We are next to a wall that looks over to a back alleyway. I look down, and I feel instantly frozen.
“Shhsh,” I say.
“What?” Johnny says.
“Shhsh,” I say again. Looking down between the clothes hanging from the clotheslines, I can see Sue Flanagan. If Johnny talks now, I think I’ll kill him.
“Let me see,” he says.
“Shhsh.”
I am leaning over the alleyway wall, and there on the top floor, just below me, is Sue Flanagan in her bedroom. There are curtains over her window, but I can see right through them. There is not much space in her room, but she is moving around like crazy, and each time she moves, her skirt waves one way and then the next, and I can see the curves of her legs. She throws something on her bed, and then she leans over the bed to get it back, and her skirt goes up to her thighs. Her skin is so white. I don’t know if I have ever seen skin as white as hers. And then she leaves the room, and I am straining to see into her kitchen window, but the shade is down, and I can’t see anything.
“Where’d she go?” Johnny asks.
“Shhsh.”
I am hoping that she will come back again, and I am staring into her room, past the curtains and into her empty bed. God. Does she sleep in the bed for everyone on the roof to see? God.
Sue comes back into the room, and I am so happy to see her again. It is thrilling. She is still moving quickly, as if she has ten things to do and time for just three of them. She throws something on her bed again, and she begins to unbutton her blouse. I can feel myself trembling, the way I felt before I ran in to call the cops on Quigley. This is maybe the most exciting thing I have ever done in my life, to be here watching Sue Flanagan.
But there is also something strange happening.
Something is bothering me, something I don’t like. I suddenly begin to think that I am doing something only because I have the edge of being in this darkness. It doesn’t sit right with me, and I wonder why I am doing this. I am thinking that I am embarrassed, and I can hardly talk. I feel a little like I have been listening to someone else’s confession at church.
I want to tell Johnny that maybe we shouldn’t be here.
Sue has her blouse open, and I can see her brassiere clearly as she turns around quickly. I can remember being so close to that brassiere, and dancing around the stoop with her, rocking back and forth, feeling wanted, and I am thinking that I want to close my eyes. I know she is going to take her blouse off, and I am having trouble swallowing. But she unbuttons her skirt instead, and the skirt drops to the floor. My mouth is dry and sticky. I feel myself moving in my underwear, feeling the famous boner all the guys love so much, but yet I know something is wrong. I feel that I want to punch out at somebody, maybe like Mr. Dempsey there in the back of his delicatessen. Why am I so young, I am thinking, and why can’t I just be in that room with Sue, talking to her as she prances around in her underpants and a blouse that is opening and closing like a flapping flag? I can hardly breathe as I watch her lean over to pick up her skirt, the silk of her underpants so close to me I can almost feel it. She folds the skirt and puts it into her drawer by the bed. I can’t watch anymore. I feel like I should be punching out at myself because I know that I am wrong being in this darkness like this. And I know, too, that she is going to take her underpants and her brassiere off, because I know now that it is her nightgown that she put on the bed. I can’t look anymore, because every time I see her I want her to hug me, and to call me Dapper Dan, and to laugh, and I know if I watch her take all her clothes off that I am going to feel funny the next time I see her, odd and different. And I know that she would hate me if she knew that I was here. I am breathing so heavily. I have to do something.
I can hardly talk, and I can see that Johnny is big-eyed and smiling. I know I have to say something to him.
But what?
I can’t just tell him that I think this is wrong. He thinks that this is just another one of those great things that come with living in the city, things that don’t happen in Brooklyn.
And so I kneel down again, and I am low enough so that I can’t see over the wall. It is a strange relief now, like I am out of it. And I take a moment to think what to say.
“We better go before we get caught,” I say, putting as much alarm in my whisper as I can.
“Are you crazy?” Johnny says. He isn’t whispering now, but talking loud, like he was surprised and shocked that I would say something so out of touch.
“Are you crazy?” he says again. This time he yells, and I know he is not asking a question.
“Shhsh,” I say. “I’m getting outta here.”
Someone opens a window. I can hear the metal chains of the window moving as it opens. Someone yells up the alley.
“Who’s there? What’s going on?”
God, I think, God, get me outta here before anyone finds out.
I am running now, and Johnny is running behind me. We get to the roof door of my building, and it creaks louder than any door has ever creaked as I open it. The No One Allowed on Roof sign slams behind me.
“Shhsh.”
We are in the hall, tiptoeing down the stairs. I am praying that no one opens their door until we get to the fourth floor, apartment 26.
“Man, did you ever see tits like that?” Johnny says. I know now that he is asking a question like he wants an answer.
“Shhsh,” I say to h
im. “Shhsh.”
We are going down my long hallway. I don’t want to answer Johnny. I don’t want to talk about it, and I know that if I just go to bed, I won’t have to talk to Johnny until next time he comes to New York to sing Irish songs, and I can just lie in my bed and think about the beauty in the eyes of the Rose of Tralee, and try with all my might to not think about the whitest skin I have ever seen in my life.
Chapter Twenty-five
I am in Bobby Carney’s house down on 51st Street, around the corner from Kips. He is taking me over to the residence of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where I have an appointment to take the special Latin exam for Cathedral altar boys.
“Why are you doing that?” Billy asked as I was leaving the house.
“It’s a good deal,” I answered, “because the Cathedral is like being in the championships for altar boys. Not everyone can get in.”
“Big deal,” Billy said, “it’s ten blocks away, long blocks. And it will snow every time you have the six o’clock Mass.”
“Ahh,” I said to Billy, “you’re just in a bad mood all the time because the Knicks lost the play-offs.”
Basketball is most of Billy’s life. He’s an altar boy at St. John’s, but he doesn’t like the Cathedral. I don’t know why. He says he would rather spend his altar boy time at our church doing the weddings and funerals for the tip money, rather than going to the Cathedral for the fanfare of it.
I don’t know why some people like to do one thing, and other people like to do something else. Maybe it depends on who your friends are, who you’re hanging around with. When Jurgensen became an altar boy, I wanted to join up with him, and when Walsh became a choirboy, I wanted to do that, too. And when Carney said I could go to the Cathedral if I wanted, that was good enough for me.
Now there is no one home at Carney’s, and so we are sitting on a couch in a dark living room. The couch and a chair are covered with a thick plastic. If Carney’s mother was home, she wouldn’t let us in the living room but would make us sit at the kitchen table.
“Did you bring the Latin book?” Carney asks.
“I forgot it,” I answer. “It’s on my brother’s bed. You know he’s got the lower bunk and it’s dark there and I didn’t see it, and he was breaking my horns when I was leaving, anyway. So I forgot it.”
“Shit,” he says, “how are we gonna go over the Latin?”
“Don’t you know it by heart?” I ask. I know that Carney is good at the Latin. We have been altar boys at St. John’s for a few years now, and ordinarily I would know the Latin pretty good, too, but this was for the Cathedral. Your Latin has to be exact at the Cathedral or they’ll give you the bum’s rush, twenty-three skidoo, get lost, kid.
“Yeah,” he answers, “I know most of it. You can start after Ad Deum qui laetificat.”
“Quia tu es, Deus,” I say, “fortitudo mea, quare me repulisti, et quare tristis …”
“Okay,” Carney says, “okay.”
He goes on through the Latin, and I am amazed that he knows it as good as any priest. I am trying to answer as quickly as he says it.
I am doing fine as Carney gets to “Domine, exaudi orationem meam.”
“Et clamor meus,”I answer, “ad te veniat.”
“Dominus vobiscum,” he says.
“Et cum spiritu tuo, “I say, being careful to form my words exactly.
Carney shakes his head. “Et cum spiri tutu oh,” he says.
“That’s not how you say it,” I say. I know that he said it wrong, and a little mess-up like this could keep me out of the Cathedral altar boys.
“Bullshit,” he says. “It is so.”
“It’s not,” I say. “It’s et cum spiritu tuo, and not spiri tutu oh.”
“Bullshit,” he says again, this time very sarcastically. “I’m telling you, I’ve been saying this for years. It’s spiri TU-TU oh.”
“Look, Carney,” I say, getting a little hot under the collar, “I don’t want to say you’re wrong, but you’re wrong. I mean, I can see the words the way they are written on the page in my Latin book.”
“Do you know what the Latin means?” he asks, and I can see he wants to lord it over me.
“No,” I say, “I don’t know what any of it means, but it doesn’t matter, ‘cause they don’t ask you what any of it means.”
“Well,” he says, “it tells you in the book what it means, and it was you who forgot the book. I didn’t.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I know what it says. It says et cum spiritu tuo.” And, for emphasis, I yell, “Tu-oh, you see, not tu-tu-oh.”
“Well,” Carney says as he gets up from the couch, “if that’s the way you feel about it, you can just go over there for the test by yourself, and see if I care.”
“All right,” I say, getting up also, “who needs you, anyway?”
“Don’t get smart with me,” he says, “or I’ll punch you in the mouth. You wouldn’t be having this test if it wasn’t for me.”
“You punch me in the mouth,” I say, “and you’ll be picking up your eyes off the floor.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I am feeling a little angry that Carney and I are arguing about this, but I know I can’t let him push me around. And, anyway, I think I know the Latin enough to pass the test. So I begin to head for the door when I am suddenly shocked as Carney punches me square in the back.
I am falling forward now and thinking, Holy God, do I have to fight Carney over the Latin right here in his living room on East 51st Street?
I know I can take him, for I have wrestled with him a hundred times at Kips Bay, and I think of the pain in my back where he punched me. I could give him a black eye right here in his living room, but this isn’t the same as when Shalleski pushed me around. Carney is a good kid, and he’s just being stupid and selfish, and I guess he wants to show me that he’s not afraid of me. I don’t know why guys get like this. Why does he so need to be right even though he’s wrong as Wrong Way Corrigan?
I just look at Bobby, hard and angry, and he puts his fists up. He wants to duke it out in his living room where we’ll break all the lamps and ashtrays. It’s crazy, especially since I know I can take him in a minute.
But I don’t want to beat Bobby Carney up. He did get me the test at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, even though I didn’t ask him to. He just came and asked me if I wanted to get in the Cathedral altar boys. It was a nice thing for him to do.
I am always remembering the story about turning the other cheek. Carney is wrong to hit me like this, as wrong as he is about the Latin, but I don’t have to do anything about it. I know it is spiritu tuo. It is enough to know I am right, without getting into a fight about it.
Et cum spiritu, big space, tuo, and he’s got a lot to learn.
And, I think as I skip down his stairs two by two, he’s lucky I gave him the other cheek.
Chapter Twenty-six
I passed the Cathedral Latin test. It was like a breeze. It is now morning dark, two months later.
It doesn’t seem like there is anyone in the Cathedral, except me and this priest who doesn’t speak any English. He is looking at a framed diagram of the altars in the Cathedral, each one numbered. It is hanging on the sacristy wall next to the cabinet where they keep the wine and the incense. There must be about twenty altars upstairs, and he is trying to figure out what to do.
It is good I know the Latin, for this priest would go thirsty if he tried in his own language to get any wine from me. Maybe he is a guinea priest, or spick, or Portugee. Billy was right. All I seem to get here in the Cathedral are the six o’clock Masses, and most of the time with the priests who don’t know the English.
I don’t like it so much at the Cathedral, but I guess it’s fair. The new guy on the block always gets the dirty work in any job. That’s the way it is on the basketball team, too. The new guy never starts the game, never gets in the middle of the action at the beginning.
I was yawning and thinking abou
t this when I was walking here this morning, getting up in the dark like I was a farmer going to milk the cows, and then meeting some foreign priest in the sacristy who tries to tell me what to do with hand signals, like in the deaf school. And I am so tired I can hardly speak, let alone read hand signals.
The priest doesn’t seem much older than Billy. He waves me over to him. The sacristy is made of stone, and has a high ceiling that goes up in the middle like a fancy tent. He gets a pencil and paper and draws an altar of a table and a cross and then puts a question mark next to it. It’s like charades with a pencil, and I know right away what he is asking.
But how should I know what altar we should go to? Pick a number, one to twenty.
Since I don’t want to appear that I don’t know what I am doing, I write #1 next to his question mark. The priest smiles. It is the way the Italians and the Spanish in New York smile when they don’t know the language but want to believe that everything is all right. We begin to walk up the long, steep and narrow corridor of the sacristy stairs, and I know that this priest is going to take me right to where we shouldn’t be. We then continue right on to the main altar, me trailing behind him when I should be in front, smiling as well, holding the cruets in one hand and my cassock in the other, trying to keep from tripping over myself.
I have been on the main altar of the Cathedral only once before when they called me in to fill in for a sick acolyte at a High Mass. It was a fluke, for altar boys don’t get to serve at High Mass until they’ve been around for a couple of years. In the Cathedral they make the High Mass on Sunday mornings their biggest deal, like being in a movie. I never had so many layers of vestments on. They have a woman who dresses you. First, in a kind of an alb, a long white surplice, and then a cincture to tie around it like a belt, and then over this they make you wear a very fancy surplice with more lace than I have ever seen, and, finally, they put a red velvet cape around my shoulders, the material flowing like a waterfall down to my wrists. Then I was really surprised when the sacristy lady pulled a small gold ring out of a box and put it on my middle finger. I felt like I was a cardinal like Cardinal Spellman and asked one of the guys next to me if he would kiss the ring so I could tell Billy that it was all so great and they were kissing my ring and everything.