A Song for Mary

by Dennis Smith

  Chapter Forty

  I am walking up the hill to Kips Bay Camp, in Valhalla, New York. A big canvas bag is over my shoulder. The country air smells like a package of Chinese laundry, clean and soft. The dirt road under my feet makes me think that I am in another country, like Ireland, but Valhalla is just ten miles above the city. Still, it’s greener than Central Park.

  Forty shades of green, that’s what Pop said about Ireland.

  Pop is already dead a couple of months, but I think about him still, and especially when I see anything green—lawns, hills, forests, valleys, mountains, glens—they all remind me of Pop and his forty shades of green.

  I am laughing now, because I remember that I don’t think I have ever understood a complete sentence of Pop’s in my whole life, except for one.

  “In Eye-er-land,” he used to say, “dere is ony da farty shades a green ta mak’ a man smile.”

  I saw him the day before he died, a tube in his throat to give him some breath. All the pipes he smoked in his seventy-eight years burned his lungs out. I felt sorry for him, lying there, and I wondered if he knew who I was, or if he cared.

  “Your grandfather,” my mother told me at his wake, “didn’t have much of a past, but whatever is there should be remembered, those fishing boats in County Cork, the warehouse in Manhattan, those endless roofs in Brooklyn waiting to be tarred and covered, all those Masses he went to, always in the same suspenders he wore for thirty years. Just keep all that in the back of your mind.”

  My mother’s father hardly knew any of us, and spent all of his time smoking his pipe and reading the newspaper and drinking his beer. After he fell from that roof, running after that rolling log of tar paper, he never worked again.

  He had no pension, no money, no stores laid up but his memories of Ireland. He was lucky to have my Aunt Kitty and my Uncle Andy there to put him up, and to put up with him. After Sunday Mass, a beer and a newspaper and a cushioned kitchen chair was all he wanted in his life, and his grandchildren were like shadows around him.

  Billy got me the job of kitchen boy for the summer. He’s a counselor, and he told me that next year, if I did okay at Hayes, I could become a counselor, too.

  The kitchen boys’ cabin is at the end of a long row of eight cabins and two double cabins. The cabins are just big enough for eight beds, four on each side, and have canvas shades instead of windows along the sides.

  I throw my duffel on a bed, and I lie down to rest from the hike up the hill from the train station. I am still huffing and puffing, bur I light a cigarette, anyway. The kitchen boys always smoke, and for as many years as I have been coming to this camp, since I was six, I don’t remember a kitchen boy who didn’t have a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth.

  A guy named Spango comes in with his suitcase tied together with a wash line. I know him from 55th Street. He has dark skin, a gold tooth, and he just moved into our neighborhood from some country in South America. He has brought with him a record player which plays the new 45 rpm records, and he has a collection of rock and roll.

  It is great having Spango and having Frankie Lymon, the Platters, the Four Tops, all of them, always available on the 45s. I can tell there is never going to be a dull moment this summer.

  Another guy named Charlie Spaskey comes into the cabin. I know him, too, from Kips Bay. He is from Brooklyn and has just won the Golden Gloves championship for fifteen-year-olds. The thing about Charlie Spaskey is that he is a very cool cat, a good-looking boy whose blond hair comes down over his eyes, and is known for getting any girl he wants. Marilyn Rolleri, Barbara Godotti, Barbara Gabelli, Catherine Gaeta, they were all in love with Charlie. Even Sue Flanagan would go for Charlie.

  It is a hot day, but the cool breeze pouring through the window openings makes us feel that a new life is starting. Everything is different here, and so I offer my cigarettes around, and we have our first bullshit session, “Earth Angel” blaring in the background.

  The time passes quickly at camp. Some days I have to work in the mess hall, cleaning tables, giving out food to the campers, or washing the floors, and on other days I have to work in the kitchen with Flora, who someone told me was Harry Belafonte’s mother.

  People are always making up stories at camp to have fun with the campers, and sometimes the truth mixes in with the stories, and I don’t know what to believe.

  Archie said that President Eisenhower’s son is a camper here, but they have to keep it a government secret and so he’s here using a moniker. Most of the campers believe him, and so, in a way, it makes their camp stay special. Archie also said that Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize, and they were going to give it to him here at breakfast next week. Nobody believes that, but Flora could be Harry Belafonte’s mother, for she is very black and she is always singing those calypso songs.

  The work in the kitchen with Flora is hard, for all I do all day is Brillo out the pots and pans and wash the floors and the counters over and over. A schedule is posted in the kitchen boys’ cabin telling us who has which job on which day. We sometimes trade the different jobs according to what days we want off. Archie is still the head counselor, and he tries to make things easy for us.

  The easiest job is the porch duty, because all you do is stand on the mess hall porch and inspect the campers’ hands to see if they have been washed as they march into the mess hall. Sometimes I pick out a little kid and make him go back to the wash house three times to wash his hands. When he comes back the third time, I have a muddy baseball which I throw to him suddenly. He has no choice but to catch it, and his hands are soaked with mud.

  I would never send any of them back to wash their hands after the muddy baseball, but I tell them they better hide their hands from their counselor. The kids are great, and they take all the ribbing in stride. Archie did the same thing to me when I was seven, and I always remember it with a smile on my face.

  Now the summer is half over. I have been practicing my set and jump shot every day, and reading as much as I can so that I will be ready to get off to a good start at Hayes. Billy gave me the complete works of Sherlock Holmes and the complete works of Shakespeare. I like Sherlock Holmes better, because he always knows what he is doing, but the characters in the Shakespeare book seem never to. My brother also gave me a paper edition of the Confessions of Saint Augustine, after he read it, and I keep carrying it around in my back pocket, half thinking that Archie will be impressed that I have such a book in my back pocket, and half thinking that I might find some time to read it.

  Two days ago I was scheduled to work in the kitchen with Flo, and when I woke up I had a stomachache and heaved all over the place. It was a bug of some kind. It felt like Tom Thumb was in my stomach going through it with a lawn mower. I couldn’t think about washing the kitchen floor four times, and Spango knew I was going to be late for work if I didn’t get a move on. It was his day off, and I guess he felt sorry for me.

  “You stay here, Dennis,” Spango said, “and I’ll work with Flo today.”

  He didn’t say that he would change days off with me, or that I owed him something. He just said that he would do the job for me, and he went off to the kitchen as the sun was rising over Valhalla. I’ll never forget him, that he did that for me.

  He died last night.

  The whole camp is in shock. He and Charlie Spaskey went to town to have a soda and to check out the lay of the land in the girl department. When they were coming home, they hitched a ride at the bottom of the hill coming up from town.

  The driver was drunk, went eighty miles an hour, and slammed into a tree. They say Spaskey will live, but his brain is damaged, a handsome Golden Gloves champion beaten by a drunk and a tree.

  All my life I have been thinking about how rough it is for my father to be cooped up in some hospital, and now I am thinking about Spango, dead at fifteen years old.

  Chapter Forty-one

  That whole thing about Spango dying like that has been on my mind, and I see it so clearly, like the
bull’s-eye in the middle of the target.

  I am fifteen years old, and I don’t think I have even started my life yet. In fact, I am always thinking about getting my life started, and I can’t imagine hitting a tree and having everything go black, every breath crushed out of you, and not even having a chance yet to get life started.

  And the pain. What terrible pain they must have felt. They are just kids, both of them, who had ten or twenty years ahead of them to make something of themselves.

  We are all just kids, really. I shouldn’t forget that. That accident makes me think that I have a lot of years before me, and I shouldn’t be wasting any of my time.

  “Time,” I remember Sister Alphonsus saying, “is the biggest gift that God gives you. You don’t have to work for it, or pray for it, or anything. He just gives it to you free and clear, and only you can put a value on it.”

  I do value my time, and I want to make something of myself. I could be something important, too, something that will make people think, Holy God, Dennis did that?

  I remember that I said three Hail Marys as soon as I heard about the accident. What else is there to do but pray for a guy, to hope that God won’t be too hard on him? Is it too late to say that I wish I would have worked for Spango that day, giving him back the time he gave me? If he had the day off, would he have gone down to the city on a visit? Maybe then Spaskey would have done something different, too.

  But thinking like that doesn’t do anything for them. Spango is dead forever, and I have no power to do anything about his dying except to say a few prayers. At least God will hear me, and maybe Spango will, too, and he will know that not many people I know would have worked the whole day for me and not have asked anything in return.

  After the funeral and visiting Charlie in the hospital, I practiced my basketball, set shots and layups, all summer long. I was feeling good, so good, about going to high school, about becoming more like my brother. I wanted to try to be a better student, and I wanted to work to be a sports star. I’ve always known I can do it, and everybody tells me I can do it. Archie and Betty down at Kips, Monsignor Ford, my mother, all of them telling me that I can recognize my famous abilities if I just pay attention.

  Chapter Forty-two

  I have been at Hayes for more than a month now, and I want to pay attention, too.

  Or, at least, I wanted to.

  It is Sunday, a crisp fall day, and I have taken a ticket at the French bakery on 54th Street. I went to the eleven o’clock Mass, and it seems that every person in the church ran directly to the bakery after the communion.

  I used to wait until the priest said, “Eta missa est,” “Go, the Mass is ended,” but lately I have been standing in the back and slipping out after the communion. I don’t think much happens after the communion, anyway. The priest just washes his chalice and talks a lot to himself in Latin.

  Father O’Rourke says it is insulting to God to come late or to leave early, and that if you insult God, you’ll insult your mother and father and your friends, too, and what kind of a person goes around insulting everyone like that? But I don’t think it is such an insult, and, anyway, God has a lot more important things to think about than me slipping out after the communion.

  I thought I was the first to leave, and I don’t know how so many people got so quickly to the bakery.

  The rolls are six cents each, and I come here every Sunday to buy three seeded rolls. They used to be cheaper, but, no matter the price, Sunday would not be Sunday if I didn’t get the rolls for my mother and Billy and me to have with our Sunday egg. Even if they cost a quarter each, I think we would still get them. The rolls and Sundays are like Mass and communion. They just go together like peanut butter and jelly.

  Today, I have an extra dime my mother gave me for the collection, but Father O’Rourke was talking about how wonderful it would be if just once he could have a silent collection, where there would be just paper falling into the straw collection baskets, so that he wouldn’t have to hear the annoying clinking of change. I didn’t want to disappoint him by throwing a dime in the basket, and so I am going to give the dime to the French lady behind the counter for a jelly doughnut.

  Most of the women in the bakery are holding wallets in their hands and wearing long dresses made of rayon. Rayon is a scientific thing, and it doesn’t smell nice like cotton, like Mom’s dresses when she washes them, but the dresses are pretty and in light colors, purples and greens like in Monet’s Rouen Cathedral. The men seem all to be in brown suits with wide lapels and brown shoes. I know almost everyone who is waiting, people you see in the neighborhood, in the stores, and in church.

  I am feeling dapper, too, wearing a blue shirt with a pink stripe across the chest, and my school sports coat. I am holding my chin high.

  Mrs. Flanagan is here, and she smiles at me.

  “How are you, Dennis?” she asks.

  “I’m good, Mrs. Flanagan,” I say.

  I don’t think she is trying to think of something else to say, and so I smile and look the other way. Anyway, my number is coming up. I would ask her about Sue, but she might think it is none of my business. I heard that Sue married a doctor in some far-off state, Illinois or somewhere. I still think about seeing Sue Flanagan in her brassiere and her silk slip.

  I didn’t especially want to go spying on Sue, but I guess the memory of that night on the roof will never go away, like Pop’s memory of Ireland. I know I feel sorry I did it, but I can still picture the white of her skin and the shadows of her breasts as they pushed out from her brassiere. I know it is not right to take pleasure in the memory, either, but I can’t help thinking what a lucky guy that doctor is to get to see her like that every day.

  If I was a doctor, maybe I could get a girl like Sue Flanagan, smart and pretty. But I don’t like to kid myself. I don’t think I could ever be a doctor. Even if I liked school, and wanted to pay attention, I don’t think I would want to pay attention that much. It takes over twenty years of schooling to be a doctor, and I have just gone through, what, maybe nine years and a couple of months counting kindergarten.

  My month at Cardinal Hayes has not been a great one, and I don’t think Monsignor Ford will be happy with me or my academic future.

  I tried, but I just can’t get my heart into it.

  I made the freshman basketball team, and I went to practice for the first couple of weeks. I like basketball, and I have a not-so-bad jump shot from the foul line. I suppose I could be called a good boys’ club basketball handler. But the boys on the team are much better than I am, and some are as good as Scarry. I know that no matter how much I practice I am not going to be a starter with this team. It is one of those things that you can see the first day. And if you can’t see it, you’ll feel it.

  Some guys play basketball like poets and other guys play like newspaper delivery boys. My brother is like a poet when he plays, for the ball lands like a rhyme every time in the center of the basket, the end of every shot a two-pointer, and Billy floats through the air like he’s on angel’s wings when he lays the ball up. I think it’s a gift that God gives you, to be able to make the basketball seem a part of your body when you dribble and jump and shoot and carry the ball. I guess I have a little gift, but when it comes to basketball, it’s like God gave Billy a pair of shoes for Christmas and I got the shoelaces.

  There’s a Chinese boy on the freshman team who handles the ball like Bob McGuire on the Knicks, and I try to copy his style. His moves are quick and graceful, and I imagine there should be music in the background when he goes in for a layup. I must’ve laid the ball up a million times, and still I don’t feel inside that I’m better than simply good at this. He’s the first Chinese boy I have ever met, and the only one who plays basketball, too. I wonder if eating chop suey would help.

  A pretty French girl calls my number and I give her my ticket. She checks it, because some people give any ticket hoping to get in front of the line.

  “Well, what eez eet?” she asks.

>   “What eez what?” I answer. I don’t think she likes this, and gives me a French sour puss. I could tell her that Mark Twain is always making fun of the French, but I don’t think she’ll care.

  “Your ord-dare,” she says.

  “Three seeded,” I say, “and a jelly doughnut.”

  She is about to put the jelly doughnut in a bag with the rolls, and I stop her.

  “No, no,” I say. “The jelly doughnut is right out of the collection basket, and I’m going to have to eat it on the way home.”

  She is too busy to figure anything out. I am just another pain-in-the-neck customer, and so she takes my dimes and shrugs her shoulders.

  Walking home, I see Father O’Rourke still standing on the corner of 55th Street talking to some parishioners. It is not very cold, but there is a woman standing with Father O’Rourke who has a fur coat on that comes down to her ankles. She looks pretty swank, and I suppose she’s from Sutton Place.

  “A real howdy-do,” my mother would say.

  I don’t think my mother will ever have a coat as nice as that. She has one coat, a red one that comes to her knees, even though most of her dresses come down below her knees. She has had it ever since I can remember.

  I guess my mother will never get a chance to have nice things. My father will never come out of that hospital.

  It makes me sad to think that Mom never has anyone to go out with. I don’t know what happened to Artie. He just disappeared. She is always alone. Even when she is doing just ordinary things, if she’s not working at the phone company, things like walking at night around the corner to 57th Street to get a newspaper. Every night at nine o’clock for as long as I can remember, she goes to get the News and the Mirror.

  The Mirror has recently folded and is a dead newspaper now. So that gives the News a better chance.

  Sometimes I think if my father was dead it would give my mother a better chance. I wish she could get another husband, a second one, and maybe start over.