Park Lane South, Queens

by Mary Anne Kelly

  Claire let the one tear roll down her cheek without wiping it. “You’re right. And it is because I’ve been a failure in so many ways that I wound up back here, still looking inward, like a teenager does, trying to know myself and all that. I don’t deny that I’m a failure. The only thing is that I’ve been a success in ways you think I’ve been a failure and a failure in what you take for granted I’ve succeeded in. I was such a waste while I was making all that money. I was so nothing, so nowhere. I couldn’t sleep unless I had the light on and a couple of joints under my belt. I used to get these great travel jobs, traveling to these incredible places, and all I could see were the printed results I’d get out of it … what was going to look great in the dais. I didn’t see the Sugarloaf in Rio, I saw an impressive backdrop for the clothes I was shooting. Oh, Carmela! I didn’t see anything, I was so driven. So paranoid. I let myself fall in love with a vicious, megalomanic, woman-hating bastard just to satisfy my rotten self-image. And I was right. I was a total shit. I only started to come to myself, to love myself, when I was so broken down and lonely that even I had to feel sorry for me. The best I was was at my worst, with nothing. I just gave up, surrendered … and went out on my own. And it was only then that I found the courage to want to come home. So I am using you. I certainly am. But finally for the right reasons.”

  Carmela was putting her hair in a braid. ‘“And it was then that I found the courage …’ How moving. I suppose I’m supposed to feel sorry for you now, too. It must have been awful making all that money without having to take the subway for it. It must have really bent your artistic pride. This might be new to you but, you know, a lot of people never even get the chance to be a hack at their art. They wait tables.”

  “Those are actors, Carmela.”

  “So they shoot weddings.”

  “Now what do you want? Me to feel guilty for being successful at what I hated anyway? I’ve got enough things I feel comfortable being guilty for. That’s not one of them. Let me ask you something. Why the hell do you have such an attitude? Did I do something to you? What is it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She sat back down on the bed.

  The Mayor groaned. This night was going on forever. Would they never stop jabbering? He rolled over and broke calamitous wind.

  They both held their heads in submissive meditation while the thunderous moment passed.

  “I always play the bitch with you,” Carmela said. “I admit it. You always did bring out the worst in me. But I’m only sending out mixed signals. It’s really not so bad that you’re home. I mean, it could be worse.”

  They sat watching each other fondly, warily. The rain battered down above their heads.

  “I’ve got to sleep,” said Claire.

  “And you won’t forget my car?”

  “No.”

  “Good night, then.”

  “Yeah. Night.”

  Michaelaen sat up in his bed. What was that? It was raining so hard. He was in his own bed but those shadows made all kinds of funny shapes on the wall. You could never be sure. His heart beat swiftly in his narrow chest. They were supposed to go out for their meeting. There was going to be magic and everything. He slipped out of bed and went up to the window. Boy. It was really coming down. And he felt a little sniffly. No one was going out on a night like this. But he didn’t want Mommy to get in trouble. He didn’t want anyone to hurt Mommy. What was today? Was it Wednesday? He couldn’t remember. If it was Wednesday Mommy was off nights. She’d be home. But if he went all the way down to her room and it wasn’t Wednesday, no one would be there. Michaelaen gulped. It was better to take along his old blankie. You never knew if it might get cold. Or drafty. Or something. He found it, right where it always was, tucked underneath his toy chest. How he hated to go down this hallway. It was best to more or less skedaddle through. He raced with his rear end tucked up tight behind him and never looking right or left, just squint so you couldn’t see too much and close your ears and hunch up, like.

  Zinnie woke up quickly, a blink of an eye and she went from full sleep to full consciousness. This was a talent of cops and conscientious mothers, and of course she was both. Michaelaen slept alongside her most of the time when she wasn’t on nights, the hell with what those psychs said in the books—what did they know, anyway? She’d arrested her share of them. Sure, they’d always gotten off, but you knew what you were dealing with. Professional loonies, half of them. She’d let her son sleep beside her as long as he needed her warmth. She smiled at the sweet-smelling body cradling into her arms. Oh Lord. This is what kept her from going over the edge. The things she saw at work! The people! If you could call them that. The things some of them did to their own kids. It made you want to be sick. It almost made you want to quit the whole deal and move out to the Island or up past Westchester. But not quite. Those people, their kids were just as hopped up as the kids in the neighborhoods. And the job, whatever it might be, it had its points. There was a feeling of camaraderie you weren’t going to find somewhere else. Like that time one of their own took a bullet and they closed every street and intersection and even the bridge on the way to Saint Luke’s. Fast. She’d had the entrance to the bridge and she’d stood there alone in the night in her uniform—that was back when she’d still been in uniform—and all of a sudden like a shot out of nowhere comes this speeding ambulance, over the bridge with no moment of hesitation, one of their own they were going to get taken care of, and save him they did, not a moment too soon they’d said later. And it made you feel good. Especially when the ambulance had been flying by and there you were holding back any interference. The little lights twinkling on the bridge there, and you knew that all the way there, there would be someone else to take over, like a chain. It was horrible. But it was beautiful, too. It had its own kind of grace. And you were part of it. It could give you a chill up your spine. She pulled Michaelaen closer still and buried her face in his tufty hair. His smell was all his own and she reveled in it. Like clover and gum. Water-pistol water from the plug. She closed her eyes. The Mayor, satisfied that all was well and everyone in their proper place, walked contentedly back down the hall.

  CHAPTER 12

  Mary sat in her chair and looked down at the floor. That was the next thing. A really good scrubbing for that linoleum. Not today, though. And she wasn’t going to ask one of the kids. If they couldn’t think of it on their own, they could live with it the way it was. That was one thing she just wouldn’t do. She remembered her own mother sitting at the same table, probably the very same chair, saying nothing, looking out the window while her husband ranted and raved at the kids. His fine Irish tongue run to drivel with drink and the florid injustices that went with it. He would aim it at the children, at her brothers and sisters and herself. Sure, weren’t they the only ones who didn’t know better than to take it? Do this, Mary. Go on off, now and do that, Mary. Isn’t that tea up yet, girl? Oh, she could still hear him as clear as a bell. Well she wasn’t going to have her children remembering their parents for that sort of nilly. Row upon row of upright tulips in the garden, all straight in rows, and never a child allowed near enough to God forbid enjoy them. No. Mary took a noisy, bitter slurp of her coffee. It might be noisy, chaotic memories her kids would have, but they would be gentle and permissive. Yes, that would always be the better way. She’d decided that as a young girl and she wouldn’t change that.

  Stan came in and sat down. “You wanna sit here all day or you wanna come with me?”

  “I was just thinking … remembering. How rigid my own dad was. How we never really knew him. We were afraid of him if anything. ‘Dad’s comin’!’ we used to hiss at each other. Like, the monster’s comin’ … or something. You’d think he would have wanted us to love him, wouldn’t you?”

  “’Cause if you want to stay here, I can go drop off the Lotto and come back and get you.”

  “A man as intelligent as he was … you’d think he would have known better. Phh. Artist! Artist in false pride is what he wa
s. With seven children and too good to take honest labor of any kind! And my own poor mother swallowin’ the bile and goin’, with her head held high, mind, to his own mother just to get money to pay the bloody milkman … it was … it was disgustin’!”

  “Mary. Come with me now and stop sittin here thinking. The next’ll be the memories of snow and your mother and when she died and before you can say Jack Robinson you’ll be wanting me to take you over to the cemetery and on the way stop off at the florist.”

  “It’s Claire I’ve been thinking about, really. When she was small there wasn’t any of this soul-searching stuff. She was a normal, happy little girl, wasn’t she? A real Ann of Green Gables. She wasn’t the one you would think would get mixed up in all this mumbo jumbo. And it wasn’t Michael’s death that got her started, either. No, it was something else. Like when she started hanging around down in Greenwich Village after school. Rolling up her uniform above her knees and hitching to the city to go listen to drop-out musicians. That was when she started with all this metaphysical bunk. Remember the palmistry? All those books out of the library! The Manhattan library, too. And now them coming looking for her pictures in the cellar. I knew that darkroom was a bad idea.”

  “Now what’s one thing got to do with the other?”

  “Maybe I should have been more stern. I shouldn’t have been so trusting.”

  “You wanted me to remind you about the meat.”

  “Oh, yikes, that’s right! I’ve got that top round I have to get out of the freezer. You do that for me, will you, dear? And I’ll put some lipstick on. The garage freezer.”

  “Mary?”

  “What?”

  “What’s Claire going to do about that camera Johnny Benedetto gave her?”

  “Stanley Breslinsky. That’s her own decision now, isn’t it? And I won’t have you influencing her, one way or the other.” Mary rubbed the corners of her mouth with a Kleenex and grinned into her grubby compact.

  Stan shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He could just make out the tops of her garters under her skirt. It was the big soft cotton skirt with the pineapples on it.

  “And,” she dotted each cheek with a smudge from her lipstick and savagely patted, “you’d better start thinkin’ about what you’re going to do about the old camera … whether you’ll be givin’ it to Claire or not.”

  “That again.”

  “Yes, that again. What’re you savin’ it for? To leave her after you’re dead and gone?”

  “To be sure. She won’t be getting much else.”

  “Stop jokin’ around, Stan. Now, I mean it.” There was a quarter of a cup left of her coffee and she finished it off with a healthy last draft. “She could use it now. She couldn’t be in more of a crisis. She’ll wind up takin’ this fellow’s camera just to get back in the race.”

  “He’s the best man any of them’s brought home yet.”

  “I know. But you don’t know, really. You never can tell. Wasn’t it you urging Zinnie to marry Fred? It was. I know Claire has ethics. Too many, maybe. But if life forces her hand, there’s no tellin’ what could happen. She might go with him just to justify accepting the gift, like.”

  “She’d be right to do it.”

  “That’s just the point, Stan. It’s not to be your decision. It’s hers. And if she has her own camera she won’t need anything from him. She’ll be free to judge him for love’s sake.”

  Stan looked at his nails stubbornly. “If I pushed Zinnie at all, it didn’t turn out so badly. You got Michaelaen didn’t you?”

  “Got Michaelaen! Like he was some raffle prize and me with the right ticket! Sure I’d give him up in a flash if he could have a normal life with a mom and a dad just like every other child, I would! You’re hot stuff, you are. Well, maybe not. Not in a flash. Oh, will you give the dog some of your bread and butter?”

  “I’m not eating any.”

  “Well, you’re standing right alongside of it! Just give it to him, will you? He’s driving me crazy.”

  “He shouldn’t have butter.”

  “Neither should you.”

  “Especially not in this heat. I ought to bring him along to the vet’s one of these days. He’s long due. You like that, wouldn’t you, boy? A nice trip to the fine doctor?”

  Like fish, thought the Mayor.

  Mary stood up decisively and smoothed her skirt. “So when are you going to give Claire that old camera of yours? I mean, if you want to.”

  Stan was spreading butter back and forth, back and forth. It couldn’t get any softer. The Mayor sat patiently down on the cool linoleum.

  “Michaelaen still upstairs?” Mary, her germ planted, changed the subject.

  “He’s shaving. I gave him a shaver with no razor and he’s up there scraping shaving foam off his face.”

  They both were quiet then. They could hear the rabbits outside shuffling in their cages. Stan lit up his pipe.

  “I know you’re thinking hard,” said Mary. “If you don’t stop puffing you’ll disappear. And you know it’s not the smoker who necessarily gets the emphysema. It’s the one sitting across the table.”

  Stan, momentarily invisible inside his cloud of smoke, was dreaming of his latest project, a miniature carousel. Not quite the work of art up in the park, perhaps. Let’s face it, he was no brilliant woodcarver like Muller, who created the original merry-go-round, but he did have his own small flair for things. He could have it finished for Christmas if he hurried. He looked over at his wife. Whenever Mary looked this pretty, Stan worried, it usually meant that her blood pressure was up. “I’ll go on and get that meat,” he said.

  Mary and the Mayor watched him with equal expressions of irritation. First he had to choose his tape and attach his earphones. To someone as nimble and quick as Mary, this could take an inordinate amount of time. This morning she chose not to notice. She raised her eyebrows and kept them raised and turned her back. Chopin. Chopin meant the rain would go on and on. Tch. She’d have to go back upstairs and change her shoes. The Mayor sadly noted the first high strains of Chopin as a continuation to his long-standing bout with arthritis. It never failed. He was really starting to take a dislike to this particular composer. This weather took the starch right out of you. Then again, it was always better to know in advance, wasn’t it? You didn’t want to find yourself too far from home when it started to rain. One thing he could never figure out, though, was whether Stan played Chopin because it was going to rain or if it rained because Stan played Chopin.

  Claire slept late. As long as it rained she was deep in the eyes of blue Morpheus, and the minute it stopped so did she. One eye was crumpled shut, the other telescoped the dim attic, not yet sure just where she was. It rested on the note propped on her dresser, bold and yellow, scrawled in Carmela’s dynamic script. “Here’s the address,” it read, “you can pick it up after eleven.”

  Right. The car. Oh, hell. It felt pretty late. There went all hope of a ride. Where was this garage, anyway? She got out of bed and scrutinized the note. Kew Gardens. Up on Queens Boulevard. That would be the Q37 bus. She looked in the mirror. Why did the corners of her mouth hang down like that? Final, inevitable gravity, that was why. So this was it, eh? Or had the alcohol done it? The lot had done it. She might as well accept it. No mirror round the world had ever treated her so bluntly. All right, fine, she’d jog up there. There was no shame in aging. Or she’d walk. Yes, walking would be far more sensible. She could just see herself having a heart attack if she overdid it. An aspirin wasn’t a bad idea, either. Her face would go on her just when she needed it. Just when she was falling in—oh, rubbish! She wasn’t falling in anything. More likely she just wished she was in love to justify accepting the camera. Well, she wasn’t going to let her panic go turning her into a prostitute, for God’s sake. If she had been going to prostitute herself she could have done it long ago and over a lot more than a frigging camera. She blew her nose. She had to do something about her hair. She twirled one strand around her fin
ger and held it up to the milky light. Old Iris still remembered her as a redhead. At least someone did. But really, if you held it a certain way it did still have sort of a glint. Sort of. Hmm. Maybe a rinse? Tch. American television! It made you want to be glamorous. She must stop watching it.

  The geranium on the sill caught her interest. She loved them like this, with no real flowers to speak of but the blossoms ready to open. The color was wonderful then, very rich and true. All of it yet to come. Of course, it was possible that Iris hadn’t been referring to her own hair at all … couldn’t she have meant someone else? Someone else watching the house? A redheaded murderer? Why not? Claire regarded herself in the mirror and lit a cigarette. Christ. That fellow over at Holy Child, the one who’d been outside when they’d brought out the white casket, he’d had red hair. Even Freddy’s lover, that bartender, was a redhead. What would he be doing snooping around here? Jealous of Zinnie? Good Lord. And that kid in front of the church, couldn’t he have been the one to go after her cameras? Wouldn’t he have reason to think she’d taken his picture? He’d certainly walked right into her frame. Only he had no way of knowing that she hadn’t taken any shots. That would explain why he couldn’t find the picture of himself … because there’d never been one. Oh, she should call someone. She must do that right away. Really, it was astonishing that they’d left her all alone here! If this were a film, the murderer would be under the porch already. Or in the closet. He might very well be in the closet. Or she. Claire felt the droplets of sweat breaking out on her scalp. Perhaps she really was over the deep end, as Johnny had suggested. Maybe she was the murderer herself? A true schizophrenic. Like The Three Faces of Eve! She sucked in her breath. She must be mad. What she needed was an English muffin. Cautiously, she left the room. There, on the landing, stretched puppy style with arms and legs flat out alongside himself, the Mayor stuck out his pink tongue in glad tidings. He had only just come out here in hopes of a draft.