Car Trouble

by Robert Rorke

  “Who’s in the hospital?”

  “My friend Kevin’s getting his prosthetic legs fitted today,” Brian said, smiling. He opened the front door and threw his satchel on the front seat. “I’m going out there to pick him up.”

  That was great news. “Larry heard something about some faculty leaving.”

  Brian put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, I don’t know about anybody else, but I had a job interview. Keep that under your hat. I may not get it.”

  So it was true. I had only one word. “Why?”

  Brian looked up, squinting into the sun. “Brother Theodore hasn’t asked me back for next September.”

  “Oh.” I lowered my head. They wanted him gone because of the Birdie fiasco, even though it was long over and Vinnie Sorrentino was back in school, his court date pending. “He still has a few weeks to ask me. But most of the other first-year teachers got the call already.”

  I didn’t know what to say. He was being fired, like Himself, but not because he deserved it.

  Brian tried to cheer me up. “Friend of mine teaches at Tech and told me there was an opening for an English teacher. So I’m talking to them.”

  Brooklyn Tech was one of the best public schools in the city. You had to take a special test to get in. I did and passed. But the school was in a terrible neighborhood—Fort Greene, where Himself had been stabbed.

  “So even if you can stay at St. Mike’s you might go anyway?”

  “It’s a public school. More money.”

  Combat pay, I thought.

  “I can get my own place. Kevin and I will probably be roommates. I’ve paid off my student loans, and it’s just time.” He gave a sly smile and got behind the wheel, closing the door. “It’s a good change, Nicky. Don’t freak out on me.”

  “I’m not.” I looked at the sidewalk, dotted with old black chewing gum. I felt like a five-year-old. Brian was my teacher and my friend, but he was almost ten years older. He could make sweeping changes in his life if he wanted to. I had to stay put—trapped in Patrick Flynn’s haunted house.

  He started the engine. “You’re looking daggers at me, Nicky. It’s going to be all right. Who knows? Maybe I won’t get the job and I’ll have to go begging to Brother Theodore and they’ll take mercy on me.”

  He said this very casually, as if it wouldn’t happen in a million years and as if he didn’t want it to. He backed the car into the street behind St. Mike’s, then took off the back way. I stayed there on the corner, staring at the things I saw every day like I suddenly didn’t recognize them, like I was in the wrong neighborhood. I had assumed Brian would be at St. Mike’s until I graduated, persuading Brooklyn’s least poetic students to recite Shakespeare and directing the annual play. He was my good-luck charm. As long as I could see him in class, I could face whatever happened at home.

  Twenty-Four

  First, I heard the banging. Then his fist, brought squarely down on the kitchen table. Next came the royal summons; the volcano rumbled up the stairs and rattled the floorboards in our bedrooms.

  “Maureen Flynn—”

  I rolled over and heard the door to the front bedroom open.

  “Can my eldest daughter be deaf? Maureen Flynn, get your ass downstairs. Noooowww.”

  I heard my sister going down the stairs and then Queenie’s paws as she met her on the landing. The kitchen table turned into a boxing ring.

  “Who’s your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Look me in the eye, young lady, I’ll ask you again. Who is your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Daddy.”

  The first slap, cracking across her face, made me jump out of bed.

  “What were you doing last night on Church and Utica?”

  Morty asked me to come in last night for someone who was sick. Maureen volunteered to pick me up when I was done, but I told her not to come to the store after dark. And he must have seen her, with those eyes that could see around corners.

  She didn’t answer at first. Her voice came in petrified spurts.

  “I was getting ice cream. We went to pick Nicky up.”

  “Oh yeah? And who’s ‘we’?”

  I stood in the hallway, hand on the railing. I could just see that watchdog face snarling at her, leaning across the table. “It was me and my friend Kathy and some of her friends.”

  “What did you think you were doing on Church and Utica with every jigaboo in kingdom come on the streets?”

  “I told you, we were getting ice cream.”

  “And who was driving the car?”

  “Kathy’s friend.”

  He had seen her in that guy’s car. One of Kathy Fitzgerald’s sketchy friends. That’s what got him going. That’s what he’d been obsessing about all night in his saloon of choice.

  “I didn’t get his name.”

  “Boppo.”

  “Boppo? Is that really someone’s name?”

  “Yes. He lives in her building on Linden Boulevard.”

  “And how old is this Boppo?”

  “I don’t know. How am I supposed to know how old he is?”

  “Never answer a question with a question. Is he old enough to have a driver’s license?”

  I started walking down the staircase. I paused five steps down. Maureen’s voice was trembling, the words getting stuck in her throat. I could see her, holding back the tears while Himself bore down upon her like some sick balloon, ready to burst.

  “I ought to break your legs, young lady, for getting into a car with some guy you don’t know. And what is Boppo’s last name?”

  “Gutierrez.”

  “You’re going out with some motherfucking spic. Are you kidding me?”

  Another slap. Finally, my mother intervened. “Knock it off, Pat.”

  I made it to the landing, next to the telephone bench. It was now or never. I came into the kitchen slowly, as if I knew what I would find there: Maureen sitting in the chair that faced the tiled wall, wiping her teary eyes with tissues, Himself in the inquisitor’s chair, next to the dining room doorway, and Mom cowering over by the sink, puffing on a cigarette. When she saw me on the threshold, her eyes bugged out and her hand went to her head in disbelief.

  “I was the one who invited her to come to the store,” I said. “So if you have to scream at someone, you can scream at me and leave her alone.”

  He stood up. I was nearly as tall as he was now, in my bare feet. “Mister, you are talking out of your ass.” He had stopped yelling; maybe he was giving his throat a rest. “Go back to your room. This discussion is between me and my daughter.”

  “Not when you’re waking up the whole house and hitting her.” I glanced at Maureen. She was looking away from all of us now, down at the tablecloth or her lap. And she was shaking.

  “Come on,” Mom said, helping her out of the chair. “Move,” she said to Himself. She led Maureen upstairs.

  He went to the stove, to pour more coffee into his cup. “You have to quit your job,” he said. He turned around and sipped his coffee, leaning against the stove. The drink always made his eyes look huge, maybe the same way vodka made his ankles and fingers swell up. He pushed his fingers back through his hair. “It’s got me crazy. You’ve got my daughter standing around with all those jungle bunnies so you can show off in front of her friends. I want you to quit today.”

  “I’m not doing it. I’m not quitting.”

  In one move, he was on me, clutching my T-shirt. The shirt ripped as I jumped back. “Are you circumventing my authority? When I tell you to do something, you will do it.”

  “Keep your hands off me.”

  “Ahh, little Nicky got his T-shirt ripped.”

  “You touch me again and I’ll go straight to the police.”

  He laughed. “And what are they going to do? This is my house.”

  Mom came downstairs and told me to go get ready for school. I looked at the kitchen clock. Seven a.m. I turned to leave th
e room and his final words—he always had to have the last word—came like a kick in the small of my back.

  “You and I are not finished, mister.”

  Twenty-Five

  Mom took us to Holy Cross to visit her mother’s grave. Even though the prospect was melancholy, it almost felt like we were sneaking away for a secret outing. The only full day we had with her was Sundays.

  The five of us bounded out of the house, leaving Himself at home with the Sunday Daily News, the television, and the dog.

  We stopped at a florist on Brooklyn Avenue, across from the cemetery. Some flower arrangements, pink carnations attached to Styrofoam crosses, were displayed on a tiered stand outside. Mom went inside to look at the better stuff and came out with an azalea bush, a miniature version of the pink one in our backyard. She didn’t really remember the exact spot of the grave, except that it was near Cortelyou Road, but I did. We walked under the double-gated entrance and set off for the chapel. I wondered if anyone had found the .357 Magnum I’d thrown over the fence.

  I was wearing corduroys and a new white turtleneck. My skin had cleared up, and my hair was grown in again, finally. My sisters were wearing slacks and skirts. Mom wore a light sweater, a pair of slacks, and her car coat.

  “Did Daddy really take you driving in here?” Mary Ellen said as we passed the chapel.

  “Yep. All around the roads. Out to Schenectady Avenue and then back.”

  “Creepy.” I didn’t see any green maintenance trucks driving around and hoped that perv who’d followed me had the day off.

  A lot of Irish immigrants were buried here. Their tombstones included the names of the counties, inscribed near the base, they’d come from in the old country. Our phantom grandmother was Irish too, real Irish, from County Mayo, not like the people who wore fisherman sweaters and blasted Clancy Brothers records at three in the morning on St. Patrick’s Day, like Himself.

  The path to the grave was halfway between the chapel and the Cloister. I could always find it by looking at the tops of tombstones; the last name, Jurgensen, Mom’s maiden name, was engraved in a decorative panel. Catherine Jurgensen was buried along with a daughter who had died shortly after birth, two years before Mom was born. The inscription on the headstone read: To Our Darling Baby Daughter, Maureen, and My Beloved Wife, Catherine.

  She was only thirty-nine when she died. Mom had always told us that she died of a heart attack. But that was so young to die that way. I thought about those five years, between the death of our phantom grandmother and my birth. Mom must have been so miserable that she needed an escape. For better or worse, it was into the arms of the first boy she fell in love with, Patrick Flynn. They’d met in high school.

  Despite the “Permanent Care” marker in the lower left-hand corner of the stone, the ground around the stone looked nearly barren. Mom sadly told us that the soil was terrible and nothing would grow there.

  “Your grandfather and I once tried to plant an azalea bush there, but it just died,” Mom said, handing me the green plastic pot. Maureen helped me shake it loose. “But nothing says you can’t try again.” From the pocket of her car coat, she took out a garden trowel. She was tense and businesslike. “Do you want to start digging?”

  I got down on my knees and scraped at the dirt.

  “When was the last time you came?” Maureen asked.

  Mom was smoking a cigarette. “Last year. I think it was around the time of her birthday. She was born June 11.”

  I looked up at the neighboring graves and didn’t see any visitors. The absence of bouquets seemed a shame. This section of Holy Cross looked a little forlorn. Dee Dee and Mary Ellen sat on two low tombstones nearby. An empty green watering can—ours—lay on the ground. The soil was dry and orange; this azalea bush was going to need a lot of water to survive. I knew where there was a faucet. After I had patted down the dirt, I walked over to the main road. The pipe for water was directly across the road from the Cloister, and I filled the can. The dry earth soaked up the water and I filled the can again. Already the pink blossoms brightened the tombstone.

  “They met at a school dance at St. Jerome’s,” Mom said when we were walking home. “She lied about her age because she was older than my father. Four years.”

  “You’re kidding,” Maureen said. “When did Grandpa figure it out?”

  “That I’m not sure of,” Mom said. “Maybe when they got their marriage licenses.”

  We all laughed and it felt good to do that. My sisters said they would remember that when they were old enough to have boyfriends.

  When we walked down Medallion Street, we saw a car parked in the driveway, in front of the Pink Panther. Uncle Tim’s car.

  “Who’s that?” Maureen asked.

  “Your uncle,” Mom said, stopping in front of the next-door neighbor’s garden and staring at the car like it belonged to the coroner. She threw her cigarette on the sidewalk and stepped on it. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  We hadn’t seen Uncle Tim since that day Himself was in Kings County. Obviously, Mom didn’t want him just showing up.

  I was the first one in the back door. Uncle Tim was in the living room, leaning forward in the rocking chair and petting Queenie. He was talking very seriously with Dad. I heard the tail end of the conversation.

  “C’mon, Pat,” he said. “Why won’t you let me help you? I don’t see how you can keep on doing what you’re doing.”

  Dad glanced at me and then back at the TV. The collie roused herself and came trotting over to greet us. Uncle Tim turned his head sharply, startled. He stood up and gave my mother a kiss. He was wearing chinos and a faded navy sweatshirt. His mop of gray hair was hidden under a Mets baseball cap.

  Mom was trying to smile, but she just couldn’t pull it off. And I couldn’t hold it against her. I didn’t trust this visit. Nobody in our family just showed up. Nobody decided to take a drive into our bad neighborhood, walk up the broken stoop, and knock on the peeling front door. It was an ambush.

  Then I heard someone coming down the stairs. My grandfather, William Flynn himself, standing on the landing by the telephone bench, in all of his Floridian glory. He flashed a broad smile and gave my hand a good, hard shake. “Nicky, what’s the good word? How ya doin’?”

  I could barely find the words. “Fine, fine.”

  Grandpa had had no trouble adjusting to retirement, a tropical climate, or a different selection of men’s clothing. Pale yellow pants—was he wearing flares?—fanned out over white patent leather slip-ons. He also sported a navy blue polo shirt and a white belt. He was trim, certainly in better shape than Himself, with a killer tan and freckles popping out on his wide, high forehead and over his black, bushy eyebrows. The lenses of his glasses were thicker, and the remaining fringe of hair that ringed his head just above the ears was snowier than I remembered. Even though his voice still boomed, he looked like an old man. It seemed like a long time had passed since we packed up the dining room furniture from Grandpa’s house and took it home in the Black Beauty, but maybe I thought that because Dad had really gone downhill since that day.

  “When did you get in?” I asked, still seeing yellow.

  “Yesterday afternoon.” Grandpa stepped into the living room and looked at the television for a minute. The volume had been turned down. Dad slumped deeper into the wing chair. “Pat, you’ve gotta get that bathroom in order. It’s a disgrace.”

  I guess he’d noticed the missing tiles everywhere while he was using the facility. Hopefully, he wouldn’t go into the kitchen, where Mom had retreated, and see the ceiling. I suspected Dad was letting the house fall apart the same way he was falling apart, as if to see how bad things could get before it just fell in on us. I’d tried to repair what I could of the bathroom after I was done with Birdie, scraping the ceiling, tearing off a lot of the old wallpaper. I had been ready to repaint the entire room. All I had to do was get the can of Benjamin Moore and a can of spackling compound. Then Himself said he would do it. But he didn�
�t. And I knew it would never happen.

  It was embarrassing watching my father get scolded by his old man, so I was glad when Patty broke the silence. “Where’s Grandma?” she asked.

  Grandpa cupped his ear. “What’s that?”

  Patty chuckled and shouted, “Where’s Grandma?”

  “Resting. She’s at your uncle’s house. Long car drive. Not me. I was up with your uncle. Drove to Breezy Point. Then checked out that ratty golf course on Flatbush Avenue. Florida has spoiled me, I’m afraid.”

  Maybe they drove past us as we were walking into the cemetery.

  Grandpa was surprised that my sisters had all gotten so tall and grown-up. He stared at Maureen’s chest and said, “Blouse a little tight?” She blushed and looked at the floor. I was waiting for Dad to come to her defense, but he didn’t. Maureen wasn’t speaking to him. Whenever he came into the room, she got up and left.

  Dad was leaning back in the wing chair, one eye on the game on TV.

  “Hadn’t you better get yourself ready?” Grandpa asked.

  Whatever discussion they were having would continue out of the house. Dad roused himself, slipped his feet into his beat-up slippers, and went upstairs to the bathroom. Grandpa took his place and raised the volume on the baseball game. The scorecard on the screen told me the Mets were losing. Maureen sat next to me and asked Uncle Tim how our little cousins were doing.

  “Maybe I can come out and babysit for you sometime.”

  She was making the most of the time Himself was upstairs. Uncle Tim gave her a long look and tapped her knee. “That would be great.” He had this broad, ready smile, and I didn’t know how he was able to change his expression so quickly after scowling at Dad. “Then your aunt and I could go out and have a date.”

  When Dad came down, he had combed his hair, probably with just water because I couldn’t smell any VO5, and he was wearing black oxfords. He grabbed his spring jacket off the back of the dining room chair, went into the kitchen, and mumbled something to Mom. And then he sauntered through the living room, without looking at us. I could see the humiliation in his stony face.