One night they were on the couch with two Coronas and Johnny Carson and he had his arm around Ann, her head on his shoulder. He looked at her and said, “How’d I get three blond daughters? Nora’s the only one who looks like me.”
Ann had gazed at him, carefully, searching in his eyes and then staring at the floor. She took his hand from her shoulder and held it in her lap and she said, “Belly, I have something very important to tell you. I want you to listen very carefully and I want you to think about it before you say anything.”
Belly prepared himself for pregnancy, or for her declaration that she was not going to college, he tried to imagine what announcement Ann the valedictorian could make that would rattle his world, but he could think of nothing that would muddle the clarity with which he saw her.
What she said was, “I don’t like boys,” and that was the last time he hit her.
He waved his open fist across her face and she hit the floor. He slapped her again and she cried and covered her face—stop, drop, and roll, just like Dick Van Dyke had taught her on the TV—she curled herself into a weak little ball and he yelled, “You were supposed to be the strong one.” He’d left a triangular scar above Ann’s right eye from his fake 1986 World Series ring and she had not spoken to him since.
Ann left. She moved in with the Kessels—Margie and Henry’s parents—for the rest of the summer and when it was time for her to take the bus down to New York City for school, he told his other daughters it was August, he was swamped, there was no way he could meet them at Springway Diner to say good-bye to daughter number two.
Belly opened his eyes. She was still talking. The Basset Hound was still talking.
“And then it wasn’t till about seven years later when I was at my fifth-year reunion that my old roommate Stephanie said he’d turned out to be gay and he’d moved to San Francisco to play in a gay metal band. Which was still hot, actually. But then I realized that the way we stared at each other and all that crazy hate and crazy heat I could feel between us was because he knew he was gay and he knew I was gay and it made us hate each other. It made us drawn to each other, and repelled. That’s when I knew.”
She turned to him. Belly pretended he could no longer hear her. He rose and walked out, leaving her with the bill, walked up the hill to his new home and laid himself down on the couch, the ring of the jukebox and Bonnie’s voice still in his ears. He clamped his eyes shut and dozed to the rhythm of the Basset-Hound-with-the-hot-ass journalist girl’s words, dreaming of fire and disco and blackness.
He woke to the rich smell of boiling meat. Stevie Ray and Jimi perched on the carpet below him, playing video games; the Mario Brothers theme, he remembered, had seeped into his dreams. King rolled in his walker, mesmerized by the TV.
“Why do you all have to have these crazy names?” he asked the boys. “What’s wrong with William?”
“They’ve got a theme going,” said Stevie Ray.
“He talks!” Belly said, but Stevie Ray clamped his mouth shut. “Well, it’s a stupid theme.”
“We like it.”
Nora came and stood in the arch of the doorway that joined the kitchen to the TV room.
“It’s kind of sad, isn’t it, naming all your kids after dead guitarists when your husband is a dead guitarist?” Belly asked her.
“Excuse me?” She folded her arms.
“I mean, not dead, but failed. Didn’t he want to be a guitar player or something?”
“He didn’t fail. We decided to have kids instead. He took over his father’s restaurant.”
“Exactly. Same thing.”
“Not at all the same thing.”
“The exact same thing.”
“He plays music all the time. He sings his sons to sleep.”
Stevie Ray put down his joystick, while Jimi played more intently, fixing his eyes on the screen.
“When is he ever here at their bedtime?”
“Sundays.”
Belly adjusted himself on the couch.
“Sound familiar to you, Belly? Only being home on Sunday nights? Does that make him a bad father?”
“Sure,” said Belly. “I take it all back. He’s a very happy man.”
“Whoever said happiness was the point?”
He looked at his grandsons. Jimi pretended not to hear them. Stevie Ray stared. “That’s not the point?” Belly asked.
Stevie Ray opened his mouth, but Nora stopped him.
“Would you please mind your own business, Stevie?” Nora asked him. “Look at your little brother, minding his own damned business.”
The boy made a teepee with his hands and whispered a prayer to himself.
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” Nora said. “Do you have to pray every time I say the tiniest thing? You think Jesus cares if I slip once or twice?”
“Mommy, can I go outside and play?” asked Jimi.
“Of course, honey. You go ahead.”
Stevie Ray followed Jimi outside, leaving them alone, Belly and Nora and the baby and the buzzing TV. The sound of a bouncing ball echoed off the side of the house.
“You don’t think you might be a tad hard on the boy, do you?” asked Belly.
“Are you going to talk to me about playing favorites? I don’t think so.” She lifted the baby from his walker and plopped him into the high chair. “Stevie Ray,” Nora called out the window. “Come back and set the table, and call Bonnie down. It’s almost time for dinner.”
He thought back to a time when his family was happy, the kind of happy that makes you feel dizzy and at the same time perfectly sober. It was a million years ago.
They’d been on two family vacations. The first one was Disney World. He took pregnant Myrna and Nora and Ann on a five-day vacation. It was miserable. Myrna fussed constantly over the two girls, didn’t want them to go on any rides or in the water. She hovered over her children like a rain cloud, pretending she could protect them from the weather. He kept his mouth shut, or filled with St. Pauli Girl, most of the trip. She’d already called the police on him once by then, just for a single slap to the side of her head, and his father-in-law sat him down and gave him a long, long, boring lecture about how to manage his anger. So he did just what his father-in-law said: every time he wanted to yell, he prayed. Dear God, he prayed, Please let my next child be a boy. Please, God, won’t you give me just one boy?
God hadn’t answered his prayers, or maybe he had and he’d just said no, but he sent Belly the next best thing: a girl who could do boy things, daughter number three. She could throw anything—baseball, Frisbee, boomerang. She could beat any boy her age at the one-hundred-meter dash and she could dance ballet, too. The perfect kid. God gave him the perfect kid and then He took her away.
Maybe happiness wasn’t the point: he’d had so little of it. The one good vacation was to Port St. Lucie, Florida, home of the Mets spring training. Myrna went off to rehab and he left the bar in his father’s hands and took the four girls on a plane, lapel pins and playing cards for everyone. They had all behaved themselves beautifully without their mother there to infect them. Everyone got along, and Nora helped out with Eliza, nine years her junior, who still needed extra attention. The girls swam and Belly watched, and they’d feasted on lobster and scampi and gone to Mets games, slept soundly all night piled into one breezy hotel room.
He walked into the dining room now and Bonnie was already laying out the plates, leaving Jimi to do the silverware and Stevie Ray to fold the napkins. They worked like an assembly line. He had the urge to run up and snatch the plates away from her, form a wall between her and the boys to prevent infection. But it was too late. The three of them were laughing, the baby in his high chair pounding his little fists.
Belly inspected the table. “Don’t you boys know the fork goes on the right?”
Stevie Ray yawned. “No, it doesn’t.”
“I know that, I was just checking.”
Nora entered with a steaming soup tureen. “Looks fancy, boys,” Bel
ly said.
“Good old-fashioned Irish beef stew,” Nora announced. “I figured since you were actually going to show up for dinner tonight I’d make something you like. Stevie, get the potatoes.”
As soon as they were seated, Nora started in on him. “So, you’re going by JG’s tomorrow?”
“Who’s that?”
“The pallet factory. JG’s. It’s on your release plan.”
“Can we not talk about this in front of the boys?” Bonnie got that reporter look in her eyes, like she needed a pen. “What are you looking at?”
“What’s a release plan?” she asked.
“You fill out this paper saying what you’re going to do when you get out of prison,” said Nora.
“Interesting.”
The boys stared at the food getting cold on their plates.
“Yes, and Belly signed a federal contract saying he was going to work for Gene. Now, if you’d gone out and found yourself something else … but you haven’t. So you need to go there tomorrow.”
Belly laughed. “You can’t make me work somewhere I don’t want to work.”
“No,” Nora said. “I can’t. But Ms. Monroe can.”
“You talked to my parole officer?” He lifted his napkin with the tines of his fork.
“Of course I talked to her. You don’t think she called here to check out where you’re staying? That’s her job.”
It was quiet, very quiet, with Bonnie and the boys all staring at their laps, and Nora staring at Belly, and Belly staring out the windows to the dilapidated front porch.
Nora cleared her throat. “We’ll talk about it after dinner.”
Belly said under his breath, “No, we won’t.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Good. Bonnie, would you say the blessing?”
“Excuse me? It’s my second night back and Bonnie says the blessing?” He saw Jimi chew on a carrot. “Put that down, kid. You don’t eat until you thank Jesus.”
“Thank you, Lord,” he said, and Belly pointed his index finger at him so fast that Jimi dropped the carrot.
“Bonnie is our guest,” said Nora. “She can say the blessing.”
“What about me?”
“You’re not a guest,” said Stevie Ray. “You live here.”
“I don’t live here,” Belly said. “I’m just visiting.”
“Let’s all join hands,” said the Basset Hound.
He linked his pinky with hers, and braced himself for a long, heartfelt, melodramatic thanks to the Lord.
Bonnie said, “Good bread, good meat, good Lord, let’s eat.”
Belly picked up his fork. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“And there’s one more thing,” she said, pressing on Belly’s forearm to lower his fork, “before we eat. I’d like to read a poem in honor of Stevie Ray’s confirmation.”
“Read it Sunday,” Belly said, shoveling a lump of mashed potatoes in his mouth. They erased four years of instant potato spuds from his culinary memory.
“I won’t be here.”
“No?” he smiled. “Aw, that’s too bad.”
“Lay off, Belly,” said Nora.
“Lay off, Grampa,” echoed Jimi.
“You lay off, little man,” he raised a pretend fist to Jimi, his tough little grandson. He could sort of see why Nora might prefer him to Stevie Ray’s soft and willowy way.
Bonnie recited a poem, from memory, something about butterflies and caterpillars and suffocating cocoons.
“Thank you, Bonnie,” said Nora.
“I didn’t get one word of it. Not one word.”
“I did,” said Stevie Ray.
“Great, you like poetry now? Now you’re definitely going to be a homo.”
“Belly,” warned Nora. “Enough.”
“No, really, explain it to me.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Grampa,” said Jimi.
“It’s about how hard it is to grow up,” Stevie Ray explained. “How hard it is to turn into a butterfly.”
“Very good,” said Bonnie.
“Well, why not just say it then? Why not just say it like that?”
“She did. It said it just like that.” Stevie Ray took a bite of beef stew. “You have to listen.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” said Jimi again. He put a dollop of mashed potatoes on the baby’s tray.
“This is delicious,” said Bonnie. “Thank you so much for cooking, Nora.”
“You’re very welcome.”
Belly didn’t say anything, just took tiny forkfuls of food and chewed quietly.
“Where’s Eliza?” he asked finally. “I thought this was a family dinner.”
“Aunt Eliza don’t eat cows,” said Jimi.
“Doesn’t,” said Nora.
Belly took a bite of beef and said, “Children, thank your mother.”
“We don’t have to,” Jimi said. “It’s her job.”
“You going to take that?” asked Belly.
“What?” said Nora. “He’s right.”
“It’s not your job. You don’t have to feed them. You could put out a slice of pimento loaf and let them fight for it if you wanted to.”
This was a game they played in prison. Someone would smuggle a treat from the kitchen, an extra slice of ham, a brownie, or, in the best of times, a ripe tomato. During recreation they’d put it in the center of a group of men, reverse dodgeball, and see who could get to it first.
He thought of telling them—engaging them in a prison yard game with his lemon meringue pie—but then he realized not one of them, not a single member of his immediate family had asked him what he had endured those forty-six months. Maybe they didn’t want to know. Maybe they didn’t care. Maybe they were embarrassed to have a felon for a father.
“She gets paid to raise us,” said Stevie Ray.
“What do you mean?”
Nora served herself seconds. “I get an allowance, from Phil. Because I don’t work. Because I can’t work. He wanted to have a big family, so that’s how it is. I get paid to raise the children.”
He looked at Bonnie. “Aren’t you going to say something? Aren’t you one of those feminists or something?”
“It’s great,” she said. “It’s brilliant. All mothers should get paid to raise their children. It’s a job like any other.”
Nora raised her fork and said, “Cheers.”
“I never got paid to raise my children,” Belly said. “I paid for them myself, every cent I made.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. We all had jobs.” Nora swallowed hard. “Eliza and Ann put themselves through college. What are you talking about?”
The chewing halted. They were all staring at him.
“What are you, a bunch of retards? Eat, for Chrissakes.”
He rose from the table, went to the fridge, came back holding yesterday’s lemon meringue pie, carefully and with ceremony, like it was on fire.
“What’s that?” asked Stevie Ray.
“Dessert.”
“It looks gross,” he said.
“Well, thanks. Great manners, kid.” He turned to Nora. “Great job on the kid.”
“Do we have to eat it?” asked Jimi.
“Of course not, honey, but you should thank Grampa for getting it. That was a nice gesture on his part.”
Thanks were mumbled.
“What’s wrong with you boys? You don’t like meringue?”
Stevie Ray pressed on the hard white top and said, “It looks dead.”
“Can we have Popsicles?” asked Jimi.
“Go ahead. Clear your places first and then you’re excused.”
Belly looked at the Basset Hound. “You want a Popsicle too, or is that too phallic for you?”
She and Nora exchanged glances.
“I think I’ll just skip dessert,” she said, rising to clear the rest of the table. “There was enough sugar in all that alcohol we drank.”
So Nor
a and Bonnie tended to the dishes, leaving the baby in his high chair, and Belly stared down at the sorry pie. He pushed it onto the baby’s wooden tray. The kid mashed his fingers into it, gloves of yellow cream and white meringue coating his hands, crust on his fingernails.
“That’s the way,” Belly said as King grabbed handfuls of pie and tossed them onto the dining room floor.
It was light outside, and hot, and Belly did not know what to do with the still lake of hours laid before him. In the bathroom he smoothed his hair, tucked his button-down shirt into his jeans, straightened the pant legs over his cowboy boots.
He thought of something his father told him, long ago, when he asked for a loan to marry Myrna.
“Come back with a bottle of Jameson’s,” his father had said.
“Why?”
“Because booze is the answer to every question.”
Nora was on the front porch, crouched down so her belly rested on her stretchy jeans, inspecting the floorboards. Spring Street was sleepy, and for a moment it felt like September, like all the tourists had returned his town to him.
“How’s she look?” asked Belly.
“This will be the last thing to work on,” she said. “Gene says the foundation’s rotted. We’ve probably got to pull the whole thing down and rebuild, but that’s a lot of paperwork, a lot of dealing with the design folks at the city to approve it.”
“What a crock,” Belly said. “The city can tell you what you can do to your house, that you own? That’s bullshit.”
Nora shrugged. “That’s the way it is now.”
They stared at the house across the street. Everything about it was new, but fake-old, with a fancy swinging glider on the restored porch, perfect lace curtains, intricately painted trim. He felt the slightest bit embarrassed to be standing in front of this half-finished construction project parading as a house, like the music had stopped and they were the only ones left standing.
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