Seventh Heaven

by Hoffman, Alice;

“Ma!” he called when he heard it on the six o’clock news, and Marie had come rushing in from the kitchen, waving a wooden spoon, afraid he’d fallen off the couch and hurt himself. He even sent a present for Little Ricky to the TV studio in Hollywood, a model of a race car he’d put together and painted on Saturday nights. Marie urged him to go out at night. Go to a movie, she suggested. Get yourself a date. Jackie smiled and insisted he had better things to do, but the truth was he was afraid of the dark. He was afraid of more things than he’d ever thought possible, including his brother’s dog, who was now full grown and huge, a hundred and twenty pounds. Whenever Jackie and the dog were alone in the house the dog bared his teeth and made a horrible sound, as if he had swallowed a chain saw. If anyone else in the family was home, Rudy kept his head on his paws, but the ruff around his neck stood straight up and his eyes never left Jackie. Sometimes, late at night, Jackie would hear a rapping at the window.

  “It’s no one, man,” Jackie would whisper to himself, but then he’d look and see that the dog was staring at the dark window, his head tilted to one side, listening.

  Jackie vowed to be even better, purer. When anyone left a car to be worked on he’d drive the customer to his job and pick him up again in the evening, and he’d deliver every car with the ashtray cleaned out and the front and back windshields washed. In that first week of May, when the buds of the maples looked yellow and then green, depending on the angle of light, Jackie hung up his black leather jacket in the basement and went to Robert Hall’s to buy a blue suit, just like the one the Saint wore every Easter. He went to the barber, and the Saint nodded, surprised and pleased, when he came home with his hair cut short. They didn’t talk much while working side by side at the station, but they didn’t have to. Every morning, Jackie would make coffee in the aluminum percolator. Every evening, at closing, he’d sweep the garage and the office. They had a calm, wordless routine, disrupted only on Saturdays, when Ace came to work. Most of the time Ace just pumped gas and came into the office to make change, but whenever he ventured into the garage, Jackie couldn’t work. He’d feel Ace staring at him, he’d start thinking about ghosts and bad blood and he’d get clumsy and screw up his jobs, and he’d find himself cursing under his breath, which wasn’t like him at all anymore.

  One Saturday in May, when the wisteria was blooming and the lilacs in the backyards were filled with tight buds, Jackie couldn’t stand it anymore. Ace’s eyes were burning into his back, and when he got up from the dolly he’d been sitting on he shouted, “Cut it out.”

  Ace just kept staring at him, so Jackie got up, grabbed his brother, and pushed him up against the wall.

  “Stop looking at me!” Jackie shouted.

  Ace kept right on looking, a satisfied grin on his face, as though Jackie had just proved him right in his opinion of him. Ace didn’t fight back, but the dog rushed in from the shadows of the gas pumps with all his hair on end, stopping in front of Jackie and barking like a dog from hell.

  “Get out of here,” Jackie told him, but Rudy circled around the brothers, getting closer all the time. Jackie let go of Ace and backed off, but the dog kept circling, catching the leg of Jackie’s uniform pants in his teeth.

  “Hey!” Jackie cried, panicked.

  Ace watched his brother blankly.

  “Call your goddamn dog off,” Jackie said.

  “Rudy,” Ace said.

  The dog stopped barking and came to stand beside Ace, but he was still growling and his eyes didn’t leave Jackie. As soon as Jackie took a step, the dog moved forward, barking again, and Jackie cried, “Oh, shit!”

  Ace watched for a moment, then grabbed Rudy by his collar.

  “I told you I’m different,” Jackie shouted. “But you don’t want to give me a goddamned chance!”

  The Saint had come from the office and stood now in the doorway into the garage.

  “That’s about enough from you,” the Saint said.

  The brothers both turned to face him, uncertain, each hoping their father was reprimanding the other.

  “You,” the Saint said to Ace. “Take that dog out of here and don’t bring him back.”

  “Pop,” Ace said, and his voice broke and he felt betrayed and burning hot.

  “We can’t live with a vicious dog,” the Saint said.

  “He’s not the one who’s vicious,” Ace said.

  “That’s enough,” the Saint told him.

  “Pop,” Ace said, pleading now. “Whose side are you on?”

  “I’m not on anyone’s side,” the Saint said, but he looked at Jackie, and maybe because his father and brother had gone to the same barber and were wearing the same uniform, Ace felt a shiver along his spine.

  He took the dog out and tied him to the air pump; then he went back into the office, where his father was going over the records. The Saint didn’t look up when Ace came in.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be working here,” Ace said. Now that it was just the two of them, all Ace needed was a sign, the slightest smile, a nod, anything, and he’d know which side his father was on.

  “That’s up to you,” the Saint said without looking up. “But you’ve got to work somewhere.”

  As if he were the son who needed to be told what his responsibilities were.

  “I can get a job at the A&P,” Ace said, desperate for his father to tell him not to, to tell him he’d always planned for Ace to be the one working beside him.

  “If that’s the way you want it,” the Saint said.

  “Yeah,” Ace said tightly. “That’s the way I want it.”

  He got a job as a cart boy, bringing in the shopping carts that had been left in the parking lot, helping older women or those who were too pregnant to lift their own groceries by carrying their bags out to their cars. He worked on Saturdays and after school. Instead of going home afterward, he’d swing by to pick up Billy Silk for a late practice and Nora always insisted on feeding him dinner. The days were longer now, Ace and Billy could play later, and soon Billy could hit whatever Ace pitched him; he could hit a ball over the fence that had been repaired and showed no sign that Jackie’s car had ever crashed through.

  They walked home side by side in the dark, sweaty and smelling like grass, the dog beside them. It would be late enough for James to have had his bath and gone to sleep and Ace would watch TV and drink lemonade until Billy had finished his homework and gone to bed. Nora let Ace keep the dog at her house during the day, and when they went into her bedroom the dog always followed, and he lay down in the far corner while they made love. Ace usually got home near eleven, after Jackie had gone to bed. Sometimes Marie was in the kitchen folding laundry or having a cup of tea. She knew there’d been some trouble over the dog and she was thankful that Nora had offered to take him in, and that she’d taken Ace in like one of her own, too. Before he came in, Ace would always leave the dog in the backyard; then he’d get himself a soda from the refrigerator as Marie watched him.

  “Over with the Silk boys?” she’d ask him.

  “That’s right,” Ace would say easily.

  Marie knew he took a special interest in Billy and she liked to hear about Billy’s baseball progress.

  “Better than Danny Shapiro?” she’d always ask and Ace would smile and say no, not yet, there hadn’t been anyone in the neighborhood born who could come close to Danny. Marie would show Ace the fingerpaintings James had done if she’d baby-sat for him that day or the cupcakes she’d made for the boys if it was a Friday night and she was to have them both the next morning. When at last Ace went into his room he’d open his window and whistle and the dog would climb up on the rim of the window well, then jump through the window. He’d lie on the rug and watch as Ace stripped and got into bed and sometimes he’d pick up his huge head and touch Ace’s hand with his nose. Those were the times when Ace felt like weeping, but he never did. Instead, he’d rub the dog’s head with his open palm and then fall asleep, curled up, knees to chest.

  ON SUNDAYS, JACKIE MCCARTHY DROVE HIS
mother to church. He never went to Mass with her, but he waited, parked in front of St. Catherine’s, wearing his blue suit. He saw Rosemary DeBenedict one Sunday as she stepped outside to pin a lace kerchief over her hair. She was a senior in Catholic school and she wore a plaid skirt and plain black pumps and her hair was dark and straight. She was there with her mother and two younger sisters, and as soon as Jackie saw her he knew she was the right girl. He thought she looked over at him, but he wasn’t sure. She had wide blue eyes and didn’t wear any lipstick, although she had on small pearl earrings and a gold locket.

  When Marie got into the car after Mass she smelled like gardenias and incense. She slipped off her shoes and sighed. Jackie started the car, but he kept on looking for Rosemary.

  “My knees are killing me,” Marie said. “I’m getting old.” She laughed. Then she looked over and saw that her boy was staring at a girl on the steps of the church and realized it was true. She had a son who was old enough to fall in love.

  The following Sunday Jackie borrowed a tie from the Saint and he got out of the car to wait. After Mass his heart grew larger in his chest when he saw Rosemary walk away, and he grinned like crazy when Marie came and told him Rosemary would be happy to sit next to him when he came to church.

  He hadn’t been inside a church for years, other than at Christmas and Easter, but he didn’t feel nearly as uncomfortable as he thought he would. He couldn’t take his eyes off Rosemary when he sat next to her, not even afterward, when he was introduced to her parents and her sisters, and by the time he got up the nerve to ask her out he had completely forgotten the boy he used to be.

  As soon as he could, Jackie started saving to buy Rosemary an engagement ring. She would graduate in June and, aside from working in her father’s bakery, hadn’t thought much about what she’d do next, although certainly there would be a husband. She quickly accepted Jackie as that man. There was a dinner at her parents’ house to celebrate. The Saint and Marie brought wine and almond cookies. Rosemary didn’t look at Jackie all night, but when he was leaving she let him kiss her for the first time. Then Jackie knew it was settled between them.

  Marie went with him to Goldman’s Jewelers in Hempstead on a Tuesday afternoon, after Jackie had made certain to ask his father for two hours off. They picked out a ring that was small but surrounded by sparkling diamond chips, and Marie wept as Jackie paid the jeweler, cash, and then she put her arms around him so tightly he thought he wouldn’t be able to breathe. He gave Rosemary the ring that evening; he got down on one knee, and as he slipped the ring on her finger he realized that she smelled delicious, like a cake in her father’s bakery, and he realized, too, that he would spend every day of the rest of his life trying, and failing, to be good enough for her.

  On Jackie’s twenty-first birthday the bridal wreath bloomed in big, white clumps, which attracted the season’s first bees. Cathy Corrigan had been dead for nearly six months, but it might as well have been six years as far as Jackie was concerned. He still had bad dreams, but everybody did, now and then. And, yes, he was terrified of dogs, small poodles and beagles made his heart jump, but anyone who’d been attacked by a monster like his brother’s dog would have had the same phobia. And the dark, well, that seemed to be getting worse, and because of this he took to carrying a flashlight. On the night of his birthday he’d have to go out after dark because Rosemary had made him a special cake at the bakery, with cherries and marzipan and chunks of chocolate. When he woke on the morning of his birthday, he could smell another cake baking already, his mother’s vanilla fudge cake, the one she made for both her sons every year.

  Ace hadn’t planned to be around for the celebration at dinner, but Marie had begged him and he’d grudgingly agreed. They all sat down at half past six. Marie had made stuffed shells and garlic bread, fruit salad with pink grapefruit slices, and the vanilla fudge cake. She felt a little depressed about the cake, even though Billy Silk had been over that afternoon and had licked out the frosting bowl and declared it the best he’d ever had. Still Marie knew it wouldn’t be as good as whatever Rosemary baked. She couldn’t quite believe that her first baby had turned twenty-one, although when she tried to imagine him as a baby she kept seeing James’s face, and she had the urge to hold James and feel how warm he was when he woke from his nap.

  Still, she served the stuffed shells with a flourish. She’d saved some in a Tupperware bowl for James’s lunch the next day, and she’d decided to take an extra pan to the Durgins because she knew Robert loved her sauce. The Saint and Jackie were grinning. The Saint picked up a bottle of Chianti and three wineglasses. Ace watched his father and his heart sank; they were all so used to his not being at their table that the Saint didn’t realize he was one glass short until he began to pour. He looked at Marie and she quickly got an extra wineglass down from the cabinet.

  Jackie kept glancing at his father, waiting for the time to be right. Just before they left the station to come home for supper, when Jackie was sweeping out the garage, the Saint had stood in the doorway to watch him.

  “Hey, Pop,” Jackie had said. “Clean enough to eat off of.”

  The Saint had come over and handed him an envelope.

  “Pop?” Jackie had said nervously, but the Saint just nodded and Jackie had to read the document enclosed twice before he could believe it. It was the deed to the station. The Saint had gone to a lawyer and had made Jackie an equal partner.

  Now the Saint nodded and Jackie cleared his throat. “We’ve got a little news,” Jackie said, and he handed his mother the deed.

  Ace kept his eyes on his food; if he was at Nora’s now he’d be having franks and beans and a Coke with ice, he’d be watching the way her hands moved as she cut up James’s portion.

  “Good Lord,” Marie said, and she put her arms around Jackie and hugged him.

  Ace looked up and saw the document. “What’s this?” he said.

  “Pop and I are partners,” Jackie said.

  Ace ignored him and turned to their father. “Pop?” he said. “What the hell is this?”

  “Hush,” Marie said. “Don’t talk that way.”

  “What about me?” Ace said. “Where am I in all this?”

  “You weren’t interested,” the Saint said. “Jackie is.”

  “Oh, right,” Ace said. He pushed his chair backward so that it scraped against the linoleum. “You just give it all to him? You forgive him for everything?”

  “That’s right,” the Saint said. “I do.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Ace said.

  He got up and grabbed his jacket. He pushed open the side door and kept right on going. When Ace went to let the dog out of Nora’s yard he saw that the lilacs were in full bloom beside her fence. Rudy came over to him and pushed his nose against Ace’s leg to be petted, but Ace gently shoved the dog away. From where he stood he could hear the clinking of dinner plates inside his own kitchen, and it was an odd thing to hear at the moment when he stepped into his own future. There was less than a month of school left, and Ace had always assumed he’d be working at the station after graduation; the job at the A&P had been temporary, but now he realized that if he worked pushing carts around the parking lot much longer he might be doing it forever. All he wanted was to make love to Nora and not have to think. But it was still light out, and Joe Hennessy was mowing his lawn and the neighborhood kids were out playing kickball, and it just didn’t seem right to walk in on Nora with a future like his hanging over him.

  Ace stood beside the lilacs. They were amazingly sweet. He could see Billy Silk practicing out in the yard with the batting tee Ace had made for him out of one of Mr. Olivera’s old sawhorses and he wished he were the same age as Billy. He wished he could crouch in the grass until dark watching to see if the fireflies had returned. Instead he started to walk down Hemlock Street. Rudy snapped up a tennis ball from Nora’s yard, then followed Ace. The dog ran ahead, then turned back and laid the ball at Ace’s feet, looking up at him expectantly.

  �
�No, boy,” Ace said, and he picked up the ball and put it in his pocket.

  Ace could smell Nora’s lilacs halfway down the block. The streetlights came on automatically, even though it wouldn’t be dark for a while. When they got to Cathy Corrigan’s house Ace and Rudy stopped at the driveway. Mr. Corrigan was out, unloading empty crates off his truck. Ace watched him for a while; then he went to the truck and grabbed a crate. Mr. Corrigan looked over at Ace, and although he didn’t speak, he didn’t stop working either, and he didn’t tell Ace to go away. After Ace had carried half a dozen crates into the garage Mr. Corrigan said, “Don’t lay them on their side,” as they passed each other. Ace straightened out the crates and saw that in a corner there was a white dressing table, with a skirt of rose-colored material around it.

  “She always wore too much damned makeup,” Mr. Corrigan said.

  Ace hadn’t known Mr. Corrigan was standing beside him and he jumped when he spoke.

  “Eyeliner,” Mr. Corrigan said.

  He shook out a cigarette from his pack of Marlboros and offered Ace one. It was cool in the garage, and against one wall were full crates of soda and seltzer. From where they stood, smoking their cigarettes, they could see Rudy sitting near the driveway.

  “You’ve got that dog trained pretty well,” Mr. Corrigan said. “What do you do, just tell him to stay and he does?”

  Ace knew Rudy wouldn’t come near this house for anything, but he said, “Hand signals.” He put his hand up like a policeman to show Mr. Corrigan the stay command.

  “I’ll be damned,” Mr. Corrigan said.

  When they finished their cigarettes there was a high keening sound. Mr. Corrigan froze, then realized it was only the dog, out on the sidewalk with his head back, howling.

  “Rudy!” Ace shouted.

  The dog looked at him and was silent.

  “Jesus,” Mr. Corrigan said. “The cry of the banshee.” He stubbed out his cigarette on the garage floor. “She was too kindhearted,” he said. “I see that now.”

  Ace reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and took out the dog’s tag with Cathy’s name on it and handed it to Mr. Corrigan. Mr. Corrigan turned it over in his hand, then gave it back to Ace.