“I can see that, man,” Liz said in her all-knowing voice. Behind her back, me and Nanny covered our mouths to keep from laughing. “I can, like, definitely see Maggie as a daddy’s little girl.”
“When he was around,” Cha-Cha said, laughing. “When he quit drinking, everything was cool for a while, until one day he just, like, vanished, man. Went to the hardware store for some lightbulbs and never came back.”
“I remember,” Nanny said. “That’s when you all came to stay with us at the Beach.”
“And my mother was wailing, wailing, man, the whole way down here on the train,” Cha-Cha recalled. “And then we got to your house and your mother was all, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish. Lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.’” He laughed again. “But Maggie, she was always waiting on him to come home. Used to sit by the window, watching for him to come walking up Dyckman Street. Even at the wedding. I mean, dig it, man, we don’t even know if he’s still alive, right? But she thought he’d like, magically appear to walk her down the aisle.” It was Raven who’d walked her down the aisle instead, being the oldest. I thought about Maggie, sitting in the apartment in Washington Heights, waiting for her father to come through the door. I’d never thought of her as someone with her face pressed against a window. She’d always seemed to be one of those girls to whom gifts came quickly, in abundance.
“But it’ll be cool, man,” Cha-Cha said. “Boulder’s very cool. All those fucking mountains, man! It’s a far-out place to start a new life.” Suddenly he turned to me, grinning, and said, “You want to ride shotgun?” I was so startled that I nodded, yes, and he hit heavily on the joint, sucking the smoke all the way in like it was oxygen. Then his lips were on mine and the smoke dipped and curled around my tongue to the back of my throat, and I held it as though I was underwater, seeing how long I could go before my lungs exploded. Then my breath burst from me, the sweet stench of weed filling the air.
“Nice,” Cha-Cha said approvingly. “Very nice.” Then he patted his stomach. “I’m going back down, get some more of your mother’s baked ziti,” he told Nanny. “Damn, the woman can cook! She got all the cooking genes in this family. I love my mother, man, but she can barely open a can of Spam. You coming, cuz?”
“In a bit,” Nanny said dreamily. She was staring across the bungalow roofs that lined the street below. I knew she was thinking about Tony Fury. I could hear it in her voice.
“Okay, be that way,” Cha-Cha said, then winked and slammed through the screen door that led to the staircase.
“He is such a fox,” Liz said.
“For real, if he wasn’t my cousin,” Nanny said. “Katie, man, we could be cousin-in-laws! But you know how he is, right?”
“How did it feel?” Liz whispered to me. “How did he taste?”
“How did he taste? What is he, a friggin’ lollipop?” Nanny asked, and she and Liz started laughing hysterically.
“Good,” I said, “he tasted good,” but they barely heard me over the sound of their laughter. It was just as well. I wasn’t going to tell them that the feel of his lips on mine made me ache for something real that lived in the world and not in my head, for flesh and touch and kisses that mattered. I was tired of renting other people’s dreams.
• • •
I still can’t believe she got Matty to move his ass out of the Beach,” Liz said. We were back in Nanny’s bedroom, lying across her bed, watching the sun shadows on the ceiling. It seemed to me they had never been so interesting, resembling clouds and balloon-shaped animals.
Downstairs, Mrs. Devlin was playing her Rosemary Clooney records; “Come On-a My House” floated up the stairs and made me think of Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” in that movie they were in together.
Nanny sighed. “Maggie gets to go to Colorado, I get to go to fucking Sacred Heart Secretarial School.” She had wanted to go to Carver Community College and take an associate’s degree in Secretarial Studies and Administration; she’d pleaded with her mother that the bus to Hempstead was cheaper than the Long Island Rail Road and subway fare combined into Manhattan, but Mrs. Devlin had stood firm. All the girls in the Scully clan went to Sacred Heart Secretarial and that was the end of it.
“Still a change of scenery,” Liz said. She was going to keep working in her father’s car dealership and take classes at Mary the Immaculate College for Catholic Women in Garden City. Her grades had been too terrible to get in as a full-time student, so her parents were making her take classes at night until she could begin matriculating.
“She thinks I’ll get a job in some insurance company and marry a rich boss, like my cousin Clare,” Nanny said. “No, what my mother really thinks is I’m going to marry John-John Kennedy when he grows up.”
“Where does she think you’re going to meet him, hanging around Eddy’s?” Liz asked. “Or going to an all-girls Catholic school taught by nuns, for chrissake?” She curled her lip in disgust.
“Really, man,” I said, sucking on a cocktail cherry. “It’s like, if they wanted us to marry the Kennedys, they should have moved to fucking Hyannis Port instead of Elephant Beach.”
“Katie, man, you lucked out, though,” Nanny said. “Going to Carver in the fall.”
“Well, Katie always was a heathen,” Liz said. “Never had the pleasure of feeling Sister Ursula’s paddle on her ass in fifth grade. Still, though, you think getting out of Dodge is going to make a difference for them? Like Matty’ll take the pledge, stay home every night, be the perfect old man?”
“She’s nervous about it, she told me,” Nanny said. “Before everyone got here, while she was nursing the baby. You know, much as she fights with Aunt Francie, they’re close, in their way.” Nanny drained the dregs of her drink. “Nobody in our family ever moved so far away, to another state, even. Except for New Jersey, and that doesn’t really count. Still,” she said reflectively, “it’s like all our parents, thinking if they left the city then everything would be all right, outasight, you know? Like once they got to the Beach everything would be sunshine and blue skies.”
“And look how well that turned out,” I said, thinking of Raven’s tongue dancing from all the speed, the track marks on the back of Bennie Esposito’s legs. Bennie shot up in his calves because his mother always checked his arms and he didn’t want her to know he was still using.
“You hear anything from Marcel lately?” Liz asked suddenly. I looked at her in surprise. She had never been crazy about Marcel; even when Marcel had gone blind for several months, Liz had barely any sympathy. It was weird because Liz was always so funny and popular and Marcel was quieter, more apt to hang back in the shadows; it was like Liz was jealous or something, even though Marcel wasn’t around and hadn’t been for a while. She hadn’t even expressed much interest when I’d told her that Marcel had eloped and left Elephant Beach to live with James. It was Nanny who had asked questions, who’d told me to wish Marcel good luck and give her a hug when I’d gone to visit after graduation.
“Yeah, I talked to her last week,” I said. “She’s cool. She’s doing good.” I didn’t tell Liz that Marcel had been crying, that she wanted to come home to visit but she didn’t have the money and she didn’t know if James would let her travel alone.
“Another one who got away,” Liz said, sounding wistful, but then she yawned and stretched her arms high over her head. “But you know what they say. You can move out of the Beach, but you can never escape.”
• • •
The party lasted until late. At the end of the night, Aunt Francie, weepy from too many gin rickeys, handed Maggie an envelope with two hundred dollars in it. “You’re doing the right thing, doll,” she said, hugging her. “Just make sure your numbskull brothers don’t follow you out there.”
“No danger of that,” Maggie said, a new light in her eyes. Later that week, at the good-bye party at The Starlight Lounge, she reigned as queen of the scene once a
gain, looking radiant with Matty at her side and the baby in her arms, like families were supposed to look before they got all fucked up. Beth Fagan, Maggie’s best friend, cried and swore she’d be out in a month to visit. Everyone took turns giving good-luck toasts. “Happy trails, motherfuckers,” Raven said, raising his glass, weaving; he’d been partying with Conor and Billy all day and could barely stand up. Maggie said it was a good thing the baby was sleeping and let him ask her again why she was leaving. Cha-Cha got choked up during his toast and gave Maggie a one-armed, bone-crushing hug; the other arm was slung around Christa Cutler’s shoulders. He had barely looked at me since the night began, and I was glad I’d had nothing invested in him, that the shotgun sensation his mouth had caused made me think only of Luke. Luke looked more like his old self than he had since he’d been back, his golden-brown hair damp and tied back in a ponytail, his face bronzed from the sun. When it was his turn, he raised his glass and said, “Go well,” and I thought it was perfect and poignant, but I saw Billy exchange looks with Voodoo and then I saw Luke drain his beer mug and set it down on the wetly ringed bar and walk outside to the old patio table, away from everyone. I walked over to a dark corner of the bar, near a half-boarded exit that nobody used anymore, which overlooked the patio. Luke sat in one of the rusted, rickety chairs and laid his head down in his arms and stared straight out at the night carnival that was Comanche Street.
“Lone wolf rides again,” I heard behind me, and turned to see Mitch, holding the inevitable glass in his other hand. We stood together, watching Luke.
“How long did it take you?” I asked Mitch.
“How long did what take me, angel face?”
“When you got out—came home—you know, before you were, like—” I was going to say “normal,” but that wasn’t the right word and it wasn’t a word I would have used about Mitch. “Before you could be around people without feeling bad,” I said.
Mitch held his glass to his cheek. Even with all the windows and doors open and the fans going, it was still warm inside the lounge; I could see droplets of sweat running into his beard.
“That’s not the way it works,” he said finally, and suddenly I was fed up, with watching Luke wander away and being afraid to follow, with Mitch acting like they were in some kind of special club that wouldn’t admit outsiders.
“I’m never going to fight in a war,” I said. “I’m never going to look at a river filled with blood, I’m never going to know what it’s like, okay? That doesn’t mean—”
Mitch reached out and pushed my hair back from my face, behind my ears. His hand lingered on my cheek. I could feel the calluses on his fingers. He drew his hand back and said softly, “Never say never, darlin’.” Then he drank very deeply, as though he’d been thirsty for years, and turned and walked toward the lights and the crowd at the back of the bar.
I turned back to Luke, to the sight of his bent head on the table, and was surprised to see Liz standing next to him, bright and barefoot in her cutoffs and halter top, flourishing a cigarette and asking him for a light. She must have been on the beach getting high, or maybe she’d gone out the front door for some air and walked around to the patio. Luke sighed and lifted his head and fumbled in his tee shirt pocket for matches. I watched, jealous, wondering what Liz was up to, if she was up to anything or simply looking for a light and getting some fresh air.
“What kind of a gentleman are you?” she asked him in her smart-ass voice. “You’re supposed to light a lady’s cigarette for her, didn’t you know that?”
“Chivalry’s dead, man,” Luke said, making no move to light her cigarette. “It’s a long time gone.”
“Apparently,” Liz said. She lit up and then blew out a plume of smoke. “Why don’t you come back inside, join the land of the living?”
“Why don’t you go back inside and leave me the fuck alone?” Luke asked quietly.
I could hear Liz gasp as she stood there, her cigarette dangling. It was the conversational tone he’d used more than the word “fuck” that was startling. She took a step backward, and her voice quivered slightly when she said, “I sure will, asshole. I sure will leave you the fuck alone.” She turned and walked back into the bar. She didn’t see me, huddled to the side in the shadows.
Luke didn’t see me, either. In the background, I could hear the sound of farewells. Maggie and Matty and Donovan were leaving; I knew I should go over and say good-bye. I kept watching Luke, though. I watched him put his head in his arms again, this time facedown on the table. The party was moving forward, toward the front door, and behind me there were sounds of tears and applause and laughter. But I kept watching Luke, feeling his aloneness, until it came up inside me and met my own.
NINE
jesus saves
When Ginger fell in love with Jesus, it wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it was something. “Last person I would have thought to become a fucking Jesus freak,” Billy said, but when you really thought about it, she was the first person who might let Jesus into her heart.
“People find Jesus when there’s nothing left, man,” Mitch said. His voice sounded dreamy and distant. “When the bottle’s empty, when there’s no more drugs, no one left to fuck, no one to hold your hand and tell you that all the bad, sinful things you’ve done don’t matter and Jesus will love you no matter what. Jesus isn’t the first thing you turn to, man. He’s the last.”
“Did you find Jesus?” I asked Mitch, curious. He had a faraway look in his eyes, like what he’d just said had come from someplace deep inside him.
Mitch looked at me, then shook his head as if to clear it. He smiled. “He found me, once or twice, darlin’,” he said. “Then I lost him along the way. As you can see,” he said, holding his drink up to the light, “my bottle’s never empty.”
What happened was this: After giving the baby away, Ginger started running amok. She had always been a little crazier than the rest of us, but now she was constantly stoned or drunk on Boone’s Farm Apple Wine or Old Grand-Dad, stumbling down Comanche Street like one of the rummies who lived on the top floor of The Starlight Hotel. When she came up close and flung her arms around you, the sweet, sweaty liquor smell would seep out of her pores, and underneath her tan, her skin was tinged with gray.
“You think she misses Allie?” I asked Nanny. “I mean, she hasn’t said anything, but they were so tight for so long.”
Nanny sighed. She had always been closer to Ginger, from their childhood city days, and had tried to talk to her, get her to go shopping, take her to the movies, anything to get her away from herself. “I don’t know, man,” she said. “She won’t talk about him. You know, they broke up hard, it wasn’t like, ‘Let’s always be friends, peace, love and happiness.’ And she was pretty faithful while they were together; he was the one screwing around.”
But Ginger wasn’t faithful to anyone now, or particular. Once she’d reach the stumbling stage, she’d fling herself at any of the boys we hung out with, drape herself around their necks like a clamshell necklace.
“Ginger, honey, easy,” Billy or someone would say, gently removing her arms. She never seemed hurt or wounded, and her eyes had a vacant look as if she didn’t know where she was.
We worried, though, that someday she’d drape herself around some guy who wasn’t somebody she’d known forever, who wouldn’t walk her home or at least to the counter at Eddy’s and order her a Coke or a cup of coffee. Sure enough, one night, after drinking on the beach, she threw herself at a stranger, one of the straggly, sleazy people who showed up on Comanche Street from time to time, usually stray dealers from other towns looking to drum up business.
“What the fuck?” the stranger said, laughing meanly. He pushed her away so that she spun around and almost fell into Mitch just as he was walking out of the lounge. The stranger, still laughing, walked away, in the direction of Eddy’s.
“Whoa, baby, whoa,” Mitch said when she almos
t knocked him to the sidewalk. “Easy there, darlin’, balance isn’t one of my strongest suits.” Ginger looked up into Mitch’s face, her eyes clearing for a minute, and then she started to cry. She leaned into Mitch’s chest and rested her head against his tee shirt and made soft sounds somewhere between a moan and a hiccup.
“Hell, if I’d known, I would have put on deodorant,” Mitch tried to joke, but then he sighed and put an arm around her and held her close. “It’s okay, darlin’,” he said softly into her hair. “We’re all lost children at some point in time.”
• • •
Ginger’s sister, Salina, came to town. She was visiting from Port Richey, Florida. “Came to check up on my little sis, see if she’s okay,” she said, watching Ginger from across the living room of their mother’s apartment on Gull Lane. Mrs. Shea was never home; she was either working or “out catting,” Ginger would say. I’d seen her only once, last summer, standing in front of the apartment building wearing sequined sunglasses and high heels and a short blue dress that barely covered her thick thighs. Her hair was freshly curled and combed as though she’d spent the afternoon at the beauty parlor. A man had been helping her into a car. He was bald, with sideburns down to his chin, and wore a powder-blue sports coat that looked like the kind of tuxedo jacket men wore with ruffled shirts in the wedding parties at the Knights of Columbus.
“Is that your mom’s new boyfriend?” I’d asked Ginger.
She’d made a face. “Some guy she met somewhere,” she said, her voice flat and disinterested.
Now Salina sat on the sagging couch, rolling a joint.
“This weed better not be beat,” she mumbled, spitting into the ashtray. “All these fucking twigs, man, it’s like Christmas tree smoke.” She wanted to go out, but Ginger wanted to stay in the apartment.
“Come on, man, don’t be a drag,” Salina said, pulling on the joint. She didn’t offer it to anyone else. She sounded more annoyed than concerned.
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