The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  Dante was grateful, but he did not feel reassured.

  On the night that Angela D’Angelo went crazy, nothing seemed different or special. Angela returned from church by nine o’clock, had dinner ready for her father, saw that the kids were all bedded down and quiet by ten, cleaned up, heard her father settle down in the bedroom with the boys. She sat with a cup of hot chocolate, which was her usual bedtime ritual. Sometime during the night, Angela D’Angelo slipped out of the apartment on the top floor, walked the two blocks up Ryer Avenue, went down the stone steps into the underground church.

  At four o’clock that Tuesday morning, the shrieks of agony were so loud, intense, and frightening that even Father Murphy, with his fifty percent hearing loss, was brought awake and ran quickly after the younger priest, Father Kelly, into the church.

  There at the altar, on her back, arms stretched into the crucifixion position, her ankles twisting together, her head jerking spasmodically from side to side, eyes rolled well up into their sockets, mouth wide open and emitting terrible screams, was Angela D’Angelo.

  Blessed with less fortitude than her mother, from whom she had inherited the burden, she shrieked over and over again, “I am hanging on the Cross with Jesus.”

  The agony seemed so real, so precisely defined by her body, that the older priest almost expected to see blood flowing from wounds. By the time the ambulance from Fordham Hospital arrived, young Father Kelly had things well in hand. A puzzled, sleepy Dominick D’Angelo tried ineffectually to calm his daughter, caressing her clumsily with a roughened hand, then shrugging, falling back against the attendants who injected the girl with heavy sedation. He seemed to have forgotten his fair grasp of English. He turned from one to the other, demanding in his Sicilian dialect: What? What have you done to my daughter? What has happened to her? Where … where are you taking her?

  His son, Dante, grasped his father’s shoulders with a strength and maturity that surprised the man. This boy, this child, now saying to him the meaningless but soothing words: It will be all right, Papa. It will be all right.

  Of course, neither father nor son believed anything would ever be all right again as they watched Angela, still in her religious ecstasy, being tied into a wraparound garment, arms pulled across her body, head lolling back heavily as she was carried, sacklike, from the interior of the church, up the stone steps, and into the ambulance. Shades were pulled, windows opened up in the apartment buildings across from the church. Father Kelly waved to the curious neighbors, go back to bed, it’s under control, a sick girl, that’s all. He faced the building, legs apart, chin up, glancing steadily as though memorizing who was still watching, nodding as they unwillingly did as he asked.

  Father Kelly, his blue eyes bright with excitement and alarm, realized he was, in effect, in charge. The old priest was mumbling and shaking, nearly out of control. Father Kelly signaled to the boy. Dante, send your father home to the other children. You come along. And so the two younger men directed the two older men.

  The priest and the boy rode with the possessed girl, each experiencing the situation in a different way. Dante took it as another disaster in his family. He felt isolated, totally alone in his awareness of what was happening. Father Kelly wondered what the meaning was, if there was any. Was this purely a religious ecstasy of the most profound kind, and if it was, why no stigmata? Or would that happen later? Or was this just a poor, exhausted, simple girl who should not have been allowed such intense access to the church, and was he at fault for not being more vigilant? The situation, in any event, provided more proof that old Father Murphy could no longer function. He was a shaken old man who should be put out to pasture. It would be a kindness. Father Kelly had worried the old man might suffer a heart attack or a stroke. He couldn’t take this kind of pressure. A younger, stronger hand was needed in this perish.

  Later, the aunts, of course, took the D’Angelo family over more than ever, and they made life as normal and warm and loving as they could. They were good women, solicitous and loving, tough and not given to crying, cheerful in the face of terrible events. This family would survive.

  But Dante knew things were very serious for his family when the uncles got involved.

  The uncles—the three Rucci brothers—were brothers of his dead mother. They lived mysterious lives. There was something tantalizing about the very fact that his father wanted nothing to do with them. They owned various enterprises: bakeries, restaurants, fruit, vegetable, and butcher shops, and, most amazing to Dante, they owned their own homes over near Bathgate Avenue. Small, neat, two-story brick buildings, one next to the other so that the cousins felt at home in any one of the buildings. They lived almost communally; only at holiday times, Easter or Christmas, did Dante and his family spend any time with his mother’s relatives.

  It had been his father’s decision not to have much to do with the uncles. Dante could not understand this. They were loud, short, muscular men, quick to distribute dollar bills and hugs. Their friendly hard hands would rumple newly combed heads or tug playfully at long sausage curls resting on some little girl’s shoulders. There was always the admonishment from his father: Do not take anything from your uncles.

  But now they relied on these very men his father seemed to despise. It was the uncles his father had finally called to rescue Angela from the large, cold, terrifying city institution where she had been sent—where Dante and his father found her, sitting, unmoving, mouth open, eyes blank, in a thin hospital gown stained with food and other things they could not imagine. Within an hour of his father’s visit, the uncles sent a special doctor to rescue the girl. Dante visited her after a few weeks, amazed at the beautiful resort-like place in the country, where his sister changed so completely. She had put on weight; the beauty of her face had returned; she smiled and talked with him. She told him about the courses she was taking, the teachers who came several times a week to teach her the mysteries of stenography. She showed him the small, neat typewriter on which she practiced every afternoon. She told him she had been promised a job, a real job, in the office of one of the uncles’ businesses.

  Dante studied her face for signs of the ghost, the terrified apparition, but what he saw was his beautiful sister, more mature and relaxed than he had ever known her.

  They had never been close. Age and gender had kept them from being friends in the past. Each had been assigned a role. There were unwritten but definite rules. They never would talk about what had happened to her. That was past and over.

  Dante had his own conflicts over his father’s attitude toward the uncles. Dominick D’Angelo was not a jealous or envious man. He did not dream of wealth or property or acquisitions. He was willing to work long and hard hours to take care of his family. He had married their only sister and they had not resented him or the lesser life she had chosen for love of Dominick. They were always generous: they had, through the years, offered him opportunities to work with them. From what Dante could discern, they were good men, but he knew instinctively that he would never be able to ask his father what the problem was. It was impossible, ever, to speak with his father on a great number of things, including the night of his sister’s breakdown. She was recovering from an illness. She was doing well. She would come home. She could go to work and get on with her life. It would not be discussed, there would be no point … It had never happened.

  The uncles sent an old, distant cousin to take care of the D’Angelos. She was grandmotherly and a good cook and housekeeper and she smiled and spoke to them in a whispered, pleasant Sicilian dialect. She was loving and gentle and easygoing, and left it to Dante to enforce the discipline and rules of the household. His sister Marie, three years older, resented and challenged his authority and he spoke to her quietly, worked out deals and compromises and made her begin to realize her importance in the family. Dante learned that one of his uncles’ cousins owned a women’s clothing factory. Marie loved clothing more than anything in her life. Picking his time, carefully, he spoke to the unc
le, and in return for doing some minor office work on Saturday morning she was allowed to pick and choose among the latest styles. The uncle would have given her whatever she wanted without any stipulation, but he listened carefully and with new respect to this nephew, at once so young and so wise. It was important that Marie learn the value of work, that she not just be handed things.

  Angela came home for a few days before Christmas. It was a good time for the D’Angelo family. There was a constant family party. The uncles and aunts came to the apartment, and then they all went over to the houses on Bathgate Avenue. There was no time for anyone to feel uncomfortable or uneasy about the sister who went crazy. Besides, she was calm now, and smiling and beautiful and loving, and she was treated by the family as the cherished girl she had always been.

  It was with a few of the neighborhood boys that Dante had some trouble. Some stupid boys who taunted him, with ugly imitations of his sister’s terrible mad passion: arms flung wide, head rolled back, tongue lolling, voices screaming the words: I am hanging on the Cross with Jesus.

  They were neighborhood boys, older than Dante, but not too much larger; he was a big boy for his age. They lived across the street from the D’Angelos. They were high school boys and they chanted at him on Christmas afternoon as he took the family dog for an airing.

  Carefully releasing the dog at the curb, Dante crossed the street and confronted his tormentors. They failed to read the controlled passion of his approach.

  “That is very unkind,” he said softly. “I don’t want to hear this kind of thing anymore.”

  They mocked him, his serious tone, his adult words, and danced around him, screaming the words again: I am hanging on the Cross with Jesus.

  He moved so fast, so unexpectedly fast for such a large boy, and he moved against the largest, a boy four or five years older than himself. It was a rule he would follow all of his life: Go for the biggest. The rest will fall in line.

  It was over quickly and decisively and the details, enlarged, embroidered, went around the neighborhood, as Dante knew they would.

  He felt he had fulfilled all his immediate family obligations when he went sledding with some pals on the night of Saturday, December 28.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MEGAN MAGEE CUPPED A SMALL AMOUNT of cold water in her hands, sloshed it over her face, licked the chocolate pudding from the corners of her mouth, dried her hands and face quickly, and whirled toward the bathroom door.

  “Whoa, now, jeez, dry your face, girl, or the water’ll freeze solid. It’s that cold outside.”

  He held her arm, glanced over his shoulder slyly, and leaned close to his daughter’s shining face.

  Frankie Magee took his daughter’s damp hand, pressed a folded dollar bill into it, rolled the fingers into a fist, and winked.

  “Not a word to Her Ladyship,” he said.

  “Oh, Pop, gee, thanks.”

  “Well, what the hell, it’s two days to Christmas. You and that nut-head friend of yours, Patsy, goin’ to the Loew’s Paradise? Now that’s class.”

  He studied the face so like his own, except for her light amber eyes; his were bright blue, but they were fringed with the same bright orange of her thick hair. The small snub nose, the wise grin of a mouth and the tough Magee chin. A don’t-mess-with-me face, handsome in a man, striking in a girl. He’d only prodded to tease her; Megan kept her own counsel. If it had to do with a friend and she didn’t care to reveal it, forget it. His wife—Megan’s mother—called it secret-keeping, as though it were some dark and sinful deed.

  Frankie Magee believed in confidence kept. Collecting and assimilating and sorting through years of information, scraps of knowledge, deals, plans, connections among the mighty and the lowly, was Frankie’s stock in trade. He worked for “the party”—meaning, of course, the Democratic Party, as though there could be any other in the Bronx, the Little Flower’s coalition notwithstanding. If the girl knew enough to keep things to herself, it was all to the good.

  “Well, then, you cleared it with your mom, did you? And you did your share of the dishes?”

  Megan and her younger sister, Elizabeth, took turns helping their mother with the setting, the clearing, the washing, the drying. It was a constant battle, a daily event: your turn, no it isn’t, liar, cheater—Ma! But today Megan dried every dish, quickly and expertly, put everything in place, whipped the dish towel smooth, slung it over the towel bar to dry.

  “Okay, Ma, can I go now?”

  “Wash up, first—you’ve got pudding all over yourself, Megan. For heaven’s sake, a girl of twelve, your little sister had better manners than you from day one.”

  It was no time to comment on her little sister. She could take care of perfect little nine-year-old Elizabeth any day of the week, any minute of the day. She was a short, fat, bloated, redheaded Magee, without the smart, knowing Magee expression. Her light eyes were so pretty. She was always smiling, always clenching her teeth so that the dimples showed in each cheek. She always pretended not to hear when people said, Oh, isn’t she pretty, so darling, so cute. Little shit. Mama’s darling little girl.

  That was what her mother had thought Megan would be: darlin’ little girl, first Magee girl in two generations. Four sons for Frankie and Ellen, the oldest all but grown, and then this little redheaded Megan, a replica of her daddy. But she fooled them. Megan knew that mistakes were made in high places. It was one of the first things she’d absorbed as a wiry, restless, active, pushing, shoving, jumping, running little girl, knocking other little girls over, grabbing their toys, belting them, ganging up on them with the little boys.

  That Megan Magee should have been a boy. Wrong plumbing.

  She knew what that meant. She’d seen her brothers peeing standing up. They all did that, all the boys, they unbuttoned and peed against a tree in the lots, or they pulled their things out and waved them at each other.

  Well, the hell with wrong plumbing, she’d have to make the best of what she had—or didn’t have. Aside from that, she could beat the boys at almost anything. She was fastest, toughest, bravest, would take a dare, give a challenge, and keep her mouth shut when it came to not talking. Megan watched the girls in school with cold contempt: Sister, I didn’t take the crayon, Louise Donnelly took it and put it in my pencil box to get me in trouble.

  The sisters at St. Simon Stock knew who they were dealing with when Megan Magee came into their grade. The same sisters had had all four Magee sons, and Megan was just the next redheaded Magee in line. They all, in turn, were delighted by sweet, simpering Elizabeth, who seemed to feel her role in life was to show everyone how terrifically wonderful it was to be the best Magee daughter, Mama’s little girl.

  Little shit. Megan flashed on a great idea. Tonight, when she came home from the Paradise. Oh, yeah, little miss, I’ll get you then.

  She collided roughly with Elizabeth coming up the stairs, spun her around, clamped a hand over her sister’s open mouth.

  “Yell and I’ll kill you,” she whispered, then gave her sister a shove and ran without stopping through the narrow hallway and out the door onto the cold street. She’d started to run toward 181st Street, when her father honked at her from behind the wheel of his black Chrysler.

  “You headin’ up to the Paradise, kiddo, I’ll give ya a lift. On my way to Fordham Road myself.”

  She ran around the car and slid in next to her father, glancing back at the house. It was a two-story, single-family house of red brick, one of the three side by side, one of the best of the single-family houses down the hill toward 180th Street. Dr. Wolfe had his office on the first floor of the next house, and his family lived upstairs. The Sugarmans owned the third house, and no one ever saw them. They were Jews from Germany and kept to themselves.

  The Magee’s car was two years old, gleaming and polished, kept in the garage behind the house. Frankie Magee bought a new car every four years. Megan realized that the Magees had a lot more than most of the people on the block. When she forgot, her mother po
inted out to her how lucky she was, how she lived in such a lovely house and had a car and how the family went out to Breezy Point in Rockaway for two weeks every year and how lucky they were in times when so many others found it hard to make ends meet, what with unemployment.

  That was one of the things her father did; he helped get jobs for people. Frankie Magee was the man to see to get a job for the boy whose wages were needed if the old man was out of work. To get transfers and appointments on the Civil Service list, to get assignments. Megan knew her father could do all kinds of things, do all kinds of favors for people, although she never understood the source of his power. Just that he had it.

  “Now, nothing you see or hear within the four walls of this house goes any further, you understand?” Ah, Jesus, her mother always felt she had to say that, whenever Megan happened to walk into a room and there was her dad, talking in his quiet way, a hand on some worried woman’s shoulder, a friendly jab to some working stiff, a “don’t worry about a thing at all, now, Tommy” to the father of one of her classmates. And her father would say to her mother, “Now Ellen, that’s Megan there, not a teller of tales, like some curly-headed little plump girl whose name I could mention but out of kindness will not.”

  God, she loved her dad.

  Whatever it was he did.

  “Let me out at the corner, please, Dad. I gotta call for Patsy.”

  “Go on and get her. I’ll drive yez up to the Paradise.”

  “Naw, that’s okay.”

  He never insisted on something she really didn’t want to do. He pulled up in front of the five-story building just around the corner on 181st Street.