The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  Miri told them flat-out to mind their own business.

  Just as she had raced the two blocks from her apartment to the school when her firstborn son, Michael, came home at lunchtime with the hand-shaped bruise across his smooth pink cheek. Sister Margaret Veronica, the fourth-grade teacher, indignantly defended her right to control this boy, who was a scamp, a mischief-maker, a day-dreamer. The smell of starch and dry age nearly choked Miri, and she spoke in a low and controlled but furious voice. “This is my son Michael, and if you have a problem with him, you call me or you call his father. You do not touch him.” And then, in a whisper that made her words all the more terrible, Miri O’Brien said, “If you ever lay a hand on any of my children, Sister, I’ll come up here and knock your head off!”

  Obviously no one had ever said such a terrible thing to Sister Margaret Veronica, and she pulled back and gasped as though she had actually been struck.

  Miri whirled away, not trusting herself, but turned back when the nun spoke.

  “Oh, I know you, Mrs. O’Brien. I know all about you, and don’t you think that I don’t.”

  Miri never told her husband or anyone else about the encounter. But no nun ever again laid a hand on any of her kids.

  Eugene wanted the seminary as much as the Church wanted him. Miri lay awake at night, wondering what it might mean. All his life, Eugene had seemed to be a spectator to his family’s life: remote, unattached, sometimes seeming amused, sometimes disdainful. He was always polite, never fresh-mouthed or rough like the others. Never a problem, always the exemplary child. The epilepsy seemed under control. Through the years he’d had four grand-mal seizures and several petit-mal. As Eugene grew older, he was able to recognize a precipitating event or combination of events. He would immediately remove himself, if not physically then emotionally, from a danger point, as though he were the decisive arbiter of his own illness.

  Between mother and son there were unspoken, unacknowledged understandings. His gaze, when turned toward her, was neither friendly nor hostile. Had she read meaning into those ice eyes that the boy did not intend? Was it all in her head? Was this nonsense, some craziness of her own, this belief in a dybbuk?

  No.

  She had been raised on the stories of her family. Dybbuks and golems and witches and ghosts and evil spirits were, indeed, loose in the world. The folk stories, the scary traditions, were not just to frighten naughty children, but to warn and inform.

  They existed in different forms in the religion of her children. She looked over their religious textbooks at night, alone, unobserved. Their world was filled with martyrs who suffered in explicitly described horrible ways at the hands of demons. Her children faced Hell if they sinned against the edicts of their Church and their God. She wondered at the sad-eyed Jesus, stretched on the Cross, at the anguish of his mother as she knelt, watching. She worried at the terror to which they were exposed. If her own inner world was real, was not theirs?

  When he finally left for the seminary, Miri admitted to herself that her feeling of loss was mixed with a feeling of relief, no longer to have the strange boy living in her home, not to feel her son’s body stiffen away from her casual or accidental touch; not to have the presence of some knowing being whose merest glance could penetrate and pass judgment on her very being. He wrote home each week, short, polite, distant letters of inquiry. How was she? His father? His family? He reported on the weather: cold, snow coming early. On his schoolwork: with the help of Our Lord, he would survive. In his description of his daily routine, the regimented minutes of every hour of his waking life, ruled and directed, examined and scrutinized, there was never a hint of complaint. It was the life he had chosen, the way he wanted. The tests and tasks were, to Eugene, the necessary devices by which he must measure himself.

  Miri handed on his letters to her husband, to the other children, without comment. She knitted warm sweaters, mufflers, socks. She wanted to prepare special foods for his visit home for the Christmas holidays. But she literally could not think of any special cake or dessert that Eugene favored. He had always approached food, no matter how prepared, as something necessary to good health.

  Within hours of his homecoming, he was part of the holiday turmoil of his family. Returning married children, with their wives, husbands, children, cousins, aunts, uncles, filled Miri’s hours. There was an exchange of visits back and forth across the street with one of her husband’s sisters, Ellen, married to Frankie Magee. Some relatives from Pennsylvania had come to sleep over for a night or two.

  The kids all seemed wild and uncontrollable, but the mothers saw to it that they behaved within allowable limits. They ate too much, played too roughly, broke new toys, compared their gifts with the gifts the others received, whined a little, complained a little, teased, joked, and got away with a few swear words during tussles.

  Good kids.

  All of them, cousins and young nephews and nieces, even his brothers and sisters, seemed to treat Eugene with the kind of deference they displayed toward adults. They vied for his approval, and worried they had been too rough or casual with their language in his presence.

  Once Eugene turned and stared directly into Miri’s eyes, and she gasped as though caught out at something shameful. His eyes seemed to impale her; then he shrugged boyishly, good-naturedly, including her in exasperation at all the commotion of children and grownups alike, as though she, as well as he, had no part in all of this. This Christmas celebration of excess in eating and playing and unguarded emotion.

  She knew she thought too much about Eugene. He was just a boy.

  But she knew other things, too.

  Miri was relieved that the family had a good time, stayed for a few days, then all went home. She was glad to clean up, to gain control again of her home ground. And she was glad that it snowed steadily and that the night was crisp and clear, the snow clean and well packed, so that the boys would stay out playing and sledding and making forts and having snowball fights.

  Most of all, she was glad that Eugene was as eager to go out with the rest of the kids as Charley was. He volunteered to dig around in the storeroom for an old family sled.

  As he was going out into the cold night, Miri spoke to him sharply, as she would to any of her children. “You pull that hat down over your ears, Eugene, you don’t want an ear infection!”

  In an abandoned, boyish reaction, he pulled his woolen hat down over his face, clowned around for a few moments, then shoved it back up, revealing his wide forehead.

  “You know what your trouble is, Ma?” he asked. “You worry too much.”

  They held it between them for a split second, then the boy winked and his mother waved him away.

  It was a rare exchange between them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHARLEY WAS THE LAST-BORN O’BRIEN child, and the most difficult birth. He was a breach baby, and his mother labored nearly twenty-two hours before a cesarean was performed, producing a sturdy, round-faced boy with blond hair, brown eyes, and a loud, healthy yell.

  This child of apple cheeks had an easy nature from the beginning, and everyone called him Charley-Dear. The first word he ever spoke was “dear,” and the nickname stuck until he was of school age and let it be known that just plain “Charley” was it.

  Charley seemed to love everyone who came into his world, but above all he adored his brother Eugene. The relationship was puzzling. Though a year younger, Charley acted instinctively as his brother’s protector. It wasn’t Eugene’s fault that he was perfect, that he was a better-than-A student, an excellent athlete, a fine altar boy, a good friend. Charley sensed, without questioning, that Eugene’s position in the family was that of the “special” child, much the way Stevie, the retarded kid in the Hoolihan family across the street, was a special case. The others looked out for him, made allowances for him, as they did for no other.

  Eugene would join his brother and the other boys in a pickup game of stickball or basketball or handball or trading baseball cards, but he
didn’t have the passion for playing that Charley and the other kids had. When Charley played—at anything—his entire existence was subsumed in the activity. He played to win, and winning exhilarated him; losing made him feel angry, but always at himself. Charley knew that Eugene played competently, that he was a natural athlete, but he was only partly there, not totally engaged. Win or lose, it was all the same to Eugene: Just a game, Charley. Don’t take it so hard. Don’t make such a big deal of it.

  Eugene rarely fought with his fists, and then only if attacked. He preferred to walk away, but if that didn’t work he fought hard, fast, anxious to get the whole thing over with; when it was, he would extend his hand to his opponent. Charley liked a good fight, sock and smash and roll around until you exhausted each other, by which time the offense was usually forgotten by both combatants. Charley figured that Eugene probably prayed for the other kid. He never discussed this with his brother; it was just Charley’s assumption.

  There were a great number of things that Charley assumed but never discussed. Family things, neighborhood things.

  He knew his mother’s family was a secret never to be discussed. All dead, somewhere upstate, in some fire. Period. And he knew there were other darknesses in his father’s family, which his parents talked about late at night when the kids were supposed to be sleeping.

  That his father’s sister, Ellen, married to Frankie Magee, his favorite cousin Megan’s mother, didn’t like Frankie’s sister, the beautiful Aunt Catherine. Called her a whore, which Charley knew was a bad thing—he looked it up in the dictionary. Aunt Catherine lived with a man much older than she, and they weren’t married; every now and then, Catherine would turn up on Ryer Avenue, move in with her brother’s family for a few days or a few weeks, and then go back to “the old man”—whoever he was.

  His cousin Megan loved Aunt Catherine, who was slim like a movie star, and had red hair that glistened, and wore lots of makeup and fancy clothes.

  Sometimes Charley’s mother would say nice things about Catherine, defending her against Ellen’s complaints; but his father would take his sister’s side, telling his wife to shut up and mind her own business. After all, what the hell kind of people did she come from? And Charley would wonder: What kind of people did she come from?

  Charley’s father was a police lieutenant and he was on the captain’s list. Frankie Magee, his brother-in-law, looked out for Tom O’Brien, but Charley didn’t understand how he could do that. Frankie was something his father called a “bag man,” but that didn’t make too much sense. As far as Charley knew, as much as Megan told him, Uncle Frankie worked for the “boss” at party headquarters in the Bronx, and he knew a lot of judges and district attorneys and lawyers and district leaders. Uncle Frankie somehow got jobs for people, and Charley knew how important that was.

  Not everyone had a job, and there were people who had to take handouts in shame. The worst shellacking Charley ever got from his father came when he was one of a group of kids who made fun of Timmy O’Leary’s clothes, taunting him, asking him if his holey sweater came from the Home Relief grab bag. It was one of the few times his mother didn’t stop his father’s strap, and after the beating she didn’t comfort him but told him his cruelty was unacceptable. She told him about people having pride, feeling shame. Explained to him that Jim Ryan’s father went out every day, dressed in his worker’s clothes, looked all day long for an honest day’s work, and returned home at the end of a workday, pretending he had a steady job. Everyone knew that. It was a neighborhood secret—there were plenty of men just like Tim O’Leary who, through no fault of their own, were unemployed. But they were entitled to their pride, and what Charley had done was heartless.

  Charley cried half the night over his own cruelty, for he was by nature a kind, cheerful, and loving boy who would never intentionally hurt anyone. He liked people; he didn’t call them kikes or guineas or Polacks or hunkies. He had friends all over the neighborhood, and he judged them only by what kind of guys they were.

  Everyone said Charley O’Brien would grow up and become an animal doctor, a vet. From the time he was small, he brought home injured birds, bleeding cats, limping dogs. He once came home with a broken tooth and a bloody mouth for intervening when some guy down toward Valentine Avenue was whacking the hell out of a puppy. He got socked, but he grabbed the puppy and ran like hell. His father straightened that guy out. In his lieutenant’s uniform, he spelled out the law. A grown man socking a kid of Tom O’Brien’s gets off easy—with a broken nose (the result of his first punch) and some busted toes (the result of his size-thirteen right foot coming down hard and unexpectedly on the guy’s feet). And anyone like that didn’t deserve to have a puppy. The guy had a house filled with animals, all showing signs of abuse. Tom O’Brien and his friends took care of things. While the guy was in the emergency room at Fordham Hospital, telling the sad story of dropping a load of bricks on his feet and falling on his face from the pain, a truck pulled up to his house, and the dogs and puppies, cats and kittens, were loaded aboard and taken to a farm upstate.

  “Charley,” he told his son, “next time come to me first.” Tom sounded stern, but he was proud of the kid. He stood up for what he felt strongest about. He wasn’t afraid of confrontation. And the boy had the best heart of anyone Tom O’Brien knew. He just hoped the boy would toughen up enough so that the world out there wouldn’t hurt him.

  Maybe the kid would do well to become a veterinarian. There were enough cops in the O’Brien family: both older sons, nephews, cousins.

  Tom O’Brien was proud of his kids, all of them—he would never admit it, because it wasn’t something he consciously thought of or would probably even agree with—but Charley was his favorite child.

  When Eugene went to the seminary, his younger brother missed his company in the room they shared. Though it was a strain at times to have a special brother, he loved Eugene and missed him and was glad that when he came home for Christmas vacation he wasn’t changed. He was still Eugene, even, perhaps more so.

  It seemed strange to Charley, the way his mother sometimes watched Eugene. She might seem the same to other people, but Charley felt her tension, her extra quietness around his brother, and she was not by nature a quiet woman. Maybe the fact that she wasn’t a Catholic—he knew that much about her, but that was all—had something to do with it. Maybe she was puzzled by the prospect of having a son who was going to be a priest.

  Charley wondered if his mother thought this was a scary thing. After all, priests were not like other people.

  Charley wondered how it was going to be: his brother, Eugene, a priest. Well, he had always been someone apart, so he was probably born to the cloth. Charley couldn’t imagine any other reason to want to become a priest. Not that he didn’t respect them, and the sisters and the Church. It was just that Charley felt the Church and the school were all just one part of life. He knew there was a wide world outside and that one day, somehow, he would explore it. Like the adventurers in the National Geographic magazines that Megan hid away for him. The dirty pictures were exciting, but even though he’d never admit it, the stories about other parts of the world, whole different peoples living on the same planet, unknown and almost unknowable, excited Charley. Someday.

  He was glad it had snowed on Christmas and for the next couple of days. If they hadn’t had the snow, the sledding and the forts and the snowball fights, he and Eugene might have been uncomfortable with each other.

  But the air was cold and clean and the guys were planning to charge down Snake Hill. They would slip away casually: not everyone was included, just the guys who could take care of themselves in case they encountered the tough guys from Webster Avenue who thought they owned Snake Hill. Charley hoped the Webster Avenue guys wouldn’t show up. He just wanted the fun and excitement of that great, dangerous, twisting hill.

  Of course, if the toughs did show up, Charley would have to hold his own. It was just that he really didn’t love fighting, for real, and he hoped it
wouldn’t be necessary. He wondered what Eugene would do, if it came to a real fight. Bless them? Charley grimaced and shook his head. That wasn’t fair. His brother would do whatever he had to do. Period.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WHEN HE WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD, BEN Herskel decided he would no longer attend Hebrew school three days a week after school. Since he had no intention of being a Jew, he no longer wanted to waste valuable time that could be put to better use. He was a large, husky, quick, athletic boy with dark red hair, dark brown eyes, and smooth clear skin, and was seen to be utterly fearless in the presence of the goyim who followed the Jewish boys from the temple after classes. The others depended on Ben to protect them, to see them to safety. His real friends were the kids from St. Simon. He was their equal in running and wrestling and softball and stickball and Johnny-on-a-pony and ringolevio, all the games the Jewish kids were afraid to play.

  Fight back, he would tell them, shoving a yeshiva boy’s reluctant shoulder; stand up to them. But their mothers had told them to be nice. To get along. To ignore. If they studied hard, one day they would be professional men.

  On the day his sister Deborah came home in tears because of what her teacher had said to her, Ben made up his mind and told his parents. He did not want to be a Jew. He just wanted to be an American, like everyone else. He would not continue Hebrew school. What was the point? Even his father only went to shul on High Holy Days.

  His father, Hymie, shrugged. Nothing ever seemed to anger him. So, I’m not a good Jew, he admitted. But I am a Jew, and so are you.

  Dora and Hymie Herskel, the parents, were small people with pale faces, who looked alike. They were first cousins, but the resemblance was more than genetic. Each day, clad in identical long white aprons, rimless glasses sliding down snub noses, hair wispy and graying, they moved about the luncheonette-candy store with a rhythm perfected by years of seven-day weeks. While Dora put up the huge vat of coffee first thing in the morning, and buttered the rolls and bagels, wiped the marble countertop, filled the containers with the chopped egg and tuna salad she’d made the night before, checked the cream cheese, cleaned the jelly container, unwrapped the ham and baloney the goyim butcher’s boy delivered, stacked the long loaves of rye and white, ready for the morning rush of policemen from the precinct house across the street, either going on the morning tour or off the midnight, Hymie did the physically heavy work. He hoisted the stacks of newspaper, broke the heavy string (which he carefully wrapped around his hand and saved), and spread the papers on the outside stand and weighted them down with small iron bars. He carried the cartons of milk and boxes of fresh Danish and doughnuts into the store. He moved things, arranged things, swiped at the floor with a dry mop, having washed it down the night before with clean, soapy water. He spritzed and polished the sliding glass doors of the penny-candy case, which were smudged by the grimy hands of the children who came and served themselves during the daytime. He checked the cookie cases on the counter, made sure everything shone that needed to.