The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  “Stay off my back, Sister.”

  She pulled away, glanced around. No one had heard their exchange, no one dared to look up from his work.

  She faced the window and surreptitiously made a quick sign of the Cross. It seemed revealed to her that she was in the presence of pure evil.

  To a large extent, Sister Mary Frances was right.

  In the last week of October, 1936, Willie Paycek went to see Father Kelly. He needed a two-day excuse from school. He and his mother and brothers and sisters were going upstate to see his father for the last time.

  Of course, Father Kelly and everybody else in school, in the neighborhood, in the Bronx and in the city, if not in the world, knew that his father was going to be executed for the murder of Walter Stachiew.

  Father Kelly shook Willie’s hand, squeezed his shoulder, asked him if he was going to be all right.

  “Me? I’m gonna be fine.”

  Father Kelly misread Willie’s brusqueness for courage. He slipped him a couple of dollars. “Get your brothers and sisters some treat. Some hot dogs or candy or something.”

  Sure. Like hell.

  The other kids didn’t know how to act, so what they did was more or less ignore him. Just the way they always did.

  Except for Dante D’Angelo. Mister Big Shot, taller than anybody else in the freshman high school class, going out for whatever teams he could, acing the exams as they came along. Mister Everything Comes Easy to Me.

  “Hey, Willie.”

  Danny caught up with him. “You’re going upstate tomorrow, huh?”

  Willie craned his neck, spoke from the side of his mouth, the movie tough guy. “Yeah, up the river. To the big house. To see the old man get it.”

  Danny grinned. “Jimmy Cagney, right?”

  “Yeah. Jimmy Cagney.”

  “Well, I just wanted to say … I … I’m sorry for your troubles. You know.”

  “My troubles? Me? I ain’t got no troubles, Danny boy. Any troubles I got, I’m not gonna have no more, you read me?”

  Danny’s handsome dark face was motionless, the black eyes regarding Willie steadily. He reached out with a fist, and tapped Willie lightly on the side of his shoulder.

  “Take care, Willie, okay?”

  And then he walked back toward his friends, who were fooling around with the basketball until their star returned.

  None of the others approached him. In fact, Willie had sensed an invisible barrier around himself. One cold night of being one of the guys, part of the crowd, in on something, meant nothing.

  The damn pansy mick Eugene was back learning to be a priest; Charley O’Brien never had much to say for himself; his tomboy cousin would one day get herself in real trouble. And the Jew, well, what the hell, he might be a big guy and tough and strong, but what he was was a Jew, and sooner or later somebody would teach him what that meant.

  Life hadn’t changed for any of them. Not the way it had for Willie. And all the changes were for the good.

  This was going to be an event to remember. Seeing the old man for the last time.

  Willie had the last row of seats to himself. He had instructed his mother to sit toward the front with the four blond Protectorate kids and Mischa, who was excited to be riding in a bus. The nuns had turned them out like it was Easter Sunday, all decked out in navy jumpers for the girls and long navy pants for the boys, with crisp white blouses. His mother was dressed up too, in her one good dress, a large, flowing black crepe with big red roses all over.

  “He likes this dress, ya fodder,” she told Willie.

  Sure. Sure. As if the old bastard ever noticed anything. Sure, Ma. Real nice, and the permanent wave she had had her friend give her looked terrific too. Tight curls all over her head, her sweaty face red, her eyes watering from the harsh chemicals.

  “To look pretty for ya fodder,” she’d told him when he sniffed the heavy air in disgust.

  Mischa sat and stared in awe at his two blond brothers and two blond sisters. He hadn’t the slightest idea who they were.

  “He eats with his elbows on the table, Ma,” the thinnest blond girl said. “Don’t you have no manners?”

  “Any manners,” her sister, a year older, corrected her with a deep sigh.

  The blond boys said nothing. They communicated with each other through signals: eye-blinks, raised brows, a slight movement of the hand, a shrug of the shoulders.

  Christ, his family, all dressed up and nowhere to go except to an execution.

  Not that the children would be allowed to watch, but they would get to visit the old man. The sisters had told them all about it. And then the next day would be the funeral, and he would be buried in a small Catholic cemetery not far from the prison. Because he’d repented, his oldest daughter said solemnly.

  This one they could make into a nun, Willie thought. She had the right mouth for it, thin-lipped and tight. And she liked to watch the other kids, to poke them or jab at them or hiss at them, just loud enough for everyone around to hear when they weren’t acting the way she felt they should.

  Hell, for the year he hadn’t seen them, he’d almost forgotten what they looked like. They were neater and cleaner and a little taller and heavier than they were before, but they were still cartoon figures with straw hair and round, empty, pale blue eyes. Willie kept them away from him. Stay away from me. Just that simple. Keep away from me. The girls sulked, the boys exchanged secrets without saying a word.

  Willie stared out the window, watching the landscape change from towns to long stretches of empty land. He saw small houses, set high above the highway, and he wondered what kind of people lived there and walked around on the farms spread out everywhere. There was a kid standing by a mailbox, a big tin receptacle on a plank of wood by the road. He caught Willie’s eye and waved to him. Willie kept his hands clasped on his lap. Dumb little bastard, that what you got to do all day, wave at strangers on a bus, who don’t wish you nothing at all?

  Maybe the little bastards, the Protectorate kids, would all get married off to kids like that one and live in the country and have kids of their own and wave to passing buses. It was about what they would be fit for.

  He could hear his mother’s voice, a droning, whining, unrelenting sound. There she was, sitting up there surrounded by those damned kids, giving hunks of herself away to total strangers.

  She talked to the other women on the bus, also going to visit husbands, brothers, fathers, sons, all locked up in Sing Sing. His mother was the star of this trip, and all attention was on her. The women listened and watched, dazzled by their closeness to a major event. Her husband was going to fry tonight, and she and all these kids were going to collect him and bury him tomorrow.

  Her starring role. Yeah, just like in a movie. That was how remote and uninvolved Willie felt. But if it was a movie, his movie, the focus would not be on that stupid, gross, obese, sweaty woman who literally couldn’t keep her mouth shut or get control of herself.

  Willie wasn’t sure who would be the star. Not he himself—he wanted no part of the action. He was the observer, cold, remote, unmoved. He wanted to control the scene, direct how it would be done, what each person would say, how each would react. His mother. He’d toss her out of the bus and let her wander around the empty land, hoping to find some stupid farmer she could stop and tell the story of her life to—tell about her husband and her lover and the murder.

  How in the name of Christ had he come from such people?

  At the prison, they were separated from the other visitors. After all, they were the condemned man’s family. The kids were given bottles of Coca-Cola and baloney sandwiches and Yankee Doodles and a bag of penny candy. Whatever they couldn’t finish, his mother devoured, waving off food that was offered to her. Too upset—no, no, how could she eat.

  And then, in a burst of curiosity, with movie-learned wisdom, she asked what her husband had ordered for his last meal. The deputy warden looked surprised. He didn’t know. Well, she could ask him herself. They woul
d meet shortly. Would she like to see him alone first, or with the children? All up to her.

  His mother looked stunned. Asked to make a decision, she began to cry.

  “Bring him here with everyone,” Willie instructed.

  The guards were relieved that someone was taking charge of the situation. They knew immediately that the woman was going to be a real mess. The kids seemed well behaved. The oldest kid seemed very sharp, very controlled.

  It was not like a Cagney-O’Brien-Bogart movie. There was a heaviness in the closed-in air, a pressurized condensation of smells rising from the floor, drifting from the walls and ceilings. As they passed through one set of sliding bars, Willie reached out, wrapped his hand around the smooth steel. The solidity of it fascinated him, the thickness, the rigidity. The guards marched along with them, two in front, one alongside his mother, holding her arm, a couple with the kids, trying to distract them, trying to pretend this was not the most incredibly awful place they would ever be in in their lives.

  Willie absorbed all of it—the sounds, the smells, the totality of the place. Beginning and end of the world, all contained in concrete and steel. He had to relax consciously, to fight off the growing claustrophobia. If he showed anything, did anything, said anything, they wouldn’t let him continue. They’d take him off to a room, along with the kids, and tell him to relax, no need to get so upset, kid, you just stay here, have another Coca-Cola, it’ll all be over soon.

  No. He wasn’t going to blow this.

  He’d waited too long for this day.

  His mother pulled back. No, she didn’t want to see her husband alone.

  Her hands reached out, touching her children lightly. Without exception, each child pulled back far enough to avoid her seeking fingers. Willie shoved them all together.

  “Okay. Bring him in to see all of us. That how you work it? We gonna be in a little room or something?”

  The guards exchanged glances. The deputy warden nodded.

  It was a small, green-painted room with a heavily grilled window, a long table, chairs, benches against one wall. The kids sat on the bench, under the window. Willie stood next to his mother, who leaned heavily, one hand on the table, one on his arm. She trembled so violently that Willie had to brace himself. If she fell, it would be against him.

  Stanley Paycek was a stranger, aged and grayed by the months in prison. His thin, sallow cheeks were freshly shaved. He squinted through steel-rimmed spectacles. His scant, frazzled hair was combed wetly across his bald skull. The gray shirt was too large; it stood away from his wrinkled neck. His pants, prison gray, freshly laundered, were too short. His white socks showed. He stood absolutely still, then dropped the Bible he had been carrying.

  Willie’s mother gasped, pulled away from her son, picked up the Bible, kissed it fervently, and handed it back to her husband.

  “Stanley,” she said, not certain who this man was, but ready to react, impatient to react. “That’s you?”

  The small man nodded, lifted his hand to his wife’s face, and touched her cheek.

  “Yeah. This is me,” he said. He seemed embarrassed by everything. The need for eyeglasses, the clean-shaven face, the obviously spruced-up picture he presented.

  And then it began, exactly as Willie knew it would. His mother flung herself at her husband, nearly knocking him over. She screamed and roared. Her face became bloated and red and wet with tears and spittle.

  Her husband held her as best he could. The guards provided backup. The woman was having a fit.

  “It’s okay, okay, okay,” the condemned man chanted.

  The children stood quietly, large eyes seeing, faces devoid of expression. They had seen, through all their lives, this kind of reaction from their mother. What was different was the lack of fury coming from their father. They had witnessed beatings, kickings, punchings. They had never before seen this man quietly holding their mother, trying to calm her down.

  A cup of water was provided. The sobbing woman sat heavily on a chair, sipping and gasping and blinking at the thin apparition that was left of her husband, a man she had known all her life, through marriage, through children, and now at the verge of death.

  “So,” his father said finally, when things quieted down. He lifted both arms, still clutching the Bible. “Come, say good-bye to Papa.” To the guards he said, “They are beautiful, aren’t they?”

  One after the other, the Protectorate kids offered a cheek, allowed him to touch a hand before pulling back and out of reach.

  “And Mischa? Where is little Mischa, the youngest?”

  “He’s next door. In another room. He’s too young,” Willie said. His eyes locked on his father’s eyes, hard to see beneath the smudged glasses. It was their first confrontation. The first acknowledgment that it was Willie who made decisions for this family now.

  “But for the last time,” his father said, his voice thin and uncertain. “To see his papa for the last time.”

  His mother began to scream and bang her head on the table. The guards looked alarmed. The woman was perfectly capable of causing injury to herself and anyone else.

  “Ma,” Willie said, his thin, strong hands biting into her fleshy arm. “Cut it out or the visit is over. Ma?”

  She looked up, nodded heavily, swiped at her face with her arm. With a snap of his fingers, Willie demanded a handkerchief from one of the blond girls. His father dug out a huge prison-issue square of gray cloth.

  He offered it to Willie.

  “For Mama, okay?”

  Willie smiled tightly and nodded.

  Within minutes, his mother quieted down. The guards brought in coffee, slices of pound cake. His mother smiled, beamed, they were all so good to her. Her children ate more Yankee Doodles, the boys sucking the white creamy centers first, the girls glaring at them, correcting their manners. One of the guards brought Mischa into the room. Small, dazed, nose running, mouth stuffed with cookies, milk mustache. He seemed lost in all the activity, the pretty children, the uniformed men, his mother waving him forward, the thin man with eyeglasses leaning toward him, calling his name. Mischa dropped his cookie and leaned against a wall. His right hand went into his pants pocket, began to work frantically.

  His mother lunged at him, screamed. “Dirty little animal, even in here you do this thing. Pig, pig, pig.”

  Willie moved faster than the guards could react. He had known what to expect. He scooped the hysterical, terrified child off his feet. He pressed Mischa hard against himself, felt the shuddering, the gasping, the choking. The guards escorted him out of the room. Willie thumped the child onto his feet, ran his hand roughly over Mischa’s face.

  “He’ll be okay. F’Christ sake, I told you, leave this kid outta there.” To the boy he said, “All over now, kid. Here, shove some more cake inta ya mouth. You’re okay, ya got that?”

  The huge, pale round eyes stared and the large head nodded, toppled forward like a flower on a too-thin stem. His hands reached for the cake. He let himself be lifted by one of the guards and gently placed on a chair.

  “He okay, this kid? He gonna have a fit of some kind? Should we call for a doc, or what?”

  “Just keep him outta there is all.” He regarded his youngest brother, who looked back, grinning. “See? It’s all the same to him. He don’t remember nothin’ that happened. He got no brains is what his trouble is. But keep him here, give him cake, he’s happy.”

  The guards glanced at the child, then back at Willie. “Okay, I guess you know.”

  “Yeah,” said Willie. “I know.”

  Finally it was time for the family to leave. The guards allowed husband and wife a moment alone. It was, of course, a mistake. She screamed hysterically, then went into a dead-weight faint, smacking her head on the edge of a chair. A nurse, standing by, revived her and Stanley was returned to his cell.

  Willie waited until the family was resettled in the visiting room and arrangements were made to take them all to the boardinghouse where they would spend the nigh
t. A priest spoke with his mother. The kids, tired, expressionless, sat quietly.

  Willie approached the older guard, the one with the nice face, the one who had been alarmed rather than repulsed by Mischa’s behavior.

  “Look,” Willie said, gazing directly into the heavily lined face of the gray-haired guard. “I’m the oldest, ya know? I gotta take care a’ alla them. I wanna say good-bye to my father alone. Man to man, because I’m gonna be head of this family now. Whadda ya say? I didn’t get no chance to talk with him, my mother had to have all the time.”

  There was something so earnest and touching about the scrawny, gray-faced, cross-eyed boy that the guard could not resist. He knew there would be no hysterics, no fainting, no overemotional parting. He looked from Willie to the line of kids, to the heavy sobbing woman. It was little enough this kid asked for. It took a few minutes on the phone to arrange, and the guard took Willie through the heavy steel door with the barred grille, through a series of passageways, all enclosed by sliding steel doors, manned by other guards. Willie wanted to shrug off the heavy hand on his shoulder, but he knew the guard thought he was being kind.

  Willie absorbed every inch of the atmosphere, with all of his senses. The very air tasted special. He would remember, forever, everything about this place. Nothing like in the movies; no movie had even come close. Prison movies should be shot in prison.

  Finally they entered the last chamber. There was a row of cells to his left, a tile wall to his right. In each cell was a condemned prisoner, and they called to Willie as he walked past, ignoring but absorbing them.

  “He’s a good man, kid.”

  “Your pop’s okay. He’s gonna be tough.”

  His father was seated on the cot that was attached by bars to the steel wall. He was hunched over in prayer, lips moving. He looked up in surprise and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

  “Willie. I’m glad you come. Mr. Watkins,” he said to the guard in the obsequious, fawning voice he used when he sought favor with people superior to himself, “this is my oldest kid. My son. Thank you for bringing him here. You’re a good man. God will bless you.”