The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  “Yes. Mortgaged, of course, but it’s in my name. We bought it from my father-in-law a few years ago.”

  “Good, good. Shows serious roots in the community. You active in local civic affairs? The church, the veterans, the neighborhood improvement societies and such? The club?”

  Of course he meant the Democrats. There was no other club.

  Dante reeled off the number of neighborhood activities in which he was actively involved, and Frankie nodded: good; good; good; good; good.

  “Well, so they know you in the congressional district, do they?”

  “They know me.”

  “Well, let them know you better. In the community. In the club. Especially in the club, and not just during election time. All the time. Be a presence. Be the guy who volunteers to do anything that gets you out and around. Start doing small favors for the neighbors; move out among the people.” He dug into his top drawer, searched around, then tossed a pack of rubber-banded cards to Dante. They were filled, on both sides, with names and telephone numbers. Dante glanced at the cards, then at Frankie, who never took his eyes off him. “These are the people you talk to, to get a favor done. The son into a good law school; the daughter into a nursing school; the father into a union. These are the people who make things happen. A bell going off, is it? Are you getting some idea what we’re talkin’ about, Mr. Prosecutor, Mr. Defender, with the fine record?”

  No games, no hedging, straight out, Dante said, “United States Congress.”

  “You’ve got the background. War hero, top man at your law school, great record with the DA, man of compassion as a defense attorney. Good family on both sides. Decent, fine, hardworking father; good honest sisters and brothers all married and raising families. Any black sheep anywhere I should know about?”

  “If there were, Frankie, you’d have seen to it I’d never have gotten appointed to the DA’s office three years ago.”

  For the first time, Frankie Magee’s grin erupted into a loud, respectful laugh. A sharp, tough kid. “Damn right. Them uncles of yours over on Bathgate had me a little worried, but they’re just a good buncha hardworkin’ Eyetalians. Now tell me something about this father-in-law of yours. I know about his altar-wine business and the real estate. Well fixed, is he? Ready to support you, not just with his mouth but with his wallet?”

  “Yes. All the way.”

  “Well, good then, good, Danny. Well, son, with the 1954 congressional elections coming up, you’ve got a little more than a year to work with. The future is gonna belong to you young fellas. The general, well, his great smile sure helped him get elected, but he’s not the same as you guys. There’s a good group of you all around the country, making the first move. Congressional seat.”

  “First, congressional seat. For a couple of terms, I’d say,” Dante said. “And then, in due time, the Senate. And then … who knows?”

  Seems to me you know, Frankie Magee thought. They relaxed, spoke of the old days, the neighborhood kids, all grown up.

  They parted with a long handshake, the pressure between them hard. Frankie Magee studied the young attorney closely and nodded with recognition.

  Oh, yeah. He had it, this young Italian. He had the hunger, the determination. He was a comer, all right.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT TOOK SUZY GINZBURG NEARLY TWO years to make an almost complete recovery. After she was taken from the iron lung, her body shrunken and atrophied, she worked with the courage and perserverance of a world-class athlete. “Hey, this is me, this little bag of bones. I gotta get these arms and legs going. Maybe not to dance, but for Christ’s sake, I’m gonna walk, and maybe run, on my own.”

  Through her years at Sarah Lawrence, where she majored in fine arts, she and Megan corresponded and, on the occasional weekend, got together in Greenwich Village. She introduced Megan to her family’s way of life, to an assortment of exciting and sometimes frightening bunch of people, who, despite her being a medical student, they considered their “special Bronx baby.”

  By the time they were in their twenties, Megan with a beginning practice, Suzy with an emerging art gallery in the Village, Suzy undertook the renovation of Megan’s private life.

  “My God, you don’t read novels or magazines or newspapers. You don’t go to the theater or concerts, or even the movies. You haven’t the vaguest idea of what is going on in the real world. If it ain’t psychiatric, for you it doesn’t exist. You are a cultural zero. So, in the interests of rescuing you from your dead-end life, you will come to the new show I’m having Friday night. There is a certain artist, blond and gorgeous and immensely talented and funny and bright, and I want you to meet him. I’m showing four artists, and Jeffrey Madison is the best and you are going to fall in love with him instantly and proceed to do mad, dirty, unthinkable things with him or I will never speak to you again. Except to nag you to death. You will come. I absolutely command you!”

  Suzy’s gallery was crowded with friends and families of the artists and with critics and serious or opportunistic collectors. Megan waved to Suzy, accepted a champagne cocktail, and wandered around to see the pictures mounted in four separate sections.

  Jeffrey Madison was constantly surrounded by admiring women; but when he was introduced to Megan, he squeezed her hand and whispered, “Listen, I want to come back to you, okay? Don’t leave without me.” He shrugged helplessly and was lost in his own crowd.

  Megan caught just a glimpse of his work: bright colors, strange shapes and forms. Christ, she didn’t understand any of it. She edged away from the others, put the untouched champagne down on a table, and took a deep breath. There was one section of the gallery that was virtually deserted. She studied the card: Work of Mike Kelly. And then the paintings. They were larger than any of the other work on display. And darker. Megan glanced from one painting to another, and then stopped short. The painting in the middle of the group, titled Sometimes, was a dark, brooding representation of a canyon. On one side, the rocks of the sheer wall were blackish, with jagged edges. A thin gray river ran far below. The other side of the canyon was angry purple, nearly black, with broken ledges, strange ominous rock shapes. A terrible place, devoid of hope or light, a place of desperation. Megan was uncomfortable. She hated the painting, and yet she could not move away from it. She examined the gray waters and saw a tiny touch of light. A raft? A person? It was a nightmare. The rocks seemed to move closer together, closing in on the figure in the water: a vise, crushing and relentless.

  “Well, Red, you like what you see?”

  She jumped. The voice was deep and harsh. No one but her father had called her “Red” since she was ten years old. She turned to confront a tall, solid man with disheveled thick black hair and a beard. At first Megan thought he must be some bum from the Bowery who had wandered in, but he stared knowingly at the scene before them.

  “I don’t think this is the kind of painting that you ‘like,’” she said.

  “Okay, what kind of painting is it, then, Red? You seem to know what you’re looking at. Go ahead. Tell me.”

  She was going to walk away, but there was something challenging, daring in his voice. “Okay, big boy,” she said sarcastically, “it’s a terrible picture. It makes me feel nervous. It’s like looking at a nightmare.” She turned then and said quietly, “You’re Mike Kelly? This is your picture?”

  “I’m Mike Kelly. This is my picture. It’s not a nightmare. It’s a state of mind.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you. I mean when I said it was terrible. I don’t know much about art.”

  “But you know what you hate.”

  “I don’t hate this; it just makes me feel …”

  He put his large hands on her shoulders and grinned. “Well, kiddo, you’ve just said the best thing you could say to an artist. My work ‘makes you feel.’ Look around at all those pretty pictures. All those bright colors. Wow, they’ll be bought for whatever the hell Suzy asks. They’d look great over a fireplace or in a dining room. I bet you some p
eople will buy one of those pictures by Jeff Madison, and have their decorator work a whole room around it. Would you buy my picture?”

  “Hell, no,” she said quickly. “I wouldn’t want to live with that … that Sometimes. What times are you referring to?”

  “As the title says, ‘sometimes.’”

  “But when you feel that way, you wouldn’t have the energy or the need to paint it. Not if it’s as terrible as that. So how far up do you have to get before you can face painting a world that looks like that?”

  As she studied the painting, the artist studied her. “What the hell are you, Red, a shrink?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. And don’t call me Red. My name is Megan Magee. Doctor.”

  When she turned to face him, he put out a large, warm hand and held hers. “Well, as you know, I am Mike Kelly. How do you do, Megan Magee, Doctor? What’ll I call you?”

  “Don’t call me anything. I think—”

  “I think you and I have a lot of things to say to each other, so I guess I better call you Megan.”

  He pushed buttons. He teased her just enough to both infuriate and charm her. She fell back on her tomboy toughness. Okay, buddy, you wanna play, you better watch out. I’m a match for you any day.

  “I want to show you something. Another side of my work. I want your professional opinion.”

  “I told you. I don’t know anything about art. I’m not the one who—”

  “You are exactly ‘the one who.’ Come on. Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll buy you dinner.”

  She went to his one-room studio/apartment. He made a great show of keeping the door open into the hallway. He had no intention of compromising her.

  What he showed her was the most beautiful collection of watercolors—a set of subtle, engaging illustrations for a children’s story. The characters were charming. The faces were of children, rounded, expressive, without worldliness. They were dreamy faces, wiseguy faces, tough and soft.

  “Take a look at this, kid,” he said, pointing to a redhead, a small girl with a raised chin, a challenging look, an I-dare-you expression. Megan looked closer. The girl had a steel brace on her left leg.

  She turned to Mike. “Wrong leg, pal.”

  He shrugged innocently. “What, wrong leg? She’s a character in my story. I decide which leg. Did you look like that when you were a kid? God, Megan, I love your face.”

  He put his hand under her chin, bent and kissed her lips. Megan pulled back.

  “There’s more to me than a face. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Mike Kelly leaned down, pulled her braced leg into the air, making sure that if she lost her balance, a mound of pillows would break her fall. He frowned, ran his fingers over the brace, ignored her protests. He examined the brace almost clinically.

  “I don’t understand why this brace is so big and heavy. Hell, I could design one a lot less disabling. And lighter.” He looked up and smiled. “And prettier.”

  Megan shoved him away. “You think this is funny? You think I’m charmed by you, you … you big jerk?”

  Kelly’s laugh was loud and genuine. He gasped, shook his head. It was a contagious laugh, and Megan couldn’t help herself. She laughed at herself, at him, at both of them.

  It was their first true good moment.

  He was as good as his word. He designed a neater, lighter brace and consulted with a friend who did metal sculpture. He gave it to her as his gift, and, with a few adjustments, it worked. She practiced learning to walk a different way, repositioning her weight, modifying her gait.

  Eventually, to his surprise, he sold his illustrated story to a major publisher. When they went out to celebrate, Megan noticed a strange quietness about Mike.

  “What’s going on?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “It’s a cycle in my life. It has a life and rhythm of its own.”

  “Is Sometimes beginning?”

  “Yes.”

  She moved in with him and watched him throughout the weeks of his sliding depression. He couldn’t attend the small publication party in his honor. She pleaded the flu, and went in his behalf.

  When she returned to his apartment, she heard a soft moaning in the dark room. She switched on the light and found him lying in a corner, hugging a pillow against his chest, nearly breathless.

  She realized talking could not help him. It had nothing to do with specific things that were bothering him. When she held a marvelous review of his book out to him, he merely closed his eyes and shook his head.

  She consulted with colleagues, who suggested hospitalization, electroshock therapy, intensive talk therapy. She gave him amphetamines and they brought him lower.

  Megan sought out his friends, artists he had shared studios with, guys who knew him in the service. They recruited others and took turns staying with Mike, coaxing him to move. They dragged him outside, made him run, forced him to exercise, get his adrenaline going. When finally he reemerged, he didn’t want to talk about any of it. He was okay now. He knew the routine; the time had passed.

  Megan researched all she could about clinical depression. Very little was known about it, other than that it came on without any precipitating factor, an unexplained chemical imbalance of the brain.

  Once the depression cycle passed, he soared, becoming manic and nearly violent. Finally, with his consent, Megan had him committed to a small private psychiatric hospital in New Jersey, where he remained, during one of his worst depressive cycles, in a practically catatonic state.

  Finally, in an obscure medical journal Megan found an article by an Australian psychiatrist who had been having some success with the use of lithium in the treatment of manic-depressives. She corresponded with him and, with his guidance, started Mike on a regimen of lithium which, as a natural salt, was easily obtained from any lab.

  It took months of monitoring and experimentation, careful blood-level tests, and finally, almost without either of them being aware of the change, the down cycles eased, becoming milder and less frequent, without any noticeable change during his more normal cycle.

  Under Megan’s careful and loving guidance, Mike Kelly’s life belonged to him for the first time in as long as he could remember.

  After knowing each other for nearly a year, and living together for a few months, they decided to get married. Mike was working on another children’s book. He enjoyed his professional life and loved the pictures he worked on. The stories flowed from the pictures, and his books attracted a great following.

  But first Megan had to tell her fiancé about Tim O’Connor and her abortion. She told him about the redheaded baby girl flushed away, knowing the reality, haunted by the nightmare. He held her, comforted her, loved her. Finally, quietly, feeling his fingers gently raking her short red hair, she propped herself on an elbow and told him, “There’s one thing I have to tell you, Mike. It might change your mind about the whole thing. But I’ve got to tell you.”

  Mike Kelly tensed. God, now what?

  “We’ve got to be married in St. Simon Stock. The whole thing, white wedding gown, you in striped pants, my dad handing me over to you—the whole deal. Whadda ya say?”

  He groaned. “Jeez, leave it to a Catholic-school girl.”

  As a successful children’s author-illustrator, and in an assertion of his maturity and seriousness, Mike had shaved his beard and cut his hair. Somewhat. He realized Megan’s family was prepared to hate him. After all, what father was going to look kindly on a guy who lived with his daughter without benefit of clergy?

  He and Frankie Magee had a serious talk in Frankie’s office. It was part of the deal; he had to ask Frankie Magee for his daughter. Frankie asked him about his wartime service. Mike had been in on the invasion of Sicily, as an infantryman in Patton’s army. He had a couple of medals.

  And yes, he had a decent family. His mother was a homemaker, his father an insurance man; they lived in Spring Valley, New York. His sister was married to an automobile dealer, and they had three kids
and lived in Connecticut.

  Yes, he could support Megan. Yes, he thought it was a great idea for her to continue her practice. No, neither of them wanted to live in the suburbs. They had their eye on a brownstone in Greenwich Village. He could have his studio; she could have her office; they could have a home. Yes, they both wanted children. After a while. And yes, by God, he loved and cherished Megan. He thought she was the funniest, toughest, brightest girl he ever met in his life.

  “And,” he added, “we are evenly matched.”

  Frankie narrowed his eyes. He liked this guy, who sure seemed to like himself as well. “Well, that remains to be seen,” he said, but offered his hand and wished them luck.

  Secretly, he was joyous.

  Having spent a year in Los Angeles, Monsignor Eugene Sebastian O’Brien received permission from his cardinal in L.A. and, with the help of Frankie Magee, permission from New York to perform the wedding of Mike Kelly and his cousin Megan.

  Her mother insisted on the works: a beautiful white dress with a long, graceful train, to be held by nieces and nephews; a ring bearer, Megan’s brother’s four-year-old boy. Her sister, Elizabeth, was a very pregnant matron of honor, and four cousins, looking typically unhappy in terrible bridesmaids’ dresses (as the theory had it, the uglier the bridesmaids, the more beautiful the bride), matched up with Mike’s friends in their rented outfits. Suzy Ginsburg couldn’t serve officially—she wasn’t Catholic—but she showed up drop-dead gorgeous in a designer suit of blue silk. A huge wedding feast was held at the Concourse Plaza, with a couple of hundred guests—friends, families, politicians, judges, representatives from the mayor’s office, even the state’s lieutenant governor. Dante D’Angelo and his pregnant wife, a beautiful girl with dark, flashing eyes; Megan’s cousin Charley, a fireman, attending with Ben Herskel’s sister Deborah, whom he was planning to marry. There were aunts and uncles and cousins and friends.

  Megan had a private moment with her Aunt Catherine, who hugged her and whispered through tears. “Thank God, baby. I want you to be happier than anyone in the world. I’ve loved you better than anyone I’ve ever known.”