All the Children Are Home

by Patry Francis

  “So you ready to start winning like your coach wants?”

  “You think it’s easy? Coach Lois doesn’t understand how good the other girls are.” I’d taken a few more steps when another thought occurred to me. “What were you saying to her in there anyway?”

  He stopped to pick up a stick, as if Princie was with us, and held it awkwardly. “I told her how Nonna always gave us a couple bucks for Christmas when we were kids. You spent yours the first day—usually on someone else. Didn’t matter what you bought; you just couldn’t wait to toss it to the wind.”

  “I did not . . . and even if I did, what’s that got to do with winning a swim meet?”

  When he didn’t answer right away, I turned around and walked a few feet backward so I could see his face. “Jeez, Jimmy, did you really tell her that?”

  “Yup. Told her you never gave a damn about winnin’ nothin’—not even Monopoly or backyard kickball. You just wanted to play.” He threw the stick as far as he could and paused, almost like he was waiting for Princie to fetch it. “Truth is, though, winning feels pretty damn good, Sky Bar. Remember the time I hit that walk-off homer in the tenth inning back in ninth grade? Best moment of my life.”

  “A stupid ball flying through the air was your best minute? Nuh-uh.”

  “Okay, maybe I had a couple better minutes with girls, but top three. Definitely top three. You know why?”

  “Can’t imagine.”

  “Cause sometimes it’s more than a ball flying through the air. It’s the minute—no, the second—when you hit back against everything that ever kept you down. The one second in your whole damn life when anything is possible.” He shook his head. “Imagine if Z could swim like you? She’d have six gold medals by now.”

  As we passed the Grainer School, Jimmy stopped to light another cigarette like he always did at that spot. Reminded me of Nonna, who crossed herself whenever she passed a Catholic church.

  “Zaidie’s gonna be the first girl president,” I told him. “She doesn’t have time for stuff like swimming.”

  “Where have you been? President was last month. This week she’s plannin’ to be the next Louisa May Alcott.”

  I squinched up my nose the way I always did when anyone mentoned Zaidie’s writing. That blasted notebook.

  “So how come you’re not goin’ to work?” I said. If he could break our unspoken rule, so could I. “Did you lose—”

  “Nah. Just called out sick.”

  “But you’re not, and if you keep—”

  “You know who you sound like now? Ma. Or better yet, Coach Lois.” Just thinking of her made him beam. “Lady’s got the bluest eyes I ever seen. Man.”

  “Don’t be disgusting. She’s old, for crying out loud—almost thirty-seven.”

  “I don’t care. Cause when you see a scrap of pretty in this world, you gotta stop and give it a little respect.” He straightened up and demonstrated his best military salute, cigarette still in hand. “You know why?”

  “I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”

  “Cause there’s a whole lot of ugly out there, Sky Bar. A whole lot of ugly. I guess you seen that already, though. Even before me, you seen it.”

  And then he gave another salute—this time for me.

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a goofball?” I said, pushing him off balance.

  IT WAS COLD twilight by the time we got home, and despite the extra-thick bathing cap Nonna found for me at Hanley’s, my hair always got wet. Still, I didn’t argue when Jimmy told me to wait outside.

  By the time he pushed through the bulkhead doors, the sun had set, but a particularly bright moon and stars illuminated the yard. He held his bat up triumphantly.

  “What the heck, Jimmy? I haven’t seen that thing since—jeez, I don’t know how long.”

  “Ninth grade, when I made the all-star team. All that talk about winnin’ musta brought back my glory days.” He tossed me the ball in his left hand. “Come on, Agnes. Pitch me a few.”

  “Are you crazy? My hair’s turning to icicles here and I’m starved. Ma’s gonna wonder . . . Besides, I was never any good at pitching. That was Zaidie, remember?”

  But I was already heading for the well-worn pitcher’s mound. “That was the first year I came, remember? You used to say you’d take that bat to anyone who tried to hurt me.” Even after all these years, my breath caught when I thought about Mr. Dean.

  “Still would, little sister.” He took his best batter’s stance. “Come on. Three pitches before it gets so dark I can’t see the ball. If I strike out, we go inside.”

  I hurled it in his direction as hard as I could. “Stri-ike one,” I yelled in the announcer’s voice I once used when I called the games in the backyard.

  The sound of the past must have drawn Zaidie onto the back steps. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. “What in the world are you two doing out here? It’s almost suppertime, and it’s getting—”

  “Hey, there’s no whining in baseball. Didn’t I teach you that? You play the game in whatever conditions you find yourself.” He turned back to me, dead serious, even in the shadows. “Come on, Agnes.”

  My next pitch landed in the dirt, but he swung at it anyway. “That’s two. You got one more.”

  Zaidie jumped down from the steps. “Let me try.”

  “Not this time, Z,” Jimmy said. “This is between Sky Bar and me.”

  By then Ma had come outside, Flufferbell at her heels. She was wearing the blue jeans Zaidie and I, embarrassed by her old-fashioned housedresses, had saved up to buy. But that night, looking at her in her jeans, dressed like everyone else’s mom, I missed the old gray dress.

  “Baseball? At this time of night? For pity sake,” she said, but there was a lightness in her voice, like she was seeing the old Jimmy, too. Before the war. Even before he walked through the door at high school and found out he was a rat.

  “Pitch him something decent, Agnes. Your father will be home soon and I still haven’t got the pot pies in.”

  “It’s Juniper on the mound tonight, folks, with batting champ Jimmy Kovacs at the plate,” I broadcasted. “But does she lose her cool? Not a chance. She looks, she sets . . .” I wound up like the pitchers on TV, extra dramatic for their entertainment.

  Jimmy wasn’t laughing, though. His eyes were on the ball that sailed through the dark, straight over the plate. He went for it with everything in him.

  “Holy cow! That ball is . . . gonnne!” I yelled.

  Zaidie and Ma were hollering, too, cheering like Jimmy had just won the World Series. Or we all had.

  But Jimmy had hit that ball so hard the crack drowned out the sound of our voices. In fact, for that single second, as it soared over the Guarinos’ fence and beyond, I swore it drowned out the whole world.

  “Yes!” he yelled, throwing down the bat as the sound came back. “Yesss!” And then to me, “See what I mean, Sky Bar? See?”

  Chapter Three

  James Kovacs Sr. Makes the Paper One More Time

  JIMMY

  GOOD OLD JAMESY. GUY COULDN’T GET A SINGLE THING RIGHT IN his whole life, not even dyin’. After Brucie brought me the paper, I sat out by the picnic table, starin’ at the words—the name, or maybe just those two letters at the end he had no damn right to use—Sr.—till it was past dark. Didn’t even make it in time to pick up Agnes at her practice.

  If the man had a ounce of decency, he woulda died in a hospital like you’re suppose to. But not Jamesy. Guy didn’t have one friend to check on him till his body stank up the flop house so bad it became a story. The bum was so damn invisible it took a week before anyone realized what was causin’ the whole roomin’ house to reek worse and worse by the day. Finally, one of the bright bulbs who lived there thought to ask if anyone seen that guy in Room 2. That was who he was to them—the guy in Room 2.

  Think of it. Jamesy had lived in the rooming house for six years and no one even knew his name.

  “Never smelled anything like it,�
� someone named George Stark was happy to tell the paper—and from what Brucie said, the TV, too. “They’re gonna have to get the place fumigated if they want to see a penny of rent after this one.”

  Course there was nothin’ about services like most people have. No picture neither. Not that I cared, though I mighta liked to get a look at him for once. But nope. Just some talk about the stink he left behind. I guess that’s what people like James Kovacs Sr. get.

  I put that newspaper under my bed. Maybe I’d hold my own little service later, I thought, though I didn’t say a word to no one. But the way Ma watches me, I could tell she knew. That night she made my favorite meal for supper, pork chops with mashed potatoes and beans, and no one hounded me about whether I’d followed up with the job Dad heard about at the garage, or asked why I left Agnes to walk home in the dark with her wet hair.

  “You want extra potatoes? I made them with real butter the way you like,” Ma said instead.

  But all I could think of was that damn stink when they took the guy out of the building. Never smelled anything like it, said the famous George Stark, king of the flop house. Didn’t even smell like a body anymore. More like some kinda chemical poison.

  “Thanks, Ma, but I ain’t hungry,” I said, pushin’ back my chair. No one tried to stop me when I left my plate on the table and went upstairs, either.

  Alone in my room, I was sorry—but also mad as hell. It was how I felt a lot in those days. With nothin’ else to do, I took out that stupid newspaper and read the story a few more times till the fumes practically rose off the print.

  After Dad and the girls had gone to bed, tiptoein’ past my door like they were afraid of waking a panther, I went down to see Ma. She was working on a puzzle of Van Gogh’s sunflowers.

  “I’m looking for a yellow piece that fits rights there,” she said, pointing at a flower near the top. Like I could just forget everything and go back to the days when I helped her with her idiotic jigsaws.

  I pulled up the chair like I used to, but instead of looking for her yellow piece, I dropped the newspaper on top of the puzzle like it was another jagged part.

  “Guess you thought if you buried this deep enough in the trash you could keep it from me forever.”

  Ma looked at me as if she was considering whether to lie or not. She coulda easily claimed she had no cause to hide anything since I never read the paper anyway. Or that she hadn’t seen it herself. There was no hiding the truth on her face, though. “He might’ve been your blood, Jimmy, but he was a stranger. I didn’t think you needed to know.”

  I reached down and found the yellow piece she had been looking for the last couple of days and snapped it into the puzzle. But inside, I could feel the thing that happened to me sometimes, the turning—like I didn’t know who to be angry at anymore. James Kovacs Sr. or Ma or the whole damn world. “You ever think maybe I’m just like him? Just another pile of stink like the old man?”

  “Not if you don’t want to be, Jimmy.”

  “And he did wanna be that way? Is that what you think? The guy wanted to die in a flop house with no one to speak for him but some asshole who never even knew his name?” I shook the paper at her. “Here it is—his eulogy and his obituary all rolled into one. Worst thing I ever smelled.”

  “Stop it now. You’re getting yourself all in a lather when there’s nothing to be done.”

  “Are you listenin’, Ma? What I’m trying to tell you is maybe I can’t stop it—and you can’t keep me from it neither—hard as you tried.”

  By then I felt the heat behind my eyes, as if I was going to cry again like a damn girl. A pussy. Wasn’t that like what they called me in the Army? Scared to pick up a gun. Had to be a medic cause he don’t want to hurt no one. That’s right. A pussy. The mama’s boy from Boston, they named me, even though I’d only been to that damn city once when Dad and Nonna took us to the Franklin Park Zoo.

  I never told them about the promise I made her, or the stone I carried in my pocket that whole year. But they could tell. Wouldn’t drink the hooch. Never shot horse like a lot of them done when things got bad. On account of I promised my Ma. No, I never told anyone, but in a place like that, people figure out who you are real fast.

  “Leave him alone. He must be a Adventist or somethin’,” my buddy used to say when he thought I couldn’t hear. But I didn’t even have church or God or anything to explain it. Nothing but a damn rock. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to chuck that thing in the jungle, but every time I tried, I thought of the night she give it to me. Promise me, Jimmy, she said. Serious as shit.

  Without thinking, I swept the puzzle she’d been working on all week onto the floor. “Wouldn’t it be somethin’ I turned out just like him—a bum, Ma, like you and Dad always said he was?”

  “He had his troubles—things I knew nothing about, Jimmy. I never should have said—”

  “Are you saying you were wrong? That he wasn’t a pile of stink—”

  “I didn’t know him, and neither did that other fellow at the rooming house. So yes, I was wrong. Him, too. We both should have kept our mouths closed.”

  “You said it about all of them.”

  She stood up so fast she almost knocked the card table over. “I didn’t know any better at the time, Jimmy. Till this moment right here, I swear to God, I didn’t know anything better. And to tell the truth, I was scared of losing what I had—you. Cause if he wasn’t a bum, then maybe he would come back and take you someday like . . .” She let her voice trail off like she always did when she thought of Jon.

  “If I was any kind of human being, I woulda been hoping for that,” she continued. “But I wanted you to be mine. Don’t you understand? I wanted the four of you for myself and if that meant your real folks had to stay drunk or lost for good, I suppose I wanted that, too. Dear God, Jimmy, I’m so sorry.”

  By the time we noticed Dad on the stairs, we was both cryin’.

  He was six foot four, my dad, a powerful man in every kind of way—especially when he give you that John Wayne face of his. But that night, standin’ there in his underwear? Man, he looked nothin’ but old. Old and half-broke like me.

  He came downstairs and kneeled on the floor to pick up the mess I’d scattered. With every piece he dropped on the card table, I could feel the strength comin’ back into him. By the time he stood up again, he was almost back to his old self.

  “Enough of this now, the both of yas. I got seven cars in the yard right now, includin’ two that gotta be done by noon. So whatever you two are goin’ on about, it’s gonna have to wait till morning.”

  He tramped toward the stairs, where he abruptly turned around, more powerful than ever. “In fact, it can wait till never, cause you know what you’re gonna do tomorrow? Get up and take care of what’s in front of you. Just do that and you’ll be too busy to worry about any of this other shit.”

  If only he knew how much I wished I could be as tall and sure as he was. I woulda even taken the ugly along with it. If only I could tell him how much I’d always wished that. Him and Ma, too.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up full of all kind of feelings—the way I did in country after I picked up a boy and lifted him on a stretcher, after I told him he would be all right even though I knew I was lyin’, after I stayed with him, tryin’ not to look at the wound where his life was seepin’ away. It was barely light when I headed for the cabin in the woods where a bum named Richard J. Cartier had died just like James Kovacs Sr.

  The Sugar Shack, we called it when we used to bring girls there. The path we used to take was so overgrowed I never woulda found the place if somethin’ wasn’t pullin’ me there. If it hadn’t been pullin’ me there since I was a kid.

  No one had been to the shack since a nor’easter knocked a tree on the roof back in junior year. It was mostly dead now, but weeds, vines, lichen—the whole wild world was scalin’ the walls, burrowin’ its way through brick and wood. When I managed to get the door open, I found it had even snaked its way in
side. Made you wonder how long it would take for nature to take back everything we ever built.

  The table where Richard J. Cartier set his coffee cup was still there, though, and the seat he pulled from a old truck, where we used to make out with our girls. Weird as it sounds, he was still there, too, looking at me like he had that day I gave him a smoke outside Frankenstein’s Texaco. Some things you don’t ever shake. I sat myself down on the cracked red vinyl and fired up a Pall Mall in his honor.

  I inhaled good and hard, tasting all the things I was sorry for. The boys who gave one last cry for their girlfriend or their mama, the life they thought was theirs before their eyes went blank with the lie of it, for the dad I never knew and the one I loved as much as anyone ever did their own blood, but could never follow.

  At that moment, though, I was mostly sorry for the shit I said to Ma, sorry for the broke puzzle she’d worked on all week. Sorry I blamed her for things that weren’t her fault. Even though I knew I’d probably do it again, I was sorry. What the hell was wrong with me?

  At first, I thought I’d just go out to the woods and see if the shack was still standin’, but once I sat down, I didn’t get up. I smoked half my pack, and when I got hungry I ate the Slim Jims and washed them down with a Pepsi from Tucker’s, even ate the candy bars I’d bought for my sister to make up for not showin’ the day before. Looked like I wasn’t going to make it to the Y that day, either. As it got later, I went out and gathered wood for a fire in the old stove. No one had used it since Richard J. Cartier sat here drinkin’ his last cup of coffee.

  I don’t know how long the fire had been burnin’ when I heard footsteps coming through the woods and felt myself goin’ into one of those cold sweats I used to get in Nam when I heard someone creepin’ up. Who I thought it was—the ghost of Richard J. Cartier, or the cops, or just some gook with a gun—I don’t know. But was I ever relieved when I got a familiar whiff of B.O.