Stony River

by Tricia Dower

  “Yeah, I know. That doctor said rage gave him the strength of a fellow twice his size.”

  “Did the doctor say what was wrong with him?”

  “Some big word I don’t remember with ‘mild’ in front of it. He said Buddy imagined things. Well, what child don’t? They gave him pills that made him dopey and walk like a robot. He stopped taking them after Charles Atlas told him they were poison. At the time I didn’t think that was a good idea, but I gotta admit stopping don’t seem to have done him no harm.”

  “Buddy talked to Charles Atlas?”

  “Not in the flesh. But he wrote him a letter. At age twelve. How ’bout that? He’s brighter than those doctors gave him credit for. Missed some school along the way, but he always made it up and never failed a course. He don’t pussyfoot around when he has a goal.”

  “Was hurting the girl the only bad thing he ever did?”

  “Ain’t that enough?” Dearie took a sip of coffee. “Still too hot.” She carried her cup to the fridge and dumped some milk into it. “I’m proud of him for settling down with you and doing so good at A&P. His manager has a soft spot for boys who’ve bumped into the law. He hired Buddy despite his record or maybe because of it—who knows? Alfie used to say if they can pull diamonds out of the ground, anything can happen. Like everybody, Buddy has his goods and bads. He just needs to learn to walk away from his temper, practice walking away till he gets good at it.”

  “Like swinging a bat? I practiced a long time before I ever hit a home run.”

  Dearie smiled. “Never thought of it like that.” She put her hand over Tereza’s. “Ain’t gonna leave him are you?”

  The sound of the car in the drive stopped Tereza from answering. Buddy walked through the door with the look Jimmy used to get after he’d gone bonkers: ashamed but unapologetic.

  “I gotta get some shut-eye,” he said. “You coming up, Tereza?”

  THE DAMAGE WASN’T AS BAD as it had sounded: only the fancy mirror and the desk chair. Buddy pushed the shards and splintered boards to one corner with his boots. “I’ll clean it up tomorrow. You gonna take off your clothes?”

  She told him the book said it should go in at a forty-degree angle downward. It hurt when he found the right hole but not as bad as the whiners in True Confessions would have you think.

  Later, seeing the little boy in his sleeping face, she thought about Alfie and Dearie doing their best to love him but being too old. If she left Buddy, it would be like his ma taking off and Alfie dying all over again. He’d rescued her when she was scared shitless, hadn’t thought twice about letting her stay. Tomorrow she’d take some of Miranda’s money and buy two gloves, a ball and a bat. She’d write “Tereza, park” on the calendar for Buddy’s next day off. Show him what a good hit could do for you.

  TWENTY

  DECEMBER 11, 1957. It starts well, Miranda at the counter by the sink, cracking walnuts, Enzo watching from a kitchen chair, his leg straight out, bouncing Mickey up and down. She asks, Are you not too warm in that jacket and vest? and he says, I need to sweat off a big breakfast. He asks, Are the walnuts for cookies? and she says, No, they’re for Cian, don’t they look just like brains, they’ll make him smarter. She’s serious but he laughs. He tells her Mama has been in the kitchen for weeks getting ready to stuff the family with seven kinds of fish and more on Christmas Eve. Even so she’ll expect them to waddle to the table the next day for roasted chicken, rice and something-ownee, something-etty and something-enzay. Italian sounds so sure of itself, even when Enzo’s voice jiggles from giving horsey rides. He’s spoken of this Mama before, confessed he didn’t go straight to Bill Nolan’s murder site because he called her first; he didn’t want her to think it was him if she heard a cop had been shot. He asked Miranda not to tell Doris and she hasn’t. She grabs the pencil and paper Doris keeps by the refrigerator and writes down what he’s just called Mickey and Cian, would he spell it? R-a-g-a-zz-i-n-o-s, as in Mama would gobble up these two ragazzinos. She likes how he includes Cian with Mickey as though he doesn’t see him as different. Enzo says his two sisters and three brothers have produced six grandchildren already but that’s not enough for Mama. Miranda says, You mean she wants them from you? and he says, Yes and that’s when her thinking takes the first wrong turn. Having conversed with so few men in her life she has little experience decoding their words. Is Enzo talking about children because he wants a child with her? Should she come right out and ask him? She can be forthright with Doris because Doris is forthright with her. Miranda doesn’t know enough about Enzo. When he started coming over he was all business. It’s different now. Doris says that’s because he’s “sweet” on Miranda and inappropriately so because of the age difference. Enzo asks about her Christmas plans. Is he working up to ask her to meet his family? She tells him she and Doris will get a tree for the children to trim and they’ll go to Mass but they haven’t given a thought yet to food. Enzo pats his stomach, which isn’t the least bit stout, and says, A family that doesn’t spend half of each day planning meals for the next is likely healthier than mine. Is he angling for an invitation from Miranda? She calls Cian to the table and gives him applesauce into which she’s folded three chopped walnuts, following instructions James left in the grimoire. She sets out a dish without walnuts for Mickey and says, I’ve been thinking on that woman who placed the ad, the one who ran away from you, and wondering if she might have bought my house— Doris said it was a young couple with a child. Enzo asks what she thinks they have of hers. She tells him about the harp in the basement that somehow got missed when Doris packed the boxes—Doris said she wouldn’t have thrown a musical instrument away, it must have been hidden from view. Miranda doesn’t mention the knife and the necklace, not wanting to explain their purpose. Enzo says I didn’t know you played the harp, but then there’s lots I don’t know about you. Miranda hears that as meaning he wants to know. She says, I don’t, it was James who did. Enzo takes a moment to remove Mickey from his leg before saying, Well then, it might be best if you don’t get it back. James said never ask a question if you’re not prepared for the answer. She plunks Mickey down at the table for his applesauce and says I’ll be calling on the people and inquiring about the harp. He asks, Sure you want to go there again and she says, Aye. She’s been thinking on giving James a proper burial—Doris has taken her to the mean plot where his bones lie—and before she does she wants to visit the last place she saw him alive. Cian has finished his applesauce. Enzo hoists the lad onto his shoulders. Mickey says, Me next! Cian gives out the deep chuckle he’s had since he was a babe that still turns Miranda weak with love. She could be “sweet” on anyone who makes Cian laugh like that. Doris calls Enzo’s face “a shame.” Miranda admires him for not making excuses for it and not keeping himself away from the world. The Mama he speaks of so fondly must have shown him he had as much right as anyone else to feel the sun and wind and rain on his face. Enzo could help her do that for Cian. She tells him Mama sounds like a wonderful woman with much to teach a young mother and asks if he’ll take her for a visit. Enzo sets Cian down and tells the lads to go play with their toys—this old horse needs a rest. When the lads are in the living room he says to Miranda, Come, sit, and pulls out another chair. She removes her apron and wipes her hands on a dishtowel. He gives her a sad smile and says, I want you to know it isn’t your fault but Mama would not understand if I brought you to meet her. She would not understand why you’re unmarried. She would insist on knowing who Cian’s father is. She would make a scene. He touches Miranda’s arm with a warm, dry hand and says, Mama is a good Catholic woman who has raised good Catholic children. He gives a short mirthless laugh and says he would have had to become a priest if his younger brother hadn’t, he studied theology for a few years, just in case, even though his heart was in crime. Miranda smiles at the image of Enzo’s heart robbing a store. Mama would have felt she’d failed the Church had she not produced a priest. Miranda nods and says, Once she meets me she might feel differently about me, a
s you do. Enzo stands, takes the few steps to the refrigerator, leans against it with his arms crossed and says, You don’t seem to understand that what you and your father did was a sin. Mama would not let such a sinner in her house and I would not bring such a sinner to her. Miranda sits for a minute listening to the refrigerator whine—Doris keeps meaning to get someone to look at it. She should ask Enzo to leave but she can’t resist petitioning his logical side. She still sees Mother Alfreda once a month and tells Enzo the reverend mother says nothing happens without God’s concurrence and to Miranda’s way of thinking that means Cian’s birth was God’s will. Enzo bristles but she continues: If sin is defined as any violation of Divine Providence and if Divine Providence, which is defined as God’s will, permitted Cian’s conception, then it could not have been a sin. Enzo says, I’m not going to stay and listen to this. His words coil above his head like smoke from a burning pan. Miranda sits at the table as he lets himself out and hears the lads call bye-bye. Mother Alfreda wouldn’t be sad to see him go. She says Miranda has the potential to achieve divine communion. She objects to Miranda wasting her gifts on gun-and-bullet parlor games for some detective. It is tempting to surrender and flee this world of appearances. To escape to the deeper, hidden world that beckons. But that would mean abandoning her efforts to give Cian a different childhood than James gave her. She takes a spoonful of Mickey’s unfinished applesauce—tartly sweet and hard as a stone to swallow.

  TWENTY - ONE

  FEBRUARY 14, 1958. The bridal couple sailed past. According to Roger’s secretary, Madge, who was also the groom’s mother, they’d taken lessons at Arthur Murray for the occasion. The waltzing blur of a bride was a pretty girl from Westfield.

  Roger found a recent tendency to be in and out of himself simultaneously curious and disturbing. Take tonight. He was dancing with Linda, maintaining the one-two-three-beat of an old Jolson number. At the same time he was off in some dark corner observing a girl in a luminous blue frock dancing with a blue-suited man. A trifle stiff, she admirably followed his lead while he carefully positioned his hand on her back to avoid her bra strap.

  The man was an outsider in her life now, waltzing with a memory: twirling around the living room, his daughter’s tiny feet on top of his, a Dorsey tune on the phonograph. Tonight, a live trio: piano, bass and drum.

  Roger had insisted Linda attend. The wedding offered the rare opportunity to give her experience in an adult social setting. Even before the separation he’d questioned what she was learning about being a wife.

  Take entertaining, for example.

  The only people who’d visited their home in several years were from the church, calling on Betty in a charitable capacity. They usually brought something: a coffee cake, a casserole. He couldn’t recall Betty offering them so much as a cup of tea. Roger couldn’t show Linda how to entertain in his sparsely furnished room, especially with Mrs. Ernst’s pungent sauerbraten wafting up through the heat register every other day.

  The late afternoon wedding had been overdone: all Valentine’s Day hearts and red roses. Afterward, the guests paraded in their cars, puffing out exhaust into the frigid air and honking horns. Linda had slid under the dash, trying not to be seen. They’d ended up here at the Piney Ridge Banquet Hall on Route 22. Not a pine in sight, but at least the place was set far enough back from the road so you didn’t hear the trucks air-braking their way to Pennsylvania.

  Roger stumbled a bit but recovered by bending Linda back into a dramatic dip. “Lean into it,” he said, but she struggled to right herself, neck muscles straining, face flushed.

  “Everybody’s staring at us.”

  “Because you’re the prettiest girl in the place.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “You are.” Keeping one hand on her back and still one-twothreeing, he dropped her hand and lifted her chin to look into her eyes. His throat tightened; how lovely she’d grown. He didn’t mind her roundness as much as Betty did. Nothing wrong with a shapely body.

  Linda turned her head away brusquely and placed her hand back into his. Roger’s sister, Libby, claimed it was normal for fourteengoing-on-fifteen-year-olds to spurn their parents’ attempts at civility. He suspected it was because he hadn’t prepared Linda sufficiently for the separation. He hadn’t prepared her at all, if truth be told, though it had been a long time coming. Day after day, month after month, for who knows how long, he’d found himself eliminating words and phrases that might set Betty off or send her into retreat. The silence between them had grown like a tumor until that awful Mother’s Day when she’d broken it with the banging of pans and bitter words flung at Linda but intended for him. When, later that day, she said she wanted to be left alone with her pain, he was bereft of words with which to argue.

  Two waiters rolled out a table holding an obscenely tall wedding cake.

  He hoped Linda wouldn’t want to marry some juvenile delinquent. She didn’t show particularly good judgment in friends, gravitating toward needy or rebellious types. Take that runaway, Tereza, and the boy who suddenly disappeared about a year ago. Richard? Roger wasn’t keen on her newest friend, Arlene, either. Polite enough, but she lived above a tavern with a drunken lout of a father. Roger had never met him but he’d heard the stories from those who had. Not the girl’s fault, of course, but she couldn’t be the greatest influence.

  The number over, Linda turned to leave the dance floor. Roger restrained her, gently he thought, until they had properly applauded the trio. “Whatever happened to Connie?” he asked as he escorted her back to their table. “You and she were such good pals a while back.”

  Linda winced.

  The word pals, Roger supposed. Something only a “square” would say, no doubt.

  “That was in grade school,” she said as if that explained anything.

  Roger and Linda were at a table with John Nolte from accounts payable, his wife, Trixie, Madge’s younger cousin, Sheila Mulroney, and her husband, Mike. Nolte and his wife didn’t inquire about Betty and why would they? She hadn’t been to a company event in ages. Waiters had cleared dinner plates away and were pouring coffee and tea. Linda plunked herself down and began crunching an ice cube from her water glass. Roger caught her eye, put a finger to his lips.

  Madge’s cousin reminded him of a younger Libby, her hair the color of dark rum. Not that Roger drank much rum. He preferred the tart taste of a whiskey sour every so often at a restaurant; Betty didn’t allow liquor in the house. A stiff drink might do her good. How could she lie in bed so much and not expire from boredom? Doc Pierce said there was a chance she was allergic to something or had a pernicious form of rheumatism. A clinic in Boston might be able to help, but it took months for an appointment. Roger asked him to get her in line for one.

  An amplified male voice announced the cake cutting. Roger pulled Linda’s chair around so that she’d be facing the happy couple. She scowled at him. Roger swore he’d never be like his father, who’d flown the coop when Roger was six and Libby eight. Roger stopped by every night to make sure everything was okay. It peeved him to come to the house he’d inherited, sit on his mother’s couch and not be able to stay. Wondering what he was missing of Linda’s life when he wasn’t there consumed his thoughts before sleep each night.

  The trio took up another song. Roger asked Sheila to dance.

  “Your daughter’s lovely,” she said on the dance floor.

  Sheila felt good in his arms, her chiffon dress soft under his hand, the scent of lilies of the valley rising from her neck. He and Betty had gone dancing when they first met. Betty was flirty, then, in an innocent way. She had this sexy way of pulling her gloves off, slowly tugging at the end of each finger. Lou said the antidepressants he’d prescribed could have made her frigid.

  “I think so, too,” he said.

  “She looks like you except for the coloring. Is her mother fair?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t want to talk to Sheila about Betty. “Madge says you’re a teacher.”

  �
�Third grade. They’re a handful, but I live for Monday mornings. If I had to stay home and clean house all week I’d blow my brains out.”

  Roger hadn’t objected to Betty working before Linda was born, but taking the job at Lou Pierce’s office seven months ago was completely unrealistic. She spent more shifts in bed than at work. Lou said it was a challenging situation and he hadn’t ruled out mental illness.

  When Roger and Sheila returned, Linda was staring at the floor. She’d eaten his slice of cake—a sickly sweet slab of pink and white— as well as her own.

  The bride and groom were making the rounds. Madge’s son, Bob, a fit-looking fellow with a crew cut, came up to their table, thanked everyone for coming and asked Linda to dance. She looked down at her lap, shook her head and mumbled no. The young man reddened. Trixie came to his rescue with “I’d love a dance.”

  From his dark corner, Roger saw his jaw stiffen and his face darken. He saw himself whisper into Linda’s ear and the two of them make their way to an alcove near the entrance. He saw himself grip her shoulders with his big, square hands. Heard himself trot out his authoritative business voice.

  Linda’s expression froze as he bit out the words “Don’t ever turn down a dance, do you hear me?” Ignoring her attempt at an explanation he pressed on, explaining the fragility of the male ego, the courage it took to ask a girl to dance and how humiliating it was to be turned down, especially in front of others. She was to follow along with whatever steps the boy made, laugh if he laughed, reassure him if he apologized for stumbling, treat the dance as though it were the most fun she’d ever had and the boy the most interesting person she’d ever met.

  Roger couldn’t make himself stop even after Linda’s eyes got shimmery with tears and her body rigid as marble. He was that boy and she was Betty, turning away from him night after night, taking her meals in her room, finding any aspect of being his wife repugnant.