“After him!” yelled Fingers.
The two men followed Vinny out the window, scrambling onto the fire escape.
Andy struggled to his feet and leaned out the window. He heard a screech of metal and saw part of the fire escape bend away from the wall as the combined weight of the three men caused anchors to rip from the crumbling wall and the structure to buckle under the strain. Someone screamed. Andy saw the two black trench coats flutter to the ground like swooping bats, and then he saw Vinny at the bottom of the fire escape hanging upside down, his head about fifteen feet above the ground, arms hanging loose as if he were dead.
“Vinny!” Andy yelled. He plunged forward, trying to climb out onto the fire escape, but something was holding him back. It felt like Fingers’ sidekick dragging him back into the room, but that was impossible: the sidekick was lying dead, or unconscious, on the ground below. “Vinny!” Andy yelled again as he struggled to climb out the window but it was no good; he was held fast. He turned away from the window and was free and ran downstairs.
15
VINNY WASN’T DEAD. Andy had been quick getting down to the telephone in the manager’s office. The police car, fire truck, and ambulance were not long getting to the Mayo.
Firemen climbed up and released Vinny’s trapped foot from the twisted metal of the fire escape while Andy stood looking up at them.
Had he found his father after all these years only to lose him again? Vinny, he prayed, don’t die on me!
Fingers and his friend were strapped to stretchers and loaded into the ambulance.
Vinny, his face bloody, was on the next stretcher.
“Vinny!” yelled Andy. “Are you okay? Vinny! Speak to me!” But his father’s eyes were closed.
“Is he dead?” Andy danced wildly around the medics.
“He’s alive,” said one.
“He’ll be okay, kid,” said the other. “Don’t worry. Get in the ambulance.”
Andy climbed into the ambulance with his father and then spent the next hour waiting anxiously in Emergency, praying still, watching the medical staff coming and going, walking the floor, sitting, walking the floor again. A nurse asked him questions and wrote down his answers.
When the nurse had gone, he sat biting lip and fingernails. What if his father died and he was left alone? What would he do? There was nobody else, only Aunt Mona, and he didn’t want to live with her. Where would he live?
Poor Vinny — was he in pain?
A doctor introduced himself. Dr. Julie. Andy’s father would mend. Crutches for a week or two. Head sutures. Nothing too serious. What were sutures? Stitches, that was all. Poor Vinny, head stitched like a soccer ball. But he would be all right. Andy felt the relief surge in his chest.
“What about the other two men?”
Fingers and his sidekick had broken their legs.
It was almost two hours before Vinny appeared, dragging himself along on crutches like a wounded soldier, a nurse at his elbow helping and encouraging. The dressing circling his head covered a gash to his temple. His foot, swollen to the size of a turnip, was heavily bandaged. Obviously in some pain, he smiled wearily when he saw Andy waiting for him.
The nurse offered to call a taxi, but Vinny said he could do it himself. The nurse left. “I’ll be only a minute,” he said to Andy.
Andy sat in the waiting room. He could see his father’s back at the telephone in the hospital entrance. He seemed to be making not one but several calls.
The taxi took them home. Andy helped his father up the stairs and onto the sofa. His foot had to be kept raised, off the floor.
Andy made him tea.
“Throw in a drop of whiskey,” said Vinny. “I need it to clear my poor head. Then leave the bottle here beside me.”
Andy took the mug back to the kitchen, poured a little of the tea into the sink to make room for the whiskey, and topped up the mug from the whiskey bottle on the counter. Then he put the tea and the bottle on the floor beside the sofa where his father could reach them.
Vinny stirred his tea. He seemed depressed. Or was still in shock from his brush with death. “Thanks for your help, Andy. I don’t know what I’d’ve done without you.” He stared. “You look a bit flushed. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” said Andy, but he didn’t feel fine. His head felt like it was about to burst; cockroaches and scorpions crawled in his belly.
“I’ll not be dancing for a while,” said Vinny. “Wasn’t that the madness? On the fire escape? I was fortunate not to break my neck. Upside down I was, my whole life turned upside down, Andy, can you believe that?”
Vinny drank his tea, then balanced himself on his crutches and limped to his room to sleep. Andy lay on the sofa to rest his pounding head and battle with his demons.
The next day Andy still had a headache, and the feeling of doom had not gone away.
He had felt it minutes before the fire escape accident and he felt it still.
It was like a vulture hovering over him.
Something waiting to happen. Waiting to tear out his liver.
Again, Vinny wasn’t his usual happy self; he lay on the sofa, foot propped up on the arm, worried and depressed. Andy put it down to pain from the injuries.
Vinny groaned.
“Is it the foot?” asked Andy.
“It’s not the foot.”
“Your head, then.”
“It’s not the head.”
“Then what?”
“It’s my sins. I groan for my sins, God forgive me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Andy, anything that happens from now on will be for your own good. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No, I don’t understand what you’re saying, Vinny. But whatever it is, I don’t like the sound of it.”
“I only want what’s best for you.”
Andy waited for him to go on, but he said no more.
“So spit it out, Vinny. What nasty thing is about to happen for my own good?”
“It will be all for the best, remember that.”
Andy didn’t understand. Vinny was up to something for sure. But what? His head throbbed and his eyes ached and the cockroaches crawled in his belly still. All he knew was that something really bad was about to happen.
When it did happen, it took him completely by surprise.
The light was fading and the rain was coming down heavier than ever and Andy’s head was throbbing and his legs felt wobbly, when there came a firm, uncoded knock on the door. The first thing Andy thought of was the police and he wondered if Vinny had managed to get rid of the whiskey, because if he hadn’t, then it was more trouble.
“See who it is, Andy.”
Andy opened the door.
She was wearing a raincoat, not her long gray coat, but otherwise Aunt Mona looked exactly the same, severe, grim, starchy.
“May I come in?” she said.
“Come in, Mona, come in,” Vinny called. He had been stretched out on the sofa, his injured foot resting on the arm, but now he struggled up and slid the whiskey bottle out of sight behind the arm of the sofa.
Aunt Mona stepped inside. “God save all here,” she said quietly. She looked at Andy. “Are you ready to go?”
Andy stared at her with burning eyes. He understood. His heart buckled. He turned to Vinny. “You asked her to come and take me,” he accused, his voice deadly quiet, head and heart pounding like a pair of drums. “You called her from the hospital!”
Vinny protested, “You don’t understand, Andy — “
“You don’t want me. That’s not hard to understand, Vinny. You’re my father, but you don’t want me. I hate you!” His father was a traitor. Andy had been betrayed. Stabbed in the back.
“It isn’t that I don’t want you, Andy, God knows I think the world of you and I’d give anything to keep you, but I can’t take care of you here, you know that right well, especially now with these crutches.”
“I thought we’d t
ake care of each other,” said Andy. “You’re my father!”
“I am and proud of it. But a boy needs to be looked after properly. And I’m not up to it. It’s beyond me. D’you hear what I’m telling you? I’m not the one to bring you up.”
“You don’t need to bring me up. I can bring myself up.”
“You can do no such thing. You’re a child. You need a proper home, Andy!”
“I’m your son, Vinny! You’re my father! You’ve got to take care of me, not — not her! And if you don’t think this is a proper home for me, then you’ve got to find us a proper home, one that is good enough!”
Vinny turned to Aunt Mona for help, but she had her back to them, looking out the window. He limped over to Andy and reached out an arm, but Andy backed away.
“Don’t touch me! You don’t want me!”
“I do want you. When you’re gone, it’ll be like I’ve lost an arm and the use of both legs. Your aunt is a good woman. She knows what a boy needs. She can take care of you until I’m back on my feet.”
“You’re full of talk, Vinny. You’ve got no intention — “
“But I do, Andy! Trust me! I’ll not let you down, not this time. Just give me another chance. Leave it to me. But for now, till I find a job and the right place for us, go with your aunt.”
“You made promises before.”
“I promise on your mother’s grave!”
“She’s got no — I don’t believe you, Vinny. I just don’t believe you!”
“Leave everything to me, darlin’, I promise.” “You’ll get a job?”
“I will.”
“And find a proper place?”
“I will.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. May God strike me dead if I don’t!”
“And you’ll send for me right away, as soon as you find
it?”
“I will, I swear. God and Mona are my witnesses.”
Andy felt a throat swell of despair. He didn’t believe Vinny, didn’t trust him. He had lied before. Vinny, his father, didn’t want him: that was all he could think of. His father didn’t want him, and worse still, he’d sent for the one person Andy hated most in all the world: Aunt Mona.
He mumbled to his aunt, “I’ll just throw my things in a bag.”
They waited for a bus outside the Mayo Rooms. The rain dropped like acid. Andy pulled up the hood of his parka. A nearby garbage can overflowed onto the sidewalk with sodden hamburger cartons, paper cups, cigarette packages, bus tickets, chewing gum wrappers. Someone had thrown up in the gutter. Aunt Mona held an umbrella over them both. They said nothing to each other. Andy stared down the empty gray road. It was too early for the streetlights to come on, but the gray gloom and drizzling rain made it difficult to see far. His head throbbed; he started to shiver. His new parka was warm enough, but this was a chill that began on the inside, in the marrow of his bones, and spread outward to muscle and tissue.
A sudden frightening gust of wind howled at them from nowhere. It blew Mona’s umbrella inside out and blew the garbage can over. The filth from the can flew up into the air and landed in a heap about Aunt Mona’s feet.
“Well, I never!” she gasped, backing away and hanging on to her broken umbrella.
The air seemed charged with electrical energy. The garbage can rolled about noisily on the sidewalk. Then the wind disappeared as suddenly as it had come and the garbage can was still.
Aunt Mona said quickly, “We’ll walk. It’s not far.” They started walking. Aunt Mona raised the damaged umbrella above their heads. She said, “Are you all right?”
Andy didn’t answer her.
“This is all for the best, you’ll see,” said Aunt Mona. They walked together in silence, Andy trembling in a fever of despair, walking like a robot for what seemed like ten miles under the umbrella through the rain along one poor street and down another to a narrow street of dismal houses. There was a number on Aunt Mona’s front door, but to Andy everything was a blur. Aunt Mona opened the door with a key and they went inside.
PART III
the aunt
16
HE SLEPT WARMLY through the last few days of November and the first light snow of the year. The room smelled faintly of roses and he was reminded of his mother. Shadowy figures shuffled in and out, bringing water he couldn’t swallow without it spilling and pills that stuck in his throat. He was in the hospital again, with nurses coming and going and Father Coughlan murmuring at him about being strong and keeping his faith, but after a while he realized there were only two people, a man and a woman, whispering in drowsy murmurs over him in the language of bees.
He woke in the night and the voices were not there. The room was dark. He tried getting out of the bed, but was too weak, and his head fell back on the pillow. He lay awake, eyes open in the dark. Again, he tried to sit up and swing his legs out from under the covers, but fell back into sleep instead and dreamed about his mother. Another day. He half woke in the warm room, voices whispering.
He dreamed he was in Tir Na n’Og under a cloudless blue sky in a blue and yellow field — bluebells and buttercups. White horses grazed nearby. His mother was calling him from their tree house, telling him something he couldn’t quite hear. Vinny came out of the house, looking like Tarzan. He stood behind Judith, she now in her Jane outfit. Andy started running toward them, but Tarzan lifted Jane with one arm and leaped up to a thick hanging vine, and the two figures swung away into the jungle without him.
He woke and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. The room was dim and quiet. He was alone.
His mother was gone.
And his father didn’t want him.
He closed his eyes and sank again into darkness.
Someone sitting near the bed, head bent: a man writing in a newspaper, working on a crossword puzzle. Andy closed his eyes and listened to the man quietly whispering words to his pencil. Then he slept again.
He tried to sit up to take some soup from one of the whisperers, who turned out to be Aunt Mona. When he saw who it was, he said, “I don’t want any,” and pushed the spoon away.
“Eat. It’s good for you.”
“I don’t care.”
The second whisperer was the crossword puzzle man. He tiptoed into the room one daylight time and said something Andy did not understand. Andy stared at him, and soon he went away, closing the door quietly behind him.
Another time. Aunt Mona brought food on a tray and sat on the edge of the bed urging him to eat, but he turned his head away and closed his eyes until he heard her leave the room, and then he saw the food left on the tray and ate a little of it, not noticing what it was he was eating. Then he slept again.
The man came in and stood beside the bed.
Andy didn’t look at him.
“Hello, Andy. I’m Hugh Hogan.”
Andy looked at him. The crossword puzzle man. He was short and barrel-chested, with a shy smile and bristly gray hair like a brush.
“How’re you feeling?”
“What’s the matter with me?”
“You had the fever.”
The fever. He felt empty.
“Mona asked me to look in on you. Are you warm enough?”
He sank back on heaped pillows, closing his eyes. The man left, shutting the door noiselessly behind him. The bed was warm and soft. He slept again.
He woke when Aunt Mona came in with a pink hot-water bottle and tray of food. She put the tray down on the floor and reached under the bedcovers and pulled out another hot-water bottle, this one blue, and held up the pink one for Andy to see. “Do you need another?”
He had never used a hot-water bottle before. “No.”
Aunt Mona left it aside and picked up the tray. There was a boiled egg with buttered toast. She placed the tray in front of Andy and perched on the edge of the bed like a bird to watch him eat. He was hungry. He ate.
“That’s the first bit of solid food you’ve got down you in four days,” said Aunt Mona. �
�You’re thin as a twig.” She saw him glancing around the room. “This is your room now. Your things are in the wardrobe. And extra blankets if you need them. Don’t get up until you’re ready. You’ve all the time in the world.” She took the tray when Andy was finished, and stood. “I’ll bring you up some milk.”
When his aunt had gone back downstairs with the tray and the blue hot-water bottle, he slipped out of bed on wobbly legs, grabbed the pink hot-water bottle, and took it into bed with him and slipped it under his thighs. It was too hot, so he slid it down toward the bottom of the bed near his feet. After a while he got up again and walked shakily to the window and looked out. Snow, everything covered thinly in snow. It was early morning, he could tell by the hazy brightness of the sky over the roofs of the houses. He was looking down on a small backyard. The neighbors on either side had identical yards, separated by snow-topped fences, and across the cobbled alleyway were duplicate yards repeated monotonously along the row of houses. Most, including Aunt Mona’s, had lines hung with washing that fluttered fitfully in the wind. There was a cold draft. He looked up; the top part of the window was open. He reached up and pushed it closed.
He turned and looked about him. He had the small room to himself, upstairs at the back of the house. The room was warm, but he shivered and wrapped his arms about himself. The floor was wood and the wallpaper was an ugly lemon color with a sucky white butterflies-and-daisies design. The bed had a thick mattress, white sheets, creamy blankets, an old faded lemon candle wick bedspread, and several heavy, plump pillows in white cotton pillowcases. The room’s furniture included a plain varnished chair; a small, ugly chest of drawers, varnished, with a fussy white lace runner, an old-fashioned alarm clock, and a calendar on it; a tall and ugly wooden closet — what his aunt had called the wardrobe — with an oval mirror on its door set in a wood frame; a framed picture hanging on the wall near the door of Jesus pointing to His bleeding heart; and a red throw rug on the wood floor between the bed and the chest. The time on the alarm clock was twenty after six. Beside the bed was a small table. There were no bookshelves in the room, no radio. Everything was clean, polished. A light with a frosted glass shade on it dangled from the ceiling center. It was the only light in the room. The switch was next to the bleeding-heart picture. He hated the bleeding-heart picture and hated the room.
Flood Page 9
