A Song for Mary

by Dennis Smith

  This Blessed Maria had a very hard life in Italy. It was just around the time the automobile was invented, and the radio, but before the First World War. We are now getting all those dates right in class, and I guess that is why Sister is making everyone read this.

  Her father dies when she is a little kid, so she has no father, and her mother is very poor, so poor that they don’t have any food at all, and they look for scraps of food around the town. But Blessed Maria just smiles at everybody and always tries to make people happy, until one day a guy comes in and tries to rip her clothes off. She is only eleven years old, and she tells the guy that she would rather die than be impure, but the guy is crazy and he has a knife with him. He threatens her, but she tells him that she belongs to God. She is just eleven, and she stands up to this guy and tells him that she is with God—something, I think, that takes a lot of courage.

  This poor girl, I am thinking. She must have gone through so much more than what they are telling us in the pamphlet.

  “This is a very beautiful story,” Sister Stella says when the class finishes the pamphlet.

  And I guess it is, too, except that it is so sad when the guy kills her with the knife. They then sent him to prison for twenty-seven years, and the first thing he did when he got out of jail, because he talked to Blessed Maria one night in a dream, was to go to her mother and ask for her forgiveness.

  I don’t know if Blessed Maria’s mother ever forgave him. I guess she did, but the pamphlet didn’t say. I don’t think my mother would forgive someone if I was killed like that. Maybe she would if he became a priest or did a lot of penance, but she would have to say a lot of prayers first to get her in the mood.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mommy has made me put on a tie, and Billy, too. We don’t have a real suit to wear, either of us, but we have on our best clothes, each in a white shirt, tie, school pants, which are the light gabardines, and a plaid lumberman’s jacket. I am wearing my old Klein’s-on-the-Square shoes which Mommy glued together when the sole fell off completely, but she keeps talking about going to Thom McAn’s to get new ones. Sometime soon, she says. I hope it is soon because the holes are getting to be dollar holes, and I have to change the cardboard every night. Billy and I never care much about the dime-sized holes, or the penny holes, the nickel holes, or the quarter holes, but when the holes get to be half dollars or silver dollars, it is hard to make the cardboard work right, and if it rains, it is like walking barefoot in the bathtub.

  Mike Shurtliff did not pay Mommy any money for washing and ironing his shirts for a long time, because he works in show business and hasn’t had a job. But he is our next-door neighbor and Mommy told him that she would do his shirts, anyway, and he could pay her sometime when he got the money. And today was the big day—that’s what Mommy said—the big payoff, because Mike gave her twice as much money as he owed her for the shirts. He got a good job on Broadway with a play about the death of a salesman. Mommy said we should celebrate Mr. Shurtliff’s good works, and so she is taking us out to dinner.

  I am nine years old, but I feel as excited as a little kid because this is the first time I have ever gone to a restaurant. Well, I’ve been to Riker’s for a Coke and a doughnut, and to Nedick’s for a hot dog, and a couple of times to Emiliano’s for pizza pie.

  But this time, Mommy told us, it will be so different. There will be linen napkins and flowers on the tables.

  It is cold, and Mommy and Billy walk so fast that I have to run to keep up with them, and our breaths make enough smoke for a steam engine to go to Canada. It is dark on Second Avenue, and there is hardly anyone on 57th Street, which is usually crowded. We race to Third Avenue and then up to 58th Street. Every once in a while I look at Mommy. Her head is very erect, and her shoulders are back, and her hair is blowing way out behind her. She reminds me of one of those women you see on the front of an old sailing ship, sailing through the New York wind as if she were sailing across the ocean.

  Mommy points, and I can see the big sign surrounded by lights. It says JOE’S ORIGINAL RESTAURANT. I have never been to a play on Broadway, or to the movie palace in Radio City, which is a whole city not far from here, but I cannot think that it would be more exciting than going into a restaurant where there are napkins and flowers on the tables. The restaurant is big, but I cannot see in because all the windows are steamed up and dripping. There’s something very exciting about a steamy room on a cold night.

  I laugh for a minute because it reminds me of my grandfather. “Dare wuz ne’er enough turf,” he said to my mother just last week, “an so we mostly froze in da County Cork.” My mother laughed then, and said, “It’s a lot easier to be poor, Pop, when there’s steam heat.”

  Mommy holds the door for us, and I see as we go inside that the floor is made of marble, and there are many small tables covered with white cloth. I see the little vase of flowers on every one of the tables, and they are all different colors. There are so many flowers, it reminds me of the altar at church.

  A man in a short black jacket and a bow tie asks Mommy what she wants.

  “A table,” Mommy says, “a table for three.”

  She is smiling, and I am glad to see her so happy.

  “Do you have a reservation?” the man asks. He does not smile back at Mommy.

  “We don’t even have a telephone,” I whisper to Billy.

  “I don’t know,” Mommy says, looking down at us. “Did you make reservations?”

  I shrug my shoulders, and Billy looks dumb. Billy hardly ever looks dumb, but that’s how he looks as he puts his hands out, palms up.

  “I guess we don’t have a reservation,” Mommy says, “but we’ve been planning this for some time.”

  “How long?” the man asks.

  “A lifetime,” Mommy says.

  She smiles at Billy and then at the man.

  He takes us to a table in the very back end of the restaurant, near two big double doors. Mommy stops in her tracks.

  “Oh,” Mommy says. “Do you have another table, maybe where it’s quieter?”

  It seems pretty quiet to me, except for the doors that are swinging open and shut like a fan.

  “This is what we have, lady,” the man says.

  “What about those?” Mommy asks, pointing at some empty tables we passed by.

  “They are reserved,” the man says.

  “What for?” Billy asks.

  “For people,” the man says.

  “I’m people,” Billy says.

  The man spreads his arms out. “This is all,” he says. “You can have it or not, I don’t care.”

  “Sure,” Mommy says as she sits. I think Billy is going to argue with the man, but Mommy grabs his hand, and she never stops smiling. She is so happy to be here. As happy as I am.

  Another man comes over and asks what we want. I am thinking that I would like an English muffin.

  Mommy picks up a menu from the three menus the waiter has put down on the table. She reads it a minute.

  “Oh,” Mommy says again. She looks surprised, like she saw a beer can in the collection plate or something.

  “Well,” the waiter says, beating a bass drum with his foot.

  “Could you give us a minute?” Mommy says. She is still smiling as she watches the man leave, putting a pencil behind his ear.

  “Boys,” Mommy says, “I was here once, but they have changed the menu since. It costs more than I thought, so we’ll have a light touch, huh? I will have a salad to begin.”

  “To begin what?” I ask.

  “You always begin with something in a restaurant, but we can only get one thing, so we will have a salad and then I can share it with you.”

  “Do they have any English muffins?”

  “Maybe, but the salad is better for you.”

  “I want an English muffin.”

  “You don’t know what’s good for you.”

  “But I know what I want.”

  “No you don’t,” Mommy says. She stops her smil
e for the first time, and I know she means business.

  “You always say ‘You don’t know what’s good for you’ even when you make me eat tripe and black beans and noodles.”

  Mommy begins to smile again.

  “Tonight,” she says, “I will tell you what’s good for you, and you will be thankful that you have something that is good for you.”

  “Not if it’s not an English muffin,” I say as I look at the menu and try to read it. A lot of the words are in a foreign language.

  “Look,” Billy says, “a shrimp cocktail. What’s that?”

  “It’s too expensive is what it is,” Mommy says.

  “How about a steak?” Billy asks.

  “Also.”

  “How about pork chops?”

  “Too much.”

  “Hot dogs?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Probably,” I say, “they give the tripe away for free here.”

  Mommy laughs at this.

  “What’s a Salisbury steak?” Billy asks.

  “It’s good for you,” Mommy says.

  “That means we can afford it, I guess,” Billy says.

  “It means it is very good for you,” Mommy answers. “They put onions and a gravy over a steak that is chopped up.”

  “Chopped up how,” Billy asks, “like a hamburger?”

  “Better than a hamburger.”

  “How?”

  “Bigger, better, you’ll like it.”

  I can see that Mommy is pushing the Salisbury steak, and I am thinking I’ll be glad to get it with the flowers and the linen napkins.

  “Forget the English muffin,” I say, holding a knife and a fork in each hand. “I’ll take the bigger and better you’ll-like-it hamburger.”

  The man comes back, and Mommy asks him for a couple of the Salisbury steaks, a salad, and something called a knockwurst. All the names in this restaurant are strange and new, and I can imagine coming here every day and ordering something that I don’t know how to pronounce or recognize when I see it. There is something on the menu called escargot, which Mommy said is a snail in a shell, and I can’t think of anything that is more disgusting. I’m glad Mommy didn’t tell us that escargot is good for us.

  We just sit there and talk as the food comes.

  “They are starting up dances at Kips Bay,” Billy says, “just for the teenagers, and it won’t be long before I can go.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s good that we took the Irish dancing because at least you know how to dance alone.”

  “Wise guy,” Billy says. “I can get all the girls I want to dance with me.”

  “You better bring a camera,” I say, “because nobody will believe you without a picture.”

  “Do you know,” Mommy says, “they just invented a new camera that develops the film inside the camera while you wait?”

  “That’s what Billy needs,” I say.

  “Uncle Andy said he is going to buy one to take pictures of your cousins.”

  “Could we get one?” Billy asks.

  “Sure,” Mommy says, “when we win the Irish sweepstakes.”

  The Salisbury steak comes, and it’s a big football of a hamburger, covered with gravy and surrounded by mashed potatoes. Mixed together it’s the best hamburger I ever had, and if my fork could lift it, I would eat the bottom of the plate with a little more gravy. The man comes back after some other guy takes our plates away, and he asks what we will have for dessert.

  Mommy gives him one of her smiles. “Could you come back in another minute?”

  The waiter leaves, and Mommy turns to us, saying, “I have a great idea.”

  Billy and I smile, too, and I can see my brother’s eyes light up a little.

  “Why not,” Mommy says, “pick up some of the good and expensive Bryer’s ice cream on the way home, from the French place on Second Avenue? It’s not the packaged ice cream, but the really expensive stuff, and they pack it in by hand there.”

  “Okay,” Billy says.

  “Better than anything,” I say.

  Expensive or not, it would be nice to get something that is better than anything, anyway.

  Mommy is holding the ice cream as we are walking home. Billy is holding her one arm, and I am holding on to the other as we walk into the wind.

  “The ice cream,” Mommy says, “will never melt in this weather.”

  I feel proud of my family as we walk together like this, just coming home from a restaurant, as good as anyone else in the neighborhood, as good as the Scarry family, who go out to eat once a week anyways, because the father is a bartender and gets a lot of big tips from the drunks on First Avenue. I know we shouldn’t envy anyone, and we shouldn’t want anyone to envy us, but I can’t help feeling good and special that we have been to Joe’s Original Restaurant tonight.

  A few days later Billy takes me to Lexington Avenue and 49th Street. It is a short, cold walk, and when we get there, there is a line of people going around the block.

  “We’ll have to wait in the line,” Billy says.

  “It’s too cold,” I say. “Let’s just go to Kips.”

  “This Motorama will be worth it,” Billy says, “just you wait and see. Archie gave me the passes, and we don’t want to insult him, you understand?”

  We stand on a subway grating, and the heat rises up and keeps our feet warm, anyway. We are there for almost an hour before the line starts to move, and in no time at all we are in the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

  I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, I am thinking as I look around the huge room. There are about a hundred cars all around us, each on its own platform, each more unbelievable than the one next to it, each car like something they made only for the future, each one looking like it came from Mars, all of them shaped like gargantuan bullets and bombs, with high wings coming out of the back fenders, all in these fantastic colors with seats of the softest leather made to wrap right around your body—oh, oh, if I could just go for a ride in one of these cars.

  “Billy,” I say, “do you think we could get Archie to get us a ride in one of these things?”

  Billy laughs. “No,” he says, “but I think we can sneak up on one of the platforms and sit in one until they catch us.”

  We walk around until we see a long and low car, shining like the sun, looking like it is made of pure silver, and it has one big light in the middle of the front, and other lights all around it, its two doors spread wide open like wings that are almost scraping the floor, and a top that is half up and half down, and the man in charge is off to one side talking to a bunch of people, and Billy boosts me up on the platform, and then he climbs up, and we crawl real fast, him on one side of the car, me on the other, and we creep into the car, me behind the steering wheel, and I sit way back and grab the steering wheel, and I try to look out but I can’t see over the wheel, and Billy says to honk the horn, but I press down on everything and nothing honks, and I ask Billy where he wants to go, and he says he wants to go to Riker’s on 53rd Street where all his friends will see us, and I turn the wheel like crazy, laughing, smiling, happier than I have ever been.

  The man in charge sees us, and he comes over, but he doesn’t say anything. He just has his arms folded, and stands there, watching, and then he throws his head back and he lets out a big laugh.

  Oh, it’s better than Coney Island here at the Motorama.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There is always a line outside of Kips Bay Boys Club on Saturdays. Sometimes it goes down 52nd Street and around Second Avenue. Two boys come out, two boys go in. Everyone wants to be inside, and not just because everyone else is in there. The place is hopping with things to do for kids. Boys are playing pool or Ping-Pong, swimming in the downstairs pool, making wooden lamps or pottery bowls or jewelry out of copper in the shops, or they are in the main gym, or the small gym on the roof, or, if you are little like me, you go to the lower gym in the basement. Midget mayhem, Archie calls the lower gym, but I don’t know what may
hem is, and I forgot to look it up. I could go to the club’s library and look in the dictionary, a book almost heavier than I am.

  I am just a couple of boys from the entrance, and Archie sees me. He’s got this way of whistling and then putting his hand in front of his face and pointing at you. He then curls his finger and yells out, “Hey, son.” That means he wants you to stop something, like cursing, running, fighting, and the other things you’re not allowed to do at the Boys Club. Sometimes, like now, when Archie whistles at you, it means he wants to see you.

  Archie brings me to his office, a small cubicle with some filing cabinets and a paper-covered desk, and then he leaves, saying, “I’ll be right back.”

  I’ve never been in this office before, and I am wondering, what is the story here? Archie Mangini is the second banana at Kips Bay Boys Club, but he is the one you see every day. Mr. McNiven is the club boss, but he is always out trying to get money from people on Sutton Place. That’s what I heard, anyways.

  I look around the office and eye the beat-up brass bugle Archie sometimes plays in the halls for fun. “Keep active,” Archie is always saying, “keep excited, and if you don’t have a trumpet to blow like I do, then just yell a little.” And so we do a lot of yelling at Kips Bay.

  I begin to read the brass plates on all the trophies Archie has on his desk and on top of the filing cabinets—swimming trophies, basketball trophies, one for debating. I don’t know how old he is, but he is out of college, someone told me. Maybe he’s twenty-five, maybe a little more, but it looks like Archie gets trophies for everything the way Jackie Robinson gets homers. It must come natural.

  I think Archie is the kind of man boys wished they had for a father, especially if they didn’t like their own fathers too much. I’ve heard guys say they wished Archie was their father because he’s fun. He will kick you out of the club in a flat second if you curse or spit or something like that, but if he’s not being a pain, he’s making you laugh.