A Song for Mary

by Dennis Smith

  “I hope you’ll be okay,” she says. “You know, there isn’t much time before you’ll be away in the service.”

  “I’ll be seventeen in three weeks,” I say. “I’ll go to the recruitment center on Broadway this afternoon.”

  “We have a lot to do.”

  “Yeah.”

  “A lot.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and I think about it for a moment.

  “Like what?”

  “Well,” she says, “you are leaving New York, and I don’t know how long it will be before you ever come back to us. So I think it’s time … I don’t know what you’ll think about it, but I think you should come with me up to see your father before you go off into the military.”

  There is a great silence now as the train screeches to a stop at the Grand Central Station stop on 42nd Streeet.

  God, I am saying to myself, dodging in and out of the crowd as I walk up the subway stairs to Lexington Avenue. I haven’t thought about going to see my father in a long time. A few years, maybe.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  So,” I say as the New York Central Albany Special speeds up alongside the Hudson River, “I have to be there to meet the recruitment sergeant at ten o’clock on Tuesday morning. We’re meeting on platform 12 at Pennsylvania Station.”

  I am feeling pretty good, sitting across from my mother, in one hand a roast pork sandwich from Rossi’s wrapped in white paper, mayonnaise oozing out of the sides, and a bottle of Pepsi in the other. I am in a blue shirt with a long pink collar, new and sparkling from Bloomingdale’s basement.

  “I want you to look good,” my mother had said when she gave it to me this morning.

  “Sergeant Brownlee is coming with us,” I continue, “three days on the overnight to San Antonio, Texas, and to the Lackland Air Force Base. Usually, he doesn’t go, but this time he has eighteen recruits, and when there are so many recruits, the recruitment officer has to go along.”

  I wondered, when he told us he had so many recruits, if Marty Trainor has a deal going with the air force and that judge.

  “I’ll go to the station with you,” my mother says.

  She looks fresh and happy. She is sitting there, smiling, as the trees and rock walls go shooting by the train window, wearing her green two-piece suit which she has had for as long as I can remember. Her “St. Patricks Day clothes,” she calls the suit.

  She has had a Saturday Evening Post on her lap since we sat down, but she hasn’t opened it at all. She just keeps watching the passing scenery with a small, pleasant smile at her lips.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I say. “I can go alone.”

  “But,” she says, “I want to go.”

  “Well …” I hesitate. “You know … I would want you to come if it were just… just me … But …”

  “I get it,” she says. “There will be all those soldiers there, right?”

  “Airmen, Mom,” I say, “and there are eighteen of us, so it is possible that seventeeen of them, these airmen, might make fun of the eighteenth, you know?”

  “All right,” she says, “I won’t go.”

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  I am hoping that she is not too disappointed, but she makes her lips tight together and nods her head a little.

  “But,” I say, “maybe you can get me my last roast pork guinea hero for the trip, huh?”

  She laughs at this.

  “Of course,” she says. “But maybe you shouldn’t call it that anymore. Maybe you should just say hero sandwich, because you never know who you are going to meet down there in Texas who might take offense at words like guinea.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I say. “You never know.”

  “In New York, too,” she adds, “they can take offense.”

  I have noticed that my mother has stopped using those hard and insulting words for people lately. Those words like dago, spick, and guinea are words I hear a lot around the neighborhood. But she changed her language ever since Father O’Rourke gave that sermon about the people out in the West of the United States calling Catholics fishheads. My mother didn’t like that at all, and told Monsignor O’Rourke that those cowboys out there didn’t know what was good for them, that fish on Fridays had more vitamins than canned beans around a campfire.

  Archie never used these racial snarl words, and neither did Billy, and so I never had much use for them. But, I don’t know what else to call this sandwich.

  “I’ve been saying ‘guinea hero’ all my life,” I say, “even to Mr. Rossi. But someone told me, when you comb your hair one way for so long, it’s hard to comb it another way.”

  “Well,” my mother says, smiling as she picks up the Saturday Evening Post, “use a brush next time.”

  She reads for the rest of the trip to the Poughkeepsie stop, almost two hours north of the city.

  The train is much quieter than the subway, the seats softer, and there are fans on the ceiling making it comfortable enough, even on these hot, end-of-summer days. It is an easy trip, and I keep watching the endless lines of trees going past us. There are so many trees, they couldn’t even all fit in Central Park.

  The Poughkeepsie State Hospital is a large, brown brick building, not far from the train station, and you can see the Hudson River from here. Maybe once it was the site of one of the great river mansions with the large golden eagles in front, but now it is a fenced-in building that reminds me of all those almshouses and poorhouses and asylums that the English and the Irish writers describe in their stories, except that it is not so dark and wet like they were in Europe.

  We are now walking through the main corridor, and I am looking for the reception desk. I am following my mother, who knows where she is going.

  “There is no one ever on the first floor,” my mother says, “and we have to take the elevator to three.”

  I am trying to act calm, cool, and collected. It’s not easy being in an insane asylum for the first time, but it’s even harder to see your father for the first time.

  Except for two photographs, I have never seen my father, and I don’t know what to expect. I know about these places, though, for I’ve been keeping up with my reading, and though I still haven’t gone through all the book-bricks in my building, I have read a lot of the Dickens books, and nobody described lunatic asylums or poorhouses better.

  There is a small corridor before us when we get off the elevator on the third floor, and there are two doors with wired glass on either side.

  I can see a nurse reading a newspaper through the door on the left, but my mother pulls me to the right. There is no nurse there, but inside I can see about twenty beds, most with men sleeping in yellow pajamas. Some men are sitting on the floor, some walking around in circles, bumping into each other. I wonder who my father is, and watch to see how many of the men turn around as my mother raps her keys on the glass window. Hardly anyone turns.

  “He was here last time I was up,” my mother says, “but they keep moving him, hospital to hospital, room to room. There used to be a nurse’s desk here, too. But it’s gone.”

  She raps harder and harder, and soon the nurse unlocks the door to our left.

  “That’s a racket,” the nurse, an older, easygoing woman, says. “We are looking for John Smith,” my mother says. “I think he’s on four,” the nurse says. “He used to be here, but try four.”

  There is the same configuration on the fourth floor, but this time the nurse is on our right. She is in a white uniform, and ever briefly the thought of being pulled into the white starched bosom of Sue Flanagan crosses my mind. The memory surprises me, as if I suddenly fell asleep and was in some kind of dream.

  The nurse unlocks the door with a key chained to her waist belt, and she seems pleasant enough as my mother asks for John Smith. We cross the hall with the nurse, and she unlocks the other door.

  “If he’s sleeping,” the nurse says, “give him a good shake.”

  “Is he on medication?” my mother asks.

  “No,” she say
s, “but he sleeps easily.”

  I can hear her locking the door behind us as we enter the room. Like on the third floor, there are twenty or so beds, and my mother and I cruise around the room, looking for my father, but I don’t know who I am looking for.

  A man comes quickly up to us, almost on a run. His yellow pajamas are two sizes too big for him. Suddenly, he grabs me by the arm. I am a little alarmed, but he is not very big, and unless he has a gun I don’t think I have to worry about him.

  “Give me my money,” the man says. His eyes are wide and seem directly connected to mine. I don’t think this is my father.

  “I don’t have your money,” I say to him, trying to be calm and matter-of-fact.

  “I know you have my money.”

  “Tell him,” my mother says, “the nurse has his money.”

  He doesn’t look at my mother. I am thinking that my mother knows her way around here.

  “The nurse has your money,” I say.

  “The nurse has my money?” he asks, like I told him his horse came in in the sixth race.

  “Yes,” I say, “the nurse.”

  The man turns and walks away just as quickly as he approached. He goes to the side of an empty bed and just stands there.

  My mother smiles.

  “They respect the nurses,” she says.

  There is a post in the middle of the room, and my mother begins to walk around it. But she stops and gently lifts a finger in the direction of the bed behind the post. “There he is,” she says.

  I see my father for the first time, lying there in a bed behind the post. He looks nothing like I imagined, and much older than his forty-five years. He is thin, but his stomach is large, as if they gave him a case of beer every night. He is clean-shaven and looks so different from how I remember him in the photographs. In one, he is in an empty lot in Brooklyn, holding a baseball glove, looking like a kid, trim and fast, trying out for the college team, maybe the Railway Express team, center field, casually leaning over to the left, his glove leaning with him, assured, knowing he’ll make the cut. He is a handsome man in that photo, and a wisp of hair falls over his forehead.

  In the other, he’s in a big velvet chair, my mother on his lap, her legs, long and shapely, kicking out from a polka-dot dress, him, trim and good-looking in a white shirt and tie, laughing, his face a grin from ear to ear. Both photographs flash happiness like a neon sign, and I look closely now at my father and look for even the smallest sign that he is happy.

  But there is no sign. There is no expression on his face, and I can think only that his nose is bigger than I thought it would be, but maybe that’s because his face is so thin. He would be handsomer if he smiled.

  “Hello, John,” my mother says.

  “Hello, hello,” he says quickly, as if that is all he has to say.

  His voice is not large, and quivers a little.

  “It’s Mary, John,” my mother says, “Mary.”

  “Hello, hello,” he says again. “Give me a cigarette.”

  My mother turns to me and she is whispering.

  “They used to be able to smoke,” she says, “but there was a fire somewhere, and they stopped allowing it.”

  “Do you remember me, John?” my mother asks.

  “Hello, hello,” he says, this time adding, “Mary.”

  “This is Dennis, John,” she says, pulling me forward.

  “Dennis,” he repeats.

  “How are you, John?” she asks.

  He is not looking at my mother, but staring across the room, but at nothing in particular.

  “Give me a cigarette,” he says.

  “How have you been?” she asks again. “Are you eating anything but dessert, John?”

  There is a stain on the front of his yellow pajamas, still wet, and I am guessing it is from his lunch. My mother takes a handkerchief from her pocketbook and wipes at it. He pushes her away.

  “Who’s this?” he asks, gesturing towards me. He doesn’t look toward me at all.

  “This is Dennis, John,” my mother answers. “Your son.”

  “Give me a cigarette,” he says.

  I have a pack of cigarettes in my pants pocket, but, still, I have never smoked a cigarette in front of my mother. Maybe I could sneak one to him.

  “Do you remember Dennis, John?” she asks. “Dennis and Billy?”

  “Hello, hello,” he says.

  The hair at the side of his head is sticking out, and my mother pushes it back with her hand.

  “You are looking pretty good, John,” she says. “I bet all the nurses are after you, huh?”

  “Who’s this?” he asks, again indicating his thumb toward me.

  “This is Dennis, John,” my mother says. “Do you remember Dennis and Billy?”

  “Give me a cigarette,” he says in the same crispy but level voice.

  “John,” my mother says, her hand on my shoulder, “do you remember Dennis? Dennis is now a man, see?”

  “Hello, hello,” he says.

  My mother goes around the bed, fluffing things up, taking the wrinkles out of the sheets. I notice that she doesn’t kiss him. He has been away more than sixteen years, and I wonder how many years it is since she kissed him last.

  “Okay, John,” she says in the middle of a sigh. “You’re looking pretty good, and so I guess we can go.”

  My mother reaches over and pats his hands, which are folded over his stomach.

  My father doesn’t say anything and doesn’t look at us.

  I have my hands in my pockets, and I think I should at least reach over and shake his hand. I grab a cigarette out of the pack as I pull my hands out.

  I grab his hand as my mother begins to walk away.

  “Goodbye, Dad,” I say, something I’ve never before said.

  “Give me a cigarette,” he says.

  I lean over next to his ear, and I whisper.

  “I dropped one,” I say. “On the sheet.”

  I am thinking as I walk into the main entry hall with my mother that these places are not dangerous. Things are just quirky here, and off balance.

  I suppose I did know what to expect, after all. I have been thinking about my father being here ever since I heard Aunt Kitty jabbering away to Uncle Tracy that day more than five years ago, and reading everything I came across about mental disease and people who have it. And every time I think about it, I realize that there is a special kind of sadness that comes with the territory in these places. People get locked away and forgotten, and that is a desperate thing.

  Maybe it is easier on the family to push mental disease into a family secret, or make up stories, like the guy fell off a truck one day and that was that.

  It was hard for my mother to talk about my father, even to me. Her silence somewhere just got turned into a secret. It’s easier to have a secret than to explain to people, especially the children, that he is locked up and forgotten because no one else knows what to do.

  It’s a very personal thing.

  When I think about the attendants beating up my father and saying he fell in the shower, I get upset. I will never stop getting upset about that. But as bad as beating some defenseless person is, I guess there are worse things.

  I’ve read about such things, what people do to defenseless young women and to children, and I wonder what kind of animal a person would have to be to abuse a young child.

  Somebody like Mr. Dempsey, I guess. Mr. Dempsey should be in a place like this.

  My father is a harmless person, but I know I can’t ask my mother why he just can’t come home with us and smoke all the cigarettes he wants.

  My mother doesn’t have much of a life to begin with.

  That would be no life at all for her.

  We are now speeding toward the city, looking at the trees and the rock walls from the other direction.

  My mother is quiet.

  I’m quiet, too, sad from seeing my father like that. But I’m glad I was there, finally. At least, I saw him.

>   In all those years when I wanted to see him, I couldn’t. Then, after I found out where he really was, I didn’t much care to see him at all.

  It was like he let me down, being sick like that.

  Being in a wheelchair or on crutches is somehow heroic, admirable, something that, like Archie would say, would make someone put their chin out for whatever is coming.

  I used to dream as a kid in St. John’s grammar school that one day a classroom door would open, and there would be my father on a pair of wooden crutches, and the whole class would cheer as I ran to him. But his being in an asylum was such a letdown to me, an embarrassment, maybe, something to become a secret that was to be kept at any price.

  And, today, to see him remembering just that one thing, how much he liked cigarettes, and not being able to remember anything else, was pretty rotten, especially since he never has the chance to smoke any.

  Maybe he’ll find the cigarette I left, and a match, too, and put back into his life the one pleasure he craves.

  But I hope he doesn’t burn the place down.

  All my life, I guess, I’ve been wishing that things would get better for us, for Billy and me, that my mother would be happier.

  And that my father would get better.

  But I can see now that my father will never get any better, and that is a hard and a bitter thing to know for sure. Before, when I thought about it, I thought it could get better for him if I prayed enough, but now I have seen it with my own eyes.

  I’ll still say those same prayers, but I know it won’t make much difference, not for my father. God has kept him alive, anyway. And instead of asking Him to make my father better, I’ll just thank Him for that.

  My mother pats my gabardine covered leg and breaks the silence.

  “I’m glad,” she says, “that you came with me.”

  “I’m glad, too, Mom,” I answer. “Even though it was pretty strange, like looking at someone in a movie or something.”

  “He loved being around you and Billy,” she says. “His memory is completely shot now. Those shock treatments, you know. But he used to have a good, long-term memory of you and your brother. He would always ask about you.”

  My mother looks away now, and I can’t tell if she is laughing or crying. She turns back to me and has a soft, resigned look on her face.