by Brent, Cora
I walked slowly around the perimeter of the cannon, thinking about July 4, 1976. Thirteen years ago. The town had been laboring for months, beginning the hopeful renovations right after Christmas. Months of fundraisers and endless solicitation calls. My mother was in charge of the Cross Point Village Bicentennial Cookbook, a compilation of family recipes grudgingly relinquished by local housewives. I didn’t know what jello molds had to do with the nation’s two hundredth birthday, but the book was a fair success in small bookstores as far away as Albany.
All that effort paid for the cannon and the paint, the historical plaques and the endless banners. On the day of the Bicentennial the Cross Point Village town square looked as if a thousand American flags had vomited. The day was a big deal across the country. There were special shirts and special coins. There were giant ugly brass eagles on living room walls and badly replicated colonial era furniture. Every couch sported a crocheted red, white and blue throw blanket and every kitchen a Betsy Ross set of hand embroidered dishtowels, one for each day of the week.
I marched in the parade with my 4-H club while the entire population of the town lined the sidewalks and waved flags. We even saw a few out of town faces as curious tourists were welcomed into ‘Cross Point Village: The Most American Town in Massachusetts’.
Alan Durant had to know it was all bullshit. My father was no fool. But he might have thought everyone else was. Anyway, he believed that the bizarre appeal of over-the-top patriotism would last. He was wrong.
Now, the side of the black cannon had been sprayed again. This time with tri-toned festive demand. ‘Fuck CPV’ stared back at me in red, white and blue. A nice bit patriotic damning to kick off the holiday.
I hadn’t been able to find my watch, figuring it must have fallen off near the creek yesterday as I rolled around with Marco. I guess the time to be very early afternoon, though it was difficult to tell with the sun obscured by clouds.
As I walked slowly towards the end of Main Street a few kids careened wildly past on bicycles. Two boys and a girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old. The first boy, a tough-looking kid leading the other two raised a fist in the air, releasing an incoherent yell. It was a sound of freedom, of jubilation. It reminded me that my father might yet be wrong.
I passed Kaminski’s Hardware without thinking.
“Angie!” called a pleased voice and I turned around to face Ben Kaminski. He was Krista’s younger brother, my cousin. He’d been a small child and was a small man, the top of his head reaching only to my nose.
“Ben.” I hugged him tightly for a moment, remembering how I’d always wished he were my brother. There were two other boys in the family, John and Gary. Krista was the only girl. John and Gary were twins, four years older than Krista, six years older than Ben. They’d headed off to UMass on baseball scholarships right out of high school, which was a pretty big deal. John was a pitcher who blew his rotator cuff straight to hell in his senior year and quietly returned to CPV to work in the store. Gary, a catcher, spent some time in the minor leagues before giving in and marrying a Springfield girl. He sold tires now.
Ben had always been rather an odd duck. The baby of the family, the ‘runt’ as his siblings called him, he was a loner and unbothered by it. My mother had told me how he’d gotten mixed up with a married woman from Albany and when that had ended badly he’d come back to CPV. He was living in an upstairs garage apartment at John’s house and working in the store.
“How are things, Ben?”
He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Can’t complain, cousin. And you? Boston life going well?”
“Sure. I have everything I always wanted.”
He laughed. “You don’t even sound convincing.”
“Don’t I?”
His smile disappeared and he looked at me curiously. “No.”
“I should try harder.”
“How long you in town for?”
“Today.”
“Back to Boston tomorrow?”
“I don’t know about tomorrow. So how are things with you? How’s business?”
Ben grimaced and peered up at the fading store sign. Kaminski’s Hardware hadn’t been around as long as Durant’s but it was still a town fixture. “You talk to your dad,” he said softly. “So you know.”
The Cross Point Grocery had closed three years ago. The antique stores and clothing boutiques were long gone. In 1989 the only thriving business in CPV belonged to the Maple Street bars.
My cousin cocked his head and stared at me. “Everything all right, Angie? Your mom said you have a boyfriend in the city.”
“No,” I shook my head, suddenly cackling in a way which caused poor Ben to stare at me with increasing alarm. “I don’t have a boyfriend in the city.”
“Oh,” he said, shifting with discomfort.
“It’s all right, Ben. It was good seeing you.” I hugged him again and walked away. I knew he stared after me in a puzzled way as I meandered down Main Street, skirting past Durant’s Drug Store, and then turning onto Maple.
Marco’s bike was parked outside of The Cave. The door to the bar was propped open and I approached slowly, staring at the motorcycle, trying to quiet the way my heart was lurching around in my chest. I ran my fingers along the handlebars and an involuntary shudder of passion sucked all the air out of me. In a compressed flash I felt every moment we’d shared over the past few days. And the one which made me close my eyes as my soul twisted was the memory of his head pillowed on my breasts as we lay next to the secluded creek. Marco. I wanted to know him. Everything about him.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the bar so they saw me before I saw them. Marco and a strange man were on opposite sides of the far end of the bar, staring at me. A pair of shot glasses and a half empty bottle of Wild Turkey were between them and I had the feeling I’d just interrupted a long, intimate chat.
“Angie,” Marco said. “This is Captain.”
The man called Captain fixed me with a penetrating look as if he saw things I wouldn’t have recognized in myself. Though his beard was shot through with gray his age was impossible to determine. He might have been forty. He might have been sixty five. The leather jacket he wore was more than clothing on his back. Shabby and used and decorated with an eagle patch over the word ‘Warriors’, it was his very skin.
“Nice to meet you, Captain,” I said, meeting his stare.
“Hello, Angie,” he said easily as if he already knew me and we were merely running into one another again.
Captain poured one final shot down his throat and rose from the bar stool, giving Marco a brief salute. “Thanks for the drink, buddy.”
Marco ran a cotton cloth down the length of the bar. “You take care, Captain.”
“I always do.”
Captain paused in front of me, his startling blue eyes searching my face. “See you around, Angie.”
I stared at him, wondering who the hell he was. It was obvious enough that he was one of the passing bikers who frequented Maple Street. But there was a level of comfort between him and Marco which spoke of some sort of bond. Did Captain have anything to do with the rough past Marco was so reluctant to talk about? After all he’d been part of a world I’d only heard rumors of. Crime. Prison.
“I’d kicked a guy’s face in, Angie. So bad he would never look like a normal man again.”
Despite the summer warmth a chill crept up my spine. I looked up, realizing Marco was watching me with some degree of wariness.
“You got something you want to say, Angela?”
I slid onto a bar stool, toying with a shot glass. “Who was that man?”
Marco shrugged. “A friend.”
“A good friend?”
Marco seemed annoyed by the question. “He sold me my bike. Comes in here sometimes to shoot the shit. What of it?”
“Nothing, Marco. Seems like a rough character, that’s all.”
Marco found that funny. “So am I, baby.”
The
conversation was becoming uncomfortable. The way he’d said ‘baby’ had a dismissive, contemptuous tone to it.
I stood, feeling defensive. “Are you busy? You want me to go?”
He looked at me flatly. “That’s a stupid question.”
“It was two questions.”
“No, and no. Feel better now?” He grabbed both glasses and turned to the sink.
I lowered my head. “I can’t figure you out,” I mumbled.
“No,” he said without turning around. “You can’t.”
I jumped off the bar stool in a huff and headed for the exit, silently cursing Marco and his erratic moods. One minute he was laying on my chest pouring out his heart, the next he was treating me like a casual dalliance.
He got to me before I reached the door, which he kicked closed. He seized me from behind, crossing his arms across my chest so I couldn’t move.
“Angela,” he said as I struggled. There was no rage in his voice, only an exasperated pleading.
“Stay,” he whispered. I didn’t really want to be anywhere else. I relaxed my arms, leaning back, pressing against him, letting him move me over to the shrouded pool table where he bent me forward, hastily undressing me and running his hard arousal across my wet center.
“Yes?” he asked, his voice gruff, though it wasn’t really a question.
“Yes,” I answered anyway and welcomed the rigid intrusion.
Later I tried to smooth my hair down, looking into a cloudy mirror next to the bar.
Marco eyed me.
“We don’t have to go.”
“I thought you said you told Tom Hennessy you’d be there.”
Marco snorted. “He’ll get so raging doused later he won’t remember who was there and who wasn’t.”
I blinked at my reflection, disliking my owlish glasses. I really needed to remember to shop for something more fashionable. “Don’t you want to see your friends?”
“I see them all the time, Angela. It’s impossible to avoid people around here. You know that.”
Yes, I did know that. “Well, it might be fun. Sort of a throwback to who’s who of Cross Point Village.”
Marco looked at me, his face blandly inscrutable. Of course after yesterday’s encounter the Boyle brothers would have told the whole crowd about this thing between me and Marco. Perhaps that’s what was he was trying to avoid. Questions. Comments. Assumptions.
I met his gaze, letting him know I was unbothered if he was. “Hey do I look like I’ve just been hammered with passionate abandon over a pool table?”
He raised an eyebrow, considering. “Yeah,” he answered with a slow smile. “You do.”
I nodded, smiling back at him. “Okay then.” I held out my hand. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We walked the two blocks to Tom Hennessy’s house. He was one of the more predictable ones; a guy who met his glory years early, married young, and then scratched his head with bewilderment at the home and family he had created.
There were cars and beaten pickup trucks parked up and down the street already. I was disconcerted to realize that we were on Oak Street. Krista and Keith lived on Oak Street. Of course this had been my cousin’s crowd years earlier and she might have shown up anyway but as we walked past her bare yellow house I realized her presence was a virtual certainty.
Cindy Page Hennessy waved gaily from the side gate. In her arms was a fat baby of uncertain gender. “Hey you guys! Go on out back. I’ve got to get this kid changed.” The broken screen door opened with a shriek and Cindy disappeared inside the house.
Before we reached the backyard I could hear the buzz of vulgar laughter and the squeals of more than a few young children.
“Banger!” shouted a crude male voice and I thought Marco cringed a little.
As I stepped into that backyard I felt awash in the same sensation that had overtaken me at the block party. So many familiar faces it made my head hurt. I could tell we had been objects of some discussion as more than a few regarded us with frank and unabashed curiosity. Krista glanced our way briefly before coldly turning her back and speaking quietly to her surrounding clique. Marco gave my hand the slightest squeeze.
Tom Hennessy appeared out of nowhere wearing a grease-stained chef’s apron and carrying a couple of beers which he agreeably handed over. “Angie,” he said with some surprise. “You back here for good?”
“No,” I answered a little too quickly as I accepted the cold can.
“Oh,” said Tom, shrugging, forgetting me already. “Hey,” he poked Marco in the arm, “after I get this next round of meat off the grill, I want you to come take a look at what’s in the garage.”
“You got it?” Marco asked with some surprise, cracking the beer open and taking a long swallow.
Tom nodded. “Yep. Tranny is a little fucked but she runs. Took a few days to convince Cindy but a woman can always be worked. Aw hell, I don’t need to tell you that.”
Marco glanced at me as I frowned and stared at the patchy grass.
“Yo Cindy!” Tom bellowed toward the house.
Cindy emerged with the baby on her hip. “What?” she complained.
Tom removed his apron. “You go look after my meat. I want to show Marco the car.”
At the mention of Tom’s new toy, Cindy’s face fell. It was obvious whatever Tom thought he had won had come at a cost.
Tom jerked his head at me. “You can hand the kid off to Angie.”
“Yeah, I don’t mind at all,” I said, although from my tone it was obvious I minded a whole hell of a lot.
Cindy shot me a look of apology and heaved the red-faced infant into my arms before retreating to the smoking grill on the patio.
From the look of the small row of pink flowers lining the baby’s onesie, I guessed the baby to be a girl. A trio of hollering toddlers ran past and I recognized two of them as Krista’s kids.
Spotting an unoccupied patch of grass by the weeping willow tree in the corner of the yard, I carried the baby over and set her gently on the ground. She patted the ground with her chubby palms and squealed, kicking her feet and turning to me with such a look of rapture I felt a sudden untapped ache. Since about the age of twelve I’d never liked babies and they’d never liked me. Almost all the women I’d known in my youth had been saddled with the crushing responsibility of babies who demanded and grew and then demanded some more. It wasn’t a life path I’d ever coveted. I didn’t know why anyone would.
Until Tom and Cindy Hennessy’s tiny daughter gurgled and reached for me with unquestioned trust. I gathered her into my arms and breathed in the delicious clean smell of her body, thinking for the first time…maybe.
“Hey, Angela.” Shannon Cortez had disengaged herself from Krista’s coterie and joined me on the grass, settling in the shade with a sigh. She had married and moved to her husband’s small town all the way east by the shore but I did not recall either the place or the man so to me she remained Shannon Cortez of Polaris Lane. She was in Tony’s class and often showed up at my house as if casually pausing on her way somewhere. Shannon was one of the girls people whispered about even as they had to know their own daughters and sisters were doing the same things they accused her of. It was because of her mother, Rosie. Rosie ran around with a lot of men who weren’t her own quiet, steady husband and one day she up and ran off with one. My own mother was always unwilling to condemn Rosie since her eldest daughter had died from an aggressive malignant brain tumor at age six. Grace said a woman who suffered such an incomparable tragedy was bound to lose some sense.
“Hi Shannon. Been a long time. How are you doing?”
“Divorced. Well, getting there anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled. The pale freckled face beneath a mane of jet black hair reflected the combination of her Irish mother and Puerto Rican father. “I’m not,” she said. “The boys and I are better off without him.”
“You have two, right?”
“Yup.” S
he pointed to a pair of dark-haired boys who were digging in the tomato garden. “Sam is four and Ryan is six.” She sighed. “I guess you know I’m back at home.”
I nodded slowly. “I did, yes.”
‘Home’ would be the pert green cottage-style house at the bowed end of Polaris Lane. I’d only been inside a few times, long enough to see a poster-sized framed photo of a small dark-haired girl I’d never met.
Shannon tickled the baby’s feet, laughing. “You should have heard the vinegar coming out of Krista’s mouth when you rolled in with Marco.”
I bit my lip. “I can imagine.”
She looked at me kindly. “Good for you, though. He’s not a bad guy. He just plays one sometimes. I mean jeez, he didn’t have to give me a job.”
I was surprised. “You’re working down at the Cave?”
“Three nights a week,” she nodded. “I can only live off Daddy’s goodwill for so long and looks like the child support checks will be few and in between.” She stared thoughtfully across the yard. “He feels sorry for me, I guess. Woman alone with two boys to raise. It’s a familiar story, especially to him. Don’t worry though. There’s nothing between Marco and me. There never was, not even in the old days.” She gave a short humorless laugh. “I was an even bigger fool than that.”
The baby crawled into my lap. “How so?”
Shannon shot me a rueful grin. “I was desperately in love with your brother,” she said. Then she touched the baby’s cheek lightly and joined her boys in the garden.
