by Chris Lynch
As Toy was finishing the last of the triangle rays, I took the Rustoleum can and made my contribution, to the wall right beside the bed. I was as surprised as anyone when I saw the picture of the goat coming out on the wall. It was primitive, like a cave-wall goat. But it was a goat. The can sputtered as I rushed to get it finished before the paint dried up.
The three of us stood crunched together in the doorway, admiring it. In a weird way, we had made a pretty place out of the room.
“Very Terry.” Sully spat.
“He’ll come home wasted,” I said, “maybe grab a last swallow of Bushmills Old Urine, then try to fall into bed, and break his nose on the floor. He won’t even know where he is.”
“Time, gentlemen,” Toy the dad said.
We each scooped a couple of bags of my new wardrobe and headed out. I was the last.
“Time,” Toy called, from out on the porch now.
“Ya,” I said. But the phone rang. I stared at it. It rang again, rang at me. I put a bag down and grabbed the receiver.
I heard the unmistakable breathing. The whistle through the one clear nostril left from all the nose breakings. The low animal pant. He waited a long time.
“Ma?” he grunted.
I let him hang some more.
“Welcome to the homeless,” I whispered as softly as a person can.
I hung up and walked out, butterflies of satisfaction beating in my belly.
O’Asis
I HAD BEEN At Sully’s for four days, eating, sleeping, going to school, and staring for long hours out my dormer window, before I got a call.
“Yo, ah, Mick,” Mr. Sullivan called from the bottom of the stairs. “Your ma’s on the horn for ya.”
I took my time getting to the phone. I straightened out the curtain over the window I’d been staring out of. I pulled on my sneakers, then changed my mind and decided to go without them. I counted the steps between my room, my suite, my bungalow—my pointed penthouse, there ya go—and the floor below. Thirteen steps. That sounded odd. So I retraced and counted again. Yup, thirteen. I washed my hands in the second-floor bathroom.
I wanted to hear her cry, but I could wait.
“Why are you not home yet, Mick? I mean, a couple of days is fine, but this is enough now. Come on home today, after school.”
I laughed, not to be rude, though not that I minded. “Ma. I mean, thanks for missing me, but no thanks, okay?”
“What’s the problem, Mick? Please just come home, today. All right, I’ll see you later then, right?”
She didn’t want any answers, any explanations. Not really. She just wanted everything put back, straightened up. As if I’d just messed up the living room or something.
“No, Ma, you just don’t get it. I’m not coming back there. I cannot live with that animal anymore.”
“Mick!” Only very rarely did her voice rise to the level of a cough, so I listened. “That ‘animal’ has slaved to put a roof over your ungrateful head—”
“Ma. I’m talking about Terry, not Dad.”
“Oh. Oh god,” she gasped. She had gotten pretty shaken over what she thought I’d said. When she heard it was Terry, she cooled right out. “What, you two have a fight or something while we were out?”
I sighed, loudly for her benefit. “Ya, Ma, we had a fight.”
“Well, for god’s sake, Mick, is that how you solve it, by running away? Come home and straighten it out, instead of acting like... like a child.”
As she went on, I threw my head back and stared at the ceiling. Then I laid the phone down and stared at it, the little buzzy voice flitting out of it whether I was there or not. I was looking at the old black receiver, heavy and dense like a hammer, I was looking at it and listening to its buzz and hating the hell out of it. My mother’s life was full of weak, brutish men, and she’d become expert at not seeing it for what it was. I couldn’t change her at this point, but I didn’t have to listen to her spin anymore either.
“What kind of a reaction is that, Mick? Did you even hear what I said? I give you the biggest news of all our lives, and you mutter like an insane person.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“The O’Asis, I said, Mick. We did it, we finally bought it. Everything’s going to be different from now on. We talked it over while we were away and first thing Monday we did it. Your father quit his job and everything.”
I had by now laid my head down on the telephone table so I could actually hear whatever she said. But it still didn’t make any sense.
“Ma, you’re joking.”
“Well, that wouldn’t be a very funny joke now, would it, Mick?”
“No, it isn’t,” I said.
“So you see, things are already better. Come home, okay? Mick? We want to see you home now. We want to be able to share this now, all of us together.”
“We?”
“Of course. We all do.”
I didn’t even bother to go after that one.
“Ma, can you tell me this much? How did the house smell when you got home? Did it smell like the regular house smell, or were there maybe other things going on there?”
“Mick, you’re acting very weird. I want you home. Now I mean it. You’re scaring me.”
“No. Humor me, Ma. What did it smell like?”
She waited. She sighed. She said, “Oh Mick, please.” She waited some more.
I covered the mouthpiece so she could hear nothing but herself.
“That weekend is over, Mick. It’s today now. I want to think about today now, is that all right?”
“What did you smell, Ma?” was my slow response.
“Mick... All right, it smelled like dogs. Are you happy? Is that what you ran away from? Is that it, Mick, you ran away from the house because of the dog smell?”
I let it hang there for a long time, because I knew she’d be thinking about it. The disgusting smell of all that went on those two days, the booze and the gas and the dogs and the puke and the honey from Honey. The smell that was coming back to me now like nausea and that I know kicked her right in the nose when she walked through the door because it doesn’t go away no matter how hard they scrub or how much carpet cleaner they sprinkle over everything. The smell that she would not talk about, because she didn’t talk about that stuff. Fine, Ma, don’t talk about it, but here, remember it. Smell it again.
“Ya, Ma,” I said, worn out from this, “that’s what I ran away from, the smell of dog. Listen, I have to go. I gotta get to school. Don’t want me to be late for school, do you?”
There was a sort of angry, checkmated tone to her voice. But once again, it was something she wouldn’t talk about. “No. Of course I don’t. But you come home today, right? After school.”
“Gotta run, Ma. I’ll see ya,” I said, and hung up as she was saying good-bye. I sat there at the telephone table, numbed, confused. I just sat. Sully came out of his room. The phone was right outside his door, and he had probably heard everything.
“Coming?” he asked cautiously.
“Huh? Oh, nah. You go ahead.”
Sully left and I continued to sit. His dad came by. “Off the phone, huh? About time.”
“Mr. Sullivan?”
“Ya, what is it?”
“I don’t have to go to school if I don’t want to, do I?”
“Hell no, I ain’t your old man. Thank Christ I ain’t, too, ’cause if I was your old man, I’d kick your behind, and your brother’s too, for the way youse turned out. Then I’d kill my own self. For the same reason.”
He stood over me, hands on hips. He smiled. “Any other questions?”
“Nope. Thanks. Got it.”
He walked down the stairs, calling back, “No offense, though, Mick.”
“Nah,” I said.
Honey walked by, looked down at her feet to avoid me, then couldn’t help herself, because she’s nice. “Good morning, Mick,” she said, but hurried on past. This was how it went every time I saw her after the May Day hazing. I was the onl
y male on earth she avoided.
“Where is that idiot paperboy?” I heard Mr. Sullivan growl from downstairs. He seemed to be having fun at the same time he was getting angry. “Ah, here he is.” I heard him fling open the front door. “What is there, a Sears bra advertisement in the newspaper today? Every time there’s an insert with the Sears bra advertisements you’re two hours late with my paper, kid.”
I laughed, even though I felt sorry for the kid. Mr. Sullivan made me laugh and I wanted him to go on.
“I got my paper, I’m outta here,” he called before slamming the door behind him.
“Doesn’t he scare you?” Mrs. Sullivan said from the bottom of the stairs.
“No,” I said. “I like him. I’m pretty scare-resistant at this point.”
“He scares me,” she said. But she was joking. “Come on down here and I’ll feed you, truant.”
I sat at the small kitchen table in the middle of Mrs. Sullivan’s immaculate calico kitchen. All I could say was, “My parents bought the O’Asis.” I paused, looked up to her for some comprehension of this tragedy. “My parents. Bought a bar. Jesus, the hole just gets deeper.”
She nodded, placed a plate of sausages and eggs and two buttered English muffins in front of me. “I know,” she said, like a sympathy thing. “Sully told me this morning on his way out.”
She calls her son Sully, which I love.
I ate like an animal, pounding all that heavy greasy food inside of me as if someone would take it away if I didn’t get it all down, now. She seemed to appreciate this, Mrs. Sullivan, as she smiled on me. But my dog-dish style seemed to worry her at the same time.
“She is your mother, Mick,” Mrs. Sullivan added. “She’s a mother. And I’m certain she’s in great pain. You can’t just erase it all, your whole life, your people, your background. Can you?”
I’d sure like to find out, is what I wanted to say. But Mrs. Sullivan isn’t the kind of person you say stuff like that to. Especially after she’s fed you so nice. And I had to admit, I was curious. More than curious. Now that I thought about it, I really wanted to see them, and to see what Terry’d say about the redecoration. If I hid, he still won. I had to show them my smiling, liberated, independent face, and dare Terry to do something about it. I’d whip his ass just by standing up.
“Well, I guess,” I said to her, “I guess it doesn’t work quite that way, erasing people. Maybe I’ll go by and see what’s up. As long as I sort of have the day free...”
“There you go,” she said, brightening up considerably. She felt the way most people felt around here: your family was your family, no matter what.
I took the bus to the O’Asis. It is outside of town, but not far outside. To get there from our neighborhood it’s a straight twenty-minute bus ride out past the point where neighborhoods mean anything. It sits on a patch of asphalt nowhere, between the city and the oldest and crummiest mall in the area. It’s a bus ride my parents have gleefully taken almost every evening—and back again in the wee smalls—for five years, always gooey dreaming of this time, when they could ride the smelly bus to their own establishment.
I stepped off the bus—there is a stop right at the door—and stared up at it. The O’Asis. It’s sort of a little house with a parking lot and a grotesque pink and green sign spanning the width of the place. “O’Asis” is how it’s written. The Irish O’, get it? At the front of the words there’s an American flag being stuck in the sand by a bunch of marines. At the other end is a palm tree with a leprechaun sitting on top. The whole thing’s a little confused.
I took a long breath before walking in. It was like walking backward into night. The place glowed with a low orange-yellow light, and it smelled like things you don’t regularly smell in the daytime.
“Now that’s my boy,” Ma said as she came sweeping out of the back room. She came out around the bar and threw her arms around me. “I knew you’d come back,” she said.
Right then I knew: I wasn’t coming back.
As she squeezed, my arms remained at my sides. I could not respond to her. What was this hugging about? Do you know what they did to me, Ma? In your house? Do you know that I’m homeless, that you’re hugging a homeless person?
I felt the strength run out of her grip as she realized she wasn’t getting it back. I waited, though I knew it was in vain because when my mother didn’t want to see something, she didn’t see it. And there was a world of stuff in her life she didn’t want to see. Her philosophy always was, when the going gets tough, the tough go to the O’Asis.
It never really bothered me before. It bothered me now. Because I was the victim, and she was my goddamn mother, and that was my goddamn house, and I couldn’t go there.
“So, you want to hear what happened?” I said. A formality.
“Terry says to tell you hi,” she said, trying to head me off.
“What? What else did he have to say?”
“That was all. Mick, I do wish you’d talk to him. He seems to want to patch things up.”
My father walked in from the back, talking on the fly. “After you stole from him... I’d say that’s pretty big of your brother.”
I shook my head. “Where is he? Isn’t he going to be working with you?”
“Well,” Ma said, “we couldn’t really have him here... ah, we couldn’t afford him, is the truth of it. He has steady work anyway, and he should keep it.”
I laughed. “You’re right, no pub could afford to have Terry on that side of the bar.”
My father laughed too. Ma wouldn’t look at my face. “Oh come on, Mick. You two have had fights before, and you will have fights again. You’re brothers. Shake hands and forget about it.”
“Ma,” I snapped. “You have to hear this.”
Then she did turn to me. She looked into my eyes with a more penetrating, knowing stare than I had ever seen before.
“No. I don’t,” she said, teeth bared like a cornered animal.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew a lot. She just wouldn’t have it.
Just as quickly, she went back to herself. She turned away and made a grand sweeping gesture over the cramped, dark place.
“Come on, Mick, this is a special time for all of us. Share in it. Let me give you the tour.”
I followed her from corner to corner, booth to table. The walls were covered with pictures of fighters who were drunks and politicians who were drunks, all sitting or standing arm in arm with one of the fifty or so previous owners of the place. One corner had two dart boards—on adjoining walls, so that one guy would have to walk into the other guy’s line of fire to retrieve his darts. The bubble-topped jukebox had every sickening sappy Irish song ever belched, and there was the world’s first video game, Pong, blipping against a wall. Ma beamed at it all.
“Somethin’, huh?” my father asked, scanning the place.
“Somethin’, Dad.”
“You home now?”
I looked at my mother, who looked away.
“No.”
He was unmoved, like it was simply a logistical problem. “Well, Jesus, how you gonna live? You gotta take care a y’self, Mick. Listen, I ain’t gonna have that sonofabitch Sullivan holding you over my head. That’s the only reason he’s took ya, y’know, just to stick it to me.”
“Gee thanks, make sure you don’t leave me nothin’ there, Dad,” I muttered as I turned toward the door.
“What? Hey wait, come back here.”
I stopped.
“I ain’t kiddin’, Mick. You gotta fend for yourself if you ain’t at home. Why don’t you come work for me?”
It felt like he had waited a long time to make that magnanimous offer to somebody, and it just happened to be me.
“I don’t think so.”
“Can’t go on bein’ a thief, now can ya,” he asked. “You owe your brother some dough, and you’re gonna owe Sullivan too. I’ll pay ya more to clean up around here than you could make anywhere else. And I’ll give you your own key so you can come in and o
ut early, before you have to see any of us, if that’s what’s botherin’ ya.”
He had actually thought it out way past me. I was nervous about it, but I saw no holes in the plan. And if I did take it, then it was official—I was out and independent.
“Deal,” I said.
“Deal,” he said triumphantly. “Come on over here, young man. Belly up and I’ll serve ya one on it.”
I pushed open the door without looking back at him.
“I already had breakfast, Dad. Leave the keys in the Sullivans’ mailbox. I’ll be here the next morning.”
“You got mail, boy,” Mr. Sullivan said. I didn’t even see him. The keys just came sailing up the stairs, hung in the air like a skyhook, then dropped to the floor. I scooped them up, along with the note that was stuck in the key ring, curled up like a message in a bottle. “Mick” was written on the outside, in my father’s backward-slanted, thick, all-his-weight-on-the-pencil handwriting. “Six A.M.” was all it said inside.
“Mr. Sullivan,” I called before he could get away.
“What?” he called back, exasperated, as if I was hounding him all the time. Which I was very careful not to do.
“I want to ask you something.”
I heard him sigh from all the way down there. But finally he did come clomping up the stairs.
“Ya, Mick, what is it?” he asked, walking straight over to the refrigerator to check it out. “Good. No booze.”
“Right. No booze,” I said, just as righteously as he did.
“Ya, that reminds me, Mick, did I hear right? Did your folks buy a bar?”
It was my turn to sigh. I did, and nodded.
Mr. Sullivan looked at the floor, half covered his face with his big gorilla hand, and laughed.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, still laughing, and shaking his head in amazement. “You wanted to ask me something,” he added.
