The Unfinished Gift

by Dan Walsh

  Today had to be a better day just by the way it started. “Which house is yours?” he asked.

  They stopped and she turned around. “We walked past it a little while ago. See that one back there, right next to your grandfather’s?”

  “The one with the little white fence around it?”

  “That’s the one.”

  The house was similar to his grandfather’s, except it had a porch instead of a vestibule, and it was painted green instead of gray. And it had Christmas decorations, like the rest of the neighborhood. Many had wreaths on their doors, snowmen in their yards; some even had their lampposts wrapped in red and green ribbon. A slight movement caught his eyes. He looked past Mrs. Fortini’s porch and noticed his grandfather standing in his vestibule, staring in their direction. When their eyes met, he turned and walked back into the house.

  “Have you lived there long?” Patrick asked.

  “Since your father was a boy not much older than you.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s right. And he played with my two little boys. They used to make snowmen together in the front yard.”

  “I like snowmen.”

  “And they went sledding together and played ball together.”

  “My dad’s a great baseball player.”

  “He certainly was.”

  Patrick didn’t like the sound of that. “Not was . . . is.”

  “You’re right . . . is. I just meant he doesn’t get to play much now that he’s grown up.” She gave him a big smile, and they continued down the sidewalk.

  As he walked along he noticed how different all the houses were here than around Clark Street. He was used to homes all connected together. No one had front yards or backyards. Just sidewalks and alleys. And he hardly ever saw trees except at the parks.

  When they came to the corner, they turned left. This street was even more different. It only had houses on one side. All down the other side was a tall stone wall. Mrs. Fortini looked both ways then led them across the street and onto the sidewalk nearest the wall. He couldn’t see over the top. “What’s over there?” he asked.

  “There? Do you really want to know?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s a cemetery.”

  “Oh,” he said quietly.

  “Do you want to see?”

  “Yeah, but how can I?”

  “Come here.” She lifted him up. “Hold on to the stones.”

  All along the top edge of the wall, different colored rocks stuck out at various angles. He peered over the top at a huge field of gravestones and monuments, as far as the eye could see. “Must be thousands of ’em,” he said.

  “At least.”

  “My mom is buried in one of these places. Well, her body is.”

  “You’re right, Patrick. Just her body is. She’s still alive, you know.”

  “I know,” he said, a tinge of sadness now starting to surface. “But I wish she were alive with me.”

  “One day you’ll be together again. You know that? And when that day comes, you’ll never be apart.”

  He liked Mrs. Fortini more and more. “What are all those strange stars on the stones?”

  “That’s called the Star of David.”

  “Like David in David and Goliath?”

  “The very same. This is a Jewish cemetery. They use the Star of David like a symbol, the way we use a crucifix.”

  “What’s a crucifix?”

  “You don’t know? It’s the cross where Jesus died.”

  “Oh, we just call ours a cross.”

  “That’s right,” she said. She paused a moment. “One of my boys is buried in another cemetery not far from our church.”

  “One of your boys died?”

  “Yep. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. So I know just how you feel. Do you remember Pearl Harbor?”

  “Sort of. I was five. That’s what started the war, right? All those ships blowing up? I saw the newsreels a few times.”

  “That’s right. My son was a sailor on one of those ships. But he’s with Jesus now. You know, Patrick, death doesn’t have to always be a sad thing, and cemeteries don’t always have to be sad places.”

  Patrick didn’t know what to say. They both seemed like pretty sad things to him, pretty much all the time.

  “They are sad for a while, but we just have to remember a few things, and the sadness soon goes away.”

  “What things?”

  “Well, your mama believed in Jesus, right?”

  “Very much,” he said. “So do I.”

  “So did my Frankie. One minute he was asleep on a boat, and the next minute he was in heaven. I believe that. By the time I heard the terrible news, he was already five days in heaven. I cried for a solid week. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I’d go to mass every day, but all I could do was think about Frankie and that I would never see him again. And then the crying would start all over again.”

  “That all sounds pretty sad to me. I thought dying wasn’t supposed to be sad.”

  “You’re right, I did say that. But I haven’t told you the best part. One morning I was sitting in the pew, crying again, and the priest was talking. And then I heard the words of Jesus, like he was talking right to me. ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.’”

  “Jesus spoke to you?”

  “In a way. It was the priest’s voice. He was quoting from one of the Gospels in his homily. But it was as if the priest stopped talking and Jesus started talking. And I realized, my Frankie believed in Jesus. He prayed to him every day. He did as a little boy, and he told me he still did every day in all his letters from Hawaii.”

  “My mom believed in Jesus . . . with all her heart.”

  “So those words are the same for her . . . and for you. I realized that I would see my Frankie again. It would just be a long time. I remembered how much I cried when he left for the navy. But that time I wasn’t crying because I would never see him again, but because he was taking a long trip, and I’d miss seeing his beautiful face and his big hugs. But I knew I would see him again. When I got the news about his ship being sunk, I cried because I was thinking I would never see Frankie again. But it wasn’t true. It was just that God was taking him on a longer trip than we had planned. But we will meet again. And the next time we meet, we will never be apart.”

  “I will see my mom again,” he said.

  “Yes, you will. And it’s okay to cry, because we always cry when people we love go on long trips. But it’s a different kind of crying than for people who think they will never see each other again. Do you understand?”

  Patrick nodded and smiled.

  “Seen enough?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh.” She released her grip and he slid down the wall to the sidewalk.

  They walked in silence for another two blocks until they came to a wide, busy street lined with all kinds of shops and stores. “Make sure you hold my hand as we cross,” she said.

  A trolley car hurried by, spraying wet snow several feet in the air as it passed. Patrick ducked behind Mrs. Fortini but could tell by her scream that she didn’t escape. She turned around, her face angry, half-covered in brown slush. Her coat was covered with more of the same. “Look at me,” she snapped.

  Patrick started to laugh; he couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  His laughter caused her to laugh. She brushed herself off as best she could. “If it makes you happy,” she said, “then I am happy.”

  Patrick didn’t understand what she meant, but he was glad her smiling pumpkin face had returned. They hurried across the street, just in time to beat another soaking from a speeding car. “The sun is melting all the snow,” he said.

  “Not all,” she said. “It’s always like this on Clifton Ave. The cars and trolleys turn it into mush. Oh, look,” she said sadly. “Look at that line.” Her eyes focused on a
butcher’s shop, two stores up from Hodgins’s Grocery. At least thirty women of varying ages, purses tucked tightly under their overcoats, poured out of the store in single file. They huddled close to the buildings, trying to avoid being baptized in slush as cars sped by. An elderly man, who wore a wrinkled coat covering white overalls, stood by the front door, admitting four or five women at a time, after about the same number left the store.

  “I need to pick up some meat while we’re out,” Mrs. Fortini said. “I’m going to have to get in line now or we’ll be here all day. You think if I gave you my list, you could go into the grocery store by yourself and pick out some things?”

  “Me?”

  “I think you could do it. But you don’t have to if you don’t want.”

  “What if I can’t find something? What if I don’t know some of the words on your list?” Patrick had only just begun to learn how to read, although both his mom and his teacher had said he read as good as some kids in the fourth grade.

  “Mr. Hodgins is a very nice man. You tell him you’re Mr. Collins’s grandson, and he’ll treat you especially nice. Just get everything you can, then ask him to tell you any words you can’t understand.”

  “What if it gets too heavy for me to carry?”

  “Then just set it on the counter and come get me. Mr. Hodgins won’t mind.”

  “All right, if you think I can.”

  “I know you can. You are a very bright boy.”

  Fifteen

  On her way to visit Patrick, Katherine drove the last several blocks behind a Western Union truck. She had no family of her own, so it carried no dark forebodings, but she noticed how it drew the eye of every passerby like a magnet. As it turned onto Clifton Avenue, three older mothers carrying their shopping bags stopped dead in their tracks and stared. Katherine saw dread on each face. When it turned left onto Bartram Avenue, a teenaged boy riding a bike stopped so fast he almost went over the handlebars. Probably has an older brother in the war, she thought. It was as if the Grim Reaper himself had shed his black robe and sickle for a brown uniform and telegram.

  Katherine had visited several families just after they’d received the telegram bearing the most dreaded words of all:

  The Secretary of War desires to express his

  deep regret that your son was killed in

  action in defense of his country . . .

  When the truck got to Collins’s street, fortunately it turned in the opposite direction. Now there’s a job even worse than mine, she thought. She pulled up to the curb next to Collins’s house and instantly felt herself getting tense. He’s just an old man, she thought. He doesn’t bite. Do it for Patrick.

  She knocked hard on the glass vestibule door then buried her hands in her coat pockets. She was about to knock again when the front door finally opened. “Afternoon, Mr. Collins.”

  He stood there glaring at her, a lit cigar sticking out of his face. He wore a wrinkled coat over a thin white T-shirt, pajama bottoms, and slippers.

  “The boy’s not here.”

  “Ah, the boy. What was his name again? Let me look at my paperwork.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m just checking up, seeing how Patrick’s doing. It is part of my job, you know.”

  “He’s doing fine.” He started closing the door.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Collins. Do you mind? I’ve driven out all this way from downtown.”

  “Good for you.” He turned and stepped back into the threshold.

  “You are so rude. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “I’m not rude, I’m old. Anyone ever tell you what happens when you get old?”

  Katherine smiled. She didn’t want to, but it was a good line. Mr. Collins smiled also. It was an awkward moment for them both.

  He stepped into the vestibule but still didn’t offer to let her inside. “He just went for a walk with my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Fortini. She’s running an errand for me down the road on Clifton Avenue, buying some things for the boy—I mean my grandson. Which way you come?”

  “Down Baltimore Pike, then MacDade Boulevard.”

  “Then you rode right past Clifton Avenue to get here. It’s that wide road the trolleys run on. That’s where they are. Check Hodgins’s Grocery or Ray’s Meats. Two best bets.”

  “Do you know when they’ll be back?”

  “You got a woman shopping with money in her hand. Anybody’s guess. But you should have no trouble finding them. Just turn back the way you came. Park on the first main road you come to. Look for a big Italian woman all dressed in black dragging around a little Irish boy.”

  Katherine looked at her watch. She had only given herself fifteen minutes for the visit, unless she had found Patrick in a bad state. She could waste all that and more hunting through crowded shops looking for them.

  “Heard anything more on the boy’s father, when he might be back?”

  First, it’s the boy, she thought. Now the boy’s father . . . though talking about his own son. “Not yet,” she said. “Talked to an officer this morning who’s looking into it.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “I haven’t been able to find out anything other than the approval for his leave has gone through.”

  “Shouldn’t be long, then. In the First War it took weeks crossing the Atlantic by boat. Now with these planes, he should probably be in here in a couple of days, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Collins. I’ll let you know if I hear anything more. I really have to go if I’m going to catch Patrick before I head back.”

  He walked back into the house and started to close the door. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, turning around. “I’ll need some ration coupons for the boy. Mrs. Fortini is using hers and mine to buy some supplies.”

  “That’s right. I meant to give them to you the other night.” She dug them out from her satchel and gave them to him. “Sorry about that.”

  He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at them through the glass, as if trying to figure a way for them to penetrate the glass without letting her in.

  “I suppose you’ll have to open the door, after all.”

  He did, just a crack, and she slid them through. “Just trying to keep out the cold,” he said. “If you miss him on Clifton, I’ll tell him you stopped by.” He walked back into the house and closed the door.

  “Do that,” she said to the closed door, watching her breath vaporize then disappear on the glass.

  One more group of four ladies, then it would be her turn to get into Ray’s Meats. Seeing the others made Mrs. Fortini realize she’d forgotten to pick up her jar of waste fat back at the house. The other ladies had theirs in hand. She’d been growing her jar all week, straining every last ounce of cooking oil, bacon grease, and used-up lard she could find. With the new rations it would have netted her at least three or four red points, which she could have used to buy more meat.

  Collins had given her plenty of cash, but since the war, cash wasn’t enough anymore. The Office of Price Administration, or OPA, kept strict controls on the prices and quantities of any food sold in stores. At first, she thought she’d never get it down; the whole system seemed far too complicated. Now it was just part of life. Red stamps for meat, fish, poultry, and the like; blue stamps for everything else. When it came to meat, each cut was given a different set of points. Ground round could be four points per pound, pork chops five points, a brisket seven.

  As an incentive, the OPA rewarded people extra points for collecting certain things. Oddly enough, waste fat was among them. She smiled looking at the row of ladies in front of her, dutifully cradling their big jars of fat like grandbabies. Hard to imagine fat ever being a good thing. But they said fat contained something they could recycle into material for making explosives and different kinds of medicines. She couldn’t imagine how that was possible.

  All she knew was, you turn in your jar of fat, you get more meat.

  Once inside, she became part
of another line that wrapped in a horseshoe past the glass case. There wasn’t as much chatter in the store as usual. A moment later, she understood why. Standing next to the scale, as out of place as a pig in a parlor, was a man in a black suit and tie. Everyone knew he was an OPA man, probably making his rounds of all the butcher shops in the area: checking the scales, keeping the merchants honest, making everyone nervous. She used her time in line to eye the case and add up her points, see what combination of meat and ration stamps she could put together.

  She wondered how Patrick was making out at Hodgins’s Grocery. He was such a beautiful little boy. Somehow she had to make that old buzzard see. She had promised her best friend, Ida, before she had died, that she would do whatever she could to get father and son back together again. It had become a topic in her morning prayers every day since Ida had passed.

  She didn’t know how, but she had a growing impression that, somehow, Patrick was the key.

  Sixteen

  Patrick entered Hodgins’s Grocery like a brave explorer through some uncharted jungle. He had never been inside a store without holding his mother’s hand. Hodgins’s was similar to the corner store his mom had shopped near Clark Street. Only everything seemed bigger and more threatening. He also had the feeling that every eye in the store was watching him, wondering what a little boy was doing in here all by himself.

  He looked up at a man behind the counter ringing up purchases, probably Mr. Hodgins. He was a tall man, slender except around the middle, and had a well-trimmed mustache. He wore a thick sweater under his white apron.

  A stock boy stacked a fresh supply of White Rose green beans down the center aisle. Patrick almost walked right into him, his eyes so focused on his list. “Excuse me,” Patrick said, backing up.