The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  Who were these young women, girls one day, flirting and holding hands with high school sweethearts, bragging, simpering, showing off, sporting small chip engagement rings, then having June weddings at St. Simon and big parties at home and then big bellies, little babies, kids running around yelling, getting chased by these girls, no longer girls, but women who watched, with bitter faces as their younger sisters came home from school, faces flushed from flirtations?

  These were things that Willie Paycek, a rat-faced, crosseyed, thin, pasty boy with a high shrill voice, noticed and wondered about.

  There was also that other thing he had observed about Walter Stachiew, and this one really bothered him. He couldn’t figure it out, no way.

  Walter Stachiew was a large man whose features, before they had become bloated and swollen, were handsome. His body was still muscular, despite the gut that hung over his low-slung belt. There were times, periodically, when he and Willie’s father would dry out. They would get religion, for some reason or other, and they would both stay off the booze. Nothing helped Willie’s father’s appearance. He was an ugly, gross man, and his attempts at charm, politeness, helpfulness, were always greeted with contempt by the tenants: Just do your damn job, Paycek, and get the hell out of my apartment.

  But Stachiew, during those times, actually had a charm, a manner that could win people over, that could make people care about him. What a fine young man he really was, off the drink. You could trust him to fix the window sash, tighten the valve so that the radiator stopped banging, at least for a while. He offered to do marketing for the elderly lady on the third floor, to walk the dog when Mr. Janowitz broke his leg. He could change into someone else.

  But Willie always knew enough not to trust Stachiew. There was something else, something strange and confusing about Walter when he was sober.

  It had to do with boys.

  It had to do with how friendly and helpful Walter was with neighborhood boys. He would fix the wheel of a bike or wagon. He would help put together a great apple-crate skate racer. He could belt a Spalding with a broomstick (of which he had an endless supply). He could show quick moves while dribbling a basketball. Always with a hand on a shoulder, a squeeze for emphasis on an upper arm, a pressing against a young body as he helped a boy through a move. And the pat on the ass, the hand cupping around a buttock. Lingering, feeling, sliding around the body of some unsuspecting boy. Because what could a boy make of all this? It was something so strange and peculiar. The boy would know it was something wrong. Sinful. But was this sin his or Walter Stachiew’s? And who could he ask, talk to, trust? It wasn’t even something he could dump in the confessional. What could you say, this man put his hand on me, on my body and … and what? And I thought of bad things, bad things I can’t even say because I don’t know?

  Stachiew never touched Willie, and Willie knew it was for two reasons. He only liked pretty, handsome, strong boys. And he knew that Willie was wise to him.

  By Saturday, December 28, 1935, Walter Stachiew had been sober and charming and pleasant for roughly four weeks. He always sobered up for the holidays. It was a time when even the stingiest people became at least a little generous. If they didn’t slip him a dollar, there was always a home-cooked plate of leftovers or a cake or some Christmas candy. So he planned his periods of sobriety. But the holidays were over, as far as his advantages were concerned.

  Besides, someone gave him a bottle of cheap booze, and he began his drinking early in the day, taking the bottle to his cot in the furnace room so that he didn’t have to share it with Willie’s father.

  Willie went into the storeroom to search for an old sled he remembered from last year, something that had been abandoned years ago by some people who moved away. It was how Willie got a lot of things: broken-down bikes, old roller skates. The sled wasn’t bad, and the snow had been falling since before Christmas. It was cold out and slippery, and the night would be perfect for sledding.

  He searched around behind large old trunks which tenants stored in the basement. Sometimes he pried them open but there was nothing but old clothes, rotting blankets, stuff people stored away rather than discarded.

  He was way back in the corner, poking around, bored, tired from having shoveled most of the sidewalk. His father set him to work, promising to be right back. By the time he returned, the sidewalk was clear. Now his father was doing the easy part of the job, tossing ashes on the walk to keep it from icing up. He heard someone coming and automatically, instinctively, because Willie was a secret person who liked to spy on people, he crouched down, unseen. And watched.

  It was Gene O’Brien, tall, slender, his pale face flushed from the cold, his white-blond hair shining with snow as he took off his wet woolen cap and slapped it against his long, slim leg. He looked around, then headed directly to the shelf where the O’Brien sled had been stacked away last year. Willie watched him, impatient to have the place to himself again. There were a few cartons he hadn’t seen before and wanted to check out.

  Gene reached up, and he pulled the sled down, turned, holding it against his chest.

  The instant he saw Walter Stachiew standing in the doorway of the storeroom, Gene O’Brien froze. He had been taken by surprise. As he released his breath, there was a peculiar, troubling sound.

  Stachiew caught it at once. Even before he spoke, the alcohol fumes began to fill the space between himself and the boy.

  “Wha’s a matter, you got scared? Huh? It’s me, you know me, ol’ Stach, huh?”

  The boy realized how tightly he held the sled, how his tension seemed to amuse the drunken man. He inhaled quietly, eased the sled from his chest, rested it at his feet, balanced it, and put his wet wool cap on his damp head.

  “You get that nice hair all wet, huh? What you been doin’ out in the snow, making snowball fights, huh?”

  The boy’s voice was muffled. Obviously he was frightened but trying to control his fear.

  “Yeah. Why don’t ya come on out in the snow, Stach? We got a fort and everything.”

  “You got a fort and everything. Wha the fuck I wanna go out, you got a fort and everything?”

  The use of the curse word hung in the air. It was not a word grown men used with boys. It was a dangerous, exciting word they daringly used among themselves, but here, now, with this man, it was something else. Something serious and threatening.

  Stachiew steadied himself on the door frame. He laughed, low and hoarse and dirty.

  “Hey. Look at you, you face turn bright red, like a little girl. I say ‘fuck,’ and you get all red.” He blinked, leaned down closer to the boy, who instinctively took a step back. This insulted Stachiew.

  “Hey, whatsa matter you? You know me, huh? What you pull back for, huh?”

  Suddenly he reached up and yanked Gene’s wet hat from his head, held it up high. The boy reached, then dropped his hands to the sled, which he held now, chest high. Defensively. Stachiew reached down and with a large, rough red hand, he tousled the silver blond hair.

  “This is pretty hair you got, kid, pretty like a little girl’s. Only little baby girls got hair like this.”

  He reached out his other hand, realized he was still holding the empty bottle. He tilted his face up, sucked on the bottle for whatever drops remained. As he did this, Eugene made a quick, graceful move to the side of the man, shoving the sled against his body as he tried to duck under his arms.

  Stachiew dropped the bottle, which bounced against some cartons and then to the floor. He moved a few inches, so that the boy and his sled slammed into his body, dead weight, a sack of cement, an ungiving wall.

  “What you think you do, huh, pretty, what you think, you gonna roughhouse with Stachiew, huh, I show you some nice roughhouse, you so pretty, such a pretty little boy.”

  Willie watched the struggle, fascinated. The air was charged not just with violence; there was something more to it. Something that both Stachiew and Eugene O’Brien were aware of. Something Willie had been expecting from the m
oment the huge drunk came into the room and confronted the handsome, silvery boy.

  Stachiew kicked the door closed without looking behind him. The boy moved from side to side, breathing hard, the snow-reddened face pale now, the beads of moisture running down his cheeks a combination of melting snow and sweat.

  Stachiew grabbed at the boy’s face, cupped his hand under the fragile chin, leaned into the boy, squinted, nodded, licked his dry, cracked lips.

  “You too beautiful for a boy, you too beautiful. Pretty, like a girl, huh? You a girl, huh?”

  Stachiew was totally fixed on the boy, and Gene O’Brien kicked and punched and breathed in loud short gasps, falling back, trying to evade Stachiew.

  Willie watched, amazed, fascinated. Excited.

  Stachiew unzipped his dirty workpants and pulled out his penis, large, engorged. With one hand forced the boy’s head down, with the other he manipulated himself.

  “You do this now, you pretty boy, you do this, I make you feel good, let me see your pecker, let me see your pretty little body, you girl or boy, I wanna see, I …”

  Suddenly Stachiew, reaching down, fondling and grabbing the boy, pulled back. His face, red and distorted, looked at first amazed, and then he smiled and laughed.

  “Why, you little fucker, you little sonabitch, you like it don’t you, you little fucker, you hard as a rock down there …”

  Suddenly, Eugene O’Brien kicked his tormenter in the balls, and when Stachiew crumpled over in agony, he turned and kicked him again, and then he lifted his sled over his head and brought it down as hard as he could somewhere in the area of Stachiew’s shoulders.

  And then he ran out of the storeroom.

  Willie Paycek remained hidden for a long time. He knew it wasn’t safe to move until Stachiew was gone. He was prepared to sit, hidden, huddled, unseen and unsuspected. He didn’t mind.

  He had a lot to think about.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IN THE FIRST WEEK OF SUMMER, 1934, ON A Tuesday morning at about 4:00 A.M. Angela D’Angelo went crazy. Neither the fact of her breakdown nor the form it took was surprising, really.

  For almost eight months, until her mother’s death—the day after her fortieth birthday in April—Angela had not only tended her mother but had taken care of the rest of the family. She cooked, cleaned and was responsible for her two younger brothers, her two younger sisters and her father, Dominick. She was eighteen years old and she gave up her senior year at St. Simon Stock High School without much discussion. It was her duty and she did it without complaint. She had help from her aunts who came on weekends from Bathgate Avenue, bringing baskets of cooked food and skilled hands to help with the washing and ironing, the cleaning and baking. They brought generations of advice and wisdom to offer the dying woman and her daughter.

  No one noticed that Angela was becoming thin almost to the point of gauntness, that the resemblance between dying mother and tending daughter was extraordinary. They both had sunken blazing dark eyes, hollowed cheeks, tangled hair. There was a connection between them that seemed to make them interchangeable.

  Her father didn’t notice anything wrong with Angela. He worked twelve or fourteen hours a day. He knew she was a good girl who took care of her mother and her family. A good girl. Nor did the other children notice. Angela became, in effect, their mother. They followed her quiet instructions, changed from school clothes to play clothes, fetched items from the store, made their beds in the morning, picked up after themselves, set the table, cleared, helped out as always, showed homework assignments to her, reported—sometimes honestly, sometimes not—where they would be after school, whom they would be with and what they would be doing.

  Dante was the oldest boy, and at thirteen he noticed things that he kept to himself. Disturbing things. He had come upon his sister staring down at the apparition who had once given light and center to their lives. Angela’s hands twitched as his mother’s hands twitched. Her lips moved silently and he could catch words only occasionally. The others assumed the two were praying, but Dante wasn’t sure. There was a secret between the mother and daughter, and all else aside—the horror of the slow, day-by-day dying of this formerly robust, warm, hearty, noisy woman—there was something sinister and dark and frightening going on. There was no one he could tell. His father would only look frightened and stay longer hours at his shop. He could scarcely bear to look at his dying wife, and Dante didn’t want to chase him farther away. He could not tell his aunts; they came, laden and busy and helpful and filled with noise and instructions and hugs and hard pinches and laughter and hearty good health, fussing with his mother, pretending, always pretending, that she would get better, that her life was not slipping away.

  He could not tell his sixteen-year-old sister, Marie. The girl was too filled with herself. Her beautiful long black hair took up so much time, her clothes had to be pressed just so, she had no time to fuss with anything beyond herself. She kissed her mother twice a day, good morning, good night, and got on with her own life. The other children were too young. They accepted things, adjusted, escaped.

  The secret between the dying woman and her daughter was a whispered revelation that became a litany between them. One day, when they were alone in the apartment, as Angela sponged her mother’s forehead and eased her matted head against the clean pillowcase, smoothed covers over the concave skeletal body, her mother stiffened. Her dark eyes grew huge and protuberant, then glowed with the desperation of her message. She reached a hand toward her daughter, and for a moment the agony of the stomach cancer shuddered through her body. She let out a soft, sibilant hiss, fastened a remarkably strong hand on her daughter’s thin arm, pulled her close.

  With a dry tongue, her mother tried to moisten her lips, and in an aching, tormented voice, she told her daughter the terrible secret.

  I am hanging on the Cross with Jesus.

  It was the secret they shared between them, the secret agony that the doctor could not know about, nor the priest nor the aunts. It was between the two of them, and over and over, sometimes with the whispered words, sometimes just by the terrible, dartlike beam of light from her eyes, her mother told her what no one else knew.

  Her mother was bearing, in addition to all other pain, the final agony of Jesus Christ on the Cross. It was a martyrdom she had been chosen to suffer and to share with her daughter.

  After her mother’s death, Angela talked with elderly Father Murphy about returning to school. It was left up in the air. She had not been much of a student. Her family needed her at home during this difficult time more than they needed her to achieve a general high school diploma. Later on, when the kids had all settled in to the loss of their mother, when they were older, when she wasn’t needed so totally, a job could be found for Angela at the phone company or in a bank somewhere. She wasn’t to worry about such things. She was to do what God needed her to do right now for the sake of her mother’s memory and her family’s need.

  Life in the D’Angelo family seemed to stabilize. The aunts came less often. The children were good kids and helped out and reported in and did their homework. Dominick worked hard.

  All was as before, with one exception. More and more often, as soon as the children left home for school, Angela left home for church. She stayed in church for hours, praying first at the foot of the statue of the Holy Mother and then at the base of the Crucifix that dominated the altar. She was home when the kids came home from school, served supper, cleaned up, supervised the evening routine of homework, baths, clean uniforms, and arbitrated the selection of the radio programs. Left a hot meal in the oven for her father. And then she returned to church.

  Dante followed her, watched her. Worried. He spoke once to Father Kelly. He never would have approached the young priest, but he literally bumped into him as he was sneaking out of St. Simon’s. He didn’t want Angela to know he’d been spying on her, and he was moving backwards toward the staircase.

  Father Kelly caught him in his open arms, laughed gently, t
urned the boy toward him, saw the troubled face, the hesitation. He walked along with Dante.

  Dante was not at ease with Father Kelly. His fine light blue eyes always seemed ready to laugh, to turn something serious into something foolish. Also, there was that other thing. That Irish thing. Dante was an intruder here, in their church. All the sisters, all the kids, with few exceptions, were Irish. This was their place. But he had to talk to someone, and Father Kelly put an arm around his shoulder in a friendly, brotherly way and made it easy by beginning for him.

  “It’s about Angela, right? You’re worrying about your sister.”

  Dante felt a quick relief. He wasn’t alone now. Someone else knew there was something wrong going on.

  They climbed the stone steps to the street level, and Father Kelly leaned against the iron piping and smiled.

  “Give her a little time, Danny,” he said softly, using the nickname no teacher ever used. “Your mother’s death has been harder on Angela than on any of the rest of you. She’s taken so much on herself, and she is, after all, only a young girl.”

  “Father,” he said slowly, not sure, not willing to trust the priest, yet needing to tell someone, “she’s gotten sort of … she’s not like she used to be. She’s … strange …”

  The strong arm went around his shoulder again, the hard hand gave a reassuring squeeze, almost hurtful on his upper arm.

  “She’s been through her own ordeal, Danny. Look, you’re a good kid and a good brother. I want you to know something. I’ve been a little worried about Angela too. I know how many hours she’s been spending in church, and I’m keeping an eye on her. She’s seeking solace, that’s all. If it gets beyond that … Do you know the word morbid?”

  Dante knew the word. He knew many words and he realized the priest was speaking to him as though he was an intelligent, responsible person, not a child.

  “Well, sometimes when a person is overwhelmed with grief—and your sister has had an awful amount of responsibility on her—sometimes a person might become unrealistic about what she expects to find in church. It goes beyond looking for comfort and understanding and … Look, kid. I’ll keep an eye on her, okay? She’ll come out of it. Don’t worry about it.” He gave a playful sock to Dante’s chin, a friendly, big-brother gesture of reassurance.