The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  They sat in a small coffee shop around the corner from Bellevue. The constant noise—conversations, clattering dishes, waiters yelling out orders to disgruntled countermen who yelled back—screened their voices from prying ears. Megan hunched across the table, took Dante’s hand, prevented him from lighting a cigarette. He already had one burning in the ashtray.

  “Danny, explain something to me. Her father said that Lucia believes her mother died of a heart attack after the death of her newborn twins. That she has no memory or knowledge of what really happened.”

  He shook his head. “No memory, but she’s heard—through the years, she’s heard talk. From aunts, cousins. She knows some of the truth, but it isn’t really clear, the exact sequence of events.”

  “Her father never discussed with her what happened? She never directly confronted him, never asked?”

  “Her father forbade the mention of her mother’s name. Every picture of her mother was destroyed. He would only tell her, ‘Your mother died when you were three years old. It was very sad and hurts me to talk about it, so we will not.’ The old man went deathly pale when he told me the true story. And you never saw such hatred on a person’s face.” He stared at his hands a moment. “What the hell, the woman killed his only remaining son, and deserted her daughter and husband.”

  “Hasn’t Lucia realized the hate her father felt toward her mother? I mean, my God, making up a story about a heart attack is one thing, but forbidding any mention of her name—that must have been confusing.”

  “What she grew up with was the knowledge that her mother—somehow or other—was responsible for the deaths of her twin brothers. Her father’s sons. And that her mother deserted her. What she’s gathered from her ‘well-meaning’ aunts is that the birth of the babies somehow made her mother go crazy. Crazy enough to kill them and desert her. So she feels … I guess … hell, I don’t know.”

  “She feels that if she has a child, she might, to use a very technical term … go nuts. Hurt the baby, kill herself, or desert the baby in some way.”

  “Megan, I want you to understand this. Lucia-Bianca is a brilliant woman. She knows the way she feels is illogical. She understands that. But …”

  “But intellect and emotion are two different things, Danny.”

  “There’s something else. She says she feels that something else happened that day. The day, she was told, she found her mother and the baby. Not that she remembers, she just feels. Hell, how could she remember? She was only three years old.”

  “She remembers. Not consciously, but it’s recorded, Danny. And Lucia-Bianca is smart enough to know that. Is she tough enough to find out? To face that day, now, as an adult?”

  “Megan, if we don’t straighten this out, I don’t know what we’ll do. We can’t go on like this. It’s been crazy.”

  She reached out and stopped him from lighting a cigarette. “Will you please stop doing that? Since I stopped smoking, I can’t stand the smell of cigarettes. Besides, I have an almost overwhelming impulse to reach over and grab a butt for myself.” She squeezed his hand hard, took a deep breath. “Okay, Danny. Let’s set it up. But remember one thing—and this goes, or we don’t do it. This will be between Lucia-Bianca and me. Patient and doctor. You don’t ask me anything. She can tell you whatever she wants, but you don’t ask me. And … no guarantees. Deal?”

  He returned the pressure on her hand. “Oh, God, Megan. Thanks.”

  She finished her coffee and tried hard not to reach out for him again.

  Gee, Megan, thanks for trying to save my marriage. You jerk. You damn jerk.

  Why didn’t you wait for me?

  They met five times in Megan’s small consulting room. It was a bare white room with municipal furniture except for a beat-up leather couch she had bought secondhand, two fairly new comfortable chairs her father had given her as a gift, and a desk lamp on the metal desk.

  At first, Lucia-Bianca had rejected the couch. “Too movieish,” she said, smiling.

  But finally, by the third session, she lay down, staring at the ceiling. Finally she began to express the deep underlying anger she felt toward her mother.

  “How could she desert me like that? How the hell could she have just deserted me? Abandoned me. God, what I remember of her, she was a soft and loving woman. My father, he was … he … a cold man. An unforgiving man. How could she have left me alone with him like that? He never remarried. You know why? Because he could never trust another woman. God, sometimes he used to look at me in such a strange way. As if he were looking at her. Because, I’ve been told, I resemble her. But, on the other hand … he’s always been loving to me. In his way.”

  “You’ve told me he made sure you were surrounded by love. Your aunts and cousins were there for you.”

  “But, God, how he hated her. We were never allowed to mention her name. I asked him once, could I see a picture of her. Was I like her at all? God, his face went rigid. ‘Never, ever ask such a question as that. You are nothing like her. We will never discuss this again.’”

  “Is that what you’re afraid of? That you are like her? That you would kill a child? Or maybe yourself, desert your child, as she did?”

  Lucia-Bianca sobbed; her breath caught in her throat. “I will be my mother. How can I help it? God, how could she do such a thing? How could she have killed the baby? How could she have left me?”

  “Use your adult intelligence, Lucia. You’ve told me you studied postpartum depression. Not something too many doctors acknowledge, but it is a medical fact. You can understand the depression that was triggered by the death of the second baby. Approach it intellectually now, as an adult. Not as an aching child.”

  “Don’t you think I understand? God, yes, intellectually. She was ill, heartbroken that the first baby died. But there’s still something wrong with the equation. Something I can’t seem to grasp.”

  “What? What doesn’t seem to fit?”

  Lucia-Bianca leaned forward, sat up, turned to face Megan. “She seemed to be coming out of it, the sadness and shock of the loss of one baby. My aunt told me that. She finally reacted to the new baby. And reached out for me again, playing with me, combing my hair, fussing with me. It was two months after she had given birth, and she was taking more and more responsibility for the baby. She held him, sang to him. God … I remember that, she sang to him. And to me. I was there, she sang some little Italian nursery song. I remember that …”

  “Do you remember the day it happened? Dante tells me you were out with your nursemaid. You came home from the park and ran into your mother’s room and went into the bathroom and …”

  Lucia-Bianca lay back and shook her head. “No. I don’t remember. I was told that, but I don’t remember. But there was something … that morning. How could I possibly remember? I was a baby myself.”

  “Because you were there. Because it is somewhere inside your memory. Would you like to try, Lucia-Bianca? We could try.”

  “What do you mean? Try? How?”

  Megan got up and pulled down the shades, then switched the lamp to its dimmest setting. “Lie back. Would you consent to a deep-relaxation technique? Would you go along with it? It must be with your total consent. It might be very painful.”

  Lucia-Bianca leaned back on the inclined pillow of the couch. “You mean … hypnosis?”

  “A form of hypnosis. But you will never lose touch with reality. You’ll be in total control, but there will be a conscious relaxing, you’ll allow yourself to drift back. It is there, inside you. You’ll face it now, as an adult, not as a child. Just at first, the child may return. That would be hard. Are you willing?”

  She sighed. “God, nothing, nothing could be more painful than what I am doing to Dante. I owe it to him to get this worked out somehow.”

  “No,” Megan said. “You owe it to yourself. To your own healthy life. You say there is something you do remember, but can’t quite visualize. Let’s try to get back to that moment and move on from there.”

&
nbsp; Through a series of gentle, informed relaxation techniques, calmly and quietly, Megan guided the woman back in time. To early childhood; to her fifth birthday party, all gold and silver balloons; friends, cousins, aunts, uncles, her father, bringing presents all wrapped in silver and gold paper. Children singing to her; her aunt, that night, after the party, at bedtime, quietly singing an Italian nursery song to quiet the excited child.

  Softly, Lucia-Bianca sang the words: a song about a mother and a child, about moonlight and stars and a soft breeze and an angel watching over the child.

  As she sang, her voice became lighter and lighter, younger and younger. The soft whisper-lisp of a small child, then of a baby, barely able to articulate the words. And then the sound became stronger. It was her mother’s voice, singing.

  And then a very small girl’s voice: “Sing it again, Mama.”

  She seemed to be listening, smiling.

  Softly, Megan asked, “Where are you, Lucia? In what room?”

  “The baby’s room. Nursery. She’s singing to me, because she loves me. Baby is sleeping. Mama loves me, not just baby. Me too.”

  “Were you worried that she didn’t love you because of the baby brother?”

  “Yes. But Mama said, ‘You will always be my darling girl. My beautiful darling girl. You will be big sister and Mama’s little helper. And Papa will be so proud of you because you are such a help to Mama. We both love you so much, and little brother Aldo will love you too, so aren’t you the luckiest girl?’”

  “Your mother sounds very happy.”

  “Mama is so happy. And baby brother wakes up and Mama brings him to me from his basket. ‘See how tiny he is. How much he needs us, both of us, to help him grow. Sit here, on the rocking chair, and you can hold him while I get a fresh diaper and we’ll put him on the changing table. Oh, there’s the phone. Stay right here, my darling, Mama will be right back.’”

  Suddenly the young woman began to groan. Her body seemed to go into spasms. Her fists clenched; her arms flailed as her staring eyes looked at something in the past. She wrapped her arms around herself and began to groan.

  “Oh God oh God oh God.”

  “It’s all right, Lucia-Bianca. Talk about it. Tell me what happened. Your mama went to answer the telephone. You are on the rocking chair with your baby brother in your lap. Tell me—it will be all right, if you tell me now. What are you seeing?”

  The child had wanted to be helpful, to be the big sister, to be Mama’s little helper, to make her father proud. She wanted to surprise her mama, show her how good a helper she was. Instead of waiting for her mother to come back into the nursery, the small girl carried her baby brother over to the changing table, the top of which was high over her head. She would get the baby ready for his diaper change. Wouldn’t Mama be pleased? She lifted the baby high over her head, to the edge of the table. She managed to reach the edge of the table, and then the baby rolled over from her hands, fell straight down, hitting his head with great force against the metal wastebasket. His neck snapped.

  There wasn’t even a cry. The baby’s body jerked once and there was absolute silence. Her mother, smiling, entered the room.

  Lucia’s voice, filled with anguish, moaned the words over and over again. “Oh God, oh God, oh God. I hurt baby brother. I hurt baby brother. Mama, Mama, Mama, make it all right.”

  Slowly, carefully, step by step, Megan brought Lucia-Bianca back to the present. She began to breathe quickly, shallowly, gasping for air.

  Quietly, Megan told her, “You will remember all that you told me. You will quietly, rationally remember the moment a tiny three-year-old girl has lived with all this time, without understanding. Now, all grown up, you will understand the accident that happened. Lucia-Bianca, it’s all right. It was a long time ago.”

  They stayed together for hours, Megan and Lucia-Bianca, ignoring the traditional fifty-minute hour.

  Quietly she told Megan, “My mama made me promise never, never to tell Papa or anyone else about what happened. Forget all about it. It never happened.”

  “And of course you did—consciously—forget. And never spoke about it. Until now.”

  “And always I knew there was something I couldn’t find.”

  “How do you feel about what happened to that little girl? Do you feel guilty about it?”

  “Yes. Of course. God, it was all my fault, what happened.” And then, quietly, “No. Not really. Not logically. I was a baby myself. What happened was terrible, but it was an accident.”

  “Let’s talk about your mother. Whom you’ve been raised to hate, who abandoned you. Why do you think she did what she did?”

  Her mother had done what she did to save Lucia-Bianca’s life. She had known that if her husband found out the truth, he would banish the little girl from his life. As he, in fact, banished all traces of her mother from his home.

  “So what she did, the suicide, the faking of the baby’s death at her hands, she did for you, Lucia. She sacrificed her life for yours. She didn’t abandon you. She gave you the gift of a loving life; she gave you your father’s love, because she couldn’t bear to think of your life otherwise.”

  Lucia-Bianca wept hysterically. “But it was an accident. A small child’s accident. Oh, God. She did love me, didn’t she? All these years I believed she loved me so little that she didn’t even think about me in those last moments, but it was for me. She knew my father so well. He would have … God, he is so filled with hate. He would have destroyed me. Oh, God, why did this happen? Did I secretly want to kill my baby brother, could that have been it?”

  “It happened,” Megan said, “because accidents happen. And your mother couldn’t think of any other way to handle it. So, to save you, she took the responsibility. To save your life, to save it from shattering, Lucia-Bianca.”

  After the session, Lucia-Bianca visited Megan a few more times, then managed, after talking with Dante, to get on with her life, as a normal, loving, trusting wife.

  Six months after her first session with Megan, she was pregnant with their first daughter. When the child was born, Dante sent Megan a huge bouquet of roses with a note: “To my pal, Megan. A lifetime of thanks.”

  Megan smiled, shrugged sadly. Hey, what the hell is a pal for, anyway?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT WAS STRANGE TO BE SEATED IN FRANKIE Magee’s “unofficial office” on the first floor of his brick three-story house, right next door to the apartment house where Dante was raised. The last time he’d had this kind of meeting with Frankie was during his senior year at Columbia Law. Magee was the Man to See, and he had been instrumental in getting Dante his appointment as an assistant district attorney. After three years working for the county, Dante had been in private practice and found it unfulfilling. The money was good, but money wasn’t enough.

  “Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Magee.”

  “Frankie,” he said easily. His thin Irish face had a hard quality somewhat at odds with his wide, easy grin. His dark blue eyes narrowed for better observation. He was a lean, quick-moving man, graceful, with thinning curly dark hair and the suspicious gaze of a born cop. Though he had left Ireland as a small child and had a distinct Bronx toughness in his speech, he would slide into a soft brogue at times.

  “Well, then, Danny, how are you doin’ in private practice? Handle criminal cases, do ya? Quite a change, taking the other side from your days as prosecutor with the DA.”

  Dante spoke carefully. “I learned more in my time with the DA than in my years at law school. It’s been interesting, working the other side. But it isn’t exactly my idea of ‘serving the law’—defending the punks. It’s just good practice, you might say, for seeing to it that the law does what it’s supposed to do.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Not to sound too pompous”—Dante shrugged and grinned because, of course, he did sound pompous—“the purpose of the law is to serve the constitutional rights of the people.”

  Frankie tilted his head to on
e side. He carefully evaluated every word. He liked the way the young man met his eyes; liked the straight but relaxed way he sat in his chair; liked the look of Danny D’Angelo, whom he had observed through the years. A good neighborhood lad from a decent, hardworking Italian family.

  “Well, then. It’s been interesting, you say, and it’s ‘good practice.’ And what is it you’re getting ready for? Seems to me you’re beginning to talk about one part of your career in the past tense. Now, I’m no grammarian, mind, but am I right?”

  “I think I’m about ready for a professional change, yes.”

  The Bronx voice spoke now, the Irish easiness gone. “What kinda change didja have in mind, Dan?”

  “I’ve been thinking along the lines of running for the state assembly. Or maybe the state senate.”

  “Well, then. Why’d you come to me?”

  “Everyone knows if you want to do anything in New York City or New York State, you clear it with Frankie Magee. So here I am.”

  Magee tapped a pencil against his front teeth, his face thoughtful. Finally he said, “Well, if you’re smart enough to know that, then why the hell aren’t you smart enough to know that once you head for the state senate, that’s where you stay? It’s a dead end. You can move to a certain level, get certain leverage through the years, and period. What you had in mind, Dan, is it to be a big shot in Albany? You like the snow that much, do you?”

  Dante knew he wasn’t being turned down or discouraged. Something very important was happening. Frankie Magee had evaluated him and had something else in mind, something Dante hadn’t dared yet to consider.

  He spoke in the rich baritone voice that played so well in the courtroom. “I figured Albany would be my next step, not my final step.”

  “Same thing, lad.” Frankie leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling. He asked quietly, “Do you own your own home, up there on Pelham Parkway?”