“What a shame,” Tom said, but Gabe held up his hand.
“So one Sunday morning when I’m not scheduled to say the ten, I walk down to the candy store at about nine forty-five and go inside for a cup of coffee. While I’m there, sure enough, she comes in. She buys a roll of Life Savers and pays with a dollar bill and goes out again. After she leaves, the owner, the candy store owner, turns to me and says, “ ‘There’s a project for you, Father. She’s in here every Sunday morning buying mints. Covering up the alcohol on her breath. Before Mass.’
“ ‘Did you smell alcohol on her breath?’ I asked him, and I could see by his indignation that he hadn’t. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Why do you think she’s buying the mints?’”
“Why?” Helen said.
Gabe smiled. “To cover the smell of the drink, or so he thought. But I had a hunch. I followed them into the church. I asked the ushers to let me help with the collection. I passed the plate, and sure enough, she adds a quarter, the boy adds a quarter, and the twins each put in a dime. At the second collection only the mother puts in a quarter. Three quarters, two dimes every Sunday. Ninety-five cents. Life Savers were a nickel then.” He sat back. “She’d been doing it for years, breaking a dollar before she went into church. And that, as far as I ever knew, was the sole source of the rumors that had her an alcoholic.”
Tom laughed. “Never assume,” he said. He drew the word in the air, circled the first part and the last: this was not a new routine. “You’ll make an ass,” he said, circling, “out of u and me.” The girls were bearing with him, love and pity in their eyes and their smiles. “You ever explain it to the old pastor?” he asked Gabe.
“I did,” Gabe said. I wondered at the bond between these two, strengthened further, perhaps, by those weekly conversations in the men’s ward. “But he wasn’t much interested,” Gabe added. “We had bigger fish to fry by then.”
Helen said, hunched over her dish of ice cream, the spoon in the air. “How come you’re not still a priest? You didn’t like it?”
I felt what would have been my mother’s impulse to grab her by the upper arm and lead her from the table. Susan said, delightedly indignant, “Helen,” confounding the rudeness of the question by acknowledging it. But Helen’s face took on Tom’s look of innocent uncertainty. Guileless. Was that wrong?
Gabe said, kindly enough, “It was the greatest privilege of my life, to be ordained.” The rest of us were silent. He was looking at Helen alone. “But after my father died, I couldn’t see leaving my mother, and your mother, to live alone. Someone had to be there,” he said. He put his tongue in his cheek, moved his mouth as if he tasted something sweet. “Your mother couldn’t cook, you know. And she had some wild oats of her own. Someone had to be there to guide her.”
“There you go,” Tom said happily. He nodded, as if the matter was settled, now and forever. It only took the asking. “And think about this,” he said to the two girls. “If it wasn’t for your uncle coming back home, your mother and I would never have met, which means you wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be here,” and he gestured, dramatically, taking in the whole house. “So say thank you to the man. Thank him for changing his plans.”
The girls, laughing, puzzled, bowed their heads. “Go on,” Tom said, encouraging them, overdoing it, I thought.
“Thank you,” Helen murmured, smiling, into her plate. Susan shook her head and said in a singsong, mocking way, “Thank you, Uncle Gabe.”
After dinner, I invited him for a walk around the neighborhood. It was dusk. Sprinklers were going on the darkening squares of green grass, and neighbors on webbed lawn chairs raised their hands as we passed by. Gabe smoked. I reminded him of the long walk we’d taken when I was seventeen, when Walter Hartnett had broken my heart. “Seventeen,” he said, and shook his head. He remembered it. He looked straight ahead as we walked, and he held his cigarette low against his thigh, cupped inside his hand. “I can’t imagine anything I said was any help to you.”
“It was,” I said.
“Walter Hartnett,” Gabe repeated the name. “The kid with the bad leg. Bill Corrigan’s right-hand man. Poor Bill.”
And I added, “Poor Walter, too.”
Gabe said, “You can’t blame a man for saying he’s had enough pain.”
I supposed he could have been referring to either one of them.
There was the suburban smell of cut grass and honeysuckle, the sounds of televisions and radios, there were the halos of lampposts, house lights coming on. It is solved by walking, he had said. He had walked out into those ravaged streets of the old neighborhood, naked, weeping.
“You’re welcome to stay, you know,” I told him. “The upstairs room is yours for good. When you go back to work, you can drive to the station with Tom. Susan will be off to college in the fall and Helen’s soon to follow. The boys are on their own for the most part. You’ll be company for me and Tom. You’ll keep Tom from talking my ear off when he retires. We’ll be company for one another.”
Gabe smiled. “Thank you,” he said simply. He thought for a bit and then said, “I’ll have to go back to pack up the apartment. I’ll have to break the lease.”
I wished he had said “the old apartment.”
“Tom’s been over there,” I told him. “He’s already taken out anything worth saving, which wasn’t much.” Gabe’s clothes, some pictures, all of his books. Even before my mother died, we had moved anything of value out here. “You should be happy to break the lease,” I said. “The building’s worse than ever these days.” And then I added, only half joking, “These days, I wouldn’t wish Brooklyn on a dog.”
He smiled again, but less sincerely. Still loyal.
As we turned the corner to start home, we came upon a group of children, five or six of them, running across three lawns, catching lightning bugs. Among them was Helen’s friend Lucy Grayson, and she paused as we passed by, dragging her bare feet in the grass as if to stop her momentum. “Hi, Mrs. Commeford,” she said in her voice like stirred gravel. She was a skinny girl with nut-brown legs beneath her cutoffs, wide eyes, and a perpetually opened mouth. I waved and said, “Hiya, Lucy,” and then saw how the other children were slowly stopping, too, gathering around Lucy as if her sudden inertia had pulled them in. Each of them said a small greeting, at odd, firefly-like intervals—“Hi, Mrs. Commeford.” “Hi.” “Hi.”—until we had walked past. And then I heard one of them shout, “Suffolk called.” It was a boy’s voice, choked with laughter. It was followed by a twitter of hushes, and then more laughter still as the children scattered again across the blinking grass.
Gabe looked straight ahead, smiling that short smile. I touched his arm, just a fingertip to the inside of his elbow. He tossed his cigarette into the street.
“Uncle Charlie’s come to town,” he said, and it took me a few seconds to realize he was referring to the old movie. “Another bachelor uncle with a shadowy past,” he said. “Forever suspect.”
“Nonsense,” I told him.
When we returned to the house, there was a strange car in the driveway. Strange to me, because Gabe said, “This might be a fellow I know.”
The front door was open once again, the porch light lit above it, and we went in that way and found Tom and the girls and a strange man sitting in the living room. There were two glasses of beer on the cocktail table and Helen was just placing the nut bowl beside them. The man stood as we entered. He was tall and broad through the shoulders. He wore a pale-blue short-sleeved shirt and gray dress pants like my brother’s. He had short dark hair, heavily Brylcreemed, graying at the temples. He said a jaunty “Hello there” as he stood, and then another “Hello, there” as Gabe introduced him. “Matt Cain, a friend of mine.” From his days at IT&T.
I sat on the edge of a slipcovered chair and made small talk as best I could, although our voices in the rugless room echoed and rang. I felt beads of perspiration running down my back. Matt Cain knew the street in Rego Park where we’d had our first apartment. He hims
elf lived in Bay Ridge. Still with IT&T on Park Avenue, yes. He had a wide thin mouth and too much gook in his hair, although, to be fair, he might have just come from the barber. There was a ghost of white skin along his hairline. A thick handful of wiry black hair at his throat, as well. Twice he offered his cigarettes all around, and twice Tom and I raised a hand to refuse them. Although Gabe took one and leaned forward from the other side of the couch as Matt Cain held the match to it.
I excused myself and went into the kitchen. The girls had washed the dishes but left them piled in the drainer. The pot I’d boiled the potatoes in was still dirty on the stove. I washed it, and washed out the sink. And then put the dishes away, not bothering to muffle the ring and clank of my lifting and stacking and returning, one by one, the forks and knives and spoons to the utensil drawer. I was being rude, I knew. Purposefully. And I wasn’t sure why. I drank a long glass of water at the sink, held my wrist under the running faucet to cool myself down. I dried my hands and put a smile on my face and returned to the warm living room to ask brightly if the men would like another beer—or, if it wasn’t too hot, some coffee?
Gabe, it seemed, had been telling them about Suffolk. His routine there. Tom and the girls—Susan perched on the arm of her father’s chair, Helen on the floor at his side, her legs crossed and her chin in her hands—were watching him solemnly. Matt Cain had leaned himself back against the corner of the couch, his arms spread out along the back and the side, his legs splayed—he had thick legs, long, with heavy thighs; he was altogether heavier than he seemed on first impression. He had his head turned a bit; he was picking a bit of tobacco from his tongue, but he’d been listening, too—amused or moved, it was hard to tell.
And I interrupted, breezing in to offer them another beer, coffee if it wasn’t too hot, meaning—intending, I knew, although I would not have said, in the moment before I spoke, that this was my intention—to graciously bring the night to a close. And wanting to kick myself in the second after I spoke when I saw, or heard, as if in some fading echo of the conversation I’d brought to a halt, that Gabe was telling them about his life at Suffolk and I had missed it.
Matt Cain pulled in his great big legs and leaned to the coffee table to put out his cigarette. “None for me, thanks,” he said. He placed his hands on his thighs and turned to my brother. “I should go,” he said. There seemed to be a thousand meanings conveyed in it. Gabe said, “I’ll walk you out.”
Matt Cain insisted on carrying his and Gabe’s beer glasses to the kitchen. He shook hands with me there, and with Tom and the two girls. I knew the smell of whatever he used on his hair would linger. As he started back through the dining room to the front door, Gabe caught his shoulder. He indicated the door to the carport. “Susan tells me this is the preferred means of egress and ingress,” Gabe said, and winked at me.
“I’ll put on the light,” I said.
Through the curtained glass in the door, I could see the two men pause. Gabe pointed to the ceiling of the carport and Matt Cain playfully bounced the hanging tennis balls off the windshield of Tom’s car. I heard them laugh, and I hoped in my heart there was no mockery in it. Not of Tom, I thought, who had lost a day of work to drive all the way out to Suffolk to fetch him. Who had driven out there a dozen times this year to sit in the men’s ward with him so he would not be alone. I watched them move away from the car, around the corner of the house to the driveway.
I finished up in the kitchen, and when Gabe hadn’t yet come in, I left a note on the dining-room table. Gone to bed. But don’t hesitate to knock if there’s anything you need. I added, Sleep well, choosing between it and We’re so glad you’re here.
The girls were in the basement, the television was on, and I called down to tell them, Not too late. Helen said, Susan’s already asleep, and Susan said sleepily, No, I’m not. Usually I left the basement door open so I could hear them when they came up, but tonight I closed it.
I went into my room. Tom was already in bed. He was reading a folded-back news magazine, his glasses perched on his nose. On these hot summer nights he slept in his shorts and a thin white tank shirt that exposed his fleshy shoulders, as pink and round as his head. He had the window fan on high and only looked up briefly when I came in, smiled vaguely. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and put on my summer nightgown. Then I crossed the room once more and turned the fan down to a low hum. I went through my fusty bedtime routine. Turned the clock around on my night table. Poured some hand cream into my palms and spread it up and down my arms. Placed a pale blue hairnet over the back of my head. Turned off the lamp that had been my mother’s in the old apartment and slipped off my glasses. The room contracted and lost every edge. I got into bed and, as was our routine, turned on my side to face Tom as he read. I closed my eyes. As was his routine, Tom lowered his arm to the mattress beside me, giving it to me. I put my two hands on his forearm, moved to put my lips to his skin.
I had turned the fan down low enough so that I could hear Gabe coming in and the girls coming up from the basement. Low enough, too, so that I could ask Tom what Gabe had said while I was in the kitchen, about his routine at Suffolk. Had he mentioned the electric shock? Had he talked about what had brought him there. That terrible day?
I closed my eyes and put my lips to my husband’s cool flesh, and he, still reading, brushed the back of his hand against my breast. I had not liked Gabe’s friend, and in my distaste, I had gone into the kitchen and lost out on what Gabe had said, about his routine at Suffolk. About what had brought him there. I had turned the fan down low enough so that I could now whisper, “Who was that guy, that friend of his?”
Tom flipped the magazine closed with one hand and placed it on his nightstand. He took his reading glasses off and leaned toward the light, keeping his arm on the mattress beside me, pulling away just a little to reach the cord. He sat back. It was his habit to ease himself into bed as a man might sink into a tub. He moved under the sheet just a little, keeping his back against the pillows that were piled against the headboard. Again, idly, he moved his hand against my breast.
“Do you remember Darcy Furlong?” he said into the darkness, just above the whirring of the fan. “From the brewery?”
I laughed. “That name,” I said.
I let go of his arm and rolled over on my back. He put his hand on my hip.
“Rumors went around about him for years,” he said. “Foolish things, mostly. Someone found him knitting in the lunchroom. There was supposed to be a tube of lipstick in his desk drawer. He wore polish on his toes—although some of us joked that, hell, if that was true, at least it meant that at some point he took off those damn saddle shoes.” He chuckled. “Nothing terrible, really. Just small, snide things said about him now and then. But Mr. Heep got wind of it, eventually. He always had one ear to the ground in that way. So Darcy was out sick for a while—some minor surgery, we all signed a card. And during this time Mr. Heep calls us in for a meeting. I told you about this.”
I nodded. I recalled it vaguely. “Mr. Heep said he was aware that there were certain kinds of rumors going around about Mr. Furlong and all he wanted to know was did anyone have any way to prove they were true? Anyone have proof? That’s all he asked. Of course, no one did. What in the world would serve as proof? We saw him in the office every day. He was a good worker. He came in on time in the morning and went home at night. He was a bachelor. His family lived down South. What else was there to know? And when no one answered, Mr. Heep said, ‘Well, neither do I, so until someone has proof, evidence, that what you have to say about Mr. Furlong is the absolute truth, I want the rumors to stop. I want an end to them. And I’ll fire the first man who defies me.’”
I heard the back door open and close. Heard, I was certain, Gabe pausing to lift my note from the dining-room table. I was aware of the coolness of my words—I had not written, after all, We are so glad you’re here.
I could hear Gabe’s footsteps on the bare floor of the living room as he crossed to the s
taircase. Tomorrow I would tell him again that he was welcome to stay.
“That was it,” Tom was saying. “The rumors stopped. Sure, everyone was free to continue to think what he liked, but no one said a word. I have to say, I admired Mr. Heep for the way he handled it. Put a stop to it. Whatever Darcy Furlong was—fairy or window dresser or momma’s boy, or just a lonely guy who liked fancy socks and his own routine—what good was to come of all of us talking about him? What were we going to discover? What were we going to change?”
In the darkness, I felt him sink himself a bit farther into the bed, as was his routine. I felt myself, my heart, sinking as well. My brother had been the golden child reciting poetry I couldn’t understand, the thin seminarian emerging from the shadow of the tall trees, his prayer book cupped in his hands. Not a year in his first parish, he had given my father the last sacrament, even as the poor man’s suffering was at its last and terrible height. I had been startled by the ferociousness of his grief—you slept?—when I woke up in the car we had hired from Fagin. I had been at various times annoyed and puzzled by his solitude and his brooding, his vigilance, the way he feared what was ugly or unkind, and the way compassion seemed to upend him—walking out naked and weeping into the ravaged streets where we had been young. My brother was a mystery to me, but a mystery I had always associated with the sacred darkness of the bedroom we had shared in Brooklyn, or the hushed groves of the seminary, or the spice of the incense in the cavernous church, even with his lifelong, silent communion with the words he found in his books. Incomprehensible, yes, but in the same way that much that was holy was incomprehensible to me, little pagan.
Someone Page 20
