Every seat was taken. The St. Agnes Boys’ Choir sang “Ave Maria,” and Father Donnelly told the crowded church Brian died because of hatred and violence, a crime perpetrated by people who thought they could force the world to look at them. They called it a peace mission.
“But peace,” Father Donnelly reminded us in his gentle, persistent voice, “cannot be gained by threatening, by blowing up an aircraft with over a hundred people on board, or by leaving a bomb in a New York City subway locker. The bomb that killed our beloved Brian Murray.”
The sorrow of watching the bomb squad hoist up Brian’s coffin blanketed me, and I wanted to die. I thought of the off-duty revolver I handed over to Charlie and wished I’d claimed I didn’t know where it was. But then, who would raise our sons, who would carry on his memory?
“You are expected to follow,” my mother whispered, and Paul and Bobby were there again, taking my arms, leading me down the aisle behind my brother Timmy and five bomb squad pallbearers.
Outside in the blaring sun, the old hearse with its curtained windows waited. But before they could load it, I felt myself reach forward. The crowds hushed, and I let my hand rest on the hot wood.
During the mile-long procession in the limousine, I saw neighbors line the sidewalks to watch Brian’s body pass. The whole town of Rockville Centre seemed to be standing there. Traffic on Sunrise Highway was stopped. Police escorts stood at every street corner, and we passed the furniture store where we had just put a down payment on a dining room set, its purple and black mourning bunting bright in the sun. I laid my head back and stared at the tufted roof. It felt like I had left reality, the familiar, and crossed into what would become for me a dream-state where I allowed everyone else to make decisions—direct the future—because I couldn’t see the future or even the next hour. I didn’t even know where the cemetery was. We had been too young to talk about death. We weren’t finished creating life. Just a week ago we’d decided to try for a daughter.
A thousand people were already at the gravesite. I sat in one of the folding chairs next to the coffin, my mother and Gracie on either side, the rest of my family and Brian’s filling the rows. As we listened to the NYPD bagpipe band play a slow rendition of “Danny Boy,” I remembered Brian and Tommy Monahan, his buddy from the Emerald Society, on lawn chairs in the yard, their cheeks puffed practicing the pipes for the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Our kids and Tommy’s two boys danced around, and laughed while Brian clowned and made his eyes bulge and his face turn purple.
An endless line of people placed flowers in front of the coffin. Finally, the Air Force fired a parting shot, a three-volley salute into the hushed crowd, and a formation of fighter jets left a plume of white cloud. One lone bugle player played taps. Then two decorated police officers removed the flag draped over Brian’s coffin and began to fold it, each crease precise. When they put it in my hands, I stared down at the stitching on the white stars until it blurred.
__________
After the funeral I lay in the dark bedroom again, leaving the boys to their grandmother. What would happen to them now? I thought about when we first had children, I kept my job so we could share parenting, a decision only partly based on economics. Brian wanted to help raise the boys, and we passed each other at three o’clock every day when I came home and Brian left for a four-to-twelve at the bomb squad. After growing up without a father of my own, I needed him to be their role model. But now, who would be there for them?
From the depths of sleep, voices drifted up from downstairs, and I heard Keith ask, “Are you a policeman like my daddy?” His voice floated up the stairs. Who is he talking to? I saw myself throw the covers back and shoot out of bed, my heart hammering in my ears, Keith’s voice getting louder as I approached the stairs. A man’s voice, deep, accented. “I’m not a policeman, but I know who your daddy was.”
I flew down the steps in time to see his dark hair, his well-muscled back, and strong arms. He was headed for the kitchen, but by the time I got there he was out the back door. Keith looked into the dark after him.
“Who was that?” I asked him.
Keith shrugged. “He said his name was Zonko. He knows my daddy.”
I woke from the dream with a start, soaked with sweat. Zvonko Busic is in prison, I told myself. He can’t hurt us. But the vivid dream of that monster with my child would stay with me like a bad omen.
Fully awake now, downstairs I could hear my mother talking to Gracie. “Tell her to get up and take care of those kids.” And then the front door opened and closed. I lay back in bed. That was the mother I remembered, not the one who held my hand on the way to the wake and the funeral.
Downstairs, the boys had discovered the refrigerator was filled with goodies neighbors brought over, and we played picnic in bed. Gracie kept them entertained when I was overcome again and again with a grief so stunning it rendered me speechless. The smallest thing could trigger my grief; seeing Brian’s Criminal Justice textbooks still piled on his desk reminded me of his happy pronouncement, “I’ll be done in December,” and how when he’d said it I had mentally begun planning his graduation party.
When Gracie wasn’t around, I let the boys watch cartoons and did my best not to cry. I tried to tame that restless rage that kept rising at will, tried not to think of those pictures in the bomb squad offices, photos taken after the FALN blew up Fraunces Tavern, killing four people, injuring fifty. Pieces of wooden chairs had been embedded in the victims’ legs.
While Bugs Bunny chased the Road Runner, I thought about Father Donnelly’s words, a crime perpetrated by people who thought they could force the world to look at them. What kind of people would do this?
The next morning I opened my eyes to the silhouette of my sister in the room. She was holding the tote bag I bought in Chinatown that I used during my commute. It usually held my high heels and whatever book I was reading. Now it looked like it was stuffed with clothes, and I wondered if she assumed I wouldn’t need it anymore but didn’t have the strength to ask. “I’m leaving. I have to go home.” Outside the sun was shining. “I’ll call you later.”
I listened to her footsteps on the stairs. Heard her say something to the boys. I had been foolish to think Gracie would stay indefinitely. It wasn’t her way. She was eighteen when she began to teach me how to leave. Boys were one way out, I knew, careers another, but when she stumbled through a haze of drugs at the threshold of her life, I made sure I found another door. Lying there with my own broken dreams spread out around me, I thought of Gracie’s nearly fatal escape and her bloodstained bridal veil on the floor of our Faile Street tenement.
He in his madness prays for storms
and dreams that storms will bring him peace.
— Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
Broken Dreams
Gracie pinned her hair in a French twist and stuck in the last bobby pin before she walked from her bedroom out to the cellar to meet Jacky, who she called her James Dean. We all loved Jacky a little, with his blonde hair combed straight back, drowsy blue eyes, tight black pants, and white socks that peeked over wingtips.
“Here, kid.” He smiled at me. “Buy yourself a Coke.” Then he handed me a nickel. I looked out the window to watch them cross the yard, Jacky’s arm around her shoulder, his head leaning in to listen to her soft words.
Gracie wore skirts that fell mid-calf, tight sweaters with matching neckerchiefs, and high heels that wobbled when she walked. She carried a black patent-leather handbag with a clasp that someone once twisted open while she was on the subway and then stole her wallet. Get a handbag with a zipper, my mother had warned, but Gracie was seventeen, worked at her first job as a receptionist at American Express, and was not about to carry an old lady’s handbag.
“Kat,” Gracie said when I picked up the phone one afternoon. “I left Jacky’s ring on the bathroom sink. If you bring it to me, I’ll buy you lunch.”
I was nine-years-old, and, although I had taken the subway by myself before, I had never been all the way downtown, or even past 42nd Street where my father worked, and now Jacky’s ring was buying me an escape. “There’s ten cents under the scarves in my top drawer. Take the #6 downtown from Hunts Point and get off at 125th Street. Cross over the platform for the #4 train to Wall Street. I’ll meet you at the top of the stairs.”
An hour later we were at Schrafft’s sharing her favorite lunch. It was the late 50s, a time when ladies wore hats and gloves, and Schrafft’s was a place a woman could dine alone amid the splendid architecture of the two-story restaurant and, if she was so included, sip gin from a teacup. It was where lovers could sit behind marble columns to hide from the public eye, and where, that day, the elegant interior made me feel like a princess.
I sat up tall and felt the excitement. This is where I want to be, I thought, as the bustle of Manhattan moved around me.
“What is Jacky going to do when you become a stewardess?” I asked Gracie.
American Express was temporary until she turned eighteen when she could apply for her dream job with an airline. She was still looking down at her hand, admiring the ring Jacky gave her when he graduated from high school.
“He’ll get a job too.” Gracie squeezed my hand. “What do you want to be?” She had never asked this question before, but I didn’t need to think about it.
“I want to be a writer.” I shrugged and smiled at the idea that had finally been put into words. Gracie nodded, watching me.
“What will you write about?” Her question was serious, not like she was talking to a kid. I took my time watching the blur of people moving toward important places.
“You.”
__________
Dear Diary: Gracie brought you home with her tonight. She said I could write about whatever I want and keep it locked from our nosy little sister Annie. I’m going to keep you with me all the time and write stories of Faile Street, which I still hate, but now I’m used to living here.
__________
“Three more months until flight school.” Gracie made an X on the calendar she had nailed to the wall, the dates crossed off until March 26, 1958, when she turned eighteen. “I sent away for both applications, but I don’t know which airline I’m going to pick,” she told me.
I knew it was between Pan Am and Eastern. Their posters hung on the wall on either side of the calendar.
“Where will you fly?” I asked her, and although I had asked this same question so many times, she thought for a minute as she lit one of her Luckies and blew out the smoke in one cool breeze.
“If I pick Eastern, I’ll fly in the U.S. If I pick Pan Am, I can fly everywhere.”
The red-eagle Eastern airplane was headed for the sky, the blue Pan Am globe promised the world. “Pan Am,” I said. I wanted the sun and the moon for Gracie. “So you can see the world.”
Out in the living room, I heard my mother say, “What are you doing here, Tom?” My father still lurked around, even four years after he had been kicked to the curb. “Get out,” she yelled, but a minute later, he was standing in the doorway to the room Gracie now shared with me, an old storeroom with no heat that she and Rose had painted pink and set up twin beds. Rose had been gone two years, married and moved away from Faile Street forever.
My father’s face was dark with day-old whiskers, his suit hung from his shoulders, and the flap of his shirt had come untucked. He didn’t love my mother or his children, but she was still his wife, since he swore he would never give her a divorce. It didn’t matter that he had moved out and never showed concern for any of us. It was the one aspect of his life where he still had power, and in his eyes he was our father and what he said was sacrosanct. Sitting on Gracie’s bed next to her, I could smell the Fleischmann’s whiskey. He stepped into the room and squinted at the wall.
“Why are you crossing off dates?”
Gracie hesitated. She looked fragile, pale, her auburn hair swept back into a neat little dancer’s bun.
His voice went up a notch. “I asked you a question.”
“I’m counting down to my birthday,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “When I can go to flight school.”
I inched closer to her, watching my father. There was something about his eyes, like a snake coiled, waiting to strike. “You’re not going anywhere, young lady.” He raised his chin. Defy me, it said, and you will be sorry.
“She’s been dreaming about this for a long time, Tom. Let her have it.” My mother’s voice had lost the defiance she had gained in the years he was out of the house. She looked startled when he slammed her into the wall, her head striking the doorframe, knocking the wind out of her. She stood there like a child, holding the side of her head.
“She’s not going to fly in any airplane.” His twisted mouth exposed a dark space of missing teeth someone had knocked out years ago. He grabbed the calendar from the wall and ripped it in half. “Don’t let me hear about flying again. Do you hear me?”
Gracie looked down at the torn pieces. “I hear you,” she said softly. I felt stung by her surrender, sure I would have stood up for myself, would not have let my dreams be ruined by a father who had deserted us.
Gracie quit school at sixteen, as had Rose. It was something expected of us all, to bring home a paycheck. We weren’t a family of dreamers, and maybe Gracie had known all along that her dream was as flimsy as a paper calendar, and that my father would dash out her dreams like you pinch out a budding rose before its blooming time. Gracie wasn’t cunning. She had not known that to keep anything sacred in this family, you did not put it on the wall for everyone to see. Even locked in a closet, it could get stolen from you. My father, with his kicked-in teeth and hollow mouth, was a genius at broken dreams.
When he turned to leave, he found Corky standing in the doorway, blocking his way, a baseball bat in his hand. Corky’s dark hair had grown from the short crew cut my mother insisted for the four boys, and now stood straight up on his head, untamed.
They stood eye-to-eye. My father’s eye twitched first, acknowledging the strength of his fourteen-year-old son, and he stepped back.
__________
Dear Diary: Some day Corky will kill him and I’ll be happy.
__________
Gracie married Jacky just after her eighteenth birthday. In his arms she felt safe from her father and safe from Faile Street, but in this single defiant act of marriage, I learned that you had to choose the right man for your escape, that choosing just anyone could leave you as imprisoned as the past from which you had tried to escape.
It was an hour before she would walk down the aisle, and already the ashtray on the dresser was filled with stubs of filter-less cigarettes. She tapped a Lucky Strike against her wrist, flicked a green plastic lighter until the cigarette caught, and then fidgeted with her hair, adjusting one last bobby pin before she lifted the pearl-studded bridal crown to her head. She looked like Cinderella. My mother stood at the doorway, her eyes brimming with tears.
“You can’t wear pearls on your wedding day,” she told her. “It’s bad luck.”
Gracie looked at her reflection in the mirror. “That’s an old wives’ tale, Mom. And anyway, Jacky’s mother bought it, I can’t disappoint her.”
It was Annie, younger than I by twenty-one months, who was the first to walk down the aisle in her pink ruffled dress, dropping rose petals, followed by Gracie holding my father’s arm. He lifted her veil and kissed her cheek, then took a seat off by himself.
__________
That night I lay on the sofa and reimagined Gracie dancing with Jacky, her dress gliding softly across the floor. I thought of the toasts to the new couple and cheers when they made their exit to begin their life together. But I woke to Gracie’s shouts channeling through my groggy dreams. The sliver of light grew bigger as Gracie opened the cellar door, Ja
cky behind her, the pearl-studded crown off-center, the once-white shoes in her hand. Closing my eyes and I feigned sleep.
“You’re high,” Gracie said to her new husband. “I can tell you’ve been using, and I’m not going with you.”
Jacky grabbed her. “You’re coming, even if I have to drag you there, so get dressed.” I stayed so still they didn’t notice I was in the room.
“No,” she twisted away, stumbling into the coffee table. I heard breaking glass, a soft cry. Gracie had cut her hand on the champagne glasses left over from the pre-wedding celebration, and I watched as scarlet blood dripped down the front of her Cinderella dress. We both jumped when Jacky slammed the door, rattling the windowpanes. Gracie looked at the blood as if it belonged to someone else.
“I’ll get you a Band-Aid,” I said as I jumped off the sofa.
A sob that had been building escaped and tears fell from her eyes. “Bastard.”
The word wasn’t meant for me, I knew, but my eyes welled up too. She walked out of the room. A few minutes later, she was out of the house, in the Rose Dirndl dress she bought for her honeymoon.
I looked around the room that my mother had spent the last of her energy cleaning and redecorating for the big day, the rug retrieved from lay-away already stained with champagne from the pre-party celebration. Lying on the floor next to the broken glass was the crown with the studded pearls, and the veil spotted with blood.
__________
With Gracie gone and my mother working at the automat, just across town from the one where my father worked, I was in charge of the four little ones. Her job at the automat was a good one, my mother said, because she could bring home leftovers and there would almost always be something for dinner. Just like Gracie used to do, I gathered the little ones together on the couch and gave them a book to read. At eight, Annie could read pretty well, Timmy sounded out words, and Danny and Patrick took time out from destroying the apartment to listen to stories about the adventures of Lassie or The Little Prince. But when story time was over, there was little I could do to contain the cyclone that tore through the place. I missed my Gracie.
Life Detonated Page 5
