Life Detonated

by Murray Moran, Kathleen

  __________

  Dear Diary: I had a dream last night that my mother told me a secret story, something, she said, that was between just the two of us. I want to write it down but her words were in Spanish.

  __________

  Gracie worked at the laundry folding towels until her baby came, and then one day she was home again. “What’s the matter?” My mother watched Gracie pick up her Luckies and walk over to the stove where she took a wooden match from the box on the wall and struck it on the burner. It wasn’t until she blew out the smoke that she answered. “Jacky’s in jail.”

  Jacky would never meet his child, a boy Gracie named Matthew, blonde like him. He had stolen social security checks from mailboxes, forged signatures, and cashed them at the Southern Boulevard Check-Cashing store. He needed the money to buy drugs, and Gracie had looked the other way. He wouldn’t change out of a prison uniform for twenty years.

  __________

  Dear Diary: I will have Gracie all to myself again.

  __________

  I wrote in that diary until the pages were filled and then used composition notebooks to write my stories. I wanted to share them with someone, but there was no one who cared, no oversight into what I was doing or what I needed, no one at home to follow up on homework or take an interest in my schoolwork. It was Gracie who had encouraged me, who had said I could do anything, who seemed the plausible solution to someone at home taking care that I made good grades. But after she moved back home she became distant, and without her to turn to, the world I lived in was limited, low ceilings, nothing to strive for, save being a waitress or a counter girl at the Horn & Hardart automat where my mother worked. There wasn’t anyone to look up to who had gone to college or knew how to encourage high academic expectations. Taking books out of the library, I learned to write, but I wasn’t a well-rounded student. I didn’t understand math or science. I didn’t get good grades. I never knew that I was smart or had any talent.

  Around me the tide seemed to pull back and forth, pushing toward the unattainable as it had for Rose and Gracie and Corky, but I believed there must be a trapdoor, a secret hatch that could lead me into a world where opportunities existed, where the routes to freedom weren’t blocked by a Faile Street address.

  So it goes.

  —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

  Half Pay

  Brian delivered me from the purgatory that was Faile Street, but his death sent me to a level of hell from which there seemed no exile. It was a strange existence, living a life you were thrust into without choice or preparation. Floating in the ether of indecision, I kept surreptitiously turning to ask Brian’s advice, picking up the phone to call him at work, searching for the portal back to the seven years we were happily married. While the city had come out for the wake and the funeral, after a few weeks, that fervor died down, and I felt completely and utterly alone with questions and no one to answer them.

  I found it hard to get out of bed, to pour a bowl of cereal, to read bedtime stories to my sons. Depression wasn’t really the word that captured how I felt. It was more like a complete shut-down; there was nothing left, no escape, no beauty, no sound that made a difference, not even the sound of my children’s laughter. Outside, people came and went, took walks, laughed and cried, but none of that penetrated the darkness that covered my world. In the mirror, my face looked old and tired, my hair a neglected tangle. Brian often told me I didn’t know how beautiful I was. Now, at twenty-eight, I didn’t care, and beauty was the last thing on my mind.

  I kept thinking about the irony of Brian asking for a transfer back into uniform right before he died, a painful decision for him since he loved the bomb squad and the team he worked with. He had been on the force six years, was considered an expert in his field, and dreamed of one day instituting innovative ways to more safely render devices harmless. Bomb disposal was the reason he went on the police force in the first place, and with his degree in Criminal Justice in sight, he saw himself moving up the ranks.

  Only there were no promotions in the bomb squad because the unit had become part of the Technical Service Bureau, which was outside the purview of the Detective Bureau. While men like Paul and Bobby, who had come on the force with Brian, received their detective shields, the men on the bomb squad, who clearly worked as detectives, did not. This affected morale. They saw themselves left behind as others who had joined the force moved ahead, getting promotions and raises. He was tired of the excuses, and he wanted out.

  I was the one who kept telling him to stay with the bomb squad, wait it out, that they couldn’t withhold promotions forever. But the real reason I wanted him to stay was that statistics showed he had a better chance of being gunned down walking the streets of New York City in a blue uniform than being blown up by a bomb. The bomb squad had a stellar reputation for safety, with a single fatal explosion almost forty years before, compared with street cops whose names filled the walls of One Police Plaza. But now a bomb had exploded and plain clothes had not saved him. I needed to know why it happened, but the department had closed ranks, leaving me to grapple with the question alone. That familiar cloak of invisibility had descended again, and this time Brian wouldn’t be there to lift it off me.

  __________

  On a morning when my mother came to Rockville Centre to take the boys to the playground, I finally managed to do my own grocery shopping, and when I came home, I found a sedan I had never seen before sitting in front of our house.

  “Kathleen Murray?” The driver ran to catch up with me when I got out of my car. “Bill Hutchinson.” He offered his hand, but I didn’t take it.

  My arms were full of grocery bags. “If you’re the press—”

  “NYPD pension department.” He cut me off and adjusted his thick, smudged glasses. I remembered vaguely someone was supposed to come by about my pension. The department had issued an initial insurance check, but there was still paperwork to be filled out.

  “I’m scheduled to talk to you about your umm . . .” He looked out at the empty street. “Pension.” He stood awkwardly, waiting for me to say something, not offering to help me with the bags.

  He continued to fidget nervously once seated at my kitchen table while I put away the groceries and prepared coffee. Why? I wanted to scream at this nervous anxious little man. Why did that bomb explode? Brian could dismantle a bomb with his eyes closed, why did this one explode and kill my husband?

  Instead, I asked, “Would you like anything in your coffee, Mr. Hutchinson?” I looked at the dandruff on his sloped shoulders and almost felt sorry for him.

  “Black, please. Thank you.” He was here before. I remembered now my mother coming up to the bedroom to tell me a Bill Hutchinson wanted to talk about my pension, but I told her to send him away. I thought his visit was simply a formality, the department would take care of us. I’d already told my boss to find a replacement. “The boys need me,” I told Harry, and he agreed, said I could come back any time I wanted to, but I knew I wouldn’t commute into the city again. I needed to stay home, close to my boys.

  When I sat down Mr. Hutchinson opened his worn briefcase and spread his papers in front of me. “As of September 11, 1976, you will receive half of your husband’s yearly salary. That amounts to $879.77 per month.”

  I stared at him. “Half?” He had the faint smell of old socks about him. “But I thought I would get three quarters. Don’t injured officers receive three quarters?”

  Bill Hutchinson smoothed his thin hair. “Yes, but, um, you see.” His voice had a whining quality to it. “You have one less mouth to feed.”

  “One less mouth to feed? My sons just lost their father. How will I raise them on half of Brian’s salary?” The way he looked at me made me want to scream with the awfulness of it all.

  “Well anyway,” he spoke quickly. “You will receive Social Security for yourself and your sons.” He adjusted his glasses. “
So that should make up for the loss in salary.”

  Did that mean I would have to leave my sons with a babysitter and return to work? I looked into his cloudy eyes for answers. “Is that how they reward their heroes?” I stared at his shiny, worn suit. “I don’t even know what happened to my husband. Do you know how that feels? And now they are taking away half his salary.”

  Bill Hutchinson colored. There was a drop of spittle on the page he slid over for me to sign. “Again, we are sorry for your loss.”

  From the kitchen window, I watched him walk down our front path to his sedan. He walked on his toes as if perpetually about to fall on his face.

  That night, when Gracie called, I told her that I had not been able to stop crying since he left. “He made it feel so final.”

  From the living room, I heard the commercial for Coca Cola, teaching my sons that if they drank soda, the world would be a better place. At four and two they already learned that they could not count on the world being better for them.

  I looked around the pretty kitchen and saw Brian everywhere, the Formica counter tops he had replaced, the pantry he converted from a coat closet, his mug still sitting on the shelf. “What am I going to do in a month or two months or a year from now?” I asked Gracie. “I will still be alone with two boys to raise.”

  “Why don’t you ask Mom to come stay with you.”

  I hesitated. I didn’t like where the conversation was headed, and dried my eyes with a tissue. “She is staying with me.”

  “I mean permanently,” Gracie said. “She can give you time to get back on your feet. It will give her a purpose.”

  “Is that why she has been so great?” I threw the bunch of balled up tissues in the trash. “Because she needs a purpose?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because she realizes she missed her chance.” Something in Gracie’s voice sounded sad and distant, as though this were her life she was talking about as much as my mother’s.

  My mother had a heart attack a year before, but she had recovered nicely and was back to her job at Horn & Hardart. She talked about retiring, and moving in with the boys and me seemed to be the obvious solution. But I had to somehow move past my sorrow so I wouldn’t miss my sons’ childhood like my mother missed mine. I would ask my mother to move in, but first I had to figure out how to be there for the boys myself, how to make sure their lives were not hijacked as mine had been.

  It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.

  — W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

  Losing Gracie

  As much as I loved Gracie, she had not been able to transform her pain and rage into action but had hidden from it behind the silky draw of a sweet high. And I spent my life trying desperately to choose another road. I knew for sure that Gracie and I were headed down different paths one Christmas long ago, and I had learned to make that hard choice on a snowy cold night on the streets of the Bronx.

  My mother tried to keep out the South Bronx by installing four locks on the cellar door, but it was so warped it hung open like an invitation. That Christmas when I started to lose Gracie forever, she was standing, half-in and half-out of the cellar door, smiling at our attempt to get ready for Santa. Even with our coats on, we were freezing as we tried to string the lights.

  I was all dressed up in my new outfit, a yellow dress with a flared skirt. Underneath, I was wearing a training bra, a garter belt, and silk stockings with a seam up the back just like my mother. Annie and I were meeting Angela and a few friends for midnight mass, and I wanted to show her off. She was eleven, and I envied her smooth blonde hair, un-freckled skin, and pouty lips. She looked beautiful, standing there holding the angel in her matching yellow dress and Maryjanes.

  We had cleared the garbage cans and shovels out of the corner so there was enough space for a tree, and Timmy climbed on the kitchen chair, took the angel from Annie, and balanced it on top.

  Gracie stepped into the cellar and leaned against the cold cement, the dim overhead bulb gave her skin a gray cast. Recently she had been leaving her baby, Matthew, with Annie and heading out, we weren’t sure where. Annie hated the fourth grade anyway and was happy to stay home and play mommy. I wondered if anyone else noticed Gracie slipping away. I felt it, the absence of the old Gracie who talked to me like there wasn’t eight years between us, the Gracie who used to come home after a date with Jacky and tell me stories about dancing like Cinderella in a place so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

  Now Jacky was serving twenty years for check forgery, and we weren’t sure where Gracie was spending her time, except with her best friend Gloria, beautiful Gloria of the raven hair, cocoa skin, and charcoal half-moon eyebrows over shiny black eyes.

  “Chu don’ have shit to eat in dis house,” I heard her tell Gracie. “Come to my house. I cook f’you.”

  When Gracie came home, sometimes days later, I asked questions with the innocent logic of a thirteen-year-old, “How come you look so sleepy?”

  My mother’s questions were harsher. “Where have you been? Why aren’t you taking care of your baby?”

  Gracie was in the apprentice stage then, gradually tiptoeing in on the lives of South Bronx junkies who lived in abandoned buildings and slept near radiators on cruddy mattresses.

  “Where’s Matthew?” Gracie asked.

  “I just put him down for a nap,” Annie told her.

  “Here.” I offered her a garland of lights. “Why don’t you help us string some lights.”

  But Gracie didn’t take the lights. “I can’t stay.” She ground her cigarette into the cement floor with the toe of her shoe. “I just want to see Matthew and then I have to meet George.” George, her new boyfriend from Long Island, drove a red Thunderbird convertible and sometimes let us pile into the back seat for a ride.

  She went through the door that led to the apartment and came back with Matthew in her arms. He looked sleepy, slightly dazed. Gracie hugged him and kissed his face all over as he squirmed and finally started to cry, putting his arms out for Annie. But Gracie wouldn’t let go. She fished her cigarettes out of her bag.

  “Open the boxes.” She lit up a Lucky Strike and took a deep drag. “I’ll tell you where to hang the decorations.” She looked sophisticated with the cigarette, and for a moment I saw the once-beautiful sister I loved like a mother.

  At 6:30 p.m., the tree looking as Christmassy as we could manage, Timmy and I grabbed our coats and went to meet my mother at the train so we could help carry her shopping bags from the automat. Walking to the Hunt’s Point train station, we played a guessing game about what we would have for dinner. Sometimes she brought dessert for dinner, bear claws she served with milk.

  As soon as my mother emerged from the subway stairs I told her Gracie was at the house, and her eyes lit up.

  “What’d you bring us?” Timmy asked.

  “Mashed potatoes, chicken, baked beans, and,” she smiled at me, “rice pudding.”

  Timmy and I looked at each other, excited about the feast, and hauled the heavy bags up Faile Street. At home we unpacked them in the kitchen.

  “Where’s Gracie?” my mother asked Annie, who was placing forks alongside each plate.

  “She had to meet George, and took Matt with her.”

  “Oh Jesus.” My mother put her hand on her chest. “She can’t be out on Christmas Eve with that baby.”

  “She took the carriage and his blanket,” Annie said, which made it okay with her.

  “I don’t care what she took with her. They’re predicting six inches of snow tonight. Go find them.”

  “Maybe she’s at Gloria’s,” I said hopefully.

  “You know Gloria won’t let George in. She hates him.” My mother knew what I was too young to understand, that George, too, was a junkie looking for his next fix, and would drag
Gracie down even further into the netherword of drugs. “Anyway, Gloria’s probably with her family tonight. Go look around Kelly Street.”

  I was just about to protest when I saw tears brimming in her eyes, which brought home the gravity of Matt spending Christmas Eve in some tenement hallway.

  On our way out we met Corky on the stairs. At seventeen, already a junkie himself, he would know better than me which drug den Gracie hung out in, but when I asked him if he could help us find Gracie, he said only, “I’ve got plans,” and turned around to go back the way he came. No “Merry Christmas,” no “I’ll see you later.”

  “Merry Christmas. I hate you,” I called after him.

  As we walked along Faile Street, the cold wind went right through my coat. We passed windows decorated with spray-on snow and a manic-looking elf with glitter eyes that pranced toward the sidewalk. Lights twinkled on trees in the lobbies we passed, and, as we rounded the corner of Hoe Avenue, we could hear Bing Crosby’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” spilling onto the sidewalk. Curtains were opened in a ground-floor apartment, and I watched a family having dinner. Two parents and three kids. They looked cozy, and I thought for the hundredth time how nice it would be to have a small family. Row upon row of brightly-lit windows shuttered families inside, safe against the cold.

  On Southern Boulevard, Wishner’s Toy Store was still open. We watched a man wheel out a bicycle with a big red bow on it. Two women stood in line, toys piled in their arms. I knew the storeroom at home held boxes wrapped with Christmas paper my mother had hidden. They were from Aunt Delia, but my mother took off the tags to make it seem like they were from Santa. I could peek inside the box with my name on it but loved the suspense almost better than the gift. I had asked for a girl’s bike, again, and I liked to believe I might actually get one, just like the one the man in the store bought for his daughter.