Bloodbrothers (7 page)

Phyllis smiled nervously. "I'm going to bed now."

"I'll be in later, sweets." He turned to Tommy. "Hey, Stony tell you what happened last night?"

"Yeah, I heard, yah beast!" Tommy smiled.

Chubby got up. "You want some coffee, Tom?"

"Just a little."

Chubby fussed around in the kitchen and came out with two cups and a pastry box of cannoli. They sat in the dinette and dug in.

"You hear anything about the union?" Chubby picked out a cannoli.

"What about the union?" Tommy turned the box toward him and picked out the biggest one.

"You know, about Stony."

"Any time he wants, he's in." Tommy wiped his mouth with a napkin. "The fuckin' kid's breakin' my chops though. He keeps stallin', yes, no, yes, no."

"Give 'im slack, he's goin' through a rough time."

"Rough time, my ass. That kid's got it made. He ain't workin'.
he ain't goin' a school. He hangs aroun' gettin' laid an'jerkin' his bird. He's gotta start pullin' his own weight or I'm gonna kick him out on the street."

Chubby snorted. "Right, I can see you doin' that. Who you think you talkin' to, Indians?" Chubby picked up another cannoli. "You don't let that kid go to the john with less'en twenny bucks in his pocket."

"Well, that's all gonna stop right away."

"Uh-huh, hey, I gave Stones some pointers last night on how to handle women. The kid's awright, but sometimes I think he walks around wit' his head up his ass. Din't you ever tell 'im the facts a life?" Chubby licked some cream off his fingers.

"Hell, no! Let 'im learn it the way I did ... in the gutter." Tommy laughed. "Nah, really, what am I supposed to tell 'im? How to stick it in?"

"Nah, you know ... just ... he don't know how to handle things. I don't think he got any problem knowin'
how
to stick it in, he just don't know
when
to stick it in. An' I also think he don't know when to pull it out. That Cheri girl got him doin' a hurtin' dance."

"Hey, you know what Pop said to me when I was twelve? Here's the facts a life for you. I ask him how you do it, you know? He says to me, 'Don't worry, when the time comes, you'll know, animals can do it, you can do it.'" Tommy slurped his coffee.

"You're lucky. When
I
ast him, he answered wit' the back of his hand."

"He was a motherfucker, wasn't he?"

"Yeah, Pop was somethin' else again."

"He really smacked you, hah?"

"You should remember. Tom, that's when I was gonna leave home."

"Oh yeah! That's when I came at you wit'..."

"Yeah, remember? You was ten. I was packin' my knapsack an' I told you I was runnin' away. You left the room an' come back wit' a friggin' butcher knife. You says to me, 'If you ever do anything to break Mom's heart, I'll kill you.' "

"Holy shit! I remember that! Yeah! I was a cunt hair away from runnin' you through."

"I saw it in your face. You were one fuckin' sick puppy that day."

"You know, it's funny. I didn't get scared standin' there with that knife, until I saw
you
was scared. You started unpackin' right away, remember?"

"Do I remember! I didn't leave the fuckin' bedroom for a week, you sick fuck!"

"Pop was a fuckin' bastard with us though. Hey, you remember that whistle a his? Any time I was playin' in the street an' I heard that whistle, my heart would jump into my mouth. No matter what I was doin' I would stop everything and run upstairs, an' half the time he was callin' me to whip my ass for somethin' or other. Din't make no difference cause I knew if he had to whistle again I would just get beat worse. Till the day I die I won't ever forget that whistle." Tommy put his thumb and middle finger on his tongue and let loose with three shrill blasts—the first two short, followed by a long, higher-pitched third.

Chubby winced at the memory. "You know, Tom, about six years ago I heard a guy on a job give Pop's whistle. I almost shit on myself."

"We were like trained dogs. One time I was fingerin' Sally Rudnick in the hallway. Pop whistles, I almost ripped out her box."

"Yeah, but he had his moments though. I mean, he wasn't the greatest, but he did what he had to. We never starved, he always had a roof over our heads an' we always had a little coin in our pockets. He useta say alia time a man's only worth what he got in his wallet. An' he shoulda known too. I remember one year in the thirties he was holdin' down three jobs. He would come home at five from the construction site, eat dinner an' go down to the
Times
plant on Forty-sixth Street and load papers on the trucks until midnight an' on the weekends he was the bouncer at Gianelli's. You remember Gianelli's?"

"Pop was a bouncer?"

"Yeah. You was really little at that time. He did it for about six months until one Saturday night when he eighty-sixed some punk. The guy came back with some friends after closing an' they bushwhacked him outside the club, broke his fuckin' arm. Old man Gianelli fired him on the spot. What good's a bouncer with a busted arm? An' they din't have compensation in those days either."

"I never knew that."

"It's the truth. An' it took six months for that arm to heal because he wouldn't take time out to rest. He was probably the only guy doin' construction an' loadin' trucks in New York City with his arm in a sling."

"Hard-nose bastard."

"Give 'im his due, Tom."

M
ONDAY MORNING
Marie and Phyllis did their weekly shopping together. After unpacking the groceries, Phyllis walked to Marie's to shoot the shit.

Marie foraged in the refrigerator for the Half & Half. "I went to Schindler Friday."

"For Albert?" Phyllis sat at the kitchen table, two cups of steaming black coffee and a box of marble cake in front of her.

"For me." Marie shut the refrigerator door and sat down, putting a quart of milk on the table.

"For what?" Phyllis lightened her coffee with the milk.

Marie shrugged. "I still got those cramps."

"I thought they went away." Phyllis picked at the cake.

"They did. They came back. And I started bleedin' a little too." Marie extracted a cigarette from her red plastic case. "Schindler said it's from aggravation."

"Aggravation?" Phyllis repeated incredulously. "He's a goddamn horse doctor. How come you don't use Schwartz?"

Marie shrugged.

"What Schwartz forgot is more than Schindler'll ever know."

"I dunno. He gave me some tranquilizers."

"He's a quack," Phyllis said contemptuously.

"At least he's better'n Marcus. Remember Marcus?"

"Marcus, even if Marcus
was
a horse doctor, he'd still be a quack."

"Remember when I was in Parkchester with Albert?"

"Oh, with the tubes?"

"The tubes?"

"Yeah. The thing with the tubes, you remember."

"Oh that. I almost forgot that. God,
that
was something, but I wasn't thinkin' about the thing with the tubes, I was thinkin' about the thing with the blood," Marie said.

"What thing with the blood?"

"You know, with the needle?"

"I don't remember."

"Maybe I never told you ... when Marcus took blood?"

"No."

"Remember, I was in Parkchester two days before I had Albert? The night before I had him Marcus had to take blood from me. One of the big needles that they take from here." She tapped the inside of her elbow. Phyllis made a face. "You know I'm not squeamish or anything. When Stony opened his head on the wall that time I was the only one that could stand there with the ice cubes," Marie said.

"I remember Tommy fainted." Phyllis raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, big tough guy. Anyways, so you know, I'm not afraid of a little blood. But what Marcus did ... I was sittin' in a wheelchair. They had me in a white smock, and you know how Marcus always had the shakes?"

"Yeah, well, he was shootin' up all the time," Phyllis said offhandedly. "That was the only thing that kept him going. I saw him do it once in the bathroom. He came over one time when Chubby had the flu. He walks in the house and goes straight to the bathroom and shoots up. It was probably speed," Phyllis added knowledgeably, "that's the only way that old bastard could keep goin'. He wouldn't take on a younger doctor to help him. I saw him shoot up and I said forget it, that's it. I don't need a junkie doctor for me an' my own. You remember I called you that day? You didn't believe me."

"If I called
you
then, would you believe me?" Marie shrugged. "Whatever ... anyways ... I'm sittin' on a chair in my room. It's night; Tommy just left, and I was reading a
Life
magazine." She flicked the ash of her cigarette. "This nurse comes in with a wheelchair and wheels me down to this lab or something and there's Marcus waiting for me with this big needle to take blood and I see he's into his "Shimmy Like Kate" number. The nurse gets me up on this table, ties one of those rubber things around my arm and Marcus goes in with the needle. I was scared because he was shakin' like he just got religion. But it don't hurt much, it's over real quick and he starts injecting the blood into this test tube. The nurse starts takin' the rubber tube off my arm and she must've bumped a tray or something off the table but all of a sudden there's this crash. Marcus ... Marcus jumps twenty feet in the air and spills all the blood in the test tube all over me, all over my white smock, and I look down and I'm drenched with my own blood."

"Oh my God!" Phyllis covered her mouth. "What you do?"

"I fainted. I woke up. I was in bed with a clean gown on. For a while I thought the whole thing was a dream, until I saw the look on Marcus' face the next morning."

"Disgusting." Phyllis shook her head.

"I should've known then that Albert was gonna be heartache. It was a bad omen."

"Oh stop, Marie."

"Everybody has a cross to bear in this life, Phyllis, and Albert's mine."

"Marie, don't talk like that." Phyllis flinched. "He's such a sweet baby. All he wants to do is please you."

"Ten years between babies ... why'd I do that?"

"You tell me."

"Thirty-seven's too old ... with the diapers, the screaming, the sickness all over again. I used to wake up with him crying and whining and I would have this fantasy ... this thing ... I would imagine getting up, putting on my coat, taking the Christmas Club money, one suitcase, and grabbing the first bus out of Port Authority to wherever it's going. One time I actually got down there, suitcase and everything. I remember that night. Albert started crying about two in the morning. Sometimes I would just lay there forever until he stopped crying. That night I lay there an hour. He wouldn't stop. Finally, I just got up, put on that green dress I had, threw some underwear and jewelry in a suitcase and walked out of the house. I had about seventy-five dollars on me. I took
a cab down to Port Authority and I got in line where they got that big map of the country with all the cities lit up. When I got up to the counter the man said, 'Where to?' I looked up at the map and said, 'Buffalo'; then he said, 'Round trip?' and I felt like I didn't understand him and he said, 'Round trip?' again. I just said, 'What?' Then he got pissed and looked at me like I was a Puerto Rican or something. I got so embarrassed I ran away from the counter. I remember sitting down in the waiting room and crying for about half an hour. Some nice fella came over with a cup of coffee from a coffee machine and sat down next to me. A very good-looking tall guy. He gave me the coffee and offered me his handkerchief. He said he was meeting his wife in half an hour. She was coming in on a bus from New Jersey. She was a singer in a club there, but they lived in the city and he was trying to get a better job so she wouldn't have to keep up this schedule and she could sing at only the clubs she wanted to. He asked me if I was coming or going. I said I wish I knew. Anyways, we talked and talked and talked and I felt terrific, like I totally forgot everything and then his wife came over. She was very beautiful with dyed red hair and this guy introduced us. At first I think she was sizing up the situation but then she saw I had been crying. Anyways, the three of us went into a place for coffee and we talked for a long time. Her name was Francine Etter but she sang under the name Marlena King. She did that hoping that some people would confuse her with Morgana King. His name was Larry Etter. He worked in the post office as a foreman but he was going to night school at Bronx Community College to be a mechanical draftsman. I never seen two people so much in love in my life. I got all sorts of excited and I told them about that time I was on Ted Mack's radio show with my girlfriends Maureen and Felice and we sang 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' and 'Hold Tight' and the program director told us we sounded just like the Andrews Sisters even though we didn't win and the next day when we went back to James Monroe we were celebrities and all the kids heard us the night before on the radio and our pictures were on the front page of the school paper." Marie stared past Phyllis. "Anyways, we exchanged phone numbers and promised to get together over the holidays and I was talkin' about everybody going up to the Neville Country Club in Ellenville for Memorial Day ... real crazy things like that. And they both kissed me goodby and I felt like they were my best friends in the world. But the minute they left I started thinkin' about the baby, about Tommy, about the apartment and I got this feeling like I couldn't breathe. I wound up cryin' again and I took the subway up to my mother's place on the Concourse. It was six-thirty and the sun was just comin' up and everything looked really quiet and peaceful and I remember wishin' that the Bronx could always be like that. I go up to my mother's place and I didn't want to wake her so I just lay down on the couch in the living room and next thing I know somebody's shakin' my shoulder. My mother's standing over me yellin' in Italian. I see it's ten o'clock. I got in a panic and I jump up, run downstairs and grab a cab back to the house. I run into the bedroom and there's this godawful stink and I see there's shit all over everything. Stony was standing over the crib trying to change Albert's diaper. He was ten years old, can you imagine that? He even fed Albert a bottle. He couldn't figure out how to heat the formula so he filled the bottle with cream soda. I tell you, I could've had ten kids like him."