Charming Billy (25 page)
Authors: Alice McDermott
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Literary, #United States, #Contemporary Fiction
There may be families, you said, who would lower their voices in the open air (mine, for instance, I told you, who at about this same time on that same night were listening quietly over our grilled round steaks to my grandmother’s explanation regarding the sensibility of renting out the place all year, fond memories notwithstanding), but yours wasn’t one of them. They were at each other a good ten minutes out on the side lawn, and then your father swung into the kitchen again, your mother right behind, trying to catch him by the back of his shirt. Both of them, with their eyes so bright and their jaws so set, with everything about them, you said, tunneled into their
anger, unaware of, it seemed, blind to the three boys still at the table, over the remnants of another catsup dinner. Back into the bedroom.
You
was the operative word in these arguments, you said.
You
flung like a spitball.
You
peeled off and flung back again. Me?
You!
If they had only been able to decide which one of them was you they might have known for certain and at last which one of them was to blame. They might have resolved something. (Ducking your head again to smile. I liked your mouth, your dark eyes, the leather bracelet on your slim wrist.)
anger, unaware of, it seemed, blind to the three boys still at the table, over the remnants of another catsup dinner. Back into the bedroom.
You
was the operative word in these arguments, you said.
You
flung like a spitball.
You
peeled off and flung back again. Me?
You!
If they had only been able to decide which one of them was you they might have known for certain and at last which one of them was to blame. They might have resolved something. (Ducking your head again to smile. I liked your mouth, your dark eyes, the leather bracelet on your slim wrist.)
Your father spent the night, perhaps the next dozen of them, on his boat, because it was September at least—at least school had started again—before he actually brought you and your brothers to the little house he had rented. You hated it, of course, the musty rooms and the blood-red shingles and the sense that whatever latent capacity your father had to become a stranger was now realized as he moved around the tiny kitchen, opening cabinets and drawers and mumbling, Now, where does she keep … frying eggs and bacon and serving them to you on faded china plates that were not his, not your mother’s, that my mother had picked up, as a matter of fact, at the Opportunity Shop in East Hampton for a dollar or two (the remnant of another upheaval in yet another household) another summer years ago. You hated the little house because it was proof positive, or so it had seemed to you then, that your parents’ marriage was over, that the days of the five of you living together were over. That the anger and the shouting would never, as you had always believed, somehow resolve itself into love again, peace. Don’t even think about it, you told Cody and John. Don’t even hope.
You slept in the room with the particle-board Buster Brown and Tighe on the wall. My room, I said, that’s where I always stay—“We’ve already slept in the same bed, then,” you said,
smiling, cutting all kinds of corners. Our amazement was at what we hadn’t known until now, the parallels in our past no more delightful than what we were beginning to suspect our futures would contain, had contained for us all along, though we hadn’t known.
smiling, cutting all kinds of corners. Our amazement was at what we hadn’t known until now, the parallels in our past no more delightful than what we were beginning to suspect our futures would contain, had contained for us all along, though we hadn’t known.
This was the lesson it taught you, you said—we were already on our way, clothes falling off, as they did in those days, the sound of the ocean somewhere above us, the humid night, the same stars, our own summer idyll—this was your particular take on your particular broken home: that in the absence of love, the evaporation, the disintegration, the tossing out of the equation of love, came peace. This was your particular take: you had one or the other, paid for one with the other.
I agreed. It was, in those days, the way we all spoke about love: world-wise, open-eyed, without illusion. Lying, of course. Because what we truly believed at that moment—would believe on and off again for the rest of our lives—was that the whole history of Holtzman’s little house—from its bankrupt builder to my grandmother’s greed to your parents’ bitter marriage—was, on this night, with our own meeting, redeemed.
In the morning, at the breakfast table, Billy was bloodshot but too skillful a drinker to seem hung over. He had showered and shaved with an electric razor and his hair was wet, combed back. The open collar of his pale blue shirt showed the aging throat, the blotched skin of his neck. Nothing in his face or in his manner indicated that he had heard a word of the talking-to my father had given him, in his room, before Billy, or I for that matter (listening to my father’s voice coming from behind the wall where Buster Brown and Tighe were still hung), had even gotten out of bed. Killing himself and lying to everyone, and what about the trouble Father Jim went to, and what
about AA again; it worked for Ted and for Mary Casey and for Uncle Jim, why not? Why not?
about AA again; it worked for Ted and for Mary Casey and for Uncle Jim, why not? Why not?
Billy’s black satchel was already by the front door when he came into the kitchen. Seeing it there, he said, “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?”
My father was at the stove, frying eggs. He turned, smiling, and for a moment I thought he might relent. But he was as adept as his cousin was at keeping himself from what he most enjoyed. “There’s an 11:17 train,” he said.
At the table, Billy took a spoonful of coffee and lost half of it as it made its shaky way to his mouth, dabbling his plate and his lap and the front of his shirt. He swiped at himself with his napkin and then removed a small pack of postcards and a fountain pen from his breast pocket. He put both on the table beside his plate.
“Another thing about Ireland,” he said. “We’re all over there. All our faces.” To me: “I saw your dad driving a Guinness truck in Dublin. And his dad was moving a herd of sheep across the road up in the northwest.”
He uncapped the pen and held it in one hand, but then put it down again when it was clear his trembling fingers could not manage it yet.
“I saw my mother,” he went on. “Good Lord, I saw my mother in nearly every shop I went into, usually behind the counter. And my father’s face was on one of the priests who said Mass at the retreat house.”
He lifted the cards, shuffled through them. The duck pond. Home Sweet Home. The Maidstone Club. A sunset on the beach at Amagansett.
“Everybody,” he was saying. “You and Danny and Claire. Both my sisters. Mac rented us a car at the airport. Ted Lynch was right behind us at a hurling match, and I’m sorry to say,
Dennis, that he was pie-eyed for sure.” He winked at me. “Easy does it, my foot,” he said.
Dennis, that he was pie-eyed for sure.” He winked at me. “Easy does it, my foot,” he said.
My father was smiling, an old habit. He couldn’t help but get a kick out of Billy, even Billy hung over, lying to everyone, Billy incurable.
Billy placed the cards on the table again, white side up. He took another spoonful of coffee, steadier now than with the last.
“I didn’t see anyone who resembled Kate’s Peter, though,” he said. “Which only proves what I’ve always said about that black-Irish bit being a lie. Sulinowsky turned to Sullivan, if you ask me.”
He lifted the pen, turned the card over again to look at the photograph. Home Sweet Home. “Maeve, of course,” he said. “And her father. Her father’s face was a dime a dozen over there. Uncle Jim. Bridie Shea as a girl again.” He began to write, slowly, carefully keeping control. “Wouldn’t that be a gift for poor Bridie, to be a girl again? Sitting up there in her mother’s window the way she used to. Not a care in the world. I told Father Jim that it was like a taste of the hereafter, going over there. I must have seen some version of every Irishman I know.”
“What about yourself?” my father said. “Anyone look like you?”
Billy looked up from his postcard. He had written a single line across, two spindly words, as far as I could see.
“Oh sure,” he said. “I was this young fellow in Clonmel. A regular legend around the gas station.” My father laughed a little and Billy looked at me. “Get your father to tell you the tale,” he said, although of course I never did, not then, my own future coming at me as it was. And I was too busy trying to make out what was written on the card under his hand.
Beautiful friend,
it looked like, just the two words.
Beautiful friend,
it looked like, just the two words.
And then I saw him address the card to Maeve.
THE LONG ISLAND HOUSE was squat, rectangular, redshingled, and green-roofed, the shingles rough to the touch but sparkling in sunlight, flecked with mica. There were two windows in front, trimmed in deep green, a door between them, also green. Three wooden steps painted to match the door, the paint well peeled now, mostly showing bare board.
The lawn, in April, was pale green, the blades of grass wet and thin, newborn. Even the low weeds that edged the property seemed freshly sprouted, as did the tangle of honeysuckle vine that covered the wire fence along the side and that would, in summer, be tangled itself with the hum of bees. The gravel driveway was scattered with puddles. The road out front was still black from all the rain that had guaranteed Billy’s swift ascent into heaven, but it was drying out now, a no-longer-solid brushstroke that by noon would have feathered back into dust along its edges. A road that on the hottest days gave off the same sharp odor it had had the moment it was spread. And swimming heat waves, of course, earth agitating air.
The suburban homes and sandy cottages were mostly silent, lights on in only one or two of them: another Saturday morning gained. The crescent of bay beach was deserted, the rocks
and shells collected at its edges, the dark wash of lapping water running over them and back again.
and shells collected at its edges, the dark wash of lapping water running over them and back again.
The lot across the street was still empty and still contained at its heart the remains of a crumbling foundation for a house that was never built, so well grown over by now that even in April the property was all fledgling weeds and dried stalks and last year’s leaves.
This had always been the view from the front steps of the Long Island house: the pale green lot, the tree line, the blue sky that in certain kinds of sunlight seemed to be reflecting the mirror flashes of sunlight off the bay.
There was a screen door at the top of the steps, patched, as all screen doors in summer homes seem to be patched, against wire-cutting mosquitoes with a two-inch square of mesh—upper-right-hand corner of the top screen (always). A heavy green door behind it.
The door opened onto a narrow room, a breath of mildew, of ocean dampness. A small rag rug at the door, another larger one under the heavy coffee table. Three damp
Reader’s Digests
on top, and a blue-and-white schedule for the Long Island Railroad, East Hampton station. A wood-framed couch with tweed cushions worn white along the edges. A dark rocker, a plaid wingback. A table and lamp beside it, the base of the lamp a shellacked coil of rope. An old Cinzano ashtray, an ancient, useless pack of matches from Jungle Pete’s. A wrought-iron floor lamp. There was a trace of last summer’s sand on the wood floor, under the couch. A trace of dust in every corner. Charcoal along the baseboards meant to discourage mildew.
Reader’s Digests
on top, and a blue-and-white schedule for the Long Island Railroad, East Hampton station. A wood-framed couch with tweed cushions worn white along the edges. A dark rocker, a plaid wingback. A table and lamp beside it, the base of the lamp a shellacked coil of rope. An old Cinzano ashtray, an ancient, useless pack of matches from Jungle Pete’s. A wrought-iron floor lamp. There was a trace of last summer’s sand on the wood floor, under the couch. A trace of dust in every corner. Charcoal along the baseboards meant to discourage mildew.
At the other end of the room, and open to it, the kitchen with its heavy Formica table and red countertops and domed refrigerator. The sink was against the back wall, under a long row of narrow windows hung high enough to block the view
for all dishwashers 5’2” and under. A back-yard door beside the sink that contained the only curtained window in the house, all others being covered by yellowed shades. Another door beside the refrigerator that led to a narrow corridor that led to the three bedrooms. The only bath at the end of these, chipped white porcelain fixtures, the sink wobbly on steel mosquito legs, the cracked gray linoleum.
for all dishwashers 5’2” and under. A back-yard door beside the sink that contained the only curtained window in the house, all others being covered by yellowed shades. Another door beside the refrigerator that led to a narrow corridor that led to the three bedrooms. The only bath at the end of these, chipped white porcelain fixtures, the sink wobbly on steel mosquito legs, the cracked gray linoleum.
Across the hall, the largest bedroom by an inch or two and the brightest due to a second window was painted yellow and decorated with eight wooden shoe-store daisies tacked by my grandmother in an unfathomable constellation across the far wall. A tall dresser with a long bureau scarf. A night table with a milk-glass lamp, a magazine opened and folded back to show a white page filled with black print, unrelieved by photographs, a pair of reading glasses placed over the page, placed there the night before because it was too late to finish and there were too many words and it was all about how much the citizenry loved the President, who was just an actor when you got right down to it, an actor reading them his lines.
On the double bed, dark mahogany headboard, no footboard, white chenille spread folded back, thin floral sheets washed pale, my father opened his eyes to the same room he had gone to sleep in. The same room he had gone to sleep in: then the shadowy circle of the milk-glass lamp, now sun-shot early morning, ebb and flow of it as the breeze sucked in the bottom of the yellow shade and then let it go again (a child in a swing) to snap back against the sash. The very sound that had awakened him. Distant ringing of the buoys in the bay (Oh, but she’s a girl). Scent of new grass and of ocean, of mildew, of the Long Island house, of eastern Long Island. I am still here.
He swung his feet out of the bed and sat for a moment. Nothing changed but the light, the magazine on the table,
eyeglasses there, clothes in the chair, daisies, dresser, Dopp kit on the bureau because his daughter was here with him and liked to keep her makeup bag on the back of the toilet.
eyeglasses there, clothes in the chair, daisies, dresser, Dopp kit on the bureau because his daughter was here with him and liked to keep her makeup bag on the back of the toilet.
It was there when he made his way across the hall, pale pink and blue, plump. He nudged it gently when he lifted the lid.
Back in the room he raised the shade up above the open window so the snap of it wouldn’t wake her—and then heard the same sound, faint but persistent, coming from the shade and window in her room next door. They had both kept the windows open all night, then, despite the cold air. There was still mist on the gray grass, mist all along the vine-covered fence. There was no place in the world he’d rather wake to.
He stood for a moment between the dresser and the bed and offered himself as some elemental part of understanding: the same room he had gone to sleep in, consciousness dropped and then picked up again, only the light changed. The return of day.
In the kitchen, he put the kettle on. Cut oranges and squeezed them under his palm on an old-fashioned glass juicer. The very one, in fact, his mother had used when he was young, in the apartment in Woodside. The very one, washed up on this shore somehow after what he imagined had been a long, newspaper-wrapped odyssey, box-bound, from that tiny kitchen in Queens to the basement of Holtzman’s house in Jamaica (years passing there, light in the narrow basement window and then darkness, light again, a thousand times over while he himself returned from overseas, met Mary, met Claire, married, had children) until someone—himself? Holtzman? his mother?—hoisted the box marked
Kitchen Things
and brought it out here to the Long Island house, where it dropped out of his sight for years and then returned again as
something he shared with Mr. West while he was still “my mother’s tenant” and not yet “my daughter’s father-in-law” and then found himself on this morning in April, the second morning with Billy in his grave, surprised and even delighted by the thing, by the things that ride out time.
Kitchen Things
and brought it out here to the Long Island house, where it dropped out of his sight for years and then returned again as
something he shared with Mr. West while he was still “my mother’s tenant” and not yet “my daughter’s father-in-law” and then found himself on this morning in April, the second morning with Billy in his grave, surprised and even delighted by the thing, by the things that ride out time.
He poured the juice into two short, thick glasses, washed and dried his hands. He pulled open the back door—frame sticking, curtain swinging—on a stage the whole wall would have moved with it. He stepped out onto the narrow back porch, where the brushstrokes in the dark green paint were his own, and Billy’s. Marvelous sweet spring air of eastern Long Island. New grass and sweet blossom and tang of sea salt. In the bright green of the pale trees, high up, narrow shafts of yellow sunlight, theatrical as well. The sound-track birdsong: gulls and sparrows and distant crows.
He did a few calisthenics. His arms winter pale, the fine hairs on them mostly gray, certainly grayer than Claire had ever seen them. By sundown his arms will have turned a ruddy brown, what with the work he had planned, clippers and scythe and scraping some paint. He touched his waist, his shoulder, raised his hands above his head, looking for all the world like a man giving praise. The return of day.
Inside, the plumbing was moaning and clunking, the sound of water rushing through the walls as if the place had been framed in pipes, not lumber. His daughter in the shower.
He took the breakfast tray from under the counter, placed cups and saucers on it, bowls, cereal, sugar, spoons, a carton of milk, a jar of jam. He toasted four slices of bread and poured water into the teapot just as she came into the kitchen, barefoot, sweatpants and an old T-shirt, her hair wet and smelling of shampoo.
“Good morning, Glory,” he said, and she said, “Good
morning,” the towel draped around her shoulders. She had already been out for a run, she said, down to the beach and back, and he realized that the shade he’d heard had been snapping in an empty room. Tomorrow they’d drive back to Rosedale. Tomorrow evening she’d fly home.
morning,” the towel draped around her shoulders. She had already been out for a run, she said, down to the beach and back, and he realized that the shade he’d heard had been snapping in an empty room. Tomorrow they’d drive back to Rosedale. Tomorrow evening she’d fly home.
He lifted the tray and she walked ahead of him through the living room. She once more unlocked the green door, pulled it open, sunlight and birdsong transforming a long shaft of the damp, dark room. She stepped outside, holding the screen open for him.
He said, “Thank you, ma’am,” and then caught the door with his elbow to let her go first. She went to the bottom step and then turned to take the tray from him, but he said, “I’ve got it,” and let the screen door close behind him as he stepped down and turned to place the tray carefully, crockery rattling, on the top step. He sat beside it. She sat below him, at his feet, shaking out her hair, running her fingers through it, and wafting a shampoo that was some false yet strenuous version of the scent of the spring air. He lifted the teacup and poured for her. She reached back.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re most welcome.”
She sipped from the cup. The breeze that had woken him had grown weaker in the sun, but something of the cold dawn still lingered. One did not dare say to a grown daughter, a married woman with children of her own, Are you warm enough? Do you need a sweater? Wouldn’t you rather wear shoes?
He said, “You’ll have to give the in-laws a call while you’re here.”
I said yes, I had already told them I’d stop by.
“There’s a happy pair,” my father said, meaning Mr. West
and his wife, united again now that their three boys had grown, and flown. Nesting again, as you yourself had said, in the Amagansett house, nesting among the ruins. What was more tenacious, you’d said, than the desire to be connected, especially in old age, more tenacious than fact, than memory. Your parents would turn away, wide-eyed, whenever you or your brothers said, But you hated … They’d only needed space, they would tell you, turning our own words against us. They’d only gone through a rough patch in their marriage that had, unlucky for you boys, more or less corresponded to your childhoods …
and his wife, united again now that their three boys had grown, and flown. Nesting again, as you yourself had said, in the Amagansett house, nesting among the ruins. What was more tenacious, you’d said, than the desire to be connected, especially in old age, more tenacious than fact, than memory. Your parents would turn away, wide-eyed, whenever you or your brothers said, But you hated … They’d only needed space, they would tell you, turning our own words against us. They’d only gone through a rough patch in their marriage that had, unlucky for you boys, more or less corresponded to your childhoods …
Sitting on the steps of the Long Island house, Billy two days in his grave, my father and I discussed what the little house needed to have done to get it in shape for summer, for his retirement next year, when he would put the Rosedale house on the market and live out here permanently. Another overhaul, long overdue. Insulation, plumbing, heating, paint. Redoing and then supplementing all that work he and Billy had done years ago. New furniture. A real garden, once he was out here permanently, plenty of visitors, too, what with a good six months to schedule them, April through September at least, maybe October, too. My three brothers and their families would each take a turn, and he hoped I’d come in from the coast with the children. Take at least a week or two.
My father sat on the step above me, the step he would begin to scrape and sand that very afternoon, and looking toward the blue sky above the bay and the crescent beach behind the treeline, he described for me all the ways he would spend his time in this lovely place, still old Holtzman’s place when you came right down to it, his surprise inheritance from a mother who hadn’t put much stock in elaborate emotion but nevertheless had married twice and loved him and had said at the end, having scattered Holtzman’s money to the charitable
winds, Bring Billy out there, with his wife, because when you got right down to it, there were all kinds of things in her heart and in her mind that we never knew. There was, for instance, her capacity to believe. There was as well her capacity to be deceived, since you can’t have one without the other, each one side of the other.
winds, Bring Billy out there, with his wife, because when you got right down to it, there were all kinds of things in her heart and in her mind that we never knew. There was, for instance, her capacity to believe. There was as well her capacity to be deceived, since you can’t have one without the other, each one side of the other.
He’d have the Quinns out, my father said, Mickey will be retiring soon, too, and all the various Lynches, sure, Danny, too, and Bridie when she needed a break in a beautiful place from taking care of poor Jim. He’d have the Caseys out and both sets of our Rosedale neighbors, my mother’s sister Louise with her family, although she drove him crazy. And, he said, he’d ask Maeve.
I looked at him over my shoulder. I’d been thinking, as he counted off the names, how clear it was that Billy’s was missing from the list, although Billy over the years would not come, and I thought then that my father mentioned her name just for that, for Billy’s sake. He said, Maeve’s never been out this way, as far as I know. She should see it. She would enjoy it.
I nodded. Sure, I said. I could imagine her, I supposed, getting off the train at the East Hampton station, tentative and slow, her hand on the rail beside the steps (the plain pearl ring) for much longer than was necessary, lingering there until the conductor offered her his own hand to help her down. (Dorothy or maybe Bridie behind her, since it would not do for her to come out here all alone.) A simple dress, or a pant suit for traveling, her round face and her short hair. My father would take her bag, take her for lunch across the street, take her on the usual tour past the beautiful houses (cottages, he’d say) that neither one of them would have ever thought to own, or even to enter, but would be content, as we’d all been content, to merely pass by and admire. Billy’s idea of heaven, he’d tell her—the idea itself sufficient alone.
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