Exile on Bridge Street (31 page)

The door slams in my face. I drop the flowers at my arm's length. I'd never known anyone to be angry with Dinny like Mrs. McGowan is. And . . . Emma is dead. Emma.

I walk down the stairwell slowly, my head tingling. I lose my breath for a moment and stop and lean against the banister. My chest heaving and heaving until I see spots and sit down, cold sweats raking through my body like shock waves. I just want to ask questions, I think to myself. I just want someone to answer all my questions. I have so many, I just wish there was someone to help me with them. But orphans don't have what is most needed: the mother. The father. The grandparents. The siblings. The cousins. The infrastructure for a child's mind.

Thinking back on it now as I stand from the typewriter and my pencil and paper, looking out through the window onto the New York Harbor, I know that not having my family close to me for those years set me back. For a long time, I was behind others who'd grown up with the support structure that a family gives a developing mind. I'm an old man now and certainly I've caught up, but for so much of my life had I been behind those of my own age.

I had a family, true. I had Dinny Meehan and Harry Reynolds and Sadie and others. It's true, I had them, but there's nothing replaces a mother. A father too, but it's the mother that makes us who we are. And why she couldn't be there to answer my questions was, well, yet another question I wanted answered.

For a moment I thought I might have a new family. The McGowan family that has loads of women in it. But it wasn't to be. Instead, I got a slammed door in the face. I walk outside and curse the cold weather. The godforsaken wind that never stops. Curse all that I can't control. It's everything in the world I can't control that ruins me. I fight back tears, even though I long to feel sorry for myself.

But when I do, I think of Emma. Died in her blooming years.

She'll always be beautiful.

CHAPTER 26

Lace Curtains

O
N
THE
ELEVENTH
DAY
OF
THE
eleventh month at the eleventh hour of 1918, an armistice is called in France. The Great War is over. The world is changing, but in our neighborhoods most things stay the same. The wind, ships, bridges above us and death always there. A week or so before the war ends, a train derails on the other side of Prospect Park from my Eighth Avenue room by Ebbets Field—almost one hundred souls scrubbed clean from the dirty earth in seconds.

In the West Village of Manhattan, Harry waits for me with a hat over his eyes and his hands in his pockets at a waterfront ticket box as I finally book passage for my mother and sisters. I take the receipt and place it in my wallet. Harry pushes off the wall he'd been leaning on and together we walk away without celebration. It'd only be months now until they arrive, if all goes well. But long months, they are.

* * *

J
ANUARY
, 1919

W
ITH
F
ATHER
L
ARKIN
'
S
VOICE
BANKING
OFF
St. Ann's long ceilings so often, it seems as though the entire neighborhood is within reach of the ecclesiastical homily and the funeral rite. Again, we show up in force for what we all simply call “sayin' goodbye to people.” The lot of us wearing our wake attire once more. With Sunday morning beer on our lips from the Dock Loaders' Club, we wash south up the Bridge Street hill again, little boys admiring us from windows upstairs, mothers shaming and appreciating us all at once, the Great Grippe taking another of the Lonergan brood, freezing and malnourished, just as it had taken Emma away from us, and many others too.

Again we are on the march through the neighborhoods, a Lonergan casket on a dray. Death everywhere, whether from grippe or war, death is the great constant. Fred Honeybeck last week. Gimpy Kafferty the week before that, died in France defending England, the both. And Quiet Higgins too. A pair of Simpson brothers to boot, Whitey and Baron, and many more. We just shaking our heads, for while we are funding a revolt with Germany in Ireland against England, they are fighting against Germany for England in France.

Today, the procession walks sullenly again in front of the open-shuttered refineries, half-opened stable doors, dusty stonecutter shops and wheelwrights and farriers and harness makers, the long and skinny smokestacks looking dolefully down on us all. Shuffling anew along the Navy Yard wall with the clopping feet of dour draught horses until we go west on Water Street. Beside the wood-fenced area in front of the giant Brooklyn Union Gas fuel tanks we continue, pulling the horses by the face and bits over the freight rails and rough cobbles. Looking over their shoulders, black-faced men inside foundries are lit only by the glowing orange of the smelting furnace and the casts pulled out by crucible tongs. The air smelling of ferric oxide and steam, we stop in front of St. Ann's Church again. Next door is Moore & Co. Paints that has for so long been there that its owners simply find it ineffective for its workers to honor each melancholic funeral cortege. Especially during the war and the horrible sickness that falls drooling out of its gluttonous, toothy gob.

To her credit, Anna has not budged since May 1917 when she sent us from her home, and she stands here now arms crossed, sneering at our like. But we keep our heads low, cross ourselves respectfully, and fill the church with flowers, pay for the casket and the gravestone at Calvary Cemetery.

But here we part, half of us entering the house of God for the Requiem Mass, others remaining outside. Families separated too—Sadie and L'il Dinny heading in with the procession, the father breaking off.

Inside is silence but for the shuffling feet, the gentle dropping of kneelers from under pews, a distant cough, and the medieval ringing of the pipe organ extending notes long for to bless the bier that holds the child, feet facing the altar.

L'il Dinny is already squirming as he sits between myself and Sadie. Behind me is the Burke family, including the son who mouths wordless sounds every so often. Ahead I see Cinders Connolly with his pregnant wife and their four young ones. Philip Large among them. Detective Brosnan in civil clothes next to his daughter, and holding her hand is Patrolman Culkin. To our right is Mrs. McGowan and her remaining daughters—her son's widow still in her weeds four years on and her children next to her. The Lark and Big Dick Morissey as well as Red Donnelly, Henry Browne, Paddy Keenan, Beat McGarry, and many others sit amongst themselves and theirs. The Lonergan family in the front row, Mary surrounded by Anna on one side, the dead child's father at the other, arm wrapped over his wife's shoulder. The familiar scars of the mother ever-present. Burnt skin on one side of her face and scalded hair over one broken ear, tears and sobbing muffled. The eldest son Richie sitting with his fists in his lap, another new tie and coat over him for the occasion. Matty Martin and Timothy Quilty behind.

Then the voice of Father Larkin imitated by the reverberation.

Day of wrath and doom impending.

David's word with Sibyl's blending,

Heaven and Earth in ashes ending.

Oh, what fear man's bosom rendeth,

When from Heaven the judge descendeth,

On whose sentence we all dependeth.

Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth,

Through earth's sepulchres it ringeth,

All before the throne it bringeth.

Death is struck, and nature quaking,

All creation is awaking,

To its judge an answer making . . .

We know these prayers in English and Latin. Some know them in Irish. And we know the incense and the holy water flung to the resting child. And we genuflect on call. And stand and sing and listen to Father Larkin in his black vestments, the prayer cycle of the Office of the Dead and his reading of the Liturgy of the Word. And over the child he stands on the altar, hands clasped, and into his homily he slowly gives for the young deceased.

“And as we know,” he begins, voice sounding off the high ceiling and wood floors. With his palms open now, he is looking down to the child. “This earthly life fer which we are exiled is not permanent. Though t'is filled with pain and with sufferin'.”

“I would like to spake today o' the one True God, and the Savior,” Father Larkin's voice opens up. “Can we not all agree that there is only one God? Yes. We can. And in so bein', he has only one Messenger o' the Light. His son. In our quest fer salvation, deliverance. And in places o' great darkness. In times o' great ruin and war. Poverty, hunger, disease, and death we sometimes believe in half-makers. For it is only in times of our greatest sufferin' that such a false deity may arise. T'is up to ye to listen to the Spirit o' God. To not be convinced by those that live only in the material world. Ye must remember that the Spirit o' God comes from the divine essence. The spark o' divinity. We are born ignorant o' this fact and must learn it. But this false deity is only concerned with the physical realities and at times such as these we are tested.”

Ahead, Cinders Connolly turns his wide shoulders to me and stares. Stares without saying a thing, eventually turning back round slowly.

“This false messenger believes himself the one and the only. And although he is born o' wisdom, of a great mother, he does not even know her. Has never visited upon her and cannot prove even who she is. His own mother. . . . He is no more than an orphan with a divine sense o' himself. Exiled from the wisdom of his mother and from God. Arrogant, blinded by foolishness, he is a fashioner of ignorance. A creator, yes, but a creator only o' rules and morals and codes and schemes that cause us to remain attached to earthbound, material needs, enslaving us by his will. Enslaving us to our physical needs. Serving our people the lethal bev'rage that has for so long bound and imprisoned us—” A slight gasp comes across the flock. “And for which the state o' New Yark has just this very week endorsed a prohibition upon the production, transportation, and sale of. In one year from now, dens of alcohol will be drained and boarded up.

“And now I say, you have, all o' ye in the house o' God now, ye have the ability to ascend from this materialistic, sensate slavery. Ye may be liberated, if ye so choose. Spiritual freedom awaits ye for when ye pass, as this child has today, yer divine spark is sent up and if ye have not overcome the ignorance from which ye're born, and have not transcended from ignorance, which sin is the consequence, yer soul not accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven summoned by the last trumpet, it may be sent back to the pangs o' slavery in the physical world again, or worse.”

Father Larkin above us on the altar walks in his black gown and headdress gently, intently.

“My children, the word o' God, it must be remembered, can only be taught by His apostles and t'rough the sacraments. I ask ye, all o' ye now, to look round. Shed light on he who seeks to hide in darkness and those archons that follow him, for they are not angels. Bring him to the open so that we may see him. See him for who he is and what he does. So that we know that he is a false creator, intent on enslavin' us in our born ignorance. Bring him to the fore so that we may use our common sense. With the faculty of our minds it is necessary to understand what is true and what is real. Expose him to the light, he who has no awareness o' the spirit o' God. No understandin' o' the world beyond matter and mind. It is he. He and his followers that seek to exile all of us in the pangs o' slavery, ad infinitum . . .”

After the ceremony Sadie is silent in thought, clutching her son's little hand and splashing kisses on his fleshy cheeks. The homily having swayed her, she crosses herself and ignores me entirely. Even refusing to allow me to let her and L'il Dinny walk ahead of me. When she finally does look up, she is gritting her teeth at me.

Dipping fingers in the font and crossing ourselves, she walks ahead of me in anger. As the double-doors open we are touched by the raw air and the slate grays and brickwork reds of late January in Brooklyn. And at the bottom of the steps of St. Ann's, The Swede, Vincent Maher, Mickey Kane, and others stand in a natural sodality behind Dinny as if they live for the weather, steely-eyed and happy. He looks up at Sadie and sees her face laundered with concern and doubt, then to the child. As mother and son descend, Dinny reaches up for the hand of the boy but Sadie pushes it away furiously. “Don't touch 'em.”

Watching her as she splits and parts the band of men, the child led by the hand toward the trolley stop a block away, Dinny sends two men to escort her home.

“Dada?” L'il Dinny calls out.

“What's the deal wit' her?” Mickey asks.

The Swede answers for Dinny, “Larkin.”

From behind me, Brosnan, Culkin, and Ferris shoulder past and jostle quickly down the steps like muscular messengers prompted and aroused by some inner need to defend the sacrosanctity of their beliefs.

“Word with ye, son,” Brosnan stands over Dinny.

“Son?” he answers.

Myself and the rest of us surround the tunics in their Sunday civvies to hear what is said.

“Silk truck went missin' last night, Dinny,” Brosnan grits. “Ye band o' t'ieves know anyt'in' about it, do ye?”

“Who's Dinny?” a man yells behind me.

“Don' say that word again,” Maher says to Brosnan.

Brosnan then grabs Dinny, throws him to the ground. Dinny does not try and defend himself. Does not even try to catch his balance and allows himself to fall, looks up to the middle-aged, red-faced man.

“Dinny Meehan!” Brosnan says with a screaming and a pointing. “The man right here, on the ground. Ain' no more'n a culchie an' a highwayman. A rogue of low degree by all accounts. Hillside men from a blighted breed o' diddicoys on top of it.”

The Swede stands between Dinny and his aggressor, looks down to Brosnan. “We told ya, but ya looked away.”

“We didn't know nothin',” Brosnan declares.

“Liar,” The Swede mumbles.

“I'm off the wagon, Jimmy,” Brosnan grumbles, his hair gray on the sides and jowls loosening in his age. “Ye've no hold on me'r us.”

“Then we'll bring ye down,” The Swede says as Dinny comes to his feet.

“G'on with it then. We'll have nothin' to do with yer likes no more. Go ahead and try and bring us down, ye feckin' bunch o' pikey shites. I got the right kinda men behind me now—yez all are the wrong kind,” Brosnan says, wiping us away with the back of his hand. “I challenge ye, all o' ye.”

Culkin suddenly pushes Mickey Kane by the face and neck, Ferris holds Vincent by the shoulder and a large crowd has gathered in a circle round the lot of us in front of St. Ann's.

“No, ye won't!” screeches Mrs. Lonergan pushing through the crowd. “Ye won't be settlin' a damned thing at me child's service, ye won't. Get on, then. Get on. Outta here. All o' ye.”

“Get out!” Anna yells, again with her beautiful and angry face and her mother's child on her hip, screaming at the height of her lungs. “Damn you. Damn all o' you. I hate you, Dinny Meehan. I hate you. I hate you!”

As Richie limps through, a confused and emotionless look on his face and two of his followers behind him, a man yells out, “Shaddup, girl.”

“You shaddup,” Anna yelps and pushes through the crowd as her mother picks up a broken paver and heaves it toward the voice.

“Go 'way,” Mrs. Lonergan continues. “Go 'way. Out. Out. Out!”

Heeding her, all the men turn slowly round, dour-faced and shamed and pulling their hats over their heads. Apologetic even, some are.

We meet back at 25 Bridge Street a few blocks away for a crisp, noontime drink and some talk. Eventually Richie Lonergan shows with all of his teenage devotees in tow. Sitting at a table along the wall they are glum and surly and I can see by the look on Petey's face when he looks at me that they are talking about us. Talking about how they hate us. Grumbling amongst themselves like ungrateful mucks. It angers me, watching them complain to each other about us, but I was looking for something to justify my anger. Something to justify my flying off the handle.