We Were Beautiful Once (24 page)

“Jack, you know I never forgot him,” she said.

“How the hell am I supposed to remember what happened thirty years ago?  I can't tell you what happened last week.”

“I'm comin' over.”

Jack exhaled smoke through pursed lips, letting out a blowing sound.

“What's that?”

“I farted. Don't you have to go to work or something?”

“I gotta get to the bottom of this.”

“You're crazy, you know that?  You're goddamn crazy,” he barked.

“You must have made the connection when you returned from the war. I talked to you about him. I remember it like yesterday. We were in the gym at school. I'm comin' over later.”

Jack hung up, grabbed a tumbler from the sink and went to the liquor cabinet to pour himself a stiff
Seagram's 7
, no ice. He walked to the front room and flopped on the overstuffed couch. A picture Julie had taken of him and his mother when he returned from Korea in late 1954 lay over the fireplace in a bed of dust. He remembered that he had arrived home dressed in a new army shirt, canvas duffle bag slung over his shoulder, and had stood in the kitchen doorway watching his mother through a screen door. She had aged a dozen years since he had kissed her that morning at the train station just over four years before. Her housedress was faded and frayed, her knees and elbows more boney. Then, jolted by an emotional current coursing through her tiny frame, the frying pan she held flew into a kitchen cabinet, and she flung her head back. “Jack!”

Two deep-set gray eyes peered back from a pasty, sunken face squeezed dry. “Yes, Mom, it's me.” He opened the door and Mary ran into his embrace, weeping for all the years that had washed away.

“You didn't tell me you were coming,” she said, patting her hair as if in a strong wind. “I hardly recognized you, hardly recognized my own son...  lost in that, that uniform.”

“It's a size too big,” he laughed.

“Oh, my son, Jack, Jack, my son, you'll never know, you'll never know. I prayed every night.” She hugged him again.

“I know. It's okay,” he whispered to comfort her.

Mary moved away, the two sizing one another up, readjusting memories. Jack looked into Mary's eyes and knew what she must have seen: a thin, tired, delicate man, not the strong boy who had left when the train pulled out of the station. Mary put on a pot of coffee. Jack sat down at the yellow table that had witnessed three generations of Prados in happier times.

“They wouldn't tell me where you were.” Mary patted a napkin in front of her.

“Let's not talk about that now.”

She started for the fridge. “I'll heat up some soup.”

“Terrific, it'll be the best I've eaten in years. What is it?”

She reached for a large ceramic bowl. “Pasta
fagiole
, your favorite.”

“Well, not sure about that. All I ate was soy beans, half-cooked, and sorghum, a ball about the size of my fist.”

Hesitating, she offered, “I can cook a...  ”

Jack smirked. “Oh, no, just kiddin', Mom, the
fagiole'
s good.”

They talked about his trip home, where he had boarded the Marine Adder, a one stack transport out of Pusan that landed in San Diego. After a half dozen military hops, he had reached Long Island where he hitched a ride. Then Mary began to fill in the weightier events that had occurred during his time away, notably the passing of Nonna Rosa.

Jack scanned the once familiar room. For all the ways their lives had turned, the room where Nonna Rosa had spent her days had changed little. A large woman who dressed in flowing flowered housecoats, her graying hair wrapped in a swirl pinned to the top of her head. She washed her cherub-like cheeks with nothing more than Ivory Soap—a woman as plain as her kitchen. Before college, Jack spent most of his time in that kitchen, listening to the radio, doing homework. Every so often he would look up from a book and let his gaze sweep past the pantry on one side, the back window, the porcelain sink, the gas stove with double kerosene-fired heaters and the small Frigidaire. The kitchen had a resonance all its own: the radio, penetrating sounds from Julie's violin, boiling water, oils in the frying pan, the mechanical innards of the gray enameled tub swooshing clothes. Sometimes Nonna would waltz around the kitchen like a portly ballerina. And at some point, like a jukebox out of money, the music would stop and Julie would emerge from the pantry, pour a cup of black coffee and return to her “music room.” If the windows were open, the percussive crack of wind filled bed sheets on the line called attention to a kind of freshness that was left in the residue of his later childhood. On the day he returned from war, the wind blew hard too, the grass that had always grown high rustled furiously, a broken clothesline flapped from side to side, waiting for someone to put it to work again.

When Jack asked about Julie, Mary told him that she had taken ill in '51 and that she no longer played violin. “I don't think it's so much the hand. It's her heart. It's broken. That guy Roger she dated never came back. She works at St. Pats, at the school.”

Jack said nothing and walked over to the rear window to look out.

After three bowls of soup, Jack set out to surprise Julie at work. At the principal's office a plump young woman with insect eyes lifted her head when Jack walked through the door.

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I'm looking for Julie O'Conner.”

“You her boyfriend?” she asked coyly.

“Nah, her brother.”

“Oh, you're Jack. In the Army. Julie showed me your pit'cher.” The woman grinned through her nicotine-stained teeth, waiting for his reaction.

“Right,” Jack cracked, careful not to show the slightest interest.

The secretary's eyes lifted over Jack's head to the clock. It was 2:30. She turned back to Jack and scanned his brown ribbon-less shirt. Jack saw her give a faint smirk. “Probably in the gym. Out the door, take a left.”

The echo from the leather heals of his military shoes ceased when Jack opened the heavy steel door that led to the combination auditorium/gym. He heard sloshing from someone mopping the floor. He walked across the gym to the edge of the stage from where the sounds were coming and boosted himself onto the elevation. He peeked behind the red, heavy curtain and in the corner, dimly lit by a 60 watt bulb, a petite woman in a gray smock swabbed the floor. She had a mop stick twisted beneath her upper right arm, which she managed to push back and forth using a rotating wrist movement. “Yo, Julie! Julie, that you?” he yelled.

Even before she turned, her jaw had dropped. “Jack? Jack, you're home!” The mop fell.

Jack ran to hug her, thinking how Julie and his mother were as close as he had been to any woman in years. Julie, likewise, had not embraced a man since the night Jack left for Hamilton's farewell party.

“How've you been?” she cried, stepping back and beaming.

He glanced down at her odd foot position and quickly turned his attention to the sparkling lime green eyes he had remembered as he had languished in prison.

“Good, good, real good. Got in about two hours ago, stopped by the house. Mom looks good, little tired. Is she seeing Dad?”

“Not often, but when they do, you know it's never good. Mom wastes so much time in the past. She doesn't let go.” Jack showed no emotion, and she changed the subject. “How are you? You look skinny.”

“Well, yeah, I haven't been eatin' in the best restaurants.” He laughed.

“I imagine, but how much
do
you weigh?  Can't be more than...  .”

“One-twenty, more or less.”

“Wow, I wouldn't 'a known you, Jack, if I saw you coming down the street.”

 “Forget me, how are you? How's your leg? Mom said you were sick.” Jack grimaced.

“It's fine.  The doctor figures that I'll limp a little from now on.  My foot, it's getting so I can almost get it off the ground, but,” she hesitated, “it doesn't matter.”

“You always had that stick-to-it-ness. You'll get there.”

“Yeah, I know, but it's my hand.” Pushing her hand toward Jack she said, “See, I can't move these two fingers much.”

Jack ran his finger lightly over her wrist, and then pulled her close.  Julie sobbed as he gazed over her shoulder, out the grimy gym window where the wire mesh ran crisscross, looking to the green lawn and beyond to the maple trees that were turning red-yellow. He turned his head in the direction of the older, brown and white three story houses beyond the trees—the ones that were freshly painted. The place looked like it did before he left, quiet and reserved, where the gardens and hedges still lifted spirits, where his baby sister ran down Willa Street, a non-stop chubby toddler, always the center of attention. Where it went unnoticed that she'd changed from a talkative five-year-old, to a shy seven-year-old, to a skinny, introverted nine-year-old, until finally in her mid-teen years, she'd withdraw for long periods as she worked her music to near perfection.

 “Have ya seen any of the old crowd?”

“Nah. And that guy I used to date, Roger, well, he never made it back,” she said somberly. She rubbed her arm across her face to dry the tears.

“Oh? Julie, I'm sorry.” Jack felt edgy, biting into his lower lip. “Ya know I lost a lot of good buddies over there.” He turned away pursing his lips. The hands on the wall clock pointed at 3 p.m., and the school bell clanged. The sound of the students's noisy dismissal filtered into the gym. He faced Julie again. Her eyes glistened in the mid-afternoon light that poured through the wired window. When it was quiet again, Jack interrupted the long reflective moment, “Could ya play me somethin' on the piano?”

Julie smiled ear-to-ear. “I don't think so. Was never that good on the piano. You know the violin was my thing.”

“I'm home, Julie. Come on...  one time, for me?”

Julie thought for a moment and then ambled over to an upright in the corner of the room, lifted its oak keyboard cover and sat down. “I haven't played...  for a couple of years.”

Barely twenty-six, Julie sat in a janitor's smock, her hair carelessly wrapped in a brown bun, and her delicate white hands resting on off-white and chipped ivories. The notes sounded sharp as she mapped out the approach for something resembling a melody with her good hand and a low note with a few good fingers. High notes haltingly pinged off the soundboard, then burst into a minor scale—a deep D-flat in the left hand resonated with a voice weakened by years of longing: “You'll never know just how much I miss you.” Though tears streamed down her cheeks, Julie suddenly appeared younger than she had the moment before. The music transported Jack back to a mansion of debutantes with coquettish smiles, and if Jack had had any intentions of telling Julie what he know about Roger, he decided to bury them then and there.    

***

After talking to Jack on the phone, Julie went home. The heat stifled the apartment, so she decided to pack a small overnight bag and sleep in Jack's spare room. About nine that night, she took the bus to Willa Street, crossed the street, walked past the row of faded brown and white three story houses that hadn't been painted in a generation.  The day had threatened thunderstorms. It was close to dark and the houses appeared older than usual. Except for a relative few, most people rented. The once well-kept lawns were now hardpan. The flowerbeds of her childhood were gullies of stagnant rainwater. The maple trees along the sidewalks were fat around the trunk and full of brown and shriveled leaves. Everything on Willa Street was reflective of everything else, so the hard brown dirt made the dented aluminum garbage cans at the curb appear fatter than normal, the fatter garbage cans made the street look narrower and the narrower street pushed back the clock.

When she arrived at the house shades were drawn, same as a few days before when she had kept Jack from blowing out his brains.

“Jack, you here? Where are you?” Her eyes adjusted to the outline of familiar objects and odd shadows that haunted the hallway. Even though it was warm outside, the air conditioning made her shiver.

She stopped before the hall mirror, which reflected bloodshot eyes held in place by gray, puffy bags and a crease emerging at the bottom of her nose and outlining her mouth before finally disappearing beneath her chin. She pressed against the flesh that joined her jaw to her throat. She went to the kitchen to shut off the air conditioner, ran upstairs, searched the rooms and returned to the living room to flop in Nonna's overstuffed chair. In an ashtray on the end table, a long-ash cigarette had burned itself out. Her eyes moved over the knickknacks and the pictures on end-tables. Slowly, the room darkened and the images and bric-a-brac of a life passing too quickly disappeared into oblique shadows and silhouettes. Jack never showed.

***

Earlier in the day, Jack had showered and dressed, grudgingly intending to go to court as ordered in the subpoena. He planned to answer much in the way he had seen on T.V. when the witness “can't remember.” But as he was leaving the phone rang, and a man on the other end who identified himself as Mr. Travers and was connected to the case, told him he did not need to appear as indicated in the subpoena. The caller mentioned he that wanted to meet Jack later in the day. Jack felt relieved and although the caller refused to tell him specifically why he wanted to talk, Jack agreed to meet at the Silver Streak Diner at 8:30 that night.

About twenty minutes past eight, Jack was walking toward the diner when a dark blue Chevy four door pulled alongside him, two men in the front seat, window down. The driver asked, “Yo, buddy, you Jack O'Conner?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I'm Bud, Bud Travers.  We spoke.”

“I was going down to the diner.”

“Figured we'd grab a beer someplace on Barnum. Hop in.”

They looked like cops, mid thirties. Jack climbed in. Travers said reflexively, “This is Steve Jones.” The man looked straight ahead, making Jack feel all the more wary.