“You mean a hospital?”
“A state asylum.”
“Oh, Dennis,” Betty says, reaching out to hold my hand, “that’s too bad he is sick like that, but you know it is just another sickness, like having the mumps.”
I know Betty is just trying to put flowers around the coffin, which is something my mother says when she thinks people are trying to be nice.
“Yes,” I say, pulling my hand back a little, “I guess I know all that, but my mother doesn’t know that I heard Aunt Kitty, and she keeps talking about him being in the hospital because of his legs and all, and I can’t go because kids aren’t allowed in, and she thinks I don’t know about it being a different kind of hospital.”
I feel like crying now, bur I know I won’t. So I look around for something to count to take my mind off my mother and the way she lied to me.
I see all the books lining the shelves from one end of the room to the other, and I stare at them and begin counting the spines.
“What are you doing?” Betty asks. I guess she sees how I am trying to count the books.
“I am counting the books because …”
“Because?”
“Oh,” I say, now feeling a little embarrassed. “I… I don’t know, I just count things if I think I might start to bawl.”
“Oh, Dennis,” she says, putting her hand on my arm. “Why do you want to cry?”
I move away again, but just a little.
“Because my mother didn’t tell me the truth about my father being in the hospital because of something mental.”
“But can’t you see, Dennis,” Betty says, sitting back in her chair, “that your mother doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, that she wants to protect you?”
I see that Betty’s eyes, big and blue like the Virgin’s coat, have gotten bigger and shinier. She is such a pretty woman, and she is smiling. She has the kind of smile that tells you she could be anybody’s friend, if a friend was needed. I know that she doesn’t want me to feel bad about my mother, or about my father, either.
“Yes,” I say, “but… but… why should she lie to me? Why couldn’t she just trust me?”
“Did she tell Billy any different?” Betty asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, shrugging my shoulders. “I think I’m mad at Billy, anyway, because he hit me with a pool stick.”
“Your brother didn’t hit you with a pool stick.” Betty looks like she really is surprised this time.
I roll up my sleeve and show Betty the bruise that is still on my arm, the one that I don’t think will ever go away. I don’t say anything, but I wonder why she would think that I said something that wasn’t true.
“Well,” Betty says, “brothers fight sometimes. Look at the Morgan brothers. They fight a lot, but they are always together, aren’t they?”
“I suppose,” I answer. “But I don’t know if she told Billy, and I don’t want to ask him.”
Betty gets up from her chair now and puts her arms around me. I try to move away a little, but she holds me firm, and as I feel her pressing me into her I just relax there until she holds me out by the shoulders.
“Maybe,” she says, “you should ask. You have these questions in your mind, and they will have nowhere to go unless you let them out of your mouth, and there is no one better than your mother to ask about them.”
She gives me another little hug and takes a book from her desk. It is called
Tom Sawyer.
She hands it to me, and I look at it. It is pretty ragged, but the cover has a picture of a boy without shoes, and he’s painting a fence.
“You’ll like it,” she says, “I promise. And you don’t have to read it here. Take it home for a week.”
I run out of the library and jump down the black marble stairs in twos. It is a surprise to me that Kips Bay has all these men, in the pool, the gym, the woodworking shop, the clay and the jewelry shops, and the game room, and, besides all that, they have a woman like Betty who can help you out if you are in a jam with homework or have trouble with a drunken father or something.
I wouldn’t mind so much if I had a drunken father, though. At least he’d be home.
I am thinking again about what a big neighborhood this is as I turn the corner on 52nd Street and walk up Second Avenue. The East Fifties, from here to the Queensboro Bridge, from Sutton Place over to Third Avenue. I know guys, and girls, too, on every street, almost in every building. Over a hundred people, I suppose. I wonder where they go when they need to talk to someone about something that is bothering them. Maybe they can go to a police station if they don’t belong to Kips. Maybe to a church, if they don’t mind confession.
I throw
Tom Sawyer
on the kitchen table. I am going to also tell my mother about all the books I’ve been reading at Kips. The kitchen light is out, and I can see her legs in the living room. She is sitting on the couch, reading a magazine. She is always reading something whenever she sits down. She hardly ever watches the television. This one is the second television Uncle Andy has given us, but the first one worked a little better. The new one is probably older and has too many lines rolling from the top to the bottom.
My mother has been pretty mad at me since I ran away, and I wonder how she’ll act with me now. Mothers, I think, usually forget about it when their kids hurt their feelings, but when it comes to running away, I don’t know.
I sit next to her. She kisses me but doesn’t say anything. She is staring at me, and I wonder if she smells the cigarette smoke of the one cigarette I had before I went to Kips. A long time passes as she continues to stare at me, as if I was a painting at the Metropolitan or a statue.
“How are you?” she says finally.
I lean in next to her, and I inhale the smell of Clorox coming from her white blouse. Anything white in my house smells of bleach, because my mother is such a stickler about getting things clean. Her hands, too, usually smell of Clorox, because when she is not reading she is always with her hands in the sink, washing shirts and things for people. It is a hard smell, but it is such a clean smell that it is relaxing. And I do need to relax as I figure out a way to ask her about my father being in the hospital.
“Okay,” I answer.
“I’ve been reading this interesting story about the Pope,” she says. “Let me read it to you.”
Good. If she wants to read to me, that means running away is something she is forgetting about.
My mother loves to read to us. When we were kids, my mother used to read the Letters to the Editor and the Inquiring Photographer columns to us every day, and get excited about the things she was reading.
“Yes,” she would say, “I agree, and we should all write to President Truman about that,” or “That is such a load of baloney that they could get rich by selling it in Brooklyn.”
“How come, Mommy?” I once asked her.
“People love baloney in Brooklyn,” she said.
And so she is reading now about how the Pope was the first Pope ever to come to America, when he was a monsignor or something, and her voice is light and singsong. She has a real New York accent, and when she wants to say
bottle,
she says
ba-ull.
The nuns are always harping about the New York accent, like saying
toid
for
third,
and that the bosses at the insurance companies will never give us jobs if we have New York accents. But I love to hear my mother read, and especially when she says
ba-ull.
Now, though, I am trying to figure out a way to get her to stop reading. I am not certain how I can bring the subject of the hospital up, but I know I want to say something before Billy gets home. He is allowed to stay out an hour later than I can if he is finished with his homework.
I guess I will just interrupt her, although she will probably say that I am being impolite. The only thing my mother thinks is worse than wearing a dirty shirt is being impolite. “Thank you” are my mother’s favorite words, and “yes, please,” and “may I this” and “may I that,” and excuse me, pardon me, and get on your feet if a lady enters the room or else you’ll be like all the ragamuffins who live over on Third Avenue and turn into a statue glued to your chair, and don’t forget to take your hat off indoors, because gentlemen never wear a hat with a roof over their heads.
Finally, I work up the courage to risk being impolite. It is not easy because I don’t really want to talk to her about this. I don’t want her to have to admit that she has been lying. “You will never have any friends if you lie,” that’s what she always says.
“Mom,” I begin with a hesitation, “could I make you a cup of tea?”
She puts the magazine down beside her and takes her glasses off.
“You should say excuse me,” she says. I knew she would say that.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Excuse me, your most worshipful lady.”
She laughs now and pats my leg.
“No thanks, Dennis,” she says. “I could never sleep if I had tea now.”
I shift some on the couch and then say, “Could I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she answers.
“Did you ever have a conversation with Daddy about me? I mean, doesn’t he want to see me? Does he ever ask about me?”
“Of course he does, honey,” she says. “But they don’t let kids in the hospital there. I told you a hundred times.”
I was hoping she wouldn’t say that again, even now when I’m thirteen, and I can’t just let her say it again and leave it alone. It’s been too many years of saying this, and me believing it, too.
“I know, Mom,” I say, shaking my head, “but you never told me he was in a mental place.”
I can feel all the muscles in her body get tight, and she picks the magazine up again and begins to flip through it. She doesn’t look at me, but keeps flipping the pages. Two minutes must pass. It is so silent, no noise at all except these pages in the magazine being flipped.
Finally, she stops.
“Who told you that?” she demands.
“I heard it,” I say.
“Where did you hear it?”
“I heard Aunt Kitty talking to Uncle Tracy, that’s all. And I told Betty about it down at the Kips library, and she said I should just talk to you about it.”
My mother turns on the couch and faces me.
“You told Betty,” she says, “about your father being in an insane asylum?”
“I told her you told me he was in the hospital because he hurt his legs.”
I can almost feel how upset she is, because the couch seems to be shaking.
“Dennis,” she says, her voice getting louder now, “you must never tell anyone these things, about your father, or about us being on welfare, or about not having any money. Or anything in our lives. This is our secret. It’s our lives. People are always trying to butt in.”
She stops now and points her finger at me.
“Nobody,” she says, “should know our business. Do you understand, Dennis?”
She makes this ugly face when she is mad at me, like she is disgusted with something, like there is some dead fish around or something that smells wicked. I am so sorry that she is angry with me, and I am sorry now that I said anything to Betty. How would Betty know that my mother would get so mad at me and that everything in our family is such a big secret? And that people are trying to know our business?
I am feeling ashamed now, and I don’t know why. There is no reason for me to be ashamed, but still that is what I feel. I don’t say anything more, but I get up from the couch and go into the kitchen and turn the light on. I grab
Tom Sawyer
from the table and go into my room and throw the book on the upper bunk. I can read, maybe, and calm down.
Why are we so different, goddammit? Different from everyone I know. Why do we have to have all these secrets that separate everyone, including us here in apartment 26? Why should I have to feel so apart from my mother?
I am in my pajamas and reading as my brother comes home. He doesn’t say anything and quickly gets into the bottom bunk.
I am wondering if I should ask him what he knows about Daddy and about the mental asylum. He has never mentioned it to me. But what if he doesn’t know? What if he never heard anyone talking about poor Daddy getting beat up in the shower at some mental asylum? What will he think if he doesn’t know? Will I make him sick with worrying about it?
“Turn the light out, will you?” Billy says.
I can’t read, anyway, and so I turn the light out. But I know I’m not going to get any sleep, not when I have all these questions. Like Betty said, they will have nowhere to go unless I let them out of my mouth.
“Billy,” I say, “what do you know about our father?”
There. I’ve said it, asked it. I can’t do anything about it now.
“He’s in a mental institution,” Billy says, and I can hear him pulling the sheet up over his head.
“How come you never told me?” I ask.
“There’s never any reason to talk about it, Dennis,” he says. “And a long time ago, Uncle Andy told me that I shouldn’t talk to anyone about it, so I didn’t.”
“Uncle Andy told you that?”
“Yeah,” Billy says. “He told me about the hospital and all, and then said not to talk about it.”
“Shit,” I say.
“Why,” Billy says, “what’s the matter?”
“How old were you?”
“I don’t know, eight, maybe nine.”
“Shit, you knew all this time and never said anything?”
“We never talk about it, Dennis.”
I am climbing down from the top bunk now.
“Shit,” I say, over and over, as I walk through the kitchen and the living room and into my mother’s bedroom.
I pull the light cord, and my mother jumps up.
“What’s the matter?” she asks.
“Could you get up?” I ask.
“What’s the matter?” she asks again, sitting up in the bed.
“I just want to know one thing, Mom,” I say, standing there in my pajamas. “Why didn’t you tell me about it a long time ago? Why didn’t you think I was old enough to know about my own father?”
I can see her shoulders going into a slump. She suddenly looks so tired, and she begins to whisper. “Oh, Dennis, Dennis, Dennis.”
“Well?” I ask, folding my arms.
“I just never thought,” she said, “that you wouldn’t feel bad if you knew. I didn’t want you to feel bad, Dennis.”
“That’s not it, Mom,” I say. “I don’t care about feeling bad or not. I just want to know why you don’t trust me?”