T
hat whole thing about Spango dying like that has been on my mind, and I see it so clearly, like the bull’s-eye in the middle of the target.
I am fifteen years old, and I don’t think I have even started my life yet. In fact, I am always thinking about getting my life started, and I can’t imagine hitting a tree and having everything go black, every breath crushed out of you, and not even having a chance yet to get life started.
And the pain. What terrible pain they must have felt. They are just kids, both of them, who had ten or twenty years ahead of them to make something of themselves.
We are all just kids, really. I shouldn’t forget that. That accident makes me think that I have a lot of years before me, and I shouldn’t be wasting any of my time.
“Time,” I remember Sister Alphonsus saying, “is the biggest gift that God gives you. You don’t have to work for it, or pray for it, or anything. He just gives it to you free and clear, and only you can put a value on it.”
I do value my time, and I want to make something of myself. I could be something important, too, something that will make people think, Holy God, Dennis did that?
I remember that I said three Hail Marys as soon as I heard about the accident. What else is there to do but pray for a guy, to hope that God won’t be too hard on him? Is it too late to say that I wish I would have worked for Spango that day, giving him back the time he gave me? If he had the day off, would he have gone down to the city on a visit? Maybe then Spaskey would have done something different, too.
But thinking like that doesn’t do anything for them. Spango is dead forever, and I have no power to do anything about his dying except to say a few prayers. At least God will hear me, and maybe Spango will, too, and he will know that not many people I know would have worked the whole day for me and not have asked anything in return.
After the funeral and visiting Charlie in the hospital, I practiced my basketball, set shots and layups, all summer long. I was feeling good, so good, about going to high school, about becoming more like my brother. I wanted to try to be a better student, and I wanted to work to be a sports star. I’ve always known I can do it, and everybody tells me I can do it. Archie and Betty down at Kips, Monsignor Ford, my mother, all of them telling me that I can recognize my famous abilities if I just pay attention.
I
have been at Hayes for more than a month now, and I want to pay attention, too.
Or, at least, I wanted to.
It is Sunday, a crisp fall day, and I have taken a ticket at the French bakery on 54th Street. I went to the eleven o’clock Mass, and it seems that every person in the church ran directly to the bakery after the communion.
I used to wait until the priest said,
“Eta missa est,”
“Go, the Mass is ended,” but lately I have been standing in the back and slipping out after the communion. I don’t think much happens after the communion, anyway. The priest just washes his chalice and talks a lot to himself in Latin.
Father O’Rourke says it is insulting to God to come late or to leave early, and that if you insult God, you’ll insult your mother and father and your friends, too, and what kind of a person goes around insulting everyone like that? But I don’t think it is such an insult, and, anyway, God has a lot more important things to think about than me slipping out after the communion.
I thought I was the first to leave, and I don’t know how so many people got so quickly to the bakery.
The rolls are six cents each, and I come here every Sunday to buy three seeded rolls. They used to be cheaper, but, no matter the price, Sunday would not be Sunday if I didn’t get the rolls for my mother and Billy and me to have with our Sunday egg. Even if they cost a quarter each, I think we would still get them. The rolls and Sundays are like Mass and communion. They just go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Today, I have an extra dime my mother gave me for the collection, but Father O’Rourke was talking about how wonderful it would be if just once he could have a silent collection, where there would be just paper falling into the straw collection baskets, so that he wouldn’t have to hear the annoying clinking of change. I didn’t want to disappoint him by throwing a dime in the basket, and so I am going to give the dime to the French lady behind the counter for a jelly doughnut.
Most of the women in the bakery are holding wallets in their hands and wearing long dresses made of rayon. Rayon is a scientific thing, and it doesn’t smell nice like cotton, like Mom’s dresses when she washes them, but the dresses are pretty and in light colors, purples and greens like in Monet’s
Rouen Cathedral.
The men seem all to be in brown suits with wide lapels and brown shoes. I know almost everyone who is waiting, people you see in the neighborhood, in the stores, and in church.
I am feeling dapper, too, wearing a blue shirt with a pink stripe across the chest, and my school sports coat. I am holding my chin high.
Mrs. Flanagan is here, and she smiles at me.
“How are you, Dennis?” she asks.
“I’m good, Mrs. Flanagan,” I say.
I don’t think she is trying to think of something else to say, and so I smile and look the other way. Anyway, my number is coming up. I would ask her about Sue, but she might think it is none of my business. I heard that Sue married a doctor in some far-off state, Illinois or somewhere. I still think about seeing Sue Flanagan in her brassiere and her silk slip.
I didn’t especially want to go spying on Sue, but I guess the memory of that night on the roof will never go away, like Pop’s memory of Ireland. I know I feel sorry I did it, but I can still picture the white of her skin and the shadows of her breasts as they pushed out from her brassiere. I know it is not right to take pleasure in the memory, either, but I can’t help thinking what a lucky guy that doctor is to get to see her like that every day.
If I was a doctor, maybe I could get a girl like Sue Flanagan, smart and pretty. But I don’t like to kid myself. I don’t think I could ever be a doctor. Even if I liked school, and wanted to pay attention, I don’t think I would want to pay attention that much. It takes over twenty years of schooling to be a doctor, and I have just gone through, what, maybe nine years and a couple of months counting kindergarten.
My month at Cardinal Hayes has not been a great one, and I don’t think Monsignor Ford will be happy with me or my academic future.
I tried, but I just can’t get my heart into it.
I made the freshman basketball team, and I went to practice for the first couple of weeks. I like basketball, and I have a not-so-bad jump shot from the foul line. I suppose I could be called a good boys’ club basketball handler. But the boys on the team are much better than I am, and some are as good as Scarry. I know that no matter how much I practice I am not going to be a starter with this team. It is one of those things that you can see the first day. And if you can’t see it, you’ll feel it.
Some guys play basketball like poets and other guys play like newspaper delivery boys. My brother is like a poet when he plays, for the ball lands like a rhyme every time in the center of the basket, the end of every shot a two-pointer, and Billy floats through the air like he’s on angel’s wings when he lays the ball up. I think it’s a gift that God gives you, to be able to make the basketball seem a part of your body when you dribble and jump and shoot and carry the ball. I guess I have a little gift, but when it comes to basketball, it’s like God gave Billy a pair of shoes for Christmas and I got the shoelaces.
There’s a Chinese boy on the freshman team who handles the ball like Bob McGuire on the Knicks, and I try to copy his style. His moves are quick and graceful, and I imagine there should be music in the background when he goes in for a layup. I must’ve laid the ball up a million times, and still I don’t feel inside that I’m better than simply good at this. He’s the first Chinese boy I have ever met, and the only one who plays basketball, too. I wonder if eating chop suey would help.
A pretty French girl calls my number and I give her my ticket. She checks it, because some people give any ticket hoping to get in front of the line.
“Well, what eez eet?” she asks.
“What eez what?” I answer. I don’t think she likes this, and gives me a French sour puss. I could tell her that Mark Twain is always making fun of the French, but I don’t think she’ll care.
“Your ord-dare,” she says.
“Three seeded,” I say, “and a jelly doughnut.”
She is about to put the jelly doughnut in a bag with the rolls, and I stop her.
“No, no,” I say. “The jelly doughnut is right out of the collection basket, and I’m going to have to eat it on the way home.”
She is too busy to figure anything out. I am just another pain-in-the-neck customer, and so she takes my dimes and shrugs her shoulders.
Walking home, I see Father O’Rourke still standing on the corner of 55th Street talking to some parishioners. It is not very cold, but there is a woman standing with Father O’Rourke who has a fur coat on that comes down to her ankles. She looks pretty swank, and I suppose she’s from Sutton Place.
“A real howdy-do,” my mother would say.
I don’t think my mother will ever have a coat as nice as that. She has one coat, a red one that comes to her knees, even though most of her dresses come down below her knees. She has had it ever since I can remember.
I guess my mother will never get a chance to have nice things. My father will never come out of that hospital.
It makes me sad to think that Mom never has anyone to go out with. I don’t know what happened to Artie. He just disappeared. She is always alone. Even when she is doing just ordinary things, if she’s not working at the phone company, things like walking at night around the corner to 57th Street to get a newspaper. Every night at nine o’clock for as long as I can remember, she goes to get the
News
and the
Mirror.
The
Mirror
has recently folded and is a dead newspaper now. So that gives the
News
a better chance.
Sometimes I think if my father was dead it would give my mother a better chance. I wish she could get another husband, a second one, and maybe start over.
But I know my father is not dead. They feed him every day in the hospital, so he will be around. Maybe my mother could meet some good man, and they could forget that my father is in the hospital and will never come out. Being Catholic, though, my mother could never get a divorce. Anyway, nobody ever gets a divorce. We don’t know anyone who got a divorce, even Aunt Kitty, whose husband went out for milk and bread one day and never came back. People on my block get married and then they live there for life. Even Annie Dunne is still married to the guy in Sing Sing. Some things just never change for people. For some people.
I don’t want to be like that, to try to be the same as the people on the block. If things are not going the way you want them to go, maybe you have to be different.
My mother, I think, is caught in this rut of having to be like everybody else, and I wish she could think she was different from the rest, better able to take care of herself without caring what anyone on the block thinks about it.
I remember lying on my mother’s bed where I had gone to read a book on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I was a kid, and I could hear my mother and my Aunt Helen talking in the living room. The radio was going, and my Uncle Bob and Uncle Buddy were singing songs in the kitchen, but I could still hear my mother talking about Tommy Quigley, the man she used to go out with then. I didn’t like Quigley even before he kicked the door in, and I paid extra attention to hear every word she was saying about him.
“So he asked you to marry him?” I heard my Aunt Helen say.
“He said he wants to buy a delicatessen,” my mother answered, “and that he could afford to marry me and take care of the children, too.”
“What did you say, Mary?”
My Uncle Buddy’s voice was in the background. “Toor-a-loor-a-loor-a.”
My mother took a long time to answer my Aunt Helen.
“It can’t be,” I heard her say finally.
It was a great relief to me, because I didn’t want to see Quigley more than once a month, anyway.
“Why not, Mary?” my Aunt Helen asked. “It might be good to have a man around the house.”
“It is not right,” my mother said, “because I was put in this situation with two small boys for God knows what reason, and I just have to stick with it.”
“You could get a divorce,” Aunt Helen said.
“I never thought about it,” my mother said. “My children have a father, and they don’t need another one. And, until something changes, that is the way it will be.”
“Things won’t change, Mary,” Aunt Helen said, “unless you want them to.”
I remember my Aunt Helen’s voice as she said this. It was like the way the priest says the last words of the sermon at Mass, winding the whole thing up.
“I suppose each of us knows that we can get whatever we want,” my mother said, “depending on what we want to do to get it.”
“Getting married again,” Aunt Helen said, “could help you out.”
“Oh, Helen,” my mother said, “this man Tommy is not a bad man, but he drinks too much, and I don’t see that he cares about my children. So he’s not the one that makes this worth thinking about.”
“Do you think any man will make it worth your while?” Aunt Helen asked.
“It is hard to say,” my mother answered in a lower, much harder-to-hear voice. “I only know that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and everyone else would tell you that it is a waste of good time to think about it until it happens.”
“That’s an I-Irish lulllll-a-bye,” Uncle Buddy was singing over my mother’s voice, and all I heard after this was my Aunt Helen laughing at something my mother said. I knew then that my mother was in no danger of getting a divorce, because she wouldn’t joke about it if she was.
Father O’Rourke is now waving goodbye to the fancy woman and gives me a wave, too, as I pass by. I wonder if he will go into the rectory now and meet Monsignor Ford, and if he will tell Monsignor Ford that he saw me on First Avenue and that I did not look like I was doing too well at Cardinal Hayes High School. I am feeling that I might as well hang a sign across my chest saying, “I have not been so good for high school and high school has not been so good for me.”