A Song for Mary (16 page)

I have a high, clear, choirboy’s voice, and I sing away at “The Rose of Tralee” the way I sing away at the Gloria or the Kyrie at the eleven o’clock High Mass. I get through the first verse easy enough, and then I get to the chorus, which I know my mother loves. I try to make every word count.

She was lovely and fair

As the rose in the summer,

But t’was not her beauty alone that won me.

Oh, no, t’was the truth in her eyes ever dawning

That made me love Mary

The Rose of Tralee.

It is my favorite because it always makes me wonder how someone can know when they see the truth in someone’s eyes. Most people I know have eyes that make you want to hide, stern eyes, like all the nuns except Sister Stella, who is always laughing. I guess my mother’s eyes have the truth in them, especially when they shine with the wetness of a tear or two. Maybe that is why she cries when sad things happen, or when she gets fed up with something, these tenement tears that she says are not really important, but that just come with the territory.

They all clap and cheer when I am done, and Uncle Bob tries to give me a cigar, but I laugh it off as Aunt Kitty gives me a kiss. It all makes me feel good, like I have done something that no one else can do.

“That Dennis,” Aunt Helen says, “I wonder who his Rose of Tralee is.”

She grabs me and begins to give me a kiss. I try to be friendly, but I think I’m too old to be getting kissed like this by everyone.

I look at my mother, and she’s got her hands together as if she’s praying.

“It’s my mother’s song,” I say. “She’s the Rose of Tralee.”

Everyone laughs, and my mother says, “Blarney.”

But I look at her as she says this. She’s beaming. It’s like I just gave her a Christmas present.

Everyone sings in the family. Uncle Bill sings “Phil the Fluter’s Ball,” and everyone tries to sing along as he slaps his knee and stamps his foot. Mom sings “Paddy McGinty’s Goat,” because it is the one song her own mother taught her as a kid. It’s longer than a sermon in church. I like listening to her voice. She only sings when she is with the family like this. She never sings around the house. But she whistles sometimes.

“God, Mary,” Uncle Bob asks, “how do you remember all them verses?”

“Nothing else to do, maybe,” Mom answers.

Uncle Andy sings “Danny Boy.”

When he is finished, Aunt Kitty complains.

“It is such a sad song,” she says, “leaving flowers on the grave and all. Let’s just sing about the good times.”

“Are there good times really?” Mom says. “Sometimes I think there’s just different times, maybe a little good, maybe a little not so good, but I don’t know if there are real good times, like in a long period, the times of Christ or the times of Henry VIII.”

“Oh, come on, Mary,” Aunt Helen says. “There’s lots of good times. We are all here, and that’s something.”

“Well,” Mom replies, “good or bad, you still have to get through the day, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Aunt Helen says, “and the queen of England has to get through the day, too. But I bet we are having a better time of it.”

Mom’s cousin Tim is drunk and falls out of his chair. He must have had half the keg. He is a big man, and there is a commotion as my uncles try to lift him back into the chair.

My cousin Johnny grabs my wrist and pulls me into the hallway.

“Let’s go Peeping Tom,” Johnny says.

“You mean spying?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Johnny says, “and it’s dark now. Ya gotta do it when it’s dark, up on the roof. You can see lots of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like girls, stupid,” he says, shoving me down the hallway.

We are on the roof, and the sign on the door going out to the roof is in big letters:
NO ONE ALLOWED ON ROOF
. It looks like it means business.

I never come up on the roof, except a couple of times, very hot nights when I slept there on a blanket with Mommy and Billy.

The door squeaks when we open it. It is so dark that it is hard to cross from one roof to the other along the six buildings that are all the same in our row on 56th Street. There is a small wall, less than two feet high, separating each building, and I trip over the first one and cry out.

“Shhsh,” Johnny whispers. “You have to be quiet.”

I squint my eyes until they get used to the darkness. It is about nine o’clock, and I am thinking that there is school tomorrow. Maybe I can stay out for another half an hour and my mother won’t notice.

The Hotel Sutton is across the street. It looks like a mountain of lights from up here. We can see into the rooms looking over the parapet. But I only see men who are on the telephone or reading. Someone is watching television.

Everybody seems to have a television now, but we still haven’t gotten one, or a phone, either. The welfare doesn’t allow them, my mother says, but I don’t know why we couldn’t hide them and add them to our famous list of secrets.

“I wish I had binocs,” Johnny says.

“What’s binocs?” I ask, wondering why he knows so many things I don’t.

“Like they look through in the navy pictures, you know, to see if any Jap kamikazes are coming.”

Johnny is lying across the roof edge, and I am thinking that he is getting his clothes dirty because I know no one ever cleans up here.

“C’mon,” he says, “lean up here, and you can see better.”

Suddenly, I hear the squeak of a roof door opening, and I am hoping that we don’t get caught up here on the roof. No one is allowed. If I get caught, I don’t know how I will ever explain anything to my mother. What would I say? That I was up on the roof to play cards? To talk with Johnny? She will know for sure that I came up here to do something I am not supposed to.

“Shhsh,” I whisper as Johnny slides down from the roof edge. “Let’s take cover.”

We run to the other side of the roof and wait in the dark to see who is coming. We are crouched low by a wall that looks over an alleyway. I can see, two roofs over, that a guy is there with his dog. Johnny sees him, too, and puts his mouth by my ear.

“If that dog comes over here,” he says, “I am going to throw him off the roof.”

“Shhsh,” I say, “he won’t come if he doesn’t hear you.”

We are kneeling down now for more than ten minutes, until finally the guy takes the dog back into his building.

“Whew,” Johnny says, “that was close.”

I stand to take the stiffness out of my legs. It is like I’ve been kneeling for an age at a High Mass. We are next to a wall that looks over to a back alleyway. I look down, and I feel instantly frozen.

“Shhsh,” I say.

“What?” Johnny says.

“Shhsh,” I say again. Looking down between the clothes hanging from the clotheslines, I can see Sue Flanagan. If Johnny talks now, I think I’ll kill him.

“Let me see,” he says.

“Shhsh.”

I am leaning over the alleyway wall, and there on the top floor, just below me, is Sue Flanagan in her bedroom. There are curtains over her window, but I can see right through them. There is not much space in her room, but she is moving around like crazy, and each time she moves, her skirt waves one way and then the next, and I can see the curves of her legs. She throws something on her bed, and then she leans over the bed to get it back, and her skirt goes up to her thighs. Her skin is so white. I don’t know if I have ever seen skin as white as hers. And then she leaves the room, and I am straining to see into her kitchen window, but the shade is down, and I can’t see anything.

“Where’d she go?” Johnny asks.

“Shhsh.”

I am hoping that she will come back again, and I am staring into her room, past the curtains and into her empty bed. God. Does she sleep in the bed for everyone on the roof to see? God.

Sue comes back into the room, and I am so happy to see her again. It is thrilling. She is still moving quickly, as if she has ten things to do and time for just three of them. She throws something on her bed again, and she begins to unbutton her blouse. I can feel myself trembling, the way I felt before I ran in to call the cops on Quigley. This is maybe the most exciting thing I have ever done in my life, to be here watching Sue Flanagan.

But there is also something strange happening.

Something is bothering me, something I don’t like. I suddenly begin to think that I am doing something only because I have the edge of being in this darkness. It doesn’t sit right with me, and I wonder why I am doing this. I am thinking that I am embarrassed, and I can hardly talk. I feel a little like I have been listening to someone else’s confession at church.

I want to tell Johnny that maybe we shouldn’t be here.

Sue has her blouse open, and I can see her brassiere clearly as she turns around quickly. I can remember being so close to that brassiere, and dancing around the stoop with her, rocking back and forth, feeling wanted, and I am thinking that I want to close my eyes. I know she is going to take her blouse off, and I am having trouble swallowing. But she unbuttons her skirt instead, and the skirt drops to the floor. My mouth is dry and sticky. I feel myself moving in my underwear, feeling the famous boner all the guys love so much, but yet I know something is wrong. I feel that I want to punch out at somebody, maybe like Mr. Dempsey there in the back of his delicatessen. Why am I so young, I am thinking, and why can’t I just be in that room with Sue, talking to her as she prances around in her underpants and a blouse that is opening and closing like a flapping flag? I can hardly breathe as I watch her lean over to pick up her skirt, the silk of her underpants so close to me I can almost feel it. She folds the skirt and puts it into her drawer by the bed. I can’t watch anymore. I feel like I should be punching out at myself because I know that I am wrong being in this darkness like this. And I know, too, that she is going to take her underpants and her brassiere off, because I know now that it is her nightgown that she put on the bed. I can’t look anymore, because every time I see her I want her to hug me, and to call me Dapper Dan, and to laugh, and I know if I watch her take all her clothes off that I am going to feel funny the next time I see her, odd and different. And I know that she would hate me if she knew that I was here. I am breathing so heavily. I have to do something.

I can hardly talk, and I can see that Johnny is big-eyed and smiling. I know I have to say something to him.

But what?

I can’t just tell him that I think this is wrong. He thinks that this is just another one of those great things that come with living in the city, things that don’t happen in Brooklyn.

And so I kneel down again, and I am low enough so that I can’t see over the wall. It is a strange relief now, like I am out of it. And I take a moment to think what to say.

“We better go before we get caught,” I say, putting as much alarm in my whisper as I can.

“Are you crazy?” Johnny says. He isn’t whispering now, but talking loud, like he was surprised and shocked that I would say something so out of touch.

“Are you crazy?” he says again. This time he yells, and I know he is not asking a question.

“Shhsh,” I say. “I’m getting outta here.”

Someone opens a window. I can hear the metal chains of the window moving as it opens. Someone yells up the alley.

“Who’s there? What’s going on?”

God, I think, God, get me outta here before anyone finds out.

I am running now, and Johnny is running behind me. We get to the roof door of my building, and it creaks louder than any door has ever creaked as I open it. The No One Allowed on Roof sign slams behind me.

“Shhsh.”

We are in the hall, tiptoeing down the stairs. I am praying that no one opens their door until we get to the fourth floor, apartment 26.

“Man, did you ever see tits like that?” Johnny says. I know now that he is asking a question like he wants an answer.

“Shhsh,” I say to him. “Shhsh.”

We are going down my long hallway. I don’t want to answer Johnny. I don’t want to talk about it, and I know that if I just go to bed, I won’t have to talk to Johnny until next time he comes to New York to sing Irish songs, and I can just lie in my bed and think about the beauty in the eyes of the Rose of Tralee, and try with all my might to not think about the whitest skin I have ever seen in my life.

Chapter Twenty-five

I
am in Bobby Carney’s house down on 51st Street, around the corner from Kips. He is taking me over to the residence of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where I have an appointment to take the special Latin exam for Cathedral altar boys.

“Why are you doing that?” Billy asked as I was leaving the house.

“It’s a good deal,” I answered, “because the Cathedral is like being in the championships for altar boys. Not everyone can get in.”

“Big deal,” Billy said, “it’s ten blocks away, long blocks. And it will snow every time you have the six o’clock Mass.”

“Ahh,” I said to Billy, “you’re just in a bad mood all the time because the Knicks lost the play-offs.”

Basketball is most of Billy’s life. He’s an altar boy at St. John’s, but he doesn’t like the Cathedral. I don’t know why. He says he would rather spend his altar boy time at our church doing the weddings and funerals for the tip money, rather than going to the Cathedral for the fanfare of it.

I don’t know why some people like to do one thing, and other people like to do something else. Maybe it depends on who your friends are, who you’re hanging around with. When Jurgensen became an altar boy, I wanted to join up with him, and when Walsh became a choirboy, I wanted to do that, too. And when Carney said I could go to the Cathedral if I wanted, that was good enough for me.

Now there is no one home at Carney’s, and so we are sitting on a couch in a dark living room. The couch and a chair are covered with a thick plastic. If Carney’s mother was home, she wouldn’t let us in the living room but would make us sit at the kitchen table.

“Did you bring the Latin book?” Carney asks.

“I forgot it,” I answer. “It’s on my brother’s bed. You know he’s got the lower bunk and it’s dark there and I didn’t see it, and he was breaking my horns when I was leaving, anyway. So I forgot it.”