Broken for You (30 page)

Rudy instituted a no-smoke policy on weekends. He added things like Gardenburgers, Tofu Dogs, and Caesar salads to the menu. He bought an espresso machine. Business picked up.

Irma eventually returned to her lipsticked, coiffed, and colorful self. M.J. did her hair on a regular basis. He accompanied her on trips to the grocery store, pharmacy, and veterinarian. They shared dinner at Irma's place four nights a week. She showed up at the Aloha, either to bowl or socialize, nearly every day; when she didn't, M.J. or Rudy called to make sure she was all right.

M.J.'s Hawaiian shirt collection grew until it acquired legendary status. Nearly everyone in the Aloha community contributed at one time or another. Sometimes the shirts arrived, gift-wrapped, on major holidays; Irma, of course, remained the major benefactress, presenting M.J. with shirts on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukah, Passover, Veterans Day, St. Patrick's Day, and the Fourth of July, and other members of the Aloha Lanes brought gifts in observance of occasions like Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Most of the time, though, M.J. would arrive at work on a nondesignated holiday to find yet another shirt on the front desk, sometimes with a note, sometimes without.

"And what have we got here?" he'd yell to the clientele at large. "Are we celebratin' Be Kind to Lapsed Catholics Day?"

Before long, M.J.'s black wardrobe was crammed into the back of his closet. He had so many Hawaiian shirts that he could wear a different one every day for weeks in a row. His favorite shirt, however, remained the first one Irma bought him.

"When will you bowl with me?" Irma demanded. Having transformed M.J.'s wardrobe, she had made it her new mission to appropriate his leisure time. More to the point, Irma had rejoined The Hits and Missus and was actively recruiting a regular partner.

"It'll never happen, Irma," M.J. replied. "I'm strictly a spectator."

"Never say never!" she said.

They had similar conversations about religion.

"Come with me to shul. What could it hurt?" Irma—

"Be quiet. If somebody like ME can believe in God, what's YOUR excuse?"

M.J. had no answer for that. But the question continued to intrigue him.

Without meaning to, M.J. Striker had become a resident of somewhere. He'd acquired a family and a colorful wardrobe. He was no longer invisible.

Twenty-two

An Atheist on Easter, 1997

F
iirst, know this: A disbelief in God does not mandate a rejection of ritual. Atheists have traditions too. Like many people on this day, you have observances to make, spiritual concepts to ponder, prayers to recite.

Services are conveniently held in the privacy of your own basement apartment and while you're still in your Skivvies, for your church has a congregation of one. Commencing with the solemn uncapping of a good ale purchased specially for this occasion, you fill a tumbler and drink it down. Since Easter is the only day on which you partake of your native brew (or of
any
alcoholic beverage, for that matter, and here's another stereotype blasted to dust: Not all atheists are godless anarchists and not all Irishmen are drunks), in a manner of minutes you're thoroughly squiffed.

The invocation of the ale is followed with a ritual poetry reading, taken from the book you've chosen as your scripture, your book of common prayer. The poem's title is "Easter 1916," and among many, many other things it commemorates a famous uprising in your homeland. It is the greatest poem of the twentieth century.

You refill your glass, clear your throat, and begin to recite for no one in the clearest, most sonorous voice you can manage: "'I have met them at close of day, coming with vivid faces…’ ”

The reading reminds you of sacrifices bigger and more lofty than the ones you've made: '"I have passed with a nod of the head, or polite meaningless words, or have lingered awhile and said polite meaningless words

The poem is about transfiguration—what better subject to contemplate on this day?—and how the deaths of plain folk made martyrs of them and caused others to cast off their motley wear and change:" 'Transformed utterly," as the poet says, "A terrible beauty is born.'"

The poem is about misjudgment, too. Regret and redemption: '"He had done most bitter wrong to some who are near my heart, yet I number him in the song; he, too, has resigned his part in the casual comedy

You are nothing like these martyrs, nor like those who came after, transformed, and took up their cause. This poem does not memorialize your uprising, your self-annihilation. Your courage is a pale watery thing, your love petty—the narrow love of one man for a spirit-ravaged, sorrowful woman—and your sacrifice is laid on the altar of romantic obsession. But you read because it's Easter—by Christ, that's the title— and because the greatest poem of the twentieth century was set down in English by a man bred in Dublin city and the sea cliffs of Sligo, and isn't that one of the best jokes Himself ever played? (This is another thing people don't appreciate about the atheistic sensibility: You don't have to believe in God to talk about him, for God's sake.)

"Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? . . .'" You're near the end. This is the section that is hardest to bear, harder still to read aloud with composure. "'That is heaven's part, our part to murmur name upon name, As a mother names her child when sleep at last has come On limbs that had run wild . . .'" Your eyes are almost blind with tears begot of these names and the memory of others: "'I write it out in a verse—MacDonagh and MacBride and Connolly and Pearse . . ."
and Virginia and Maureen, and our sweet faerie wand. . . .

Besotted with weeping, as well as brew, you close the good book and go back to bed.

And thus the service endeth.

Hours later, you reawaken, take a shower, make coffee. The main event is over; you ponder how to proceed. There are things you won't do on this day, that's sure; avoiding certain activities constitutes a less formal but still integral element of your holiday tradition. For example, you won't turn on your 10-inch black-and-white television for fear of being assaulted by a young, sweet-faced Judy Garland, wearing a hat as big as a tent and singing the theme from
Easter Parade.
You won't venture within earshot of an alleluia. You won't gather with friends at a restaurant for brunch. You'll avoid eye contact with little girls wearing hair ribbons, floral dresses, white tights, and shiny black patent leather shoes.

You might consider calling your only sister in Chicago, saying hello, and talking about something safe, like the weather; Midwesterners love to talk about the weather. You could inquire after your sister's health, her husband's health, the health and whereabouts of her eight biological children—and her only niece.

This plan sounds too redemptive. You light a Lucky Strike and put it out of your mind.

Then you remember your commitments to your boss. You remind yourself of your duties as an amateur hairstylist. You recall the admonition of a certain Jewish matron and friend, a person you consider a martyr in her own way: "You feel BLUE? Get up and DO!"

In the end, you're not very original. You dress in the most god-awful Hawaiian shirt in your collection—a gift from the martyr, it's your hands-down favorite—leave your apartment, and start walking with purpose. You behave like every other idiot who's desperate to believe that the lost will be found, the sinners will be redeemed, and the dead beloved—arisen and full in earthly flesh—will find their way back to your arms. In short, you end up at the church of your choice, because no prayer in the world comforts your soul like the sound of someone bowling a strike.

It was one of those cool, early spring nights. The quiet that followed closing time would make it hard to sleep, especially tonight, so M.J. threw on a coat, belted it loosely over Irma's shirt, and headed south for a walk. Other people were out walking—spring fever was his guess— so 85th and Greenwood was busier than usual for this time of night, and a Sunday, too. Across the street in front of the record store, a young couple was quarreling. Even though M.J. couldn't see the lovers' faces or understand what they were saying, it was a sure thing that the girl was roundly pissed off about something, and her sweetheart was trying to jolly her out of it. There was wildness and strength in her lithe body. She kept fluttering against his trunk and limbs, pushing away from him one moment, inclining toward him the next. M.J. saw in an instant what a pair they made.
Linnet's wings and laurel tree,
he thought, hoping against hope that they knew what they had and would do whatever needed doing to keep it close. At 85th he turned around and started back uptown. He didn't look at the couple again; they'd loosed a feeling in his gut, spiraling now and gaining momentum, and even though he could easily dredge up a poem to shape that feeling into artful expression, he'd had enough of Mr. Yeats for one day, enough poetry, enough bloody feeling—
Can't you for one blessed minute give it a rest, man?
—so he sank his head between his shoulders, looked down, and skulked north on Greenwood like an asshole trying to leave without paying.

He'd gone half a block when he heard shouting: a name, he thought, but the name was not his.

Suddenly a car gave voice to some unlucky horror: There was a prolonged, desperate shriek of braking tires. Any fool within earshot knew how that sound would end. M.J. ratcheted his eyes shut and waited— for the crush of steel, the shattering of glass. But there was no crash— only a terrible arrhythmia in the city's heartbeat, paralyzed breath, a battlefield silence.

Then people started screaming. M.J. turned around. He was sorry when he did.

She was lying in the middle of the street. Probably dead. Had to be, or dying. She wore the remnants of a fancy black dress.

The street was stilled and numb with aftershock until a young man bolted toward her, running like a soldier to a fallen comrade in the field, skidding on his knees to where she lay, draping his coat over her—and when M.J. saw them, spotlit in the pink-smeared headlights of the SUV that looked obscenely big, big as a tank, he realized who they were.
Oh Christ,
he thought,
it's that girl and her boyo and they'll never be able to patch things up now. Poor bloody bastard. Poor son of a bitch.

He stepped off the curb and started toward them, but then a middle-aged woman stumbled out of the SUV, pale, shaking, barely able to walk. She shuffled toward the girl, muttering, her eyes glazed, and M.J. veered away from the lovers and took her by the shoulders, fixing her at a safe distance and blocking her view, taking off his coat and wrapping it around her, making her sit on the curb because she was going into shock. He said words to her, stupid, meaningless words, but the only ones that came to mind: "You're all right, missus. It will be all right." There was the sound of more doors opening then and he looked up to a sight like a clown car at a Shriners parade: They tumbled out from all sides, an entire soccer team, boys they were, a dozen of them maybe and young, too young to be in the middle of this, looking for all the world like Dublin lads after a proud hard-won game of hurley, dirtied faces and scraped knees and still wearing their black and white jerseys. They walked silently, slowly toward the dying girl—as if some ill-intentioned hypnotist were reeling them in—and formed a circle around her, some of them dumbstruck, others choking back sobs, all transfixed.

Suddenly, unbelievably, the girl started flailing her crushed hands and trying to make sounds.
Holy Christ,
M.J. thought, his guts churning in sympathy,
she's not dead, she's not even unconscious, those boys can't be there,
and he rushed over then, knowing all about boys, the roughened bluff outsides that mask the tenderest of underbellies, how they march into places where they shouldn't go and then are too ashamed to lead themselves out. He knew what they needed now: to be told what to do, to have rules and a straw boss. He moved among them and steered them away, not roughly, but with the firmness of a father, he hoped, because that's who he had to be now, that was what was being asked of him and he would take it up, the cause of fatherhood, just this once, and stand in for all the absent fathers of all these hapless boys. Their das would not want them to see, to know—and neither did he—how easy it is for these bodies of ours to be utterly ruined.

"Boyos!" He forced each one to look into his eyes. "Come here now, boys, come away, over here. I need yous all to listen. That lady over there, is she somebody's mum?"

A shaky voice spoke up, "She's my mom, sir," and a boy with thick, smudged glasses stepped to the front. "She didn't mean to . . . That girl, she ran right in front of us and my mom—"

"I know that, son. Listen now. Your mom really needs you. Go sit with her, can you do that? Get her talking, about anything. Make sure she stays warm. A couple more of yous," he said, pointing, "go with him. Is there a cell phone in the van? You, son, go get it and call the police."

And so he went on, talking to them, mobilizing them, keeping them occupied until the paramedics and officers arrived. When they did, he stepped out of the street and took his place in the shadows. He hadn't seen what happened. There was nothing more for him to do. Still, he couldn't make himself leave. He stood there forever, even after the ambulance pulled away and the scene started to clear. No one noticed him. No one questioned his loitering presence.

His coat lay in the street where it had dropped unnoticed from the woman's shoulders when she got up and spoke with the officers. The night was well on—it was chilly damp now—and he stepped off the curb to retrieve it.