The Crazyladies of Pearl Street (32 page)

Apart from some puzzling and anatomically improbable drawings on the walls of public toilets, I learned little about sex on the street because kids in the 'Thirties were reticent and puritanical in comparison to children of today.? HYPERLINK “file:///C:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Administrator\\Impostazioni%20locali\\Temp\\Rar$EX00.266\\Trevanian%20-%20The%20Crazyladies%20of%20Pearl%20Street.htm” \l “note31#note31” ??[31]? But information of a decidedly unreliable sort could be had by hanging around the older boys who used to loiter in the mouth of our back alley, awaiting the two girls from our block who had reputations for being willing to 'do it'.

One of Pearl Street's two 'fast' girls was Kathleen Gogarty, a fifteen-year-old with dead eyes lost in folds of fat, a granular complexion, and a limp-knee'd, flat-footed waddle that made her seem half crippled, although the real problem was that she wasn't strong enough to move her weight gracefully. She would walk homeward from Our Lady of Angels down the steep sidewalk of the Livingston Avenue hill, her books digging into her belly, her feet slapping on the pavement, her flesh jiggling within a too-tight navy blue uniform. Street lore insisted that Kathleen Gogarty would do it for a Baby Ruth bar or a bottle of Dr Pepper, but you had to be quick as she'd only give you the couple of minutes it took to consume her bribe because her mother would beat her if she got back from school late. I have no idea why that particular brand of candy bar or that particular soft drink was understood to possess the power to undermine Kathleen's morality and prudence, nor do I remember any of the boys bragging that he had actually ever done it in the allotted two minutes, or explaining how he had managed it while she was drinking a Dr Pepper, but street lore is a resilient strain of truth, capable of shrugging off any assault from logic, probability or observation. As she neared the mouth of the alley, a couple of boys would push one of their gang out in front of them and say, “Hey, Kathleen! Look who's got a Baby Ruth for you!” The other boys would snigger while the chosen lover struggled, his heels slipping on the slimy cobbles as he tried to get back into the safe anonymity of the pack, all the while making gagging sounds as if his refined sexual taste revolted at the prospect of having to do it to 'fat old gravel-faced Gogarty'. Kathleen would not complain or try to push past the blocking boys. She would just stand there in bovine patience, her fat-squeezed eyes looking dully ahead, until the boys got tired of razzing her, then she would continue her way down the street, her feet slapping on the pavement, her body heaving and jiggling.

The other girl on our block who was understood to be willing was Brigid Meehan. Unlike Kathleen, Brigid really would do it because she was simple-minded and biddable. Although she would soon be sixteen and out of school, she sat at the back of Sister Agnes-Joseph's fourth-grade class, cramped in a desk much too small for her. Sister Agnes-Joseph got all the 'difficult' kids because of her unique blend of maternal sympathy and prison-guard toughness. She was gentle and understanding with the backward ones, but disruptive, unruly boys learned to fear the edge of her ruler across their knuckles and to respect her ability to defend herself in a one-on-one tussle by slamming the kid against the cloakroom wall until he was dazed and docile. Sister Agnes-Joseph possessed the indwelling power of a Force of Nature. I have seen a whole playground of rampaging kids fall silent as she passed through on her way to the chapel. Shouts would fade in a minor-key Doppler decay, wild runners would stumble to a sedate walk, jump ropes would swing limp, and balls would bounce away unattended as she walked by, a calm half-smile on her lips, her eyes beneath the starched wings of her head-dress glinting quick darts of intimidating benevolence left and right.

Brigid always walked home alone because, being in the fourth grade, she got out of school half an hour earlier than other girls of her age. As she descended Livingston Avenue from Ten Broeck, wearing the yellow knitted toque that she wore summer and winter, the boys would begin their ritual catcalls and whistles and wise-mouthed suggestions. Although they knew she would do anything she was asked to do (she had once been knocked down by a passing brewery wagon when a boy told her to step out in front of it), they usually let her go on her way because they were afraid of her brother, Patrick. They knew that if anything happened to her, Patrick would come looking for the boy, and the prospect of being hunted down by a tough, determined, one-eyed dummy was a powerful anaphrodisiac.

I was always uncomfortable because Brigid's mother was the woman with whom my mother had, against my better judgment, struck up a friendly relationship, exchanging 'good afternoons' whenever they met. And also because I had had a... well, let's call it an experience... with Brigid. This, despite Patrick's tendency to beat to a pulp anyone who fooled with his sister.

One hot evening a few days after my eleventh birthday, Brigid came knocking on our door in a tearful panic. She explained in an urgent yet stumbling way that her mother was 'stuck', and all the grown-up Meehans were drunk, and her brother Patrick was still in the Reformatory, and she didn't know what to do! She begged my mother to come and help her. I followed along, unwilling to let any mother of mine go over there alone. When we got to the foul-smelling Meehan warren we found Mrs Meehan in her kitchen, one hand on the gas tap of the stove and the other on the handle of the back door. She was 'stuck', unable to release either one. Added to the kitchens boiled-cabbage-and-urine smell was the sickly sweet smell of gas because in their efforts to pry their mother's hand off the gas tap the kids had repeatedly turned the gas on. To turn it off again they'd had to twist hand and all. Now two of them were clinging to their mother's arm, trying to tear her hand off the door knob. Crucified between door knob and gas tap, Mrs Meehan was sobbing that it wasn't her fault! She was trying to let go! But she couldn't! She just couldn't! My mother, always calm and efficient in an emergency, ordered the swarm of little kids out of the kitchen. Out! Out! Then she sat with me and Brigid at the kitchen table and began talking to us quietly about how grown-up Brigid was getting to be, and how it was so hot at night that it was hard to sleep—anything that came into her mind. I played along, chipping in when I could. Brigid didn't contribute; she just sat there with her eyes lowered to the greasy oilcloth, her old knitted yellow toque down to her eyebrows. In time, Mrs Meehan's sobbing tapered off and her white-knuckled grip on the door handle slowly relaxed. My mother was telling us about one summer up in Lake George Village when the weather was so hot that...

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs Meehan turn the gas on again. I was about to cry out a warning when she calmly struck a match with her other, now liberated, hand, and lit the metal nipples. “Would you like a cup of coffee, Missus?” she asked. Mother said Yes, she would love a cup of coffee, and Mrs Meehan slid the percolator over the stiff blue jets of flame... and that was it. She was all right again. Brigid sighed with relief and left the room, and her mother sat down in the chair she vacated and began talking about the heat. I couldn't help looking at the wide shiny red welt across her palm where, the day we arrived on Pearl Street, she had held on to a hot iron frying pan, unable to release it until Old Joe Meehan kicked it out of her hand.

While Mother and Mrs Meehan were drinking their coffee, I slipped out into the front hallway to get away from the olfactory cocktail of grease, garbage, cabbage, gas and pee that was making me queasy. The hallway was dark and spookily alien, so I decided to await Mother out on the stoop, but I was startled by a voice from the depths of the shadow. “Luke?”

“...Brigid?”

“Come here, Luke.”

I stepped toward the voice, sliding my feet so as not to trip and stretching out my hand to keep from bumping into anything. She took my hand, turned it over and laid something on my palm. It was warm and oozy-soft and silky smooth; it felt like nothing I knew. I moved my hand slightly, and the dense liquid interior shifted, like tepid mercury in a silken pouch. I caught my breath and my senses slithered at the realization that lying on my palm was Brigid Meehan's left breast, which I held, the nipple towards my wrist, as though I were offering it to some god of Forbidden Things. It was so soft, so smooth that it seemed to flow into the spaces between my fingers like fine sand. I gently put my thumb over the nipple, petal-soft within its thin, silken erectile crust, even more liquid-centered than the breast, even more mysterious, more exciting. I stood in that dark hallway, my breath short and my pulse pounding in my ears, but I knew that this breast had not been offered to me out of desire; it was a gesture of gratitude for our having come over to help her mother. Brigid was offering what she knew all boys and men wanted.

But even as my senses were being transported by the thralldom of that breast on my palm, an icy thought penetrated my bewildered bliss: What if her brother, Patrick, suddenly appeared and found me holding his sister's breast? That dead eye with its white veil would pierce me to the heart as his fists clenched in anticipation of pounding my face to jelly. What would I say to him? Could I possibly bluff my way through? “Hey, Patrick, how's it going? Long time no see. Say, I'll bet this looks funny to you, but the truth is... well, I was just... ah... holding your sister's breast. You know, giving her a hand? So! What do you say, Patrick? How were things in the Reformatory?”

Standing in the dark hallway, simultaneously luxuriating in the sensation of that breast on my palm and dreading getting my face pounded to jelly, was like absorbing alternate doses of Spanish fly and saltpeter. But I didn't know how to take my hand away without seeming to reject her gift. For a confused instant, I considered kissing it good-bye, and my senses reeled at the anticipation of that warm satiny skin on my lips, that nipple brushing my lips... but Brigid lifted her breast out of my palm. From the rustle of clothing I assumed she put it back under her blouse, and I knew I would never touch that breast again. Without a word, I walked down the hallway and out onto the stoop, where a cluster of Meehans was strewn over the steps, sucking beers and snarling at their communal kids. I felt strangely adrift; my mind couldn't span the contrast between this real place populated by drunken Meehans and squalling kids and that magic place in the dark, only a few feet behind me, where I had experienced the ardent alchemy of Brigid Meehan's left breast.? HYPERLINK “file:///C:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Administrator\\Impostazioni%20locali\\Temp\\Rar$EX00.266\\Trevanian%20-%20The%20Crazyladies%20of%20Pearl%20Street.htm” \l “note32#note32” ??[32]?

The moment when Brigid Meehan laid her breast on my palm in that dark, cabbage-and-piss-smelling hallway was the dawn of my manhood, and her breast became an indelible and universal metaphor for desire. I would often let my imagination finger the whole tactile gamut of that awakening like a pious convert to hedonism telling the beads of a sensory rosary, lingering over each sensation. And I always felt a blend of tenderness and shame when I thought about her, tenderness because of the confused pleasure she had given me, and shame because I knew it was wrong to have anything sexual to do with a girl who was simple-minded.

When we got home from Mrs Meehan's kitchen, I wondered aloud why Mrs Meehan couldn't let go of things. Mother said she didn't know, but maybe the poor thing had lost too many things in her life: lost all her dreams and hopes, lost the family she had before she ended up in the nuthouse where one of the Meehans found her, lost two babies who died... of neglect, according to street lore. Maybe after losing so much, Mrs Meehan just couldn't let anything else get out of her grasp. I nodded, impressed by my mother's insight, but puzzled. Despite the glib explanations with which movie psychologists 'cured' a guilt-laden heroine's problems, I couldn't accept that the human condition could be reduced to such literal plots and simple symbols. It would be many years before I read the facile generalizations that make Freud better literature than science.

So, when I first encountered love at the age of eleven, my understanding of its physical aspects was a compound of my mother's clear clinical explanations, drawings on public toilet walls, Miss LaMonte's firm thighs and sloshing breasts, what the older boys on the block did—or claimed to have done—with Kathleen Gogarty for the price of a Dr Pepper, and above all, the stimulating but troubling effect of Brigid Meehan's silky left breast melting on my palm. A disturbing stew, and a tangy one.

In addition to my partial and confused understanding of the meatier aspects of love, I also had some notions of love's more heroic manifestations. The principal of these was the inspirational beacon of my grandfather's undying love for his Maud, whose grave he had visited every Saturday evening of his life. And there was Mrs McGivney's self-sacrificing love for her war hero husband. I still saw Mrs McGivney occasionally, scuttling across the street to Mr Kane's. I spoke to her once, hoping she had forgiven me for deserting her, but she frowned and drew back, as though she didn't recognize me.

Along with these instances drawn from life, I found examples of romantic love in movies and radio dramas. In the hard-breathing 'drama films' my mother enjoyed, the quest for love was a high-voltage matter loaded with urgent need, perfidy and suffering. There was also a lot of sin involved, and guilt, and recrimination, and denunciation, and pleading, and denial, and retribution, and vengeance, the whole emotional stew served up with great dollops of unabashed over-acting. All a bit frantic and messy for a boy of eleven.

Lighter romantic films, on the other hand, made love seem like a game... but a game that I would not be likely to win, because the narrative conventions were against people of my sort. Hollywood idiom made it inevitable that the guy who was the zany, fast-talking female star's boyfriend at the beginning of the film (a polite young man, well-spoken and bookish) was not the person she would end up with; just as the intelligent, refined gal who began with the male star was not the woman whom Fate and the brothers Warner had destined for Clark Gable. The moral to be deduced from this was that bookish, considerate men never get desirable girls; just as educated, independent-minded girls never end up with the really desirable men. The stars of the film would usually meet through some silly accident that made them both angry, and they would spat and shout at each other through a series of unlikely complications, often declaring that they wouldn't marry the other one, no, not if she/he were the last person on earth! Deduced moral? Two people who don't like each other and who have totally incompatible beliefs, aspirations and backgrounds are sure to end up together forever.