The Leap Year Boy (7 page)

“My son. Where is he?”

Mrs. Walsh turned toward the living room. “Jackie! Kevin!”

Voices from inside said, “What, Ma?”

Irene was in no mood to wait for an invitation. She swept by Mrs. Walsh and found the boys sitting on a threadbare sofa with Alex propped between them, his snowsuit pulled down to his waist. The twins teased him with a sugar cookie, holding it above his head, just slightly out of his reach. They’d gotten a good fix on the range of his arms.

Irene said, “Stop it.”

The twins froze.

With one swift motion she snatched Alex back and pulled up his snowsuit. As she passed by Mrs. Walsh, who hadn’t moved from the threshold, she said, “In the future I’ll thank you to tell your boys to keep their grubby hands off my son.”

“They’re just kids. Don’t get so high and mighty, Mrs. Miller.”

Irene stopped in her tracks. “What?”

“My boys didn’t do nothing wrong, no harm to him. They was just playing with the little freak.”

Irene’s lightning left hook would have done heavyweight champion Jack Johnson proud. The force of the blow knocked Mrs. Walsh back through the threshold and onto her rear end some six feet away, landing at her sons’ feet.

With her hand to her cheek, she said, “You hit me.”

“Say another word about my son and I’ll hit you again.”

Irene marched back across the street. Looking over his mother’s shoulders at the twins cowering in their doorway, Alex waved bye-bye. Arthur and Arnold followed, heads downcast, faces grinning.

The sun had gained momentum, and the snow in the street had mostly turned to brownish slush, exposing an amalgam of cinders and horse manure. Without looking at the boys, Irene admonished her sons. “Destroy that fort.”

“But, Ma.”

“You want to get it worse than she did? Wait until your father gets home.”

Ten minutes later the fort was slush, too.

Inside, Irene pulled off Alex’s snowsuit. She tried three different shirts and sweaters on him. All of them were way too short in the sleeves. She bit her lip. It was true. It was incredible. His arms really had grown. What was next?

Much to their surprise, Arthur and Benjamin didn’t “get it worse” that night from their father, as Irene had threatened. Their punishment was limited to the two whacks on the rear end with a broom handle from Irene and an afternoon’s confinement to their room, where they were forced to copy over their homework ten times. At dinner that evening, Abe asked about the purple bruise on Benjamin’s face. Irene told him something about a snowball fight, leaving out the details of the kidnapping, rescue operation and left hook, lest Abe charge next door to extract even more vengeance on Walsh senior, whom Abe had more than once threatened to flatten like a pancake.

After the dinner dishes were cleared, Irene sent Arthur and Benjamin to their room. She gave Alex some measuring cups to play with while she ran warm water into a washtub for his bath. “Abe,” she said, “we have to talk.”

From the tone of her voice he thought, look out, here it comes. “Yeah?” he said nervously.

Irene said, “It’s about Alex.”

“What about him?”

“There’s something going on with his body.”

“What’s wrong with his body?” he asked, feigning concern, although what he really felt was relief that this wasn’t going to be about Delia.

“He’s growing, Abe.”

“Growing? Well that’s good, right? See, I told you all he needed was a little time.” He turned to Alex. “You’re gonna be a big boy after all, right Alex?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’ll show you. Alex? Come here, honey. It’s time for your bath.” She ran hot water into the kitchen sink and tested it until it was lukewarm. She added a handful of soap flakes. As she lathered him up his arms, she said, “Take a look at them.”

Alex, standing in the tub, splashed soapsuds at his parents. Thanks to the length his arms, he barely had to bend to reach the water.

Abe pressed Alex’s arms to his chest, dampening the front of his shirt. Holy God, he thought, what happened here? “Irene?” He released his son’s arms. He’d prayed that the boy would grow, but who could ever imagine he’d grow like this? He looked at Alex dangle his arms in the water. How the hell did they get stretched out like that? It had to be painful. He bent closer. “Alex, do your arms hurt you?”

Alex splashed water in his face.

Chapter 6

Three weeks went by. Alex’s condition remained stable. He gave no indication that his long arms bothered him in any way. He continued to scoot and crawl around like a wind-up toy, eat like a small horse and throw whatever objects were handy at his brothers and the cat.

However, his arms pained Irene, constantly. Night after night, she had troubling dreams about Alex, in which his nose grew like Pinocchio’s, or his head mushroomed and rotted, or his penis elongated grotesquely, in shades of green and blue.

Abe tried his clumsy best to calm her fears. Since Alex didn’t express any discomfort, he was of the opinion that perhaps the boy’s condition wasn’t a problem after all, that it was just a growth spurt—an odd one, to be sure, but then, hadn’t Alex been unusual since the day he was born? Maybe his elongated arms were a forerunner, a harbinger of better things to come, an indication that the rest of his body was bound to catch up sooner or later, and that the best strategy was to keep the whole thing on the Q.T., to wait and see what, if anything else, developed.

Besides, Abe had places to go and people to see, namely Delia Novak. The slip of paper Malkin had given him with her address was burning a hole in his pocket. The question was, how was he going to get out of the house? According to the address, she lived across town, closer to where he worked than to Mellon Street, and Irene barely let him out of the house as it was, although he was damned if he knew why she wanted to keep him home. What the hell was there to do at home? Oh, it was all right playing with Alex and the boys. But after they went to bed, what was he supposed to do with Irene, sit there all night and listen to her complain about the price of chicken and the neighbors that didn’t take care of their yards or her mother’s reluctance to give her the good china? As if he cared a rat’s asshole about china, or wanted to hear her carp about a loose gutter, a drafty window, the state of the furniture, Christ, it never ended. And if it wasn’t that, she was moaning about Alex and his arms, and every time he tried to change the subject to something
he
cared about, something that affected
his
life, like the imbeciles at work and his fat lazy boss who hadn’t done a day’s work in a year, she told him to keep his mouth shut and quit his whining, he was lucky to have a job. Lucky, huh? Try lathing metal pipe ten hours a day in the heat and stink of summer or the aching cold of winter, with the icy wind blowing in off the river, see how lucky you’d feel.

If he wanted to see Delia, and damn it, he sure wanted to, he had to figure out a way to do it during daylight hours. Shields gave him twenty minutes for lunch. He could take an extra fifteen, maybe even half an hour, if he could get Mougianis to cover for him. Hell, he’d done the dumb Greek plenty of favors, he’d covered his ass plenty of times when the man got so drunk during lunch he could hardly turn on his machine, so the man owed him one. He’d take a ride up to Delia’s place, just to take a look-see. She probably wouldn’t be there anyway, in the middle of the day, she was a waitress, that’s what Malkin had said. He’d leave her a note. He’d written it three times over:

Dear D,

Heard you was back in town. Want to see you, if it’s all right with you, for old time sake. What do you say? Get word to Malkin or leave word at The Wheel. Just say when.

Yours Abe.

And so, a little before noon on January 2, 1910, Abe stood on the platform of the Monongahela Incline on East Carson Street, his collar turned against the chilly, sooty air wafting in off the river, his hand cradling the slip of paper with her address, and he felt in the moment and out of it, as if his body was taking him and the rest was just along for the ride. He wondered what would happen if on the off chance she’d be there when he knocked on her door. Would he stand there, hemming and hawing, hat in hand, or would he rush in and throw her on the floor?

A cable car squealed to a stop not ten feet away from his face. Twenty riders sprang from the steel and glass cage, faces flushed with exhilaration and relief that they had made the precipitous ride without incident. A little boy in a hat with dangling earflaps begged his mother please let’s do it again, why can’t we do it again, please I’ll be good, Momma, but Momma was having none of it and deflected his entreaties gently at first and then with more vigor, pulling the boy away by the neck.

Abe handed the conductor a nickel and took a seat against a window. Arthur and Benjamin would get a kick out of riding in this contraption, after all, they were crazy for the Jack Rabbit roller coaster and all the rides at Kennywood Amusement Park. He’d have to take them on this contraption sometime. Even the little one would be thrilled.

The car filled quickly, with a squat mother and father and six children chattering excitedly in some Eastern European dialect Abe couldn’t quite get the hang of. The smallest child stared at him. He felt conspicuous in his blue workshop jacket with “Abe” stitched over the breast pocket.

“All righty, folks,” the conductor announced as he closed the metal grate and the heavy sliding door, “there’s no getting off now, we’re about to set off on a wonderful, remarkable, gravity-defying journey reaching stratospheric heights, leaping forth into the wild blue yonder, clinging by the skin of our teeth to the rocky hillside. You, sir,” he continued, pointing to the father, “do you realize the gravity—gravity, get it, that’s a joke, sir—of our situation, that we are connected to good old terra firma by nothing more than some heavy gauge steel cables, a steam engine and our faith in the Almighty?”

The man blinked. Two of the smaller girls clung to his side.

The conductor, a one-time stage actor of some local notoriety until drink got the better of him, adjusted his blue uniform cap. “Never mind, sir, because the good Lord in His infinite wisdom is looking out for every mother’s son and daughter among us. There are no atheists on board, are there?”

The man blinked again.

Abe said, “I don’t think they capiche the language too good.”

“You don’t say. Nevertheless, let me explain the technicalities of our impending journey, for your edification, sir, if not for theirs. We will be traveling on the diagonal some 635 feet up this small mountain and reach our final destination—not in the metaphorical sense, of course—the Grandview Avenue station, elevation approximately 370 feet, moving at the breakneck speed of six miles per hour. But enough physics for now. Folks, please keep your hands inside the windows unless you want to lose them on the way up, and prepare for perhaps the most exciting two to three minutes of your lives.”

The passengers let out a collective
ooh
as the cable car fought to gain traction against gravity. Their trepidation turned to shouts of elation as they eked their way up the hillside. Abe was able to make out the Shields Metal Building, where at this time on any other workday he would have been eating lunch and complaining about the boss with the other stiffs, as the men referred to themselves.

The car thumped to a stop at the top of the hill. The relieved travelers applauded, the father shook the operator’s hand, and everyone spilled out onto Grandview Avenue. Abe stood cement-footed in the wind, fingering the slip of paper with Delia’s address, wondering whether he should turn back now, return to the ordinary life, to the miserable monotony of days with Irene and the boys, or go through with this, what, this irresistible diversion. He’d heard Davy talk about life-changing moments. He wondered if he were having one now.

A woman pushing a stroller bumped into Abe’s calf as she hurried by, tossing an excuse me into the wind. It was enough to prod Abe out of his stupor. He put one foot in front of the other in a stiff-legged march, which in seven minutes brought him to 14 Desdemona Way.

*

As Abe was riding up to meet his short-term fate, Irene was wheeling Alex four blocks to St. Philomena’s Church, the scene of so many of her unhappy childhood memories. She stopped at the neatly shoveled and rock-salted front steps. They were all too familiar. Her mother used to make her say a prayer to the Lord on every step before she entered, as if she were a pilgrim paying homage to a holy shrine. She was sure it was just another ploy her mother used to keep her under her Catholic thumb, but on this day, she said fourteen prayers for Alex, pausing on every step.

When she came to the massive wood and wrought iron front doors, she couldn’t go through with it. She remembered Father Kiernan’s unfeeling condemnation when she’d married out of the faith—she could only imagine his contempt, had he known she was two months pregnant before her marriage. Good Lord, was she that desperate for someone to talk to about Alex’s condition, about Abe’s infidelities that she would go to a man of God that had proclaimed her godless? Would he really welcome her back, accept her in his good graces as if she were the prodigal daughter? More likely, he would he subject her to a lecture on the wages of sin. She shuddered, but not with the cold but with the shame that she’d come so close to opening herself up to the man. “Alex,” she said, “let’s go see Nana.”

Alex stood up in the stroller, spread apart the fingers of his right hand and made the sign of the cross in the air.

Irene dropped to her knees beside him. “Alex? What did you, how do you know how to do that?”

He repeated the motion.

Oh my God, she thought, what does this mean, he can’t possibly understand what he’s doing, or what a church is, or what it’s supposed to stand for; but what if he does, what does that make him, the Second Coming? No, he was simply waving his arms, babies wave their arms all the time, he waves those long arms of his when he wants something, but God, those long arms.