I lit the lights and poured us a drink. The storm was beginning to crackle outside. A door opened upstairs, releasing a few bars of Al Martino, then closed again.
My wife’s breath smelled of olives and feta and all kinds of Balkan fare, something she complained of in others in the past. She was excited, smoking. She’d clearly been fucking the Armenian satisfactorily all week. It was Setrak this, and Setrak that.
“The Matisses were breathtaking. I never realized they were so big.” She pulled out a notebook with names written in Cyrillic in a baby hand, pronouncing them as if she spoke Russian fluently. They’d obviously discovered plenty of new, cheap talent to flog for their new gallery project.
I found myself getting angry, but this was nothing compared to what I felt when I discovered that the Armenian’s parents had gone with them.
“He’s a hotelier, he got a special deal, why not take advantage?”
I felt a pang for the demented man upstairs in the bed, and my lost mom. I was spoiling for a fight.
“It’s a long way from coffin ships,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“That was your sales pitch when you met me, wasn’t it?”
She said nothing.
“Your stock-in-trade. Up from Florida with a Scots name, you quickly got the hang of things here and decided you were Irish. Only the strong survive, you used to say.”
“So?” She was icily still.
There was silence. I wanted to bring something to a head. I got up to get another bottle from the fridge. I was still in the kitchen when the question jumped out like a genie from a lamp. “Am I getting a hump?”
“You always had one,” I heard her laugh out from the next room. “I thought it was from all the reading and thinking you used to do. Big thinker.”
I came back, the cold bottle in my hand.
“Didn’t you know that?” she laughed again, throwing her head back.
I wanted to shove the laugh down her throat. Both of us had taken plenty of drink but I felt stone-cold sober as I swung the bottle. It caught her on the side of the head.
She slumped down on the sofa slowly and quietly.
In a panic, I felt her pulse, almost afraid to touch her skin. There was no sound from upstairs.
She was alive, breathing clearly, inclined to snore. Nat King Cole sang, “I thought you loved me, you said you loved me...” as I sucked air into my lungs and ran out of the house, forgetting to code in the alarm. It was raining to beat the band.
Old rancors and memories boiled up as I walked. Cars hissed by in the wet. My father’s first car was an old Falcon, whereas even the shabbiest Two Way Inn customer could surprise by turning out in something decent like an ageing Cadillac for the odd expedition to Far Rockaway. My Dad loved those words, Far Rockaway. “Goddamnit!” The Falcon stalled at every red light, and before it did I went into an agony of apprehension feeling a giggle build up inside, knowing there was no way to stop it rumbling up and out to hurt Dad’s feelings and make him swear even more, or even lash out and hit me. Saving Face for Ireland.
That was the “up-and-up” era. “We’re on the up-and-up,” Dad often said. That same year we went “home” to Ireland as a family, to thatched cottages and women in aprons and cardigans with anxious looks. I was put to sleep in a room full of bunk beds for students of Irish.
The males of the family laughed at jokes they didn’t share and at Dad’s hat. Nobody wore hats over there, at most they pushed a cap or beret around their heads when answering a question, as if it helped them think. I heard one of them say, “See any dollars fall outta the hat, boys?” We were overcharged everywhere we went. A vendor refused to tell Dad the price of an ice cream until he admitted we were “Yanks.” Dad was oblivious, delighted with everything.
I could still feel this anger somewhere inside now, untreated. I walked and walked.
There’d been a trip to Nevada as well, to another relative. Mom and Dad took us to shows of people I couldn’t stand, like Carol Channing and Buck Owens and Fats Domino. They watched these shows with the half-attention of people waiting for something more important to arrive, who expected better things of life and had the impression the real action was happening elsewhere. Me and Sis sniggered as Carol Channing threw imitation diamond rings into the audience, and Dad hissed, “Will you cut that out?”
* * *
A while later I found myself near the river, somewhere between the two big bridges. My clothes were sodden and the earth was muddy and smelled fresh. The world was washed down.
I heard my own voice quote A.E. Houseman aloud: “Yonder lies the gate of hell.”
“What’s that, Daddyo?” a voice said, and I saw the outlines of eight young men in hoodies against the evening sky. “Didn’t we see yo’ down hea’ the other day with yo’ friend?”
I realized the urgency of the situation, slid and lurched onto the street, dropping my cell phone. I ran until I reached a late-opening grocery store but was stopped at the door.
“Sorry,” the man said, “no can do.”
“There’s eight of them. I need to phone for help.”
“If we let you in, they’ll smash the place up.” He shut the door.
They soon caught me again, forced me to the ground, then kicked me as I lay. They broke my eyeglasses and took my wallet. They’d already smashed my phone.
I heard a saxophone peal out clearly, cutting the air like a knife, before I eventually lost consciousness.
I woke up in Mt. Sinai with stitches on my face. “Those kids feel threatened,” the nurse said. “They feel they’re being forced out by neighborhood change. They’re afraid of losing it to people from Manhattan, from anywhere.”
“We’re all going to lose it,” I said to George when he arrived to take me home. I gave no info to the cop who came, refused to file a complaint.
At the house, all was quiet. The front door lay open as I’d left it.
George refused to come in because I’d told him I socked one to the Swamp Rat.
When I went in, she was nowhere to be seen, although I knew there’d be trouble tomorrow. I looked in on Dad. The Pole was dozing in an armchair in his room.
“Someone rattled your cage,” he said, his eyes open. “I never saw a more miserable creature.”
The Pole opened her eyes or woke, depending on what she’d been doing. “All quiet,” she said too quickly, not mentioning my face. She stood up. “I’m going to get something to drink.”
“See the ass on that one — it’s far too big,” Dad sighed.
I knocked lightly on my wife’s bedroom door. We’d had separate rooms for years. There was no reply. I opened it as quietly as I could.
She lay on the white bed. The duvet (as she always liked to call it) had soaked up a lot of the blood, although I knew there was positively none when I’d left her downstairs. I approached, calling her name softly. She looked as youthful as the young Piaf I once loved.
This time there was no pulse.
I headed for the phone. As I shouted for an ambulance, I heard the Pole on the stairs and my father asking, “Am I dying?”
The police weren’t as sympathetic as I might have expected. This was perhaps due to my face, which was beginning to bruise up nicely. My story was disjointed, with periods that I couldn’t account for. They refused to let me call George, then changed their minds and called him themselves. He came, white-faced, but was of little help, as he hadn’t entered the house with me. He was escorted out, promising me that he’d send someone straight away.