He made his living as a subway motorman, but my old man never really left the navy. Around the house he was always using terms like "shipshape" and "swab the deck," and the fact that I was never in any branch of the armed services probably galled him. If I"d been drafted and killed in Vietnam he would have cherished my memory, but the war ended before I turned eighteen and he was stuck with the reality of a living, breathing, moody teenager instead of a corpse that could not disappoint him.
One Sunday afternoon when I was about five years old my father fell asleep watching a football game on TV. He looked so comical lying there on the couch-hair askew, socks halfway off his feet, hairy belly exposed-that I couldn"t help giggling at the sight of him. Just then my mother appeared with his usual Sunday lunch on a tray-a longneck bottle of Budweiser, and a tuna salad sandwich on Wonder Bread. She was a wonderful cook, but this was the sort of food he preferred to eat. She looked at him, turned to me and said, "Sure gets quiet around here when he"s asleep, doesn"t it?"
We both covered our mouths to m.u.f.fle our laughter. n.o.body had to say a word about it, but in that moment, we became secret allies against the head of the house, a man we both suspected was a bit of a buffoon.
When it came to everyday life, just about everything went his way-where we went on vacation, what colors the rooms were painted-until it was time for me to attend school. That"s when my father found out that his wife not only contained a spine-she contained a spine that did not bend a millimeter on issues that mattered to her.
The old man wanted me to attend public school, free of charge, but my mother insisted that I attend a Catholic school. Personally I was indifferent to the issue but fascinated by the way she calmly and quietly stood her ground while he ranted and raved about what a waste of money Catholic school would be. He"d go on and on about it, and when he"d pause for breath she"d all but whisper matter-of-factly, "He"s going to Catholic school." She almost sounded bored when she said it, and he didn"t know how to handle that.
All those years he"d thought he was in charge. Now he knew that he wasn"t. It was just that up until this point, his decisions hadn"t interfered with her pa.s.sions. She didn"t mind conflict when one of her pa.s.sions was at stake.
To make matters worse for my father, he was faced with an opponent who refused to behave as if a conflict was even going on. It drove him crazy. He literally pulled at his hair in frustration. The night it all came to a head I hid at the top of the stairs, a terrified five-year-old whose future was the subject of a raging battle going on downstairs.
"What the h.e.l.l do you want him to be?" my father roared. "A priest?" priest?"
"No," she said. "I just know that Catholic school will be better for his soul."
"His soul!" soul!"
"You heard me."
"What"s the real real reason, Mary? Come on." reason, Mary? Come on."
"I just told you the real reason. Also, he won"t have to face a negative element in Catholic school."
"Oh, you mean n.i.g.g.e.rs?"
"Danny! That"s a horrible horrible word." word."
"Really? What"s worse, Mary, saying a word like "n.i.g.g.e.rs" or taking your kid out of a perfectly good school system to avoid avoid them?" them?"
"We are not having this conversation."
"Oh yes, we are. Listen to me. This is the world, woman. People are people. They flood in and out of my subway cars every day and let me tell you, you might as well get to know them all, especially especially the black ones, because he will be dealing with them, one way or another. They are not exactly an endangered species." the black ones, because he will be dealing with them, one way or another. They are not exactly an endangered species."
"Oh G.o.d, Danny, the way you speak! speak!"
"I speak plainly, free of bulls.h.i.t. You should try it some time. You"re sheltered, Mary. You sing in the choir and you bring food to sick parishoners because you think it buys you points in heaven-"
"I do these things because I like like doing them!" doing them!"
"Fine. Great. But I notice that all the people you help are white Catholics who believe in the same hocus-pocus as you."
"My faith is not not hocus-pocus!!" hocus-pocus!!"
"Your answer to our son"s education certainly is! Abracadabra, hocus-pocus! Stick him in Catholic school, and nothing bad can happen to him!"
"Do you want want bad things to happen to him?" bad things to happen to him?"
"I want life life to happen to him! I don"t want somebody telling him to say a prayer and light a candle when he should be figuring out ways to solve his own problems!" to happen to him! I don"t want somebody telling him to say a prayer and light a candle when he should be figuring out ways to solve his own problems!"
They were silent down there for a few heartbeats, and then my mother cleared her throat and said, "Hear what I say, Danny. Sammy is going to St. Aloysius School in the fall."
"We"ll see about that."
"We certainly will."
I had to run to my room because my mother was coming up the stairs to go to bed, while my father slammed the front door on his way to Charlie"s Bar. When he came in that night, he slept in the spare bedroom for the first time. It wouldn"t be the last time.
She was a true believer, my mother, attending the eleven o"clock Ma.s.s each Sunday and the seven o"clock Ma.s.s every morning during Lent. I went with her on Sundays, but she was on her own during Lent.
My father never went to church at all. She never even tried to get him to go. All her willpower was focused on one issue, the school issue, and at last he caved in. It was the first marital battle he"d ever lost.
The night before I was due to enroll at St. Aloysius, he did a strange thing. He"d been spending his spare time sc.r.a.ping the outside walls of the house to prepare it for a paint job. Now, at the dinner table, he announced that he was ready to start painting, and he wanted my mother to pick a color.
He was giving her a choice! Nothing like this had ever happened before!
My mother was both stunned and suspicious as she thought it over. He even gave her the sample sheets provided by Benjamin Moore, so she could study the little circles of paint before making up her mind.
She pored over the sheets for an hour. At last she decided she"d like the house to be painted robin"s egg blue. The previous color had been yellow.
"You sure that"s what you want, Mary?"
"Yes, Danny. Anything but that terrible yellow."
"You got it, girl."
He stayed behind the next day when we went to St. Aloysius. The enrollment process took most of the morning, and when we got home he was up on a ladder with a bucket, painting our little clapboard house. We stood and watched him, stunned at the sight. Suddenly his once-in-a-marriage offer made sense.
"How do you like that, Sammy?" my mother said. "Your father got even."
He certainly had, and it was a master stroke, both literally and figuratively.
There he stood on the ladder, almost gleefully spreading bright yellow paint on the clapboard walls. He"d put a couple of empty cans in the curbside garbage pail, and I could read the labels: canary yellow. It was probably the brightest shade they made.
My mother looked at our rapidly yellowing house, took a deep breath, and began walking toward the ladder. My father glanced over his shoulder at us, but didn"t miss a stroke. I was so anxious that my heart felt as if it might pound right out of my chest. Would he pour the paint on her head? Would she pull the ladder away from the wall and make him fall?
This was it. They were going to kill each other, and I was going to be an orphan!
G.o.d, I had so much to learn about marital conflict. Sometimes you blow up on the spot, other times you let things marinate. My mother, I was learning, could marinate with the best of them. All she did when she got to the base of the ladder was ask my father if he needed any help.
"From who, you?" he asked, not taking his eyes off his work. "Forget it. You"d paint the Stations of the Cross all over the house. We"d have people genuflecting as they pa.s.sed by."
"Whatever you say, Danny," she said pleasantly. She turned to me and winked. War had officially been declared at the Sullivan household, and it was us against him.
I didn"t like that. I didn"t like it at all. For the first time, I wished I had a brother, or a sister-somebody to be a true ally in this house where the uneasy peace we"d always known was gone for good.
I had to wear a green blazer with the school insignia on a patch over my breast pocket, and whenever my father saw me wearing it he"d throw me a mock salute.
"Closest thing you"ll ever get to a uniform!" he"d say.
The school cost about five hundred bucks a year, and he loved reminding my mother about how many times he had to make the subway trip from South Ferry to The Bronx to make five hundred bucks. It was actually a bulls.h.i.t complaint, because by this time she"d taken a job as a receptionist at a medical center and was paying the tuition out of her own pocket.
The years pa.s.sed. I graduated from St. Aloysius and moved on to Holy Cross High School. By this time I was working after school and weekends to make my own money, so I could pay for my books and my lunches. Everything seemed to be going pretty well, except that I was going to burn in h.e.l.l for masturbating so much.
Yes, indeed. The catechism we studied in religion cla.s.s said it was "seriously sinful, when deliberately indulged in."
A great bit of information, eh? The sort of thing I never would have been taught, had I attended public school. And I believed it. I believed I was indulging in something that was seriously sinful.
That didn"t stop me from doing it, every chance I had. I wasn"t trying to be evil. On top of my raging hormones I just needed a little something to help me cut the tension in the house, and nothing worked better than masturbation. I was losing my soul, and there wasn"t even anybody I could talk to about it.
I kept going to Sunday Ma.s.s with my mother, but I stopped receiving Holy Communion, because I knew I was not in a "state of grace." While everyone around me got up to take the magical wafer on their tongues I sat there alone among the pews, like a leper. My mother wanted to know what was wrong. Then she demanded demanded to know what was wrong. to know what was wrong.
I would not say. I was shy to the point of mortification, and for the first time ever my mother and I were b.u.t.ting heads.
It was killing me. By this time conflict with the old man was a living state, like arthritis-I barely even noticed it anymore. But all it took was one sad-eyed look from my mother, and I was on the floor.
We grew further and further apart. She upped her own dosage of church, going every weekday morning to the seven o"clock Ma.s.s, Lent or no Lent. I still went with her on Sunday mornings, but one Sunday morning in September of my senior year I decided that routine was about to change.
I was nervous about what I had to do, so nervous that I"d jerked myself off both the night before and on the morning of my big announcement, and during the morning session I actually heard the church bells pealing for the ten o"clock Ma.s.s. I was both drained and nervous when my mother appeared at the door to my bedroom half an hour later to tell me to get ready for "the eleven."
She was already dressed, a vision in black. The dress was snug on her because she"d been gaining a lot of weight, but it was still her favorite going-to-church dress. It made her look like a widow. Wishful thinking, I guess.
"You want to start getting ready," she said. It was what she"d said to me on a hundred Sunday mornings, but not until now did I realize what a strange sentence it was. She was telling me what I wanted to do. How can anyone, even your mother, tell you what you want want to do? to do?
She couldn"t-not anymore. I pulled the covers to my throat, took a deep breath, and let it fly. "Mom. I"m not going."
She stood her ground, stunned but undeterred. I hoped she"d go away, but she didn"t.
She stared at me. "Are you sick?"
"No."
"Then why aren"t you going?"
"Because it"s all bulls.h.i.t."
She let out a cry I can still hear in nightmares, an inhuman sound, the wail of an animal caught in a steel-jawed trap. Down the hall, I could hear my father snoring. He went out drinking every Sat.u.r.day night just so he could stick it to my my mother by sleeping late and nursing a hangover well into Sunday afternoon.
My mother stared at me in wide-eyed disbelief, as if I"d morphed into someone else, an absolute stranger, or maybe something even worse than a stranger...her husband.
She put a hand on the wall for support. "What exactly is bulls.h.i.t?"
It was stunning to hear her use the word, even in this context.
"All of it," I replied.
"Church?"
"Yes."
"Prayer?"
"Absolutely."
"G.o.d?"
"There is no G.o.d."
She turned the color of cement. I hadn"t really meant what I"d said about G.o.d, but it was too late. The harpoon had found its mark, right through her heart. She even put her hands to her chest, as if she meant to grab the wooden shaft and yank it out, but instead she let her hands fall to her sides and gave me a smile both sad and pitying.
"I"m very sorry to hear you say that," she said calmly, and I could see that her strength was returning. It was remarkable, almost scary that someone who"d been jarred so thoroughly could rally so fast. She was looking at me in a way she"d never looked at me before.
She was looking at me the way she looked at my father.
"Oh, Samuel," she said in a voice that was soft but not gentle, "I"ve done all I could, but now my worst nightmare has come true. You have become your father."
My scalp tingled. "Hey, Mom-"
"I fought it as hard as I could, but I can"t fight it anymore. Go ahead and be what he is. Forget the church. It"s too difficult a life, isn"t it? The time it takes, the discipline..." She sighed deeply. "I just wanted you to have a rich life. I didn"t think it was too much to ask, or expect."
"All right, all right, I"m coming with you."
"Why? So you can sit there and sulk? Sit there like a stone, refusing to receive Holy Communion? What"s the point?"
"Let me get dressed-"
"No." She held up a hand. "You don"t understand. I don"t want want you there. I you there. I forbid forbid you to come with me." you to come with me."
I could not believe what I"d just heard. Blood pounded in my temples. The world was collapsing all around me, as I stared at this stranger who used to be my mother.
"Mommy?"
"Go back to sleep for a few more hours. I guess that"s all you"re good for, anyway." She patted my foot, like a doctor comforting an invalid. "Sure, take the easy way. Be like your father. Don"t respect anything. Make fun of the things people believe in. Lie in bed all day and pleasure yourself with your hand. You seem to be good at that."
She knew. She knew! She knew! My faced was burning. I wanted to pull the blanket up over my head, but I felt paralyzed. All I could do was lie there in bed while my best friend in the world became my mortal enemy. My faced was burning. I wanted to pull the blanket up over my head, but I felt paralyzed. All I could do was lie there in bed while my best friend in the world became my mortal enemy.
She patted my foot. "I"m taking you out of Holy Cross. No point attending a school you don"t believe in, is there?"
"Mom! I"m sorry!"
"No, you"re not. What a waste of time it"s been, trying to guide you. I should have realized it was hopeless long ago. Well, you know what they say-better late than never." She looked at her watch, forced a chilling smile. "Speaking of late, I"d better get going." She leaned over and pressed cold lips to my forehead in what was unmistakably a farewell kiss.