A Song for Mary
Copyright © 1999 by Dennis Smith
Reading Group Guide copyright © 2000 by Dennis Smith and Warner Books, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc., Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
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www.HachetteBookGroup.com
A Time Warner Company
First eBook Edition: June 1999
ISBN: 978-0-446-93035-2
The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Cover design and illustration by Honi Werner
Contents
Bravos and Applause for a Song for Mary
BRAVOS AND APPLAUSE FOR
A SONG FOR MARY
“Atmospheric … a touching tribute.”
—New York Times
“A poignant and honest work.”
—New York Daily News
“Daring stuff, wonderful stuff … a New York past rescued.”
—New York Observer
“A memoir as rich as his family was poor … poignant.”
— Chicago Sun-Times
“Loving … riveting … poignantly re-creates life in the tenements … will make you feel good a million times over.”
—Newport News Daily Press
(VA)
“A moving memoir of growing up in the tenements of New York City … also the record of an astonishing spiritual journey.”
—Modern Maturity
“In this life-affirming reminiscence, the author thanks, through beautiful words, his mother for all her sacrifice.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Captivating … a funny but heartbreaking picture … a ‘song’ that’s worth singing.”
—Albany Timed Union
(NY)
“A clear, wry, entertaining voice.”
—Roanoke Timed
(VA)
“The deftly told saga of what led Dennis Smith up to the big red doors of his now-famous Engine Co. 82.”
— Tom Wolfe, author of
A Man in Full
“Richly detailed, lovingly told memoir … vividly re-creates the pains and joys of an impoverished Irish-American boyhood.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A soft look at a tough world … simply and lovingly told … a meaningful book.”
—William Kennedy, author of
Ironweed
“Tough, tender … heartfelt … genuine and memorable.”
—Irish Voice
“Readers will have a hard time putting this down … highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Clear, vivid, evocative.… The portrait of Dennis’s mother, Mary, is at once unaffected and complex. An honest and admirable book.”
—Thomas Flanagan, author of
The Year of the French
“Moving.… Smith’s good-natured storytelling makes this book worthwhile.”
— Greensboro News & Record
(NC)
“Told with elegant simplicity … another resonating memoir from the club of New York Irishmen called the Nine First Fridays, of whom Frank McCourt and Dennis Smith are stars.”
—Thomas Keneally, author of
Schindler’s List
“Tough … inspiring.”
—Firehouse
magazine
“Magical … what all memoirs should aspire to—images poignant and sharp; memories painful and vivid. … If there was a crown jewel for memoirs, it would surely rest here, with this book.”
— Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of
Sleepers and Apaches
Report from Engine Co. 82
The Final Fire
Glitter and Ash
Firehouse
Dennis Smiths History of Firefighting in America
The Aran Islands: A Personal Journey
Steely Blue
The Little Fire Engine that Saved the City
(for children)
Firefighters: Their Lives in Their Own Words
This book is not a novel.
The persons, places, and situations are real, and the dialogue is reconstructed as best as I can remember it actually occurring. I have changed just a few of the names because I am sensitive to the right of privacy within families.
For my brother Bill
with love and admiration
and for Carlin and Henry Patrick
the coming generation
S
itting with my brother in the first pew of Queen of Angels Church I can hear the beeping horns and speeding cars and trucks on Queens Boulevard, and I wish it were quieter. I look around the church and into the faces of my five children and my brother’s four, searching for some sign of grief. Do they miss her? I keep asking myself.
Do they know anything about her?
There are no flags or draperies on her casket, no brass or silver ornaments. Just a small bouquet of mixed flowers sitting on top, about where her folded hands would be. The casket looks strong and modest, words that apply to her like colors on a drab canvas.
These sons and daughters and nieces and nephews of mine have had privileged upbringings and little has been missed for the wanting. But they are the grandchildren of a tough New York life. I study them now as the priest goes through the Mass, all of them young adults, each with a life of his or her own, each with a unique set of problems and confrontations, needs and desires. Sure, they loved her, but I wonder if any of them have found time in their busy and complicated lives to touch themselves with her life, to be anointed with a memory that might protect them or help them or make them more complete.
Why didn’t I think of it beforehand? There will never be another opportunity like this. I could have written something, the priest could have introduced an oration. But she wouldn’t have approved of that kind of singling out, even at the funeral. No, keep it modest, she would advise. Remember that railroad tracks are plain and ordinary, but they’ll get you where you’re going.
Still, I want them to remember this moment, for it should be a monument moment.
The priest is at the communion, and I go to the altar.
“I want to say something,” I whisper.
The priest is shocked out of the usual.
“Who are you?” he asks.
The children are lined up behind to receive.
“Their father,” I say, gesturing toward them.
I stand to the side until the communion is finished, but the priest goes past me as if I am invisible. He busies himself at the altar, paying me no mind, but I stand my ground. I’ll have my say in or out of his agenda.
Finally, he looks up to the small group, and says, “A family member wants to say something.”
I look at the small casket enveloping what has become no more than ninety pounds of skin and bones. There is not a cough or a sneeze or a shuffle in the church. The traffic sounds have momentarily disappeared, and it is perfectly quiet. “Just one thing,” I say, “that I want to ask you to think about as we’re all gathered here trying to commemorate a life. The true epitaph is not the message epitomizing a person that is etched into a headstone, but the memory that resides in the swelling of the heart. Each of you might have hundreds of memories, but you have to make sure you find the right one, the one that speeds the blood. Sometimes, you have to search long and deep within yourself to find that particular memory, and when you find it you’ll know, for this is the epitaph that will stand your test of time. So I ask you to remember Mary like this, and like anything in your life that is worthwhile, there is no time like now to start.”
I
am seven years old and I know the difference between right and wrong.
It’s been my job for more than a month to take the erasers out to the school yard at ten minutes to three each day and clap them against the brick wall so they’ll be nice and clean for Sister Maureen in the morning. But today, when we were standing for our afternoon prayers, Peter Shalleski knuckled me in the back of the head. We were in the middle of the Hail Holy Queen. It’s too bad that Sister Maureen didn’t see that. She only saw that I took Shalleski’s ear right after O Clement O Loving O Sweet Virgin Mary and twisted it so that it nearly came off. I should have bopped him right there in front of everyone, in the middle of the Hail Holy Queen, but I know he is tougher than anyone in the class, and I know as sure as Charlie McCarthy has a wooden head that Shalleski is going to get even with me later for the twisted ear.
I don’t care.
My head is hurting from where he knuckled me, but I know it is going to hurt even more as Sister is about to give me a whack with the pointer across the back of my pants. I wish I had corduroy pants instead of these thin gabardines. Here I am standing on the bare wood-slat floor, eyes closed, biting my teeth together as hard as they will go, my hands flat against the chalky blackboard, leaning over for all the class to see, as the thin pointer comes swishing down and goes
shwitt
across my shiny pants.
The sting goes through my body as I knew it would. I want to scream out, but I can’t. None of the boys ever screams out, even if Sister gives three whacks, which is the most she gives. It is like it has been all thought out and in some rule book tucked in a corner somewhere in the sacristy of the church. The girls never get it, and even if they did it wouldn’t hurt so much, because there is so much material in their blue uniform dresses.
I can feel the sting now as it is running up and down my body and all the way across my face, and I feel my face becoming red as I turn to the class and try to straighten up.
“Sit in the back of the class until three o’clock,” Sister said.
“But what about the erasers?”
“Never mind the erasers. There’ll be no more erasers for you.”
It is the first job I ever had, the first time I am doing something the others do not do, something different. She gave me the job because my marks led the class on the vocabulary tests, and to lose it now because Sister didn’t see Shalleski slide a knuckle across the back of my head makes me want to cry.
But I know you can’t cry in front of a whole class of boys and girls. It would be like screaming out when Sister whacked you with the pointer. They would start to call you Phil the Faucet, or blubber baby, or some stupid thing, and take out their snotty handkerchiefs every time you passed them in the hallway.
And so I just raise my voice a little bit.
“Shalleski hit me first, Sister, and I don’t see why I should get punished because of what Shalleski did.”
“Don’t raise your voice to me, young man,” Sister scolded.
Mommy is always saying this, too, calling me “young man” in a voice that means being a young man is not so good, and that it gets you in trouble. Maybe Mommy and Sister are related, long-lost cousins or something.
Sister waits for a few seconds before she answers me.
“If Shalleski jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?”