All Our Yesterdays (18 page)

Lone nodded, concentrating on his counting.

“We got a complaint.”

Lone nodded again. He took the pile of twenties and pushed them across the table at Knocko.

“Okay?” he said.

Knocko grinned.

“Good idea,” Knocko said, “but we been taking Chou’s money for years. We sell him out first chance we get and who else will give us money?”

Conn was leaning against the door frame looking at the smoked ducks.

“No?” Lone said.

“No,” Knocko said.

Lone nodded and brought his right hand up from below the table. In it was a .45 automatic, the hammer already back. He must store it cocked, Conn thought
hear me say we’re policemen? You’re threatening two policemen, Lone.”

“You go.”

Knocko frowned.

“Hey, Lone,” Conn said from the doorway.

The muzzle of the gun deflected slightly toward Conn. Conn grinned. He thought of the last time he saw Mick Collins.
You were born to be shot
.

“Fuck you,” Conn said, and walked into the gunfire.

U
p front in Holy Cross Cathedral, Mellen in her new black dress prayed audibly along with the priest, kneeling beside her son at the funeral mass that Gus knew Conn would have laughed at. Knocko Kiernan was there with Faith, and most of his children. The police commissioner and the mayor were in attendance, and all the members of the City Council. Afterwards they gave Conn a full killed-in-the-line-of-duty burial. Police from all over the state were in the burial procession. A bugler played taps. A volley of shots was fired.

At graveside Gus stood with Mellen on his arm by the pile of newly turned earth, which had been covered with a tarp. Across the grave, somewhat apart from the crowd of mostly official mourners, Gus saw a middle-aged blond woman wearing a black hat with a veil.

She must have been something when she was young
, Gus thought.

After the burial, while Mellen was at the center of a great circle of condolences, the blond woman came to stand beside Gus.

“I’m Hadley Winslow” she said softly. “I knew your father.”

“Thanks for coming,” Gus said automatically.

“He was a better man than he may have seemed,” Hadley said.

Gus turned to stare at her. She smiled at him, patted his upper arm briefly, and walked away. Gus stared after her.

Probably was
, he thought.

“H
ow’s your mother?” Knocko Kiernan said to Gus.

“She’s in there with the rosary beads. Her and God.”

“Better than nothing,” Knocko said.

Gus shrugged. They were sitting at the table in Mellen’s kitchen. Each with a glass of whiskey. There was a bottle on the table between them.

“It wasn’t police business,” Knocko said. “We was there to protect a guy was paying us.”

Gus nodded.

“I figured that,” Gus said.

“Yeah?”

“You hear stuff,” Gus said. “I’m glad you killed the gook.”

“Me or him,” Knocko said. “First guy I ever shot.”

They were silent, looking at the whiskey, not drinking it.

“My father never cleared his piece,” Gus said.

Knocko shook his head.

“Gus,” Knocko said, “I … to tell you the truth, Gus, it didn’t seem like he tried.”

“Just walked into it,” Gus said.

Knocko nodded. “He was always like that, never seemed to give a shit.”

“I know.”

“Conn was a stand-up guy,” Knocko said.

“Conn was crazy,” Gus said.

“Hell, Gus.”

“He was, the old lady too.” Gus jerked his head toward the bedroom. “They drove each other fucking crazy all my life.”

“I knew him before you was born. Before he met your mother. He was a good man, Gus. It was just … he just had, like a part missing, you know?”

“Yeah.”

They were silent. Each looking at the whiskey. Neither drinking it.

“He gimme something to give you,” Knocko said. From an old brown briefcase, on the floor, between his feet, he took a large manila envelope and put it on the table in front of Gus.

“What is it?”

“I dunno. He never told me what it was. Just said it was your insurance policy. Said give it to you if he died.”

“When’d he give it to you?”

“Six, eight years ago,” Knocko said. “It was Jackie Robinson’s rookie season, I remember that, ’cause we were talking about him when he give it to me.”

“Nineteen forty-seven,” Gus said.

“Yeah.”

“And you never looked?”

“No. Was for me, I’d a looked. Conn said this was for you. Nobody else, not Mellen or nobody.”

“Lot of people would have looked,” Gus said.

“I ain’t one of them,” Knocko said.

“No,” Gus said. “You’re not.”

W
hen Gus came home from work, his mother called to him from her chair in the parlor, “Is that you, dear?”

“Yes,” Gus said. He took off his uniform jacket and hung it up in the front closet.

“You going to come in and tell me about your day?”

“In a minute, Ma.”

Gus went to the kitchen and opened a can of Ballantine ale. He took a swallow, and then took the can in with him to see his mother.

There were no lights. It was early evening, and there was snow outside, which made everything brighter, so that the room was less dim than it often was. Her Bible was on the table near her, and her rosary. A loosely crocheted lap robe sprawled over the back of the Boston rocker that she sat in. She wore her housedress. She had a number of them and they all looked the same to Gus, though he knew she changed them regularly.

He gave her a kiss on the forehead, and went to sit across from her on the couch.

“I wish you wouldn’t drink so much,” Mellen said.

Gus sipped his beer.

“You ought to try it,” he said. “Loosen you up a little.”

“And I hate seeing you with a gun.”

Gus nodded patiently. It was a catechism he knew by heart.

“I want to carry a lace hankie,” he said, “but they won’t let me.”

“It was guns killed your poor father.”

Whenever she said this, Gus always knew better. The gun might have been the instrument, but it wasn’t the cause. But he never commented.

Mellen stared out the window.

“You going to make us something for supper?” she said.

“I’ll make you something,” Gus said. “I’m going out.”

“Again?”

“Ma, I went out two Fridays ago.”

“Where are you going?”

“Gonna have dinner with friends at the Bavarian Rathskellar.”

“What friends?”

“Guy I know, Butchie O’Brien, owns a tavern in Charlestown. Him and his wife.”

“And you?”

“Me and a friend of Butchie’s wife.”

“Is she your date?”

“Yeah, I guess so, blind date.”

Mellen was silent for a while, looking out the window.

“There’s a ham in the icebox,” Gus said. “You want some ham and potato salad, maybe?”

“Be careful, Gus,” Mellen said. “You’re a young man, and these women are a great temptation.”

“I haven’t even met this one, Ma. She’s a blind date.”

“I know women, Gus. I know them as a woman and
as a mother. And I know you, as only a mother can, as someone who carried you in her womb. Single young men are vulnerable to sex. It seems so desirable.”

Gus finished his beer. He knew this catechism as well. And he knew there was no way to divert it.

“But no matter how desirable sex seems, if you give in to it you will regret it.”

Gus stood. He wanted another beer.

“If there is temptation,” Mellen said, “think of the Blessed Virgin. Think of me. Stay pure for me, Gus. Save yourself for marriage. Make me proud.”

“Sure, Ma. You want some tea with your supper?”

D
ancing with Peggy Sheehan was more fun than Gus could remember having. She would lean a little back in his arm, so that she could look up at him—the posture would make her thighs press against his—and she would talk. Gus was always quiet and he always felt too quiet when he was with a woman. Peggy didn’t seem to mind. In fact she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were bright and her face was animated, and she would talk about what happened at Jordan Marsh, where she was a stenographer in the credit department, and what happened at home in Lynn with her sisters, and the fun she’d had last year when they all went up to Salem Willows. She used a bright lipstick, Gus noticed, and she enjoyed a drink. The smell of her—perfume, cigarette smoke, liquor—seemed to promise enchantment. And her laughter seemed perpetual and enduring, sounding in Gus’s imagination long after they’d said good-night.

They began to kiss good-night on the second date, and by the fourth time he was able to put his hand on her breast, outside her sweater, and that was as far as it went.

“None of that,” she would say if Gus tried for more. “Only my husband will get to do any of that, Mister Pushy Pushy.”

“I’m sorry,” Gus would say, his voice raspy with desire.

And Peggy would say, “Oh, I know, Gussy, men always try. They can’t help it.”

And Gus would be grateful that she wasn’t angry.

“My mother’s always warning me about you sex crazed women,” Gus said once, as they sat in the Eliot Lounge after work. Peggy was drinking her third Cuba Libre.

“Oh, phooey on your mother,” Peggy said. “Your mother this, your mother that …” She drank. “Hell with your mother.”

And she laughed. And he laughed.

“Hell with her,” Gus said.

S
he undressed in the bathroom, and insisted that the lights be off before she came out. Gus was in bed under the covers, when she came to the bed wearing a long nightie with small bows at the neckline. She got into bed beside him and pulled the covers up, and closed her eyes.

“Don’t you hurt me,” Peggy said. “I’m not very big.”

She spoke a little girlish lisp that had seemed cute to Gus when they were dating, and
very
came out
vewy
.

“Me either,” Gus said.

As they had the first sexual encounter of their marriage, she lay very still, with her eyes closed. He’d thought about this time a lot, about her trim, sturdy little body naked in his bed. He’d imagined a more erotic consummation. The whores he’d had on R and R in Tokyo had been lively. He knew that much of that had been pretense. But they had been fun. And they seemed, some of them, to enjoy it. Of course Peggy was no whore, and it was her first time.

She’s scared
, he thought.

Sometimes she seemed to clench as if in pain.

“You okay?” Gus said. “Am I hurting you?”

Eyes closed, she shook her head grimly.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Go ahead.”

He tried to be careful.

She’ll relax in a while
, Gus thought,
and it’ll be better
.

“Y
ou’ve got to get me some help,” Peggy said. She was on her first bourbon. Gus knew he had maybe ten more minutes before she would be drunk and there was no further talking to her. They were at the kitchen table. Chris was on the floor playing with an assortment of plastic cowboys and Indians Gus had bought him.

“We got no money, Peg.”

“Well, damn it, get some. He never lets me alone.”

“He’s a little kid,” Gus said. “You’re his mother.”

“He never goes out, he never goes three feet away from me. See him, right under the damn table. It’s as far as he gets.”

She drank her bourbon.
About five more minutes
, Gus thought.

“I think it’s better if we talk about this later, Peg.”

“So the little darling won’t hear?”

“Can’t be good stuff for him to listen to.”

“Maybe he’ll learn something,” Peggy said. “Give me some rest. You better do something, Gus. Or I’ll be in the hospital.”

Gus looked at his son. Chris’s nose was running and he had a cough. Gus could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was listening, and Gus knew how smart he was. Chris would understand what they were saying. Gus felt very heavy.

“Peggy,” Gus said, “every day about ten thousand
women have about ten thousand babies and take care of them without having a damned breakdown. For Crissake, take care of your kid. You’re his mother.”

She finished the bourbon and poured some more, with a new ice cube. She was heavy now. She’d never lost the weight she’d put on when she was carrying Chris.

“You’re out there every day in your uniform with your shiny badge, and your big gun. You stand around, drink coffee, direct some traffic, flirt with all the girls. And you think you work hard. Well, let me tell you something about work, Mister Big Shot policeman. You should change a few thousand shitty diapers. Maybe you’d know something. Three years old and not even potty trained.”

Gus took in some air. He’d changed enough diapers, but he knew there was no point arguing. He felt as if his whole self was in a contraction. He thought of hitting her. Even the thought of it was a kind of release. He looked at Chris, sitting stiffly on the floor, moving the toy figures intensely about.

He said, “I’ll get you some money, Peg,” and stood and scooped his son up in his arms. “Let’s you and me go out to the store and buy a toy or something.”

The boy was stiff in his father’s arms. As they left the kitchen, Gus could feel Chris staring over his shoulder at his mother.

“Don’t hurry back,” Peggy said.

“T
hey didn’t know what to do with me,” I said. “I wasn’t like anything they’d ever expected, if they ever actually thought about what they expected.”

“Most people probably don’t,” Grace said. “They think,
We’ll get married and have children
, and have some vague image of the Gerber baby gurgling on their knee.”

“Not us,” I said.

“No.”

“Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”

Grace smiled, though not very much.

“Maybe you are not Prince Hamlet, nor were meant to be?”