Broken for You (27 page)

"Isn't she a wonder, Mo?" he'd said. They were in the kitchen. Michael was doing the dishes. Maureen was trying to feed Jacob, who was eight months old; they were both festooned with chartreuse globs of Gerber puree. Gina was outside, smoking a cigarette, standing apart and watching the two older boys roughhouse with Artie.

"Have you asked her about her family at all?" Maureen said.

"I get the feeling she hasn't any, or else she's on her own."

"That's a pity. She's very . . . serious, isn't she? Does she ever laugh?"

"She's a wonder. She's a genius."

"Not to mention a great roll in the hay, I'm thinking."

Michael spun around. "Maureen O'Casey, I'm shocked!" he exclaimed in falsetto. "Shocked, I tell ya! This from the mither of three! With Bun Number Four bakin' the oven! Be Jaysus!" he said to the baby. "What's the world comin' to at all at all, I ask you, boyo!" Michael scooped the baby out of his high chair and whirled him around, flinging droplets of strained green beans in a perfect arc around the kitchen. Maureen shrieked and laughed. Michael hugged the baby close and stage-whispered, '"A great roll in the hay,' your mither says. That's a bit like the pot givin' names to the kettle, wouldn't you say, Jakey ?" Jacob smiled broadly and promptly threw up.

"HA!" Michael snorted.

"Oh, for God's sake." Maureen grabbed a wet dish towel. "Look at the two of yous. Give me the baby, and wipe yourself off with this." She started peeling off Jacob's clothes. "I just worry, you know. I'm still your older sister."

"I'm fine, Mo. Really. We're fine." Michael banged on the window to get Gina's attention. When she turned around, she began laughing so hysterically that her knees buckled.

"Ah," Maureen said. "So she
does
have a smile now and then."

Gina was kneeling on the ground, shaking with laughter, tears streaming down her cheeks. Michael started kissing the window, leaving a profusion of green-tinged lip prints. Artie, James, John, and the now-naked Jacob stared as if they were in the presence of alien life-forms.

"All right then," Maureen went on. "Get that shirt in the laundry and put on one of Artie's. Then you can start in cleanin' the walls and that window!"

Michael blew more kisses as he exited. Gina mimed grabbing them out of the air and stuffing them into her shirt.

Maureen didn't ask any more questions about Gina. She was a good girl like that, not the prying sort at all.

Michael and Gina were together constantly, sometimes at her place, sometimes at his. Michael's grades suffered; he lost his scholarship and had to drop out of school.

"Marry me, Gina."

She stared at him, unblinking. "I'm older than you." "Marry me."

"I'm an artist. I smell. My hands are never clean." "I'm an atheist. I'm in desperate need of savin'." "Don't joke like that. I don't like it." "Forgive me. Marry me."

She backed away. "I should have broken it off. I shouldn't have let it go this far."

"Oh, no, darlin'!" Michael said, affecting his exaggerated brogue. "You've got the wrong idea entirely." He pulled her toward him and started to unbutton her blouse. "You were thinkin' I was proposin' because I was mad for you, is that it? No, darlin', I can't stand the sight of you." He parted the folds of her blouse and drew slow feathery circlesaround her areolas. "It's only that I'll lose my visa unless I can get some homely, unwitting American spinster to say 'I do.'"

Michael teased her nipples with his tongue until they stood erect, like two tart raspberries. Nothing mattered but the taste of her.

"No babies."

He looked up, startled.

She seemed to be staring at something far away. "I wouldn't be a good mother."

He didn't know what to say. They hadn't talked about children. He hadn't really thought about it.

"And I can't have an abortion, either, Michael." She looked at him. "God would punish me." Crina—

"I don't care if
you
believe or not, Michael. I know I'd be damned. So you have to promise me that we'll be very, very careful. No babies."

God, but she was beautiful. His enigma. His secret-keeper.
Maybe she'll change her mind,
Michael thought.
Or maybe she's right; maybe we don't need kids. It's a sure thing that Maureen has already done her bit, procreating on behalf of the O'Caseys.
He decided he didn't care. "Whatever you want, Gina. Just say yes."

"All right, Michael," she answered. "I will join my flesh with yours." She giggled then, pressing frantic hands against his hard-on, starting to unzip his trousers.

Within two months, they were married. At Michael's insistence, and despite Gina's protests, they had a civil service at the county courthouse; Jerry and Maureen were their witnesses. They lived at Gina's place.

For a while, everything was right as rain. Michael got a job managing the front desk of the bowling alley. He took one university class each semester, working on his degree, studying at night. Gina waitressed part-time and painted. She was moody, yes, but he didn't care. He could always fix it. With sex. With a joke. He'd read poetry to her. They'd go bowling.

Then one day she showed up at work, sobbing so hard he could barely understand her.

"It's happened it's happened oh Christ Michael Christ what am I going to do?"

"It'll be all right, darlin'." But he was shaken. Her desperation was terrible to see.

She tried hard during her pregnancy, probably for his sake. She drank less. She read Dr. Spock, obsessively. She cut curtains for the baby's room. She shopped with Maureen. She let Michael pamper her. She let the waitresses at the restaurant give her a baby shower.

Gradually, she stopped painting—the smell of turpentine made her nauseous—and just before Wanda was born, Michael came home one day to find that she'd destroyed all her canvases; they'd been torn off their frames and slashed into strips. They lay in a twisted, serpentine mess in one corner of the room.

Gina was on her hands and knees, naked, her belly swollen and ripe, trying to scrub the remnants of oil paint from the living room floor. "You were right, Michael!" she said. Her face was unnaturally luminous, her voice singsong. "Everything's wonderful! Everything will be for the baby now! The baby will make me good!"

After Wanda was born things got worse. Gina seemed to have no feelings for her. She couldn't stand to hold or feed her. When Wanda cried, it was Michael who went to her, picked her up, gave her a bottle, sang to her. He didn't know any lullabies, so he crooned jazz and blues ballads. Wanda's favorite song, the one that never failed to soothe her, was "Blues in the Night."

Gina didn't eat. She drank heavily. Michael had been taking night classes, but when he started coming home to find Gina passed out, Wanda awake, wailing, needing a diaper change, he gave up going to school. He was afraid to leave them alone any longer than necessary. "Why don't you ever come to see us, Michael?" Maureen asked. "It's hard to get Gina out of the house." He was ashamed to ask for help. "She's still having trouble, you know, getting used to the baby." "She can call me, Michael, anytime. I hope she knows that. I remember how lonely it can be, especially that first time. I'm sure it would help her to talk to someone." "Thanks, Mo. I'll tell her."

Wanda became accident-prone. "She fell off the couch," Gina would say, her voice frowsy and confused. "She banged her head on the door." "She tripped on the stairs." "Her arm got caught on the fire escape railing. She was trying to fly and her wings aren't ready!"

When Michael gave Wanda her bath, he found scratches, bruises. "How did you get this, darlin'?"

"Sing the song, Da," she'd say as she decorated his face with bubbles. "About the blue night and the man in knee pants."

Then she broke her arm. She was four.

"It's very rare that we see this, Mr. O'Casey," the pediatrician had said. They were looking at an X ray. "Children's bones are still unformed and malleable, so it's unusual for them to actually break. Usually we see something called a 'greenstick fracture,' in which the bone bends." The doctor fell silent. He looked Michael in the eye. "Just make sure Wanda is getting proper supervision," he said, finally. "I wouldn't want to treat her for another injury this severe."

That was when Michael started taking Wanda to work with him. They had a nursery at the bowling alley. It wasn't busy during the day, so Wanda got lots of attention and he could look in on her frequently. At least he knew she'd be safe.

Gina had good days sometimes, days when she seemed almost normal. Sometimes in the afternoon she would come over, play a bit with Wanda, bowl a few games. "Come watch Mommy make the pins go 'crash!'" She was still a helluva bowler. Now and then she would even compete.

The photograph of Gina was taken in 1970, at tournament time. Michael stood facing her, in the adjacent lane; he caught her just after she released the ball. Her throwing arm was cocked in front of her, framing her startling, haunted face. Her other arm floated out to the side with a peculiarly light and graceful extension of the fingers. She was standing on one leg, with her other leg cocked behind her. She looked like an exotic crane poised for flight. Wanda was in the photograph too, barely visible behind the scorekeeper's desk in the background. Her eyes—dark, enormous eyes just like her mother's—peeped over a Styrofoam cup. Michael loved the photograph so much that he ordered two prints. Soon after, Gina vanished.

She left a note: "Dear street sweet brawler Michael love, i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry. Cracked. Can't fix it. Satan has made his bed in me. It's hell, the hell of this, i'm never going to change i hurt. Her. You. Split. God can't forgive. Mary can't forgive a rotten evil mother who cannot keep our human child safe from the weeping world. A hole in the soul that must be it. Can't fix it. Stop trying. Say one rosary for me and then Hail Mary Hell Mary. Going away. Going far away to the sinning place the mouth of Hades the land without birds and Michael don't please don't come looking. Wish me your beloved dead. Take care of our sweet faerie, our magic wand protect her plant your nine bean-rows and a laurel tree so those with the will of wild birds can have shelter. I will always love you always always love you angel your Virginia."

"She can't have just disappeared, Maureen. People don't just disappear."

"They do, Michael. Sometimes they do."

"I'm going to find her. Can you take care of Wanda for a while? I know it's a lot to ask."

"Don't worry about that. Of course she can stay with us, but—" "She mentioned family in Kansas City once. She was estranged from them, but they might know something. I'm going down there to see what I can find out. Can I bring Wanda over on Saturday?"

Michael gave away most of his possessions. He sold his car to Jerry. He kept one of the photos of Gina for himself; the other he tucked into Wanda's small suitcase just before he delivered her to the Schultz doorstep. He would travel with little else but cloth and poetry; his book of Yeats was a talisman now, a reminder of how they met, an emblem of his love. To have the book always with him was to stay connected to her. He would look to it for guidance.

In the beginning, he called Maureen every weekend. There was always a lot of noise in the background. Kids yelling. "When are you coming home, Michael?"

"Not yet. I showed her picture around here, and somebody thinks
they may have seen her. Have the police there turned up anything?"
"Sometimes people don't want to be found, Michael. That's what they
told me."

"That's not a proper answer! That's just a way for them to excuse their own bloody incompetence! Are the bastards even tryin' to find her? Am I the only one who cares?"

"Come home and be with your daughter, Michael. She misses you. Do you want to talk to her? She's in the backyard." "No!" he shouted. "Christ, Maureen. No."

His calls were fewer and fewer after that. Eventually he stopped calling altogether.

He moved frequently. Whenever he arrived in a new place, he picked up a postcard and mailed it to Chicago, just so Maureen would know where he was and that he was still alive.

After a while, though, he started to wonder if that was a good idea. Maybe it would be better if they forgot about him. Yes, he decided, it would be best if they all thought he was dead. After all, he was a different person now. So, surely, was Gina—if she was still alive, which was doubtful.

So, he stopped sending the postcards. He began dressing entirely, exclusively, in black. He changed his name. He disappeared from view. It was, to tell the God's truth, a blessed relief to be untethered to his old life, a life which included people who loved him when they should hate him for the wreck he'd made of all their hearts. The one punishment he could impose on himself was that he keep looking for Gina, bowling alley by bowling alley, from one end of the country to the other, back and forth, round and round, for the rest of his ignoble life. It was a fine castigation, the right way to simulate hell's damnation: He knew he'd never find her.

But deep down, some part of the man who'd once been Michael Francis Joseph O'Casey still hoped to see his wife walk in to whatever bowling alley he found himself in, shimmy her darling, unrepentantly plumlike ass up to the throw line, and let one go in that way that was only Gina's, unique in all the world.

Twenty

Nothing Like South Pacific

Several miles from Margaret's house is an area of Seattle which, like many such places in American cities, has no name; it is a connecting area, an urban corridor. Its main artery— Greenwood Avenue—is born out of and then disappears into other streets, arising and vanishing with no demarcations to mark its origin or its termination.

For a brief time, at 85th Street, Greenwood Avenue achieves a distinctly cheery and extroverted personality, when it serves as the heart of the Greenwood Neighborhood: a tidy collection of businesses housed in mostly old but well-maintained, squat brick buildings. Like maiden aunts, they have a kitschy, apple-bosomed feel to them. Appropriately, many of the businesses in this neighborhood are stores containing all manner of knickknacks: Depression glass, milk glass, Fiesta ware, Hummel figurines. There are also more practical-minded establishments: a grocery, a bank, Buddy's Homesick Cafe, the retail center for the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, the Greenwood Academy of Hair. Newer, trendier stores are starting to spring up as well: a sushi restaurant, a store selling items related to Tibetan Buddhism, a used jazz record store.

Festive banners are perennially hung across 85th Street to announce community events: neighborhood meetings, parades, street fairs, etc.The citizens of the Greenwood Neighborhood, one senses, are involved. They take an interest. They are most likely social, outgoing people with nothing to hide. They suffer no major complaints, physical or otherwise. They are rarely gripped by guilt or shame. And Greenwood Avenue, for a brief time, shares the plucky and unsinkable disposition of the residents here.

But by the time Greenwood Avenue crosses 90th Street, even though it adamantly maintains its northern course, it begins to seem depressed, becoming wide and flat and undistinguished—a lackluster ribbon of gray that is flanked by an unrelated collection of businesses and rental properties which, although probably reputable, share a certain seedy and impermanent look, as if they've been hastily installed and might just as hastily vanish. They seem always to be casting a backward, guilty glance, like fathers who've been ducking out on their child support payments.