Family Blessings (6 page)

And Greg had brought him into it all. They'd welcomed him as they'd welcome one of their own-- "Beer's over there. Pop's over there and anybody who doesn't help himself to the food goes hungry without sympathy!"

Fourth of July was probably off. He supposed there'd be no picnic here this year. He'd asked his captain for the day off clear back in April.

He'd probably go in and volunteer for duty that day so one of the married guys could be with his family. Hell, he had nothing better to do. He was used to volunteering for holidays. Better than sitting around feeling sorry for himself.

He remembered one Fourth of July when he was twelve, thirteen maybe.

Junior high and he'd joined the band, asked to play the tuba because there was no money for instruments at his house, and the school provided tubas and drums. He'd chosen tuba and could remember its weight on his shoulder, the feeling of that big cup-sized mouthpiece against his lips, and the surge of excitement when he'd marched down the street with that big brass bell above his head for the first time.

There'd been a favorite march: the Klaxon, that was it, and--damn!-how it had stirred his blood when they'd played it. Pum, pum, pum, pum. He and the bass drum setting the rhythm as the band strutted down the street.

The band director, Mr. Zatner, said the junior band had been invited to march at a parade in the small town of Princeton and they'd all been issued satin capes, maroon on one side, black on the other, and were told to wear black trousers and white shirts.

He went home with a knot in his gut because he knew he'd have to ask his parents to buy him a pair of black pants. They lived in a sleazy apartment above an appliance store a half block off Main.

A warped, weathered open stairway led up to it from the alley where the smell of rotting vegetables hung heavy in the warm months from the garbage dollies of the Red Owl store next door. A few times, when there was nothing in the apartment to eat, he'd hung around the back door of the grocery store when the produce people were weeding out the bad stuff.

"Hey, need some help?" he'd asked, and the man in the soiled white apron had said, "Hey, this is one for the record! A kid offering help?

Sure, why not?"

They'd tossed away some discolored cauliflower, some fancy kinds of lettuce that looked black and slimy, and bunches of broccoli that looked fine to Chris. Trouble was, he hated broccoli. They came to oranges-- soft in spots but far from moldy.

"Hey, these look good yet," Chris had said.

"Not good enough to sell."

"Mind if I eat one?"

"Don't mind at all. Here, have two. Have three." Chris caught the three oranges as the man tossed them his way.

That day he took home oranges, wilted carrots and something called spaghetti squash, which tasted like fodder when he peeled and cooked it. His little sister, Jeannie, complained, "But I don't like it!"

"Eat it!" he'd ordered. "It's good for you and it's another nine days before the old man gets his welfare check."

But they both knew the old man and old lady had to buy their booze first. They bought most of it in a dive the kids referred to as "The Hole," a block from the apartment, down one level from the street, a dank, smoky basement bar where the old man went as soon as he got up in the morning, and where the old lady joined him straight from work. She was a fry cook in a truck stop out on Highway 10, gone from the apartment before the kids woke up in the morning, most nights stumbling home after they'd gone to bed.

Both the old man and old lady were at The Hole the day Christopher came home with the knot in his gut about the black slacks. He boiled Jeannie some macaroni and mixed it with Campbell's tomato soup and after she went to bed, he waited up for his parents.

They came in around midnight, arguing as usual. When they stumbled in, stinking like a barroom floor, the old man wavered in his tracks and spoke with slack lips anchoring a smoking cigarette.

"What the hell you still doing up?"

"I gotta talk to you."

"At midnight, for Chrissake! Punk like you oughta be in bed."

"I would be if you'd have gotten home at a decent hour!"

"You're some smart-ass kid, you know that! Don't tell me when to come home and when not to! I still wear the pants in this family!"

He sure did. They were filthy and smelled bad, like all the rest of him, and hung like a hammock below his protruding beer belly.

"I need some money for a pair of slacks."

"You got jeans."

"Black ones."

"Black ones!" he exploded. "What the hell you need black ones for!

"For a band uniform. We're marching in a parade and everyone needs to wear white shirts and black slacks."

"A parade! Jesus Christ, they think I got money to fork over every time a parade comes to town! Tell your band director to come over here and tell me to my face that I got to foot the bill for any goddamn band uniform! I'll tell him a thing or two!"

His mother spoke up. "Shh, Ed, shut up for God's sakes! You're gonna wake up Jeannie!"

"Don't tell me to shut up, Mavis! This is my goddamn house! I can yell as loud as I want to in it!"

"Dad, I need the money."

"Well, I haven't got it!"

"You had enough to get drunk tonight. Both you and Ma."

"You just watch your mouth, sonny!"

"It's the truth."

"There's nothin' wrong with a man having a little drink or two, and I don't need any smart-ass kid like you tellin' me when I've had enough!"

"Ed, don't start in on him."

"You always stick up for him, goddamn it! Smart-ass kid's got no respect for his elders, that's what. Anytime a smart-ass kid tells his own father--" He belched unexpectedly, his slack lips flapping, the bags under his eyes nearly doing the same.

"I'll be the only one without black slacks."

"Well, that's just too bad, ain't it! Goddamn government bleeds a man for taxes to build schools, then they come beggin' for more!

You can wear the jeans you got on, and if that ain't good enough for em, screw em."

"Dad, please . . . everyone's wearing maroon-and-black capes and my blue jeans will look--" "Capes!" Ed's head jutted forward.

"Capes!Jesus Christ, what're they turning out over there, a bunch of sissies! Capes!" He bellowed with laughter, the buttons over his belly straining as he bent back. With a jeering stare at his son, he straightened, pulled the cigarette from his mouth and squashed it out in an ashtray. "I got no money for sissy uniforms and you can tell your band director I said so."

Christopher and Jeannie shared a dinky bedroom with space for little more than their narrow twin beds and one beat-up chest of drawers.

Though he got under his covers without turning on the light, he knew she was over there wide awake. Sometimes she pretended to be asleep when their parents were fighting, but not tonight.

"I hate them," she said matter-of-factly.

"You shouldn't say that."

"Why? Don't you?"

He did, but he didn't want his feelings to infect her. Girls were different. Girls needed their moms, especially--a lot longer than boys r, did.

Jeannie startled him by declaring, "I'm getting out of here as soon as I'm old enough."

Hell, she was only nine. She should be living a carefree life instead of plotting her escape from her family.

"Jeannie, don't say that."

"But it's true. I'm going to run away."

"Aw, Jeannie, come on . .."

"And when I do, I'm never coming back, except maybe once or twice to see you. You're the only good thing around here."

He lay with a lump in his throat, unable to rebuke her with any amount of conviction, for he'd had the same thoughts himself.

The following week, Mavis slipped him twenty-five dollars.

"Here's for those black slacks," she said.

"Thanks," he said without any warmth. He deserved decent clothes, and food on the table, and parents at home and sober now and then. Every kid deserved that much. If it weren't for him Jeannie'd have gone to school even tackier than she did. He made her comb her hair and eat some toast and put on her jacket every morning while the old man snored in his alcoholic stupor and his mother fried eggs at the truck stop to earn enough money for their endless boozing.

Twenty-five dollars slipped into his hand now and then couldn't make up for two drunken parents who didn't have time to raise their kids.

"Your dad didn't mean anything by it. He's had it hard, you knowfalling off that loading dock and busting up his back. He was a different man before that happened."

He'd heard this so often, but he didn't buy any of it. Other people had strokes of bad luck in their lives and overcame them.

Other moms realized that nine-year-old girls needed somebody to wash and iron their clothes and be home to cook them supper and wish them goodnight at bedtime. Ed and Mavis were alcoholics, plain and simple, and she was no better than the old man. They didn't beat their kids, but they didn't have to: Neglect did it for them.

Christopher Lallek marched in that Fourth of July parade dressed in new black jeans. But no parents were there watching from the curb, and the joy of playing the Klaxon had somehow dimmed after his father's disparaging remarks about sissies. The following year he dropped band from his schedule and took Home Ec instead.

He figured if he had to cook for himself and Jeannie for the next five years he'd at least learn how. And in Home Ec class he got a free meal now and then.

Christopher sat on the steps of a redwood deck, remembering. Dark had fallen and the first stars were gleaming in the southeast sky.

Crickets were singing in Mrs. Reston's garden. Behind him, light glowed through her kitchen door while on her refrigerator hung a note about leftover lasagna. His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn't eaten all day, but he had no urge to do so. He should get up and go home, leave this family to themselves, but he didn't know how he could handle walking into his apartment with all its reminders of Greg.

Greg's clothing in the closet, his CDs in the living room, his mail on the kitchen cabinet, his shampoo in the shower, his favorite juice in the refrigerator.

Sweet Jesus, he'd give anything if he had a mom and dad to go to, someone whose house he could walk into and be hugged and held and loved and cared about the way this family cared about one another. Someone who'd turn down the bed in their spare room and come to him as he lay in it and comb his hair back with their fingers and say, "It's going to be all right, son. You lost a friend but you still have us. We love you."

He'd never heard the words from them. Never. He'd never said them to a living soul, not even to Jeannie before she left or to Greg before he died. It was true what he'd told Mrs. Reston: He'd never been taught how.

They still lived in town, Ed and Mavis, in a trashy subsidized housing project where he was called regularly to handle domestics and disturbances of the peace. Last time he'd seen them was maybe three years ago. The old man had a grizzled beard and smelled as bad as ever, sitting in a rocker and sipping cheap whiskey straight from a pint bottle. The old lady had been drinking beer and watching soap operas, the place so filthy only a torching could improve it. He'd been called there to break up a fight in another apartment, and who knows what had prompted him :, ' . .

j," i to knock on their door. He wished he hadn't. Nothing had changed.

Nothing was going to change.

Behind him, Lee Reston said, "Christopher? What are you doing out there alone in the dark?"

He sighed and rose from the hard wooden step, flexing his back, looking up at the stars.

"Remembering."

She slid open the screen and stepped out, crossing her arms and facing the sky just as he did.

"Yes," she said, then both of them held silent awhile, thinking about the night ahead, the days and months ahead. The crickets went on scraping away and the stocks in the garden gave off a pungent perfume.

The moon had risen and dew was forming on the grass, which was growing at this very moment.

Life went on.

They must, too.

"It's time I go," he said.

"Where?"

"Back to the apartment."

"Oh, Christopher . . . shall I . . . would you like someone to .

.."

"It's okay, Mrs. Reston. I'll have to face it sometime. Your children are here now and you need some time alone with them. The captain has cleared me till after the funeral, for as long as I need, actually, so I'll be there at the apartment tomorrow.

You'll need some of his clothes, his mail, his car keys . . .

whatever. If you want me there when you come to get them just say the word. If you'd rather have me gone, that's okay, too. Now you'd better get some rest. You've had a rough day."

She crossed the deck, her feet clad in nylons, shoes left behind somewhere, and stood above him with her arms crossed and her hair backlit by the kitchen light. "You don't have to go back there yet.

You can sleep on the sofa in the living room and we'll go together tomorrow."

For a moment he was tempted. The scene he envisioned earlier flashed through his imagination, of her combing his hair back as he lay on a pillow, of her calm voice saying, "It's okay, Christopher, I'm here and I love you. You're going to be just fine." But she had her family now, and her own grief to work through, she didn't need him hanging around tonight--someone else to worry about and soothe.

"Thanks, Mrs. Reston, but I'll be just fine. You go on back inside and be with your kids. I'll see you tomorrow."

She watched him head around the side of the house toward his car.

Just as he reached the corner she called, "Christopher?"

He stopped and looked back at her. The moon had risen and by its light she made out the rim of his short regulation haircut, the busy Hawaiian print on his shoulders, his bare legs and feet, still in the rubber thongs he'd been wearing this morning when he'd been heading for the beach for a day of fun.

"Thank you for all you did today. I couldn't have made it without you."

"Thank you, too," he said, "for letting me stay. I'd have gone crazy if I couldn't have been here with all of you."