No Safe Place (7 page)

Mary Kilcannon appeared in the doorway.

Her long black hair was disarranged, her skin pale in the light. Kerry was too afraid to run to her.

Entering, she gave him a look of deep compassion, then placed a tentative hand on her husband’s shoulder. Softly, she asked, “What is it, Michael?”

Throat working, Kerry watched his father’s angry face.

“The wagon.” Michael gazed down at the sheets with a kind of wonder. “Sharp edges …”

Eyes never leaving her son, his mother kissed Michael on the side of his face.

“That’ll need tending, Michael.” Still trembling, Kerry watched his mother take his father by the hand. “We should go to the hospital.”

Slowly, his father let Mary Kilcannon lead him from the room.

Kerry could hardly breathe. Turning, Mary Kilcannon looked back at him. “Don’t worry about your father …”

Somehow Kerry understood that she meant he was safe tonight. But he did not get up until he heard the front door close.

His eighteen-year-old brother, Jamie—tall and handsome, the family’s jewel—was standing in the door of his bedroom. “Well,” Jamie said softly, to no one, “they cut quite a figure, don’t they?”

Kerry hated him for it.

It started then—the thing between Kerry and his father.

Two days later, the stitches still in his arm, Michael Kil-cannon, with two tickets a fellow patrolman could not use, took Kerry to a Mets game. Michael knew little of baseball—he had emigrated from County Roscommon in his teens. But he was a strapping, handsome man in his red-haired, florid way and, when sober, a dad Kerry was desperately proud of: a policeman, a kind of hero, possessed of a ready laugh and a reputation for reckless courage. Michael bought Kerry popcorn and a hot dog and enjoyed the game with self-conscious exuberance; Kerry knew that this was his apology for what no one would ever mention. When the Mets won in the ninth inning, Michael hugged him.

His father felt large and warm. “I love you, Da,” Kerry murmured.

That night, Michael Kilcannon went to Lynch’s Ark Bar, a
neighborhood mainstay. But Kerry felt safe, the glow of his day with him still.

His bedroom door’s opening awakened him.

Rubbing his eyes, Kerry looked at his father across the room, half glad, half afraid.

Michael staggered toward him and sat at the edge of the bed. Kerry kept quiet; his father was breathing hard. “Bastards.” Michael’s voice was hostile, threatening.

Kerry’s heart pounded. Maybe if he said something, showed his father sympathy …

“What is it, Da?”

His father shook his head, as if to himself. “Mulroy …”

Kerry did not understand. All he could do was wait.

“I’m as good a man—better,” Michael said abruptly. “But
he
makes sergeant, not me. They give it only to the kiss-ass boys …”

As she had two nights before, Mary Kilcannon appeared. “Michael,” she said in the same soft voice.

Kerry’s father did not turn. “Shut up,” he said harshly. “We’re talking …”

Fearful again, Kerry looked at his mother. Her words had an edge her son had never heard before. “Leave the boy alone.”

Michael Kilcannon shrugged his heavy shoulders and rose. With a slap so lazy yet so powerful it reminded Kerry of a big cat, he struck Mary Kilcannon across the mouth.

She reeled backward, blood trickling from her lip. Tears stung Kerry’s eyes; watching Mary Kilcannon cover her face, he was sickened by his own fear and helplessness.

“We were
talking
.” Michael’s voice suggested the patience of a reasonable man stretched to the breaking point. “Go to bed.”

Gazing at Kerry, she backed into the hallway.

Michael turned from her and sat at the edge of his bed. He did not seem to notice that Kerry was crying.

“Mulroy,” he repeated.

Kerry did not know how long his father stayed, mumbling resentful fragments. Kerry dared not fall asleep.

After this, Kerry never knew when it would happen. On some nights his father would come home and beat his mother. On others he would open Kerry’s door and pour out his wounds
and angers. Kerry learned to make some sound or comment so that Michael thought he was listening, to fight sleep or any sign of inattention that might set his father off. Michael never touched him.

As long as Kerry listened, he knew that his father would not beat Mary Kilcannon.

As deeply as Michael Kilcannon terrified him, so Kerry loved his mother.

She, too, was from County Roscommon. At twenty-one, she had given birth to James Joseph; Kerry Francis had not been born until she was thirty-three. Between, there was a string of miscarriages.

Mary retained a faded prettiness, like a rose preserved in the pages of a book. But what Kerry adored was her laughing green eyes, like crescents. The mere sight of Kerry seemed to make her smile.

They lived in the Vailsburg section of Newark, populated by Irish and a scattering of Italians. Vailsburg began with the leafy expanse of Vailsburg Park, a rolling tract of land with several ball fields; it ended with Ivy Hill Park and the grander homes of South Orange, where the snobs lived. The streets were tree-lined and quiet, with neat two-story wooden houses populated by the families of policemen and firemen, civil servants and small-businessmen, the odd lawyer or accountant. Children ran free, playing games in the streets, protected by mothers like Mary, who shouted at drivers who went too fast. There were several playgrounds with basketball hoops, and in the winter, the fire department flooded a section of Ivy Hill Park and turned it into a skating rink.

Mary Kilcannon taught Kerry to skate there, laughing as he flailed his arms, clapping with pleasure as his efforts became stronger and surer. She made him forget what was already clear—that he would never be as tall as Jamie, or as fast and agile at sports. She was the one person on earth Kerry was certain loved him as he was.

Without speaking, Kerry and his mother became conspirators.

What Michael Kilcannon imposed on them at night was a shameful secret, never to be discussed. Kerry knew that his mother could not ask the police for help. Michael Kilcannon
was
the police; to tell his friends would shame him, perhaps make him even more brutal. Within the tight community of Vailsburg, where a quiet word from a policeman was enough to nip trouble in the bud, Michael treasured his reputation.

Every morning, Mary Kilcannon prayed at Sacred Heart.

In the half-lit vastness of the church, Kerry would watch her rapt profile. Kerry, too, found the church consoling—its hush, its seventy-foot ceilings and beautiful stained-glass windows, its marble altar, framed by a fresco of Jesus ascending. Sometimes they stayed for an hour.

One snowy winter morning, they wended their way home. They made a game of it, Kerry trying to walk in his mother’s bigger footprints without making footprints of his own.

His prize was a cup of hot chocolate. As they sat at the kitchen table, his mother smiling at him, Kerry felt he would burst with love. But it was she who said, “I love you more than words can tell, Kerry Francis.”

Tears came to his eyes. As if reading his mind, Mary Kil-cannon said, “Your father’s a good man when he’s sober. He takes good care of us. He’s only frustrated, afraid he won’t succeed as he deserves.”

The words were meant as comfort. But what Kerry heard was that they were trapped: from the long nights with his father, he sensed that the reasons for Michael’s failure to rise were the same as for his abusiveness, and that this would never end until someone ended it.

Kerry squeezed his mother’s hand.

But outside their home, Kerry knew, Mary Kilcannon would always be known as James’s mother.

It began with how much Jamie favored her, so closely that only his maleness made him handsome instead of beautiful. By seventeen, Jamie was six feet one, with an easy grace and with hazel eyes that seemed to take in everything around him. Vails-burg thought Jamie close to perfect: he was student body president of Seton Hall Prep; captain of its football team; second in his class. Jamie’s clothes were always neat and pressed, nothing out of place. Girls adored him. Like most obvious expressions of emotion, this seemed to amuse Jamie and, perhaps, to frighten him.

This was Jamie’s secret—his ability to withdraw. To Kerry, his brother seemed driven by a silent contempt for both parents, the need to be nothing like them. From an early age, Jamie was too successful for Michael Kilcannon to disparage. Because of Jamie’s size and his attainments, the father came to observe a sort of resentful truce with his older son: Michael received praise in public, was reminded in private of his own inadequacy. But Jamie did not raise his hand, or his voice, to help his mother.

When Jamie left for Princeton on a full scholarship, he would not let his parents drive him there.

Jamie did well at college, played defensive halfback on the football team, became involved in campus politics. His much younger brother dimly imagined classmates thinking that Jamie did this easily. But Kerry knew that as he fearfully waited for his father to climb the stairs, he would sometimes hear his brother, through the thin wall between their bedrooms, practicing his speeches, testing phrases, pauses …

Kerry never forgot the Christmas vacation of Jamie’s second year away.

Jamie was running for something. He practiced a speech late into the night; sleepless, Kerry listened to his brother’s muffled voice.

Michael Kilcannon came home.

Hearing his father’s footsteps, Kerry wondered whether Michael would open the door or go to his mother’s bedroom. He sat up in bed, expectant, as Michael’s footsteps passed.

Amoment later, Mary Kilcannon cried out in pain.

The only sign that Jamie had heard was the silence on the other side of the wall. Tears ran down Kerry’s face.

No, he would never be his brother James.

He did not have to worry: at Sacred Heart School, no one mistook him for Jamie.

Kerry was short, slight, and a recalcitrant student. Reluctantly, he submitted to such rudimentary discipline as learning to walk in a straight line, to keep silent between classes, to respond to the hand bell that ended recess. Once, he smashed a bee with a ruler; instantly, Sister Mary Catherine swatted the back of his head. “That was one of God’s helpless creatures,” she rebuked him.

Ears ringing, Kerry wanted to say,
So am I.
But the nun’s words stayed with him: though he fought often, it was never against anyone weaker than he was.

His rage seemed close to suicidal; Kerry Kilcannon challenged only boys who were bigger, older, and without mercy. All it took was some offense to Kerry or another smaller boy, and Kerry would throw a punch. More often than not, he would absorb a beating that did not end until someone stopped it—Kerry was awkward, unskilled, and to quit felt like death to him. By the time he was twelve, his fistfights were so frequent, so violent, that he hovered on the edge of expulsion.

Then he fought the bully Johnny Quinn.

Johnny had “borrowed” the prized new bike of Timmy Scanlon, a nine-year-old Kerry liked. Laughing, Johnny returned the bike, covered with mud.

When Timmy began crying, Kerry punched Johnny Quinn in the nose.

The fight went on for an hour, cheered by avid boys. Kerry took a savage beating. Blind with pain, blood pouring from his

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nose and mouth and a cut at the edge of his eye, Kerry passed out at last.

When he awoke, the first thing Kerry saw was his mother, crying. “Why?” she kept saying. “Why?” Even if he could have spoken, there was nothing Kerry could tell her.

He had suffered a chipped tooth and a broken nose, and the two stitches at the corner of his eye left a scar.

Michael Kilcannon took a rough pride in his son’s combat-iveness; Kerry had distinguished himself at little else.

In desperation, Mary turned to Kerry’s godfather.

When Father Roarke, the principal, called Kerry to his office, Liam Dunn was there.

The two men looked at each other, then at Kerry. “Hello, Kerry,” said Liam.

Kerry was surprised. Though Liam always asked after him and never forgot his birthday or his name day, his selection as Kerry’s godfather had been more for the prestige it conferred. Liam had long ceased to be his father’s partner on patrol. He was now councilman for the West Ward, into which Vailsburg fell, an intimate of Monsignor Conroy of Sacred Heart. Even at twelve, Kerry knew that the green line that marked the route of the Saint Patrick’s Day parade ended at Dunn’s Tavern because Liam wished it; that immigrants looking for work could find help from Liam Dunn, with his friends in the labor unions, the police, the fire department; that the Dunn Association, Liam’s own charity, supported Vailsburg causes generously; that when Frankie Burns, the idiot son of impoverished parents, had been killed by a car, it was Liam who paid for the funeral. Liam never spoke of any of these things; others did.

Liam turned to Father Roarke, his voice and manner deferential. “May I take Kerry for a walk, Father?”

The priest nodded. “Surely.”

Gently, Liam Dunn touched Kerry’s elbow and steered him from the room.

It was the first chill of fall. Kerry wore a lined jacket, Liam a wool coat and a muffler. Their breaths made thin smoke.

Liam did not say where they were going. For block after block of Vailsburg they simply walked, occasionally making small talk, Liam sometimes gazing into the distance. Oddly,
Kerry was not nervous; Liam seemed a man comfortable with silence.

They stopped at Ivy Hill Park.

“Why don’t we sit awhile,” Liam said.

They found a green wooden bench. For a time, Liam was quiet, content to watch the park. Kerry studied him: he supposed Liam was in his mid-forties, like his father, and, like Michael, big. But although Liam was fleshier, the bulk seemed to serve him, to be part of who he was. His short hair was quite red; his seamed face soft only in the chin; his ridged nose more Castilian than Irish; his eyelids were so heavy that they seemed half closed. But when he turned to Kerry, his eyes were clear, penetrating.

“I hear you fight, Kerry.”