Some Great Thing (6 page)

“Don’t go in there thinking all you gotta do is look clean and pretty and show them you can save. Those men are lookin for savvy. That fella who’ll interview you will know everything that can go wrong in a construction company and you shouldn’t be fooled by his suit. Confidence is what ya gotta have, Jer.”

I record this also as the first time she called me Jer. She gave me confidence and she told me what to do, and you can think what
you want, but there is nothing unmanly about getting advice from a woman that beautiful. And she was exactly right.

She told me about getting a plan in writing and told me to be honest and proud.

Weeks later I got an interview at a bank. I walked in there with my chin set so and I butted chests with a bull of a banker who smiled like a boxer. And sure enough when I shook his hand I felt concrete, wood, and nails.

“I was in the construction business for twelve years, Mr. McGuinty, and I rarely encountered men as young and stupid as you. I don’t know what it is that makes you think you can own your own company but whatever it is, it’s not represented in this proposal.”

And he went at me with the sharpest spears of honesty that were ever flung at me, and if I had been more reasonable I would have crawled out of that office and contracted my life to the Rossis to live in health and safety. But Kathleen had given me weeks of advice, and I told him that that piece of paper was bullshit for the bank and if he wanted the truth I’d tell him. I told him exactly how much I needed to bribe the machine renters, the councillors and him if he wished. I told him how I could fudge my insurance, and a hundred other things that won’t make me look like an honorable man, but up yours.

I walked out of his office completely broke and rich, with more money than I ever thought I’d have and no way of paying it back.

F
ROM THE THIRD MORNING
, my visits to the truck were about financial advice, preparing me for that interview. Kathleen drove by at a different time every morning, and I would put down my tools when I heard her and do my best to look serious and avoid the eyes of Cooper. Men like Johnny Cooper didn’t tease you about women, they went to the women and made you look like a fool.

Her coming at a different time was the difficult part. Even these days, if a catering truck comes later than usual you’ll find some
angry-bellied workers. She made the best sandwiches that ever drove by men, and they were hard to wait for.

But it wasn’t that. When you’re cold and the sun’s not coming when it should, it’s harder to control the shivers. I would leave Mrs. Brookner’s thinking of nothing but Kathleen, and whenever she was late she made me lonelier than before I had met her.

Advice. She could have told me that the best way to make money was to give it to the Pope and I would have believed her.

But she gave me good advice.

The sun. Never did I think you could press it to your chest and enjoy getting burned.

She came later and more confident each day. I was sick and shy.

But I started learning how to handle her.

“How are ya today Jer?”

“Good.”

You just be quiet, you see. And you don’t ask her a thing.

Or, “It’s cold as a hoor,” you say or something like that, because it looks like she likes a bit of the roughness. And she laughs like a boy on a ride.

And you say something like, “Don’t suppose you want to trade jobs?” and she says, “If only you had some skills,” and then you laugh, quiet, and she starts talking like a bird you can’t touch.

She told me all about herself in those first few mornings and to this day I don’t know her. Her parents were Irish and she grew up in Dublin till she was eighteen. Sisters, brothers, she was the oldest, she looked after them.

The part of her story I liked was she came here on her own. She followed a man and I hated that part. Broke her heart, she said, and I only half hated her. She started struggling and struggling and she was still doing that now but it was looking like she might see the end.

I had a lot of money saved, I thought, and I wanted her to know that, so I told her sometimes the end is closer than you know and she nodded like I was wise.

I liked to watch her hands make my sandwich.

She said that looking after her sisters and brothers was like being a mother and she said she needed a break from that for a while because she was only young. “That’s another reason kinda why I came here,” she said. “But,” she said, “I might want kids sometime.” You could still hear the pretty Irish in her voice, but you could tell she was trying to cover it.

I hadn’t thought about kids so I had nothing to say, and she liked me when I said nothing. She told me about Ireland, but my father was Irish so I didn’t listen. She told me about the house she grew up in, eight kids and the parents with three beds between them, or something of the sort. “Sheesh,” I said, or something to show that it meant something to me.

“You don’t know what that’s like, Jer, sleepin in a bed with so many kids,” and I said, “No,” to show her she was right. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters,” I said, in a deep voice, and she said, “Is that right, Jer?”

She told me a lot that day while she was putting the world in my sandwich. All I wanted to ask her was “Where did you come from, where did you come from?” even though she was telling me all about it.

O
NE DAY WE HAD
lunch together in her truck and one day a couple of days later, she didn’t turn up at all.

The day we had lunch in her truck was the day after I got my loan approved at the bank and my future appeared like a map. I was excited about the money.

“I’d like to buy you lunch, Kathleen.”

And she said, “I’d like to make it.”

She came around again at noon and we sat in the back of her truck on a couple of milk crates. I told her the good news, I said, “I got it.”

As soon as I went into that truck everything felt different. I felt
like I was in her bedroom and her parents were out. Everything both of us did was slower and closer and every word had skin. The blade falling smooth through an egg said, “Jer, you’re a good strong man.” Everything she did said something about me and everything I did said something about her, and that is the truth about a boy in a girl’s bedroom.

“This calls for a celebration,” she said. She went up front and reached under her seat and pulled out a bottle of Dewar’s that she kept there, she said, “for bonfire nights.” It was an Irish expression I never understood. “You must have impressed that banker, Jerry.” And heavy came my cup.

The whiskey rubbed my nerves with velvet, and I ate half my sandwich without knowing it. She laughed a bit before she bit into her sandwich, and I don’t remember why, but there she is, in my mind, laughing before she ate her sandwich. She moved her crate a bit closer to mine and it was natural.

And there is one moment in every man’s life when Fear and Worry smile at each other and push him toward a woman. Something makes them decide you should forget about them, and there you are falling toward this woman with no real thought of being scared or pushed back—just a feeling of blood, chest, fast.

I gave Kathleen a kiss two lips. A kiss on the skin of her smile, then hand round the back of her head and Deep. And yes there is warm and yes you’ve landed soft and fast pushes further to a warm can’t believe. I kissed Kathleen and my palm was behind her ear and her head was touching my hand like grace and this is a man and a woman, finally. In that hand there, that thumb there. Soft.

Go away while I remember.

I
DIDN
’
T LOOK INTO
her eyes because when a man does that he’s an actor. It was so silent and I was so Jerry again and she the more Kathleen. There was my hand and her breath saying good.

Then Worry and Fear shut the truck up tight. There was a look around her mouth like love and What’ve you done.

She had the sense to smile and make a joke, and I was grateful because all I could have said was Wow and This is Serious.

“That’s not how you’ll keep the banker happy,” was what she said.

We both leaned back and were each a kid on a crate, except really she was all grown up now. She picked up the bottle of Dewar’s again and filled up both our cups and she stood up and said, “ ’Nother sandwich?”

I got so nervous then, I tell you with no pride, and I didn’t know what to do. She walked around, getting bread and tomatoes and I was too scared to look at her. Maybe I looked at her legs in her jeans and was proud. But I was scared and I wanted her to say more and she was just slicing bread. I didn’t know whether to say “Come back here” or “I’ll go.”

I forgot that we were parked there by a site and it was lunchtime for more than just the two of us. I heard other builders coming toward the truck and in a couple of seconds Kathleen was sliding open the serving window and was taking orders for food. It all suddenly felt exactly like it was: Jerry in the back of a food truck.

As soon as I got outside, my leaving felt like a mistake. I felt like I should be back in there in her.

S
HE CAME BY THE
next morning with her “How are yiz” like a whisper. She made me a special breakfast, she said, and there it was all wrapped up, sausage still hot and a toothpick. I wasn’t ready for that. I hated the thought of someone thinking all night about what it was like being kissed by Jerry McGuinty, and I still don’t like the thought. I’ve kissed plenty of women, and I don’t want to know how it felt for them. I was expecting her not even to show up that morning, or to show up with a look like No. But there was my special breakfast. We didn’t need to say much because one right
look is like the sun on fog. I was a confident man standing there by her truck with a sausage in my mouth, and I didn’t say a word but “Nice.”

I
ASKED HER OUT
to dinner. The day after the day after I kissed her I asked her. It wasn’t my first time taking a girl to dinner. I did it once before, but that was no good because I wasn’t clean.

K
ATHLEEN GOT A SMILE
on her face and said, “OK.”

I didn’t have a car in those days so we decided she would pick me up in her truck and we’d go a couple of blocks over to Giovanni’s, you know, Italian.

I got clean for that date, boy. I went back to my place early and Washed.

At eight o’clock she rolled around like luck and I met her on the curb. She wanted to come in and meet Mrs. Brookner and see where I lived but I told her no. “Let’s eat,” I said, like a man who knows his mind. We got up into her truck and it was the first time I had been driven by a woman and every time she turned a corner was like a long flirty smile. She drove that truck smooth.

“Giovanni’s,” she said.

“Giovanni’s.”

“I know what I’m gonna have,” she said.

We didn’t say much when we were walking into the restaurant. She just made a sort of squirrel-eating-nuts noise which in those days I found cute. “Smells good in here,” I said. A waiter came and took us to a table, and I let Kathleen go first even though I was hungry. When we sat down we both had that phony look that people get when they sit down in restaurants. I saw myself in a mirror behind Kathleen’s head, and it was then that I felt nervous. I looked like a fuckin idiot. Young. Kathleen took longer to get rid of her phony look, but it was only like the difference between a beautiful thing and a painting of it.

“So what are you gonna have?” I asked her, as soon as we were settled.

“I don’t know yet, Jer.”

“But I thought you said you knew.”

“Sure I knew, but I don’t any more.”

“I see. I see.”

We were flirting.

“I know what I want to drink,” she said, “if ya don’t mind, Jer,” and that was a highball of Dewar’s.

“Make it two, make it two,” I told the waiter.

We sat there and smiled and there was her neck right across from me. I remember her dress and her hair but I won’t tell you about them because why would that interest you.

“Jer,” she said. “I’ve been so happy for you, since you got that loan. Happy, happy happy.”

The drinks came.

“When a man does something on his own,” she said. “When someone does something on her own, he comes back a different person. I came back different. You came back different. Cheers. I loved that … I hope ya don’t mind me saying this … but I loved that look on your face when ya came to the truck the other day because it reminded me of mine. I looked just like that when I came here from home. When I got off the boat …”

We both drank those whiskeys quick like Here Comes a Holiday and ordered a couple more. I ordered spaghetti and Kathleen ordered spaghetti because that’s what Giovanni’s was known for. And we got a jug of red wine.

“It’s terrifying, Jer, thinkin that there’s nothing between you and starvation, you and some great cold nothing, except your own courage. You’ve gotta … I’ve gotta … stand up, go out and do something, because if ya don’t there’s nothing but that cold, do ya hear me, Jer?”

She just went right ahead and got all thoughtful and it was just
what I needed, just what we needed, to make a kiss in the back of a truck more than that. Just what I needed to make me hungry and easy.

“I knew about every step when I got here, like every time somebody said something to me I remembered it. Tom, the fella I followed, disappeared completely. I walked around, like, not knowing where to walk around. And ya decide, don’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“You decide. Am I gonna be lost or not?”

“That’s right. You plan.”

“Exactly, Jer. You plan what yer gonna do next. What’s your next move, as they say. That’s what ya decide. And I decided.”

“The truck.”

“Exactly, Jerry. That’s a lovely Irish name. Did you know that my father had a brother named Gerald? Gerald became a priest. That was his decision. Some of them find God, don’t they, but that wasn’t my decision. In Ireland, Jerry, ya make God your decision for keepin out the cold, or ya leave. It wasn’t just Tom, ya see, Jerry. It was me. I knew, Jerry, that he didn’t want me to come, but I came no matter. I was frightened like a little kid, I was, everything louder and bigger. None of it’s louder or bigger but I felt so, Jerry, I felt so, and all the funny accents and the drivin, flip me, if I couldn’t get used to the drivin when I got that truck. It was one of them little things ya have to get used to, like the little things on top of all the big things, on top of that worry have I made the right decision leavin home and that fecker Tom leavin me and it’s colder here in the winter than the devil could have planned and my family’s at home forgettin me, and there I am drivin on the wrong flippin side on top of it all. You know, Jerry? Ha! This is good, eh?”