The Crazyladies of Pearl Street (52 page)

But even the most enriching experiences must come to an end, so finally, butt-sore, cramped, stuffed and deafened, my sister and I were allowed to go up to bed with the rest of the kids, while the women collected the dishes and began to clean up the devastated kitchen.

“—but not you, Cuz!” Aunt Lorna said. “You're the bride! You just sit there and talk to us! You and me, we haven't had a good gab session in years!”

As I passed the dining room door I saw that the tablecloth had been removed and cards were being dealt out. There were glasses and wine bottles on the table, but no lemonade pitcher. I glanced at Ben anxiously. His new blue double-breasted suit jacket was hanging open, the top button of his apple-green shirt was undone, and he had tugged down his pink-and-blue tie. His face glistened with sweat, but he was smiling and seemed to be having fun, so everything would be all right. Maybe.

Some time in the middle of that night, I gave up trying to sleep and slowly picked my way out of the sweaty tangle of cousin-limbs. Sleeping crosswise hadn't worked. The bed's slack springs had made us all slide towards the middle, so it had been impossible to keep space between me and the next boy. For the first hour, there had been giggling and punching and pinching and threats to tell mothers and counter-threats about what would happen to you if you did. The oldest of my cousins demonstrated both his primitive idea of humor and his profound stupidity when he clutched the cousin next to him, farted, then pulled the blanket over their heads, sharing with his victim the effects of his droll prank. I took comfort in the knowledge that 'Aunt' Lorna and 'Uncle' Tonio had not been able to have children of their own, so these kids and I shared no common genes. They were 'cousins' by courtesy only.

I found Anne-Marie out in the dark hallway. She had disentangled herself from a crush of squirming girls, one of whom had wet the common bed. We sat together on the top step of the staircase and looked glumly down towards the light and noise of the wedding party, with its snorts and hoots, its harsh laughter and detached drunken words, until she fell asleep on my shoulder and I had to put my arms around her because she was shivering in her thin nightgown. I dozed off in that awkward position, my cheek against the wall.

In the small hours of the morning, my mother found us at the top of the stairs, shivering and clammy. My arm had fallen asleep under the weight of Anne-Marie, and it tingled painfully as circulation returned to it. Mother took us into her bedroom, into her wedding bed, where we all snuggled together to get warm. She and Ben had had a shouting row, and her eyes were red with crying. Characteristically, Anne-Marie reacted to the tension and anger radiating from Mother by withdrawing into a deep sleep, but Mother remained rigid with rage. Whispering into the darkness, I asked what had happened, and she told me that after drinking wine—“and he knows he can't hold his drink”—Ben had played poker with the other men. The game had broken up with a fight. Ben had hit one of Tonio's 'business acquaintances' from Troy, and when Mother and Lorna rushed in to break things up, the other friend had his back to the wall, a flick blade in his hand, while Ben faced him, his belt wrapped around his fist and about a foot of belt and buckle dangling like a flail. If Mother and Lorna hadn't been there, things would have gotten nasty, because Tonio and his brothers seemed content with the role of interested bystanders. Uncle Tonio helped the fallen Trojan to his feet and persuaded both of his pals to go to a downtown bar with him and his brothers. Just to let things cool down a little, whaddyasay? Who needs trouble? They left grumbling about 'bad losers' and making threats against 'four-flushing hicks'.

When they were alone, Ben confessed to Mother that he had lost more than half the money they had saved up for their cabins in Wyoming.

“Did you say those guys were from Troy?” I asked Mother.

“That's what Ben said.”

“Jesus!” I whispered.

“What is it?”

I remembered Uncle Tonio telling me about his 'friends' from Troy. He had bragged that he knew a couple of card sharks who could clean suckers out 'slicker 'n shit'. They let the sucker win for a while, then: “...whadda you know?... his luck turns sour and he ends up stripped to the bone. And if the sucker complains...? Well, you don't complain about these guys. They got friends, and their friends got ways. Know what I mean?” He had winked.

I told Mother about this, hoping she would see that it wasn't all Ben's fault. These men from Troy were professionals cheats. But although she had lived with my father for a total of only a few months, he had managed to infect her with the con man's scorn for the mark: the stupid pigeon that deserves to be plucked. Losing money to a couple of card sharks made Ben contemptible in her eyes, and it's hard to imagine a worse basis for a lasting union than contempt. Resentment is less destructive; even hatred. Realizing that nothing I could say would change her view of Ben as a sucker who deserves whatever he gets, I limited myself to asking where he was now.

“Who cares? Wandering around out there in the dark, probably. Feeling sorry for himself. I told him off good and proper for getting drunk and losing all that money! It was mine as much as his! Those cabins were my last chance to make something of myself... to be somebody!”

“And what did Ben say?”

“What could he say? He gave me some crap about marrying into a family of cheats and thieves, and he stormed out. Just like that! Left me cold!” She began to cry again. No sobbing, just tears flowing down her cheeks into the corners of her mouth. “When I think of the things we went without to save up that money! The gallons of potato soup you kids had to...” Her words squeaked and stuck in the back of her throat, and it was a while before she could add, “...and on my wedding night, too!”

When we went down to the kitchen the next morning the house was empty except for Aunt Lorna, who was busily... too busily... making our breakfast. The atmosphere was taut. She told us that Tonio's brothers and their families had gone back to Hudson Falls first thing that morning.

“And those card sharks Tonio brought in to clean Ben out?” Mother asked.

“Well... I think they took the morning train back to Troy. But, hon, please don't—”

Ben came to the back porch to speak to Mother, but he wouldn't come in because, he said, if he did he might lose control and start busting up things... and maybe some people too. He must have had a bad night, because his new suit was muddy in patches and his trousers had a triangular rip at the knee, where his skin showed through, oddly pale and baby smooth. He told Mother through the screen door that he had spent the night wandering around, and he would be waiting for us at the bus station when she was ready to leave.

I wandered into the dining room, which still smelled of wine and stale cigarette smoke. When I came back into the kitchen, Aunt Lorna was bustling around, serving pancakes to Anne-Marie and babbling away nervously about how there was nothing in the world like a good breakfast to drive the blues away and make the world seem brighter. But Mother would accept only a cup of coffee.

“Well, sit down to drink it at least,” Aunt Lorna said. “Your bus doesn't leave for ages.”

Mother didn't sit. She stood at the back door, sipping her coffee and staring out across the muddy creek that ate a little further into their backyard every year. “So where's that son of a bitch you married?” she asked.

“Oh, hon!” Lorna said plaintively. “Calling people names won't help anything.”

“Don't 'oh, hon' me! Where is he? Off getting his cut of blood money from his card-shark friends?”

Lorna explained that Tonio had been out all night long with them, making sure they didn't come back looking for revenge. He'd done this to protect Ben because he had hit one of them, and that made men like that want to hurt people... bad.

“Oh, so Tonio's a big hero, is that it?” Mother asked. “Trying to help us out, is he?”

“Hon... please! Don't blame me. I never thought anything like this would happen.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know perfectly well those men cheated Ben!”

Aunt Lorna winced and turned away. I was embarrassed by the way Mother kept bullying Lorna, who was only guilty of marrying Tonio and accepting his domination.

“That was money I'd shrimped and saved for, Lorna! My children went without to build that money up! It was our future... our hopes and dreams! So what are you going to do about it?”

“Good God, hon, what can I do?”

“You want to know what you can do? You can make your slimy thief of a husband pay us our money back, that's what you can do!”

“I can't do that. Ben lost that money! He gambled and he lost. You can't blame me. I didn't know those men were planning anything like... Oh, hon, please!” Aunt Lorna buried her face in her palms and sobbed.

“Come on, kids,” Mother said. “We're getting out of here!”

Anne-Marie and I swallowed last forkfuls of pancake and picked up our suitcases.

Mother turned at the door. “And you listen to me, Lorna. I don't ever want to see you again unless you can tell me you've left that son of a bitch for good and all. You've buttered your bread, now you can lie on it! And don't bother to write, because I won't answer. From now on, I have no cousin, no friend, no nothing! I'm alone in the world!” She snatched up her suitcase.

“Oh... hon!”

And we left. I was the last one out. The screen door slipped from my grasp and slammed shut. I rushed to catch up with Mother and Anne-Marie, hoping Aunt Lorna didn't think I'd slammed the door on purpose. Though they both lived to be old women, my mother never saw or heard from her cousin again.

There wasn't a word spoken during our long, three-stage bus ride back to Albany. Ben's new suit was ruined. Humiliated and hung over, he avoided looking at us. He stared out his window, his eyes raw and whipped. Mother sat beside him, seething in silence; Anne-Marie and I sat in the seat across the aisle, neither of us daring to talk.

Twice Anne-Marie got sick and the bus had to stop along the road; finally she fell asleep against my shoulder.

Night fell, and I carefully eased out of my seat, lowered Anne-Marie's head so she could sleep across both seats, and went to the front of the bus, where I occupied a recently vacated seat directly behind the driver. I stared out the front window as our headlights cleaved an eternal archway of overhanging branches that vanished into the darkness at the edges of the cone of light we chased down the road. In time, the hypnotic drone of the engine and the rigidity of my stare made it feel as though we were standing still and the trees were rushing at us, then parting and pouring past us right and left. It was all my fault. I had sensed from the beginning that things wouldn't work out between Ben and Mother. They were both good people, but Mother wasn't the easygoing, forgiving, optimistic woman Ben needed; and Ben wasn't what she wanted him to be: a responsible, reliable version of my slick-talking, sharp-dressing father, to whom she still had an aggrieved but undying attachment. I had sensed all this, but nevertheless I had done nothing to save them from each other. I could have, easily. All I would have had to do was tell my mother that I didn't want Ben for a stepfather, and that would have been the end of it. Her loyalty to her children sprang from a deeper place than her feelings for Ben, or for any man. But in the end, I had saved myself instead. I wasn't exactly responsible for Mother and Ben's marriage, but I could have stopped it.

I was responsible, however, for Ben's losing money to those card-shark friends of Tonio. Tonio had told me how these vermin worked, and I'd had a premonition of calamity when I walked past the dining room door and saw the cards and the wine on the table, but I hadn't warned him. So whatever happened now would be my fault. I knew that the guilt would be with me forever. At the moment of accepting that guilt I experienced one of those metaphor-moments that emerge again and again in my nightmares: it is night, and I am being chased through a tunnel of harshly lit tree limbs that rush towards my face, then split and rush right and left, into oblivion at the edge of the headlights, and this chase, this flight, goes on forever, forever.

It was after midnight when we arrived at our stoop on Pearl Street, Anne-Marie sleep-walking between me and Ben. Without a word, Ben and Mother took bedding from Anne-Marie's bed and put it on the floor beside my daybed. Anne-Marie wriggled in, having emerged only minimally from unconsciousness and eager to escape back into sleep. In no time her breathing was shallow and regular. I could hear the rustling sounds of Mother and Ben undressing in the back bedroom, then the creak of the springs as they got into bed. Ben's voice muttered good-night and something else I couldn't catch. Mother was silent. I sat on the edge of my bed, looking out on the street and feeling miserable. When I closed my eyes I could see those pallid branches rush past me as I hurtled into the darkness. I opened my eyes to dispel the vertigo.

After a long silence, I heard Mother's voice. Ben replied. Then Mother said something curt and sharp. I couldn't make out their words, but there was anger and pain in the sound. It wasn't long before they raised their voices and I overheard swatches of their hurtful quarrel.

“...All right!” Ben said. “I got drunk! I'm sorry. I keep saying I'm sorry! What more can I do?”

“You got stinking drunk on your wedding night and left your wife to sleep with her kids!”

A silence, and I hoped they would stop fighting and let sleep and time start to heal things.