Townie_ A Memoir Part 11

TWO DAYS later I was sitting on the granite steps of Academy Hall between cla.s.ses. It was a cool, gray morning, and I had a biology exam and was trying to remember what a lysosome was when Eric, one of the skinny rockers from Connecticut, sat down next to me. He had long blond hair. His cheeks always looked wind-chapped. He lit up a cigarette.

"That guy you hit had to go to the hospital."

I looked over at him. I hadn't told anyone about hitting anyone, but I'd done it in the parking lot beneath the dorm windows of Academy Hall.

"You fractured his forehead."

"How do you know that?"

"'Cause I was there. His buddy's my friend from back home."

I shrugged, though my heart was going a bit faster and I couldn't deny the warmth of pride opening up in my chest.

Eric blew smoke out both his nostrils. He nodded his head as if I'd just said something. "Yep, concussion."

"And what about his scrawny friend he was beating on? How's his nose?" I stood and gripped my biology book. Eric nodded again and took a deep drag off his cigarette, and I walked down the steps for Haseltine Hall and my biology exam. I reminded myself how big that Ryan was, that watching him punch his skinny friend was like watching a grown man hit a woman or a child.

Not far from the door to the hall, a group of girls was sitting in a circle smoking and chatting. One of them, thin and fair-skinned from Michigan, held a dead leaf to the flame of her lighter, the leaf curling away from the heat and becoming a wisp of smoke. She looked at me as I pa.s.sed. I pulled open the heavy oak door of the hall and stepped inside; it was as if I'd just been warned.

9.

POP WAS SICK with the flu. It was spring now, and he called me and asked if I wanted his two tickets to the game.

"What game?"

"The Red Sox."

"Baseball?"

"Yes, baseball. baseball."

"I guess so."

"They're playing the Yankees at Fenway."

"Where's that?"

"Boston. Take Dolan. Tell him it's the Yankees."

I'd heard of them but didn't know they were from New York or that we were supposed to hate them. My father liked Sam Dolan, admired him for his muscles and good manners, and I'd heard them talk sports before, using words and terms and names I'd never heard. It was like sitting with Marjan's family when they spoke Persian. Sometimes I listened hard for anything I might recognize, though I didn't do that the few times Sam and my father talked about sports; I knew there was nothing in it I would know much about, these games with b.a.l.l.s in them that men threw at each other or bounced or hit with a bat. I understood training for a goal, and I knew these were athletes who worked hard at what they did. But why? Why were grown men playing games games?

Since I was very young, I'd seen little of them and knew less. Pop had never talked to us about them; maybe if he'd stayed with us he would have. Maybe he would have had more time to, the way he did that afternoon he and I had thrown a ball to each other bare-handed on the sidewalk, the charcoals growing hotter in the hibachi on the half-wall beside us. And if he'd stayed, there may have been more money and less moving from one sc.r.a.ppy neighborhood to another where no one seemed to have much to do with these games either. On the TV we four kids had lived in front of, there were only three or four channels, and we would turn to those that gave us stories of escape-eccentrics stranded on a desert island, a bunch of pranksters in a concentration camp, a family of rock musicians working through all their problems in one half-hour episode every day. If we watched any games at all, it was of a woman sitting on a stool interviewing for a possible date three men she couldn't see.

One Sunday back on Lime Street, Pop had picked us up and was driving us north to the beach. Suzanne sat in the front, Jeb, Nicole, and I in the back, the windows down as we pa.s.sed trailer homes in the pine trees, the smell of sap in the air. Pop turned on the radio to listen to the end of the game he said he'd been watching. His exact words were the the game. game.

"What game?"

He glanced at me in the rearview mirror, his face only eyes. "The Red Sox."

"Who's that?"

He smiled as if I'd just told a joke, and he turned up the radio. But I wasn't joking. I was almost thirteen years old. It was like listening to TV newscasters talk about politics or the economy, a larger world I couldn't even begin to understand. Pop's eyes were on the road, but he was listening intently to these men, to this game, which at that moment, sitting in the back of his car, I began to understand was baseball.

When we got to our parking spot at the beach, Pop took a while to turn off the radio, and as we walked over the hot sand together he still seemed to be back there in that car and whatever it was those men were describing, their voices calm and soothing, using terms I did not know: b.a.l.l.s b.a.l.l.s and and strikes strikes and and fouls fouls. Fastball Fastball, splitter splitter, sinker sinker. Double play Double play.

Now Sam and I were driving into Boston with Pop's tickets to a place called Fenway Park. It was a cool September night, and soon Sam and I were sitting up in the stands with thousands of other people-men, women, and kids, almost all of them wearing a Red Sox hat or jacket or sweatshirt or all three. The air smelled like mustard and popcorn and beer, and as I drank mine, I still couldn't get over how many people had come to this game. Over thirty-three thousand, Sam said, and this was the smallest park in baseball, though it looked pretty big to me, the towering banks of blinding lights that lit up the field, wide and deep green, only three players standing out in it, and there were the other men on this diamond, what Sam called the infield, the dirt path from home plate to first to second to third then back home. There was the mound the pitcher worked from, and I couldn't believe how hard and fast these men threw the ball past the batter into the catcher's mitt, another new word Sam taught me. He sat next to me, sipping his beer and patiently explaining everything: what a strike was and a ball and a foul; how the first two foul b.a.l.l.s count as strikes, that there are different kinds of pitches and different kinds of pitchers, on and on, and as he did, he leaned close and kept his voice low, as if he didn't want to draw attention to how little I knew, that this was, in fact, the first baseball game I had ever watched.

There was a crack in the air and I watched the ball fly over the field and hit what Sam told me was "the Green Monster," a ma.s.sive wall the baseball bounced off of into the glove of a Yankee who threw it to another Yankee who threw it to one at second base though our runner was safe, Sam said. That's how I felt too, safe, my best friend and me sitting deep in the stands with thousands of other people all rooting for the same team. It was like being admitted into one huge, loud and happy family you hadn't even known about.

After a while, it was the Yankees' turn to hit. Every time one of them walked up to home plate with his bat, hundreds of men and boys would yell insults at him I couldn't quite make out, just the tone, which I knew well, but it wasn't directed at me or anyone I would have to try to protect, and I felt relieved of everything, part of something far larger than I was, just one of thousands and thousands of people united in wanting the same thing, for these men from our team to beat the men from the other team, and how strange that they did this by playing, playing, that one beat the other by playing a that one beat the other by playing a game game.

Sam and I bought and drank a lot of beer. To get to it, we had to walk down a concrete ramp past two Boston police officers, big men with gray hair, their arms crossed over their pale blue shirts and badges, glancing at us like we might be trouble, then concluding we weren't. On the way back to our seats, we had to scoot by ten or fifteen people and every one of them stood without hesitation as we squeezed by them, trying not to spill any beer, and when we got to our seats we folded them back down and sat and drank and looked out at the bright green field and the big men playing ball in their white uniforms and their gray uniforms, a number on the back of each, and I was sweetly, happily drunk and couldn't believe I'd never come to this place before, that I'd hardly even known about it. I smiled over at Sam and he smiled over at me, though something happened in the field, and he looked up and stood and so did all the people around us, a foul ball floating fast ten feet above our heads and behind us. I turned partway around and saw the bare hands reaching for it, heard a rustling, then a thunk thunk. In my seat lay the ball. I picked it up and somebody slapped me on the back, Sam too. "You should bring that home to your father."

I nodded and smiled and studied the ball in my hand. It was harder than I'd thought it'd be, but it was also just like the one Pop had thrown to me on the sidewalk four years earlier. I liked its red st.i.tching. I stuck it in the side pocket of my jacket, Sam and I tapped our plastic beer cups, and I raised mine to the batter who'd fouled right to me, Jerry Remy, Sam said. Then Remy got a hit and made it to first base without being thrown out and I cheered for him, this man I'd never heard of in this game I'd never played or watched.

THE NEXT afternoon Sam and I stopped by my father's house to thank him for the tickets. His young stepkids were at school, and Lorraine was out somewhere, and Pop lay on one of her sofas under a light blanket. He was pale and still had a fever. Sam was telling him about the game, using language I still couldn't speak from a culture I still didn't know, but at least now I knew where the country was, had seen some of its people and smelled some of its food. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the baseball. I handed it to him. "Here, you can have this."

He propped himself up on one elbow. "You got a ball ball?"

"Yep," Sam said. "It landed right in his seat."

Pop took it from me, turned it over in his hand, glanced up at me. "I've been going to games for thirty years and never never got a ball." He said something else about it, but I kept hearing the last thing he said. got a ball." He said something else about it, but I kept hearing the last thing he said. Thirty years. Thirty years. He'd been going to games for thirty years? Why didn't he ever take me before? Or Jeb? Or Suzanne and Nicole? And as Sam and I left him to rest and get over his flu, as we stepped outside and walked past the faculty housing in the clear September air, I thought it must be the money. That's why he never took us before. It'd be too much money. He'd been going to games for thirty years? Why didn't he ever take me before? Or Jeb? Or Suzanne and Nicole? And as Sam and I left him to rest and get over his flu, as we stepped outside and walked past the faculty housing in the clear September air, I thought it must be the money. That's why he never took us before. It'd be too much money.

Lorraine was walking toward her house, a ladies' store shopping bag dangling from her hand. She smiled at us, though she looked tired and distracted and took her time walking back home.

WEEKS LATER, a cold blue October dawn, my mother's voice shot up the stairwell to my attic bedroom. "Andre? Telephone."

It was just after six in the morning and it was Lorraine.

"Andre," she took a deep breath that seemed to catch in her throat, "your father has left me for a nineteen-year-old child. I need your help moving his things."

"Excuse me?"

"Yes, he's with her right now. In Boston." She took a deep breath, and I pictured her smoking. "Please, Andre. I need your help. Please."

IT WAS close to nine when I knocked on my father's door. I was sweating lightly from the three-mile walk through town, my French textbook in my hand. The air smelled like oak dust and dry rot, and Lorraine answered the door right away. She was in a brown velour pantsuit, barefoot and wearing no makeup, the lines in her face deeper than I'd seen them before. She hugged me to her tightly, smelled like cigarette smoke and coffee and unwashed skin. She pulled away. "Thank you for coming."

"You're welcome."

I followed her up the stairs to the second floor and my father's room. It was clear she hadn't slept, that she'd been packing his things for most of the night. His closet doors were open, the hangers and shelves bare, as were the walls, his hat collection gone, the top of his desk empty. There were cardboard boxes stacked under the window, and I imagined her driving to some all-night grocery store to get them. But then I saw the writing on the sides, the same professional movers she'd hired to deliver her nine thousand pounds of furniture up North. She'd stacked his alb.u.ms on his weight bench, some of his books too.

She was smoking now and talking. Her voice was thin, her Southern accent stronger than ever, as if the fatigue she felt had taken her down to some deeper, truer version of herself.

"Lorraine?" I was about to tell her I was sorry this was happening to her, but that it was none of my business and I would not be able to help her pack up my father's possessions. I would not be able to help her kick my father out of his own house. But the phone rang and Lorraine rushed to the other room, a feathering of smoke in the air behind her. I felt bad for her, and I wondered who this nineteen-year-old was Pop had gone to sleep with, but I had no business even standing in this room. I was just about to leave when I saw his gun.

It lay on top of the books she'd stacked on his weight bench, its leather holster unsnapped, the .38 halfway out of it. I picked it up. The holster fell away, the snub nose cool and heavy in my hand. I flipped open the chamber, and there were the bra.s.s firing pins of six .38 sh.e.l.ls.

Had she she loaded this? Would she know how? I looked but didn't see a bullet box anywhere, and I could hear her in the other room talking to somebody from the college, some dean whose first name I recognized as she told him how my father had left her for a child, that he had spent the night with her in Boston and Little Andre was here to help her with his things. loaded this? Would she know how? I looked but didn't see a bullet box anywhere, and I could hear her in the other room talking to somebody from the college, some dean whose first name I recognized as she told him how my father had left her for a child, that he had spent the night with her in Boston and Little Andre was here to help her with his things.

I upended the .38 and tapped the handle against my hand. Six rounds fell into my palm. They were hollow-points, bullets designed to fragment once they hit their target, to do the maximum damage. I knew Pop had bought these, that he imagined having to stop some rapist with them, and maybe he was keeping his gun loaded these days, though I couldn't see why. I stuffed the bullets into the front pocket of my jeans. I shoved the .38 back into its holster and snapped the strap around the hammer, and I opened the drawers of his desk, but she'd already packed them and I saw no boxes of ammunition.

Lorraine had walked down one level to the kitchen. She stood there staring out the window as she smoked and talked on the phone to one of Pop's friends about what he was doing to her. I felt sorry for her, and I didn't feel sorry for her.

She turned and saw me heading for the stairs and the front door. She held up her hand, a More between two fingers, its smoke curling above her head. I waited as she said goodbye to the dean. She hung up the phone and stubbed out her cigarette and walked up to me.

"You can't stay, can you?"

I shook my head. "It's really none of my business. Sorry."

"No." She put her hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes. "I shouldn't have called you." She hugged me to her and I hugged her back. Her body felt so small and I could feel her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against me and I began to get hard and pulled away. She kept her hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes, hers brown and edged with pain and something I couldn't name. We stood there quite a while, it seemed. Then she thanked me again for coming, and I turned and left my father's house, six hollow-point sh.e.l.ls, heavy as a promise, in the front pocket of my jeans.

ALL DAY long, I went to cla.s.ses and carried them with me, didn't know where to put them. It didn't feel right to throw bullets in the trash. What if some kid found them and was the kind of kid I'd been? I pictured some ten-year-old squeezing the rounds in a vise and taking a hammer to the firing ends.

Later, walking across the Basilere Bridge, I checked the traffic for a cruiser, then stopped and pulled the hollow-points from my pocket and threw them out over the railing, watched them briefly catch the sunlight as they fell into the dirty, swirling water.

It was early evening when I got to the bottom of Columbia Park. Across Main, two girls from Seventh Ave sat on the steps beside Pleasant Spa drinking c.o.kes and smoking. I was thirsty and told myself to drink some water before I changed and went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt to work out. And maybe that's what I was thinking of as I walked up my street and saw stacked on our front lawn everything Pop owned. There was his weight bench and barbell and iron plates; there were cardboard boxes that held his books and alb.u.ms, his Akubra hats and pipes and clothes and running shoes. There were two or three full garbage bags there too.

HE LIVED with us for two weeks. We didn't have a spare bedroom, and our only couch was a wicker sofa too small to sleep on, so he slept up in my room. I gave him the bed and slept on the floor, which I found I liked anyway, that cool hard surface under my back. I couldn't remember the last time I saw Pop so happy. Maybe when we were small and lived in Iowa City, when he was finally out of the Marines and going to graduate school full-time, when he was writing and taking cla.s.ses and making love with his beautiful young wife, our mother, when he'd sit down on the couch with us four kids and tell us stories of Running Blue Ice Water.

Now he was forty and free again, Lorraine and her two quiet kids and her nine thousand pounds of furniture heading back South. He laughed a lot, sometimes a little too hard and a little too long, and he was in a constant mood to celebrate. Nearly every night he and I would drive down to the bars on Washington Street. It was strange going out with him this often, like having a new buddy, one I'd always known but never really knew.

I'd try to guide us to a corner table so my back would be to a wall or window and I could see who was coming in and who was leaving. I seemed to always be looking for trouble, for a husband to slap his wife, for a boyfriend to call his girlfriend a c.u.n.t or a wh.o.r.e, for a bigger one to lord over one smaller.

Since fracturing that bully's forehead, there'd been more fights: once, when Marjan had been in the wedding party of a friend, the reception later at an Am Vets down in East Boston. Two men in a Chrysler kept tapping the rear b.u.mper of the limousine that held Marjan and the other bridesmaids. I was driving my mother's Toyota not far behind, and the driver of the sedan was unshaven and had dark curly hair and he leaned on the horn again and again, tapping the b.u.mper with his. "It's party time, b.i.t.c.hes! Come out and f.u.c.kin' play play!" The limo driver was old and small. He was parked at the entrance to the hall where he was supposed to open the back door for the girls, but he kept glancing into his side view mirror and he wasn't getting out from behind the wheel. Now the driver of the sedan was yelling more s.h.i.t out his open window and he b.u.mped the limo again, and I pulled my mother's Toyota into an empty s.p.a.ce and was running between parked cars, the sedan driver looking over at me just as I threw one into his face, then another and another. A small voice inside me said, This is wrong, he can't fight you behind the wheel like that, you have to step away, This is wrong, he can't fight you behind the wheel like that, you have to step away, but I kept swinging at him inside his window and only stepped back when he jerked open his door and stood, staggering a second, this very big man, at least a foot taller than I was, seventy, eighty pounds heavier, and now his friend was hurrying around the trunk behind him and I couldn't let my adrenaline back up on me and turn my legs to water because once you started you couldn't stop or they'd get you so I reached up and grabbed the tall driver's ears and yanked his face down onto my knee, then hit him with rights again and again till somebody pulled me off, a crowd around us now, men from inside the bar. but I kept swinging at him inside his window and only stepped back when he jerked open his door and stood, staggering a second, this very big man, at least a foot taller than I was, seventy, eighty pounds heavier, and now his friend was hurrying around the trunk behind him and I couldn't let my adrenaline back up on me and turn my legs to water because once you started you couldn't stop or they'd get you so I reached up and grabbed the tall driver's ears and yanked his face down onto my knee, then hit him with rights again and again till somebody pulled me off, a crowd around us now, men from inside the bar.

It was cold, but a lot of them wore T-shirts. One of them had a smoking cigarette between his lips, and he told me cool your f.u.c.kin' jets. cool your f.u.c.kin' jets. The big one was bleeding from his nose and mouth. He was telling two men how I jumped him for no reason, that I was crazy. And now his friend, short and thick-looking, close to thirty and wearing an Irish scully cap, was pacing back and forth behind him, breathing hard, his fists clenched, and I knew what he was doing. He was getting himself to where he had to be. Because now he had a good look at me, this nineteen-year-old in a borrowed suit jacket and old corduroys, who was so much smaller than his big friend and probably not as strong as he was either, and you couldn't let the rush fade or there'd be nothing to fight with, and I yelled, "C'mon! You want to go at it? You want to f.u.c.kin' go The big one was bleeding from his nose and mouth. He was telling two men how I jumped him for no reason, that I was crazy. And now his friend, short and thick-looking, close to thirty and wearing an Irish scully cap, was pacing back and forth behind him, breathing hard, his fists clenched, and I knew what he was doing. He was getting himself to where he had to be. Because now he had a good look at me, this nineteen-year-old in a borrowed suit jacket and old corduroys, who was so much smaller than his big friend and probably not as strong as he was either, and you couldn't let the rush fade or there'd be nothing to fight with, and I yelled, "C'mon! You want to go at it? You want to f.u.c.kin' go at at it?!" it?!"

He rushed at me but two or three regulars held him back, the big one surrounded by four more. The one smoking the cigarette pulled at my arm. "I said cool cool it." it."

The bridesmaids were going inside now. A few gripped small shiny night bags, a few others bouquets of flowers, and Marjan looked over her shoulder at me as if she'd never seen me before, did not even know my name.

The function hall was smoky and dimly lit, the DJ playing loud disco. Marjan was at the head table with the bride and groom, and I sat in a chair where I could see the door. The term sucker punch sucker punch was in my head, my face heating up with the knowledge that that's what I'd done, surprised a sitting man with a fist to the face. I kept hearing his voice out there in the parking lot calling me was in my head, my face heating up with the knowledge that that's what I'd done, surprised a sitting man with a fist to the face. I kept hearing his voice out there in the parking lot calling me f.u.c.king crazy, f.u.c.king crazy, and now my arms and legs felt spent and heavy and it would be bad if the two of them came in now. and now my arms and legs felt spent and heavy and it would be bad if the two of them came in now.

"Why the fighting?"

A man sat beside me. He was five or ten years older than I was. He had long black hair tied in a ponytail. He wore a string tie with a turquoise and silver clasp at his throat, and he had narrow shoulders and dark eyes and high cheekbones.

I shook my head. I shrugged.

"Violence only leads to more violence, man."

"Yeah? What about the girls? The driver wasn't doing anything about it."

"Were they really in danger?"

"Yep." I stood and made my way through the tables for the bar and a beer. Men and women were talking and smiling at one another, laughing and drinking, and I felt like some kind of dimwitted brute.

Weeks later, drunk at Ronnie D's with Suzanne and her new boyfriend, Fred, a gentle mechanic with a bushy beard, I'd look up every time the door opened or closed; I was still expecting to see the Lynches or the Murphys coming for me, and I was tired of this, tired of the flare of adrenaline every time air from the street drifted in, and I turned to Fred and asked him if he'd give me a lift down to Riverside. It's where the Lynches and some of their cousins drank, at a bar in a Chinese restaurant in the shopping plaza next to the stadium. Fred said he would but first I needed the bathroom, and I made my way through the crowd and an opening in a part.i.tion wall and there was Pop, sitting at a table with three Bradford girls. The bar was loud with talk and laughter and you couldn't even hear the jukebox, just the dull thumping of a ba.s.s guitar, a black man singing somewhere beneath it. Pop wore one of his Akubra hats tilted back on his head, a drink in front of him, a smoking cigarette between two fingers on the table. The girls across from him were laughing hard about something, the one beside Pop laughing too, and I knew who they were but didn't know them. He saw me and waved me over.

"Want a drink drink?"

"I can't."

"What?" He cupped his hand to his ear. I walked around and leaned in close, could smell the Marlboro smoke in his hair. "I can't. I've gotta go fight somebody." It's the most I'd told him about anything, and he looked up at me, his face somber, and I squeezed his shoulder and left him for the bathroom. He cupped his hand to his ear. I walked around and leaned in close, could smell the Marlboro smoke in his hair. "I can't. I've gotta go fight somebody." It's the most I'd told him about anything, and he looked up at me, his face somber, and I squeezed his shoulder and left him for the bathroom.

In the blue light of the Chinese restaurant's bar, Dana Lynch stood there with four or five others. He was wearing a pullover sweater and I was drunker than I'd thought and walked between two men I didn't glance at. I looked up into Dana's face, saw some of Steve in it, saw the surprise. I patted his stomach, "You're getting soft, Dana." I stepped past him and walked to the men's room by a tank of goldfish treading water. I had to p.i.s.s again, but I ignored the urinals, stood by the door and waited. Maybe they'd all come in, maybe just him.

I waited till I couldn't any longer and I used one of the urinals, my eye on the door. I rinsed my hands and splashed my face, then stepped back into the aquamarine darkness of where I was sure I'd be fighting more than one.

The bar was more crowded than just a few minutes earlier. More women now, most of them in ladies' leather jackets, their hair clean and feathered away from their faces like disco dancers. The air was smokier, and I walked through it past Dana Lynch and his friends. At the front door I glanced back at him. The men standing around him were not his normal crew, and he was sitting on a stool, looking at me, a still expression on his face. At his knee was a long wooden cane.

As I climbed back into Fred's car, I felt vaguely sorry for Dana Lynch. It was clear he was in no shape to fight anyone, and that he was afraid to fight me. Somebody was afraid afraid of me. of me.

It's what I'd wanted, wasn't it?