Life Detonated Read online

  “She went to school with my sister Eileen.”

  “Hey Kathy.” Mike O’Leary had thrown back a few too many. “I was just telling Fiona here that I won a big trial today.” I took a step back from his breath. “I’m celebrating.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. When I turned back, I saw Brian was threading through the crowd to the end of the bar. He stopped briefly to talk to a guy I didn’t recognize, shake hands with someone else, and take a quarter out for the jukebox. He signaled to the bartender to order our drinks.

  Vietnam. “Fucked up, man,” my cousin Frankie had said at his own homecoming a few months back. “Fucked up.”

  “Oooh, Kathy’s got it bad.” Fiona’s breath was hot in my ear.

  “Who is he?” I watched Brian scan the bar while he waited for the drinks. He smiled when he saw me looking.

  “He is a sweetheart,” Fiona said. “And he cannot stop looking at you.” She raised her glass. “Payback for all those Bronx boys you introduced me to.” Fiona wasn’t like a lot of the gum-smacking girls from Brooklyn. She had spunk, despite the gloominess of the apartment she shared with her mother, who still rolled her hair on a sponge roll, just the way she had as a young girl in Ireland.

  Brian’s hand brushed mine as he handed me a drink, and I felt him watching me as he sipped from a bottle of Budweiser. His blue pinstriped shirt was open at the collar, and I let my eyes linger on his bare skin. I had one serious boyfriend before, and that was when I was eighteen and thought a twenty-five-year-old attorney named Vincent would deliver to me everything my life was missing. Until I found out he was married with two children.

  “Do you have plans for New Years?” he asked.

  I nodded, cursing my brother Timmy for making me promise to double-date.

  “Last minute.” He gave me that half-grin again, and I thought about what it would be like to kiss those lips. “I understand.”

  The jukebox turned another song. “Hello, I love you, won’t you tell me your name. Hello, I love you, let me jump in your game.” I could feel the heat crawl up my neck. Did you play this song? I wanted to ask him, but he took his last sip of beer and set the bottle on the bar. His eyes never left my face, and I felt like I was swaying on a porch swing dreaming this scene.

  “Listen,” he said. “My sister is having a family party tonight to welcome me home, so I have to leave, but I would like to see you again some time.”

  “Fiona and I usually come on Fridays,” I said. I was twenty years old and had been coming to McGuinness’s for a few years. I was one of the crowd, despite my Bronx address, but had never met anyone here I was drawn to. Until tonight. There were a few admirers, like Richard, who told me how much he loved redheads, or Steve, who thought every woman in McGuinness’s was in love with him. But none of them gave me pause the way Brian did.

  “Okay.” Brian watched me with those eyes. “I’ll see you around.” He let a moment pass. “But someday I’m going to marry you.”

  The words didn’t sink in for a minute, and before I could say anything Brian was gone. If I wanted to follow him, ask him if he meant what he said, I wouldn’t have been able to. I was rooted to the floor, my mind buzzing with his off-hand proposal.

  “Air Force.” Fiona sidled up next to me. “Last name’s Murray, dad has an old man’s bar over on Rogers. I’ll drive you by his house tomorrow, so you can see where he lives.” Suddenly the room was alive with chatter, as though all sound, except for Brian’s words, had all fallen away and had just now come back to life.

  __________

  “What do you think about a guy who says he’s going to marry me the first time we meet?”

  My boss, Harry Banks, and I were having lunch in his office. His pastrami sandwich was too big for his mouth, but he shoveled it in anyway. I piled half my pastrami on the deli wrapper. “I’ll take the rest of that.” He reached over with his fork. “I would say he likes you.” Harry was the president of Hamilton Adams, an Irish import company, where I worked as his administrative assistant. Most of the office was terrified of his short fuses and endless demands. But I witnessed worse in my own father and found it easy, almost familiar, to be with him.

  “He is a friend of Fiona’s. Just discharged from the Air Force.” I wanted to tell him about Brian’s eyes, the swept-up way he had of looking at me.

  “So, what’s the problem?” Harry opened his second bag of chips.

  “The problem is he said someday he would marry me.” The thought still made my legs weak.

  “Yeah, well,” Harry wiped his mouth with his napkin. “He is either in love or crazy. Take it slow.”

  “I will,” I said. But I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  During the day, I showed Irish linen samples to fashion design showrooms, took inventory, and sent telex correspondence to our mills in Belfast. At five o’clock, I took the subway home to the tiny Throggs Neck apartment where my mother, and five of my seven brothers and sisters and I fought for space. The noise was constant—the patter of footsteps, raised and hushed voices, the ever-present din of televisions all set to different programs. It was a step up from where we came from—a basement apartment in the South Bronx—but still, the crowded space left plenty of room to long for a tiny slice of privacy.

  In a tight back bedroom, my sister Gracie and I slept in twin beds, our nightstand piled high with books. Even walking the streets when she was using drugs, she always had a book with her, and we passed them back and forth, precious, like keys to another life. It wasn’t long before Brian became woven into that make-believe world that carried me away from Randall Avenue. My prince in a pea coat.

  “So, what’s he look like?” Gracie lay on her back with her eyes closed when I told her how he bought me a drink and then disappeared into the snow, right after he said he was going to marry me. Gracie smiled, as if proud. She had always kept me pretty. While my little sister and brothers ran wild, dirty from playing in the cellar, Gracie washed my face and combed my hair. Watching me walk up the cement steps from our basement apartment like a peacock, her response was always the same. “You look beautiful,” she would say.

  I told her how Fiona and I drove by his house, a brownstone with stained glass windows, a little manicured lawn, the works.

  After that, every time the phone rang, Gracie asked, “Was that him?”

  And just when I thought I would never hear from him again, she left a message on my pillow. Brian Murray. BU 8-2784. The old rotary dial took forever to circle, sluggishly settling back into place before I could rotate the dial again for the next number.

  He answered on the second ring, his voice deep, husky. “I’m glad you called back,” he said.

  I pictured that smile, had already memorized it when I closed my eyes and thought about the night I met him. “Did Fiona give you my number?”

  “No, my sister Eileen knows where Fiona works, and I called for your last name and looked you up in the phone book.”

  “What are you, a detective?” My own smile looked goofy in the hall mirror. The phone sat on a tin folding table where everyone could hear your conversation.

  “Not yet, but I’m waiting for the next class to join the NYPD. I’ll be a detective one day.”

  “You’ll make a good one.” I whispered the words, keeping Brian close, away from my depressing Bronx apartment.

  “How about dinner Saturday night?” he asked.

  “I would like that,” I said, and after we hung up I stood for a long time staring at the phone. I wanted to call him back. I’ve been thinking about you, I wanted to tell him. I can’t stop.

  __________

  Saturday, sleet rapped the windowpane, blurring the apartment building across the street. He won’t come in this weather, I kept thinking. I read the same paragraph of Arthur Hailey’s Airport twice without remembering it. Fingering the little bumps on my chenille bedsprea
d, I watched Gracie look for something to wear in the dresser drawers. Rich red hair and high cheekbones like Katherine Hepburn, she had been clean since Bedford Hills, where she did eighteen months for drug possession. “What happened to the closet?” She touched the split wood around the lock. We kept the closet locked and barricaded against our brother, Corky, who sold anything not nailed down for drugs. I saw right away when she opened the door that the top shelf was empty. I dropped the book.

  “My camera.”

  Gracie narrowed her eyes. “That son-of-a-bitch.”

  “I hocked it.” Corky was sitting on the living room couch flipping through the TV Guide, his voice defiant.

  My ears rang. “What do you mean you hocked it?”

  He got up. “Hocked.” He was six inches taller than me. “Are you deaf?”

  When I took a swing at him he caught my hand with his forearm. Pain shot up to my shoulder, and I backed away just in time to miss his punch. Gracie held him back, finally pushing him out the door, almost tipping over the china cabinet, where the Waterford crystal shook and then steadied.

  To breathe through the pain, I sat on the plastic-covered couch and studied the Waterford toasting flutes and vases, an ashtray that never held ashes, the crystal that was my mother’s pride and joy. Her friend Simone worked shipping at Bloomingdales and kept sending pieces “by mistake” to the Bronx instead of Westchester. “I think he broke my hand,” I told Gracie. It was already beginning to swell.

  “Come on, Mom won’t be home from work for a few hours. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

  Instead of the bus, we pooled our money for a cab. The driver sang along to “Love Child” on his radio. Outside, the sleet came down sideways, freezing rain that coated the streets. Gracie blew smoke through a little crack in the window. I thought about when my father finished boxing my mother around, how he used to torture Corky, beat him with a broomstick, a belt, his fists.

  “We need to get him out,” I said now. My hand throbbed.

  “Fat chance,” Gracie said. “You think Mom has any control over him?”

  “You shouldn’t be around him. He’s bad news, too much temptation.” In fact, Gracie hated Corky almost as much as I did and kept as far away from him as she could. But they had been looking for the same fix on the streets for years, and I was pretty sure if Gracie decided to get high, Corky would have no problem bringing her back into the using fold.

  __________

  After five hours in an emergency room that smelled like sewer, and X-rays that showed a hairline fracture, they fit me for a cast.

  My mother was at the kitchen table when we got home, The Daily News spread out in front of her, next to a glass ashtray of crushed Pall Malls stained by her red lipstick. “How do you spell method?” Patrick asked her.

  “M-E-T-Haitch-O-D.” Her parents’ Irish accents were still noticeable.

  I stood in front of her with my cast.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Throw Corky out or I’m gone.” This wasn’t the first time I wore a cast or sported a black eye from a fight with him. She had served as Corky’s punching bag herself. I was twenty years old, earned a decent salary, contributed to the rent, and yet my mother still did not hear me.

  She picked up her cigarettes without looking at me. “I’ll talk to him.” She stood. The run in her nylons showed varicose veins that mapped her once-beautiful legs. I watched her cross the room and thought of her at sixteen, walking home from Cardinal Spellman, boys stealing looks. I knew where she was going. She would close the door to her bedroom and tune us out, imagine herself elsewhere, anywhere except trapped in this tiny, crowded apartment with the eternal televisions, footsteps coming and going at all hours, where everyone wanted something from her.

  “He’s here,” Gracie called from the window.

  I looked down at my old dungarees, a wrinkled t-shirt of my brother Timmy’s I had thrown on before we went out the door. “Jesus,” I told her. “I’m a mess.”

  “Quick.” Gracie pushed me toward the bedroom, her eyes two sparks. “Go change. I’ll keep him company.”

  Nothing fit over the cast. Finally, I found a red sweater with stretched-out sleeves and matched it to a short black skirt. Heels were out of the question with the icy streets, so I settled for my furry boots, and then studied myself in the mirror hanging from the closet Corky had jimmied open. It wasn’t how I wanted to look for my first date with a man who said he would marry me. I tried to fix my splotchy face with make-up, but my right hand was useless. My hair was a nest of tangles, and when I tried to comb it, the frizz won. Finally, I walked out the bedroom door.

  “The roads are slippery,” I heard Brian say to Gracie. “But I made it in an hour.”

  I tried to hear what Gracie said back, but the TV drowned out her voice. It had been a long time since I had introduced Gracie to my friends. I didn’t want Brian to know she was twenty-eight, had been messed up since she was eighteen, still shared my room, and that was the good part. Her husband was in jail, her sons parceled out. I wouldn’t know how to explain that even strung-out on drugs, she had always been a mother to me, and that had grounded her. Now, we grounded each other. I probably won’t see him again, I thought as I walked toward the living room. He’ll think we are violent or crazy.

  Timmy, Danny, and Patrick were watching TV and ignored Brian. He sat in the same spot Corky had sat in hours before, and he stood when I came in the room. His smile faded as he took in the cast.

  “Hey,” he said. He was wearing a cream button-down Oxford and a gold watch that looked like a graduation gift.

  “Hi.” I headed for the door. “There’s a restaurant a few blocks away.”

  “Nice to meet you, Gracie,” he said over his shoulder. He followed me down four flights of stairs that smelled like a dirty mop. On the last step my foot caught, and I felt his hand on my arm.

  “Hey.” That same husky voice. “Slow down.” His suede jacket, spotted dark in places from the sleet, smelled like rich leather, and I wanted to rest my head against his chest and stay there forever. “We’re in no rush.” He placed my coat over my shoulders and held my elbow as we walked along the sidewalk slick with ice.

  His white Volkswagen looked brand new. It was parked a few cars down from the car I shared with Timmy, an old Nash Rambler convertible with no back window and a hole in the floor near the accelerator. I waited while he opened the door for me. Inside, it was quiet and warm.

  His hair seemed longer than it had at the bar, more civilian, and he was sporting new sideburns. The windshield wipers shuddered as they cleared a small circle in the ice. “Daydream Believer” played on the radio, and he turned and gave me that half-grin. “Where to?” he asked.

  I directed him right, then left. “I thought you might cancel because of the storm.” The moon was a soft glow on the streets’ glistening surfaces. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “I wanted to see you.” He glanced at me. “Weather wouldn’t stop me.”

  I wanted to say something back, tell him how happy I was, but the pill the doctor had given me at the hospital had worn off and pain was beginning to drill through my hand.

  Orlando’s smelled like garlic and was empty, save one other couple brave enough to come out in the weather. “Good evening, Kathy,” the hostess, Marie, a friend of my mother’s, greeted us. Her eyes widened when she saw the cast, but she knew enough not to ask questions. “Miserable night out isn’t it?” She seated us and handed us menus.

  “Marie, meet Brian.” She gave him a quick up and down.

  When we were alone she would want the details, but she was working now and polite. I knew she would tell my mother everything as soon as she had the chance.

  “Nice to meet you,” Brian said.

  I took my time with the menu. At home I let the boys have first run at the leftovers my mother brought us home from
the automat.

  “What happened to your hand?” Brian asked.

  “I had a fight with my—” but I felt the hot sting of tears and quit talking.

  “It’s all right.” He looked at me over his menu. “I have sisters.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, but it made me laugh. “So do I.” I wiped my eyes on the napkin. “And four brothers too.”

  “Well, you beat me there. I have one brother.”

  “I got in a fight with one of them,” I said quickly. “He stole my camera. He’ll steal anything he can sell.”

  Brian watched me. He was quiet for a while. Finally, he passed me the bread. “I think I’ll have the steak,” he said, saving me from talking about Corky. “You?” He aligned his knife and fork with the plate.

  “I’ll have the same.” I smiled

  “How about a bottle of Pinot Noir?”

  I wasn’t sure what kind of wine Pinot Noir was, but it sounded perfect.

  When Marie brought our meals, I realized I couldn’t cut my meat. Brian reached over and took the knife from my hand. His forehead creased while he cut, and I could smell the wine, those Lucky Strikes that reminded me of Gracie, and the leather from his suede jacket.

  “When are you going on the police force?” I took a sip of the wine and rolled it around in my mouth.

  He glanced at me. “I’m not sure. With Mayor Lindsay’s layoffs, it might not be for a while.”

  “How do you know you’ll be called?”

  He cut the meat into precise, bite-size pieces. “They already interviewed me. I worked with munitions in the Air Force.”

  “Munitions?”

  “Military weapons. Bombs.”

  I studied the strong flex of his jaw. “Isn’t that scary?”

  “No. It isn’t the kind of job you can do if you’re scared.” He cut the last bite of steak. “It takes a steady hand.”

  “You must have nerves of steel.” And the longest lashes I have ever seen on a guy.