The past two weekends Cooler Heads played in bars smart enough not to let in sixteen-year-olds like Rita and Maryann. And while it kept Rita from seeing Eddie those nights, it also kept Maryann from seeing Tommy. As Rita had lied to Maryann, telling her Eddie said Tommy thought Maryann was cute, the fact Maryann couldn't approach Tommy was a major plus. But, this Friday night the band would be playing just across the ferry in Sag Harbor.
Admittedly, the venue for the band was the bottom of Sag Harbor's barrel. Rosco's had no stage, less than twenty tables and the ugliest bar maid in the county. She was so ugly that both Tommy, who never had a bad word to say about anybody, and Eddie, who hardly ever noticed anybody, were astonished at her looks. The truth of the matter was the barmaid was Rosco. It was her place and her name was Rosemary Cola. And she had saved for twenty years to buy her own bar, only it was doing so poorly, even in a gold mine town like Sag Harbor, that she couldn't afford a barmaid, a bartender or a bouncer. Rosemary Cola and Harold Stoneman would never meet but they certainly had much in common. Loners, never having experienced the thrill of romance, the wonder of love, the satisfaction of sex. Empty hearts, anxious minds, sadness. And the irony is that if they had ever met each would have probably felt unworthy of the other.
A friend of hers had seen a bunch of local kids play, liked them and correctly figured Rosemary might be able to afford them. They were Rosco's first entertainment and possibly last hope. The fact that Sag Harbor was considered (and actually was) big time by Tommy made Rosemary's offer of $125 for the night sufficient. In fact, Tommy would have talked his guys into playing for free if he had to. He correctly considered this a big time opportunity for their collective future.
Tommy spent an inordinate amount of time considering what would happen to his friends. Confident in himself and his life's plan he took great pleasure in 'helping' his buddies make their lives better. But his weakness was in not sensing their resentment. On several occasions they sat around and discussed how bossy Tommy could be. How annoying it was to hear him preach about what would be best for the band though really deciding what was best for them. But they never voiced their problems with Tommy and he would spend many more hours considering and many more hours pontificating about the future according to Tommy.
Maryann first heard from the younger sister of Mike Torre, Cooler Head's bass player that they'd be at Rosco's on Friday. She talked her dad into driving over to Sag Harbor and got him to drive past the bar. One look and she correctly guessed this would be a place not overly concerned about the age of a couple of its female patrons and their so-so phony proof. That night she asked Rita why she hadn't mentioned that Eddie and the guys would be playing right across the south ferry in Sag Harbor. The truth was Rita had wanted to go watch Eddie play but not with Maryann still infatuated with Tommy.
"Oh gee, I forgot to tell you. I'm sorry but no big thing, we'll go and have a great time." Rita was a bit surprised and a little disappointed in that the lie came out so easy and seemed to have no effect on her. Does this mean I'm getting close to being a grownup, the daughter of Big Bob Willis wondered?
Eddie found himself getting ready for his Friday show much earlier than normal. He also noticed stomach rumblings he hadn't experienced since that day in gym class when he was expected to do a flip on the damn trampoline. He decided, as Eddie often decided, to ignore the signal. Only when he sprayed his underarms with his mother's hair spray did "Easy Ed" conclude he was nervous.
Well, Eddie rationalized, it's Sag Harbor. If we do well someone could notice and we'd be on the road to ...
Eddie caught himself. He'd seen Rosco's (they always tried to acquaint themselves with the room they'd be playing in). He was aware of its position in the entertainment food chain and he was sure they wouldn't get seen by anyone of importance there. But if they did well, there'd be a good chance to play at a hot Sag Harbor bar and then.... Eddie decided it was one stop too early to get uptight. And, as may have been Eddie's greatest strength, he was able to almost immediately calm down. Several long pulls on a clipped weed behind the family's garage also helped.
Rita and Maryann told their dads they were going to the movies. They followed the same sure-fire plan that had covered them so many other times. A simple plan. One or both would sit down with a friend who had seen a movie and get a detailed accounting. They would even practice their movie reviews on each other. They got so good that Maryann's dad would often make decisions on what movie to see or not based solely on his daughter's second-hand reviews.
The usual plan had Maryann and Rita walking to the ferry that would drop them off in Greenport where Eddie would meet them. They would then go with him to whatever local bar the band was playing and stay through a set or two. Of course, getting back home was a bit more complicated. Very early on Eddie would bring them back to the ferry during a break but as the band began to get jobs outside of Greenport, Eddie had to arrange to get the girls dropped off back at the ferry. For the first several weeks of Rita and Eddie's relationship, Rita and Maryann saw most of the shows. Lately, the band had been working out of range, too far to ask anyone to help, so Friday night in Sag Harbor was nearly as special to the girls as it was to Eddie and the guys.
Big Bob Willis was a Town of Southhold police officer. He'd been a cop for thirteen years now with very mixed results. Popular with his fellow officers, his drinking was a major issue with his superiors. It had also kept him from being able to do the required studying to pass the sergeant's test, a fact those superiors found comforting because beyond the drinking, Big Bob was a loose cannon. His reputation for roughing up suspects (beyond the typical acceptable stuff) was widely known on the force and he'd been brought up on charges several times over the years. His popularity with the cops on the review board (he was a drinking buddy with one and had gotten another one laid on several times) saved his ass. But his last charge, where he put a sixteen-year-old in the hospital for a month, had been the most serious and Big Bob was lectured by Brian Farrell, his drinking buddy.
"Bobby, my friend, it's one thing to kick the ass of some Riverhead spic, it's another to break the arm of a white boy from Mattituck. I can't guarantee we're going to be able to save your sorry butt next time," he warned. "You've got to take it easy."
Big Bob assured him he would, just as he'd assured Diana he'd stop playing around with women and how he'd assured Rita he'd cut down on the booze. Big Bob had been assuring people his whole life without ever meaning any of it. In fact, Diana used to refer to him as her "assurance man." As in, "Yeah, mom, my assurance man guaranteed he'd be home in time but he's not here and we're not coming over." Big Bob, since the day Diana and their two fathers decided marriage would be "the best thing all around," had made every decision he faced in life based on what was easiest and best for Big Bob. And if promises needed to be made to reach his usually shortsighted objectives, he'd make them with no concern of his ability to keep them.
On the Friday evening of the Sag Harbor show, Rita had dressed, put on her make-up and was looking for a sweater when Big Bob pulled up. He had told her he wasn't coming straight home from work, so he'd see her when she got in. Rita had given up trying to get her father to stop drinking and knew that Friday nights were when he definitely got drunk as opposed to most Saturdays and a couple of other nights a week. So, when his car pulled in the driveway, she was surprised. She watched him get out with that little shuffle step that said he was three-quarters of the way to being totally wrecked then go around to the other side of the car. As he did, out stepped what appeared to be a girl not much older than Rita with a short tight skirt, high (very high, Rita thought) heels and the biggest set of boobs she'd ever seen. Rita quickly decided Big Bob must have lost track of time because the one promise she'd gotten him to keep was that he wouldn't bring his girl friends home. As she slipped out the side door she wondered if he'd been scamming her on all the nights she'd been scamming him.
Rita should have been able to enjoy the ten-minute walk to meet Maryann but she knew just a few blocks into it that she wouldn't. Unlike much of the rest of the world, Rita Willis had virtually no habits. She didn't smoke, bite her fingernails or twirl her hair. She didn't even have any borderline habits like chewing gum or a sweet tooth. But since her mother's death, she had developed what could be considered a habit and it would often bring her to tears. It began at the cemetery where they laid her mother to rest. After everyone had left she stayed behind, to say good-bye one last time. She spent only a few moments and in those moments everyone returned to the procession where her father's car awaited her. As she made the short walk back to Big Bob she thought about what she would come to consider the three worst times of her life.
The first was when her father told her that her mother had a year to live. And if she didn't stop drinking she wouldn't even make the year. The next ten months were, in her memory; almost a blur of confrontations over her mother's drinking. And the worst of all was the day was the day her mother died.
The strange habit of reliving those two days and one year was now taking place again. She remembered the chill she got when her father used the word "terminal" in describing her mother's situation and how difficult it was facing her mother with that knowledge. Her mind flashed to several of the countless screaming matches they'd had when she'd find evidence of or actually witness her mother drinking, the look in her mother's eyes that was there only at those moments. It was a fierce look that said I will die for this liquid if I must and I will die at this moment if need be. The times she would find and quietly throw out liquor bottles; the days she'd come home to find her mother in a deep sleep, stinking of the booze that put her in that state. The arguments with her father about his responsibility in all of this, none of which ever got anywhere; and finally the day Diana Willis' liver lost its battle with cirrhosis. She didn't describe it as a battle between her mother and the disease. That would imply her mother fought. Alcoholism ruled Big Bob's wife. That and the despair that marriage to a man like Bob Willis would cause even the strongest of women.
The last day of Diana Willis' life was for her like so many other days. She awoke to an empty bed, drank periodically throughout the day and fell into a drunken stupor before her husband returned from his tour of duty. Only this time her liver finally gave out, with what little there was left of it exploding through her esophagus, resulting in massive bleeding through her mouth. Rita found her that way after coming home from school, called 911 and waited for the ambulance. Her mother was unconscious and only regained consciousness for a moment in the ambulance. Rita was holding her hand and could still feel the pain from her mother squeezing that hand so hard a ring Rita was wearing cut into her finger. She remembered wondering how a woman so sick, so near death, had the strength to do that. And in that moment of consciousness the conversation mother and daughter had would also become indelibly etched in Rita's mind.
"Mommy, you're awake. You're doing great. I love you."
"No, I'm not. I'm dying. I love you, sweetheart. Where's daddy?"
"He's on his way," Rita lied. Truth was it was after his tour and he was out drinking. By the time he came home his wife had been dead for hours.
"You're not gonna die. You're gonna be fine. But you've got to fight, mommy."
The last word Diana Willis spoke was " Why?"
As with so many times before, these terrible memories caused Rita to cry. Typically it would take the sound of a human voice to break her trance. This time it was an automobile horn. Rita had strayed from the side of the road and was walking down the center of it when a red Pontiac swerved around her. She got out of the road, composed herself and made a promise not to bum out Maryann. Maryann got to their meeting place a few minutes early. On the walk from her home to the front of Walter's Hardware store, she didn't notice the beautiful view of the sun setting over the Great Peconic Bay or even the golf ball that whistled no more than a foot past her head and bounced in the street. Ferry Road ran between the second and fifth fairways of the Shelter Island Golf Course, a fact that didn't faze the permanent residents but always seemed to startle the tourists. It wasn't so much that the road ran through the golf course as it was that there were absolutely no trees, bushes or fences to separate the two. The golfers, the cars and people like Maryann were all part of what could have easily passed as a Norman Rockwell on acid painting.
As she had done several times on her five-minute trip, Maryann took out her compact mirror and checked herself out. She decided, again, that she needed just a bit more lipstick but otherwise was decidedly pretty. She was right, but she was looking into a three-inch mirror. She had nothing approaching a full-length mirror at home and, unlike most people, never ever sneaked peeks in store window reflections. She hadn't seen her body below her neck in many months. To be precise, not since the day her mother left with a guy she had met in an auto body shop getting a dented fender repaired. Maryann and her mother were talking as the car banged into a fire hydrant and Maryann had, after weeks of internal suffering "confessed" to her father how it was her fault that his wife and her mom had left. Anthony Palladino didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, but he did know not to tell Maryann his wife, Carrie, had two affairs that he knew of before the last one and that he had always taken her back "for the sake of the kid." He told her, for the hundredth time, that her mom was just mixed up, that she would be back. Initially he hadn't believed it, but lately found himself beginning to like the sound of his words. He also soon noticed food was taking the place of a mother in Maryann's life, but wasn't sure what to do about it.
"Hi, kid," Rita said as she approached Maryann. She often
called Maryann "kid" even though they were almost exactly the
same age. The fact was they were like sisters several years
apart, something that made Maryann feel wanted and Rita feel
needed. That was another reason Rita was having such a difficult
time dealing with Maryann's feelings about Tommy. She was very
anxious about what this night would have in store for Maryann and
felt she was responsible for making it go well. But what would
'well' be, she wondered. She went over in her head the exchanges
she'd had with Eddie about her dilemma but his words were no help
then and no help now. He just couldn't begin to grasp how much
Tommy's kindness had allowed Maryann to get her hopes up, how
much all of this meant to a teenage girl recently abandoned. How
awful it would be when Maryann figured out it was all so
hopeless.
Questions? Comments? Please send e-mail to jbearden@ieee.org
Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden