Kathy was still sleeping when I left for work; soundly sleeping, I would add. I decided it was a deep sleep, born out of exhaustion and peacefulness. Peaceful from finally sharing long-carried burdens, and exhaustion from extracting herself away from an unwelcome situation. I would have had more confidence in those beliefs had she been at my place when I got back that night. Or if she had left a note. But one night doesn't change a person, and I wasn't shocked. I decided that it would be a long time before I'd ever be able to understand Kathy Scully, but now that I knew more about her, I wanted to be with her more than ever. And I would do whatever it took to make that happen. But I tried to temper those notions with the knowledge only time on this earth brings; the definition of wise is recognizing we know next to nothing, and you can't predict a goddamn thing.
I tried to get myself to call the Leary family that night, but even looking to see if they were in the phone book was beyond me. I guess I wanted to wallow in my sadness-- a useless endeavor, to be sure, but one that I've found myself doing from time to time. Intellectually I felt better about where I stood with Kathy. The things we'd shared suggested the relationship had potential, if I had patience; and now that I knew so much more about her, realizing that potential seemed more important than ever. But my heart trumped my mind, and I was simply sad.
Having skipped running on Monday, I was determined to make up for it with a harder and longer run. And I did, doing an extra mile or so in the park. When I started to tire on my way back home, I used the possibility of Kathy's voice on my answering machine to fuel those last few blocks. But doing that only increased my disappointment when I found the only message I had was from a guy asking me if I wanted to change oil companies.
I was feeling as close to normal as I would feel for a while. That meant that before I headed over to Mahoney's, I allowed myself to look for the Learys in the phone book. But if they were still on Long Island, they weren't in Levittown, though I did find three Robert Learys listed. It sounds silly, but I wasn't in the mood to call Leary families, explain who I was, and then maybe be told I had the wrong number. I decided that determining they didn't live in Levittown anymore was progress of sorts, and that was good enough for the time being.
I'm currently driving west on the interminable Route 80, and as soon as I crossed the Michigan-Indiana border, I started seeing signs for South Bend. I've never been a Notre Dame fan, which is past sacrilegious and close to a venal sin for a Roman Catholic. But I would like to see the campus, the golden dome and all. And the football field where Rudy, one of my favorite all-time movie characters, got his ass kicked for four years just so he could get in one game. Now that I think about it, I was in a situation not unlike Rudy's, the only difference being that Rudy wound up fulfilling his dream.
The weekend came and went, and I never even determined if the Learys still lived on Long Island. On Friday night I was out of Mahoney's, back home, and in bed by eleven. I did my Saturday-with-Jim-and-Maureen thing, but I was such a bore, Jim asked me what the hell was bothering me. As if he didn't know.
"I really thought we were getting somewhere. I know we were. She told me things she swore she'd never told anyone else, and I believe her. And now she's disappeared for almost a week again. Scully still hasn't heard from her?" Jim had told me earlier in the week that Jack hadn't seen or heard from his daughter since the time she called him in his office, the morning before the evening she surprised me in Mahoney's. Jim couldn't tell him that she had been on Long Island later that same day, not without giving me up. And I certainly wasn't about to tell Jim the secrets she had shared with me even though the temptation was great.
If there were any chance that she was lying about being adopted, Jim would certainly have known it. The Scullys had been his friends for years, and you can't fake a pregnancy. But it was only the strange behavior that Kathy exhibited in nearly every aspect of her life that even allowed me to consider her stories not being true. If I went on the way she delivered them, I would never have doubted her for a moment.
"Listen, the old man is scared out of his wits. Since she didn't come home, he's sure she's back with the professor. Meanwhile you and I know it could be worse than that: she actually came home and then disappeared again. Maybe back to Princeton, maybe who knows where? For once I don't think I have any advice for you, Murph-- you got yourself involved with a real strange one there, real strange." Maureen ventured into the smoke-filled den with some beer and pretzels. She sat on the only chair in the room save for the two giant recliners, and asked me the magic question.
"How long are you going to let her move in and out of your life like a cloud. Are you really that-- what's the right word? Enamored with her?"
"I guess I am. She's really two different people, you know, and one of them is somebody I could fall in love with. Shit, I'm probably there now." Jim made the sign of the cross for me and everybody laughed.
"Based on all that he's heard over the years and from what you've told him, Jim thinks she may very well need some professional help. Did you share those thoughts with Sean, Jim?" Jim rolled his eyes.
"Thanks for the beer and stuff, Maureen Isn't this cigar smoke getting to you?"
"No, I've actually gotten to like it. But you want me out, and I'm leaving. I'm going to run some errands, honey, be a good host. And Sean, you know we're here for you."
That wasn't my problem.
The conversation turned to business, and Jim informed me that he had a source in the national office of Krause soups that called the day before and tipped him off that they were coming in sometime in the next month or so to do one of their semi-annual store blitzes. They'd send in four people, each of whom would meet up with one of my supervisors or me, and hand us a list of supermarkets to which they wanted to be taken. They would then write up reports on all the stores that they would get to see in a two-day period, and base a major part of our yearly evaluation on those results. Now knowing that the time of our trial by fire was upon us was a tremendous advantage.
On Monday, I would meet with my supervisors and give them the information about Krause, and they in turn would get their sales reps to concentrate on the Krause products each time they worked a store until the store blitz was completed.
I got back to my place around five thirty that afternoon with no plan other than to be lonely and miserable on a Saturday night. Even in my condition I knew I'd be looking for trouble if I didn't find something to do, someone to be with. I was deciding whether to go the long shot route and call Janice, or to try and take Mrs. Braun up on her dinner offer. I was in my contemplation position, leaning back in my chair, feet up on the miniature desk in the corner of my bedroom, staring at the phone, when it rang.
"Hi, Sean. it's your wayward girlfriend." Girlfriend? "I don't want you to worry about me. I'm all right. I've got something I'm taking care of. It's important, but it's almost over."
"I was worried, but I know your father's even more worried. Don't you think you ought to call him?"
"If I do, he'll be able to figure out where I am: he's got that damn caller ID thing on his telephone, and I just don't want to deal with that. I am a grownup, you know, and it's only been a few days anyway."
"Look, far be it from me to be giving a brief for your father, but you said yourself how he idolizes you Cut the guy some slack. Let me... damn, I was going to say 'Let me call Jim' and tell him to tell your old man I heard from you and you're all right... not a good plan. Isn't there someone you can call? Wait a minute, you can't leave the place where you're at even for a few minutes to make a phone call?"
"No, I can't. But you're right. I've got a couple of friends I can call who can call my father. I'll do that. How are you, Sean Murphy? I miss you, you know?" I was in the palm of her hand and she knew it.
"I miss you too. When do you think this situation will work itself out?"
"Soon, that's all I know. I can't talk any more, but I promise I'll call you more regularly. 'Bye, Sean."
So there I was. All things considered, I must admit, happy as a pig in shit. Funny how much the construction of a sound made by breath being forced through an overt positioning of the tongue and lips could mean. GIRLFRIEND. I was willing to disregard all the weirdness coming from this girl, this too-young, too-kinky, liable-to-cost-me-my-job girl. And even to minimize the possibility she was in some kind of trouble. And why? Because she was the most perfect looking woman --she was clearly a woman/girl-- I'd ever met, and she was willing to be with me? Was it just that, just lust? How the hell do you know?
Most of us are attracted to every good-looking female we see, and only when we get turned down do we move on. But if we're not turned down, and we get to live out the fantasy we drag around with us, at some point the transition from lust to love is made. And for men it's usually a difficult journey. Difficult because we can't tell the damn difference between the L words.
Everyone seems to agree that there needs to be some combination of the two, with lust taking center stage early on, followed by a leveling-out period, followed by the dominance of love. Logical, basic stuff. But it's not at all calculable-- it's emotions, not intellect, making the final decisions, and therein lies the problem. As for me, at the moment of Kathy's phone call I was absolutely sure I was in love. And I was beginning to think it was not unrequited love. And then, in the midst of the madness, I experienced something close to exaltation, a feeling that everything was going to turn out just right. That feeling allowed me (allowed me!) to move ahead in earnest with my quest to revisit the Learys, a place that I believed would bring me more of the joy that I was experiencing at that moment. I was just an assumption-making demon.
The first Leary phone number I called was a no-answer. The second resulted in a man picking up the phone.
"Hi, I'm looking for Robert Leary; this is Sean Murphy." There was only the slightest hesitation in his response.
"Sean, you son of a bitch, where the hell have you been? How are you doing? Where are you? Wow, I can't believe this." He shouted away from the phone. "Honey, it's Sean. Can you believe this? Get on the other line." I hadn't said a word since giving my name.
"Sean, sweetheart, we gave up hearing from you. Where are you?"
"I'm in Wantagh, Mrs. Leary. How are you folks doing? How's Mike?"
"We're all fine. Come and visit us-- come over now. You know we're ten minutes away." They were in East Meadow, just a few miles north of me, probably not even ten minutes. But I wasn't ready to go just then, so we spoke for a little while and agreed that my quest would end with Sunday dinner at their home.
As I lay in bed that night, I tried to conjure up some of the better memories from three years at the Learys', but Jack Scully's daughter kept overwhelming my thoughts, and in a moment I had given in to her.
The next morning, I decided that, before I visited the Leary family in their new home, I'd drive by the old neighborhood in Levittown. They lived on a block I used to tell people was named after the old heavyweight boxer, Walcott Lane. I'm sure it wasn't, but in those days I'd pretty much say or do anything that came into my head. Those were the days of sharing an attic bedroom with the Learys' son, Mike, and Richie, another foster kid. We were all within a few months of each other, three sixteen-year-olds, close as a muggy day, but still different in a lot of ways.
The Learys had a daughter, a witch of a girl they named Mary Elizabeth, but who we renamed Lilly, after the wife of Herman Munster. With the exception of Lilly being a supersized -- the first supersized anything-- bitch, the three years in Levittown were a lot of wild good times. And they were stupid and dangerous times, to be sure, committed for the most part by Richie and me. For the most part.
Mike Leary was the same chronological age as his roommates but his maturity level, compared to us, was off the chart. Usually, that is. He was a star football player, an achieving student, kind to small children, little animals, and his mother. But he had an Achilles heel. Two of them, actually. To this day, the temper he used to demonstrate at the drop of a wrong word or deed was about the worst I've even seen, and he had a stubborn streak to match. And there was no more classic example of the two chinks in Mike Leary's armor than the night he drowned the Hudson.
It was a nineteen-fifty-four Hudson Hornet, a huge brownish vehicle that had a back seat literally big enough for two couples to get laid in at the same time. But this is about the night it he put it to rest. It had been giving him-- and us-- it was our only form of transportation-- trouble for quite some time. That came as no big surprise; at twenty-four years old, it was certainly more than a bit past its prime. It had rested in Mr. Leary's driveway for many years before he gave it to Mike, who-- add mechanical wizard to his resume-- got it running, with no small amount of effort.
Some of that effort was spent on repairing the clutch-- a daunting task, to be sure. Richie, who had a second-grade reading level, but could build or fix anything (and eventually did build a house alone) from scratch, wasn't around, so it was left to the least mechanical person I've ever known-- me-- to assist Mike in fixing the old worn-out clutch.
The main use of Mrs. Leary's empty red Savarin coffee cans was us filling them with the Camel and Lucky Strike cigarettes, and some occasional weed, that we smoked in our slovenly attic room. This time we used the can to store the screws and nuts and bolts Mike came upon as he removed, repaired, and replaced the clutch. It was only after using the now smooth-running mammoth vehicle for several days that his mother found the can under a tree next to the driveway.
"Mike, I've found something you might need." She brought us the can while we were eating the cereal breakfasts we slobbered every morning.
"Sean, what the hell is this?" Mike passed me the can. It contained two springs, three screws and three washers. The year after Mike's Hudson Hornet was manufactured, they stopped making all Hudsons. I guess as early as nineteen-fifty-four, American car makers had begun drowning THEIR business, something that continued for almost forty years.
But neither age nor poor construction would be the executioner of the Hornet. For that it took Bobby Beradino's big mouth. A house fire cost Bobby two whole fingers, and parts of several others. He was also missing several parts of his brain, namely the ones where common sense and reasonableness would have been located. He drank too much; drove too fast, picked fights with guys twice his size, and was famous for always making the wrong decision, regardless of the situation. And while some would say his decision to take up the saxophone-- I swear to God that's true-- was just typical Bobby, it was the one thing that I respected him for. He stunk, of course, but it took a lot of guts for him to do it.
He loved Mike Leary like the big brother he never had, and though Bobby was older, he looked up to Mike. But when he drank, the jealousy slipped out. So it was on a hot August night, after we all had way too many beers, that Bobby started ragging Mike about how ugly and slow the Hornet was. And how beautiful Bobby's father's Buick was.
"I'd rather drive my father's Buick one day a week than own that fuckin' Hornet. What color is that old piece of shit anyway, cat shit? You know, that's what it is, the color of cat shit." It had been dark brown in its early years; at that point, it may very well have been close to the color of cat shit.
"Fuck you and your father's Buick. Driving that fuckin' car's the only thing in your shitty life. When's the last time you had a piece of ass, Bobby? When did you EVER have a piece of ass? And when's the last time you got a girl to even ride in YOUR father's car, huh?"
"You're just jealous cause my car's beautiful, and your car's an old piece of shit. Cat shit."
"It isn't your car, asshole, and your old man's car isn't beautiful anyway. It's an old man's car, that's all it is."
"You love that Hornet like a woman, you know that? The Hornet this, the Hornet that. Piece of cat shit." I'd never heard Mike say he loved the Hornet, just the size of its backseat.
"Love it like a woman? Fuck you, what do you know about women? You've never gotten laid, and you're eighteen years old." Bobby had actually turned nineteen that week, but Mike's point was well taken.
"If anything happened to that Hornet, you'd blow your fuckin' brains out. You know you would."
"Oh yeah, how the fuck do you know that? Can you read my fuckin' mind?" We had been drinking beers sitting in a little neighborhood park, but as the great Beradino-Leary debate heated up, we all began walking around the park. Richie and I trailed a few feet behind, loving it.
"I know it's the most important thing to you. Not grades, not football, it's that cat-shit car. And let's face it, without it you wouldn't be getting' laid anymore than I do. That's why you love it-- without it, you'd be beatin' your meat as much as the rest of us." Almost in unison Richie and I told Bobby to fuck off, to quit associating us with himself.
I piped in: "Asshole, what do you mean, 'beat your meat'? How the fuck can you beat your meat without any fingers?" Bobby was too intent on ripping Mike to hear my words, but Richie thought they were pretty funny. Of course, Richie was only a few moments from passing out.
"Without that car you wouldn't be shit. Nothin', not a fuckin' thing." Bobby was getting woozy. He stopped and sat down, his head leaning against a big oak tree. Richie and I sat down a few feet away, but Mike was still standing, pacing.
"Is that right? I ain't nothin' without the Hornet? I'll tell you what, I'll set fire to the fuckin' thing right now. Sean, you got any matches?" He looked dead serious, drunk but dead serious.
"Wait a minute, what if it blows up? It will blow up." I was scared, but Richie was laughing, egging him on.
"That's a great fuckin' idea. Burn it and watch it blow." Bobby was just about out of it now, he'd be asleep in a few minutes and by the time he woke up, around sunrise, with his head still leaning against that old oak tree, Mike would have completed what turned out to be a Herculean task.
Richie had another idea. "Let's drive it into the lake Come on, leave Bobby here. Wouldn't that be something? We could always dive down there and visit it." I had already puked my guts out, and though I'd resumed drinking, I was now unusually sober for the circumstances. The end result was my being far more reasonable than normal.
"Mike, you're gonna miss that car. Forget all this shit. We've got no way to get around without it, you know?" Richie decided to go back to plan A.
"Mike, I found some matches. Fuck it, let's blow the fucker up."
"Jesus Christ, Richie, are you stupid or what? You want to walk to school in the fuckin' rain and snow? And Mike's gonna miss that car for other things-- he's gotten laid in it, and so have we. Why the fuck would we want to get rid of it? Just to show up that asshole?" That asshole was now completely unconscious.
"Are you sayin' I need that piece of cat shit?" Mike was picking up the gauntlet that Bobby had passed on. He had continued to drink all through the argument, and was now quite drunk.
"I'm sayin' we all need the Hornet. The Hornet is a good thing. Fuck Bobby."
"You want the Hornet? I'll give you the Hornet. And I'll give that bitch Lilly the Hornet too. Anybody can have the Hornet."
Lilly had gotten Mike in deep shit that day by reporting to his father that we had two girls in our room the night before. On things like that Mr. Leary had warned Mike that he would always be the one responsible.
Lilly was twenty and was attending local community college, but she was still obsessed with trying to make life miserable for the three of us, especially Mike. It was basically jealousy of Mike, borne out of her father's obvious obsession with her kid brother, and it was many times stronger than Bobby's. The problem was she lived in the same house as us, and was privy to our comings and goings, and what we did in that disgusting attic bedroom. In other words, it was easy as hell for her to burn us at will.
"She's always bitchin' that I've got a car, and she's got to bum rides to school. I'll tell her exactly where the fuckin' car is, and if she wants it, she can go fish it out."
"What are you talking about?"
"You'll see. Come on." I looked over at Bobby, and he was still out, but Richie had now joined him, a few feet away, sleeping with his face in the dirt.
We walked out of the park, toward the Hornet. We got in and Mike started it up. I asked him where we were going, but he just kept driving. We headed east, then south; as we made the south turn, I figured we must be heading toward Coos Lake, in Massapequa, about four miles from that point. It was a lake we'd often messed in and around, and by far the closest body of water to Levittown. We were within about two miles of it when the car up and died.
"What happened?" Mike looked down at the gas gauge. "We're out of gas. Good, I won't be wasting any money. Here, get behind the wheel and keep it in neutral."
"You can't be serious-- this is crazy. Tomorrow you're gonna be sorry as hell."
"I'm pushing the Hornet to the lake, that's it. It's gonna spend eternity in Hudson heaven, and it's leavin' tonight."
"You're out of your fuckin' mind. First of all, we need this car-- you know we do. Secondly, you'll never make the lake. And I'm not gonna help you."
"I'm doing this, and I don't want your help, except to steer, so just shut up and do it." He pushed it off the main road, up and down side streets, which, as it was now about three AM, were completely void of traffic. It was a slow go, to be sure, and I had plenty of opportunity to try every bit of logic, reverse logic, begging and pleading I could come up with to dissuade him, but to no avail. It was sometime a little after four-thirty when we got to the street that led to Coos Lake. I hit the brake.
"I'll steer from outside now, I don't wanna wind up with the Hornet."
"Okay, steer, but don't push the car." Mike was always trying to prove something or another, and this was just another something. He wanted me to be his witness that he pushed the car two miles with me in it. Even at sixteen, I knew that the things he was proving were to his old man, not himself.
We were just a few feet away from the lake now, and the road began to slope. Suddenly the car was on the embankment, and Mike let it go. It picked up speed, and in a moment, it was in the water. Clear as crystal, I remember the Hornet looking sleek and beautiful those last few yards down into the water. But the lake wasn't very deep, as lakes go, even in the middle, and where the car went in it was very shallow. Water covered the hood but the roof and the rear end were still dry. We looked at each other.
"Shit! I thought it would just kind of work its way under."
"Did you remember to take your stuff out of the glove compartment?"
"What stuff? All I had was a flashlight that didn't work, and some papers and junk."
"Where's your license?" Mike grabbed for his back pocket. He found his wallet, reached in and pulled out his license.
"Where's the registration?"
"In the glove compartment-- we don't need it anymore."
"What are you gonna tell your father?"
"Fuck him."
"Yeah, right, but what are you gonna tell him?"
"Somebody stole the car while we were in the park. That's it. That's enough. Same thing with Lilly. Then if the cops come to us and say they found it, we act surprised." We took one last long look at the Hornet.
"Come on," Mike said. "Let's get the hell out of here before somebody sees what we did." His eyes were as narrow as they were an hour before.
As we began the long walk back to Levittown, I noticed how soaking wet with sweat he was. He pushed a friggin' five-thousand-pound car two miles, to prove to Bobby he didn't need it, and to himself that he was the man his father was constantly demanding he become. I can't wait to find out what became of Michael Leary.
I just finished counting at least a dozen signs that pointed out the fact that I was nearing Notre Dame University, but I never did bring myself to get off of 80 to tour the school. I guess my distaste for the phoniness of the likes of Lou Holtz, and the hypocrisy of the University's athletic program in general, was just too much to overcome. I don't know if I'm going to be passing Northwestern on this trip, but if I do, I'm going to stop in.
The Learys' home in East Meadow was very much what I had expected. A clean, dormered Cape Cod, on a well-manicured lot. Mrs. Leary had always loved flowers, and her passion had obviously not diminished over the years. Dozens of black-eyed susan plants lined both edges of their property, with large, shaped rhododendrons directly up against the entire length of the house. There were trees along the street, maples and pear trees mostly. It wasn't Kristy Lane in Woodbury, but it was nice.
As I pulled up in front, I got a partial glimpse of the above-ground pool in the back yard. It was a quick reminder of the night Richie and I-- to get back at Lilly, for turning us in for smoking some weed-- took her bicycle apart and dumped all of the pieces in the pool. We swore to Mr. Leary it wasn't us, but he didn't believe it for a second, and he gave us a punishment that he believed fit the crime. It was early in our senior year of high school By then, we had an old, beat-to-shit Mercury convertible. We paid two hundred bucks for it, put a few hundred dollars and a few thousand hours of work into it, and it was the main way for all three of us to get around. But his simple directive put an end to that. He had us put a "For Sale" sign on our car, with instructions that HE would deal with whoever came to look at it. He would take whatever he got for it and use it to buy a new bike for Lilly, and the balance would go to fix up the attic room we had just about destroyed.
The last time we used the Mercury was rather memorable, driving it to the local poolroom on a Saturday afternoon. None of the three of us had any steady work. Mike and Richie were playing football, and I was running cross-country, so the only money we had was basically from birthday gifts, begging Mrs. Leary, or an occasional odd job. And whatever we got our hands on, we shared. On that day we had just enough to play pool for an hour, after which we would spend the rest of the afternoon hanging around, bullshitting with the regulars.
Before we'd left the house that day we'd scoured all the ashtrays for cigarette butts, with no luck. We had no luck because we had done that, with much success, the night before. Smokeless, with Mike behind the wheel, and Richie and me crammed in the front seat of the Mercury, we began the three-minute drive to the South Village Green Bowling Alley and Pool Hall. But our main focus was on getting something to smoke, as soon as possible. Three seventeen-year-olds hooked on tobacco. We were driving for only a moment when Richie noticed that the car driving in front of us contained two men, both of whom were smoking cigarettes.
"Oh man, those smokes look fuckin' great. I can taste them from here." Richie looked over at me, his eyes very wide.
"I know what you're thinking, and I'm thinking the same thing."
We were stopped at a light just a few blocks from the pool hall, when the guy in the passenger seat of the car we were stalking threw what was left of his cigarette out of the window. I was riding shotgun, so it was me who jumped out, grabbed the butt, and got back into the car. It was still burning, so I took a couple of drags before passing it on to Richie, who did the same before giving it to Mike. There was enough of it left to work its way back to me for another drag or two before it burned my fingers.
Often, when I think things aren't going real well in my life, when there's something I want that I can't quite afford, when someone tells a story or I read something about somebody reaching ‘rock bottom', I think about that trip to the pool hall.
Strangely, I remember being more nervous walking up to the Learys' door than to the homes of any of the other three families. In the few seconds between ringing the bell and seeing Mrs. Leary's face, I must have wiped my hands on my pants five times.
"Sean, now look at you! Come in, come in. Give your old mom a hug." She held me tightly for more than a few seconds, and when we pulled away, she had tears in her eyes.
"You know, we long ago gave up ever hearing from you again. We wrote social services, but they said it was up to you to contact us." I asked her where Mr. Leary was.
"I sent him out for some ice; he should be back any minute."
"How's Mike and Mary Elizabeth?" I nearly said Lilly.
"Come on and sit down, I'll tell you all about them. And I've got tons of pictures."
I followed her into their kitchen. We sat down at an old rectangular wooden table, on which were several million scratches and three large picture albums. I was vainly searching for the "SM" I'd initialed on that table many years ago when Mr. Leary came in the front door. As little as Mrs. Leary had changed in the nearly twenty years since I'd seen her last, that's how much Mr. Leary had. He'd put on a lot of weight, his hair was snow white, and he walked like an old man.
"Goddamn, Sean Murphy, it's good to see you." When he bear-hugged me, it was clear he was still as strong as an ox. "I see Patricia's got the albums all ready for you. We've got grandchildren, you know. How about you? Not married, huh?"
"Nope, never found the right girl, Mr. Leary Still looking, though. So tell me about Mike and Mary Elizabeth."
"Mike's a college professor. Mathematics. He got his Ph.D. at the University of Washington, and he stayed right there to teach. He's married to a girl he met in grad school, they've got two beautiful daughters, and we've got lots of pictures. Honey, show them the latest ones." He was smiling broadly, through a couple of broken front teeth I didn't remember.
Mrs. Leary opened up an album and slid her chair over to me. As she opened the first page, I asked again about Mary Elizabeth.
"You mean Lilly?" We all burst out laughing.
"I didn't know you knew we called her that."
"Are you kidding? She used to complain about that all the time. I used to tell her that was the least of what you guys were doing. God knows what really went on in that devil's workshop you turned that attic into."
"But how's she doing?"
"She's been married about five years now-- no kids, but she's very happy. She teaches special education children. She says it makes up for the fact they can't have any of their own."
The pictures of Mike and his family were just beautiful. He had a pretty blonde wife and two blonde daughters, a family out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Mike looked fine himself, very much the same, except for a little academic beard. Mrs. Leary gushed about her granddaughters, their soccer, their grades, all the usual stuff. And she had kind words for Mike's wife, what a fine mother she was, what a sweet person.
"So do you get to see them much? Have you been out there? Hey, it's not that long until Thanksgiving. Man, I'd love to see him." Mr. Leary put his head down, and Mrs. Leary took a deep breath before speaking.
"We haven't seen Mike since he went away to grad school. He's a wonderful son; he never forgets our birthdays or Christmas. He sends us these wonderful pictures. He…" She stood up, turned her back to me, and walked away a few steps. I could tell she was crying. I looked at Mr. Leary; he was leaning over the table, his head resting on the tops of his stacked fists. I had no idea what to say, as the quietness got very loud.
"Where does Mary Elizabeth teach? Is she on the Island?" Mrs. Leary turned toward me, walked to the table, and sat back down in her chair.
"Yes, she works in the North Babylon school district. They have a nice house nearby in Deer Park. She's over here quite a bit, you know, we go shopping together. In fact, you asked about Thanksgiving-- we have it there every year. I'm sure she'd love to have you. I'm going to ask her." She seemed okay again, I looked at Mr. Leary, but he hadn't moved.
"Mr. Leary, look what I brought for us." I had a couple of fat Don Diego cigars I bummed off of Jim, and I held one out to him. He picked his head up and smiled a very small smile.
"Thanks, Sean, that's really nice. Honey, we'll go sit outside and burn these a while-- okay?" Mrs. Leary nodded her head as she closed up the albums.
They had made this back yard into a virtual carbon copy of their Levittown yard, right down to the Japanese rock garden. We sat under a wide green umbrella in simple cloth-strapped yard chairs. We cut the tips off of our smokes and lit up. Mr. Leary put his feet up on the table, and looked very contented. He wasn't.
"It's my fault, Sean. I wanted him to be everything I wasn't. I wanted him to be the star football player, the great student, the great son, the great father. I wanted it so much I drove him nuts."
"Listen, a lot of fathers and sons have those problems, and they get through them. Why not you guys? Was there a big falling out after high school?"
"After college. He wanted to teach, to be a college professor, what he's doing now. I told him he took all those engineering courses in college so he could make a lot of money. So he could have a great life, and give his family everything they could ever want. But he wanted to teach. One thing led to another and we had a big blowout. Right here, sitting right here, just like you and I are this second. I remember it like it was five minutes ago." I could see his cigar had gone out. I flipped him my lighter.
"I guess you've tried to contact him?"
"You mean call him? Sure, but he won't talk to me. I even wrote him a letter; apologized for everything I could think of. He talks to his mother on the phone, but he won't speak to me."
"What about his wife. What does she think of all this?"
"I'm not sure. Patti thinks she's tried to get him to stop all this crap, but I don't know."
"Does she speak to you? Jeez, I just realized, you've never seen your grandchildren in person." He just nodded his head.
"But what about his wife, what's her name?"
"Nicole-- he calls her Nicki. Yeah, the few times I called, if she answered, we'd talk for a while. I don't know, it just seems like there's something missing in all this."
"You say you called. Did Mike ever answer the phone?"
"Yeah, one time. As soon as he heard it was me, he just said 'Hold on', and gave the phone to Nicki. It's really lousy, you know?"
"I'm sorry." His cigar was out again. "You've gotta work on that thing, Mr. Leary." He took my lighter off of the table, lit the Don Diego again, and inhaled a long pull.
"We're some pair, Sean. You've got no father, and I've got no son."
"Nah, I'll never have a father, Mr. Leary, but you guys will work it out someday."
I spent three years watching the antagonism build up from son
to father, and I've got to say I wasn't shocked to learn what had
happened between them. That stubborn streak of Mike's apparently
had gotten the better of two people. And I would have bet
everything I had that a big part of Mike was at least as unhappy
about all of it as his father was.
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Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden