The City Below Read online

  Nick pressed forward, leaving his brother behind. The other men could tell them apart tonight because Nick was in chinos and a corduroy jacket. Terry wore the black suit his mother had bought him, as if he were already in the seminary.

  When Nick presented himself to his grandfather, the circle closed around them. Cronin raised his new sword high over Nick's head. "Kneel ye!"

  The men pushed closer to watch. They had their beer and their cigars, after choking through the interminable convocation upstairs, in the cathedral proper. Their ties were loosened now, and their shirts were open at their throats.

  "Bow ye!"

  Nick bowed his head.

  And though this was a game, the encircling men felt a common shudder of delight as they recognized Nick's posture, with his robed grandfather towering over him. "I dub ye Squire! Squire to the Knight!"

  Nick raised his head to look his looming grandfather in the eye. When he said in a firm, loud voice, "I, Squire, pledge ye, Knight, my fealty and devotion," the men let up an approving cheer.

  Squire got to his feet The men were slapping his back, but the boy ignored them and leaned toward his grandfather and whispered, "What about Terry, Gramps?"

  Cronin blinked. What about him?

  "Do one for Terry, Gramps."

  Only then did Cronin realize what a hole he would blast in their brotherhood if he did not call Terry forward too. These boys made their moves together, and it was like Nick to have said so. Nick and Terry were a pair.

  Cronin stretched to his full height to look for the kid. With his plumed hat, Cronin was taller than anybody there. He spotted Terry back by the sandwich table. "And behold," he bellowed, "the Knight spies his Chaplain!"

  The men stopped and listened again. Terry stepped aside.

  "The Royal Chaplain!" Cronin added.

  Terry stood where he was, a stricken look on his face. His grandfather sensed how he'd have preferred to be ignored, but Cronin had no way to know why being singled out like this— as this—was Terry's nightmare.

  "Chaplin!" one of the men cried raucously." Charlie Chaplin!"

  The Charlestown gang laughed. Another nickname, a beaut Some people would call Terry Doyle Charlie long after the originating joke had been forgotten by everyone but him.

  ***

  Terry was sitting on a bench at the foot of the obelisk on Bunker Hill. He often came here, just to look out at the spine of the city—the Custom House and the harbor at one end, the Hancock Building with its hypodermic-needle spire at the other. In between, he pictured the men and women who lived and worked in those buildings, who stood at the wheels of sailboats in the harbor, who spread cloth napkins on their laps to eat breakfast in the restaurants, who drank cocktails in the hotel bars. He pictured students at their desks at all the great colleges, the blue books in which they wrote their exams.

  It was a magnificent spring afternoon, with an army of clouds in retreat across die sky. The light was so clear that the lines of the mortar in distant brick buildings flashed, the air sparked off the angles of new leaves. A pale green haze draped each tree. As he sat staring out of Charlestown, an unusual peripheral sense had made Terry feel aware both of the view and of what was behind him a few dozen yards away, over the lip of the hill, down the grassy slope—the high school, where he'd learned that the feelings he had, sitting here, were disloyal.

  The school had let out hours ago. He was supposed to be home for dinner already, but he'd become transfixed by the view of downtown, the clouds streaming overhead from west to east, which had maybe hypnotized him. He was suspended in a mood of uncertainty and longing. The sight of the distant buildings soothed him, but the images they evoked—men in topcoats hailing cabs, women getting out of those cabs, leading with one spiked heel, one perfect leg—filled him with anxiety. The few tall buildings were modest compared to the skyscrapers in other cities, he knew, but to him they were the pickets of a world of sophistication and accomplishment, a world of which he was meant to know nothing.

  He took out a cigarette and lit it He knew that the impression most outsiders had of Charlestown came from the fearsome, low-rent end that abutted the Mystic River Bridge from which commuters looked down. They saw the rough industrial district dominated by the Boston Sand and Gravel tower on one side and by dilapidated wharves lining the crotch of the harbor on the other. Outsiders could see the Bunker Hill monument, but they knew nothing of Monument Square or the streets leading into it where fine Victorian houses stood, proudly kept not by die wealthy who had built them, but by the large, intact families of Irish firefighters and cops. They knew nothing of Main Street where storekeepers greeted every shopper by name, or of the tranquil Common where he lived, or the elm trees, the wide sidewalks, the tidy squares of grass, the hedges and flower beds, the neighbors minding each other's children, burying each other's dead. They knew nothing of the churches—his own St Mary's, but also St. Catherine's and St. Francis de Sales—where the people, all the people, met each other regularly in one common acknowledgment not only of needing grace but of having it.

  The views into Charlestown from the elevated bridge ramps featured, in addition to the blank walls and smoked windows of the warehouses, the housing project that North Shore suburbanites would see as one of the grim neighborhoods they associated with the decaying inner city they left behind each night. They would imagine vacant-eyed, unattended teenagers with freckles bridging their noses, and pregnant mothers tugging at their children's ears. They would picture Irish gypsies, young hooligans and drunks, knowing nothing of the lengths to which those mothers went to keep the threadbare clothing of their children clean, or of the natural genius corner boys had for cracking jokes, or of the rare camaraderie of tavern haunters who thought nothing of putting half their gin rummy winnings in the St. Vincent's poorbox, which sat by the pickle jar on every tap counter in the neighborhood.

  Passersby would see none of that from their autos, and in feet, from his vantage on Bunker Hill, neither did Terry. He had no need to. He saw nothing of the Town but the slanted asphalt-and-shingle planes of the rooftops he took for granted, as he took for granted the essential virtue of the people who lived in the rooms below them. The city proper was what he saw and what he wanted, without knowing why.

  "Hi, Charlie," a girl's voice said from behind the bench. The sound was close enough to startle him, but because of the name, he did not assume she was speaking to him.

  She was, and when he realized that it was the damn moniker they'd laid on him at the K of C, he bristled, even before he knew who she was.

  He stood up and faced her.

  The girl took a few steps toward him in the shoulder-bouncing, hand-flapping style of Charlie Chaplin. A decent imitation, in fact. When he only stared at her, she stopped.

  "Your mother called to see if you were out here."

  He recognized Didi Mullen, Jackie's sister. She was a tall, thin girl who'd graduated the year before. That crucial year had, in the social system of Charlestown, kept her and Terry from being friends, and now that she took the train out each morning for her job in an office downtown, the gulf between them was wider than ever. The Mullens lived on Monument Square.

  "She said you're late for dinner."

  "Hi, Didi. I was just going to finish this smoke." He held up his cigarette. "Want one?"

  At first he thought she hadn't heard him, but then her face broke into the goofy, wide-mouth grin for which she'd been teased in high school, the flat-chested Martha Raye. She held her hands out and he tossed her the pack. She laughed when she caught it, and he thought, You shouldn't use so much lipstick, or not such a bright red, or something.

  "You're no gentleman, Charlie," she said. She lit her own cigarette, then approached his bench.

  "I'm no 'Charlie,' is what you mean. You may call me Terence." He sat as she kept coming. His casualness was not quite the act with her that it was with girls in his own circle. If he blushed, it was because he felt she'd just caught him at something.
/>   She smiled and threw her head back to clear her hair away from her face so she could put the cigarette to her lips. Her hair was a rich, shimmering red, the best thing about her. Terry remembered seeing her from behind in the school corridors, that very hair pouring down over her shoulders, a promise that when she turned around, this would be one beautiful girl. When she did turn it was always a surprise. Her mouth was made for a bigger face, her chin was pointed, the rims of the glasses she wore curled above her brows, making her look bug-eyed, more Eddie Cantor than Charlie Chaplin. Didi's offbeat appearance, Terry thought, was what made her try to win you over by being a little silly. And her offbeat appearance, more than her silliness, was probably what had put him at ease with her in ways he rarely was with the pretty girls. The offbeat he knew about, if of a different kind. He was good looking enough for a guy, and played basketball. But he had interior features that clashed. He was always turning around, as it were, and seeing shadows of disappointment fall across the faces of those he'd hope to impress. He reacted not by being silly, but by being, as they said, quiet. And no one had ever been surprised—this had been assumed of him in Charlestown since grade school—that God had blessed him with a vocation to the priesthood. Lucky bastard: many are cold, few are frozen. Kids left Terry Doyle alone.

  Didi wore a tan blouse and a dark skirt and snappy high heels, but it was like her that she also wore, as if it were a jacket, an oversize man's shirt that was navy blue. The sleeves were rolled back at the cuffs, and the bottom button was fastened so the shirt flowed around her like an artist's smock, gave her the air of a beatnik. Terry noticed stitch marks on the sleeves and realized patches had been removed. Didi's father was a cop. This was a shirt of his. Beatnik, hell.

  When she had drawn close enough to hand him his cigarette pack, he gestured at the bench beside him. "Have a seat, Miss? Is that what a gentleman says?"

  Didi grinned at him, and when she took a deep drag on the butt, he was more conscious than ever of her big lips. She exhaled dramatically, letting him see the pleasure a hit of nicotine could be. Only then did she sit. "What are you doing?"

  "Just looking. I come here sometimes."

  "I know you do. I see you from my window. You sit here by the hour."

  "Not by the hour. By myself."

  "Doing what?"

  "Sometimes my homework."

  "What else?"

  "Looking." He shifted his gaze toward the downtown buildings.

  She let her eyes follow. "Oh, you just have a case of senioritis. I used to do that last year. I can see downtown from my bedroom."

  "You see a lot from your bedroom."

  "I used to sit there by the hour too, trying to picture it, hoping I could get a job downtown."

  "And you did."

  "But it's not so great as a high school senior thinks it is, take it from me. I bang a typewriter all day. See that building there?"

  "The Hancock."

  "That's me. Hancock Insurance. Seventeenth floor, typing pool. I sit in a room ..." She put the cigarette in her mouth and began to mime the act of typing. Each time she hit the carriage, she made a ding sound. It was true, she had a Chaplinesque flair. Finally she stopped, and when she looked at Terry, it was with a sudden solemnity. Then she looked away again. They spoke, each with eyes on the distant skyline.

  "You don't like it?"

  "I like it okay," she said. "I'm a lot faster than I was."

  "But you—"

  "—see the rest of my life flashing before me. I'm nineteen. There are girls in the typing pool who are forty, still living with their mothers. I'm afraid if I blink, I'll be old. Maybe I'll spend my whole life filling out the forms of other people's accidents. They're not even my own accidents, Charlie."

  "I really wish you wouldn't call me that."

  She looked at him with surprise. "You don't like your new nickname? How would you like 'Horseface'?"

  "No one calls you that."

  "Me?" She was shocked. "I was talking about my brother."

  Terry stared at her, trying to fend off the feeling of horror, that he'd so insulted her. He'd never heard Jackie referred to as Horseface, but—

  But then she laughed. Her strange face broke into an expression that said, Gotcha! At that moment Terry, feeling a release of his own, was sure he saw a flash of real beauty in her. What he saw was the charm of a girl laughing at herself, and the self-acceptance such a thing implied was as far removed from his experience as the downtown buildings were.

  He snapped his cigarette away, but instead of getting up to go, he reached into his pocket and pulled out another one. Didi held out her cigarette to him, and he leaned toward it to take a light. He cupped his hands around the tips. His hands shook slightly as the cigarettes touched, then flared.

  "Like dragonflies," she said.

  Terry wasn't sure what she meant He inhaled with an excessive show of pleasure, as she had, and he leaned back. He became aware of her legs, one crossed over the other, her knee peeking out from her skirt. She was wearing nylons. As he watched, she shifted her legs, turning toward him, nearly touching him. He had never noticed before the line a woman's calf muscle makes as it falls to the hollow of her ankle.

  She looked at his face and waited until he looked back. "Speaking of brothers, that was something, what yours did today."

  "What?"

  "You didn't hear?"

  "No."

  "Some Italians came into your grandfather's store. They wanted money—"

  "A robbery?" Terry's alarm brought him forward.

  "Not exactly. They said they wanted payments."

  "Protection?"

  "I guess so. Squire fooled them. Jackie said he made them think your grandfather was already paying it Jackie said they couldn't get out of there fast enough. Lucky for him. You should see his eye."

  Terry felt that he was supposed to be in two places at once: at the Bouquet, seeing this thing happen—what, Jackie getting slugged? Nick scoring somehow? Terry felt he should have been there stopping anything bad from happening—but also here. He was supposed to be here, with this girl whom he felt he was meeting for the first time. The scent of her perfume hit him only then; he'd never noticed her perfume before. He was aware of her chest, inside her father's shirt. He took in a glimpse of her tan blouse as if it were underwear.

  There was life in her legs as she uncrossed and crossed them again; the sound made him think of satin.

  Moments passed.

  Terry wanted to put his hand on Didi's knee, but she spoke before he could do so, not that he ever would have tried.

  "Your brother is special," she said. "Everybody says so."

  Terry leaned back and let his eyes follow the clouds. They were running across the sky like horses, and all he knew was that he wanted to be one of them. He said nothing. How could he?

  Alter a long time, Didi pinched the small butt to her lips like a truck driver. Then she flipped it away, somebody in a movie. She put both her arms behind her back, pressed them against the bench, swelling her breasts. On purpose? She said, "So are you."

  "What?"

  "Special."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because it's true. You're going to be a priest. That's special."

  "But I'm not," he whispered, not daring to look at her. Usually when he had this feeling he was in bed, crushing his pillow, raging. But now he was taut, his back straight, his hands on the cold wood by his thighs. Though a space of only inches separated them, it might as well have been the whole city.

  "You're not what?"

  "Not going to be a priest."

  He had never said it aloud before. Until now he had not understood that this was his problem. Where there was supposed to be faith—that cavity in his chest, his heart, his soul—was instead this feeling; this feeling of loss and longing was what he worshiped.

  "Why not?"

  He said simply and quickly, "Because I'm not worthy."

  It was the truth, but also it was mile
s from being the whole truth.

  "Have you told anyone?" she asked quietly.

  He shook his head.

  Having told you that, he thought, may I touch you now? An obvious deflection from what he'd just declared, his new longing for her. An instance of his unworthiness? If that's what it was, he did not care. The elements of her face were concentrated into the dark pupils of her eyes, which had locked on him. How could he ever have thought her un-beautiful?

  How many times had he peered at the backs of the heads of girls who did not know of his existence, thinking, Look at me! Turn in your seat right now and look at me! They never had.

  But Didi was looking at him, openly marveling. The world is round, he'd said. The earth moves around the sun!

  "What is it like?" she asked.

  "It's like being a hypocrite. Everybody treats you like you're a little god, when inside you know you're just ..." He shrugged.

  "Like everybody else."

  He took this in. All he'd wanted was that she wouldn't laugh. She wasn't laughing. "That isn't quite the feeling," he said. "I have some kind of calling, I mean for something special, but just not necessarily the Church."

  "If it's something special, it has to be the Church." She said this so simply. It was an absolute truth of their kind. An absolute cul-de-sac. "I thought about being a nun."

  "You did?"

  "But only as a way to get out of Charlestown. How's that for a noble motive? Talk about unworthy! The religious life is the only way a girl like me gets out of here. The Medical Mission Sisters was what I thought about."

  "But you—"

  She leaned into him. "I decided the Town, with my dippy brother and his friends—no offense—was better than a leper colony in Borneo."

  Terry laughed.

  "Of course what I got, since it is my dippy brother and his friends, is a leper colony in the Town."

  And then she began to laugh. They both did, at the joke of their impossible situation. Born to be special, but born here. They laughed and laughed. In a few minutes they would not know what had been so funny.