The City Below Read online

  Finally Terry stood up, and then Didi followed. He said, "Anyway ... now you know my problem."

  "You've got two problems—God and your mother."

  "Guess which one is worse."

  "So just go home and tell her."

  Didi seemed so practical all of a sudden, as if she thought nothing of telling the truth to her mother.

  "And then what? I graduate next month. If I don't go in the seminary ..." His voice trailed off, and once more he lifted his eyes to the city in the distance.

  "You do what the rest of us do. You get a job. Maybe you get a girlfriend."

  "But what about that other feeling, of being called to something else? I think ..." He faced her, feeling rushed now. What had he said? What had he done? When she brought her eyes right back into his, he felt the bolt of his strength again, what he'd needed before. He said, "I think I'd want to go to college. I mean, maybe I would just postpone the seminary, you know what I mean?"

  "That's what you'd say to her?"

  "No. It could be true."

  "Postpone, Terry? What? Giving your life to a God you don't feel worthy of? You don't want to be a priest any more than I want to be a nun. You just want out."

  "I'm not saying that, not yet."

  "Wait a minute, bud. Are you nervous because I said 'girlfriend'?"

  "No. No, that's—"

  "I wasn't talking about me, you stupid shit."

  "Neither was I, Didi."

  She stepped back, feigning incredulity. "You're in high school, Charlie! Do I look like a cradle robber?" She kept backing up, now pointing at him while cupping her mouth with her other hand.

  Terry felt dizzy with confusion. Offending her was the last thing he'd meant to do.

  "Do I look like a church robber?" Didi threw her head back and laughed. Her hair caught the feverish light of sunset and seemed afire for an instant. She made a cackling sound, then turned and minced away, twirling an imaginary cane, her head cocking from side to side. The perfection of her Charlie Chaplin showed him, somehow, the depth of her wound.

  ***

  That night Squire and Terry were lying in their beds against opposite walls of the small room with the slanted ceiling. It had been their room forever.

  "Nick, you awake?"

  Terry was rigid, his hands under his head. He'd been trying to make out the seam in the ceiling where the inclined plane met the horizontal one.

  "Nick?"

  What is this called? he wondered, thinking of the shape of the room. Trapezoid cube? It reminded him of questions on the College Boards. He wondered if he could use the results of the test he'd taken to get into the seminary. Not cube, rectangle. Box. Bedroom.

  He looked to the side, just able to make out the form of his brother under a dark mound of blanket. Mushroom.

  "Come on, you dipstick."

  The mound stirred, but settled again.

  Nick had said so little at dinner. It had been a momentous day for him too, but Terry's announcement had usurped all the energy in the room. Their mother had stiffened with surprise, her fork suspended above her plate, a piece of potato stuck in the air. Her free hand had danced at her throat as the color came into it, the blood pulsing through her arteries, her hypertension, what always threatened to make her swoon.

  Ned Cronin had said, "What, what's that?"

  "I've been thinking about maybe a couple of years of college before going to the seminary. For the experience, you know? I'd still go, but not now, I mean."

  He had repeated the exact words twice. But before that, he had said them in his mind a hundred times, all the way down Winthrop Street from the monument, around the tidy Common across from the store and house.

  "But you're accepted already," Flo said. "You sent in your forms. I've started sewing name tags on your shirts. Monsignor already wrote the announcement for the bulletin." Her cheeks were aflame now. Her fingers had moved to her temple, which she was pressing.

  "But he didn't print it yet."

  "He bought you a present."

  Terry stared at his mother. She was forty years old, but looked fifty. Her hair was white. Everyone said she had the nicest smile, and it was true. She could go on about her blood clots—she discussed her medical condition as if it were a job—but she always ended by "offering it up," as she would say, "for my dear Terry," by which she meant the boys' father. With her purse full of pills and the white elastic stockings she wore for her varicose veins, she was regarded as one of the parish hypochondriacs, but the truth was that a clot had nearly killed her once. She expected it back, like a planet in a slow but certain orbit No wonder she was preoccupied. No wonder she wasn't practical. Her father had long since stopped using her help in the store. Instead, she was in charge of bringing flowers to St. Mary's. Every day she fussed over the altar as if the Blessed Mother were coming. If she wasn't feeling lightheaded, she could be counted on to help serve the meals that the parish offered after funerals to families too poor to provide their own. She needed nothing for herself, that was her theme. Except for one thing, one thing only had she allowed herself all these years to need. A son a priest Him.

  "What do you mean, college?" she asked now. "Who's going to pay for that?"

  Terry looked away, stunned. But Nick said, "That's not the point, Ma."

  Her voice was shrill. "We can't send you two to college. We can barely—"

  "Nobody's talking about me," Nick said. "Terry's the brain. He should go to college if he wants to. Money's not the point, is it, Gramps?"

  Old Cronin looked helplessly at his grandson. "You know how we operate in this family. What's good for one is good for the other."

  "Nobody ever said that when it was Terry going to the sem."

  Terry leaned toward his brother. "Nick, never mind. I'll—"

  "You have a right, okay?" Nick said "That's all I'm saying."

  Terry stared at his brother, too grateful to speak. The ocean in his chest had become an ocean of love for Nick.

  A killing silence descended on the table. Finally Flo stood, pressing her temples now with both hands. "I'll get seconds," she said. She put the corner of her apron in her mouth, sucking as she left the dining room. Terry knew she'd be taking a pill out there, along with a hefty swallow of her sherry.

  In her absence Cronin leaned toward Terry. "You shouldn't be agitating your mother. You know what the doctor says."

  "I didn't mean to, Gramps."

  "Well ..." Cronin looked from one boy to the other. "It's not your fault. It's nobody's fault"

  "But he can go to college, right?" Nick asked.

  Cronin covered his mouth with his napkin. His wet eyes glistened, turning on Terry. "Don't you worry. You can do that if you want. It's what the cardinal did, a couple of years with the Jesuits at BC. You tell your mother Dick Cushing did that very thing." Cronin spoke intimately of the cardinal because they'd become friends years before, when a younger Cushing had helped out at St. Mary's.

  "Would you tell her?"

  "I will indeed. She can wait. So can Monsignor's present."

  Terry felt that he could breathe again.

  But then his grandfather had added, "Experience, that's right. And some Jesuit training. You'll be a better priest for it." He'd fixed Terry with a cold stare. "Your mother is counting on you. And so am I. But the main thing, boyo, it's a sin to reject a divine calling, and we all know you've got one. Right? Right?"

  Now, in the bedroom, Terry said into the darkness above him, "I know you're awake."

  "No I'm not."

  "Come on, Nick."

  "Squire."

  "You like that name? You don't think it's phony?"

  Squire sat halfway up. Terry could just imagine the expression on his face: Who's phony?

  "All right, Squire. All right"

  Squire flipped onto his back and punched his pillow up.

  Terry said, "I heard what happened. Jackie's sister told me."

  "Told you what?"

  "At the store. Tho
se guys."

  "Wop cocksuckers."

  "How'd you do it?"

  "Just said we were already paying some asshole. Said everybody on Main Street was. Lou Triozzi." Squire laughed quietly. With Terry, now that he'd asked, Squire could enjoy it.

  "Won't they find out?"

  "We are paying. That's what I've decided. Us and everybody."

  "Paying who?"

  "Me."

  "For protection? That's nuts. They never—"

  "Gramps agreed. He's calling the meeting. The Lou Triozzi Benevolent Association. It's about to become famous. Punks like the two that we saw won't know it from the Black Hand."

  "Does Mom know?"

  "Come on, Terry. What does Mom have to do with anything? You shouldn't worry so much about her."

  "I really let her down tonight."

  "That's catshit, Terry. Hey, do you want to be a priest or don't you?"

  "I don't know."

  "It's your life, kid."

  "But she's sick. I really get worried."

  "That isn't your fault Anyway, who the hell knows how sick she is?"

  "I just wish we could keep her from getting so—"

  "Maybe she gets that way to keep the leash on. Don't get railroaded."

  "But you're getting railroaded. You're the 'Knight's Squire.' That's a leash. A year from now it'll be you who's graduating, and you'll be headed for the flower shop full time."

  "Hey, as long as I don't have to take your place in the sem." They laughed. Then Squire said, "The shop is okeydokey with me."

  "Really?"

  "Yes. I fucking love the place. Especially now."

  "Because you're Lou Triozzi, you mean?"

  "I'm going to organize the pansies around here. Moran's, the Shamrock, Flanagan's, the drugstore, all of them."

  "You're in high school!"

  "The two wops that came into the store were no older. What do you know?" There was a defensive meanness in Squire's question, and Terry felt the shove in it.

  They stopped speaking.

  The silence from Squire's side was blunt, and Terry was disoriented by it Once, Nick had deferred to Terry in everything. Nick, hatching a plan, would have wanted to know what Terry thought But this was "Squire."

  "Charlestown is changing, Squire."

  "No it's not."

  "These Italian guys coming into the shop like that proves it The whole city's different. We just may as well face it. Wops come into our turf. Some of us go out. It shouldn't bother you so much."

  "What fucking bothers me"—Squire sat up angrily—"is watching Gramps get slugged to the ground."

  "That happened?"

  "You didn't notice the mark on his head?"

  "I thought that was—"

  "What, he got drunk and passed out? Jesus Christ, Terry, you can really be an asshole, you know that? I mean a fucking asshole! This is the real world I'm talking about, not BC."

  "What does BC have to do with it?"

  Squire fell back in his bed, silent again.

  "No, seriously. Why does BC bother you? You were the one who said I should go."

  Squire did not answer.

  Terry felt the weight of a new recognition. Despite the way his brother had supported him, Terry was letting him down too. Squire had read Terry's feelings, the way he always could. Terry wanted to say, It's not you I want to get away from. But instead he said, "You have to be careful, Nick."

  "I am careful, Terry. And I'll tell you something. Those wop cocksuckers won't be coming in again."

  "Yeah, thanks to another wop."

  "Named Triozzi."

  "Named Tucci. Isn't that his name?"

  "I'm surprised you know it."

  "You didn't scare those guys off, Squire. Their Al Capone did, and he won't like it if he finds out what you and your Benevolent Association are pulling off."

  "He won't find out unless I tell him."

  "Oh, Jesus, Squire, listen to yourself. You should leave this stuff alone."

  "They didn't leave us alone, Terry. The two wops came to us. That was my calling. And I agree with what Gramps said: it's a sin to reject it. You do what you have to do. No problem. But the same applies to me, okay? That's the point, the one you seem unable to get. So go to BC. Have your malted milks at the sock hop, go to the big game, rah, rah. Get your A average. Get yourself a car coat."

  "Why are you pissed off at me?"

  "I'm not."

  "You sound pissed off."

  "You need a girlfriend, Terry. Get yourself a girlfriend."

  "Jesus, Nick, why do you say that? I mean, that really—" Terry rolled with a grunt toward his wall.

  "Gets you?"

  "It all gets me, okay? Let's drop it."

  "You brought it up. You fucking woke me."

  "You were awake and you know it. This is all bullshit, Nick. All of it Including the 'Knight's Squire' and including your junior G-man protection racket. It's crap like this that makes me want to get the hell out of here."

  Squire said nothing. He lay there under the weight of knowledge he didn't want: how different they were after all, how fucking different He thought of Jackie Mullen, his friend. He didn't need Terry.

  He pictured the two punks, the acne on the one's face, the other's ridiculous sweater. He wanted them to come back. If he had to, he would go after them. He wanted to see the glint of fear in their eyes again. He wanted to cause it "Crap like this," he said quietly to the blackness above, to himself, "makes me want to stay."

  3

  IN SEPTEMBER John Kennedy was the nominee, and at Boston College the air was charged. Students at Catholic schools all across the country felt the jolt of politics that fall, but at BC the unprecedented energy shot through everyone, students and teachers alike, even the wizened old Jesuits long committed to a holy ignorance of events outside the classroom and the cloister. Kennedy made nuns giddy, and he made monsignors regret having become Republicans, but his candidacy was no mere replay of the Al Smith effort three decades earlier. John Kennedy's appeal went far deeper than religion, and the success he'd achieved already, simply by the character of his arrival on the national scene, gave his first constituents a visceral sense of vindication. His importance for Catholics, for the Irish, and especially for the Irish Catholics in the neighborhoods of Boston who had elected him to Congress lay in the way his new prominence made them feel connected to the larger world he was storming—the world beyond the parish, beyond the neighborhood, beyond the parochial school, the Holy Name, the K of C, the Catholic societies and clubs that had kept separate not only sacristy ladies but lawyers, doctors, and even foresters—connected to the world beyond the streetcar schools for the Catholic kids who were, almost all of them, the first in their families to go to college.

  BC was as far from Charlestown as it was possible to go and still be inside the city limits. It was a gracious, sprawling enclave straddling the border between Boston and Newton. Terry Doyle arrived there with no notion of the cultural assertion made by its sham Gothic architecture, or of the social meaning of the college's location, near Chestnut Hill where the Brahmins lived. The cardinal's residence across Commonwealth Avenue was a more telling point of reference. He noted the mansion as the streetcar passed it, but he was focused on the college as the car slowed for the turnabout at the weather shed that marked the end of the line.

  Much as he'd wished otherwise, his thoughts on the interminable ride from Charlestown that first morning had kept returning to the world he did know. As he'd left the house, Nick had wished him luck. Gramps had pinned one of the famous lapel shamrocks on his new corduroy sport jacket. And his mother had put a special sack lunch in his hands and kissed him. But he was sure they'd exchanged glances behind his back as he'd adjusted the clover flower on his coat and tugged his necktie into place.

  In the reflection of the streetcar window Terry had played over and over vivid scenes of his life in Charlestown. All summer the thought of this first day of college had filled him with eage
rness, but what he kept seeing now in the mirror of the streetcar window had undercut his every pulse of happiness. The flower store with his red-nosed, nip-sucking grandfather, the attic room with his brother, the rooms above the store with their shelves full of pill bottles and Madonna vases, their pictures of Curley, Cushing, and Pius XII—these were the places he belonged. What was he doing going off to college? Who did he think—in die masterpiece kneecapping question of his kind—yes, who did he think he was? One night Nick had laughed and said Terry's feelings were only fitting, since surely he'd been kidnapped in infancy by tinkers and sold to the peasants at the Kerry Bouquet That not even Nick understood his feelings had been the real surprise.

  By the time he hopped off the streetcar opposite the entrance to BC, he felt hung over. He hadn't noticed them until now, but six or seven other guys got off too and headed toward the campus. They were as gangly and awkward as he was, with fresh haircuts that made their ears stand out dangerously. At Charlestown High, ears like that would get snapped from behind. All the boys wore new shoes and an air of timid isolation, but to Terry Doyle they seemed supremely at ease, upperclassmen probably.

  None was carrying a brown paper lunch sack, and that stopped him just as he was about to trail across the street Without consciously making a decision, but also fully aware of the meaning of the deed, he turned back abruptly to the streetcar platform and went directly to the green trash barrel into which commuters stuffed stale newspapers. He pushed the bag his mother had given him deep into the newspapers, appalled at himself yet knowing he had no choice. Just as automatically, he pulled the shamrock off his coat and stuffed it in after the bag.

  The demands stern Jesuits made on him that morning purged him not only of his morose self-doubt but of all feeling. "No salvation," he imagined them thundering, "outside of class!" In a welcome state of numb compliance, he went from intimidating orientation sessions in a succession of classrooms to the slow, snaking lines of course registration in the big gym. Even his ability to be impressed by the turreted campus was dulled when a warm, late summer drizzle began to fall. The rain made the figures passing each other in the quads slouch into themselves, yet Terry had concluded that not even his fellow freshmen were as lost in this new world as he was.