Bronx Noir

“You don’t want me here.”

“You don’t want to be here. You never did. Ever since your father died.”

“That wasn’t it.”

“And what have you found on your travels, your wandering? What great insights have you uncovered? We’ve been in the dark for, what, twenty years? You’ve been here and there and shut up without a word. Except for that one time, that one night, that one day when everyone knew. But since. It’s like we’ve been dead.”

“You could’ve considered me in some friary somewhere if that would’ve helped put your mind at rest. You always wanted me to be a priest. And I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Bother? Bother us? That’s like a suicide thinking he’s helping others by shooting his face off. That’s a lie. You know it. It’s cowardice. And it’s wrong. It’s wrong. Oh, Davey.” And she began to weep, her head falling onto her arms, her bony back contorted with her sobbing.

I watched her cry. I couldn’t ask her to stop. I couldn’t comfort her, certainly. I couldn’t demand anything of her. I just needed to wait there until dark, so I could leave, retrieve the stash from the church, and be on my way wherever. I looked around at the room, different from what I’d remembered, but when you remember only in decades, some things lose focus. The sofa was new. To me. And the big television. But the picture of Jesus, that famous painting that graced every Irish household in the Bronx and Queens and every damn borough, the Lord looking nothing so much as a film star, like a schoolmarm’s dream of the savior, that was there, in laminated eternity on its own little easel on the buffet table. There were palm fronds from Easter, dry behind the painting of a thatched house in County Cork, a generalized scene of whimsical poverty. Those hadn’t changed. The furniture was new, from what I remembered, but then, that was not to be relied upon.

My mother calmed down after a few minutes, and we sat there in relative silence for fifteen minutes or so. I was reluctant to speak further, and I thought Ma was too rundown by her outburst. But I was wrong. She’d been waiting.

The latch turned in the door. My mother and I looked toward it. Bella bustled in, older, wider, white-clad, wrathful.

“What have you done to her?”

“Bella.” I stood. She pushed past me, in her best busynurse mode.

“Ma, is everything okay?”

“We were just sitting here.”

“Has he done anything?”

“I’m fine.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Hello, Bella.”

“Never the courtesy of a reply in ten years and you show up unannounced. You. You never changed.” She glowered at me. “Sit, Ma. And you—sit where I can see you. And don’t move. I hope you hid your purse, Ma.” She went into the kitchen, returning with a glass of water and a pill, giving them both to our mother. “Drink.” She sat on the sofa facing me.

“So. You must have used up all the money I sent you.”

“Thank you. I never thanked you.”

“You didn’t. But I didn’t expect you to. When did you get out?”

“Yesterday,” Ma said.

“And you’re here now. For how long?”

“Not long. Just a visit.”

“So you must have something planned.”

I didn’t answer that, but assumed an expression of surprise.

“You might fool Ma, but you can’t fool me. You may think we’re dummies here in the old neighborhood, those of us who never left, too stupid to get out, but then, you thought everyone was stupid except you, didn’t you?”

“All I’m here for is a visit, Bella,” I said. “I know I was wrong.”

“You have never been right. Ever. And you and Jimmy together, I don’t know which one was worse.”

“Bella,” said Ma.

“Oh, Ma, cut it out. He was no saint. He’s dead and buried, and it’s been ten long years, but for heaven’s sake—”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“I have never believed that.”

“What? That I didn’t kill him, or don’t you believe me?”

“I have never believed you.”

“Bella, I’m not here to explain myself—”

“Then why are you here, Davey?”

“—but to try to make things right. I even went to mass, for God’s sake.”

“They’ll never be right while you’re roaming the streets. And you’ve never believed anything long enough to make a go of it. Mass. Hah.”

“It was all Jimmy’s idea.”

“So you said. So we heard.”

“That was the truth!”

“So you say.”

“I didn’t kill him. He told me to get away. He didn’t expect we’d run up against anyone else.”

“You left him there, bleeding.”

“It was an accident.”