Balance of Power

FIVE

Kerry Kilcannon's clearest memory of early childhood was of his father bleeding.

It began as many other nights had begun—with the sound of a slammed door, Michael Kilcannon coming home drunk. He would teeter up the stairs to the second floor, talking to himself or to someone he resented, pausing for balance or to take deep, wheezing breaths. Kerry would lie very still; until this night, Michael would stumble past Kerry's and Jamie's rooms to the bedroom at the end of the hall, and the beatings would begin. Through his tears, Kerry would imagine his mother's face at breakfast—a bruised eye, a swollen lip. No one spoke of it.

But on this night, Kerry's door flew open.

Michael Kilcannon flicked on the wall light. The six-year-old Kerry blinked at the sudden brightness, afraid to move or speak.

Slowly, his father walked toward him, and then stood at the foot of his bed. Blood spurted from his forearm.

Terrified, Kerry watched red droplets forming on his sheets.

Michael glared at Kerry, his handsome, somewhat fleshy face suffused with drink and anger. "Look." His Irish lilt became a hiss. "Look at what you've done."

Kerry stared at the bloodstains, stupefied.

"Your wagon, you pissant. You left your fooking wagon on the path . . ."

Kerry shook his head reflexively. "I'm sorry, Da," he tried. Then he began to cry, trying hard to stop.

Mary Kilcannon appeared in the doorway.

Her long black hair was disarranged, her skin pale in the light. Kerry was too afraid to run to her.

Entering, she gave him a gaze of deep compassion, then placed a tentative hand on her husband's shoulder. Softly, she asked, "What is it, Michael?"

Throat constricted, Kerry watched his father's angry face.

"The wagon." Michael paused, and then gazed down at the sheets with a kind of wonder. "Sharp edges . . ."

Eyes never leaving her son, his mother kissed Michael on the side of his face.

"That'll need tending, Michael." Still trembling, Kerry watched his mother take his father by the hand. "We should go to the hospital."

Slowly, his father turned and let Mary Kilcannon lead him from the room.

Kerry could hardly breathe. Turning, Mary Kilcannon looked back at him. "Don't worry about your father . . ."

Somehow, Kerry understood she meant that he was safe tonight. But he did not get up until he heard the front door close.

His eighteen-year-old brother Jamie—tall and handsome, the family's jewel—was standing in the door of his bedroom. "Well," Jamie said softly, to no one, "they cut quite a figure, don't they?"

Kerry hated him for it.

* * *

It started then—the thing between Kerry and his father.

Two days later, the stitches still in his arm, Michael Kilcannon, with two tickets a fellow patrolman could not use, took Kerry to a Mets game. Michael knew little of baseball—he had emigrated from County Roscommon in his teens. But he was a strapping handsome man in his red-haired florid way and, when sober, a dad Kerry was desperately proud of: a policeman, a kind of hero, possessed of a ready laugh and a reputation for reckless courage. Michael bought Kerry popcorn and a hot dog and enjoyed the game with self-conscious exuberance; Kerry knew that this was his apology for what no one would ever mention. When the Mets won in the ninth inning, Michael hugged him.

His father felt large and warm. "I love you, Da," Kerry murmured.

That night, Michael Kilcannon went to Lynch's Ark Bar, a neighborhood mainstay. But Kerry felt safe, the glow of his day with him still.

His bedroom door opening awakened him.

Rubbing his eyes, Kerry looked at his father across the room, halfglad, half-afraid.

Michael staggered toward him and sat at the edge of the bed. Kerry kept quiet; his father was breathing hard. "Bastards." Michael's voice was hostile, threatening.

Kerry's heart pounded. Maybe if he said something, showed his father sympathy . . .

"What is it, Da?"

His father shook his head, as if to himself. "Mulroy . . ."

Kerry did not understand. All he could do was wait.

"I'm as good a man—better," Michael said abruptly. "But he makes sergeant, not me. They give it only to the kiss-ass boys . . ."

As she had two nights before, Mary Kilcannon appeared. "Michael," she said in the same soft voice.

Kerry's father did not turn. "Shut up," he said harshly. "We're talking . . ."

Fearful again, Kerry looked at his mother. Her words had an edge her son had never heard before. "Leave the boy alone."

Michael Kilcannon shrugged his heavy shoulders and rose. With a slap so lazy yet so powerful it reminded Kerry of a big cat, he struck Mary Kilcannon across the mouth.

She reeled backward, blood trickling from her lip. Tears stung Kerry's eyes; watching Mary Kilcannon cover her face, he was sickened by his own fear and helplessness.

"We were talking." Michael's voice suggested the patience of a reasonable man, stretched to the breaking point. "Go to bed."

Gazing at Kerry, she backed into the hallway.

Michael turned from her and sat at the edge of his bed. He did not seem to notice that Kerry was crying.

"Mulroy," he repeated.

Kerry did not know how long his father stayed, mumbling resentful fragments. Kerry dared not fall asleep.

After this, Kerry never knew when it would happen. On some nights his father would come home and beat his mother. On others he would open Kerry's door and pour out his wounds and angers. Kerry learned to make some sound or comment so that Michael thought he was listening, to fight sleep or any sign of inattention that might set his father off. Michael never touched him.

As long as Kerry listened, he knew that his father would not beat Mary Kilcannon.

* * *

As deeply as Kerry feared his father, he loved his mother.

What Michael imposed on them at night was a shameful secret, never to be discussed. Kerry knew that his mother could not ask the police for help. Michael Kilcannon was the police: to tell his friends would shame him, perhaps make him even more brutal. Within the tight community of Vailsburg, where a quiet word from a policeman was enough to nip trouble in the bud, Michael treasured his reputation.

Every morning Mary Kilcannon prayed at Sacred Heart.

In the half-lit vastness of the church, Kerry would watch her rapt profile. Kerry, too, found the church consoling—its hush, its seventy-foot ceilings and beautiful stained-glass windows, its marble altar framed by a fresco of Jesus ascending. Sometimes they stayed for an hour.

One snowy winter morning, they wended their way home. They made a game of it, Kerry trying to walk in his mother's bigger footprints without making footprints of his own.

His prize was a cup of hot chocolate. As they sat at the kitchen table, his mother smiling at him, Kerry felt he would burst with love. But it was she who said, "I love you more than words can tell, Kerry Francis."

Tears came to his eyes. As if reading his mind, Mary Kilcannon said softly, "Your father's a good man when he's sober. He takes good care of us. He's only frustrated, afraid he won't succeed as he deserves."

The words were meant as comfort. But what Kerry heard was that they were trapped: from the long nights with his father, he sensed that the reasons for Michael's failure to rise were the same as for his abusiveness, and that this would never end until someone ended it.

Kerry squeezed his mother's hand.

* * *

But outside their home, Kerry knew, Mary Kilcannon would always be known as James's mother.

It began with how much Jamie favored her, so closely that only his maleness made him handsome instead of beautiful. By seventeen, Jamie was six feet one, with an easy grace and with hazel eyes which seemed to take in everything around him. Vailsburg thought Jamie close to perfect: he was student body president of Seton Hall Prep; captain of its football team; second in his class. Jamie's clothes were always neat and pressed, nothing out of place. Girls adored him. Like most obvious expressions of emotion, this seemed to amuse Jamie and, perhaps, to frighten him.

This was Jamie's secret—his ability to withdraw. To Kerry, Jamie seemed driven by a silent contempt for both parents, the need to be nothing like them. From an early age, Jamie was too successful for Michael Kilcannon to disparage. Because of Jamie's size and his attainments, their father came to observe a sort of resentful truce with his older son: Michael received praise in public, was reminded in private of his own inadequacy. But Jamie did not raise his hand, or his voice, to help his mother.

When Jamie left for Princeton on a full scholarship, he would not let his parents drive him there.

Jamie did well at college, played defensive halfback on the football team, became involved in campus politics. His much younger brother dimly imagined classmates thinking that Jamie did this easily. But Kerry knew that as he fearfully waited for his father to climb the stairs, he would sometimes hear his brother through the thin wall between their bedrooms, practicing his speeches, testing phrases, pauses . . .

Kerry never forgot the Christmas vacation of Jamie's second year away.

Jamie was running for something. He practiced a speech late into the night; sleepless, Kerry listened to his brother's muffled voice.

Michael Kilcannon came home.

Hearing his father's footsteps, Kerry wondered whether Michael would open the door or go to his mother's bedroom. He sat up in bed, expectant, as Michael's footsteps passed.

A moment later, Mary Kilcannon cried out in pain.

The only sign that Jamie heard was the silence on the other side of the wall. Tears ran down Kerry's face.

No, he would never be his brother James.

* * *

In school, Kerry became contentious, angry, picking fights with older and stronger boys who often beat him badly. And then Liam Dunn, his godfather, took him to the CYO to learn boxing.

Boxing became his salvation—what Kerry lacked in athleticism, he made up in resolve, and then self-discipline. He stopped fighting outside the ring; by seventeen, weary of his own violence, he stopped fighting at all.

By then, Kerry was as big as he would ever get: five feet ten, one hundred fifty-five pounds. He was a full three inches shorter than his handsome brother, the state senator, that much shorter and sixty pounds lighter than his father, the policeman. Beyond boxing there were not many sports for a boy who was neither big nor fast of foot nor a natural leader, let alone one who still lost his temper in frustration at his own lack of talent.

Finally, Kerry made himself a serviceable soccer goalie. "Serviceable" captured Kerry's senior year—Bs and Cs, no honors won, a slot the next year at Seton Hall University, a few blocks from his home. For the longer range, Michael suggested that Kerry go into the police department. "It's enough for a lot of us," he said, "and no point worrying about why you're not your brother. After all, who is?"

Kerry did not answer. His father's failure was etched in the deepening creases of his face, the bleary eyes, and the only relief he found beyond drink was abusing his wife and belittling his son. Kerry's mother seemed almost broken. Perhaps, Kerry thought, his father's women had been her final degradation.

Michael still sat at the foot of Kerry's bed, but often now he talked of the women he met in bars or on the job, so much younger, so much more admiring. Quietly disgusted, inexperienced himself, Kerry simply hoped that this diversion would help Mary Kilcannon. But the beatings Michael gave her grew worse, especially after his second citation for police brutality: the time Michael had beaten a black man into a concussive state for trying to "escape." It brought him a reprimand, a month's suspension, and a dangerous self-hatred; the night after this happened Mary Kilcannon needed two stitches on her upper lip.

Kerry drove her to the hospital, despair and hatred warring in his heart. When she came out of the emergency room and into the night, Kerry simply held her, cradling her face against his shoulder.

"Leave him, Mom," he murmured. "Please. It can't be God's will that you should stay."

"It's only the drink . . ." Mary closed her eyes, adding softly, "Divorce is a sin, Kerry. And what would I do?"

The look on her once-pretty face, now so pale and thin, pierced him. When they came home, Michael Kilcannon lay passed out on his bed. For a moment, Kerry wondered how it would feel to kill his father in his sleep.

Mary watched his face. "I'll call the priest," she said quietly. "I'll call Father Joe."

It was far safer to call Liam, Kerry thought. Surely there were policemen who cared nothing for his father, prosecutors who owed Liam Dunn a favor. But the priest was his mother's wish.

"Yes," Kerry said. "Call Father Joe."

The next Saturday, the slender, balding priest came to the Kilcannons' home and spoke quietly to Kerry's father. His mother stayed in her room. For several hours his father sat still and silent and then, before dinner, left.

He returned after midnight.

Kerry heard his feet on the stairs, heavy, decisive—then the ponderous breathing as Michael reached the top. He did not stop at Kerry's room.

Kerry's mouth was dry. He lay on his bed, dressed only in boxer shorts, listening for sounds.

His mother screamed with pain too deep for Kerry to bear.

For a moment, Kerry's eyes shut. Then he stood without thinking and went to his parents' room.

His mother lay in a corner, dressing gown ripped. Blood came from her broken nose. Her husband stood over her, staring down as if stunned, for once, by what he had done.

Kerry stood behind him. He felt so much hatred that he barely registered his mother's fear as she saw him.

The look on her face made Michael turn, startled. "You," he said in surprise.

Kerry hit him with a left jab.

Blood spurted from his father's nose. "You little fuck," his father cried out.

Kerry hit him three more times, and Michael's nose was as broken as his wife's. All that Kerry wanted was to kill him; what his father might do to him no longer mattered.

Kerry moved forward . . .

"No," his mother screamed, and Michael Kilcannon threw a savage punch.

It crashed into Kerry's shoulder; he winced with pain as Michael lunged forward to grab him.

Kerry ducked beneath his father's grip and hit him in the midsection.

The soft flesh quivered. Michael grunted in pain but kept coming, eyes focused with implacable anger. Arms blocking Kerry's next punch, he enveloped him in a murderous bear hug.

Helpless, Kerry felt his ribs ache, his lungs empty. His father's whiskey-maddened face was obscured by black spots, then flashes of light. Kerry felt himself lose consciousness. With a last spasmodic effort, he jammed his knee up into his father's groin.

Kerry felt his father stiffen. His eyes were great with surprise. Panting for air, Kerry lowered his head and butted his father's chin.

Michael's grip loosened. Kerry writhed free, almost vomiting, then stumbled to his right and sent a flailing left hook to his father's groin.

His father let out a moan of agony, his eyes glazing over. His mother stood, coming between them. "No, Kerry, no."

Still breathing hard, Kerry took her in his arms and pushed her to the bed with fearful gentleness. "Stay," he commanded. "Let me finish this."

She did not move again.

In the dim bedroom, Kerry turned to his father.

Michael struggled to raise his fists. Kerry moved forward.

Whack, whack, whack . . .

His father's eyes bled at the corners now. Kerry hit him in the stomach.

His father reeled back, mouth open.

Kerry brought the right.

It smashed into his father's mouth. Kerry felt teeth break, slashing his own hand. His father fell in a heap.

Kerry stood over him, sucking air in ragged breaths, sick with rage and shock and astonishment. His eyes half-shut, Michael spat tooth fragments from his bloody mouth.

Kerry knelt in front of him. "Touch her again, Da, and I'll kill you. Unless you kill me in my sleep." He paused for breath, then finished. "I wouldn't count on doing that. I'm too used to waiting up for you."

After that night, Michael Kilcannon never hit his wife again. His younger son never hit anyone.

* * *

Joan listened with downcast eyes. As Kerry finished, they closed.

"In some ways," Kerry told her, "my mother was lucky. So was I. But that wounded, angry boy still exists. Maybe he's the ruthless one I keep reading about." Kerry stopped, dismissing self-analysis or selfjustification; as he had learned long since, a reputation for ruthlessness had its uses. Softly, he finished, "You won't raise a brutalizer, Joan. You'll raise a victim."

Joan was silent. Kerry sensed her absorbing all that he had said, yet struggling with the habit of years. He could not push further, or try to talk her, yet, into leaving.

"I'll leave my number," he said at last. "If you ever want to reach me, about anything, please call anytime. Once I'm President, I'll make sure the White House operators know to put you through."

* * *

Leaving, Kerry was startled by a slender, brown-haired man standing on the porch.

The man stared down at him. Even had Kerry not seen photographs, he would have known John Bowden from his look of fear and fury.

Kerry felt a reflex of hot, returning anger, then stifled it—to indulge this could do harm. Calmly, he stuck out his hand. "I'm Kerry Kilcannon," he said. "Your future brother-in-law."

Humiliated by his own impotence, the difference in their stations, Bowden did not move.

Kerry's hand fell to his side. Softly, he said, "You're wondering what she told me. Nothing. She didn't have to."

A red flush stained Bowden's neck. Still he did not answer.

"Get help," Kerry told him. "Or someday you'll go too far. And then, trust me, you'll be the one who suffers most."