The Strangler

36

“Mikey, let me have those.”

Ricky indicated with his chin that he meant the rolls, and Michael passed the dish.

They ate quietly again. Forks and knives clinked, mouths mashed. No one spoke.

At Sunday dinner, the family felt particularly decimated. During the week it was easier to forget how devastated they had been. Not here. With Joe absent-he was out working another detail-each couple at the table had been halved. There was too much room between the chairs, too much empty space on the table. Kat, Ricky, and Mother Margaret all seemed diminished by the absence of their voluble partners. They were not used to carrying the weight of a conversation. Over the years, they had gotten used to the attacking, serve-and-volley style of their mates. They preferred to respond-to quip, to reply, a withering sentence or two and then shut up. This table had never been the place for long speeches anyway. The words flew too fast, everyone talked over everyone else, babbled, blurted, shouted, insulted, teased. Short, loud, and sarcastic, that was the Daley style. There was only one blusterer left, Brendan Conroy, and his gaseousness was particularly off-key tonight. Between Michael and Ricky there were affronted scowls-that this hammy buffoon was poking their mother seemed outrageous, still-and soon enough Conroy grew quiet, too. Even Kat, armor-plated as a battleship, was lost in her own thoughts.

Dinner lasted twenty minutes. It felt like an hour.

After dinner Michael sprawled on the couch, dazed in front of the television.

One by one the family drifted away. Kat helped with the dishes, then stamped a kiss onto Michael’s forehead before leaving. Little Joe waved dutifully, “Bye, Uncle Michael.” Ricky lay draped across the armchair, then abruptly he got up and went home, too. He chucked Michael once on the shoulder on the way past: “See ya, Mike.” Margaret went upstairs to read and fall asleep.

The sudden turn of the ebb tide left Michael beached on that couch, alone with Brendan Conroy, to their mutual discomfort. Michael would have taken off, but a stubborn sense of turf kept him there. This was still his home, Michael’s and his brothers’, though soon Brendan would displace them. He would roll that big pink body into Joe Senior’s bed, as he had already enthroned himself in the father’s seat at the dinner table and his armchair in the living room. But for now, as long as Michael remained on the couch, he could stave all that off. He could exercise a child’s life tenancy in his mother’s home, and there was nothing Conroy could say or do to dislodge him. Maybe he would even fuck with Conroy by staying long enough that Conroy would go home to his own bed instead of climbing the stairs to sleep next to Margaret.

If Conroy was troubled by any of this, he was not letting on. He watched the TV through a pair of black-framed reading glasses that rested on his mug awkwardly, like a costume. When he pried the shoes off his feet with much struggle and shoe-scraping, Michael said, “Make yourself at home, Brendan.”

At nine o’clock, Michael insisted on watching The Judy Garland Show instead of Bonanza.

“ Bonanza is in color.”

“I know.” Michael would rather have watched Bonanza, too, but he could not help himself.

“You’re a pisser, there, boyo.”

Michael did not respond. He lay on his back, head propped on the armrest, one arm curled around his head. He knew how it must look to Conroy: a fruity pose, Byron come to Dorchester. Fuck ’m. Michael would lie there any way he damn well pleased. It was his couch. He’d lie there all night just for spite. The little fuck-yous are the sweetest.

“How long are you going to keep this up?”

“Keep what up, Brendan?”

“Moping.”

“The word is mourning.”

“Mourning is it? How long will you be doing it?”

“Amy’s only dead a few weeks. You in a hurry?”

“Oh, come on. You’ve been at it longer than a few weeks, boyo.”

“Have I? Must have lost track of time. Been having too much fun, I guess.”

“You’re mourning your dad.”

“Well, he’d do the same for me.”

“Not this long, he wouldn’t. You know, there comes a time, Michael. You don’t mourn forever. Life is for the living.”

“Hm. I thought it was for the dentist’s office. Now, Time, that’s for the living. But Dad does not get Time anymore. Or Life. He got thrown out of the Time-Life Building, the poor bastard.”

“I’m trying to talk to you here, seriously, man to man, and you’re making jokes. I don’t get you, Michael.”

“I know you don’t. Isn’t that always the way with families? Fathers and sons, you know.”

“You blame me for your old man dying, is that it?”

“Should I?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why do you ask?”

“Because something about me pisses you off, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what the hell it is.”

“We’re just oil and water, Brendan. Irish salad dressing. Don’t let it bother you.”

“Doesn’t bother me. Doesn’t bother me one bit.”

“No, it doesn’t seem to.”

“Doesn’t bother me a bit.”

“Alright, Brendan, let’s just be quiet now and watch Judy Garland.”

“Fuck Judy Garland.”

Michael dilated his eyes in mock horror. Fuck Judy Garland?

“If you’ve got something to say to me, say it. Cut with the jokes and the snide remarks, you and Ricky both, couple of little kids. Be a man, for Christ’s sake, would you?”

“I’m trying. For Christ’s sake.”

“Ai-yi-yi, to get a straight answer out of you…You think your dad dying is my fault?”

Shrug.

“Answer me, Michael, yes or no: Do you think your dad dying is somehow my fault?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Affirmative. Roger. Ten-four. Aye-aye.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“He doesn’t know. Well, you’ve got some nerve, boy, I tell ya. I love these armchair quarterbacks. What more should I have done, Michael?”

“Run faster.”

“Run faster?”

“Run faster.”

“And what would that have done? You mean so I could get shot instead of him? Maybe you forget, I did get shot. I’ve got a hole in my gut to prove it. I nearly died. Do you know I still get blood in my shit?”

“No. Didn’t know that.”

“Well, I do. I shit blood. What do you have to say about that?”

“You should watch what you eat.”

“Go ahead, make jokes. You like to forget little things like me getting shot because you’re so busy feeling sorry for yourself.”

“It’s a full-time job.”

“Let me ask you something: If I did die, would that have been enough?”

“Would have been a start.”

“Well, that’s just fine. I’m a little dense, I guess, I’m just a thickheaded old Irishman, but I get it. I’m done with this. You hear me? You want it to be like this forever? Fine. But just so’s you know, I understand what this is really about. Couldn’t be more obvious. Poor little boy doesn’t like to see his mommy with anyone but daddy, so you blame me for anything and everything. What a, a-”

“Cliche?”

“Yes. And for what it’s worth, you’re wrong. Your father’s dying broke my heart. I’d do anything to find the kid that did it.”

“Would you? So what have you done to find him? Tell me, what have you done? Where’s that kid, Brendan?”

“How the fuck should I know? If I knew, don’t you think I’d move heaven and earth to find him?”

“I don’t see you moving heaven or earth.”

“What do you recommend?”

Michael shrugged. “I’m not a cop. Neither was Amy.”

“That’s not an answer. Tell me, boyo, what should I do? What would satisfy you?”

Another voice intervened: “That’s enough.”

Michael twisted to see his mother standing on the bottom stair in her pale blue housecoat, arms folded across her belly. He sat up.

“You two are going to have to learn to live with each other. That’s all I’m going to say. Michael, you show a little respect. Brendan, time for bed.”

“Time for bed, Brendan,” Michael mocked.

Conroy gathered up his shoes and padded across the room to the foot of the stairs. Margaret stood aside to let him pass on the narrow stairs. Even so, there was barely room for the two of them. As he climbed past her, Conroy’s hand lifted the little wood ball out of the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. That wood ball, the size of a large orange, had been loose for almost thirty years. Conroy seemed surprised to see it in his hand, as if it had adhered there. He fitted it back on the post then continued up the stairs unembarrassed. His hand curled over the wobbly banister, incongruously massive on the handrail burnished smooth by children’s palms.

Michael could feel that banister passing under his own hand, the narrow rounded top, a hairline joint that scratched across the palm halfway up, a scabrous patch where the wood grain roughed your thumb pad, the upturn that signaled the top of the staircase.

“You go home too, mister.” Margaret sighed. “Work in the morning.” She did not wait for a response but turned and trudged up the stairs.