Pete Hamill - The Christmas Kid

Now on this frozen night he stared at the dark windows of the first floor left, wondering who lived there now, and whether Molly’s bones were lying in some frozen piece of the Brooklyn earth. He could still hear her voice, trembling and tentative: “We’re sinners, aren’t we?” He could hear her saying: “What’s to become of us?” He could hear the common sense in her words and the curl of Brooklyn in her accent. “Where are we going?” she said. “Please don’t ever leave me.” He could see the mole inside her left thigh. He could see the fine hair at the top of her neck.

“Well, will ya lookit this,” a hoarse male voice said from behind him. “If it ain’t Buddy Carmody.”

Carmody turned and saw a burly man smoking a cigarette in the doorway of a tenement. The face was not clear in the muted light but the voice told Carmody it was definitely someone from back then. Nobody had called him Buddy in forty-six years.

“How are ya?” Carmody said, peering at the man as he stepped out of the doorway. The man’s face was puffy and seamed, and Carmody tried to peel away the flesh to see who had lived in it when they both were young.

“Couldn’t stay away from the old neighborhood, could ya, Buddy?”

The unease was seething now. Carmody felt a small stream of fear make its move in his stomach.

“It’s been a long time,” Carmody said. “Remind me, what’s your name?”

“You shittin’ me, Buddy? How could you fi’get my name?”

“I told you, man, it’s been a long time.”

“Yeah. It’s easy to fi’get, for some people.”

“Advanced age, and all that,” Carmody said, faking a grin, glancing to his left, to the darkening shop windows, the empty street. Imagining himself running.

“But not everybody fi’gets,” the man said.

He flipped his cigarette under a parked car.

“My sister didn’t fi’get.”

Oh.

Oh, God.

“You must be Seanie,” Carmody said. “Am I right? Seanie Mulrane?”

“Ah…you remembered.”

“How are you, Seanie?”

He could see Seanie’s hooded eyes now, so like the eyes of his policeman father: still, unimpressed. He moved close enough so that Carmody could smell the whiskey on his breath.

“How am I? Huh. How am I…Not as good as you, Buddy boy. We keep up, ya know. The books, that miniseries, or whatever it was on NBC. Pretty good, you’re doing.”

Carmody stepped back a foot, as subtly as possible, trying to decide how to leave. He wished a police car would turn the corner. He trembled, feeling a black wind of hostility pushing at him, backing him up, a wind that seemed to come from the furled brow of Seanie Mulrane. He tried to look casual, turned and glanced at the building where he was young, at the dark first floor left, the warm top floor right.

“She never got over you, you prick.”

“It’s a long time ago, Seanie,” Carmody said, trying to sound casual but not dismissive.

“I remember that first month after you split,” Seanie said. “She cried all the time. She cried all day. She cried all night. She quit her job, ’cause she couldn’t do it and cry at the same time. She’d start to eat, then, oof, she’d break up again. I was there, just back from the Keys, and my father wanted to find you and put a bullet in your head. And Molly, poor Molly…You broke her fuckin’ heart, Buddy.”

Carmody said nothing. Other emotions were flowing now. Regret. Remorse. Mistakes. His stomach seethed.

“And that month? Hey, that was just the start. The end of the second month after you cut out, she tells my mother she’s knocked up.”

“No.…”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Don’t lie, Buddy. My old man told your old man. He pulled a gun on him, for Chrissakes, tryin’ to find out where you was.”

“I never heard any of this.”

“Don’t lie, Buddy. You lie for a livin’, right? All those books, they’re lies, ain’t they? Don’t lie.”

“I didn’t know, Seanie. I swear.”

“Tell the truth: you ran because she was pregnant.”

No: that wasn’t why. He truly didn’t know. He glanced at his watch. Almost time for the book signing.

“She had the baby, some place in New Jersey,” Seanie said. “Catholic nuns or something. And gave it up. Then she came home and went in her room. She went to Mass every morning, I guess praying to God to forgive her. But she never went to another movie with a guy, never went on a date. She was in her room, like another goddamned nun. She saw my mother die, and buried her, and saw my father die, and buried him, and saw me get married and move here wit’ my Mary, right across the street, to live upstairs. I’d come see her every day, and try talkin’ to her, but it was like, ‘You want tea, Seanie, or coffee?’”

Seanie moved slightly, placing his bulk between Carmody and the path to Barnes & Noble.

“Once I said to her, I said, ‘How about you come with me an’ Mary to Florida? You like it, we could all move there. It’s beautiful,’ I said to her. ‘You’d love it.’ Figuring I had to get her out of that room. She looked at me like I said, ‘Hey, let’s move to Mars.’” Seanie paused, trembling with anger and memory, and lit another cigarette. “Just once, she talked a blue streak, drinkin’ gin, I guess it was. And said to me, real mad, ‘I don’t want to see anyone, you understand me, Seanie? I don’t want to see people holdin’ hands. I don’t want to see boys playin’ ball. You understand me?’” He took a deep drag on the Camel. “‘I want to be here,’ she says to me, ‘when Buddy comes back.’”

Carmody stared at the sidewalk, at Seanie’s scuffed black shoes, and heard her voice: When Buddy comes back. Saw the fine hair at the top of her neck.

“So she waited for you, Buddy. Year after year in that dark goddamned flat. Everything was like it was when you split. My mother’s room, my father’s room, her room. All the same clothes. It wasn’t right what you done to her, Buddy. She was a beautiful girl.”

“That she was.”

“And a sweet girl.”

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t right. You had the sweet life and she shoulda had it with you.”

Carmody turned. “And how did she…When did she…”

“Die? She didn’t die, Buddy. She’s still there. Right across the street. Waiting for you, you prick.”

Carmody turned then, lurching toward the corner, heading to the bookstore. Thinking: She’s alive? Molly Mulrane is alive? He was certain she had gone off, married someone, settled in the safety of Bay Ridge or some suburb. In a place without memory. Without ghosts. He was certain that she had lived a long while, had children, and then died. The way everybody did. And now he knew the only child she ever had was his, and he was in flight, afraid to look back, feeling as if some pack of feral dogs was behind him, chasing him across some vast abandoned tundra. He did not run. He walked quickly, deliberately, but he did not run and did not look back. And then he slowed: the signing itself filled him with another kind of fear. Who else might come there knowing the truth? Hauling up the ashes of the past? What other ancient sin would someone dredge up? Who else might come for an accounting?

He looked back then. Nobody was following. Not even Seanie. A taxi cruised along the avenue, its rooftop light on, looking for a fare to Manhattan. I could just get out of here. Just jump in this cab. Call the store. Plead sudden illness. Just go. But someone was sure to call Rush and Molloy at the Daily News or Page Six at the Post and report the no-show. BROOKLYN BOY CALLS IT IN. All that shit. No.

And then a rosy-cheeked woman was smiling at him. The manager of the bookstore.