William Kennedy - Very Old Bones

Peg pushed herself up from the bed, pulled off her nightgown, thrust herself into a cotton robe, and strode briskly to the bathroom, leaving the bedroom door ajar. The hall light would fall directly into George’s eyes. Good. George stood up, walked to the door and closed it, sat back on the bed, and looked at his dim reflection in the dresser mirror.

“You’re gonna die in the poorhouse of bullshit and other people’s generosity,” he said to himself.

In her chair by the parlor window Annie Phelan monitored the passing of neighbors, sipping her first cup of tea of the day from the wheeled serving table, popping white grapes into her mouth, chewing them with great vigor, coming to an end of chewing, organizing her lips and tongue, and then spitting the grape seeds onto the oriental rug.

Billy, in the kitchen breakfast nook, was reading the baseball results (the Red Sox and the Albany Senators had both lost) in the morning Times-Union , his right leg stretched kitchenward, its plaster ankle cast covered by the leg of his navy-blue Palm Beach trousers, the toes of his shoeless foot covered by half a white sock, his hickory cane standing in the corner of the nook next to a paper bag containing his right shoe.

Agnes Dempsey, practical nurse and Billy’s special friend, who’d been a now-and-then overnight guest for years, and who became a full-time live-in member of the household a year ago April, when Annie’s feebleness and vagueness were becoming a family problem, Agnes Dempsey at forty stood at the counter by the sink, breaking soft-boiled eggs into coffee cups with broken handles.

Peg, dressed perfectly, as usual, in high heels and blue flowered dress, stood at the gas stove pouring a cup of coffee, the only breakfast she would allow herself, except for one bite of Billy’s toast, she in such a high-energized condition that we must intuit some private frenzy in her yet to be revealed.

Agnes brought Annie her breakfast before serving anyone else, stirred up the eggs with a teaspoon, topped them off with a touch of butter, salt, and pepper, then set them in front of Annie along with two pieces of toast. Annie looked at the eggs.

“They got bugs,” she said.

“What’s got bugs?”

“Those things. Get the bugs off.”

“That’s not bugs, Annie. That’s pepper.”

Annie tried to shove the pepper to one side with a spoon.

“I don’t eat bugs,” she said.

“That’s a new one,” Agnes said when she set Billy’s eggs in front of him on the oilcloth-covered table. “She thinks pepper is bugs.”

“Then don’t give her any pepper,” Billy said.

“Well, naturally,” said Agnes, and Peg saw a pout in Agnes’s lips and knew it had more than pepper in it. They all ate in silence until Agnes said, “I’ve got to get a room someplace.”

“You don’t have to go noplace,” Billy said.

“Well, I do, and you know I do.”

“Let’s not create a crisis,” Peg said.

“I’m not creating a crisis,” Agnes said. “I’m saying I’ve got to get out of here. Father McDevitt said it, not me. But I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“Then why didn’t you ever say anything?” said Billy.

“Because I didn’t know how to say it.”

“Well, you’ve said it now,” said Peg. “Do you mean it, or is this just a little low-level blackmail?”

“What’s that mean, blackmail?”

“Agnes,” said Peg, “go on with your tale of woe.”

“I’m saying only what the Father said. That we can’t go on living this way, because it doesn’t look moral.”

“Very little in this life looks moral to me,” Peg said. “When are you leaving?”

“She’s not leaving,” Billy said. “Who’ll take care of Ma?”

“We can’t let Ma interfere with Agnes’s new moral look,” Peg said.

“You heard the Father,” Agnes said. “ ‘How long have you been here, my dear?’ A little over a year, Father.’ I felt like I was in confession. ‘You did that? How many times did you do it, dear?’ They always want the arithmetic.”

“I’m surprised the Vatican hasn’t sent in a team of investigators to get to the bottom of this,” Peg said.

“Whataya talkin’ about, this ?” Billy said. “There’s nothin’ goin’ on.”

“Then you don’t have anything to worry about,” said Peg.

“Worry? Why should I worry?”

“You shouldn’t,” Peg said. “You’re clean.”

“Look, I know what you’re gertin’ at,” Billy said, “and I’m not gertin’ married, so change the subject.”

“Changed. When do you move out, Ag?”

“ ‘We don’t want to give scandal,’ the priest says. What does he think we do here?”

“He imagines what you do,” said Peg. “It probably keeps him peppy. What else did he say?”

“He says we have to create the sacrament.”

“What sacrament?” Billy said.

“I don’t think he meant baptism,” said Peg. “Do you?”

“I don’t know what he means sacrament,” Billy insisted.

“No more profane love in the afternoon, maybe? Make it sacred?”

“You’d better watch what you say,” Agnes said.

“You better organize this act you’ve got going here,” Peg said. “And you too,” she said to Billy “I really don’t give a rap what the priest says, or the bishop either. This is our house and we do what we like in it. But I think you ought to make a decision about your own lives for a change. I’ve got to get to work.” She bolted her coffee and stood up.

“I’ll call about supper,” she told Agnes. “I’ve got that luncheon with Peter and Orson. The lawyer’s picking me up and I suppose the whole gang will be there. I want to go down early and help with the lunch.”

“We’ve got a roasting chicken and lamb chops,” Agnes said.

“Better be careful about lamb chops,” George Quinn said, coming through the swinging door into the kitchen. “That’s why Annie had her stroke. Always showin’ off eatin’ lamb-chop fat.”

“I’m going where there’s no lamb chops,” Peg said. She gave George a quick kiss and went out.

The phone rang and George, the closest to it, answered: “Hello there, who’s calling this early?. . Who?. . Oh, yeah. . Well, no, Peg’s gone to work. Any message?. . Yeah, Billy’s right here,” and he handed Billy the phone with the words, “It’s Orson, that floo-doo.”

“What’s the prospect, Orson?” Billy said into the phone.

“I need to get out of this goddamn house,” I said. “What are you up to?”

“I gotta go to the doctor’s.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“I’ll take you,” I said.

“What’s your problem down there?” Billy asked.

“It’s a big day today. I need to get out from under for a while.”

“So come have breakfast and we’ll go down to Sport Schindler’s for an eye-opener. I gotta meet a guy there owes me money.”

“Always a pleasant prospect,” I said. “I’ll see you in five minutes.”

“You can’t get here sooner?”

George Quinn sprinkled a teaspoon of sugar on his eggs, his tie tied tight on his lightly starched collar on this day that was headed into the high nineties: sartorial propriety, impervious to weather.

“So how’s the numbers business, George?” I asked as I sat across the breakfast table from him and Billy.

“It don’t exist,” George said.

“What?”

“Where you been, Orson?” Billy said. “George has been out of business for a year.”

“I thought that was temporary,” I said.

“A few of the big boys went to work by phone after it all closed down. But not me,” George said.

“I blame Dewey for starting it,” Billy said. “That son of a bitch, what the hell’s the town gonna do without numbers? Without Broadway.”