Park Lane South, Queens

He nodded, reluctantly, and followed her onto the darkening grass.

Johnny Benedetto tossed around in his sloppy bed. Perspiration rolled off his body and wet the sheets. He was dreaming of a little boy in holy terror. Johnny flung one fist out desperately; the woods became the streets of Brooklyn and the little boy turned into himself. He entered the crummy building with the peeling wallpaper in the hallway and took the old elevator up. It took so long, then bounced to a stop. He heard someone in the apartment. Voices. Women’s voices wailing. They were in there with his mother. He stood at the open door of the apartment and the women turned to look at him. They stopped crying. “Mom?” he called, looking past their heads. “Mom?” But nobody would let him in. They pulled him down the stairs and brought him somewhere else to wait for his aunt. He didn’t like his aunt, he told them. He wanted his mom. His mom had gone away, they told him, she had gone back to Jesus and he must be brave.… Johnny woke up with a jolt. His breath came short and fast. Trembling, he reached out and felt for the gun on the night stand. It was all right. Just a dream. He was fine.

When dinner was done, Claire hung around the kitchen and helped her mother dry the dishes. Mary was going to hymn mass with the neighbor, Mrs. Dixon. They had been walking to church together for almost twelve years now, and chatting over the hedge whenever they hung wash, and still they called each other “Mrs.”

“Good Lord, it’s muggy,” Mary wiped her brow. “I’d better change this blouse. Smells of fish. I hate that when you stand next to someone in church who’s all smelly.”

“You really like to go to church, don’t you, Mom?”

“I wouldn’t go if I didn’t like it, now, would I?”

“No. You wouldn’t. But a lot of people would.”

Mary slid the Mayor out from in front of the refrigerator with one foot, put the leftovers inside, closed the door, and slid him back to his spot, smack in everybody’s way. It was a wonder that no one ever stepped on him, but nobody did, and he wouldn’t budge on his own. He liked the ride.

“Would it be,” Mary suggested casually, “that you’d like to come along?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Another time, then.” She surveyed the kitchen. Spic and span until the onslaught of night snacking. Claire was over at the sideboard, reaching for the tallest shelf with ease. Claire had the legs in the family. She reminded Mary of her own mother, Jenny Rose. The longest legs and most heathen ideas in all of Skibbereen. If Mary didn’t know better, she’d think Claire was Jenny Rose born twice. Sometimes, when Claire looked at her … ah, silly notions only got you round the bend and back to where you started. You lived and died and if you’d done it well you would get your reward. There was no telling what the Holy Ghost was up to.

“Ma?” Claire steadied the plate she almost dropped, “How do you think something like that can happen? A murder like that?”

Mary closed her eyes and turned her head. Claire had always been the clumsy one. She couldn’t bear to watch her with the good china.

“I mean from the murderer’s side. How can someone live with such guilt?”

Guilt? Interested now, in spite of herself, Mary sat at the white pine table. “If indeed the murderer knows guilt,” she said.

“You mean a schizophrenic?”

“Ah, these labels psychiatrists put on things! Evil was around a long time before they thought up words like that. Words that allow murderers to sit around in hospital gardens and take the sun just as nice as you please. And then back out on the street to kill again.” She straightened her shoulders. “Especially in this city.”

“Yeah, but there must be more to it than that, than simple good and evil.”

“What’s simple? We all are secrets from ourselves.”

Claire sat down, too. She loved it when her mother got like this, all deep and confidential. Irish.

“We trudge along, not being especially good, hoping, anyway, for miracles. Don’t we? And then there are those who, having given up, have given in, regardless of … because of the blind and total lure of evil.”

“Yeah, but how does it start, the madness? When? Is it learned or inherent?”

“Or,” Mary’s face lit up, “is it a living force predestined and allowed to exist by some great power, planted into innocence haphazardly?”

“A plan that has no plan?”

Mary leaned across the table. “Just lessons to be learned,” she whispered. “Battles to be won.”

Claire lit a cigarette. Her mother would be annoyed to know that the gurus preached the same philosophy, almost word for word.

“Oh, give me one,” Mary snapped.

Surprised, Claire gave her hers and lit another.

“Just don’t tell your father.”

The Mayor hopped up and howled. “Oh, drat,” Mary put the cigarette out quickly and waved the air. “That’s Mrs. Dixon. Let her in and I’ll get ready.”

Mary Anne Kelly's books