Answer as a Man Read online

  Lionel had a sister whom Jason avoided. Her name was Molly, and the name suited her. She was twelve years old, and like her brother, she was “red Irish,” with a pert and pointed face, large eyes the color of clear honey, a mass of red curls, and a spirited rosy mouth usually uttering sardonic remarks. She was still small for her age and showed no signs as yet of nubile curves; her slight figure was boyish and restless. Her lean little arms were spotted with enormous freckles, the same kind that covered her face and her neck, and she was disapproved of as a “tomboy,” for there was no pole or tree she could not climb with remarkable speed, and no fence she could not leap over with an unseemly display of lank thighs, and hardly a boy she could not soundly thrash when needful. Vivacious, keen, smart, and direct, she was not loved as her brother was loved. Though she was an excellent scholar, the nuns felt no fondness for her. She was too derisive of fools in the classroom, and could be impudent even to the most formidable nun. She had a way of defiantly tossing that rioting blaze of curls, and her eyes could be challenging.

  Her father adored her. Her mother was afraid of her. Lionel treated her with smiling indulgence, and joked about rather than with her. She would look at him sharply, her golden eyes intent, and there would be something grave in her expression, if only briefly.

  Jason thought her a nuisance when he thought of her at all, and disliked her. She would tease him and push him and laugh at him loudly. He did not know that even if she was only twelve she was deeply and maturely in love with him. In comparison with Joan, his sister, she was an active squirrel full of chattering. He thought her extremely ugly, whereas Joan was a haughty nymph in spite of her crippled state. In order to see Jason, Molly would visit Joan and help her with her homework, but between the two girls there was much hidden animosity.

  Between old Bernard and Molly there was a profound empathy, an understanding, and an intense fondness. They seemed to speak to each other without words. Kate considered the child “very noisy, but clean and well-mannered,” and that was all. Kate was incapable of disliking anyone, and she was grateful to Molly for her kindness to Joan, and was hurt when Joan uttered a cleverly malicious remark about the child in her absence. Molly’s animation made Joan realize her own affliction and limitations. She believed Molly to be vulgar and coarse, and never saw the bright softness in Molly’s eyes, and the compassion. Molly was not deceived by Joan; she knew her thoroughly, as Bernard knew her, and pitied the crippled girl not only for her affliction but also for her nature. She saw that Joan despised Jason, and this outraged the girl. For John she had a smiling contempt; he amused her.

  On this drab and storm-swept morning, Jason was glad to see his friend, and hailed him in return. “What’re you doing out so early,” he asked Lionel, “and in this damned weather?”

  “Thought you might be delivering the papers Jack should be doing,” said Lionel. “Here. Give me a load for across the street.”

  They often met like this, and the somberness of the day lightened for Jason. He felt rich in the friendship of the most popular boy in the school. He could not understand why he, the least popular, attracted Lionel. Gratefully he filled Lionel’s arms, thinking that time would be saved and he would not be late again for school. “You’re dippy for doing this for ole Jack,” said Lionel. “I’d kick him in the crotch, myself. Why do you do it?”

  He often asked this question, and Jason invariably replied, “Well, there’s my mother.” Lionel would nod sympathetically, as if he understood mothers. He did not like his own mother at all. But his apparent sympathy was consoling to Jason. “I know,” he would say, and run across the street and deftly distribute the papers, all with extravagant gestures and whistlings. His bare red head was like a spot of fire in the murkiness, blithely bobbing along the wooden walks and up the porch steps.

  Jason never thought of Lionel as enigmatic, if he had even known the meaning of the word. Molly often thought of her brother as this, though she, too, as yet did not know the word itself. Bernard Garrity mistrusted him. “There’s more to the bucko than appears,” he would say. “These laughing men need to be watched.” But Kate was fond of Lionel; Jason would brighten openly at the sight of him, and she loved Lionel’s constant stream of jokes. She found something heartening in one who found life amusing and bearable. To her it meant a sort of reassuring nonchalance and strength. The Nolans were every bit as poor as the Garritys, if not more so, yet Lionel never complained, was never downhearted or resentful. Nor was he stupid and blandly accepting. He had insouciance.

  As for Joan, her face would become enchanting when Lionel appeared, her voice more musical, her smiles ready and waiting. She even acquired a dainty animation. Lionel taught her to play Old Maid and checkers, and showed her a genuine patience and a desire to please. He was not insensible to beauty, and Joan was all sweetness to him.

  Once Lionel had asked Jason, “What do you want most out of life?”

  Jason considered this for a long moment and then said, “Money.”

  “So do I.” Lionel rubbed his fingers together lovingly.

  “But how’re we going to get it?” asked Jason with some desperation.

  Then Lionel said a strange thing. “You’ll find a way, kid, you’ll find a way.” For once he did not laugh; he did not even smile. He had only stared long and hard at Jason, his yellowish eyes, not as clear as his sister’s, but disingenuous, very intent. Years later Jason was to say to himself, “He knew. He knew all the time.”

  There were two papers left in the wagon. One was for Bernard, as Jason knew. It was old Joe’s gift to him each day. The other one was for Jason’s favorite customer, Patrick Michael Mulligan, the owner of Mulligan’s Inn-Tavern, which even the most rigorous called “a nice decent place.” Though, as an Irishman, he was not accepted in what passed for Belleville society, he was respected and personally liked. He could be counted on for any charity, for he had a great kind heart and was genuinely affable and kind. His employees loved him, though he could be stern with incompetents and those who considered a job a place for social encounter. He demanded loyalty and gave it in full measure. The Inn-Tavern had thirty clean bedrooms, comfortable and warm, and visitors from out of town usually filled it to the last room. Patrick was a concerned host; he regarded his guests as valued friends. He was as round and comforting as a warm muffin fresh from one of his own ovens; he had a charming open countenance, like a summer rose, flashing blue eyes and thin blond hair and several chins, for he was a marvelous chef and ate immense servings of his own dishes. He was famous for his corned beef and cabbage—always fresh and well-spiced—his sauerbraten and potato pancakes, his homemade breads, his roast beef and stuffed geese, his cutlets and pork chops, his delectable fried chicken as crisp as a nut on the outside and soft and luscious within, his herby stews and pastries, his fine rich coffee. His dining room always immaculate, his waiters always obliging and polite.

  His tavern, attached to the building, was conducted with decorum, and no one criticized even the ladies who patronized it with their husbands or fathers. It was “respectable.” He had been born in Ireland; he knew how to make a pub the neighboring meeting place for friends. On Saturday night there was a fiddler and a piano for dancing. All was demure, invisibly regulated, and friendly. He was considered a rich man, and owed not a penny, having the Irishman’s aversion for banks and mortgages and debts.

  As he was a widower, with one child, no one thought to rebuke him for having a discreet mistress, a middle-aged widow of property, who was the very soul of prudence and good conduct, and of an excellent family with robust bank accounts. No one ever caught them in public impropriety. They addressed each other formally—no use of Christian names before others. Sometimes they soberly mentioned marriage, which never took place. Mrs. Garden did not intend to jeopardize her financial standing by marriage, for in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania a wife’s money still automatically belonged to her husband on wedlock. Besides, secretly, both had had disastrous marriages and did not desi
re another such, though they loved each other dearly.

  Mr. Mulligan’s daughter, Patricia Mary, had been born when Mr. Mulligan had been forty-four. She was now thirteen years old, and the heart of his life. She was never called Pat or Patsy, for she was a most aloof and dignified young lady, “a bit of a snob,” as her father would say with love. Tall, if too slender, she had a cultured presence for a girl so young, and was extremely—and consciously—graceful. She had a private tutor. Her father would boast that she could quote Shakespeare “by the armload” on the slightest provocation. She thought Patrick crude and was somewhat ashamed of the Inn-Tavern, believing it unworthy of her pretension. Her mother, she would say, had been the daughter of an Irish knight, a fiction which the doting father did not dispute. “All the Irish are the sons of kings,” he would say, winking and patting his very rotund belly.

  Patricia, contrary to her father’s convictions, was not very pretty, though she had great style even at her age. Her father bought her clothing in Philadelphia. She, had a cloak lined with white ermine, and her undergarments were of silk or the softest linen, handmade, and cascading with lace. She had a buggy of her own and a sleek mare. She rode about town with an uplifted profile and an expression of chronic disdain. She had fine straight light brown hair, always elaborately curled, a thin sharp face with a large nose, thin colorless lips, and her dead mother’s agate eyes. In her case, however, the eyes were cold and perpetually scornful.

  She took riding and dancing lessons, went to Philadelphia frequently to visit an aunt—also with pretensions, whose husband was a “damned Sassenagh,” according to Patrick—and elegant cousins who pretended to be English. She had no intentions of spending her life in Belleville. She loved nobody but herself, not even her fatuous father, whom she endured as a lady must endure her elders. She thought of herself, not as an Irish Catholic girl, but as an Episcopalian, her aunt having converted to that religion on her marriage. Patrick insisted on her attendance at Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation; on this he was very firm. Patricia “suffered.” She thought Father Sweeney proletarian and unlettered.

  She had few if any friends in Belleville. She had fawners, whom she tolerated. Had it not been for Patrick, no servants would have remained in the ugly if luxurious house he owned near the Inn-Tavern, for Patricia was pettish, overbearing, and extremely demanding. The maids hated her, but they loved Patrick.

  Jason had seen her a few times, in her polished buggy and sometimes at the door of her father’s house. It was inexplicable that this proud Irish boy, with his own dignity and sense of worth, should have fallen in love with this dim girl. Lionel had guessed this. He had laughed at Patricia, ridiculed her openly to Jason, rallied him about her—this had led to their first fistfight, which Jason had won, to his later contrition. Lionel no longer teased him about Patricia. Jason, he believed, had too much sense to be long infatuated with that “silly, homely, daffy girl.”

  Jason, to Patricia, did not exist. He was someone who brought papers occasionally, and delivered the exquisite laundry—her own—done by Jason’s mother. She read constantly. She dreamed of a Continental nobleman, or an English lord at least. When she saw Jason he was faceless, a lumbering cheap Irish nobody. Her father spoke of him fondly, but then Patrick spoke of almost everyone fondly and approvingly. That her father was a “grand darling of a man,” as Bernard called him, she did not know or care. Patrick’s brogue offended her; she had tried to correct him a few times, but had, to her dismay, encountered blue eyes suddenly hard and fierce, and had been frightened. Calculating, if not very intelligent, she knew when to retreat.

  Patrick had a houseman, whom Patricia called “our butler,” but Patrick was always first up and liked to receive the morning newspaper himself. So he appeared at the heavy double oaken doors of his house when he heard Jason pound up the porch stairs. “Top of the morning to you, boyo,” was his invariable greeting. He gave Jason his personal sunny smile, but his glance was keen and knowing.

  “Mr. Mulligan,” said Jason, and paused. Mr. Mulligan waited. Then Jason said, “I’m fourteen today, sir. You promised me a job.”

  “So I did, Jason.” Mr. Mulligan regarded him fondly. “When can you start?”

  “I want to finish school, in June. Ninth grade.”

  Mr. Mulligan nodded. “Good, then. In June, we’ll talk. Start you in the kitchen. Three dollars a week and all you can eat.” He saw Lionel racing across the street, still delivering the last papers. “Promised him one in June, too, when he’s fourteen. Make a good waiter, I think. Too flighty, perhaps. Time will tell.”

  “He’s not flighty, Mr. Mulligan. He’s got a lot of sense.”

  Patrick thrust out his lips. “Yes, I know. A bold lad. Bright. Best be careful, Jason.”

  “Why, sir?”

  Mr. Mulligan shrugged. “Not for me to judge, boyo. I’ve been wrong before.”

  “He’s my best friend, sir.”

  “And many’s the man who was betrayed by his best friend. Remember Judas, who betrayed our Lord.”

  Jason smiled. He thought Mr. Mulligan fanciful. He touched his cap and ran down the steps. It was snowing heavily now. Mr. Mulligan lingered in the doorway. Like many Irishmen, he was prescient, intuitive. He wished, for a moment, that Jason was his son. He closed the door and felt a vague melancholy. Then he was annoyed at himself. He reopened the door and called to Jason, fumbling in his pocket. Jason returned. Mr. Mulligan thrust a five-dollar gold piece in his hand, the first Jason had ever seen. Jason stared at it speechlessly.

  “Happy birthday, Jason,” said Mr. Mulligan, and closed the door in Jason’s face. He did not answer the long, angry pealing of the bell. He chuckled to himself. When the gold piece dropped into the mailbox Mr. Mulligan nodded.

  “He’ll do,” he said aloud.

  Jason told Lionel of this episode. His face was dark with outrage. Lionel stared at him, then burst out laughing, and gave no explanation for his merriment. He loved Jason, in his way, but thought him a bit of a fool. He filed this information away in his formidable memory. Lionel never forgot anything of significance. He wondered, for an instant, if Jason had displayed a prodigious cunning. Pride, to Lionel, was self-indulgence, or an astute self-serving.

  3

  The day was all white when Jason arrived home: sky, earth, even the bare trees. A vast cold chill now lay windless in the streets, and a deep silence, for Belleville had no streetcars. The stillness was disturbed only by an occasional rumbling wagon and horses or a hoarse cough from a hurrying workman. No children were abroad; it was too early yet for school, and housewives were busy in the kitchens. Lionel had returned to his home for breakfast and Jason heard his own footsteps crunching on the new snow. Mr. Carson hailed him as he went down the alley to the little Garrity house. “Got a spare newspaper?” he asked, leaning from his narrow rear doorway.

  “Only the one for my grandda,” he said. Mr. Carson grumbled and slammed his door in umbrage. Jason went into his house. Well, at last John was back from Mass. He was sitting in the warm cheerful kitchen at the table and was devouring a very big dish of hot porridge. He looked at Jason remotely with his small gray eyes. As usual, he appeared to be freshly scrubbed with harsh soap; he was excessively neat and his slight body was always rigid.

  He offered no thanks to his brother for having done his morning work. He gave off an air of preoccupation with unworldly things, which always irritated Bernard. “As if he is being served by invisible altar boys,” Bernard would say. Joan did not look at Jason either. She was busy buttering toast for John and smearing that toast with marmalade that Kate had made in the summer. Kate looked worriedly at the alarm clock on the shelf near the sink. “Jason, love, you’ll have to hurry with the laundry,” she said.

  “He’ll have a hot cup of tea first,” said Bernard, and deftly took the teapot from his granddaughter, who had been in the act of refilling John’s cup. She tossed her beautiful head and regarded Jason with the air of one resenting an intruder. “And
one of those pieces of toast, then, Joan,” added Bernard.

  Jason, standing, drank the cup of tea and glanced at the clock. He then remembered the parcel Mr. Maggiotti had given him and fished it from the huge pocket of “his grandfather’s coat. He gave it to Kate, who reddened a little and then opened it. It contained nearly half a pound of fat bacon, a slab of salt pork, a thick length of salami sausage, a slice of yellow cheese, and a chunk of butter. “Oh, how kind,” Kate murmured.

  John stared avidly at the bacon. “I think I’ll have a little of that,” he said. “If you please, Mum.”

  “It’s for Jason’s birthday,” said Bernard. “I know that.”

  “Let him have some,” said Jason, seeing his mother’s face. “A priest has to keep up his strength, you know.”

  Bernard laid down his spoon and regarded Jason sternly. “He’ll have none of that, Jason, unless you have some too.”

  “No time,” said Jason. Joan gave John a pleased smile.

  “Then,” said Bernard, “Jack has no time, either. He’ll take Joan to school himself this morning, in her chair, and not you, Jason.”

  “Da,” said Kate.

  Bernard was rarely abrupt with Kate, but he now said, “Quiet, Katie.” Jason, usually indifferent to injustice, smiled. “I think I’ll have a piece of my birthday cheese, Mum. I do find I’m hungry after all. Da, will you have some with me?”