“That’s my father!” Richie sputters.
“Can you believe this is his life, Maisie?
He was awarded the goddamn Bronze Star.”
Everybody knows that Brian O’Neill
came back a hero
after he was injured in the war.
“He was one of the very first
sent to fight the Viet Cong,”
Richie says mournfully.
“Now he has night sweats.
He wakes up shouting!
My sister, Regina, gets freaked.”
Richie omits
that his dad goes on drunken rampages.
I say, “I know, Richie.
I just wish he didn’t take his demons
out on you.”
Together, we race to the lobby entrance,
push open the heavy door.
“Cocksuckers!” screams Mr. O’Neill
a few yards away from us.
Two men forcefully shove him
against a police car. Richie goes pale.
“Cocksuckers!” screams Mr. O’Neill again.
“Asshole!” shout the cops.
There’s scuffling. Yelps.
Mr. O’Neill’s being arrested.
Again.
“I had to call the police.
He was going after Regina,”
Richie explains all raspy.
“Well, you can’t have him
hurting your little sister.”
But I realize that to throw
your dad in jail overnight
must be humiliating.
PASTEL PAINTING
“It makes everything worse,”
he agrees.
Richie almost never discusses his mother,
Caitlyn O’Neill.
If she were a painting, she’d be pastel.
It’s like her outline is blurred.
She floats like a Chagall.
A beautiful Irish Chagall.
If I painted her,
I’d draw her in a dark pencil,
making heavy Braque outlines
so you could see her more clearly,
bring her back down to Earth,
down to her life here in the Bronx
so she could help her children.
Lustrous green eyes,
thin, elegant face.
A person you’d probably see every day
walking the streets of Dublin.
I’d make her into a formidable presence.
Someone who could hold the family together.
Because Richie’s dad is a dish-flinger,
a wall-puncher.
I wonder if they have any plates
left to eat off in that doomed apartment.
Or if there’s a draft in every room,
a wind blowing through every wounded wall.
LIKE FIRST COUSINS
Richie and I’ve known each other
since I was in kindergarten
and he was in third grade.
Back then, I didn’t pay much attention to him.
But lately, for the last two years,
we’re like cousins;
comparing notes about his dad
and my mom.
Sometimes we imagine
putting them in the ring
in Madison Square Garden
and selling tickets.
It would be a long fight,
but we think we’d make millions.
In the Bronx, we love a good battle
in the boxing ring, on TV, or in the streets.
Tomorrow or the next day,
Richie and I will sit together
and mumble our sad stories.
CARTOON FACE
“Will you be in school?” I ask.
“Of course,” says Richie.
“Senior year! I have to get into college.
Or I’ll end up like my dad.”
“You’ll never end up like him,” I say.
“He has all that body hair. And a mustache.”
I take a pencil out of my pocket
and sketch a cartoon
of Mr. O’Neill’s face.
“I can’t believe you can do that!”
says Richie.
I push the elevator button.
“See you tomorrow.”
He tugs my sleeve.
“Take this!” he says. “But don’t open it until later.”
He hands me a plain white envelope.
“What is it?”
“It’s nuthin’. Honestly. Nuthin’ at all.”
THUD
Upstairs, from the hallway,
I hear my brother, Davy,
eleven, playing the piano.
Well, it’s more like plinking.
He has mad love for George Gershwin.
He bangs out chords from
An American in Paris almost every night.
But it gets quiet.
He must be reading the composer’s bio.
He’s consumed by both Gershwin boys.
I love that they’re Jewish.
But Davy doesn’t care about that.
Every note speaks to him.
I hotfoot it inside
to dry the last few dinner dishes.
Davy gets up from the piano bench.
“I can’t wait to get out of this place,”
he says.
“Which place?” I ask. “This apartment?
The Bronx?”
“Yes,” he says, and trudges off to his room.
He has no desire to talk to me.
I sit back down at my sketch pad
and try to master rendering the tiny stitches
on the heels of my socks
when I hear something thud.
It comes from my parents’ bedroom.
Whatever it is,
it rolls and crashes.
I watch my pencil fall
in slow motion onto the floor.
I put my drawing pad down.
Their fights tighten my stomach,
make me grip my toes.
I forget to breathe.
I wonder: Maybe the police
should visit our apartment
after they finish with Mr. O’Neill.
I get my brother.
“Come on, Davy, let’s watch TV,” I say.
It’s how we cope on nights like this.
I turn it on, volume high.
Davy slumps down next to me, and we sink down
into the overstuffed turquoise couch,
wanting to disappear.
For this brief moment Davy and I
are on the same side of the family war.
KIDS VERSUS PARENTS
My mother doesn’t strike Davy.
Not once. Never. Ever.
He’s safe.
I get jealous of that.
I am aligned with my dad.
At least he’s not a slapper.
My grandma says I look like him.
I have my dad’s brio, his boldness,
and not in a good way.
I’m his favorite,
but being his favorite doesn’t help.
Lately, on fight nights,
instead of me and my dad
versus Davy and Judith,
it’s kids versus parents.
Now Davy grabs my filthy
black pencil–marked hand
as if we’re pals.
“It’s okay, kid,” I say.
We both know that’s a lie.
But what’s the big deal?
It won’t kill me
to be nice to him,
older-sister style.
A HIT MAN?
Through the wall, Dad’s hollering,
“You’re nuts, Judith!
You need professional help!”
My mother uses the bastard word
a trillion times.
I picture her staring at Dad with her one good eye.