A Season in Purgatory (8 page)

“I know he was in an accident.”

“He was driving eighty miles an hour. And being blown at the same time. You didn’t know that? Your precious Constant didn’t tell you that? See what I mean?”

“I didn’t know that. What happened to the girl?”

“Broke her neck.”

“Where is she?”

“In a wheelchair somewhere. She’s all taken care of, of course. Financially, I mean. Gerald’s awfully good about that. Paying off for their carelessnesses.”

I wanted to ask her questions, about Agnes, about Jerry, but I didn’t want to interrupt her.

“Constant is the one, of course, in whom all hopes are centered. Gerald adores him. Grace, too.”

“Why do you think all hopes are centered on Constant?” I asked.

“Jerry had that frightful accident and is a cripple. Smart, of course, but no public career now. Desmond married a maid for ten minutes and then became a doctor. Sandro might run for something, governor or state senate. Maureen could amount to something. She’s the smartest, but
she’s also a girl, and Gerald is not that advanced in his thinking. The other girls will all marry well—they’d better, if they know what’s good for them—but it’s Constant who’s going to be president of this country if Gerald has his way.”

“Good God,” I said. I had no idea that Gerald Bradley’s aspirations were that high.

“But your friend drinks too much.”

“Oh, that. You mean that night at the club? You heard about that? With Weegie?”

“Yes, I heard about that. But more. I have been married to two alcoholics. I recognize the signs. It’s the way he drinks. Notice it. He never sips. He gulps. One night at the club, he was always tapping his glass for the waiter to bring him another. Couldn’t wait. Couldn’t keep focused on the conversation until he had another full glass in front of him.”

“He was just having a good time.”

She took no notice of my defense of him. “One day he will be a drunk. You mark my words. Too much is expected of him. And all Gerald’s careful planning will go up in smoke.”

The train came into the Fairfield station. Her mind reverted to the career part of her life. She gathered her things. She put on her dark glasses. She waved out the window to a chauffeur standing on the platform. “That’s the Hardwicks’ chauffeur,” she said. We said good-bye. She got off.

Kitt was at the station to meet me, not Constant. I almost didn’t recognize her. The braces on her teeth had been replaced by a retainer. She no longer dressed like a child. She was becoming pretty. I noticed for the first time how much she resembled Constant. As always, she talked nonstop.

“I hope you’re not disappointed it’s me here to meet you and not Constant. He’s in one of his moods,” explained Kitt. She took off her glasses and placed them on top of her
head. It was a gesture she had copied from Maureen. “Friday night’s Weegie Somerset’s coming-out party, and he wasn’t invited. None of us were. Not that I would have been anyway, I’m too young. If you could have heard my father on the subject! That’s why they went to Florida, to get out of town. They’re at the Breakers. You’ve probably heard that. I’m so glad you could come. Constant couldn’t bear to be alone. There was only Fatty and Sis Malloy for company, and that wouldn’t do at all for Constant. At least he can bring you to the club. He brought Fatty to the club once, and he knew all the bartenders and waitresses from Bog Meadow, and shook hands with them. You can imagine how that went over.”

“What about you?”

“I’m off to Florida tomorrow. I’ve been to a sweet sixteen party in Spring Lake. One of the girls at the convent had it.”

We walked outside. Constant’s Porsche was double-parked. There was a ticket on the window.

“Oh, hell,” she said. She took the ticket off the windshield and tore it in half.

“You shouldn’t do that,” I said.

“My father has a man, Mr. Fuselli, Johnny Fuselli—you met him in Watch Hill, the one Maureen thought was handsome in a cheap sort of way? He takes care of tickets and things like that for us.”

“A gangster type in a red car?”

“The very one.”

“Won’t he need the pieces?”

“Not Johnny. That’s what he gets paid for. Hop in.”

“Are you old enough to drive?”

“No, but I will be soon.”

“Shouldn’t I drive?”

“Not on your life. This is Constant’s new Porsche, and
it’s my only chance to drive it. Now, where the hell are my glasses?” She looked in her bag.

“They’re on top of your head,” I said.

She roared with laughter. “I’d love a cigarette,” she said.

For a novice Kitt handled the car very well. “Look at that creep, will you?” she said, honking the horn at a slow driver. She cleared the busy section by the railroad station and we headed west out Asylum Avenue for the drive toward Scarborough Hill. Kitt never stopped talking.

“Doesn’t your family ever want you?” she asked.

“My family is one maiden aunt who talks about missionaries all the time,” I replied.

“Are you Constant’s ott?” asked Kitt.

“I don’t know what an ott is,” I answered.

“Someone who’s always available.”

I blushed. I was always available.

“My mother has otts. They’re people who are useful and do convenient things. Mother has otts who write the place cards for her but who aren’t asked to the party and pretend they don’t mind. She’d a godmother to their children but she wouldn’t dream of having them be godmother to any of hers. It’s an unequal friendship.”

“Are you asking me if that’s what I am?”

“Yes.”

“I hope not.”

“Don’t let him boss you around. He has the tendency to boss.”

“Don’t go too fast.”

“I will if I want to.”

She increased her speed as we got closer to the tree-lined streets of the west side of the city.

“Great excitement. Sandro’s running for Congress. I bet you didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t.”

“Congressman Lopez died in office, and Sandro’s going to run for the rest of his term.”

“Isn’t he awfully young?”

“He’s almost twenty-six. Pa doesn’t think he’s too young. Pa says he has charisma.”

“Is he qualified?”

“The Catholics will all vote for him. Pa will see to that.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Winning is all that matters. Family motto. We all used to think my brother Desmond would be the first to run for office. After Jerry’s accident. But he wanted to be a doctor, and then he married a maid. Did you know that?”

“I think I may have heard something about it.”

“Oh, the to-do over that. Ma’s tears. Pa’s rage. The cardinal placating. Poor Rosleen. She didn’t know what hit her. She was quite pretty, but there was no way she would do at all. My father said to Desmond, ‘You sleep with girls like that. You don’t marry them.’ Poor Bridey, the cook, I felt so sorry for Bridey. She was Bridey’s second cousin, or in-law, or something, I can never keep all Bridey’s relations straight. We’re all meant to marry well, you know. Constant is always supposed to bring home boys from Milford for Mary Pat and me to meet, but you’re the only one he’s ever brought.”

I couldn’t help but feel that I was somewhat of a disappointment in that department.

“Of course, all my friends at the convent are mad about Constant. But whenever I bring any of them home, he doesn’t even look at them. He just likes girls like Weegie Somerset. You wait and see. He’ll marry a Protestant when the time comes. Oh, and the to-do about that when it happens, if he doesn’t marry a Catholic.”

“I’ve never heard a family talk about being Catholic as much as your family does.”

“But you’re Catholic.”

“But we didn’t talk about it all the time. I think you’re driving too fast.”

“I can’t imagine what happened between Constant and Weegie. Something. I mean, they didn’t invite any of us to the party, and Mr. Somerset owes my father a lot of money. My father will get even with Mr. Somerset. My father always gets even. They say that’s Irish, getting even.”

“Slow down, Kitt.”

“Oh. You’re right. There’s a policeman behind us. Red light flashing.”

“You’d better pull over. What about the license?”

“Just keep quiet and let me do the talking.”

It was an un-Christmas Christmas in the Bradley mansion. There were wreaths on the doors and electrified candles in the windows, but there was no Christmas tree. The house, usually bustling with noise from so many occupants, seemed eerily quiet. Constant’s presents had been left on the bench in the hall beneath the stairway, as well as two for me, one from Grace and one from Kitt, but he exhibited no curiosity about them in the days before Christmas. By then I was used to his spoiledness, his sullenness, his occasional bad temper, especially when he drank, but I was still in his thrall, and overlooked such deficiencies, as they were rarely directed toward me. When he wasn’t the absolute center of attention, he was restless. He whistled little tunes under his breath, or paced, or tapped his foot incessantly, or snapped his fingers, or cracked his knuckles, or beat time to a song on the radio.

“You’re not relaxing to be around,” Kitt said to him before she left for Florida.

Constant looked up, surprised, as if she had discovered something secret in him.

Fearing she had upset him, she mocked herself. “You
lack my inner peace,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her and assuming an expression of nunlike humility.

“Fuck you,” he replied, good-naturedly. They both roared with laughter.

Bridey, the cook, wanted to serve us our meals in the dining room, with candles and flowers, but Constant said he preferred to eat on tables in front of the television set. A few times Fatty and Sis Malloy came by for lunch or dinner. Their lives were pointedly different from the Bradley kind of life, and they seemed pathetically grateful to be included in anything at the grand house in Scarborough Hill. Fatty worshipped Constant and seemed not to mind when Constant teased him unmercifully.

“I ran for the car as soon as I got your call,” said Fatty.

“The last time Fatty ran was when he missed the ice cream truck,” Constant said to me.

“I think you hurt his feelings,” I said later to Constant.

“Fatty’s used to having his feelings hurt. He knows we all love him,” said Constant.

On the day of the night of Weegie Somerset’s dance, catering and florist trucks began arriving early in the morning at the great gray stone house next door to the Bradleys’. Delivery men carrying armloads of pink roses scurried into the house. Several hundred gold ballroom chairs were stacked in the driveway in front of the house while the trucks were being unloaded. Constant stood in the window of his parents’ bedroom and watched the activity. In the late morning he had a long talk on the telephone with his father in Florida. When he came back into the room, he said, “Come on. You’ve got work to do.”

“What?”

“Every year at Christmas my father gives turkeys and food packages and oranges to the poor of the city, and shoes to the little children. They traipse us down there every year,
my brothers and sisters and me, all dressed up in our best clothes, and we hand out the stuff, and my father makes a speech, and my mother sits there in her mink coat like the queen, and the priests thank everybody. This year, my father says, I have to do it, and he says that you have to write me something to say.”

“Like what? I wouldn’t know what to write,” I said.

“Yes, you do. Christmas and peace and giving and loving and family, and all that shit. My father said anything about family always gets them. Work up a tear. Nothing long. Just a few paragraphs. You know how to do it. Oh, and get something in about Sandro running for Congress.”

“Shouldn’t he be here, preparing for his campaign?”

“He will be. After Florida. Then full steam ahead. Pa will call in the heavy artillery. They all owe him favors, all those politicians.”

Fatty and Sis went with us to the auditorium of the Malachy Bradley School, named for Gerald’s father, in the section of the city called Bog Meadow. There were hundreds of bags of groceries, and turkeys, and crates of oranges, and boxes of children’s shoes. Fatty and Sis and the priests and nuns lined up the people and passed out the goods, but most of them wanted to receive their packages and their turkeys directly from the handsome young Bradley boy, so smartly dressed in his blue blazer and gray flannels from J. Press. A photographer appeared, and a cameraman from the local television station.

“I see a resemblance in you to your grandfather,” an old woman said to him. “I’m Agnes O’Toole. Your grandfather Malloy, God rest his soul, lived right near us over on Front Street when they came over from the old country. God bless you, Constant. We’re grateful to your wonderful family.”

“Thank you, Mrs. O’Toole,” said Constant, smiling and friendly. At times like that, he was condescendingly good-natured
to his inferiors, and they, in turn, were enchanted. “Certainly, I’ve heard my mother speak of you and your family.”

“My late husband, Francis X. Moriarity, worked for your grandfather Bradley in the butcher shop over on Sisson Avenue,” said another old woman. “A fine man he was.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Moriarity. My grandfather always had a great affection for that shop on Sisson Avenue,” said Constant.

“God bless you, Constant,” said person after person, receiving his packages.

Constant basked in their praise and admiration. He became, if anything, handsomer, and more loquacious than he had been since the Labor Day dance at the beach club in Watch Hill. His spoiledness, his sullenness, vanished. All morose thoughts of Weegie Somerset evaporated, at least for then. He found a personal thing to say to each person to whom he spoke.

“What’s your name?” he asked a little girl.

“Maureen,” she answered.

“Why, I have a sister called Maureen,” he said, picking her up and talking to her for several minutes. He faced her around so that the cameraman and photographer could get her picture. “Fatty, give me one of those Hershey bars for young Miss Maureen here.”

When he stepped to the microphone, he was in full possession of himself. “I am so sorry my father and mother could not be here this year to greet each of you personally, but they have had to forgo a Connecticut Christmas this year. Business has taken my father to Florida. I talked to him this morning, and he said to tell everyone he will be back here handing out the turkeys himself next Christmas. My mother, too, sends her love and best wishes to all. Our parents are bringing us up to play some part, to get involved in
politics and public service. My brother Sandro, as you probably know, is running for the rest of the late Congressman Lopez’s term. And we expect you all at the polls.”