Belly (12 page)

He moved his hips up the one wide flight of stairs to an office with drop ceilings where a secretary sat behind a too-tall
desk. She had nice eyes but her hair was too big.

“Margie Kessel here?”

“Your name?” she asked, keeping her eyes trained on a messy pile of papers.

“Belly O’Leary.” She looked up then, took him in. He knew she was putting a face to the name in the headlines. He ran his
hands through his hair before he folded his arms across his chest.

“I’ll tell her you’re here. Have a seat.”

He lowered himself into a hard plastic chair, picked up a lone copy of
National Geographic
dated 1983. Spit and Spat, the statues in Congress Park, were on the cover, young children playing in the pool between them.

“This is a strange surprise,” said Margie from down the dark hallway. She motioned for him to come toward her. “Step into
my office.”

He nodded, raised himself from the seat, and followed her like a pet. Her office was a small room with very high ceilings
and one huge window sealed shut. It was covered in papers, blueprints, odd little maps with tiny colored plots. “What a mess,”
he said. “What’s with the temperature?”

“Hot outside, hot inside,” she said. “AC’s broken in here. Sit down.” Her armpits had half-moons of sweat stains beneath them.

He pulled a chair up to the desk and sank into it. The air-conditioning hummed overhead, dripping Freon into an old rusty
bucket.

“You seem to have some trouble getting around,” she said.

“New hips.”

“When’d you get those?”

“Prison,” he said.

“Great. That’s just what I want my tax dollars to pay for. New hips for old criminals.”

“Do you have to always start a fight?” he asked.

“Do you?”

He looked at his lap. “Bill Fisk here anymore?”

“Not for ages. Can’t you tell? It even smells better in here.”

“Give me a break.”

“This is a much better place to work without the old Republican guard in place. I know they were your friends, but it was
very hard to get anything done.”

He nodded. Okay, he thought, they’re really gone. All of his old friends had vacated the premises, the plan. He was alone
with no friends at City Hall now, no one downtown to save him.

“Do you mind telling me what the hell you’re doing here?” she asked.

He took a deep breath. “Listen.” He pressed his hands against the air in a gesture of stopping. “I thought you might help
me get a job.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I mean, you were talking about the Small Business Association and everything, and maybe there’s some job for me. I had
a bar for thirty years, maybe I can kill the corporate takeover, make sure the Golden Grill doesn’t close up shop.”

“Have you been down Phila Street, Belly? The Golden Grill is gone. It’s a café.”

“Another one?”

“Listen, you’re just in time for the reign of the big-box shop. Wal-Mart’s the biggest corporation in America and one just
opened up by the old mall.”

“I didn’t know there was a new mall.”

“My advice to you, Belly, is to go out there and get yourself a job at the Wal-Mart, in the liquor section or something, if
they have one. They’re hiring a couple hundred people.”

“That’s rich.”

“Listen, the economy was really good until about two weeks ago, so a million of these giant stores moved in over the last
couple of years, thanks to a nice tax break courtesy of the governor. We got Target, Lowe’s, Home Depot, whatever you like.
Those are the jobs, unless you want to work at Ball or GE or Quad Graphics and those are heavy union and all the guys your
age are already collecting their pensions.” Margie blew her nose. “You brought the rain with you when you came.”

Belly covered his mouth with his hands. He said, “Fuck.”

“Why don’t you go work for Gene? He’s got that thing he does with the wooden things.”

“Pallets.”

“That’s right. The pallet company. Nora will know all the details.” Margie winked at him.

“What’s that mean?”

Margie looked at her hands, stretched her fingers, and twisted her wedding ring.

“Haven’t you seen him? He’s at Nora’s house every day.” She coughed. “Maybe he’s just steering clear for your return.”

“How do you know?”

“Everybody knows.”

“Everybody knows what?”

“About Nora and Gene.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, though he knew, and he didn’t want to know.

“Listen, it’s not my place to talk about it. It’s Nora’s affair.”

“What the hell do you mean by affair?”

“Don’t give yourself a heart attack, Belly. You probably won’t get the government to pay the medical bills now.”

He sank back in his seat. “I’m so thirsty,” he said.

“Belly, thanks for stopping by. I have to work now.”

He tugged at the collar of his shirt. “It’s so hot in here.”

“It’s an old building,” she said, and she placed a hand on his shoulder as he rose.

They stood there for a moment. He knew she was waiting for him to leave, and he looked at his shoes, he looked at the fluorescent
greenish light flickering in the ceiling, he looked at the stained, gray, corporate carpet on the floor, and still he did
not move.

“Is there something else?” she asked.

He kept his eyes trained on the condensation forming on the windowpanes as he asked her, “Can you sign this form?”

“What is it?”

“I have to show my parole officer I was looking for a job.”

“Oh, Jesus,” she said, but she wrote her initials in the appropriate place on the form.

“Listen, Belly. Good luck. I mean it.”

He said, “Thanks,” and walked down the hot, dark hallway, out the building into the blazing sun, and he did not know which
direction to walk. He felt like a man with no zip code as he headed home to his daughter’s house.

He tried to erase from his memory any image of what had just happened, tried to pluck it right out. Instead he recalled, it
must have been in 1980-something, how Eliza had started disappearing for days at a time. Not that Belly noticed. But Myrna
told him one morning when he came back from the bar that Eliza was spending nights at a house two blocks south, at the home
of her friend Margie. They were vegetarians, Myrna said, with both fascination and contempt. They were hippies. Belly didn’t
know why she was telling him: was he supposed to intervene somehow? Was he supposed to go over there and drag her home? Let
them feed her, he thought, and house her, too. Less money for us.

One Sunday morning in their old house on Phila Street the doorbell rang. Usually this was a bad sign: even the Jehovah’s Witnesses
knew to come to the back door and knock hard. Myrna was passed out on the couch—nine o’clock on a Saturday morning was not
the O’Leary family’s best time—and Belly opened the door in his pajamas to find a woman in a dashiki and a man in a T-shirt
that read
Thank you for pot smoking.

Belly said, “What?” and the woman held out a loaf of homemade bread.

“We’re Henry’s parents,” they said.

“Who?”

“Henry. Your daughter’s sweetheart?”

“Which daughter?” Belly asked. He crossed his arms and wondered if his third daughter had gone and got herself a boy without
telling him.

The woman was still holding the bread.

The man said, “Your daughter Eliza,” cocking his head to the right.

“It’s banana bread,” the woman said.

Myrna mumbled “What the hell’s going on?” from the couch, and then she raised herself and wafted over to the door like a ghost
and managed to smooth down her hair and paste a smile on her face. What was it about women that made them instantly able to
turn from drooling drunk to gracious hostess?

Myrna invited them in, and they ate banana bread, and later Myrna fixed apple martinis in the old silver shaker that had belonged
to his father and they sat and talked like real couples with real families. The Kessels had driven through Saratoga on their
way back from Canada, they said, where they’d hidden from Vietnam, part of the caravan of carpetbaggers who took a detour
and were so charmed by the town they never left. There were hordes of them then, twenty-five, thirty years before, kids Belly’s
own age but living on a different planet entirely, young parents who let their children run around in nothing but diapers,
outside where everyone could see them. Kids who opened up hippie restaurants that served tasteless mush and wouldn’t respect
the food chain.

That whole day faded away: the two couples, the banana bread, the drinks, a game of Twister (Belly just observed while Myrna
tangled herself up with the neighbors), the swapping of family histories, some polite comparison of the children’s grades.
Belly watched in awe as his wife rotated her whole personality to accommodate these visitors from another world.

The doorbell rang again, and this time when Myrna stumbled to the door, a chubby girl with a cyclone of brown hair stood there
with her arms crossed above her wide stomach. She said, “Tell my parents it’s lunchtime,” and turned around, stepped off the
porch, and fell like a truck on the pavement, spraining her ankle.

He’d watched the Kessels spring into action, rescue their daughter Margie from the sidewalk and help her home, one parent
on each side boosting her up, and a horrible sting of guilt circulated through him, so much guilt and so little alcohol left
in the house, and when night came and the booze wore off completely he found himself in a rage, on a rampage, swinging his
arms around like a machete until every woman but one in his house received a welt.

The Kessels and the other hippie types were gone, or hardened now into solid citizens, just their children left to cling to
scraps of worn convictions like faded tie-dyed T-shirts. Margie was in charge of the town, somehow, and Eliza had married
Margie’s boring brother who couldn’t make her happy. This was not how he meant it to be, when he was first married and first
running the bar, when, for a few months at least, he envisioned a life with a pretty wife and a couple of kids in the town
that he loved.

Everything that happened happened long ago, twenty pounds ago, two girlfriends ago, a hundred thousand gray hairs ago, and
not one thing about that life had stuck. No more wife, no more mistress, no more bar, no more books. Since his third daughter
left him, he hadn’t been able to hold on to one thing, not one semiprecious thing could he retain.

H
ow’d the job search go?” Nora leaned against the doorjamb with the baby on her hip. The boys were playing Grand Theft Auto
and Belly had reserved the right to play the winner, but what he really wanted was to nap.

“You think these boys will ever let me sleep?”

“You can’t sleep in the middle of the day, Belly, you have to get a job.”

He shifted himself on the couch. “Did I get any calls?”

“Are you expecting any?”

“I don’t know.” Jimi’s guy died on the TV screen, drowning in bad-luck theme song.

“Well? The job?”

“Not good,” he said to Nora. “Nothing.”

“Well, it’s pallets for you, then.” He shook his head. She sat down next to him on the couch and put the baby between them.
King flapped his arms like a bird. “I know it’s only the third day, but you can’t sit around here playing video games. You’ve
got to do something.”

He nodded.

“Well, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“To Gene’s. He said for you to come in this afternoon.”

“Fuck,” Belly said.

“I’ll pick you up in a few hours.”

Belly planted his feet in the plush, stained carpet.

“It’s only for a few hours,” she said. “What else are you going to do?”

He thought of the Piels in the fridge and the Jameson’s and tequila in the cabinet, and those sounded like wonderful friends
to spend an afternoon with, but he said, “Let’s go.”

T
he pallet company was out by Quad Graphics, in the industrial part of town that had not yet been claimed and subdivided by
developers. Just a little low building with big, mean, yellow machines out front moving stacks of wooden planks from one pile
to another, and a hand-painted sign that read “JG Pallets.”

“Who’s the J?” Belly asked.

“The boss,” said Nora.

“I thought Gene was the boss.”

“He is. Sort of.”

She put the car in park, left the motor running, but Belly just sat there. He sat there sober.

“Off you go,” said Nora.

“Give me a minute.”

“Don’t be late on your first day.”

“It’s not my first day.”

“It is. I told Gene you’d come in at one p.m. and it’s already five after.”

“I’m an old man,” he said. “Give a little respect, would you?”

“Right.”

Belly lit a cigarette he’d stolen from Nora, cupping the filter in his hand as if he could keep her from seeing.

“Get out of the car,” Nora said. “Come on.”

“Let me finish this.”

“No,” she said, and she got out, walked around to his side, and opened the door. A group of men milling in front turned to
look at them.

“Nora, don’t make a scene.”

“Out,” she said.

“Fine.” He stabbed the cigarette out and saved the unburned part in his pocket. His right hip screamed at him as he climbed
out, an ache right above the metal joint. But he didn’t say anything. He tried to let his stoicism kick in.

He didn’t say good-bye to Nora, just walked toward the front door, looked at the men, and said, “Women, what’re you gonna
do?” Then he wondered if they would think she was his girl, his pregnant girlfriend instead of his daughter. Even a big girl
like Nora would give him some points, being so much younger than him.

Men sat at picnic tables, hard hats and safety goggles lying next to their open lunchboxes, and Belly thought he should say
something else to them, some old male salute, some regular way of interacting that he must have known before he was surrounded
by men, day and night of men, not one of whom you could trust, before he stopped shaking hands or slapping a fellow on the
back, all locker-room interaction forbidden in prison because it led to things unspeakable. He said nothing. He walked past
them and said nothing.