Belly (16 page)

B
elly crept into the house like a naughty teenager. He tiptoed up the stairs and as he reached the top he saw the light go
out in Nora’s room. The door was still open a crack and he pushed it open a few inches more and the moonlight and streetlights
came streaming in the window and he could see how her eyes were wrenched shut.

“Nora,” he whispered. “Nora, honey, I have something I want to tell you.” But she did not open her eyes and he only said,
“Good night.”

B
ONNIE THE
Basset Hound came through the TV room carrying a big frame backpack, a bandanna on her head. Her clomping steps woke him
and she stood there in a tight tank top and he tried not to look. He tasted stale beer on his breath, his head pounding like
someone wanted setting free in there.

“Climbing Everest?” he asked her.

“Heading home today. Back to Ann.”

“Sorry to hear that.” He smiled.

“Is there anything you’d like me to tell Ann? Any message?”

“I’ve got nothing to say to that homewrecker.”

“Okay then.”

“Nothing.”

“I heard you.”

“Not one word.”

Bonnie put her pack down. “Why don’t you come with us to the bus station? Nora’s dropping me off.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“What else are you going to do?”

“There’s a point.”

Nora called from the kitchen, “Take a shower first, Dad,” and he thought he heard forgiveness in her voice. So he climbed
up the steps and peeled off his clothes—again he’d slept in his clothes—and he took his fifteen-second shower, a bodywide
ablution, and climbed to the attic and changed.

Bonnie waited for him at the back door, and then offered her hand to help him down the side porch steps. “I’m not a gimp,”
he said. “I just had my hips replaced.”

“I thought you could use a little help,” Bonnie said. “You seem worn out today.”

They leaned against the car, waiting for Nora and the boys, and Bonnie told him, “I talked to Ann this morning. She said to
tell you hello.”

“Sure she did.”

Bonnie cleared her throat. “She feels bad about everything that’s happened.”

“What’s happened? Nothing happened. Nothing that should matter to her.”

“She feels responsible.”

“For what?”

“About what happened to her sister.”

Belly shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“She told me that your daughter said something to her, a week before she died, something about how she wanted you all to be
closer, that she might not always be around to keep you together.”

Belly clenched his teeth and forced air out his mouth. He said, “Listen, you better stop talking about this. I mean it. Now.”

“Ann feels like that was some kind of portent. She should have kept a sharper eye on her little sister after she said that.
She feels like maybe it was her fault.”

Belly banged his fist on the top of the truck.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said.

“Maybe you could tell her it wasn’t her fault,” said Bonnie, so maddeningly calm.

Nora and the boys were watching them.

“What?” he said. “What is everybody looking at? Let’s go before this one misses her bus and we have to keep her another day.”

He climbed into the truck with the big boys in the wayback and the ladies up front; he sat back and snapped his mouth shut
and watched the town roll by and erased that last conversation from his memory bank. They passed Margie walking to work, and
Nora beeped at her. Margie waved.

“How you doing, Hebe?” Belly called out the window.

“Belly, Jesus,” Nora said.

“She doesn’t care. Jews are known for their sense of humor.”

Jimi giggled. Stevie Ray was sullen as usual. The baby fell instantly asleep.

They turned left on Broadway, past the demolition of the strip mall across from his old bar.

“That building is going to be beautiful,” Bonnie said.

Nora nodded. “I can’t wait. There’s going to be a Gap there.”

“Oh, for Chrissakes. Just what we need, another one of those chain stores. If that was here when you had your store you would
have gone under, you know that?”

“It did go under.”

“Even so,” Belly rolled down his window, lit a cigarette with his special red lighter, and kept his elbow propped on the half-open
glass.

“They have good sales,” said Nora.

They pulled into the Springway Diner parking lot. Bonnie hopped out and removed her pack from the wayback. Nora and Stevie
Ray and Jimi all climbed out; they formed a human Stonehenge around her.

“Thank you so much,” Bonnie said to Nora. “You were wonderful.”

“Anytime, come back anytime you want.”

Bonnie and Stevie Ray hugged and he said, “Bye, Aunt Bonnie.”

“Bye, honey.”

Jimi was holding on to her leg. “Let go, sweetie,” said Nora. “Aunt Bonnie has to get on the bus now.”

Bonnie tapped lightly on Belly’s half-open window. He rolled it down all the way and she put her hand on his shoulder and
said, “Later, Belly. Thanks for the chat.”

He said, “Okay.”

“You can have my room now,” she said.

“I’ll be getting my own room soon enough,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“I’ve got plans,” he said, and he could hear the emptiness of his claim. What landlord would take him now, with a felony on
his record, with no income to speak of, with his misdeeds published and trailing along behind him? He’d have to move to some
shack in Ballston Spa, some trailer park full of convicts like himself.

He pulled himself out of the back seat, walked up the handicapped ramp and into the diner. Coffee, he thought, I need coffee,
but as he stood at the counter, keeping his profile turned from the dining room in case Maybelline was working, he found no
change and no bills in his pockets, and he returned to the car.

Nora and Bonnie talked a bit, hugged, talked more, and hugged again, weaving him out of some pattern. He sat in the passenger
seat with the AC on and the door half open, and finally Nora got back in. Bonnie waved to them all and ducked inside to buy
her ticket.

When Nora turned on the car and rolled up the windows, Belly started in on the kids. “Aunt Bonnie?” he said. “Aunt Bonnie?
She’s your aunt now, after staying with you for a week?”

“She’s married to Aunt Ann,” said Jimi.

“That’s impossible. It’s illegal, for one thing.”

“Belly,” said Nora, backing out, “they’ve been together for over ten years. If you and Ann had been talking all that time
you would have known her.”

He covered his ears. “Don’t talk about that stuff in front of the boys,” he said.

“The boys know all about it.”

“It’s a sin, for God’s sake. It’s against the laws of the church. It’s against the laws of nature, for that matter.”

“We don’t care,” said Stevie Ray. “I know tons of gay people.”

“What gay people? Where?”

“All over,” he said. “I’m going into ninth grade, Grampa.”

Belly rolled down his window and lit a cigarette. The lighter was getting low on juice, and he had to run his thumb along
it three and then four times to get it to spark. “At least the dyke bitch is gone.”

“Don’t say that word in front of the children.”

They waited at the edge of the parking lot to turn left on South Broadway. A small black Hyundai shaking with Mariah Carey
music pulled around them. It was Maybelline, singing loudly and off-key, a long cigarette poking from between her fingers.

“Belly, there’s your whore,” said Nora.

“‘Bitch’ is wrong but that word’s okay?”

“‘Dyke,’ don’t say ‘dyke.’” Nora stopped the car in front of the ex-Dairy Queen. “You want to get out? You want to get out
and talk to your whore?”

“Keep going, and don’t call her that.”

“Maybelline’s a whore and Bonnie’s a bitch,” said Jimi.

“Enough,” said Nora.

“Whatever. I’m just glad she won’t be here to ruin the confirmation.”

“She might be back,” said Stevie Ray. They turned right on Spring Street and coasted down the hill, past the park, hovering
at the traffic light for just a minute. “Aunt Ann is supposed to come on Sunday.” He sat back in the seat. “She might.”

“Oh, that would be a sight. That would be something for the children to see. Their aunt and wifey making out on the couch.”

“Enough,” Nora said again.

They pulled in the driveway and Jimi asked, “Ma, can we go swimming now?”

“I don’t know, you guys. I’ve got a lot to do and Stevie Ray has confirmation homework for CCD.”

“I’ll take them,” said Belly.

“Yeah, Grampa’ll take us.”

“I don’t know.” They pushed the screen door open and she looked at Belly. “I don’t know.”

“What? I’ll take them. I can take them.”

“Okay, but you both have to wear water wings.”

Stevie Ray put his hands on his hips. “Mom, do I need to remind you that I’m nearly fourteen years old?”

“Okay, fine, you don’t have to but Jimi does.”

“I don’t care,” said Jimi. “I’ll wear them.”

Belly sat at the table while he waited for the boys to change, and Nora puttered around the kitchen. “You have to be careful
with them,” she said. “I’m giving you one more chance, just so I can have a moment to myself.”

“I can watch the kids,” he said. “I can help with that.”

“Thanks. I’ve got it under control.”

“But if sometime you want a babysitter or something you can just have me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Belly fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers. “I’m just saying, if you’re going to pay someone to watch them, it may as
well be me.”

Nora looked at him. “How much money do you have left?”

He stopped playing with the salt and pepper. “None,” he said.

“Jesus.”

“I know. It’s just temporary. Some money’s bound to come through.”

“From where?”

“They’re bound to call.”

“Shit,” Nora threw down a dishtowel. “Don’t you get it? They’re all gone. They’ve cleaned the place up.”

“They owe me,” he said.

She stood next to him with her hand on his shoulder, bent down to look directly into his eyes. “You act like you’re some kind
of hero for going to prison. But it’s your fault. You never should have gotten mixed up with them in the first place. You’ve
shamed the whole family and now you act like everyone’s indebted to you, like people are going to just call you up and offer
you money, offer you a job, as if you don’t have to work like the rest of the world.”

“You’re wrong,” he said. “Just wait. You’ll find out you’re wrong.” The boys stood in the arch that joined the kitchen to
the TV room and they watched Belly. “Let’s go,” he told them. “I thought you little wimps wanted to swim.” They moved through
the humidity trapped in the kitchen, escaped to the outside.

“Watch them,” Nora called after them. “You have to really watch them.”

S
tevie Ray walked five paces ahead of him, and Jimi stayed close to his side, mimicking Belly’s wide steps, avoiding the cracks
in the concrete. They turned right on Court Street and then right again on Phila, and Belly could almost hear the sharp clack
of his old dog Seaver’s paws as a soundtrack. This was their old route: him and the pup on their midday walk to retrieve the
late paper, the stillness of weekday afternoons when the whole world was at work and Belly was just waking, when Saratoga
belonged to him.

He pretended she was there, his sweet little mutt, he pretended these grandchildren were his girls, he pretended all four
of his daughters and his dog surrounded him like bodyguards as they approached Mrs. Radcliffe’s on the south side of the street.
Belly stood with his back to the house where once he’d lived with his whole family unscathed.

“That’s the house where Mom grew up,” said Jimi, tugging on Belly’s sleeve to turn him around.

“I know it,” said Belly. “I was there, too.”

Stevie Ray unlatched the Radcliffes’ rickety wooden gate and led Belly and Jimi inside. In the small yard a big above-ground
pool squatted, surrounded by a cheap pine deck. A middle-aged woman in a Day-Glo lounge chair lay with her tired stomach hanging
out of her bikini, a towel over her face. This couldn’t be, how could this be Mrs. Sylvia Radcliffe, the same woman who rescued
him from the street the morning after Nora’s wedding? Two teenage girls floated on tubes in the pool, holding magazines.

“Hi, Mrs. Radcliffe,” the boys called.

She took the towel off her face and he wished she hadn’t.

“Mr. O’Leary,” she said, beckoning him forward with a manicured hand. “It’s been years.”

The girls put their magazines down and glared at him.

“You’ll remember they call me Belly,” he said, making his way slowly up the steps to the deck, running his hands along his
hips.

“I know that,” said Mrs. Radcliffe. “Girls, say hello to Mr. O’Leary.”

They mumbled from the water.

The boys splashed into the pool, making the girls squeal. Jimi did not wear his water wings, and Belly didn’t make him.

“Feel free to go in,” she said. “Our pool is your pool.”

“I don’t swim.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Never?” She leaned over so the stretch marks on her breasts curved like waves.

“Never.”

She lay back again. “Me neither. I hate the water.”

“Me, too.”

“I’d take a dry shower if I could.”

He laughed. “Me, too.”

“Isn’t that funny?” she said. She glanced at the kids in the water. “You want a drinky?”

He remembered this woman, his across-the-street neighbor, as shy and private, as law-abiding and churchgoing and meek. It
was as if she’d blossomed in middle age, opened some secret compartment inside her that made her seem shiny and new, like
an irresistible toy.

“What you got?”

She pulled out a small plastic tub from below her chair. “Wine cooler?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m stuck in the eighties. I can’t help it. I miss them.”

“Me too.”

“The drugs.”