Broken (16 page)

On the cold, dark, December evening, the future of Warrenvale looked bleak. When production at the mill had been high, the glare of the foundry fires painted the horizon with a yellow-orange glow. Now production was pitifully low, and only a few furnaces lit up the sky. Two smokestacks, however, could still emit enough smoke to taint the air at the top of Vickroy Street hill.

Anna Mae, bundled in her winter coat, sat on the front steps waiting for Angelo to drive her to work at The Pizza Parlor. With her hands shoved deep into her pockets, she thought about the mills. As much as people once hated the dirt and stench, the steel industry was what kept the valley alive. Now it was dying. Angelo’s father, like thousands of others, had been laid off.

Anna Mae’s family struggled along with the rest of the people in the valley. Sarah worked hard cleaning houses, earning only ten dollars a day. Anna Mae added to that from her pizza parlor job, keeping little for herself. Even Davie contributed a few fists-full of change from his paper route. Without Walter’s paycheck, they did what they could to keep a roof over their heads. Many mill workers had lost their homes.

She gazed up into the starless sky. Everything in the world was all wrong.

Headlights climbed up and over the hill and she stood up. Holding the porch railing at the top of the steps, she stretched to see if it was Angelo’s old white Mazda. But it was a bigger, darker car. She watched, curious as the car stopped in front of the house and the headlights went out. On the street side, the driver’s door opened. It seemed as though someone was struggling to get out. When a male figure finally stood up, she could see his face over the car roof, but she didn’t recognize him. She watched him make his way around the car. The man was on crutches. He seemed unsure of himself as he worked his way to the curb.

“JD!”

“In person!” he said smiling up at her from the sidewalk.

She was horrified. His left pant leg was pinned up above the knee. “Oh my God,” she said hurrying down the steps. Now she was looking up at him. “What happened?”

“Gooks,” he said. “They gave me my ticket home.”

The white Mazda pulled up behind JD’s car and Angelo got out. He looked back and forth between the two standing on the sidewalk.

“You remember JD,” said Anna Mae.

“Yeah. I do—I think,” said Angelo. “You were in Vietnam.”

“Yeah,” said JD shifting on his crutches.

Angelo looked at the pinned up pant leg. “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey! It’s the breaks. Could be dead, y’ know.”

“How long have you been back?” Anna Mae asked.

“A few weeks. I heard about Stanley. Tough break. How’s your family doing?”

“We’re managing,” Anna Mae said. “Walter’s in jail.”

“So I heard.” He suppressed a grin. “I’m glad you were out here. I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about Stanley. But I forgot about the steps. I’m not good with steps except for falling down them.”

Anna Mae and Angelo exchanged anxious glances but JD just laughed. He hadn’t lost his sense of humor. “Have you heard anything from George Siminoski?”

“Nothing,” said Angelo. “The guy’s a first class bastard!”

“A few times a week,” said Anna Mae trying to hide the fact that she was freezing, “I help Angelo’s mother at George’s parents’ home. Irene Siminoski’s heart is so bad she can’t do anything. And his father—those horrible scars! He just sits in his chair with the lights out watching television.”

JD leaned against the car, taking his weight off the crutches. “Didn’t he get some restitution from the mill? Something for facial reconstruction?”

“Yeah,” said Angelo. “And Dobie put the money toward George’s education. Personally, I think Dobie has gone a little crazy. George doesn’t give a shit about his family. He never comes home.”

“What a shame,” said JD. “Some people just don’t appreciate anything. They should send George to Vietnam and give him a taste of reality.”

Anna Mae pulled her collar up, trying to warm her neck. “I have to go. I work at The Pizza Parlor,” she said. “I’m sure Sarah would love to see you. Why don’t you stop by tomorrow around two? We’ll help you up the steps.”

JD looked down at the space where his leg should have been.

“Okay,” he said softly.

Angelo put his hand on JD’s shoulder. “Hey, buddy. We’re here if you need us.”

JD nodded, then turned awkwardly on his crutches and maneuvered his way back to his car. Anna Mae watched him struggle.
It’s true,
she thought.
Everything in the world is all wrong.

July 16, 1969

Walter had been a resident at Pennsylvania’s Western Penitentiary for almost eleven months now. Every Wednesday, Sarah went to visit him. On a busy corner in Warrenvale, she would wait for the bus with her head down, avoiding eye contact, convinced that everyone was looking at her—from store windows—from passing cars—as they walked by—looking at her, condemning her, pitying her because her husband was in prison. She was mortified, disgraced.

But she went anyway. She rode the bus into the sordid side of town and walked down a rutted concrete sidewalk into the ancient redbrick building. She passed through the metal detector in a line of people that, at first, made her so uneasy she was afraid to look at them. It had taken her months to accept the weekly insult of guards riffling through the personal items in her purse, and even longer to live with the occasional humiliation of being frisked. Now she was used to the whole process. The ordeal was routine.

It was a sweltering Wednesday in mid-July. Walter and Sarah were fortunate to have found a picnic table shaded by the tall brick watchtower at the corner of the prison yard. Many of the inmates had chosen to visit with their families in the recreation room. It wasn’t any cooler inside, but at least it was out of the sun.

“So he didn’t come,” said Walter, taking a long drag on his cigarette and letting the smoke curl languidly upward.

Sarah shook her head. Walter was no longer the imposing figure that once dominated the Lipinski household. He seemed so much smaller against the backdrop of fellow inmates and uniformed guards. The lines in his face were more prominent and his hair was more gray than black.

Sarah had changed too. For almost a year, she had been in charge of her own life. She had acquired some self-confidence.

“You know that David’s wrapped up in the space program,” said Sarah. “And today they’ll be launching a rocket to the moon. It won’t land for days, but this is so important to David he can’t pull himself away from the TV long enough to go to the bathroom.”

“So he wets his pants,” Walter said dryly.

Sarah frowned. She was getting tired of Walter’s cutting remarks. Didn’t he realize how hard it was for her to visit every week?

“And the bitch wouldn’t come either?” Walter snapped. “She’s watching that stupid rocket too? I thought she hated all that junk.”

“Anna Mae is not a bitch! She’s a very sweet young lady.”

“So is the very sweet young lady glued to the boob-tube too?” he asked, his voice drenched in sarcasm.

“They’re going to the moon, for God’s sake.” Sarah was beginning to raise her voice. “The whole world is watching!”

Walter glared at her as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. He then lit a second cigarette from the burning stub of the first.

“They still won’t let you have your lighter?” she asked.

“How many times are you going to ask me that same stupid question? No lighters, Sarah. No lighters, no matches, no nail files, no knives, no forks, no guns, no shoehorns, no automatic weapons, no nothing. Understand? Don’t ask me again!”

Sarah started to say that she was sorry. Walter cut her short. “This place is a shit-hole! You and those kids think it’s some kind of picnic in here. I wrote David a letter, ya’ know. I fuckin’ apologized! And I wrote the bitch—the sweet young lady—a letter too. They can’t be bothered to answer, much less visit. I don’t care about Anna Mae. But I want to see my son. Do you hear me?!”

Sarah shifted on the bench. It was so hot her dress was sticking to her skin. She wanted to get up and pull it away from her body but she was too self-conscious.

A tall, black inmate with arms as big around as Sarah’s thigh stopped by the table and took Walter’s cigarette out of his hand without asking. Then he picked up Walter’s pack of Chesterfields and took four more. He put three into his pocket. Using the cigarette that was already lit, he fired up the fourth, then handed the original back to Walter.

“This your old lady?” he asked, flashing a row of perfect white teeth.

Walter grunted. “Yes.”

“You’re lucky! That mother-fuckin’ whore-o mine ain’t been here fo’ months.”

Sarah cringed at the language as she watched the inmate swagger off. Then she turned back to Walter. “You just let him take your cigarettes? And you don’t say anything?”

A vein pulsated on Walter’s temple and his jaw muscles tightened. He said through clenched teeth, “Shut up, woman! You just get the hell home and you tell David that if he ain’t here next week I’ll...”

“You’ll what, Walter? You’ll hit him? Is that what you think you can do? Beat him up again? In here?”

Walter’s cigarette had burned down so far he singed his finger while lighting another. “Don’t test me,” he threatened.

Sarah stood up and pulled her sweaty dress away from her body. Slowly, she sat back down and looked her husband straight in the eyes. “Ya know what? Sooner or later there’s going to be a parole hearing. And when there is, they’ll want me to be there. And they’ll probably ask me if I think you have changed. They’ll want to know if I think you’re still a threat to the family. They’ll ask me, Walter. They’ll want my opinion. They might even want David and Anna Mae to come.”

Sarah saw the blood drain from her husband’s face and for a split second she wondered if she had gone too far. She knew that if Walter became enraged he might just be crazy enough to attack her right there in the prison yard. She looked down at the table, wondering how she could reverse the effects of what she had just said.

“You’re right, Sarah.”

Sarah looked up.

Walter looked straight into her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

She became wary.

“It’s just that it’s so hard to be here. I want to see my family.”

She wondered if he was sincere.

“I want the chance to make things right.” He leaned across the picnic table and kissed her on the cheek.

A whistle shrilled and a guard was on them in a flash. “Go near her again and you won’t have any visitors for a year!”

Now almost everyone in the yard was looking at them. If they looked close enough, they would see that Sarah was smiling.

July 20, 1969

Four days later.

Sunday was one of the busiest days at The Pizza Parlor. With all the ovens burning at full blast, the kitchen was as hot as Hades. Fortunately, Anna Mae was working out front in the air-conditioning.

“Two large with double cheese and pepperoni,” said the scrawny teenage boy at the counter.

“And what would you like to drink?” Anna Mae asked, her eyes scanning a line of customers that almost reached to the door.

The boy who had just placed the order, looked across the room where the rest of his noisy group had crammed themselves into a booth. “You guys want Pepsi?” he called out.

The reply was in unison. “What?”

“Pepsi!” he shouted.

They all nodded.

Anna Mae slid the order slip through the slot into the kitchen, iced a row of glasses, filled them with Pepsi, and arranged the drinks on a tray. As she carried the tray to the counter, she saw Joey Barns elbowing his way to the front of the line, ignoring the threats of those who thought he was pushing to place an order.

He waved his arm, calling out to Anna Mae, “I have to talk to you!”

“Not now,” she mouthed over the clamor of customers.

His face dropped in disappointment as he looked around for a place to sit. Finding none, he leaned against the wall, took a slip of paper out of his pocket, studied it, then put it back.

She looked at the clock. It was 3:42. Her replacement, Jenny, should have arrived twenty minutes ago. At 3:59, Jenny showed up stumbling over a barrage of excuses. Together they waited on the last of the customers.

Exhausted and irritated, Anna Mae rolled her apron into a ball, tossed it in the laundry bin, and walked over to Joey. A booth had emptied so they sat down.

Bursting with excitement, Joey held up the slip of paper. “I got it!”

Anna Mae felt her heart stop. She knew what was on that paper.

He held it up, waving it. “I came as soon as she gave it to me.”

The heart that had stopped was now pounding. “You have my mother’s phone number!”

Joey nodded so vigorously his hair flopped up and down. He held out the slip of paper. “I wrote it down,” he said. “I was real careful. I didn’t want to get the numbers wrong. I even asked her to say it again to make sure I didn’t make a mistake. That was good, wasn’t it?”

“That was very good.” She took the paper from his hand, holding it like a rare gem.
My mother. My honest to God real mother. I’m sitting here holding my mother’s phone number in my hand. This is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for all my life.

Somebody was pushing at her shoulder. She stammered, “What? What?”

“Didn’t you hear?” It was Angelo looking down at her. Angelo was working for his uncle’s bricklaying company—hot, dirty work. He must have stopped at his house to shower because he smelled of soap and after-shave when he slid beside her into the booth. "It finally happened!”

“I know,” Anna Mae said. “I have the number right here.”

“What number?”

Before she could answer him, he threw his arms around her and exclaimed in a loud voice, “We did it! We landed on the moon!”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“Five minutes ago,” he said looking at his watch. “I heard it on the car radio. At exactly 4:17, the United States of America landed on the moon!”

“Hot dog!” Joey exclaimed.

Word spread quickly and the place was in an uproar. Anna Mae was oblivious to the celebration going on around her. “Joey,” she said. “I’m not eighteen. You told me my mother might contact me when I was eighteen.”

“I told her about Walter being in jail and all. She got real happy. That’s when she gave me the number.”

Angelo got up and pulled at Anna Mae’s arm. “We need to get to a television. They’re gonna’ get out of the space ship and walk on the moon. We gotta see that!”

She folded the precious piece of paper and put it in her shirt pocket. “Joey? Would it be all right if I called her from your place?”

“Sure.”

“Come’ on” she said to Angelo. “We’re going to Joey’s.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

In the hot and stuffy apartment, Angelo and Joey sat quietly on the couch. Across the small room, sitting in a straight-back wooden chair, Anna Mae’s hands trembled as she dialed the phone on the end table. She could feel Angelo and Joey watching her and suddenly, she wished the apartment were bigger so they didn’t have to be in the same room. On the other hand, their nearness gave her courage. She listened to the phone ringing at the other end for what seemed forever. Then all too quickly, a woman’s hesitant, high-pitched voice said, “Hello?”

Anna Mae opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

“Hello?” the woman said again.

Anna Mae froze.

“Hello? Is someone there? Is this Anna Mae?”

Surprised to hear her own name and now sure it was her mother on the other end of the line, Anna Mae’s first reply was barely audible. Then quickly, and louder, she said, “Yes! This is Anna Mae. Are you Becky?”

In the ensuing silence, Anna Mae could hear the rickety hum of a fan in the background. The sound of it brought an intense realization that this was not an illusion—that her mother was actually somewhere out there and holding the phone to her ear. Anna Mae was trying to think of what to say next when the high pitched voice softened and asked, “Will you call me ‘Mother?’”

The request took Anna Mae by surprise and she hesitated. Not wanting to do anything to push Becky away, she said, “Yes. I will.” There was another long silence, so Anna Mae added, “I don’t call Aunt Sarah ‘mother.’”

The muffled sounds on the other end told Anna Mae that her mother was crying and suddenly her own eyes filled with tears. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds, and then her mother said softly, “I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay…Mother.”

“I know I don’t deserve to be called Mother. I’m so sorry. I should have called you a long time ago. Does Sarah know you’re calling me?”

“No.”

“Are you at home?”

“No. I’m at Joey’s place.”

“Are you going to tell Sarah?”

“I don’t know. I just finished work.”

“Oh my. You’re a big girl now. You have a job!” Anna Mae couldn’t make out the next few mumbled words. It sounded as though she was talking about Anna Mae when she was a baby, but she couldn’t make sense of what her mother was saying.

“When can I see you?” Anna Mae asked.

“Oh my,” said her mother. “I didn’t think about that.”

Anna Mae heard the clinking of what sounded like ice cubes in a glass. “Will you think about it?”

“I’ll ah—I’ll think about it. Oh my. I’m so sorry, Anna Mae. You were such a beautiful baby. I’m so, very, very sorry.”

“But it would be okay for me to come to see you sometime, wouldn’t it?”

“I said that I’ll think—well, maybe we should wait a little.”

“Wait?”

“For a while.”

Anna Mae was devastated. Had she expected too much? Should she have been satisfied with just a phone call? “Do you live in Pittsburgh?”

“Oh my. I’m so sorry. You call me again, okay? Okay, Anna Mae?”

“I’ll call again, Mother. I want to see you. I’ve waited so long. Mother? Mother?”

Anna Mae held the phone away from her ear and looked at it through a blur of tears. Angelo jumped up, took the phone from her hand and listened to a dial tone. He placed the receiver in its cradle, then gathered Anna Mae into his arms. Joey went into his small kitchen to get her a cold drink.

Angelo picked up the slip of paper laying on the end table. He then retrieved a phone book from the lower shelf, and began flipping through the pages. “I can tell from this number that she lives in Pittsburgh. If her last name is still McBride, we might be able to get an address.”

“And to think she was so close,” said Anna Mae. “Why did I think she was somewhere across the country?”

Joey handed her a glass of ice water while offering an explanation. “You thought she was far away because you didn’t know where she was.”

“Here it is,” said Angelo, “She lives on Foster Street, on the South Side. I know where that is.”

Anna Mae looked over his shoulder at her mother’s name and address. Suddenly the room was spinning. The hot, humid air in the small apartment was suffocating. She took a long drink of cool water then went to the open window to breathe. When her head cleared, she turned around and looked for a television set. There was none.

“Joey,” she said, “would you like to come to my house to watch that moon thing?”

Anna Mae, Angelo, and Joey arrived at seven thirty and found David cemented in front of the television. He didn’t look up. They went to the kitchen, stacked their paper plates with potato salad, kielbasa, and brownies and went back to the living room. Anna Mae sat on the couch between Joey and Angelo, who were almost as enthralled as David. Leaning forward, they watched the astronauts inside the Eagle, bobbing around in the moon’s low gravity. Sarah brought them cans of Pepsi. She then went back to the kitchen, got herself a plate of food, and joined them.

Anna Mae was looking at the screen but her mind was elsewhere. Sarah asked if something was bothering her. She told her aunt that The Pizza Parlor had been a madhouse, and she was just tired.

“Your Uncle Walter asked about you,” Sarah said.

Anna Mae’s reply was razor sharp. “Big deal!”

She recalled Joey telling her that Becky had only agreed to talk to her after she learned that Walter was in prison. Anna Mae wondered about that. She could still hear Becky’s high-pitched voice.
Will you call me ‘Mother? Oh my, you’re a big girl now. You have a job!

Hey!” David leaned over and nudged her. “Do you know what they call that place?”

“The moon,” said Angelo, winking at Anna Mae.

David crossed his eyes. “The Sea of Tranquility, dummy!” He turned back to Anna Mae. “Remember the rocks? You said you didn’t care about the rocks and now...”

“Don’t bother Anna Mae,” Sarah snapped. “She’s tired.”

Anna Mae remembered the precise tone in her mother’s voice.
You were such a beautiful baby. I’m so very, very sorry.

Angelo stood up, took the untouched plate of food from Anna Mae’s lap, and placed it on the end table. Then taking her by the hand, he led her into the kitchen where he put his arms around her. “We’ll go to see your mother as soon as we can.”

She breathed his musky, man scent as she nodded into his chest. He unclipped her hair, letting it fall through his fingers while backing her against the sink. Their bodies melded together and his parted lips found hers. She could feel herself relaxing as Angelo tightened his embrace.

“Yuck!” said David from the doorway.

“Get out of here!” Anna Mae said.

“Mom,” David yelled. “They’re necking in the kitchen!”

“You mind your own business,” said Sarah, pulling him away from the door and out of sight.

Anna Mae gave Angelo a quick kiss on the cheek then pushed him away. “We better go back with the others.”

They returned to their seats on the couch where they watched the astronauts struggle into their space suits, hoist on their backpacks and depressurize the Eagle. Then Neil Armstrong, on his hands and knees, backed out of the spacecraft and onto a small platform. David’s nose was five inches from the screen.

“Get out of the way!” said Anna Mae.

At 10:56, to the cheers of everyone in the Lipinski living room, Neil Armstrong descended the ladder—the first to put his feet solidly on the surface of the moon. David’s jaw hung in awe. Joey’s eyes were wide as saucers. Angelo squeezed Anna Mae’s hand. Sarah kept eating.

“That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”

Eighteen minutes later, Buzz Aldrin joined Neil Armstrong. Joey laughed like a little kid as the astronauts kangaroo-hopped around on the moon’s surface.

“I told you so!” said David hopping around the room. “I told you they were going to walk on the moon and you said I was crazy. Do you think I’m crazy now?”

Anna Mae grabbed David by the shirt, pulling him down so she could kiss him on the cheek. “Just a little bit.”

David wiped his cheek. “Yuck!”