On Pluto (16 page)

Nobody messes with Zorro. Class dismissed.

Seasoned altar boys, Jimmy (in his makeshift pinstripe shirt) and I immediately fled for the sanctuary of the church—not for the confessional, but to light up incense in a closet of a room off
the sanctuary. The Catholic Church interprets the burning of incense as a symbol of the Prayer of the Faithful, rising to Heaven, a purification process. The incense is burned in a metal container called a thurible, to be dispensed in three ritual swings for the Trinity. The imagery is recorded in Psalm 141:2, “Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight: the lifting up of my hands, as evening sacrifice.”

But Jimmy and I weren't there for the prayer. We just liked the smell of the stuff. Besides, as captain of the school safety patrol and altar boy Master of Ceremonies, a position in the church pecking order akin to Michael the Archangel, I had access to the room. Keys to the Kingdom. It pleased my mother; she was also proud of the way we held sway with the nuns at Mass. Jimmy taught me to hold the gold-plated altar communion plate just above the Adam's apple of nuns queued up for communion. When the sisters lined up, we would press the plate gently against their throats, just to let them know we were there. A presence almost as good as a supernatural power.

Jimmy always has been a presence with me. Fifty years later, when he learned that I had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he called to express his love and support; he promised me that he wasn't going to treat me any differently. It was music to my ears. He ended the conversation with a play on Alzheimer's: “Remember, buddy, you still owe me a hundred bucks!” I've passed the exchange along to other friends, who have responded in kind, “You owe me a hundred bucks, too! And don't forget it.”

Bada-bing, bada-boom.

****

The boom came in October 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis of the Cold War, a 13-day war of words between the U.S., the Soviet Union, and its ally Cuba—a Russian roulette among titans of the day—Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and John F. Kennedy. No one was
ready to blink.

Two months earlier, after unsuccessful covert U.S. operations to overthrow Castro through a failed Bay of Pigs invasion and Operation Mongoose, the Cubans and Soviets secretly began constructing medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missile bases with the ability to strike most of the continental U.S. Photo reconnaissance captured proof. It is generally regarded as the moment the world came closest to nuclear holocaust. After rejecting tactics of attacking Cuba by air and sea, the Kennedy brain trust opted for a naval blockade of Cuba—no Soviet ship would be allowed to enter Cuban waters. In a letter to Kennedy, Khrushchev called the blockage “an act of aggression, propelling humankind into the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war.”

“Ah, shit!”
as Kelley would say.

On October 25, 1962, the Soviet ships were steaming just off Cuba, and the U.S. was not standing down. We were on the edge of extinction, we thought. The nuns were abuzz with images of Armageddon, and tuned-in transistor AM radios throughout Resurrection for the holy unwashed to hear. Last call for us, and no one had passed the height line yet at the Five Points. After wet-your-pants radio reports and a mock class exercise of duck and cover under our desks in the event of a nuclear attack (as if to vaporize us in a position of kissing our asses goodbye), the bell rang to end school, and we all spilled out of the building like flushing tap water, down the second floor stairs, to the first floor, heading to the back door. Billy St. John and I then hung a quick right to the basement.

“Where are you guys going?” cautioned Tony Keating, a life-long friend, who walked home with us every day. “Keats, we're going to the basement to get ready for the boys' basketball team tryouts,” replied Billy.

Few seventh graders had ever made the eighth-grade team, and Billy and I were on the precipice of greatness, hoping Coach
Pete McHugh would tap us.

Keating stopped us in our tracks. “Where do you want to be when the bomb drops? On the basketball court with Mr. McHugh, or home with your parents where you belong?”

The logic was unassailable. And so, like lemmings, we followed Keating down Milton Road to safe haven. When I got home, I hugged my mom, and then went to my room to pray.

“Dear God, not now, please not now!”

Prayers were answered. The next day, no bomb. Kennedy and Khrushchev had agreed in back-channel negotiations that the Soviets would dismantle offensive weapons in Cuba, and the U.S., in return, would agree not to invade Cuba and dismantle missiles in Turkey and Italy. Still, Billy and I were cut from the eighth-grade team for missing practice and racing home to pray. A small price, I suppose, for saving the world.

Prayer was always a part of the daily routine at Resurrection, drilled into our thick “cabezas” through all the smoke and mirrors of
Mad Magazine
and
Playboy
centerfolds. Every May, we had special devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary, honoring the mother of Christ as the “Queen of May,” a ritual that dated back to the 16th century. We were all schooled in the virginity of Mary, and many of us, at the direction of the priests, nuns, and our parents, wore scapulars—the Blue Scapular of the Immaculate Conception, scratchy cloth images of the Blessed Virgin that were suspended over the chest and the back by thin twine. While often causing a rash, the scapular came with a sacred promise, known as the Sabbatine Privilege, that the Blessed Virgin, through special intercession on the Saturday after the death of a devotee, would personally liberate and deliver the soul from Limbo.

I was all over that.

On May Day, the nuns instructed us to write private letters to the Blessed Virgin, our personal prayer requests, nothing to be held back. It was to be a solemn exercise. We were then assembled,
as if awaiting the Rapture, at the rear of the parking lot behind the church, in front of a tall granite statue of the Blessed Virgin. At the base of the statue was a large wire bin into which we tossed our prayers to Mary. Then, Sexton Quinn, on orders, lit the prayers on fire, and we all watched our words drift up to Heaven in the smoke. I could see them.

Still can.

Each year, I had the same prayer: that my mom and dad would live forever.

10

F
ORGET
-M
E
-N
OTS

I
N THE SPRING ON BROOKDALE PLACE, THE FORGET-ME-NOTS
bloomed like a botanical garden, a sea of soothing pastels that kindle the memory. The Greeks called the flower Myosotis, translated “mouse's ear,” an allusion to the shape of its leaf. Who could ever forget a patch of ensuring Forget-Me-Nots, delicate five-lobed blue, pink or white flowers with yellow centers? German folklore says the Almighty once overlooked the petite plant in naming all the other flowers. Legend suggests that one of the tiny lobes cried out, “Forget-me-not, Oh Lord.” To which God replied, “That shall be your name.”

Often in life, we remember the diminutive. Henry David Thoreau wrote of Forget-Me-Nots, “It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending; even flowers must be modest.”

I grew up in a modest neighborhood where memories last
forever. Forever is a long time, yet in a long-term memory, it's a place of persistent peace, a steadfast mooring when the swift high tides of life pull one to treacherous waters where memory implores the brain: forget me not.

****

It took forever in Rye for our stickball games to end on Brookdale Place. Used to drive my mother nuts, as she tried diligently to prepare dinner in two shifts for ten. Most of the time was taken up trying to find the errant ball in Phil Clancy's shrubs or Mr. Androtti's ivy, or secure another broom handle for a bat when we had exhausted our stash. I used to sneak broom handles out of the rectory at Resurrection Church, telling Bridie, the matronly Irish woman who cared for the priests, that I needed another broom to sweep the sidewalks for Monsignor McGowan.

Bridie was a tough Gaelic doyenne; it was difficult to discern her age from the deep crevices in her face and her youthful voice. She was always accommodating, but she intuitively knew that I was up to something, yet seemed to enjoy the repartee. After securing another boom, I always tried to do something helpful on my way out of the rectory, like putting a plate away in the kitchen or a glass back on another shelf, usually a spot where Bridie had just baked a stack of chocolate chip cookies.

“Anything else I can do for you?” I would ask with a handful of plunder in one palm, the prospective stickball bat in the other.

“Yeah,” she always replied, “stick that broom up your ass and sweep the floor!”

When Bridie's stock ran out, we looked to Jim O'Rourke, the guy from Killarney that looked two decades beyond his age; the priests had hired him to cut the lawn. Jim loved to drink, and usually began about 10 am, walking down to McGuire's Market, owned by Jerry's dad, for a morning Bud, while most in the store were looking for the cream. By noon, O'Rourke was usually sleeping it off in the janitor's room; so we'd sneak in and
steal a broom. He lost a lot of brooms on the job.

But we never lost the bases on Brookdale Place. We didn't need to take them home at night. The field was the street, long and narrow like the fairways at St. Andrew's. First base was the birch tree on the curb lip in front of Pappy Langeloh's house; second base was the large, sweeping oak in front of Lou Kelly's home; and third base was the blunt edge of Ronnie Buckie's driveway. Home plate was chalked in the middle of the street, batter's box and all.

As often as we could, we'd have Hungarian born Zena Kelly, Lou's trophy wife, throw out the first ball for special effects. She was Zsa Zsa Gabor incarnate to us kids. She had some big
casabas
, knew it, and always obliged us. Al Wilson frequently dropped the ball when handing it to her for the opening toss. I don't know if he was just nervous like Hermie in the
Summer of '42
, or he was just looking for Zena to pick it up. Al was no fool.

Mom often watched from the kitchen window, her fixed position over time, as she gazed out, taking it all in, sorting out what it all meant or what she thought it to be, as she often talked to herself or to an imaginary friend. The conversations continued. Over the years, the neighborhood stickball players came and went, depending on age. If you could swing a bat and stood taller than a tricycle, you could play.

The regulars included my brothers Paul, Tim, and Andy; my tomboy sister, Lauren, a pretty good hitter, also played from time to time. My sister, Maureen, a “Hot Lips” Houlihan-type, frequently watched from the sidewalk, as did sisters Justine and Bernadette from their scooters.

Stickball, a variation of a Northeast inner city game invented in the 1750s, takes ample coordination, but if you hit the sweet spot of the broom handle, you could drive the pink Spalding high-bounce ball, the Spaldeen, almost to Monument Park in Yankee Stadium. The crowd always cheered as the ball lifted, like a Project Mercury rocket, above the canopy of trees—prompted
by a din from deep inside the throat of the slugger, as he mimicked the roar of a standing ovation, pushing gusts of air up the esophagus, then instinctively limping into a Mickey Mantle trot, aping the weak knees of “The Mick,” head cocked to the left for balance.

“Holy cow! Did you see that?”
we mocked in our best Phil Rizzuto.

We commonly ran out of digits counting the scores. Games were often called on account of the bell, not a lost ball, weather or darkness, but the bell.

We all lived by bells; I often felt like a cow. On the back porch at 25 Brookdale, Mom would ring a cowbell the size of a grapefruit with a long cord that my dad had hung from the porch ceiling. The knell was a summons for all the O'Briens, no exceptions, to head home. Game over!

Da-ding, Da-ding, Da-ding!

The clangor was a directive for the other kids to go home as well, a dictate from my mother that neighborhood parents relied on to gather their flocks. Brookdale Place was an extended family. Mom was the bell ringer, the arm of authority on a dead-end street with a tidal brook at the end that meandered to Long Island Sound. We never had to worry about speeding cars, other than some of the relatives after too many whiskey sours over the holidays. Brookdale parents watched out for every kid. We had group cookouts, block parties, and in the summer time, the neighborhood kids roamed freely through back yards playing flashlight tag or catching fireflies. Bernadette Burgess, who lived across the street, had the best swarm of fireflies.

There were few organized sports in those days; pickup was the rule: stickball, wiffle ball, stoop ball, basketball, and of course, slow-motion tackle football in the fall and winter after Pappy Langeloh had cut down his corn stocks in the field next to us. The most fun was plowing through the snowdrifts of December on fourth down and short yardage, and giving the ball on a
fullback drive to four-year olds, bloated in their puffy snowsuits like the Pillsbury Doughboy.

With the largest family on the block, my folks ruled the neighborhood. There were a lot of big Irish families in Rye then. Birth control in the Catholic Church then was anathema. Judging from the size of families in Rye the “rhythm method” of birth control was working about as well in New York as Casey Stengel's curve ball. Priests and nuns, presumably most of whom never had sex, instructed mothers of the parish to recognize the days of a fertile womb and avoid intercourse—a game plan gone with the wind after a few martinis. “I got rhythm,” as the Gershwin song goes.