The Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks (48 page)

The day before Thanksgiving their mother is hired to start work the day after Thanksgiving in gift wrapping at Grover Cronin’s on Moody Street, and consequently she does not feel ashamed for accepting a turkey and a bag of groceries from St. Joe’s. “Since I’m working, I don’t think of it as charity. I think of it as a kind of loan,” she explains to Earl as they walk the four blocks to the church.

It’s dark, though still late afternoon, and cold, almost cold enough to snow, Earl thinks, which makes him think of Christmas, which in turn makes him cringe and tremble inside and turn quickly back to now, to this very moment, to walking with his tiny, brittle-bodied mother down the quiet street, past houses like their own—triple-decker wood-frame tenements, each with a wide front porch like a bosom facing the narrow street below, lights on in kitchens in back, where mothers make boiled supper for kids cross-legged on the living room floor watching
Kukla, Fran & Ollie
, while dads trudge up from the mills by the river or drive in from one of the plants on the Heights or maybe walk home from one of the stores downtown, the A&P, J.C. Penney’s, Sears: the homes of ordinary families, people just like them. But with one crucial difference, for a piece is missing from the Painter family, a keystone, making all other families, in Earl’s eyes, wholly different from his, and for an anxious moment he envies them. He wants to turn up a walkway to a strange house, step up to the door, open it, and walk down the long, dark, sweet-smelling hallway to the kitchen in back, say hi and toss his coat over a chair and sit down for supper, have his father growl at him to hang his coat up and wash his hands first, have his mother ask about school today, how did hockey practice go, have his sister interrupt to show her broken dolly to their father, beg him to fix it, which he does at the table next to his son, waiting for supper to be put on the table, all of them relaxed, happy, relieved that tomorrow is a holiday, a day at home with the family, no work, no school, no hockey practice. Tomorrow, he and his father and brother will go to the high school football game at noon and will be home by two to help set the table.

Earl’s mother says, “That job down at Grover Cronin’s? It’s only … it’s a temporary job, you know.” She says it as if uttering a slightly shameful secret. “After Christmas I get let go.”

Earl jams his hands deeper into his jacket pockets and draws his chin down inside his collar. “Yeah, I figured.”

“And the money, well, the money’s not much. It’s almost nothing. I added it up, for a week and for a month, and it comes out to quite a lot less than what you and me figured out in that budget, for the rent and food and all. What we need. It’s less than what we need. Never mind Christmas, even. Just regular.”

Earl and his mother stop a second at a curb, wait for a car to pass, then cross the street and turn right. Elm trees loom in black columns overhead; leafless branches spread in high arcs and cast intricate shadows on the sidewalk below. Earl can hear footsteps click against the pavement, his own off-beat, long stride and her short, quick one combining in a stuttered rhythm. He says, “You gotta take the job, though, don’t you? I mean, there isn’t anything else, is there? Not now, anyhow. Maybe soon, though, Ma, in a few days, maybe, if something at the store opens up in one of the other departments, dresses or something. Bookkeeping, maybe. You never know, Ma.”

“No, you’re right. Things surprise you. Still…” She sighs, pushing a cloud of breath out in front of her. “But I am glad for the turkey and the groceries. We’ll have a nice Thanksgiving, anyhow,” she chirps.

“Yeah.”

They are silent for a few seconds, still walking, and then she says, “I’ve been talking to Father LaCoy, Earl. You know, about … about our problems. I’ve been asking his advice. He’s a nice man, not just a priest, you know, but a kind man, too. He knows your father, he knew him years and years ago, when they were in high school together. He said he was a terrible drinker even then. And he said … other things. He said some other things the other morning, that I’ve been thinking about since.”

“What morning?”

“Day before yesterday. Early. When you were delivering your papers. I felt I just had to talk to someone, I was all nervous and worried, and I needed to talk to someone here at St. Joe’s anyhow, because I wanted to know about how to get the turkey and all, so I came over, and he was saying the early mass, so I stayed and talked with him awhile afterwards. He’s a nice priest, I like him. I always liked Father LaCoy.”

“Yeah. What’d he say?” Earl knows already what the priest said, and he pulls himself further down inside his jacket, where his insides have hardened like an ingot, cold and dense, at the exact center of his body.

Up ahead, at the end of the block, is St. Joseph’s, a large, squat parish church with a short, broad steeple, built late in the last century of pale yellow stone cut from a quarry up on the Heights and hauled across the river in winter on sledges. “Father LaCoy says that your father and me, we should try to get back together. That we should start over, so to speak.”

“And you think he’s right,” Earl adds.

“Well, not exactly. Not just like that. I mean, he knows what happened. He knows all about your father and all, I told him, but he knew anyhow. I told him how it was, but he told me that it’s not right for us to be going on like this, without a father and all. So he said, he told me, he’d like to arrange to have a meeting in his office at the church, a meeting between me and your father, so we could maybe talk some of our problems out. And make some compromises, he said.”

Earl is nearly a full head taller than his mother, but suddenly, for the first time since before his father left, he feels small, a child again, helpless, dependent, pulled this way or that by the obscure needs and desires of adults. “Yeah, but how come … how come Father LaCoy thinks Daddy’ll even listen? He doesn’t
want
us!”

“I know, I know,” his mother murmurs. “But what can I do? What else can I do?”

Earl has stopped walking, and he shouts at his mother, like a dog barking at the end of a leash: “He can’t even get in touch with Daddy! He doesn’t even know where Daddy is!”

She stops and speaks in a steady voice. “Yes, he can find him all right. I told him where Daddy was working and gave him the name of McGrath and Company, and also Aunt Ellie’s number. So he can get in touch with him, if he wants to. He’s a priest.”

“A priest can get in touch with him, but his own wife and kids can’t?”

His mother has pulled up now, and she looks at her son with a hardness in her face that he can’t remember having seen before. She tells him, “You don’t understand. I know how tough it’s been for you, Earl, all this year, from way back, even, with all the fighting, and then when your father went away. But you have got to understand a little bit how it’s been for me, too. I can’t … do this all alone like this.”

“Do you love Daddy?” he demands. “
Do you
? After … after everything he’s done? After hitting you like he did those times, and the yelling and all, and the drinking, and then, then the worst, after leaving us like he did! Leaving us and running off with that
girl
friend or whatever of his! And not sending any money! Making you have to go to work, with us kids coming home after school and nobody at home. Ma, he
left
us! Don’t you know that? He
left
us!” Earl is weeping now. His skinny arms wrapped around his own chest, tears streaming over his cheeks, the boy stands straight-legged and stiff on the sidewalk in the golden glow of the streetlight, his wet face crossed with shadows from the elm trees, and he shouts, “I
hate
him! I hate him, and I never want him to come back again! If you let him come back, I swear it, I’m gonna run away! I’ll leave!”

His mother says, “Oh, no, Earl, you don’t mean that,” and she reaches forward to hold him, but he backs fiercely away.

“No! I do mean it! If you let him back into our house, I’m leaving.”

“Earl. Where will you go? You’re just a boy.”

“So help me, Ma, don’t treat me like this. I can go lots of places, don’t worry. I can go to Boston, I can go to Florida, I can go to lots of places. All I got to do is hitchhike. I’m not a little kid anymore,” he says, and he draws himself up and looks down at her.

“You
don’t
hate your father.”

“Yes, Ma. Yes, I do. And you should hate him, too. After all he did to you.”

They are silent for a moment, facing each other, looking into each other’s pale blue eyes. He is her son, his face is her face, not his father’s. Earl and his mother have the same sad, downward-turning eyes, like teardrops, the same full red mouth, the same clear voice, and now, at this moment, they share the same agony, a life-bleeding pain that can be stanched only with a lie, a denial.

She says, “All right, then. I’ll tell Father LaCoy. I’ll tell him that I don’t want to talk to your father, it’s gone too far now. I’ll tell him that I’m going to get a divorce.” She opens her arms, and her son steps into them. Above her head, his eyes jammed shut, he holds on to his tiny mother and sobs, as if he’s learned that his father has died.

His mother says, “I don’t know when I’ll get the divorce, Earl. But I’ll do it. Things’ll work out. They have to. Right?” she asks, as if asking a baby who can’t understand her words.

He nods. “Yeah … things’ll work out,” he says.

They let go of one another and walk slowly on toward the church.