The Risk Pool (49 page)

“A little bird told me you were back,” she said accusatorily, the first shift we worked together.

“A little bird?” I said, surprised, curious.

“A little blackbird,” she said, “who was up at the hospital this morning looking for a shot of penicillin. I hear it’s nice up at the lakes this time of year.”

Most days the waitresses could go home by two, at which time the regular drinkers would start wandering in. Three-thirty to four-thirty was Untemeyer territory. Mike’s was the bookie’s next-to-last stop of the afternoon, after Harry’s and before Greenie’s, where he did most of his business when the shops let out. Necessity made me something of a bookie myself, taking the action of the lunch crowd who had to get back to work. I was also expected to be knowledgeable, serving up a tip with a boiler-maker, in return for which I got good-natured insults when the nags didn’t run.

On Wednesday afternoon of my first week, my father wandered in ten minutes after Eileen left, looked around the place at my customers and said thank God he was going back to work soon.

“Thank God is r-r-right,” said Tree, who had been in several times that week and not recognized in me anybody he’d ever seen before. I’d wanted to ask him about Alice, the big woman he’d smooched with at The Lookout so long ago, and about the even bigger woman who’d eaten the pâté at Jack Ward’s wake, but I didn’t. My father informed me later that Tree had divorced the pâté woman and married Alice shortly after I’d gone west. They were living up above the bar, and Tree only came into town once or twice a week, at which times he dropped in on his ex-wife, with whom he now had a little something going on the side. My father couldn’t make up his mind which woman was bigger and razzed Tree about it pretty unmercifully, demanding to know.

“It varies,” Tree always responded. “W-w-week to week.”

“Stay on top if you can,” my father urged.

“I’m the m-m-man, ain’t I?”

“You sure are, Tree,” my father said, clapping his hand on the little man’s back. “You sure are.”

I drew my father a beer and set it in front of him. He was usually
all right when he drank beer, so I got him started that way before he had a chance to think about it. According to Mike, it was the hard liquor that was doing him in, but he’d been pretty sober since my return, and I figured if he could stay that way until he went back to work, he might be okay.

“You learn how to make a Manhattan yet?” he said.

I said no.

My father consulted his watch. “You got about ten minutes to learn.”

He was right, too, because very shortly thereafter, the heavy front door to Mike’s Place grunted open about six inches, fell back shut, then grunted open a second time, a wooden cane thrust in this time, to prevent the door from closing.

“You better go help her,” my father said.

I did as I was told, nearly screwing up bad, because when I pulled the door open, the old woman on the other side, having braced her thin shoulder against the wood, tumbled in. I caught her just in time. The fat taxi driver who had apparently just dropped her at the curb hadn’t bothered to get out, but had leaned across the seat to watch and now looked disappointed that I’d broken the old woman’s fall.

“Why thank you, young man,” the old woman said when I had her upright and the door had swung shut again. “I think I’ll have a Manhattan.”

So I got her settled in the booth nearest the door, made her a Manhattan under my father’s supervision, and brought it to her. For some reason, she looked familiar to me, though I didn’t see how she could be. She made no move to take off her old fur coat, though she did remove her hat, which had been knocked cockeyed by her assault on the door. Her gray hair was thin, but utterly wild, despite the half-dozen bobby pins arranged, as far as I could tell, randomly.

“You’re him,” she said, staring up at me intently, “aren’t you.”

“Why, yes,” I said. “I suppose I am.”

“Well,” she said. “He’s still alive, though I’m sure I never would have expected it.”

“I’m very glad to hear it,” I told her, still not making the connection. “Excuse me.”

I went back to the bar.

“Give her about twenty minutes,” my father said, “then make her another one. Did she have money on the table?”

I said yes.

“Sometimes she forgets,” he said.

In a few minutes I went back to see how she was doing. “I think I’ll have another Manhattan,” she said, as if the idea had just occurred to her. She handed me the empty glass.

Twice more this happened, and when I served her fourth, she instructed me to call a taxi. The dispatcher seemed to be expecting the call. “Aw, fuck,” he said.

A few minutes later the same driver pulled up out front and tooted. I got the old woman on my arm and together we negotiated the single step down to the sidewalk and then the curb. Again, the driver didn’t bother to get out. It took a minute, but eventually I got her situated comfortably enough in the backseat.

“Make sure the towel’s under her,” the driver said.

Oddly enough, there happened to be a ragged, dirty towel on the seat and the old woman was squarely in the center. It had begun to drizzle out and I was getting wet, but I took a moment for a word with the driver.

“When you get her home,” I said quietly, “why not get off your fat lazy ass and give her a hand into the house.”

He started to say something, but I held up a finger and wagged it, trying to look like a dangerous man. I must have, at least a little, because the words died in his mouth.

Back inside, I was greeted by a powerful odor that I’d been only vaguely aware of when I’d helped the old woman out of her booth. My father and the other men at the bar were all grinning at me.

“There’s plenty of t-towels in the back,” Tree said.

In fact, the old woman had peed all over the booth and floor, just as she apparently did every Wednesday afternoon upon finishing her fourth Manhattan.

But it was later that night, at home, when I sat straight up in bed. I’d been thinking about the cab driver I’d been too hard on, and the old woman’s good-natured way of letting other people clean up her mess, when I suddenly imagined a younger Mrs. Agajanian, standing on her screened-in back porch, watching my old friend Claude dangle, red-faced, from the bent crossbeam of the ramada.

One Saturday afternoon in early May I ran into another old woman I’d known a decade before, and this one—Tria Ward’s
mother—I recognized right away. The amazing thing was that she also recognized me.

I didn’t work Saturdays, and I had agreed to meet my father at some unspecified time and place later that afternoon, whenever and wherever I managed to track him down. At the moment I was putting it off by picking up my mother’s anxiety pills (valium now) and a six-pack of Rolaids from a downtown pharmacy.

I knew what was in store for me once I located my father. In the space of an hour I’d have three or four sweating beers lined up on the bar awaiting my attention. I’d have left home with every intention of being home for dinner with my mother, and for the first hour or two I’d consult my watch dutifully and warn my father that I’d have to leave soon, to which he’d reply, sure, absolutely, why not? But when the actual time approached, he’d say what’s the hurry, and by then that would seem to me a valid question. I’d try to figure out what my hurry was and not be able to. What had been
my
idea, to go home and not disappoint my mother, would suddenly seem like
her
idea, and I would resent her attempts to control my life. As soon as I finished this one beer I was on, I’d call and tell her the score, and if she didn’t like it, tough. But by the time I thought of calling again, there wouldn’t be much point, because afternoon would have merged with evening, and she would not only have eaten, but cleared the dishes and stacked them in the small cupboard above the sink.

By the time my father and I thought of eating it would be late, just about the time Irma would have the kitchen closed up in Mike’s Place. Probably she’d have her coat on and be ready to leave when we shambled in, my father demanding veal and peppers, the Saturday special. She’d tell my father to go screw himself, and my father would say, Irma, Irma, let’s sneak back in the kitchen, get away from your husband. When he emerged five or ten minutes later he’d have two steaming plates full of veal and peppers that we’d perhaps pay for, perhaps not, depending on whether anybody remembered to ask us to and whether we remembered ourselves. And then we’d be ready for the rest of the night.

This was the inevitable scenario I was trying to postpone by doing errands for my mother when I ran into Mrs. Ward at the prescription window at the drugstore.

“Forgive me,” she said, after our eyes had met and I had looked away, not wanting to force the issue of our having been just about
half acquainted so long ago. “But aren’t you my daughter Tria’s young friend?”

The answer to that seemed more no than yes, but I decided to go along. “Mrs. Ward?” I smiled. “It’s nice to see you.”

“I’m told you’re a graduate of the university,” she said, as if there were only one university in the country.

I admitted it was true, adding that I was taking a break from graduate school and wondering vaguely how she would have heard any report concerning me.

“And you are studying what?” she said, with the kind of forthright, almost insulting directness, you sometimes encounter in persons who are not merely curious but, for some reason, believe they have a right to know all about you. And, as is usually the case with such people, you gratify their curiosity and only regret doing so later. I told her I was studying anthropology.

“Why, that’s practically the same thing, you know,” she said, looking up at me.

I said I supposed it was, then asked what it was the same as.

“Why history, of course,” she said.

“Of course.” I blinked.

“Why don’t you join us for brunch in the morning?” she said suddenly. “Say about one?”

“One in the morning?”

“In the afternoon, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. One in the afternoon, tomorrow morning. I’d be there.

“Say hello to Tria, won’t you?” Mrs. Ward said, when we’d both paid for our prescriptions.

I looked around. Except for ourselves and the pharmacist and the young cashier, the store was empty. I didn’t know who the cashier was, but I knew she wasn’t Tria Ward. I wondered if Tria had become invisible, like Mrs. Agajanian’s son, the fish cleaner.

“And she is …”

“In the car, of course. Out front,” Mrs. Ward said. “I don’t drive, you see. The driving of automobiles has never been among my skills.”

I had forgotten this, and I think I would have asked her, had I been the sort of person who believed I had a right to know, precisely what the tiny woman considered her skills to be. Instead, I followed her outside to where a canary-yellow Chevette sat in a tow zone right in front of the pharmacy. Mrs. Ward started
speaking even before she had the door open, which meant that the first few words had to have been lost on her daughter. “
Look
who I have just discovered!”

Tria—she was still quite beautiful, long dark hair halfway down her back—leaned forward over the steering wheel to look, first at me, then to see if there was someone else.

“You don’t recognize your old compatriot, Mr.…”

“Hall,” I supplied.

“Mr. Hall,” Mrs. Ward verified.

“Oh … yes,” Tria said and smiled almost charmingly enough to mask the fact that she had not the slightest recollection of me.

“I’ve invited Mr. Hall to brunch with us in the morning,” she said, getting into the small front seat with some difficulty. “Mr. Hall is an historian.”

“Actually—” I began.

“And a graduate of the university,” she continued. “What
we
need is some informed opinion … some light on the subject … some illumination, you see.”

Tria didn’t look like she had much faith in the concept, or perhaps in my ability to deliver.

“Tomorrow morning then, Mr.…?

“Right,” I said. “Around one.”

I was pleased to see, when Tria pulled away from the curb, that driving was now among
her
skills. It certainly hadn’t been the last time I’d seen her. She yanked the Chevette into traffic and turned at the corner with such authority that her mother grabbed the top of her head, as if to prevent an invisible hat from flying out the window. It seemed to me that Tria Ward might be angry at something. Maybe even something to do with me.

The next day I was pretty glad that morning did not arrive at the Wards’ house until afternoon. F. William Peterson came over to the flat around eleven, and I heard him and my mother talking in subdued tones in the living room. My mother was of the opinion that I had spent the previous evening dazzling the dull local beauties. I never told her when I was planning to hook up with my father, of course. He always offered to come by and pick me up, but I said no, that I’d find him, and he understood well enough.

“Well hello there, Mr. Debonair,” my mother said, when I finally dragged myself out of bed. She and F. William Peterson were drinking coffee on the same end of the sofa. “Do you know what momentous decision we’ve just arrived at?”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“Brunch,” she said. “Corn bread muffins and sausage links.”

“Sounds good,” I said, wondering what momentous decision they’d have arrived at if F. William Peterson had been allowed a say. “I hope you won’t mind me taking a rain check.”

She gave me the tragic wounded look I expected, but, to my surprise, her face lit up when I said I’d been invited to brunch at the Wards’. “Ah!” she said. “Old line!”

I frowned.

“Well, not
Jack
Ward, of course. He was as plebeian as the next fellow, but his wife was a Smythe, one of the first families of Mohawk County,” she said. “Strictly old line.”

“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” I said.

“And Jack Ward cut quite a figure when he came back from overseas,” she remembered. “You should have seen him and your father in uniform.…”

She stared off dreamily.

“Take my car if you like,” F. William Peterson suggested.