White Man's Problems (5 page)

“SA.”

That dampens my desire to bust him even more. We get lots of nuts out of the Salvation Army on Fifth Street. Cots, no toilet seats, stabbings, hypodermic needles. PSs, drunks, junkies. I think about it. My shift is almost over, so I can be back to the station soon, turn in the bike, and be on the way to the gym and then home within an hour. Plus, truth is that I don't want to put this guy down. His face has something about it. The eyes are clear. That you never see: clear eyes. He's dirty—like greasy dirty—and his skin and clothes are covered in the kind of scum you get sleeping in driveways and bushes. But this guy does not have that dark red-brown color the real drunks get—the ones who've spent twenty or thirty days at the beach all day and night, just taking breaks to get loaded or find the soup kitchen. The true homeless have a deep sunburn that tells their story better than any ID card or medical records I ever saw.

I make a decision. “Why don't you head back that way, sir?” I say. “And no more yelling. If I have to run you down again because you're yelling at people, I'm gonna put you in jail, you understand me?”

“Yes, officer,” he says.

“Ok,” I say, “don't let me hear about you.”

***

Torres finishes his shift and changes his clothes at the precinct headquarters adjacent to city hall, site of the O.J. Simpson civil trial and the steady stream of court appearances of pop stars busted for drunk driving. Torres gets in his truck. He stops at the light coming out of the Civic Center, at the entrance to the freeway. To his left, a man sits in a Lexus with sunglasses and a baseball cap over long hair, waiting for the arrow to go onto the highway. Torres squints. There is a glare against the windshield from the LA sun that overexposes the image for a moment, and it doesn't make sense. Here is a very dirty man in a nice car. Then the light softens, and suddenly everything becomes clear.

“Holy shit,” Torres says out loud to no one.

Torres follows Klezak down the I-10 freeway for several miles to Overland and eventually to a high-rise in Century City. Torres checks the office listings, and after he shows his badge to the guards, he makes it to the thirty-third floor. The receptionist gets the same badge flashed to her, and Torres walks through the offices one by one.

Klezak is sitting behind his desk when Torres comes in. He looks as though he were expecting the cop.

“You found me,” Klezak says.

“Yes, I did,” says Torres, slowly crossing the threshold. They look at each other in silence. Torres can see no trace of Klezak's dirty skin and clothes. His hair is slicked back and conforms with the office environment—long but not too long. With a shirt and tie, he looks normal.

“What now?” says Klezak.

“I don't know. Can I sit down?”

“Please.” Klezak gestures at the chair in front of his desk. A few bad pictures hang on the walls, a lamp sits on the corner of the lawyer's desk, and stacks of paper crowd the corners.

Torres sits and stares at Klezak, whose face, shirt, and blue-and-white-striped tie explode at him in their nattiness, their Pentecostalness—none of it has a speck of dirt.

“You followed me,” says Klezak.

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, what can I do for you? Should we discuss this morning?”

Torres studies his eyes, looking for signs of mania, paranoia, or danger. There are none. He does not know what to make of this strange, sad man. “Well, first, just tell me…man, are you…like, ok? It's a little scary.”

“I'm fine, Officer Torres. I'm not homeless. I work in this office. I have my own practice. I'm just a lawyer.” He smiles. “And I did nothing illegal. You and I both know that.”

Torres takes this in. “You were close.” He waits for a reaction. “I could have written you up easy. Sent you away for the seventy-two-hour dry out.”

Klezak is unfazed.

“It's really weird,” Torres says finally. “You have to admit that.”

“Maybe so,” says Klezak. Then, in an instant, he seems to lose his confidence, as though revealing a bluff. “I can't keep paying you guys. My deal was that I'd only have to pay once for the whole force.”

Torres thinks for a second and then nods. “Noah.”

Klezak doesn't respond.

“This is how Noah got the boat, right?” Torres says.
“The one in Long Beach. We could never figure that out.”

Klezak offers a small, nervous smile. “A boat is what he wanted.”

Torres stares more. Klezak is serene again, caught but not guilty.

Suddenly Torres has a feeling he does not recognize. A powerful sense of being swept away. He blinks his eyes, but nothing changes. Now there is a buttery yellow light behind Klezak's head. Torres stands and moves a few steps to see if it is an illusion.

“But you're not Noah,” says Klezak as Torres moves. “We both know that.”

Torres continues walking, circling Klezak at his desk. The light stays above the lawyer's head. Torres goes back to his seat.

“I'm really starting to lose it,” Torres says.

“No, you're not,” says Klezak. His voice is soothing. “You're waking up.”

“But Noah…Noah's fine. He just took the money and went back to work?”

Klezak says, “Noah could not see it.”

Torres considers this, and in doing so he feels hopeful and then excited. Then he starts to relax, like a patient who has just taken a needle. “Maybe so.”

Klezak gets up from behind the desk and walks to Torres at his seat. The light remains. He extends his hand to Torres, who takes it and rises. Klezak's secretary, well trained, comes to the threshold and closes the door.

“Will you pray with me, Eddie?” says Klezak.

“How'd you know my name?”

“I know a lot more than that.”

The light is fuller now. Klezak's eyes are a deep blue. The two bow their heads against their interlocked fingers. Torres closes his eyes, and in his earthly eyelids he sees light, followed by an open field. He knows he is in the presence of angels. “It is here for me,” he thinks. It is a transcendent, translucent feeling, the God of the preachers, the long-held power of his native soul. He opens his eyes.

“Will you follow me?” says Klezak.

Here Comes Mike

1.

I
f you go back through the tunnel of time to when basketball was holy, you will find that Mike Donegan scored thirty-six points against Cardinal O'Hara in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Diocese championship game of 1966. He took over in the last five minutes, with clutch buckets, bruising defense, and a coast-to-coast three-point play that lit up the gym, got the bench dancing, and made his coach, Brother Francis, close his eyes and punch the air.

Mike was the best player in the history of Nativity BVM Junior High. It was not just that he could shoot and was a step faster; it was his personality. Like any great ballplayer—any truly great player—he was emotionally detached, a bit of an asshole on the court. He had no choke in him. In close games against Saint James and Archbishop Prendergast or when they played public schools like Media or Eddystone, or even against the all-black teams from Chester, as the game wore down, the crowd, the scorekeepers, and the janitors would say quietly to themselves, like a pious flock, “Here comes Mike.”

John and his mother and sisters went to every game, sitting on old bleachers in church gyms with half-moon backboards and floors of loose wood or even cement or tile. Snack stands served red licorice, Bazooka bubblegum, and hot dogs boiled in plain pots of water. The snackstand ladies wore double-knit cardigans from Sears, and their giant bosoms hit the heads of any five-year-olds standing too close. When they talked it was to say things like: “'Scuse me, hon,” and “You need another quarter, love,” and “You can't take that soda in the gym.” John's job was counting Mike's points.

Margie starting asking him, “How many does he have now, Jackie?” for the first time in the third quarter of the O'Hara game early in the season. Everyone got into it as the games went by. “How many does he have, Jackie?” they would yell. His brother wanted the ball any time it mattered. On wintery playgrounds anywhere in the Diocese, as imaginary clocks ticked down in imaginary games, boys pretended to be Mike Donegan taking it to the house.

Mike was the oldest of Mickey and Rosemary Donegan's five children, followed by Donny; the two girls, Annemarie and Margie; and John. Nine years from oldest to youngest, the difference between growing up in the sixties and the seventies. Rosemary Donegan loved all her kids, but Mike was her angel from God. Before church on Sunday, she stood in front with a trash can and collected food for the orphanage at Saint Ignatius. The priests knew she brought in more than anyone else in the parish. She was beautiful, with thick black hair, thin features, and a curvy cupcake of a body, which, in light of her five kids, must have been a reward from the saints.

She was urgently, passionately Catholic, saying the Rosary every day and novenas twice a month. She was a barrel of energy, going to mass at half past five and forever visiting aunts in nursing homes. Part and parcel went a sense of doom. Rosemary could not watch the kids' games or even the Eagles or the Phillies when things got too close, hiding her eyes or sneaking looks at the television from behind the wall. She put sugar in spaghetti sauce and salt on her oatmeal.

Her kids loved her first above all other things. She had a special language with each, private and kind; a dialogue about bodies, clothes, schedules, favorite colors, and things wanted most for Christmas. And with Mike, whom she could not take her eyes off since the day he was born, she had quiet conversations and shared the gentle connection between Irish mother and son that ran all the way through the ages, all the way down to the sad, stubborn, and reluctantly consecrated core.

John never forgot waiting with his mother on a cold Friday night for his father to get home from the police station. Mike had been caught drinking behind the Lenni Firehouse with his cousin Peter. Annemarie was just about to put John to bed when their father's sister, Aunt Marian called.

“Mickey, the boys are in jail,” she said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” said Mickey.

“Peter and Mike. The state cops just called. You have to go get them. They're at the station on Route 352. Hurry.”

“Christ, Marian, they're fifteen.”

Times changed. Mike lost interest in sports, feeling the natural order of things drawing him toward steel-toe boots and flannel shirts. He spent most of his time in fields and in cars smoking pot. He smoked big fat bowls of ragweed homegrown dope that burned the throat and caused him to not care about basketball or college or Bobby Kennedy. He started hanging around a girl named Ginny DiMeo, who dressed the same way he did and always seemed to have a runny nose whenever she came over to the Donegans' house. One night before bed, John heard Donny tell Annemarie that Peter told him Mike had licked Vicki DiMeo's tits in the woods by the football field at the high school.

After Mickey drove away, the four younger kids and their mother did not speak, as though talking would bring bad luck. They were all the same, the other Donegans, besides Mickey and Mike. Taking Rosemary's lead, they worried for the world and obsessed over the oldest son, the big brother, who was a broad canvas on which they painted all their fears. There were differences, but they were the subtle differences between apples from the same tree. Donny had a bad temper. Annemarie had red hair and Rosemary's big hips and love of rosary beads. Margie was dark; she was the one the boys liked. John was the youngest but the smartest, separated somehow. Even then, when he was six years old, the family knew, with a strange, unspoken clairvoyance, that he would leave.

Though Mike was quiet, he was unfailingly nice to John, even as he became alienated and silent when at home. Mike never did well at school, but Rosemary could not discipline him, leaving enforcement of rules as a matter between father and son. Mickey Donegan was a simple guy, a plumber who liked a sandwich and a shot and a beer. Even before his first arrest behind the firehouse, Mickey was convinced the kid would go wrong. Truth be told, he preferred his daughters.

The Pontiac parked at the curb, and Mike got out of the passenger's side. “Oh thank God,” Rosemary said to the other kids. “Here comes Mike.” John looked out the front side window of the family's row home to see if his father's grip on Mike's collar was the painful kind or the loving kind. It was actually not so tight—not the kind that said “get the fuck in the house”—and John could tell that Mickey was relieved. But by the time they got through the door, Mickey's anger had risen. Rosemary ran to them, all hustle and bustle, and said, “Michael Christopher, are you ok? What in God's name were you doing?”

“He's fine,” said Mickey. “But he's a dumb son of a bitch. And he's gonna be a tired son of a bitch, too.”

Mike's eyes were glassy, and he was maybe a touch wobbly, but he was peaceful. If he was scared, John couldn't see it. His hands were bleeding.

Mickey continued in a raised voice, “With the fine and court costs, it was one hundred and thirty-three bucks.”

“Oh Jesus,” said Rosemary. “Michael.”

“A dollar an hour. That's what it's gonna be, pal,” said Mickey. “One hundred and thirty-three hours of work for me. I know your math's not too good, so I've done the calculations for you. It starts tomorrow and will go every day till it's worked off.”

“What happened to your hands?” said Rosemary. Mike seemed not to know. “Go to your room and get washed up. I'll get you a bandage.”

“A dollar an hour. Add it up,” said Mickey.

“The rest of you get to bed, too,” said Rosemary. “Jackie, you should have been in bed hours ago. Annemarie, I told you to put him to bed.”

The kids shared the second floor and its bathroom. Their parents had the stuffy third-floor bedroom that sat atop the small house like the bridge of a ship. John peeked in on Mike, who was in the room he shared with Donny. Mike had stripped down to his boxers and was lying in bed, wrapping ACE bandages around his hands.

“You ok?” asked John.

“I'm ok.”

“Did you really get arrested?”

“Kind of,” Mike said. But then he said, “Just got into a little hot water, Jack boy. It'll blow over.”

“Are you going to go to jail?”

Mike laughed. “No way, José. Cops just try to scare ya.”

“Why didn't you run?” said Donny.

“You can't run, Donny,” said Mike. “You can't just
run
.”

“What happened to your hands?” said Donny.

“Cop did it. After they put us in the car. He picked up one of the broken beer bottles we'd chucked at the wall. He told me to open my hands, and then he put a piece of glass in each one and said, ‘Make a fist.'”

“Jesus,” said Donny.

“Mommy was scared,” said John. “She was crying.”

“She was?” Mike said. “Just forget about that.”

“Ok.”

“All right. Go to bed, man, ok?”

John closed the door and heard Margie and Annemarie in the bathroom. “C'mon. Move,” said Annemarie. “Daddy's coming up. I have to brush my teeth.”

John headed to the girls' bedroom, which was his room also, until a few years later when Mike got drafted. John climbed into Annemarie's bed instead of his own little cot, and when she returned from the bathroom, she pulled him in close under the covers, like she did on most nights, too tired to put him back where he belonged.

2.

R
osemary died in February 1971 from primary brain cancer. She went fast. “Astro-site-toma, grade four,” John heard the nurse say during one visit to the hospital, which stuck in his head because he was in fourth grade and it made him think of the Astrodome. She slept all the time at the end. John worried that she wouldn't wake up to say good-bye to him as time was running out. But she did. A few hours before she passed, she held his face and said, “Jackie, my big strong man, you know what you have inside of you. Take care of your brothers and sisters.”

At the funeral, John followed along in between Donny and Margie. A young nun sang “Ave Maria,”
standing black-and-white
in the knave in front of the stained-glass explosions of the apostles. Mike was sent back from the army just in time to say good-bye, and John watched him from across the pew and in front of the grave. He tried to hold Mike's hand when he could during each of the processions of the day: from the church to the cars, from the cars to the gravesite, from the gravesite to the cars. When he couldn't be with Mike, he held Margie's or Annemarie's hand instead, letting go only to grab their shoulders if their heads went down to cry.

3.

T
hirty-five years later, John boarded the Metroliner in Penn Station on a Saturday morning in fall. It had the makings of a good football day, and a conflicting, crisp mood took over Manhattan as he left. John thought of the Bloody Marys he was missing in the parking lot at Columbia, where his friends from business school would be before the Cornell game. He walked through the train, stopped in the bar car for three Heinekens, and continued down almost to the end, where he threw his stuff in the seat on the aisle. He opened one of the beers and settled in next to the window.

John took the short trip to Philadelphia enough to know all the places and all their names. During breaks from college and business school he had ridden trains across Europe and even into Russia, the first in his family to go anywhere like that. But he didn't enjoy not knowing where he was. Rather, this trip was
his
train ride, the ride home. It afforded him just enough time to get mentally prepared. He liked putting his face against the cold window as the train made its way south through the industrial wasteland stations at Newark and Metropark, to more habitable ground of New Brunswick and Princeton Station, through Trenton and on to places like Cornwall Heights, before slowing down into Philadelphia.

When his mother died, John was the only one who recovered. And he knew he would be the same way now that Mike was gone. He had learned to rely on himself. “Yep,” he said out loud, his inner thoughts forcing through. Mike had given in to colon cancer the previous afternoon. It was hard to believe he was dead. Then again, Mike had always seemed somewhat unreal. John opened the second beer. Nine years between two people was a lot of space growing up. Mike embodied all the clichés: larger than life, a rebel without a cause, an artist without an art form, a working-class hero. Mike was called up in 1970, “the last fucking guy drafted in America,” as Donny put it.

When he got back from the service, Mike seemed a lot older. John came to realize that his brother was a loner and a wanderer—but not the fucked-up Vietnam vet of the movies. “That's the cliché,”
John said to himself, speaking out loud once more. John always knew, from his mother, what Mike was doing at any given time, but the specifics were often fuzzy, maybe because he was in and out of AA. He migrated between trades, essentially a carpenter, always great with tools and craft, but an undependable worker, walking out of opened doors to his father's plumbing business and his uncle's machine shop.

Mike went through two wives in a seven-year stretch and had a daughter with each. They lived with their mothers, both erratic women who pursued messy child-support claims. His first wife was a lying skank named Debbie who moved around the South. The second, Joanie, lived in Jersey. John knew his nieces a little. The oldest, Margarita, was a nasty piece of business, already mixed up with mullet heads and meth at fourteen. The last John knew she was in the Florida Panhandle in a trailer. But the little one, Ava, Joanie's kid, was nine and lived in north Jersey. John tried to send her cards on her birthday and even invited her and her mom to come see him in the city. He liked Joanie. She had bought him beer when Mike or Donny weren't around. It just never worked out that she and Ava could get to New York, same way it never worked out with Joanie and Mike.