The Hanging Party
A short story by
John WilliamTuohy
Tommy Chandler sat in the parking lot at the
Valley Diner as though it were a safe haven against the impending storm. It wasn’t.
It was just the first place to stop and he was early. Salesman’s habit.
Loosening his sedately
striped silk tie and slipping out of his woolen suit coat, he got out of the
car and walked the length of the lot to stretch his legs. He recalled the times he’d walked here as a
boy, eager to spend the few dollars he earned each week delivering the Ansonia Evening Sentinel. It was a great local newspaper while it
lasted. It gave him his start in
business. He wondered if kids still
delivered the paper anywhere in America.
He peered through the lightly falling rain
into the darkness of the Diner and recalled the days before it closed at
night. When he was a kid and this was a
factory town, the Diner was open around the clock. The place was operated by the…what was their
name? Greeks… Khronos….that’s what it was,
Khronos, something like that. He had a
kid who was a big deal on the high school football team, but he died or
something, or was that somebody else?
Anyway, then the factories left and the
place cut back its hours. He heard that
Khronos sold out and moved to Florida and practically gave the place to the
cook, some Mexican guy, or something like that.
Then he died and the place went to Dolores Kearney. He knew the Kearney’s from the Assumption
School. He heard she had a kid with Down
syndrome who got married, and that Dolores married a guy from Seymour, a
plumber.
Turning from the Diner,
he took a deep breath and held it. This
was his town. This is the place they
would bring him back to when it was his turn to go. This place where they still called him Tommy.
Out of boredom, he carefully kicked the mud
from the hand-sewn leather on his oxblood loafers and watched a pretty, thin
girl in a waitress uniform and with a light sweater and no raincoat leap from a
cab and dash through the light rain into the Diner. Then, seeing the procession approach through
the cold, rain soaked streets, he straightened the nose of his silk tie around
his neck, and slipped back behind the waiting warmth of the automobile’s black
European leather seat. Turning the
ignition, he slid the car into gear and joined the procession as the last
car. It was, he thought, a long
procession; they always are when you die young.
When you die old, there are not enough people still alive who remember
you to form a decent procession. That
was his theory anyway.
They drove slowly through the streets. Appropriately, the Beatles song Yesterday
melted out of the oldies station but it
depressed him and he turned it off. The town was lifeless. Where were the vast herds of loud and
laughing children who once roamed these streets? What became of the corner markets with their
crooked floors and wooden counters, bent under the weight of those enormous,
ancient cash registers with the white ivory keys? Places like Senesky’s with their hand stuffed
kielbasa, and Nicoletti’s where the mozzarella was so fresh it dripped with
warm milk. Like the children, they were
gone and with them went the identity that was, to him anyway, the things that
defined this place.
The mills were gone too. Closed and silent as coffins. They said the wages were too high and the
unions wanted too much. The truth is,
the profits were too low, and it was the bosses who wanted too much. When they left, they took everything with
them, leaving behind a generation too proud to cry foul.
He thought that Maria looked good,
considering the circumstances. How long
had it been? Twenty-four years? He had not seen her in almost as many years
as he had lived here. She was older and
it showed in her face. He couldn’t
remember Iggy Gallaher’s face anymore. It was a closed coffin. He pulled down the visor and looked into the
mirror at his own face and noticed for the first time that he looked old, or at
least older. Annoyed, he slapped the
contraption shut.
Pulling himself away from his thoughts and
trying to remember what Iggy looked like, he looked
around him and realized he had stopped at a light. To his left was a vacant storefront. Wasn’t that where Giordano’s pizza was? What a shame.
He recalled a faded snap shot he had some
place, in a box somewhere, of him, Iggy and Maria upstairs at Giordano’s pizza,
where the booths had white tablecloths and silverware. Downstairs the tables were bare cold
linoleum, and the forks and knifes were white plastic. The picture showed he and Iggy arm in arm, smiling broadly, proud of their new white shirts
and new white ties, designed to match the new souls for their first communions.
Straightening his tie again and slipping his
suit coat on, he followed the others into the modest house. He paused for a second to look over the
Valley below, past the town that lay in near lifeless repose and strained to
see the ocean that pushed brief, light winds of salt air around his face.
Holding the door for a couple he didn’t
know, he slowly made his way inside, finding a spot between the parlor and the
dining room to stand, feeling uncomfortable and exposed. He nodded and smiled to the few who cast a
look his way and discreetly pulled his shirt cuff over his watch that was too
expensive for the room.
It genuinely surprised him when a somber
caterer piled tin trays of overcooked food onto the imitation pine table. Where were the old aunts who never learned to
speak English? The ones permanently
draped in black, shapeless dresses, rosaries tied to their wrists, scurrying
back and forth from the kitchen with massive plates of peppers and onions and
garlic salami? Where was the Grappa and
the tiny cups of murky espresso? He
reluctantly shuffled toward the table to pick and nibble bits of microwaved
food, served on styrofoam plates.
Filling a paper cup with warm Coke, he
retreated to his spot between the parlor and the dining room to wait for time
to pass. After what seemed like an
eternity, he placed his drink on top of the VCR, walked across the room, and
tapped the young man on the shoulder.
“Michael,” he said, “I’m Thomas Chandler
… I’m sorry for your troubles. He was too young to die.”
“Mr. Chandler, my dad talked about you a lot. I feel like I know you.”
“He talked about me?” Chandler asked quickly.
“Yeah,
all the time, crazy Tommy Chandler.
Did you really take a cop car for a joy ride?”
“No,” he lied. “And your mother?” meaning did she ever speak
of him.
“Oh yeah,
I’ll get her. I’ll tell her
you’re leaving. She’s been with the
funeral guy since we got back.”
“No, no, don’t. That’s fine.”
He gave the young man a final long
look. Like his father, he wore an
unmistakably Irish face. He had his
mother’s dark eyes and dark hair. Chandler
was elated and it showed in his eyes and in his growing smile. He had always relegated what they had done as
a horrendous mistake but now, seeing this stunningly handsome young man, he
realized that the creation of a life could never be a mistake.
He
slowly shook the young man’s hand and reluctantly releasing it, he made his way out to the car, loosening his
tie with his first step outside. He
slipped off the coat and slid behind the wheel.
“Chandler!”
Maria called across the growing density of the fog. He turned to watch Maria stroll from the
darkness of the house into the gray light of the day and float, ghostlike,
across the lawn and lean on his opened car door. Clad in black, her once handsome face was
ghastly pale, which illuminated the redness of her sensuous full lips when she
smiled at him. She said, “Eat and run,
huh? Yeah, you only came for the
food.” Having never lost his joy in the
self-deprecating humor of his class, the working class, his return smile was
spontaneous and genuine.
“Yeah,” he droned with a purposeful flatness
as he handed her a plastic fork. “That and to steal your plastic ware. You caught me.”
She took the fork, held it against her
ominous black dress, and rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, I have to work and Ma doesn’t cook any more. Her arthritis, ya know?”
And at that her smile, that warm and
welcoming smile, for some reason, vanished from her and an unsettling
remoteness rudely elbowed it’s way between them.
“It was just easier to hire somebody, ya know
there Chandler?” Without waiting for an
answer, which piqued him slightly, she turned her full attention to the cars
silver roof, she stroked a few raindrops from it, and she said approvingly,
“Life is good I see.”
“No, not really.” He smiled with his best
sardonic smile. “I stole it.”
She returned his smile quickly and it
transformed her. For a second, only a
second, the deep lines were gone from her face and her magnificent eyes, so
resonant and lovely, flashed with life and then the look disappeared as
unexpectedly as it arrived and she retreated to her detached spirit again.
“It was a long ways for you to come there
Tommy. Thank you,” she said in a way that was not hers. “I didn’t expect to see you.”
He searched for acrimony in the last words
and not finding any he used the moment to study her still beautiful, if drained
almost insentient face. She looked
tired, drained. That was to be expected. But it was more than that. There was an aura about her, a dissolute
grimness really, that gave off a sense of defeat that had buried her and made
her older than her years. She narrowed
her eyes in a way that startled and concerned him. The disapproval for what she was must have
shown through on his face. Realizing he
was caught, he retreated into banality.
“Eliza saw it in the New Haven Register,” he said going through the trouble of calling
the paper by its full name yet not explaining which Eliza he meant. “You remember Eliza?” He added, “My sister.”
“Yeah, sure yeah, the little one. How is she?”
“She’s fine.
She’s in Old Saybrooke.
Painting. She had a show up in
Hartford and,” he stopped himself. This
wasn’t the time. “She saw the” he
stopped himself, reluctant to use the word obituary “thing in the paper about
Iggy,” he continued safely proud of his mastery of acceptable
colloquialisms. So I just thought…..”
“No, yeah sure, that’s fine.” She interrupted in an effort to rescue him
from his obvious uneasiness. “You’re
always welcome here, you know that.
You’re like family, Tommy you always were. Iggy would have been so proud that you was
here, honest to God.”
He noticed she bobbed her head with every
word and he felt a sense of dread when she knelt with a wince of advancing
years and came to eye level with him.
“He really loved you Tommy,” she whispered
with what sounded to him to be an accusing icy shriek. He decided not to answer and for a second an
eternity of silence fell over them. She
stared at him with a searching look and realized she had hurt him and piqued
his guilt, that great equalizer of the Irish race, so she, being a woman who
understood these things, gave him her Mona Lisa smile.
“It’s good to see you again Chandler,” and
softness from a time long gone warmed then.
“You too, Maria Aceso,”
he called out, using her maiden
name. He smiled as the apparition of his
stress slipped from him and melted into the ocean air. He lifted his eyes to the morose drenched
little house and said, “He’s a handsome
young man, your son. Well spoken.”
“Yeah, sure. He’s a good boy,” she whispered. “He reminds me of you sometimes.”
“Really?”
The notion delighted him and it showed.
“Why?”
“Yeah, you know, some of the things he
says,” she said with a mother’s smile as she too turned to look at the modest
Cape Cod. “They just fly out of left field, you know? He tells you whatever comes into his
mind. He makes you laugh.”
Still looking toward the house, she
continued, “He’s got your eyes. Did you
notice?”
“No,” he lied again.
She returned her eyes to his and he could
see the question coming before she spoke the words.
“Did you ever have any…...” she trailed off,
feeling the question was an intrusion, something she had never felt with him in
the past.
Their relationship, essentially a
relationship of youth, had been that open.
"Naw,
there was never enough time or not enough,” he shrugged because he
didn’t want to discuss it and he really could not find the right way to explain
himself. He could hear the emotionless
chill of the wind charging in from the fog drenched Sound before it covered
them.
“Time,” he finally said settling for the
wrong word. “….something, I don’t know
why. Who knows why?”
He smiled at her but she did not smile
back. She stared at him. He struck her as flippant and self-possessed,
reserved in a way that was not like them, her people, and the Valley
people. She decided that whatever she
was looking for was gone or maybe it was never really there, that she had only
seen those fine things in him through the eyes of a young woman long since
gone.
Disregarding the uneasy silence, she decided
to stare at him again for a few seconds longer to make sure she was right about
what she saw and what she no longer saw and what she didn’t see, and deciding
she was right, she declared,
"you’ve changed,” allowing her disappointment to seep through in
the disapproval of her voice.
The wind changed directions, as New England
shoreline winds are prone to do, and quickly passed over them with a lukewarm
interest. He looked at her. Had she always been this nasal? Why did she start every third word with the
letter D? Did she always speak like
that? Did he sound like that? Why were all these houses so small and
shabby? Were they always that way? He wanted to leave.
“Did you ever tell him?” he asked, hoping
she had and hoping she had not.
“About us?” she asked. He nodded, aware that his anticipation and
anger showed.
“Naw,” she said and folded her thin, olive
colored arms against a sudden sea breeze.
“You know, what would be the point there
Tommy? You know? It would have caused more problems than it
would have solved, and Iggy was a good father to him, so, like...I don’t know,
you know?” The thought of it all overwhelmed her.
“We were young Tommy.” She was being generous. It annoyed him, and it showed. She wanted to return to the unquestioning
safety and acceptance of her home. Young
Ignatius Gallaher, a cop like his father, appeared in the doorway and waved to
her. Saved, she smiled and waved
back. So finally, it was over. It had ended.
Together, they had reached a separate peace. That incident in their young lives had
forever fragmented time and he learned
that it is difficult to make sense of the world when time is broken. For those years, the answer eluded him. He did not understand it because it was
bigger than he was, so he returned to the incident, time and time again,
because in returning to it, he returned to the Valley to search for the answer.
“Well,” he said but couldn’t think of
another word to say so he said nothing.
Another blanket of uncomfortable silence draped over them just as a
frigid Canadian wind blew down the Valley and stung them both. She wrapped her arms across her petite body,
and he, not used to the chill leaned back to the warmth and safety of his
imported leather seats.
“Do you need anything?” he asked, putting
the key in the ignition, “anything at all?”
Suddenly, she seemed distant. Angry.
She stood slowly with a slight groan and sighed, “No. No, Iggy had his pension from the
department. I’m still working. There's no insurance because of what he did to
himself but we’re okay.” She smiled
dismissively. “Take care, Tommy.”
“Like I say, you ever need anything…Maria…..I…..”
She closed his car door in his mid sentence
and slowly walked away. "I know,”
she said over her shoulder, “I can count on you.”
The words stung him one by one. She waved a spiritless wave, and walked
slowly back to the house. He pulled off
his tie, tossed it on the floor, and drove away, back downtown, towards Route
8.
...I know, really sad story isn't it? It happened to a guy I know, anyway here's some really nice colors to look it
