I am not a vindictive woman but – in the light of any thought of human self-preservation – he should not have left me. I don’t make waves. I don’t diminish a person. I don’t invent things to make a fuss about. But I objected when he came home from work and told me about this tootsy he was making goo-goo eyes at. Said he might just love her. This was just before Dad got sick, really sick I mean. He was always sick – that is, I always told Gene that if it came to it he must swear – I said those words, swear – to not try and make me choose between my father and him. To not put me in that position That was when he and I first held hands out in public. Flowers were falling in the streets off of wet trees. I don’t say he shouldn’t have feelings. Everybody has feelings. But under my roof, eating my food, digging cheese out of my Tupperware at work, he lusted after this tootsie in platform heels. This sweet thing with old fashioned hair. (He tells me, he told me all about her. He couldn’t stop himself. Just one or two questions after my initial shock and woosh, it all came out.) Then he went.
He stopped talking finally and went. After a month of bargaining, pleading, negotiating what I went through with him he walked right out of that kitchen door, putting the suitcase down by the door for a minute just before he left. I vomited right in the kitchen sink. And then I phoned the ward to ask how Dad’s medication had one down after supper. It was fine. I put the phone down and wiped my mouth. Gene said he had no idea he meant that much to me. Then he picked up the suitcase and walked through the door, closing the door quietly. He had to close it twice to make sure it locked.
I still fit in the old clothes I wore before we met, when I go out. Lots of my old dresses are still white, I’ve no idea why. I still fit in the old dresses but I’m not quite enough of a girl to pull the white off, anymore, at least I don’t feel I am and that’s what decides things when you’re walking out. I said, “Have a nice life,” and waved, dressed in white, out the window, at the truck as it pulled his stuff away.
I bought a gun. It isn’t easy you know, in this city. It takes three days. I abide by the law. I didn’t want some hot article the police could trace to some crack den. I wanted something you could count on. I bought a nine millimetre snub-nosed revolver from the best personal fire-arm boutique in lower Manhattan. I used my cousin’s name – she lives in Italy, we look a lot alike. I have her driver’s license from when we were buying fake IDs as teenagers to sneak our drinks. I think we must have got our Ids mixed up some time when we were out of it. She’ll never know she killed a priest.
That’s right. The tootsie’s father – wears the cloth. Minister of some kind. Damned if I know. She loves him though. That much Gene told me. Always visits Dad in the retirement home. That’s how he knows she loves wholeheartedly. Not like me. She can let somebody go. She put her own blood, that sweet old man away. She’s a safe bet. He can love her. He knows there his heart will be safe. But then, things change..
Dad should be resting in his grave any day now. My Dad I mean. He went just fifteen days after Gene left. Isn’t that a riot? Gene was always saying Dad upstaged him. I was going in to see him washed, that early morning shift, to tell him the latest about me and Gene – and they just said, “He’s gone.” I had just walked through the glass ward doors and was making my way to his name when a nurse met me at the door to his locked room. Said they woke him up with his cup of tea and he was gone. They hadn’t time between changing their shift at six and my coming at eight to pick up a phone. Gene came to pack his books two days after. I didn’t see a reason to tell him. Isn’t it something though? If he’d waited three more weeks to jump on old love bunny maybe he wouldn’t have had to share centre stage with anyone. I’d have been all his. Didn’t say a thing. He ripped the tape out of the tape gun’s heart across a box like the sound of some animal that was in pain and then he was gone. I sat in white. I found it pleasant. But I couldn’t go out dressed like that. Not any more.
Her father preaches at the Sacred Heart. Just odd weekends. A Sunday here, a Sunday there. He’s the relief minister when the regular can’t make it, or has to preach a big sermon earlier on and doesn’t want to do the evening service. He leads a prayer. Maybe a quick sermon. They help him up and down the stairs with his stick. Sometimes he just needs to lean on an arm. When his wind is good. He knows his text by heart. Don’t see why a good man should fear seeing God sooner than might be expected through natural attrition. Gene can fear for his sins, but tootsie’s father should be pleased to be up nearer his God than thee. Me, I’ll be glad to be the instrument that sends him to Abraham’s bosom. I’m sure he has a warm welcome waiting. Gene is the one who should worry about what will become of him. If he doesn’t find his way home soon, I swear the world will be the ruin of him.
Just before dawn I took the gun, buried it in my valise, took the cross town bus up to the church and found a good location just behind the vestry door. (Some churches are still open at night, even in Manhattan.) The early mourners and prayer reciters arrived, to light their candles. Women knelt. I ate some crackers and peered through the gap in the pine ministry door. The old ladies and bores were filling up the best front pews. Then the young pastor and his wife and then the old age home nurse, in white, and the Dad, coming down the aisle with his stick. I slipped in the cupboard in the vestry. There’s a little table there where people can wait. Minutes hung in the air then passed and Dad’s stick clacked up the stairs, closely followed by the thudding steps of his nurse.
Gene was out there I saw just before I hid, slouched with his tootsies just before the back row. She’s too old for that silk blouse. It’s cut too low. Doesn’t she know this is a house of God?
And there I wait. The old man is munching on a soda cracker (I left mine out on the desk, rushing to be hidden.) The nurse is peering out the door I was just peering from, waiting for his cue to go deliver. There she goes – to get a drink of water while he chokes on soda crumbs. Run nurse girl, run for the tap. I slip out of the door of the low cupboard and pastor Daddy’s eyes are like brass saucers, all blackened rims at the edges and just as wide at my sudden appearance out of nowhere. I hold the gun up with the silencer. (A separate purchase, from out of state, by mail order, pay or return.) But I don’t need it. Daddy unfolds like a concertina from his plastic chair. The stick falls last out of his bony hand, which opens wide like a fan as he clasps at his chest. He breathes his last, or rather fails to breathe his last breath, and it’s all crumbs falling to the floor after that, closely followed by Dad, closely followed by the stick which clatters about. I feel no remotest urge to pound his heart and slip back inside the cupboard putting my gun, snub down in the valise and hold my racing heart. The nurse comes running in with the water and you can imagine the scene, the pounding on chest and screaming for help and eventually she drank the water herself.
The tootsie ran in after the young priest, when he heard. I hear her sobbing through the door. Eventually Gene’s steps – I can hear their pat, pit pat at the small room’s entrance. And his voice through the door – hesitant, trying out what to say. They drag the tootsie away, then the young priest and nurse scuffle to extricate the dead. I shake out my cramped leg and smooth my creased white skirt before slipping out through the emptying pews.
Have you ever tried to sell back a gun in this rotten city? The mark up I tell you on retail is criminal. I kept it finally. Gene keeps calling, begging. Tootsie without the distraction of Daddy at the home of perpetual rest is apparently tears and money to lay out. He wants back into Mommy. I don’t hear a thing as I take the phone from my ear. Sitting here looking at the view I don’t wear white any more. Seems inappropriate, somehow, though I never did pull the trigger. I wear black and a head band – crisp white, when I can stand it. It looks good, or so they tell me. Neighbourhood kids stop when I pass and say “Mother Superior”, but don’t go above a whisper when I turn. I laugh, it’s pleasant to make an impact.
Some nights I sit at the window and wonder what would’ve happened if Gene hadn’t realized just days before Dad left that he couldn’t stand me. I can’t fathom it. All I know is faced with another old man’s eyes closing I folded myself into that closet and I keep quiet, and still when I hear Gene approach I keep the cupboard door firm behind me. Who knows if he still waits in the church for someone to save him? I only hear the organist gathering up the sheet music, and wait for Gene to come try to find me. One day he’ll find that kitchen door unlocked and maybe he will try his luck. And then he’ll find out if you can ever unload a gun before you find it right between your eyes.
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