Peter’s return home was brought on by a series of events that began with a modestly scandalous public moment; but also by the climax of long and bitter discord in the lives of Sarah, Tommy, and Chick Phelan, and finally by the death of Sarah. The return would also transform Peter’s work radically and set him on a quest not only to understand the chain of causation that had led the family to a crisis of sanity and survival, but also to memorialize it in art.
For Chick the year 1954 was full of crisis, a climactic time in his life. A failed priest in Sarah’s eyes, Chick had been introduced to Evelyn Hurley, a handsome cosmetics saleslady at the John G. Myers Department Store, during a New Year’s Eve party at the Knights of Columbus in 1937, by the Times-Union newspaper columnist Martin Daugherty. The introduction was followed first by Chick’s privileged glimpse of Evelyn Hurley eliminating a wrinkle in her silk stocking by the most modest elevation of her skirt, that elevation the equivalent to Chick of a wild aphrodisiac; and second, by Chick’s intense and private conversation with Evelyn immediately thereafter, during which he became acutely aware of the audible friction created when she crossed her legs under the table, her silk stockings sliding one upon the other and creating, in Chick’s heart and soul, the phenomenon of love at first sound.
Chick then pursued her with ardent respect and found his ardor reciprocated, but found also that Evelyn, a widow, was a woman of the world in ways that Chick only hoped to be a man of the world; and so for seventeen years the Chick-and-Evelyn courtship frequently approached, but never arrived at, ardor’s ultimate destination. Chick was too loyal a Catholic to use prophylactics, Evelyn too alert to possibility to allow access to herself without them.
Marriage was, of course, the answer, but impediments prevailed, principally in Chick, who, even after he bought Evelyn an engagement ring in the tenth year of their courtship, chose to believe he was seeing her circumspectly. None in the city except himself thought it much of a secret, not even his sister Sarah, the chief impediment, who for years refused to acknowledge that Evelyn existed on the planet, and announced often at dinner that the Phelan credo, in the abstract, allowed no truck with widows, or divorcees, or women of loose character. Sarah, at a neighbor’s wake, overheard a man describe someone she assumed to be Evelyn as “loose as ashes and twice as dusty” and, understanding the import of the statement without grasping its particulars, thereafter actively did all she could to discourage Chick from his pursuit, never, for instance, allowing him to bring Evelyn into the house during the seventeen-year courtship.
It was during the very early twilight of a June evening in 1954 that Chick found himself in a duel of screams with Sarah, he reacting to Evelyn’s ultimatum that if he did not marry her she would leave Albany and go alone to Miami Beach to take work as the hostess of a luxurious new Collins Avenue delicatessen that was about to be opened by a friend who had moved to Florida and, with prudent investment, found himself with money to burn. And how better to burn it than cooking corned beef and blintzes?
Sarah and Chick each lacked novelty in their arguments—the much-discussed moral position on widows and designing women, the depravity of men’s desires, the holy priesthood (“Once a priest, always a priest”), maternal wishes, Catholic antipathy to Florida and especially Miami Beach, and, the ultimate appeal, family loyalty: “What will become of us if you leave?”—being Sarah’s enduring salvos; and Chick’s—his fury at being thought of as a priest (“I was never a priest, only a seminarian”), the right of men, even Albany Irishmen, to marry, the right not to be interfered with by sisters, the love for Evelyn (newly announced within the past week), the last chance for happiness, the only love he’d ever known in this goddamned life (“Don’t you swear at me over your concubine”), and the ultimate truth: that he was goddamn sick and tired of being a slave to this family, goddamn sick and tired of not being appreciated, goddamn sick and tired of this stinking town and this stinking street and . . . and there Chick’s tirade was interrupted by the front door bell; and he opened it to see a policeman standing on the stoop holding Tommy by the arm.
“Mr. Phelan?”
“Yes.”
“Is this man your brother?”
“He is. What’s the problem?”
“Well, he’s more or less under arrest. It’d be better to talk inside.”
Chick saw another policeman sitting in the squad car parked in front of the house and recognized Eddie Huberty, who used to play left field for Arbor Hill in the Twilight League. Chick waved a small hello to Eddie and backed into the house to let Tommy and the policeman into the parlor.
Molly, who had been upstairs in her room trying to shield her ears against Sarah’s and Chick’s eternal arguing, came down the stairs at the sound of the doorbell, and stopped behind Sarah as the policeman entered and took off his hat. He stood beside Tommy, who could look only at the floor, while Chick, in his shirtsleeves and suspenders, commanded the moment.
“Has he done something, officer?” Chick asked.
“It seems he has. We had a complaint from a woman on Ten Broeck Street that he followed her home from Downtown.”
“He always walks on Ten Broeck Street,” Chick said. “All his life. Did he do anything to the woman?”
“It seems he did,” the policeman said, and Chick detected a small smile on the man.
“It was Letty Buckley, wasn’t it?” Sarah said.
“Matter of fact it was,” said the officer. “How’d you know?”
“I know that one,” said Sarah. “She’s a troublemaker.”
“I don’t know about that,” said the officer. “She called us and said your brother followed her two days in a row, always walking behind her, so the third day we followed along and saw him behind her, sure enough, carrying a cane, and when she got to her front stoop he hooked the neck of the cane under her skirt and lifted it up, up to her hips, and she screamed. He tipped his hat to her and kind of twirled his cane, and then he walked away. That’s when we picked him up.”
“Did you do that?” Sarah asked Tommy, poking his shoulder with one finger.
Tommy made no acknowledgment, stared at the floor.
“Did you, brazen boy? Did you?” Sarah screamed, and Tommy, crying, nodded yes.
“Don’t yell,” Molly said, pushing past Sarah and taking Tommy by the arm. “Come and sit down, Tom,” she said, and she led him to the love seat and sat beside him.
“Is he under arrest?” Chick asked.
“Not yet,” the policeman said, and added in a whisper, “Mrs. Buckley hasn’t filed a complaint, and I’m not sure she really wants to. Probably get in the papers, you know, if she does. She just thinks he oughta be kept under control.”
“We can guarantee that, officer,” Chick said.
“You bet your life we can,” Sarah said.
Tommy whimpered.
The policeman offered a faint smile to Chick and Sarah. “More of a joke, really. He didn’t hurt her, and nobody saw what he done except us. And, o’ course, Miss Buckley. Quite a surprise to her, musta been.” And he laughed. “Just keep him close to home.”
Chick nodded and smiled, and as they walked out to the stoop the policeman said softly to Chick, “Really was funny. Her skirt went about as high as it could go. He’s pretty clever with that cane.”
“We’ll see it doesn’t happen again, officer. And you wanna bring over a coupla tickets to the Police Communion Breakfast I’ll buy ’em from you.”
“I’ll do that,” the policeman said, and he got back in the prowl car. Chick waved again to Eddie Huberty.
Tommy’s head was still bowed, his sisters watching him in silence, when Chick reentered the parlor, feeling that the policeman’s smile had broken the tension. Chick tried to convey that in his tone. “Tom, what the hell did you do that for?”
Tommy shook his head.
“You know Miss Buckley? You ever been in her house?”
“No,” Tommy said.
“You just like her looks, is that it?”<
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Tommy nodded yes.
“Where’d you learn to do that business with the cane?”
“Charlie,” Tommy said.
“Who?” said Sarah.
“I’ll handle it,” Chick said. “Charlie who?”
“Charlie, the movies.”
“Charlie, Charlie. Charlie Ruggles? Charlie Chan?”
“No,” said Tommy.
“Charlie Grapewin? Charlie McCarthy?”
“No, Charlie with the derby,” Tommy said.
“Charlie Chaplin he means,” Molly said.
“Right. Charlie Chaplin,” Tommy said.
“You saw him do that with a cane?” Chick asked.
“People laughed when he did it. People liked what Charlie did,” Tommy said.
“When’d you see him do that?”
“Saw it with you.”
“Me?” Chick said. “I haven’t seen Charlie Chaplin since the 1920s, silent movies.”
“Down at the Capitol,” Tommy said. “You and me, we saw Charlie, and everybody liked what he did. They laughed. We liked him, you and me did, Chick.”
“Jesus,” Chick said. “He sees somethin’ in the movies and then imitates it twenty-five, thirty years later. I do remember Chaplin used to do that with his cane. Did it all the time. It was funny.”
“It was not,” Sarah said. “Don’t you dare encourage him. It’s a filthy thing he did to her, even if she isn’t any good.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Molly said. “She’s always pleasant to us.”
“She has men in, what I hear.”
“She’s single, what’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t want to talk about it any longer,” Sarah said. “You come upstairs with me, young man.”
“What’re you gonna do?” Chick said.
“I’m going to punish him.”
“Let him alone, won’t ya? He’s scared to death already.”
“You want him to do it again?”
“No, of course I don’t.”
“Then he has to be taught a lesson.”
“He’s scared,” Molly said. “He wet his pants.”
“Get off the love seat,” Sarah said. “Go upstairs and change. You’re a bad boy.”
Tommy quickstepped through the back parlor and went up the back stairs. Chick and Molly exchanged smiles as Sarah went up the front stairs.
“Brazen boy,” Molly said.
“Sixty-three-year-old brazen boy,” Chick said.
There is a photograph taken of Molly by Giselle in early September, 1954, sitting on the porch of the Grand View Lake House on Saratoga Lake, cupping a bird in her hands. She is looking with an oblique glance at the camera, a small smile visible at the corners of her mouth but not in her eyes. The photo is black and white and arrests the viewer with its oddness and its mystery: first the bird, a cedar waxwing whose tan, yellow, and red colors are not discernible, but whose black facial mask is vivid; and then the puzzling expression on the face of this obviously once-beautiful woman in her sixty-fifth year.
A facile interpretation of the photo is that the woman is perhaps saddened by the fact that the bird is injured, for it must be injured or else it would fly away. But this interpretation is not accurate. The memories and secrets that the bird evoked in Molly were what put the smile on her lips and the solemnity in her eyes; and it was this contradiction that Giselle captured in the picture, again proving her talent for recognizing the moment of cryptic truth in people she chose to photograph. Molly had been declining into melancholia before the photo was taken, the onset of decline dating back to the day Tommy was arrested for imitating Charlie Chaplin
On that day, after the policeman left the Phelan home, Tommy went up to his bedroom to remove the underpants that his terror had caused him to wet. In the front parlor, Chick, awash in anger, pity, frustration, anxiety, and other emotions too convoluted to define in a single word, straightened his necktie, snatched up his seersucker sports jacket, and announced to Molly that he was going to dinner and a movie with Evelyn, goddamn it, and maybe he’d be home later and maybe he wouldn’t.
When Chick left, a sudden isolation enveloped Molly: alone again in the company of Sarah, who could raise at will the barricades between herself and the rest of the family: a perverse strength in the woman to do what no one else wanted done but was always done nevertheless. Sarah would spank Tommy, as her mother had spanked all the children for their transgressions of rule. Tommy would cry openly, would wail and sob in his imposed shame, imposed because he was incapable of generating shame in himself, was without the guile, or the moral imperatives that induced it in others, was, in fact, a whole and pure spirit who had had the Commandments, and the punishment for transgressing them, slapped into his buttocks for six decades, but who still had no more understanding of them than when he was an infant. All he knew was that he should avoid the prohibited deeds that provoked spankings. Raising a woman’s skirt with a cane had never been prohibited, but now he would realize he could never do it again. Now, truly; for his crying had begun and Molly knew Sarah was at her work.
The situation was old, Molly’s guilt was old, the themes that provided the skeleton of the events taking place this minute were older than Molly herself, and she was sick of them all, sick of her helplessness in the face of them. She heard the sobs and loathed them. It was like kicking a dog for chasing a bitch in heat. Tommy had instincts that no amount of punishment would turn aside; they would always find a new outlet. But what of your instincts, Molly? Did you ever find another outlet for your stunted passion? It seems you did not, alas. No future for it. Animal with instincts amputated. But no. They were still there. Orson had raised them again last year, had he not? Bright and loving young man, prodding your memory of pleasure, revisiting feelings long in their grave. Orson is Peter’s. Even Chick said he probably was. “Orson,” Chick said, “anytime you need a place to hang your hat you’re welcome here.” Chick so easygoing, the trouble she gives him. He said he was sick of this stinking street. I know he was going to say this stinking house too, and this stinking family. These stinking brothers and sisters. Chick doesn’t mean it.
But he does.
We all do.
Molly laid her head back on the sofa and closed her eyes to shut out Tommy’s sobbing and Sarah’s screaming. She tried to replace those sounds with the face of Walter as he stood tall before her, waiting for her kiss, expecting it, inviting it. Walter loves Molly’s kisses. Loved. Don’t pity yourself, Molly Remember poor Julia, dead at twenty-two, Julia who never knew passion, Julia who was kissed by boys twice in twenty-two years and neither kiss meant any more than a penny’s worth of peppermints. I was truly kissed, Julia. Your sister knew kisses and love and more. Much more. Never again. Other things. Never again.
Molly plunged into the blackest part of her memory to hide, to shut out the thoughts that were coming back now. So much wrong. So many evil things the result of love. Why should it be that we are gifted with love and then the consequences are so . . .
Tommy squealed and Molly rose up from her black depths, sat upright on the sofa, heard the squeal a second time, a third, the squeal of an animal in agony, and she was racing up the stairs in seconds toward the wretched sounds. She saw Tommy face down on his bed, Sarah striking his naked buttocks—she had never hit him naked before, never; nobody was ever hit naked, ever—her hand coming down again and again with the two-foot rule (and Molly saw that Sarah was hitting him not with the rule’s flatness but with its wide edge and screaming, “filthy boy, brazen boy, filthy boy, brazen boy”), the Tommy squeals and Sarah screams beyond Molly’s endurance.
But as Molly moved toward Sarah to snatch away the ruler Tommy suddenly rolled onto his back and with both feet kicked Sarah in the stomach as she was raising the ruler yet again, and Sarah flew backward across the room, her back colliding with Tommy’s three-drawer dresser, knocking his clown lamp to the floor and throwing the room into darkness. And Sarah sat suddenly on the floo
r, breathless, her glasses gone, her expression not pained as much as incredulous that such a thing could happen to her.
So began Sarah’s awareness of her mortality. In her rage, Sarah damaged Tommy’s spine so severely that he could not walk, could not stand or lie straight, could not bend over, could only rest and sleep sitting on cushions. Dr. Lynch, the family physician for thirty years, prescribed pain pills, a wheelchair, and X-rays, and accepted without question the explanation that Tommy had been attacked on the street by wild kids who hit him with sticks. Tommy would not eat or drink, would accept nothing from Sarah, and so Molly assumed control of his life and convinced him to take some bread pudding and tea. She put whiskey in the tea to soothe this grown-up child who never drank whiskey, or even beer or wine, in a house where it went without saying that a drop of the creature improved every living thing, including dogs and fish.
Tommy calmed down and Molly busied herself so totally with him that she could, for hours at a time, forget how dreadfully hostile she was to this house, this family, especially to the absurd and brutal Sarah, who could not only do such a thing but who could stand for the doing for decades, Sarah who felt no remorse, only mortal pangs of ingratitude that she should be isolated by her family after giving her life over to its care and feeding, its salvation from damnation.
Chick was the first to isolate her. When he learned what she had done to Tommy he immediately picked up the telephone, called Evelyn, proposed to her and was accepted, told her he would give two weeks’ notice at the Times-Union and take whatever severance pay he had coming, then they would go to Miami as she wanted, she could work at the deli, he’d get a job somewhere, and they’d start a new life and never look back.