A Drinking Life (29 page)

The door to Laura’s studio was unlocked. I opened it slowly, remembering all those film noir scenes of the horror within. The rooms were black, but I knew where the kitchen light cord was and pulled it on.

Everything was gone except the bed.

The easel was gone. The paintings. The brushes and paints and tomato cans. The sumptuous art books. The folders full of reproductions. Laura.

The linoleum floor now looked like an immense abstract painting. Under the sink, there was a bag of garbage. Inside it were two empty pint bottles of Canadian Club. I stood there for a long moment. How could she just go like this, without a word?
I’m fucking you, kid. But I don’t have to love you to fuck you.
Why didn’t I see this coming? I looked everywhere for a note to me, even on the bathroom mirror where they left notes in the movies. Nothing. She was gone. I imagined a man coming to the door and the two of them laughing. She was already packed, the clothes folded into suitcases, the canvases wrapped and tied together, the easel broken down for shipment, and he helped her to the street with her things and shoved them into his car. A convertible. I was sure of that. The easel sticking up from the back like a cross. And off they drove, smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey and laughing, laughing.

She would never tell him about me, some kid from Brooklyn, some boy out of art school. She might never tell anyone about me, might already have forgotten my existence. I slammed the icebox door with the flat of my hand, then did it again and again. Then turned around and saw the bed, stripped of sheets and covers, the striped mattress as naked as a corpse. I walked over and ran my fingers along its edge. Then I fell upon its vast emptiness and heard the distant rumble of the El and wept.

A chill came into me. For weeks, I couldn’t read Henri, or look at the artists Laura had introduced me to. It was as if the whole world that she knew had walked out into the night. My need focused more than ever before on Maureen. We were now going steady. That was supposed to give me a sense of structure, and a shared intimacy on the inevitable path to engagement and marriage. Instead I was full of uncertainty and one huge silent lie: I couldn’t tell Maureen how numbed I was by the disappearance of Laura.

The notion of marriage was scary; it made me see an apartment in the Neighborhood, kids, noise, a job I might hate. For a while I tried to merge the notion with my vision of life as an artist. We’d live in the Village and have children later. Maureen would be my model and we’d spend our evenings together in the company of painters and poets. I must have been a hugely egocentric boyfriend. I remember almost nothing about what she wanted from life, but I’m certain I spent many hours talking about what I wanted. I do remember that she didn’t take seriously my grand plans. Or so I thought at the time. She might have simply been what most girls then were: a supreme realist.

When the school term ended in June, my life started to unravel again. Without Laura, I had no outlet for my sexuality. Maureen was a Good Girl and with her I usually played the Good Boy. It was only late at night, after I’d dropped her off, that the Bad Guy came to life. Neither Boop’s nor the Parkview was any help; there were almost no available women in the Neighborhood, and those who were free knew I was going steady with Maureen. One evening, I called the school office to see if Laura had returned for summer sessions. No, she wasn’t part of the modeling pool anymore. What about Gloria, the Puerto Rican girl? The secretary laughed.

What do you think this is, a dating service?

No, no, I lied. During the summer, some of the guys from class, we’re planning some life sessions, just to stay in shape for the fall.

She gave me a number for Gloria Vasquez. I called. A man answered in Spanish and I hung up.

In the lunchtime bars along Sands Street, some of the guys from the Navy Yard talked joyfully about the whores who showed up in the evenings. But I had seen them, painted, lacquered, with huge piles of hair and alarming mouths, and they made me afraid. Afraid of disease. Afraid of their experience: thousands of blow jobs, thousands of fucks. And besides, I couldn’t pay them.

So I got drunk a lot and into fights, drowning my cock in rivers of beer. Drunk, I called Gloria Vasquez again one night, my head full of her brown nipples and thick lustrous hair, and this time she answered. She was sweet. She was polite. But she knew I was drunk and soon hung up. I was too embarrassed ever to call again.

The summer came and we all went back to Bay 22 and Oceantide. I remember strutting too much under a Saturday sun, getting bleary with beer, and falling asleep on a blanket beside Maureen. I woke with a furry tongue but I wasn’t very ashamed of myself: everybody else from the Neighborhood was doing the same thing. For all of us, boys and girls, drinking was natural. It was also woven together with sex; you drank in order to get sex or you drank if you didn’t have sex. In those years before the Pill, sex was also woven together with fear. The girls surely wanted it as much as we did, but they would pay a tougher price. Instead of fucking, we got drunk.

On the beach, among all those oiled bodies, with Maureen beside me but untouchable, I sometimes tried to distract myself with books and allow a novel to lift me into some other world. But then someone would come over and say, Whatta you, studying for a test? And I’d put the book away and play the role to which the Neighborhood had assigned me. I went to the bar at Oceantide (where they
did
check draft cards) and sat on the side at a crowded table and sipped beer that older guys had bought. I talked much bullshit. Sometimes I even danced with Maureen.

On my seventeenth birthday, I stopped at 378. I brought my father some drawings I had made of Duke Snider and Sugar Ray Robinson and he seemed happy with them but didn’t know what to do with them. He rolled them up and put them in a closet. My mother had a cake for me and the kids all cheered. Then my mother saw something in my face.

You’re unhappy, aren’t you? she said.

I’m all right, I said.

What’s the matter?

I shrugged and didn’t answer.

Maybe you should come home, she said.

Maybe, I said.

But I didn’t want to go home. When I said goodnight, there were tears in her eyes, but she didn’t cry.

From the pay phone in Sanew’s, I called Maureen. Her father answered.

Who’s this? he said.

Pete.

She’s already asleep.

Could you tell her I called, Mr. Crowley? He sighed and hung up.

I was a mess of emotions and I wanted to get drunk. But I knew that wouldn’t help. I went back to the room, and for the first time since Laura left, I read
The Art Spirit.

Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing. …

I was soon asleep.

15

M
ICKEY HORAN
joined the navy in July. A few weeks later, he was followed by Jack McAlevy. And Joe Griffin. Suddenly, among the guys in Boop’s, it was our turn.

The radio and the newspapers were still full of the war. In my room, I was reading Harvey Kurtzman’s
Two Fisted Tales
and
Frontline Combat.
Even Ted Williams, the greatest hitter in baseball, was back in the air force, joining Steve Canyon. I imagined myself in Korea. Or on ships plowing through icy northern waters.

You’re the type who is always going away,
said Laura, before she went away herself.

And I thought: Maybe she was right. She was right about a lot of other things. Maybe I have to go away. It wasn’t just destiny; there were practical reasons too. The money I earned at the Navy Yard just wasn’t enough for me. I had to pay for rent, food, and carfare; I needed money for drinking, to see friends, to have a little enjoyment; and I was going steady with Maureen. In the fall, when school started again, I’d need tuition along with money for paint and canvases, because I was supposed to move on from the basic drawing course. But I didn’t even have a bank account. I couldn’t afford a telephone or a television set. Two days before payday, I always had to borrow a few dollars, just for carfare and hot dogs. I knew what I wanted: enough money to pay for art school, to buy paint and brushes and books. Without those things, I couldn’t imagine a life, even with Maureen. I just couldn’t afford the wanting.

In August, I decided to join the navy.

But
why?
Maureen said.

I can finish high school in the navy, I said. And when I get out, I’ll get the GI Bill. You know, they pay you to go to school. They give you loans to buy a house. I can save a lot of money while I’m in, and we’ll be in great shape when I get out. It’s for
us,
Maureen. For
us.

She knew otherwise. She began to weep. I talked to her, caressed her, kissed her almost desperately. I hedged, layering doubt into my words, making it sound as if my mind wasn’t made up. She cried inconsolably for a while and then stopped. I walked her home. She ran inside without another word.

But the idea of the navy had possessed me, and the possession wasn’t based on the benefits of the GI Bill. That summer, I couldn’t see myself clearly; it was as if the mirror was warped. The navy would provide me with a clear identity, no matter how temporary. Once I could say I was an
Eagle
boy and everyone knew what I meant; now I could say I was a sailor. In the navy, I would earn my space in the world and in this country; the act would certify that I was American, not Irish, not simply my father’s son. Joining a group larger than myself would cause my hobbling ten-cent miseries to recede and vanish. Above all, the navy offered escape. I would escape the stunted geography of Brooklyn, going where nobody knew about my father, my drinking, my failure at Regis, my limitless uncertainties. I would escape the grinding pressure to pay my way in the world. Above all, I would escape the strained demands of choice. I wouldn’t have to choose between life as a cop or a bohemian, a plumber or an artist. I wouldn’t have to choose between art school or an early marriage and the baby carriage in the hallway.

In addition, there was the truant spirit of romance. I would be going from the known to the unknown, the safe to the dangerous. Alone at night, I saw myself on a cruiser, rocking in deep blue water as the heavy guns fired salvos at the dark Korean coast. I saw myself moving through radiant tropical ports with palm trees blowing in the wind and bars full of dark abundant women like Gloria Vasquez, with brown nipples and black hair. I thought about visiting all the ports where my grandfather had gone, drinking in his bars, and then, dressed in navy whites, tougher and older, walking into the sunlight and seeing Laura. She would stop and squint and say, Is that you? And I’d look at her in a bitter Bogart way and say, Not anymore, and turn to take Gloria Vasquez by the hand.

And Maureen? I made a different set of pictures, conjured another shadow-self. Maybe we’d get married. Not right away. Eventually. When Korea was over or something. She’d come and live with me in my home port, in Hawaii or San Diego, some bright gleaming place far from Brooklyn. Or we’d want until I was discharged. Sure.

Because I was only seventeen, I needed to be signed into the navy by one of my parents. But when I told them one evening in 378, my mother was horrified.

They’ll send you to the
war,
she said.

Everybody’s going to the war, Mom.

Buddy Kelly is dead in this war, she said. Buddy Kiernan is dead. Every week, more of them are dead.

They were in the army, Mom. I’ll be in the navy.

Can’t you wait a year? Until you’re eighteen? Maybe the war’ll be over by then.

I don’t want to wait, Mom.

She shook her head in sorrow and frustration. But my father was looking at me in a different way.

Don’t listen to her, he said. It’ll be the best thing you ever did. You can learn a trade. It’ll make you a man.

I don’t understand it, my mother said.

You’re not a man, Annie.

And so he signed the papers.

I was told to report three weeks later, on Monday, September 8, at eight in the morning. The recruiter said I could “strike” for a yeoman rate, which meant I might be able to work as an artist or cartoonist on a ship’s newspaper. There were no guarantees, he said, but since I’d gone to art school, it was possible. This inflamed me even more; with any luck, I could become the Bill Mauldin of the navy!

A week after signing up, I left the Navy Yard, saying good-bye to the men, who all wished me well. I wrote to C&I, explaining that I wouldn’t be back until I was out of the navy. Then I packed all my things, gave up the room next to the Parkview, and went home to 378. I didn’t show off the nude drawings; I sealed them with Scotch tape into the big portfolio envelopes. I got cardboard boxes from the grocery store and packed my art supplies, comics, and other books, including
The Art Spirit.
I stacked them all in the woodbin in the cellar, explaining to my brother Tommy that eventually he might send them to me when I was out at sea. He was now at Brooklyn Tech, a brilliant student, with plans to be an engineer. He took the assignment as if it were a sacred duty.

Then I went on a summer binge, ten days of tearful scenes with Maureen, wild nights at Boop’s, sunburns at Coney. The art school interlude was behind me; I had been reclaimed by the rituals of the Neighborhood. Everything culminated in a going-away party for me and three other young men in a VFW post down by the Venus theater. I arrived with Maureen and we clung to each other through the long evening. Now there was no going back; the papers were signed; my friends were here to say good-bye. The hall was packed, the tables stacked with whiskey and set-ups and pitchers of beer. The jukebox blasted. Maureen and I danced, her small breasts pushing hard against me, her hands tense and sweaty. She said very little, but at some point I made a joke and smiled and she turned away in tears. Her girlfriends came over and hurried her into the ladies room. I downed a cold beer and poured another. Goddammit, Maureen, I’m a
man,
I thought (incapable of irony or self-mockery); I have to do this because men do these things. When Maureen came back, her eyes were red. I took her hand and we went to dance. Jo Stafford was singing “You Belong to Me.”