The Easy Way Out (14 page)

However miserable I'd felt in high school, I at least hadn't felt responsible for causing anyone else's misery, a definite advantage to being without friends or lovers. Perhaps that was why I was secretly hoping that the offer Arthur and I had made on the yellow house would be turned down: we wouldn't be stuck owning the place, and no one would be to blame for Arthur's disappointment except the greedy owners.

*   *   *

My parents' store was on the ground floor of a two-story brick building that they owned. The top floor held the dusty offices of a grotesquely fat divorce lawyer and the dentist my brothers and I had been sent to as children. (The latter had recently been indicted on charges of a Medicare scam that involved treating people for nonexistent
gum diseases.) On one side of O'Neil's was a jewelry store, which, according to my father, had not made a sale since the day the nearby shopping mall opened, and on the other was a barbershop that had been converted into something called Samurai Death Martial Arts Institute. Samurai Death was one of four martial arts institutes that had opened up in town in the past decade. They heightened my feeling of being in strange, hostile territory, where everyone was capable of smashing blocks of concrete with their bare hands.

The window display at O'Neil's hadn't changed significantly in almost a decade. Two androgynous mannequins wearing unconvincing wigs and ill-fitting green suits were standing in limp-wristed parody of a fashion model pose. Surrounding this hapless couple were stacks of sun-bleached work clothes, underwear from another generation, and clunky black shoes. Occasionally, my mother would haphazardly toss a pile of new gym uniforms or socks into the stew. A Boston TV station had recently done a special on the demise of the downtown areas of suburbs. Repeated shots of O'Neil's windows flashed across the screen. I was heartbroken, but my parents claimed to be thrilled (at least in front of Ryan) with what they considered free publicity.

I locked the Yugo against the roving bands of Samurai Death squads and rapped on the glass door. Ryan came forth, grinning and apologizing, a ring of keys in his hands. He ushered me in with a warm hug. He was spilling out of a white dress shirt and a pair of gray flannel trousers. “Nice material,” he said, fingering the lapels of my black sport jacket. “You obviously don't shop here.” He forced out a laugh and tossed a limp hank of hair out of his eyes by snapping back his head.

Ryan had inherited my father's dark, handsome coloring and my mother's strong chin and jawline. Feature for feature, he was a lot more striking than either Tony or I, but in the last few years he'd taken on the neglected look of a person who had long since given up on the idea of having a sex life. His black hair had receded unevenly from his temples and brow. A good haircut would have done wonders for him, but out of loyalty, he insisted on going to a local barber who snipped away artlessly and left an archipelago of hair clumps scattered across his skull.

I straightened out his tie and tucked in his shirttails. “If you don't mind me saying so, Ryan, this outfit doesn't do you any favors. Couldn't you find anything more attractive on the racks around here?”

“I don't need favors, Pat, I need miracles, something this store doesn't specialize in.”

“Any business today?”

He shrugged. “We always get some. It's a big week for socks. How's Arthur? You should have invited him to this dinner to liven things up a little. I better go dig out your parents. They're probably in back, fighting.”

He wandered down the center aisle, tugging at his shirt until he'd disarranged it.

The store was long and narrow, cluttered to an almost incomprehensible degree from the linoleum floor to the high, pressed-tin ceiling. There were tables on either side of the center aisle, stacked with shirts and sweaters and pants in no particular order. Customers generally had to stand by helplessly while Ryan sifted through the piles in search of their size. The racks of suits against the wall were hidden behind racks of sport jackets that were hidden behind racks of winter coats, making almost everything more or less inaccessible. Ryan worked up front, while my mother kept to her station behind a glass display case at the rear. Rita's counter contained the more expensive dress shirts, tie clasps, cuff links, handkerchiefs, a few bulky watches, and a selection of striped ties of a medium width that was never exactly out of fashion and certainly never in. Because Rita was so eager to look busy, she spent most of her time polishing and shining the glass. She'd amassed a collection of cleaners that included virtually every product put out by Amway, Procter & Gamble, and Dow Chemical.

My father generally stayed out of the front of the store altogether. Eight years earlier, he'd cleared a space behind the dressing rooms, from which he rented formal wear. I think it was the only money-making square footage in the place, although my mother claimed he'd opened it up simply to get away from her.

My parents still had a loyal following of customers, but most of them were getting on in years and had less and less need for new clothes as they retired, got sick, shrunk down a size, and returned to clothes they'd worn in the 1940s. Someone under the age of sixty-five did occasionally come in, but it was rarely to buy anything more expensive than a gym uniform or a package of briefs.

Each time I entered the store, I was swept away by nostalgia and dread. The smell of all that denim and polyester and accumulated dust hit me in the face the way a blast of heat from the engine of an idling car hits you on a hot summer day. The truth is, I loved my
parents' store and had since I was a child. I loved to go there after school and play in the piles of clothes stacked in the dark storeroom. On Saturdays, the busiest days in that era when the earth was cooler and my parents ran a thriving business, I was allowed to help out in front, talk to customers, and operate the cash register. Now the image of myself as the eager, helpful little boy in tie and jacket—a miniature mock-up of my father—made me cringe. But then I had loved being a dutiful son. Neither Ryan nor Tony had had the slightest bit of interest in the store, yet they were the ones who ended up working there. Sometimes I worried that what would make me happiest would be to step into Ryan's arch-supported shoes and take over the family business. During slow periods at the travel agency, I often fantasized about going into O'Neil's with a work crew, cleaning it from top to bottom, chucking out all the old merchandise, and snazzing things up.

My mother came out from the back room, her head tilted to one side as she screwed in an earring. “Late again, Patrick,” she said without looking at me.

“Problems at work,” I told her.

She took her position behind the glass case and looked at me doubtfully. “I've never known anyone who has as many problems as you do. How do I look, dear?”

She had on a white blouse and a gray flannel skirt, a feminized version of Ryan's outfit, and she looked particularly short and uncharacteristically defenseless. Rita dressed for work in sedate, slightly mannish outfits that complemented the severe and rigid sides of her personality, those I liked the least. Her hair, which had been a dark and glamorous red, was now tinted some shade dangerously close to orange. She'd worn it in the same style forever—shoulder-length, brushed off her face, and held in place with a plastic headband.

Age and worry over my father, the store, and her three sons had deepened the lines in her face and given her the tough look of the hardworking and slightly contemptuous.

“You look very nice,” I said.

“Oh, good. I don't know why I trust your opinion, but I do. Listen, Patrick, I have a favor to ask. I can count on you, can't I?”

“It depends on the favor.”

She sighed, disappointed. “The whole point of a favor is that you do it, you don't question it.”

“I'm not going to agree to just anything, Rita.”

She frowned. I was standing in front of her counter, trying to
organize the ties according to color. “Don't mess that up,” she scolded. “I won't be able to find anything. All I want you to do is go along with the suggestions I make for the honeymoon. No matter what I say, your father will disagree with me, but you might carry some weight, since you're the travel professional.”

“I promise to listen to your plans; how's that?”

“Thanks for nothing.”

Ryan came out of the back room, snapping open a beer can. My father trailed behind.

“You're going to drink that now and spoil your dinner?” my father asked. “What sense does that make?”

“Stop bossing him around, Jimmy. You treat him like a child.”

Ryan winked at me and took a swallow from the can.

“Where's the funeral, Patrick?” my father asked.

“Black is fashionable,” Ryan said.

“Well, it just goes to show. And I thought we were on the cutting edge here. Get rid of the plaids, Rita; black is the big color for spring.”

Twelve

I
drove to the restaurant—an eatery in the lobby of the hotel beside the shopping mall—with my mother in the passenger seat, nervously clutching the dashboard, and Ryan and my father packed into the miniature back seat. My father is thin and short, but, particularly in cars, he tends to sit with his arms stretched over the back of the seat and his knees spread, thus taking up twice as much space as his body requires. In the past five years he'd been operated on for bleeding ulcers, kidney stones, and gallstones. (“Marry a man,” my mother liked to say, “and end up with a rock quarry.”) He'd spent almost as much time in the hospital as he had at home. He'd developed emphysema the year before and supposedly given up cigarettes, though he occasionally lit up.

“What the hell,” he'd say optimistically, “I can always kill myself if it gets too bad.” He was almost seventy. Despite the weariness brought on by his bad health, he'd retained a certain dashing appearance. His sunken cheeks and the lines around his eyes added more drama to his face. Only his neck, which was terribly thin, showed the ravages of his various illnesses.

He was still attractive enough to make mildly suggestive comments to comely relatives and waitresses without looking completely ridiculous. But when he did flirt, he did so with the hostility of an
aging handsome man who's bitter for not having taken full advantage of his looks in his youth.

“Jesus Christ, Patrick,” he said as I drove through a tangle of prefab housing projects and condo villages, “it's so cramped back here, it's like riding in a coffin.”

“Please,” my mother said.

“I think this is perfect for Patrick,” Ryan said, still knocking back his beer. “It's bohemian.”

I tried to change the subject by mentioning that I'd been giving some thought to the store lately.

“And you're coming to give your brother a hand,” my mother stated flatly.

“No.”

“We could use the help, Pat.”

“You see, your brother is asking you to come work with him. I'm glad you're speaking up for yourself, Ryan.”

“I've been thinking the way to increase business might be to specialize. Target a particular customer, one who doesn't get what he needs at the mall. I thought it might be a good idea to try specializing in large sizes.”

“Clothes for fat people?” my father asked me, appalled.

“James!” My mother's backward glance clearly indicated she was offended on Ryan's behalf.

“Well, heavy, also tall and broad-shouldered. Big-boned people.”

“For Christ's sake, Patrick, the store is crowded enough as it is. The last thing we need in there is a lot of fat people pushing through the racks.”

“Well, maybe we should critique your body next, James.” She turned toward me. “For someone who claims to have no interest in the store, you certainly have a lot of ideas.”

“I've never said I have no interest in the store.”

“No, you don't say it, you just refuse to work there, you refuse to offer your brother a little support. It isn't as if that travel nonsense is getting you anywhere. Click, click, click on the computer all day. You just think you're better than Ryan, that's all.”

Ryan objected, and my mother apologized to both of us, though the cutting tone in her voice hung in the air. There was a tremendous amount of anger between my mother and me, although usually we kept it just under the surface. In addition to everything else, I don't think she ever completely forgave me for being homosexual. She took
it personally, as something I'd schemed to draw attention to the flaws in her child rearing. The fact that she'd welcomed Arthur into her life so graciously made me suspect she'd figured out I was unhappy in the relationship, or at least reassuringly unsatisfied.

We were stopped at a red light and had fallen silent. It was a tense silence that was gobbling up all the oxygen. Directly in front of us was an absolutely blank housing development that could have been anywhere in the country, a handful of gray ranches clustered together on the dusty plateau of a reclaimed hazardous-waste site, not a tree or a shrub or a blade of grass in sight. Looking at it, I felt the odd vertigo that sometimes overtakes me in shopping malls, airports, and other characterless spots. I snapped on the radio and immediately snapped it off.