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Johnny’s Dying


ISSUE:  Summer 1980

Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light, to guard, to rule, to guide. Have mercy on the soul of my father, Patrick Devlin. And if it so be Thy will, let nothing happen to my family, ever again. I am Thy child.

Molly—Mary Loretta—Devlin blessed herself and got up from her knees. She prayed twice a day, morning and night, kneeling beside her bed, sometimes facing the pale pink stuccoed wall, sometimes head down, her face buried in her hands, staring into the soft black wells of her stopped vision. The bed was made up with a cover that once was a diningroom curtain, French goods of azure satin stripes and bands of tightly-woven ecru linen studded with baskets of flowers. Molly loved this cloth because it was the best of its kind, one of the last remnants of the days when her mother and father had money. Now it made of her bed something strict, elegant, and different. Had she had the sight of herself that God in His mercy and wisdom had of her, she would have recognized those qualities as the very ones she wanted for herself.

It was May 1940, and Molly was twelve and fatherless since September. She was a serious child, mannerly and devoted, and loved, because of those amiabilities that they unthinkingly took to mean approval of their own voluble and clannish lives, by her family: her mother, Lottie, her younger brother, Gerard, and her uncle, Lottie’s brother, Charlie Ahearn, a captain in the Fire Department and a paying member of the Devlin household since 1933, the year that May, his wife, died in childbirth. Molly prayed with absolute faith but little hope that her mother’s people would consider her Devlin feelings before their own raw need to drink and quarrel and speak their minds to each other. “Say it. Say it. Go on and say it. I know what you’re thinking anyway.” And they did and they did.

There were two other Ahearns besides Lottie and Charlie: Lily, the youngest, wife to McCann, a neighborhood bookie, and Johnny, the oldest of the four. Lily was a telephone operator in a Wall Street brokerage house and lived with her heavy and good-humored husband within walking distance of the Devlins, on the other side of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Johnny lived in the streets and the lodging houses of the Bowery, hand to bottle, glass to mouth, whiskey, beer, Sterno, whatever was cheapest and whatever he could get. When he was desperate for drink and the money to get it, he showed up at Charlie’s firehouse on East Broadway, in Chinatown. If Charlie was not there, he stood outside the door waiting for him, shaking and shivering, his shoes broken and his cloth cap hanging on the back of his liead, his thin flannel shirts buttoned up to the neck summer and winter, hot and cold. Johnny was under orders never to come to the Devlin apartment, not entirely because he drank—they all did, except Charlie—but because Lottie could not stand the sight of him. “He broke Mama’s heart,” she said, “And Mama was a saint.”

Molly leaned into her bedroom mirror, one that used to hang in the dining room of another, larger apartment. Lottie had given it to her when they moved after Pat’s death. “Take it,” she said. “It’s got real gold leaf on the frame. You need more in your room than just that old bed. And those books.” The face that Molly saw in the glass was round, the Ahearn face, with thick fair bangs cut straight across her forehead, and dark blue eyes. “A little Swedish saint,” McCann called her, in his cups. She closed the door and sat on the bed, her hands folded between her knees. Patrick James Devlin, her father, on that Thursday of last September, a day whose blue, red, and gold offered to the eye and the skin the fruition of life, had gotten up, dressed in his Glen Plaid suit, fastened in his oval gold cuff links—Lottie’s wedding gift—taken the subway to Bowling Green and locked himself in the one-man office on John Street that he kept for writing the insurance policies that no one could afford to buy. His rent was three months overdue. Cardboard covered holes in his shoes. If Charlie hadn’t been paying the rent on the apartment, they would have been out of there, too. Pat wrote a short letter, put it in an envelope, and wrote Laurette A. Devlin on the front. After he had propped it against the base of the lamp on his desk, he shut the windows and locked them. Then he pulled down the shades and turned on the gas under the cooking ring in the corner. He took off his wristwatch and laid it on the desk in front of him. He wondered how long it would take.

Molly had kissed him that day before going to school. “Bye, Daddy.” He was standing in front of the chifferobe, putting in his cuff links, his vest hung over the back of a chair. He put his hands just under her ears and kissed her forehead. “My Molly,” he said. He took her in his arms. “My girl.” She smelled the talcum powder on his face, the starch in his shirt. The next time she saw him, he was dead, his eyes closed forever. Between the two faces was the land of locked answers, where truth fell from the skies. Only the dead can say, I know, I understand.

Pat was laid out in his striped trousers, black sack jacket, white shirt, and gray silk tie. His rosary beads of large smooth stones held together with heavy twisted metal rings were threaded through his fingers. The crucifix was onyx, with a silver corpus so finely articulated that Molly could see the nails in the hands and feet from where she knelt. Lottie stood beside her. “He had a second nervous breakdown,” she said. “He had the first years ago when his sister Regina died so young. Monsignor Raftery says he wasn’t responsible for what he did. We can have the Mass. God is good.”

The coffin was going to be closed. Lottie laid her hands on Pat’s. “Goodbye, my darling,” she said. “You were my life. My life.” Charlie held Mollie by the arm. “Be a soldier,” he whispered to her. Molly leaned over her father’s body. The sad sweet smell of the flowers. He might yet come back to them. She kissed his forehead. No. His body was cold, cold as the winds that fanned the fires of hell.

Molly turned out the light and got into bed. Would Charlie come safely through the perils of the day’s fires, particularly on the four to midnight shift, on Saturday nights and on all nights with a full moon? Would her mother be able to get a job? She was very good at keeping books, she said. Would there be enough money to pay the rent? Charlie had a good steady job, and he was good to them, but he gambled, betting a lot of money on the races. Would Gerard stop sassing the teachers and throwing girls’ hats down the sewer grates? Only Molly knew he smoked behind the dumbwaiter shaft on the roof. For herself, Molly was consumed by the pain and humiliation that is visited upon the children by the sins of their fathers.

The next morning Charlie pushed the Daily News across the kitchen table to Lottie. “Will you look at this?” he said. “Johnny’s in the paper.”

“What?” said Lottie. “In a fight?”

“No, he’s in the Inquiring Photographer.”

“You’re fooling.”

“Would I make it up if it wasn’t true?” asked Charlie. “Look for yourself.”

There it was, picture and name, John Ahearn, 125 Bowery, New York.

“That’s a flop house,” said Charlie.

“Sweet Father,” said Lottie. “Why would anyone ask him anything?”

The question of the Inquiring Photographer was: what would you do if you had your life to live over? Johnny’s answer was: if I had my life to live over, I would be a fireman like my brother Charlie. He is a captain and has passed every test he ever took. He’s going to Delehanty’s for the Battalion Chief test. He is a good firefighter and is in command of Engine Company 9 in Chinatown. He has never lost a man. Hiya, Cap. I thank you. The next night Johnny was in Kings County Hospital. The police had found him in front of the Long Island Railroad Station, bruised and bloody, in an alcoholic coma.

“Who’ll be next?” asked Lottie, “First Pat, now Johnny. Things always happen in threes.” She unscrewed the cap on a gallon of Italian red and tipped it into the shot glass that she kept in the corner of the kitchen windowsill. Molly watched, her stomach contracted. The ritual was starting. One small pour, one small swallow. One small pour, one small swallow. Maybe it would be a gallon today, maybe a half.

“When troubles come, Molly, they don’t come in single spies, but in whole battalions.” Charlie had gone to the hospital as soon as the police called, and had just returned.

“He’s dying,” he said. “Johnny’s dying.”

“Forgive and forget, Charlie. Forgive and forget,” said Lottie. “There’s nothing like your own around you when you’re sick. We’ll stand by. Molly and I will go out tomorrow.”

“I really don’t want to go,” said Molly.

“Nonsense,” Lottie said. “He’s your uncle.”

She unscrewed the cap again and poured another drink. “And take that look off your face, Miss,” she said to Molly. “Wine is good for me.”

“John Ahearn,” Lottie said to the nurse in charge of the ward.

“Over there,” she answered, staring at them, taking in their worn sweaters and Lottie’s cracked handbag. She was immaculate in her unifrom; her white stockings shone. There were mother-of-pearl cuff links in her sleeves.

“Visiting hours are over in exactly one hour,” she said, and turned her back on them.

Lottie and Molly stood there for a moment, until they found where he was. “There he is,” said Lottie. They walked up to the bed. His eyes were shut, his lips sucking in and out. His hands were outside the sheet, by his side, knobby and bruised, with long, thick, ridged nails. They were yellow, and his face had a strange yellow cast. His features were drawn in concentration. He might have been listening to directions for a sudden and complicated journey. His false teeth were in a glass on the bed table, next to a copy of the News and a box of Loft’s Parlays, Charlie never came empty-handed.

“Merciful Father,” said Lottie.

Johnny opened his eyes, wide, all at once and seeing nothing in front of him, turned his head slowly to the side and looked at them. His eyes were round and blue-gray, Ahearn eyes, but they protruded and the whites had the same yellowish color as his face.

“La,” he said slowly. “La and the children.”

“No,” Lottie said. “Only Molly.”

“Only Molly,” he repeated. His mouth was shapeless without his teeth, and his chin moved up and down in a straight line rather like the end of a knitting needle. Molly stood behind her mother. It looked like another bad death, and what she wanted, what she must do, was by no act of hers to associate herself with this disreputable man, on whom even the nurses looked with disdain.

Johnny tried to move in the bed but could not raise himself. Lottie poked at the pillows under his head. The string at the neck of his hospital gown was loose, and one white shoulder showed against the grained brown skin of his neck.

He licked his lips. “Give us the teeth, La,” he said. Lottie passed the glass to him, and he fitted them slowly into place. He looked at Molly.

“Hello, Molly,” he said, and tried to wink at her.

“Hello, Uncle Johnny,” she answered.

“I’m sorry about your father. I’m sorry for your troubles.”

“That’s all right.”

Lottie was stitting in the wooden visitor’s chair, her hands wound around the handle of her handbag.

“Well,” she addressed Johnny, “how do you feel?”

“Bad. I feel bad.”

“Your face is all cut up. How did that happen?”

“Jesus, La, how do I know? In a fight.”

“What’s all this about the Inquiring Photographer?”

“You saw that?”

“How could I not see it? It was right there in the paper.”

“Yeah. Well, I know the guy who asks the questions. What’s his name?”

“Jimmy Jemail,” said Molly.

“Yeah. That’s him. I used to see him on the Extension. He used to kid me, always said he’d ask me a question some day. And he did.”

“The nerve of you. What would you like to do if you had your life to live over. Saying you’d like to be a fireman like your brother. What do you know about work? You’ve never worked a day in your life.”

Johnny sighed, a long sigh, that turned into a loud hiccup.

“I never had a chance, La.”

“You had as much chance as the rest of us. You were the only one who went wrong.”

“Where’s the Cap?”

“Why?”

“I want to see him.”

“Money won’t help you now, Johnny. Nothing to ask for. Nothing to take.” Her voice tightened.

“Like my jewelry. My ring and my bracelet that Pat gave me before we were married. You took them, didn’t you? You took them to get drink. They were mine from Pat, and you stole them and you never admitted it. The only things I ever had that were worth anything. I knew, and you knew and Mama knew. Not that she’d ever blame you. But I blame you. How dare you do that to me?”

Johnny put up a shaking hand.

“Not in front of the kids, La.”

He looked at Molly. “You’re getting big. Always listen to your mother, now. She’ll tell you what to do.”

“It’s too bad you didn’t do the same,” said Lottie.

“Did the Cap see the paper?”

“Of course he did. You know he reads every word in the News every day.”

Molly watched with terror as Johnny started to cry.

“I had a right to be a fireman like the Cap,” he said.

“You took them, didn’t you, Johnny? You took my jewelry?”

“La, for Christsakes, what difference does it make now? All right, I took them. I did it. Now are you happy?”

Johnny hiccupped again, with such force that the bed moved a little. What if he dies now, right in front of me, thought Molly. He turned wearily and cupped one hand under his ear, supporting his head, the pose in which the bums were drawn in the funnies, curled around a lamp post.

Lottie was dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. She looked at him, her head cocked.

“Is there anything you want, Johnny?” she asked.

He was trying to say something. They bent down to catch it. He had an old and a tired smell and his breath dragged up from his depths. Molly thought of Pat’s head in the coffin, drops of holy water on his mouth, seeming to float in a sea of flowers. Johnny pronounced two words, with equal emphasis.

“Orange ice.”

“Go get it for him, Molly,” said Lottie, taking a dime from her purse. “Get a big one. It’s the least we can do for him. I’m going down the hall for a cigarette.”

Molly was alone with him now. He was looking at her over the distance that separated them. She knew she was going to do something, but had no idea what it would be. Then she stepped forward and put her hand on his, as she had seen Lottie do to Pat.

“Good luck, Uncle Johnny,” she said.

“Goodbye,” he answered.

When she got back from the candy store with the little pleated cup, there was only a small ball of the ice that was not melted, with a wooden spoon stuck in the center. As she turned the corner near the ward, she saw Lottie standing outside the door.

“He won’t need it now, Moll. He’s dead. Johnny’s dead.” She covered her face with her hands.

“It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”

“What isn’t?” asked Molly.

“You wouldn’t understand. Here he was a bum all his life, and he had a priest at the end. The chaplain was in to hear his confession while you were out getting the ice. While poor Pat, all alone. Oh, God, I don’t care if I live or die.”

“Why did you talk to him that way about the jewelry, Mama?”

“Because it was the last chance to get the truth out of him,” said Lottie. “Death is final. The door is shut on you, and there are no more questions you can ask. Oh, Molly, why did he do it? Why did your father do it? I loved him so and he loved me. I know he loved me and I’ll never know why he did it.”

When they got home, Charlie was sitting in the kitchen, with papers spread out in front of him on the table. There was an insurance policy, a baptismal certificate, dog tags on a piece of stringy khaki tape, a medal on a ribbon, and an old brown photograph.

He held it up. Johnny in his World War uniform, one of four soldiers doing a dance step for the camera in their thick boots. Molly took it and turned it over. Me and my buddies, it said, France, 1918.

“Remember that?” Charlie asked Lottie.

“The only time he was ever out of trouble. How Mama loved to get that allotment check every month. Where will he go?”

“The Veterans, Long Island.”

“What about Mama’s grave?”

“All filled. You’ll go next to Pat. And I’ll go to the vets.”

“The first Ahearn to go. I wonder who’ll be the next?”

Charlie sighed and got up from the table. “It’s a sad business for the little bit of bread and butter you get out of it,” he said.

He opened a cupboard and took down a bottle and two jelly glasses. He poured a drink for Lottie and one for himself and included Molly in the toasting gesture that was directed somewhere outside the kitchen window.

“Here’s to you, Johnny,” he said, his eyes bright.

“Yes, Johnny,” said Lottie, “You were your own worst enemy. Well, you’re at peace now, you and the mother that loved you.”

Molly looked at them. Their faces formed a circle, turning inward. She saw in their eyes the same tears that filled her own.

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