This Is the Life by Alex Shearer Page B

“Aren’t they small?”
    I don’t know what women saw in Louis, but they must have seen something invisible to my eye. It was only toward the end that he got lonely, and the lonelier he got and the more straggly his beard became and the more the dust piled up on the carpet, the harder it became to start anew.
    * * *
    Back before Louis and I fell out with God, we were altar boys three and a half times a week. (On average.) Three times on a Sunday we had to drag ourselves up the hill to church: for high mass at eleven, back for altar-boy tuition at three, back again for benediction at six thirty. And then every Saturday we would take it in turns to be the servers at early-morning mass.
    Looking back I realize our parents probably sent us to become altar boys not merely from a sense of devotion but to get a break from us and maybe to have sex undisturbed on a Sunday afternoon.
    One Saturday, a few weeks after our father’s funeral, it was my turn for the six thirty Saturday rising and the bitter solo trek up the hill to put on the red cassock and the white cotta and do the honors at an ill-attended morning mass, to which only fanatics and the elderly came.
    Afterward, as I left the church, a man stopped me. He was a stranger to me and I had been warned about such and had no intention of going anywhere with him. But that wasn’t what he had in mind.
    â€œHey, son,” he said. “Your mother’s the widow, isn’t she?”
    Inside I was angry, ashamed, and somewhat offended at hearing my mother so described but was unable to argue with the truth of the statement. I think that those who attempt to deal with the effect of familial death upon children and the young constantly overlook one essential aspect of it all—the sheer embarrassment.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. As I couldn’t deny it, I feigned ignorance.
    â€œLook, things can’t be easy. You see she gets this.”
    And the unknown man, who knew all about us, but whom I did not know, pressed some folded banknotes upon me.
    â€œYou give that to your mother, all right?”
    I stared at him, uncertain what to do.
    â€œYou go straight home now and give that to your mother, okay?”
    I nodded, but I did not thank him. And then he was gone and I was alone in the street with the banknotes in my hand.
    A sudden excitement came into me. I was going to hurryhome now, the bringer of joy and glad tidings. I would place the money upon the table and see our mother’s face, at first clouded with perplexity and distrust, but then lightening with belief and with doubt dispelled as she reached out and took the notes in her hand and realized that for a brief while things would be easier and we were saved.
    And it wouldn’t be just her. Louis too would be amazed by my ability to go out single-handed into the world and attract good fortune, just like that, when left to my own devices.
    So I turned toward home. I was anxious to keep the money safe. But along with that, I had a hankering for a certain kind of style which I had seen in films in the cinema, where men would reach into their inside pockets and take out wallets, or flat gold cigarette cases, or small guns with which to shoot their enemies.
    I didn’t have a coat with an inside pocket. So I stuffed the money inside my pullover and walked quickly home. It was a twenty- to twenty-five-minute walk.
    As I entered the house, I called to my mother.
    â€œI came out of the church,” I told her, “and there was a man . . .”
    Her fear changed to interest to anticipation as I described what had occurred.
    â€œThen let’s see it,” she said. “Let me see it.”
    I reached to my imaginary inside pocket, under my pullover, and, you’ve guessed it, the money had gone.
    Her dismay was palpable, and I felt an inner sickness. To have come home with hope and then to have destroyed it was worse than coming home with nothing at