RSS 2.0 FeedOld Friends
Main Street in Manchester was lined with red brick buildings: storefronts and apartments over the stores – a long, old street in an old, old town. Main stretched from East Center Street on one end to Culley Road on the other. A courthouse and city offices clustered on the corner of East Center. The Cheney mansion and the family’s mill reigned at the far end on Culley near the Connecticut River. A few baseball fields and a park, empty on this winter evening, perched on the flats below the mill.
The street was wide with diagonal parking in front of the stores, sidewalks on both sides, and awnings over most of the doorways. Traffic lights nodded in the small, cold breeze which came up from the river. From where he sat in front of the library, Mort Wood watched a handful of neon signs begin to show in the gloaming. The marquee across from him in front of the Veteran’s Hall read Bingo – Wednesdays. Further down he could see the dimly lit signs of the drugstore, the barbershop, and Marlowe’s Hardware. Snow had crusted here and there – at the base of the monuments, on the green’s bare tree trunks on the hill beside him, along the high eaves of St. James’ Church next to the green, stained dark against the curbs, and lodged beside the legs of the bench where he sat. The grey paint on the bench had begun to crack and peel.
Mort watched snow start to fall in big flakes in the milky globes of light the streetlamps threw along the curb. Like a cape, the snow gathered around his shoulders and onto his cane sitting across the lap of his overcoat. The O’Connell boy bicycled past him towards Culley, and the tires on his bike slid a little as he turned onto Church Street. Mort saw the boy disappear past the collection of two- and three-family houses lining that street. There was no other activity – just a tangle of telephone wires and naked clotheslines and scatterings of forgotten Christmas lights beginning to show along the side streets in the dusk. In an upstairs window of the house on the corner of Church, Mort could see a woman in a calico dress working at a sink with steam from hot water billowing around her and the corners of the window clouding with condensation. His wife, Trudy, had owned a dress like that years ago.
When he reached the end of the block, the O’Donnell boy pulled his bike up against the house that shared a wall with Noren’s Grocery. Upstairs, Larry Noren heard the familiar sound of the boy stomping his feet on the front porch mat and then entering the house on the other side of the wall where his long mirror hung. A small lamp whose base was in the shape of a pump and handle threw dusty light onto the nightstand behind him.
Larry regarded himself in the mirror and ran his finger over the thick, gray bristles of his eyebrows, then across the wisps of hair on the sides of his head. He sniffed the aroma the hair tonic left on his fingers. He made his mouth smile, straightened his tie and cardigan sweater, stretched his eyeglasses over his ears, and put on his long, tan overcoat. Finally he shook the front of the overcoat and pulled a brown scarf over the shoulders.
He glanced at the hooked rug he was standing on. Throughout the flat there were many like it that Marge had made and many seat cushions, too. This one had a pattern of red roses on a black background with the year, 54, hooked in yellow wool into a corner. He looked around the room he’d left exactly as it had been the night she’d passed away three years earlier: her knitting needles in a basket beside the armchair, her hairbrush and perfume on the bureau, her light blue cotton bathrobe on the hook behind the door.
Larry switched off the lamp and walked downstairs into the street, leaving behind the store’s worn smell of dried goods, fresh fruit, and dusty wooden planking. The air outside tasted raw. He pulled up the overcoat’s collar and tucked the scarf down inside of it. He walked slowly and carefully through the falling snow down the one block of Church Street to Main. Then he crossed the street and made his deliberate way up the sidewalk to where Mort sat.
“Good evening, Captain,” Mort said.
Larry nodded and sat down next to him. “That’s a nice cap.”
Mort took off the cap and brushed the snow from it. It was made of green wool with a feather in it. “My daughter sent it to me from Delaware.”
“It’s nice.”
“Trudy is down there visiting now. Took the train.” He replaced the cap and gestured with the cane. “No more trains for me.”
“So, how’s your knee?”
“It’s okay,” Mort said. “I’m all right. You?”
“Good. You know.”
Mort nodded, though they weren’t looking at each other. Several cars crawled up Main Street, pausing at the two traffic lights that only blinked yellow once evening fell. The last car, a green Chrysler, stopped in front of the bakery next to the Veteran’s Hall. A little boy climbed out of the passenger seat; the door jingled when he opened it, and a short fragrance of sweetness and flour wafted through it and across to them.
“Is that Frank Tangerlini’s grandson?” Mort asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I can’t tell who’s driving, but it looks like his old car.”
The car idled quietly, and billowing exhaust bounced off the pavement. The boy came out, grinning, carrying a small white bag. He climbed in, and the car returned up Main Street in the opposite direction.
“Say, I saw the O’Donnell boy head up your way a little while ago on his bike,” Mort said. “I guess he was coming home from high school after basketball practice.”
“He’s a good young man,” Larry said. “He still helps his mom around the house.”
“And he’s polite.”
“He is very polite.”
A siren whined off on the far side of town towards Bolton Lake. Mort blessed himself. The lights blinked off in the bakery. A woman in a flowered apron and black stretch pants unlocked the door of the Veteran’s Hall, pushed it open, and then let it close again. She disappeared inside as three heavy-coated old men slowly made their way up the sidewalk and stopped in front of the Hall. One of them looked at his wristwatch, then all three shuffled their feet; their breath came in short clouds under the lights there.
“Are you going over tonight, Captain?” Mort asked. “I think it’s some kind of stew.”
“I don’t know. I guess I will.”
“I hear Leonard Murphy lined up a banjo player he saw at the Knights of Columbus convention down in Newark. I hear he’s going to play tonight.”
“Is that right?”
“It should be good. I like the banjo.” The neon sign over Marlowe’s blinked off with the store lights, and Henry Marlowe walked out to the curb and opened his car door.
“There’s young Hank,” Mort said. “I saw his father at church on Sunday. I guess he spends most winters down in Florida because of his arthritis – has a mobile home there.”
“That’s something,” Larry said.
They watched the man start his car and drive down towards Culley Road. A cat crept along the sidewalk past the barber shop and the drug store and disappeared between the buildings. The brief clamor of freight cars being loaded at Cheney’s dock tumbled faintly up the alley behind St. James Church.
Some more men had joined the group milling about in front of the Hall. The woman in the apron reopened the door and held it ajar as the men formed a line. The man at the back tossed a cigarette into the gutter; the tip glowed red in the shadows until the snow snuffed it out.
“I heard Ruth McDougal passed away last week,” Mort said.
“What?”
“At St. Mary’s Home. I guess she just died in her sleep.”
Larry swallowed and folded his hands on his lap. The line across the street filed gradually into the hall. As each man entered, the woman smiled and engaged him in brief conversation.
“Did you hear what I said about Ruth McDougal, Captain?”
“Are you sure it was Ruth McDougal?”
“I’m sure. Father Reilly told me this morning after Mass. Apparently she was alert to the end.”
“I almost married her,” Larry said quietly.
Mort looked at him. “Say again?”
Larry stared out into the street. “We were going to elope. Marry in New York City. We’d even bought tickets for the ferry from Bridgeport to Long Island.” He shook his head, took off his glasses, wiped away the snow with his scarf, and replaced them. A cold breeze came up from the river and tossed big, slow, fat snowflakes around in the streetlamps’ glare.
“I didn’t know that, Larry,” Mort said slowly. “That must have been when I was away in the service.”
Larry nodded. “It was. No one knew.”
“But wasn’t she already engaged to that boy from Waterbury, and then he enlisted and got sent overseas?”
“Yes.”
“And you got shipped over just after that, didn’t you?”
Larry nodded again.
Mort looked at his old friend sitting perfectly still, then past him to the green where they’d first met as boys. "But you didn't elope."
"No." Larry shook his head slowly. "No, in the end I couldn't do that to that boy. I was heading over myself. That could have been me." He paused. "I told her I'd had a change of heart."
Mort tapped his fingers lightly on the cane on his lap. He looked down at it then back at his friend. "I guess you know that boy never made it back. And you were probably still overseas when she married and moved to Cleveland."
A moment passed before Larry said, "I found out when I came home."
Mort watched the small rise and fall of Larry's chest. "Did you know that Ruth was back here at St. Mary's?"
"No." His voice was almost a whisper. "I wish I had."
Mort readjusted the cane. “Father Reilly told me she moved there to be close to her sister and niece. He said they visited her regularly."
They fell quiet again. A truck drove by. Mort watched Larry put his hands into his coat pockets. Then Mort took off his cap, studied it, brushed it off again, and put it back on. He climbed to his feet, laboring with the cane. The sound of a banjo tuning up came from across the street. “Well, are you ready to head over?”
“I think I’ll just sit here for a while.”
“Don’t think too much about Ruth, Larry.”
“It’s pretty hard not to.”
Mort watched his friend stare into the street while the snow fell around them and dusted their glasses. “Well, come over in a little bit then.”
“I might.”
“Come over for the entertainment, anyway. I’ll save a chair for you.”
“Thanks. I might come over.”
Mort put his cane down carefully into the new snow. He hesitated, then leaned down off the curb and limped across the street. The line had disappeared. The woman smiled and held the hall door open for him. Before he went inside, he looked back across to the bench in front of the library. Larry was still there, silhouetted under the streetlamp. He’d pulled his overcoat up around his neck and had buried his chin down under the collar. The cold breeze had blown it open at the knees.