Paddy’s, it is, but little changed from Teresa’s time here save for the name, nestled among the current analog of antique stores and attorneys and accountants and bail bondsmen. Same flaking dark-green paint on the walls, dark-stained wood booths, kitschy beer-art on the walls. I’m early but he’s earlier, already in a booth, with a schooner-sized glass in front of him, half-empty.
I almost recognize the guy behind the bar; maybe the son of the owner of Kelly’s? Hard to say. Similarly truculent and potato-y faced, but half the people in this state have that same face.
People look up as I enter, look back down. A television mounted high up in one corner broadcasts a baseball game silently; probably the Reds out of Cincinnati. More memories of my childhood surface: my father drunk in his armchair, yelling at the television, a can of Schoenling sweating in his palm, four more burbling away in his gut.
Tom’s in a booth nestled in a quiet corner and as I sit in the booth opposite him the server comes over, a pretty, chirpy thing, probably a student in Lexington, home for the summer. We want nothing more than a beer right now.
—
While we wait, Tom glances at the television and I follow. It looks like we’re playing St. Louis. Tom turns back to me. “Sorry. Started without you.”
“I think you’re entitled. How’d it go?”
He blows a tired and exasperated breath out. “It… went.”
“Did you make out okay?”
He shrugs. “Well enough. But a lot of it has to go to satisfy back taxes, shit like that.”
“Oh.”
“Been a rough few years. Buyers won’t buy unless everything’s settled up.”
“But, in the end… ”
“Yeah, yeah… I guess.”
“You feel bad about it.”
He nods. “Of course I do. I feel like I’ve let everybody down.”
“Pretty big thing to keep going by yourself. Anybody help you out?”
“Uh… a little. I hired some people. Nobody in the family wanted anything to do with it, but they were all too happy to take a share of the profits. When we had profits, that is.”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
Tom sighs. “I know, I know. But… ”
“Is it really what you wanted to do, anyway? You never struck me as the farmer type.”
“Ah… it wasn’t so bad. Not a bad life. For a while… but it got harder and harder to convince people that paying half again as much for local stuff was better than buying cheaper from somebody else. I just couldn’t compete, anymore.”
“So, let somebody else do it.”
Tom smiles, but there’s pain behind it. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have five generations of Hannas breathing down your neck with everything you do. Not to mention brothers and sisters who won’t lift a hand to help but think they get a say in what you do, second-guess your every decision.”
“People can take only so much bullshit before they give up,” I respond.
Tom stares at me for a long moment. “It’s not just bullshit, Mark. This is family. This is where I came from.”
I’m chagrined. The hurt in his eyes is real. “I’m sorry, Tom. You’re right, and I’m sorry.”
We fall silent. I’m not sure where the beer I ordered is, hope that she shows up with it soon. Across from me, Tom bats his now-empty glass back and forth, distracted, staring across the room at nothing.
“Anyway, it’s done,” he mutters, more to himself than to me. Suddenly, he smiles, picks up the glass and puts it back down with an audible thump on the edge of the table. “Gaah… ” he growls. “Tired of talking about this.” He blows out an exasperated breath, turns to me. “How are you?”
“Okay. I guess.” I make a face. “Maybe it still hasn’t sunk in. Mostly just dealing with my own bit of family bullshit, at this point.”
“Yeah.” Tom nods his head. “Sorry about all that. Didn’t mean to be so touchy.”
“I understand.”
“What are you going to do with her house?”
I shrug. “Don’t know. Maybe try to fix it up, sell it.”
“You don’t want it?”
I shake my head. “Not particularly.”
“It’s a nice house.” He grins. “As I remember.”
I grin back; doesn’t hurt to remember the history that he and I share. “It is. I know that. It’s just… I don’t know what I’d do with it. Not sure I’d want to live in it, if I end up back here for any reason. Lots of other memories locked up in it, maybe. Not good ones.”
“She was a piece of work, wasn’t she?”
I never mentioned Tom by name to my mother when the relationship—such as we had—between us began to unravel shortly before I went to college. Which didn’t mean that she didn’t have her own suspicions. Tom and I spent a lot of time with each other, to the exclusion of almost everyone else in our little circle. He saw her at her worst more often than either of us cared to remember.
Where the hell is that beer?
“She, uh… you know what I feel most, right now?” Tom shakes his head; I go on. “Relief. I’m glad it’s over. Finally.” I know how that must sound. “Gaah… ” I echo. “Tired of talking about this.”
Tom grins. “Yeah. Let’s make a promise to each other not to talk about family shit.” He turns halfway back to one of the silent television, back to me. “Uh… how about those Reds?”
I smile; he’s obviously dissembling, and I understand why. And because the only thing I want to say is this, I say it. “You look good, Tom.”
He manages a sheepish look… but, dammit, he does look good. The black curls have been sacrificed to a brushy cut that hugs his scalp, but the beard beneath it is a wondrous thing, part scruff and part well-groomed man-of-a-certain-age, streaked here and there with silver. He has this bear-y, lumberjack-y thing going on that… well…
“So do you, Mark.”
I open my mouth to speak, but then the bar erupts in a loud, sustained groan punctuated by more than a few liquory imprecations; the Reds have just given up a triple and we can almost hear St. Louisans three hundred miles away crowing in triumph. Tom and I look wide-eyed at each other as the television shows a very concerned pitcher in huddled consultation with the manager.
Shortly, the crowd around us settles back down. Tom rolls his eyes. “You were saying?”
I smile. “I don’t know. Is it worth saying?”
He shrugs, then leans forward on his seat, elbows propped up on the table, head resting on clenched hands. His face is less than two feet from mine; if I mimic his posture, I could lean forward and kiss him. “Maybe,” he whispers.
“Tom, I… ”
But then here is our server and she chirps two beers down onto coasters and asks us if we want menus; we both shake our heads and she’s off.
Tom chuckles. “Looks like you’ll never get the rest of it out.”
I open my mouth to say it, but then I notice the fingers of his right hand, curled around the pilsner. There’s something…
“What happened to your finger?” I ask.
He sets the glass back down and holds up his hand, flexing his fingers. The top two joints of his middle finger are missing. “Oh. Had an argument with some equipment a few years ago. Obviously, I lost. Hurt like a motherfucker.”
“I bet it did.”
Tom smiles. “Rest of me’s still here, by the way. I guarantee it.”
I smile back. “Ditto.”
“Well… the rough-and-tumble world of the professional architect… ”
“You have no idea how hard it is to shuffle papers these days.”
“Certainly it’s more exciting than that.”
“Not really.”
“Well, that’s too bad.” He takes a sip of his beer. “So… ”
“So… city mouse and country mouse, I guess?”
“Sure.”
“I had to get away.”
He nods. “I understand. I don’t blame you.”
“I wanted to stay, if that means anything. Because of you.”
Tom smiles; whatever pain he still feels is there, a little bit, I can tell… but it’s an old pain, blunted. “So… how long are you back for, this time?”
I shrug. “As long as it takes for all this shit with Mom to get cleared up.”
“It hurts, for a bit. Then it hurts less and less.”
I remember then that Tom is, technically, an orphan, now that his father has passed. But he could have been talking about us, as well. Whatever us there was, back then. Whatever us there is, right now. “I’m not sure how I feel about it, even now. It’s almost like it’s somebody else’s mother.”
Not much to say to that, so Tom doesn’t. Then, “So, New York? Is it like they say it is?”
I nod. “I actually like it. It’s… different, but good. Intense. It’s been interesting being home, though.”
He gestures around him. “Well… Versailles… ” and I chuckle.
“Teresa says you’re selling?” I prompt.
Tom manages to look sheepish, as if he’s been caught out in a minor fib. “Well, yeah… ”
“She said something, said she saw you a few weeks ago,” I say, in explanation.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I, uh… yeah. Milk business isn’t what it was, you know. And I’m tired of trying to make it work.”
“Some national is coming in?”
Again, the sheepish look, and I wait. “Well… little white lie, I guess. It’s not another milk producer. It’s, uh… well, it’s a developer.”
“Oh.” Images of Teresa and Duane’s subdivision flash through my head. “Okay.”
“They offered, I accepted. Well, just verbally, so far. There are some things to straighten out, yet.”
“Well, that’s good. That’s good.”
“I… think so. I really hope people understand. Course, if they’d bought more of my product in the first place… ” He shrugs.
“People will think what they want to think. Certainly we’re both used to that, by now.” My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it; I have a pretty good idea who it is. And I’m afraid to talk to her.
“Well, it was probably easier for you. In New York.”
“It was. Easier to hide, if you need to. Easier to be who you are, when you need to.” I offer a sympathetic half-smile. “Must have been… interesting for you, here.”
Tom shrugs. “It’s been… okay. It is what it is, I guess. People come and go, you know?”
“Yeah. If it’s any consolation, it’s much the same in New York. Never seems to be enough time for everything.” I smile back and take a long pull off my beer. “What are you going to do with all your filthy lucre?”
He grunts out a laugh. “Haven’t got it, yet. But… I don’t know. I do get to keep the house.”
Tom’s great-grandparents built the house when they started the dairy; Tom is the fifth generation to live in it. I remember being over there fairly often, although it was hard to get some privacy there when Tom and I began seeing each other; there was always somebody underfoot. None of the other children wanted the place, much as none of them wanted to be bothered with running the business. Both had fallen upon Tom almost by default.
“It’s a nice house,” I offer.
“It is… but it’s too big for one person. And it’s a bitch to keep up. Expensive.”
“Funny,” I offer, again. “Both of us stuck with houses we don’t really want.”
We look at each other across the expanse of battered and graffiti’d table. Something curdles the air between us, much as nothing had become a something that one spring day so long ago.
Chirpy—I’m sure she must have a name—shows up, then, asking if we want more beer. As it turns out, we do, and Tom orders a plate of fries. I’m in a mood for drinking, tonight, and it crosses my brain that I’d neglected to eat dinner.
When she departs, Tom and I return to our wordless contest of barely-suppressed whatever the hell this is.
Finally, Tom relents, starts speaking in a voice I have to strain to hear. “Okay. I won’t pretend that I wasn’t hurt when you said you were leaving. I don’t know what I was expecting, at that point. Maybe I was just being naive. But I think we would have worked something out between us. I think we could have.”
I don’t want to hear this, but I do. And I need to. “Maybe,” I answer. “God knows I wanted to. But I had to leave. I couldn’t stay here any longer.”
“Because of her?” His voice is rich with skepticism; I can hear the seriously? as if he’d spoken it aloud.
“You don’t know what she was like, Tom. Every day of my life she went out of her way to tell me how worthless she thought I was.”
“But we were old enough! Old enough to go out on our own, make a life together!”
“Where? Here? No. Lexington? Maybe… but you had ties to this place, and your family business. How would you have made it work?”
“I would have given all that up for you, Mark.”
“I didn’t know that, Tom. You never told me.”
Tom slumps against the back of the seat, twirling his nearly-empty glass. He sighs. “I’d barely told myself, maybe. I’d just thought of it. I really didn’t want to take things over, but nobody else seemed inclined to and I knew that Dad would be disappointed in me if I backed out as well. And when I told him why, he’d just be more disappointed, and I was tired of being a disappointment to people.” He picks up the glass, drains it. “Turns out I’d just postponed the inevitable by about fifteen years, and here I sit.”
Chirpy’s back, bearing beers and food. Tom and I stare at each other while she busies herself with us; she’s not sure what we are to each other… friends? Enemies involved in some kind of slow-burn argument?
On the television, I can see that the camera is panning a crowd on its feet, celebrating. The camera goes to a view of a player trotting around the bases; obviously, it’s a home run. Success there, so…
“Tom, I… ” and I stop. I look around theatrically.
Tom gets it, starts smiling. “You’re safe,” he murmurs.
I take a deep breath, stare at the oncoming ball, ready myself, swing. “… haven’t stopped thinking about you.”
He takes a sip of his latest beer, wipes foam off his upper lip. “Well, that’s something.” He smiles. “But… ” He takes another bit of the beer. “I know there’s a ‘but’ coming.”
I look at him. “But… ”
“Is there someone? There?”
I shake my head. “No.” I reconsider. “Not really. I wanted there to be, but… ”
My phone buzzes again. I think to ignore it, but Tom glances down.
“You gonna get that?” he says.
“Do you mind? I’m pretty sure it’s Teresa.”
Tom waves a hand. Go ahead. He leans back against the bench, drinks his beer, watches the game. I dig my phone out of my pocket.
Where are you?
I grin and message back.
In town. At a bar. Paddy’s?
With Tom.
Yes.
Long pause; I know she’s thinking.
You need to get back here. Now.
Subtle, Teresa. A line from our shared childhood comes back to me: You’re not the boss of me.
Why? I type.
Daddy just showed up.
“Fuck!” I say; a bit too loudly; heads turn… laughable, given what I’d just heard a few minutes ago.
“What?” From Tom.
I drain the last of the beer, reach into my pocket for my wallet. “I have to go.” I can see the disappointment sleet across his face, mirror it with my own. This isn’t where I’ve wanted things to go.
Tom watches me pull out some bills, shakes his head. “No, no, no—I’ve got this. What’s up?”
“It’s my dad. He… finally decided to show up. I… ” want to punch him, is what I want to say.
Tom smiles, waves a hand. “Go. It’s fine.”
I stand up. “Tom… ”
He looks up at me. “Let me know how it goes, okay?”
Posted 18 December 2024