Grief Street

he’s—”
    “Don’t speak his name! Homosexuals are an abomination unto God.”
    “Ain’t we all?”
    “Ho! Haven’t you changed your tune!”
    “Charm school, it puts thoughts in a guy’s head.”
    Eva laughed her own laugh, which was remarkably the same as that of her husband. “You can lead a fool to thought, but you can’t make him think.”
    “Anyhow—Johnny, he looks like me in that old picture. Except for the freaking earrings, of course.”
    “What are you saying? You’ve seen him?”
    “Sure, I been seeing him where he works. In a fairy bar over there in Hell’s Kitchen. You remember the Kitchen, Eva. Where the doc helped us out?”
    “Shut up!” Eva’s hands flew to her ears and covered them. “Shut up! Shut up!”
    “Remember?”
    “Shut up!”
    Eva stamped her feet now. Kowalski spoke louder. “Only last night I seen him. I picked him up in the Buick-We drove over there to Jersey to catch the fights. Know what I mean?”
    “Oh, God...!”
    “He as’t why you never come with me to the fights.”
    “Those horrible, horrible fights! The very idea. I abhor it!”
    “Exactly what I explained, sweety. Sweety —that’s what your son calls me, by the way.”
    “Wicked! Abomination!
    “Johnny and me, we had us a freaking howler over that one.”
    “What are you talking about, fool?”
    “Your violent nature, sweety.”
    “What—?”
    “You think Johnny doesn’t know what you done to his brother?”
    “Oh—please, God, don’t say the name!”
    “You think Johnny and me we ain’t talked all about what you did?”
    “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and God!”
    “Did you say the baby’s name when you went and covered his face with the pillow?”
    “God!”
    “Did you sing all motherly like, Hush little Jimmy now go to sleep?”
    “God!”
    “Did you, Eva? Did you?”
    “Oh—God!”
    “To hell with your freaking God!”
    “Have compassion, have mercy—!”
    “Hush little Jimmy now go to sleep... That’s what you sung to our baby while I was off to work, right, Eva? Tell me the truth!”
    “I can’t remember. That’s the horrible truth. I was sick! You know it’s what the doctor said...”
    “I know it’s the words to a song Johnny can’t forget.”
    “Forget him. Forget the baby, too. It’s just you and me now, Joe.”
    “Strange freaking talk from somebody who says she lives m the past because no place else is fit, leastwise the unbearable here and now.”
    “Haven’t we made the best life we could?”
    “There ain’t anything we about it. It’s the life you made for us, Eva. Which is a prison full of wounded inmates. Johnny’s wounded, I’m wounded—you’re freaking incapacitated. Baby Jimmy, maybe he’s lucky to be dead.”
    “Oh —God!”
    “ How come you can say freaking God but you can’t say Jimmy or Johnny?”
    “We must forget the boys. We must! Yes, of course, we know what we did—”
    “What you did, Eva.”
    “It was you who found the doctor!”
    “It was you that tossed out Johnny.”
    “He wasn’t right! He wasn’t all boy!”
    “That ain’t the reason. It never was.”
    “I was afraid!”
    “Afraid Johnny'd remember the song? Afraid he’d tell somebody? Afraid your son the pansy would get you blackballed out of your freaking Sodality?”
    “It’s a blessing he’s what he is. It made him flee this place. It made him flee you!”
    “Sure, a guy like Johnny, he had every reason to fear what I become—King Kong Kowalski. I’m sorry as hell about my own kind of fear and what it made me—angry and ugly as sin.”
    “Joe, how do I make you understand? It’s good he left us. I always worried about my nervous spells.”
    “Mommy the maniac baby killer, she calls it spells. ”
    “I worried I’d harm him, too, Joe. Don’t you see? I worried I might kill him, too.”
    “Say the name. Say Johnny.”
    “Pray with me!”
    Kowalski’s face went hamburger red. The veins at his temples bulged and throbbed. He laughed, then snorted, then sang a song of mockery that made his wife draw her hands protectively to her face and head.
    “Hush now, Eva, don’t you cry... Watch all the furniture go bye-bye...”
    “Stop it, Joe! Pray with me!”
    “Hush now, Eva, don’t you cry...”
    Kowalski moved to the dining table, raised a fist, and brought it down against the edge. Cups, saucers, and dishes crashed to the floor. Food spattered the ceiling and the walls. Eva bounced up and down in her chair, hands covering her eyes,