A kid from marlboro road, p.1
A Kid from Marlboro Road, page 1
To my mother and father, and to their parents and
grandparents, who crossed the Atlantic with nothing in
their pockets but hopes and dreams.
Copyright © 2024 Edward Burns
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Seven Stories Press
140 Watts Street
New York, NY 10013
www.sevenstories.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Burns, Edward, 1968- author.
Title: A kid from Marlboro Road : a novel / Edward Burns.
Description: New York : Seven Stories Press, 2024.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024006923 | ISBN 9781644214077 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781644214084 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3552.U732438 K54 2024
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024006923
College professors and high school and middle school teachers may order free examination copies of Seven Stories Press titles. Visit https://www.sevenstories.com/pg/resources-academics or email academic@sevenstories.com.
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
A Kid from Marlboro Road
Family Photos
1
We went to Pop’s wake today. It was an open coffin service which means exactly what it sounds like. I’d never seen a dead person before and my grandfather would be the first. You wait on line to take your turn going up to the casket so you can kneel and say a prayer. My mom was already there, standing next to the coffin and flowers, with her brothers Mike and Mark and her stepmother Gilligan. I couldn’t even look at her because she was so upset. I’d already been crying for two days now and didn’t want to start again in front of all these strangers.
The place was packed. There were forty rows of chairs and every seat was filled. There was a line of people waiting to pay their respects that went all the way out the front door and onto the sidewalk. It wasn’t only our family and Pop’s friends from the Bronx. There were hundreds of the sandhogs, guys who must have come straight from work because they were still wearing muddy work boots and dirty work pants and had greasy work gloves stuffed into their back pockets and hard hats in their hands. There were cops in uniform and detectives in nice suits. There were old Irish biddies dressed in black who sat quietly praying with their rosary beads and other old Irish biddies who cried out loud. There were the men from the bar where Pop used to drink every night and the sole surviving friend from his kitchen who used to sing and dance with Pop on Saturday nights.
“You see this crowd, that’s the sign of a well-liked man,” my dad said.
“So it is,” I replied, trying to do Pop’s Irish accent.
My father smiled, took my hand and held it. It felt good even if his hand was sweaty. I’m not embarrassed to hold his hand in public today because it’s a funeral and I’m sad and no one makes fun of a kid at his grandfather’s funeral. He kept holding it until someone started talking to him and pulled him away, leaving me and Tommy alone on the line. Tommy seems like a different kid since we got the news that Pop died. He’s not a dick anymore. He’s nice to my parents, asks if he can help out around the house, and even said he could look after me when we’re at the wake. But the weird thing is I haven’t seen him cry at all. I was watching him when we got close to the coffin and he didn’t even look that sad.
“Do you know what to do?” I asked him.
“Yeah, you just go up there and kneel down and say a prayer.”
“Do you want to go up there together?” I asked.
“Yeah, maybe we should,” he said.
So that’s what we did. After we knelt down, we did the sign of the cross and bowed our heads. I was having a tough time thinking of a prayer to say because I was too busy looking at Pop’s face. I mean, it looked like my grandpa, and it didn’t. It’s hard to describe. It’s almost like he looked fake and not dead but maybe that’s what a dead person looks like. He was also wearing a suit and tie and I had never seen him dressed up before.
When Tommy finished his prayer, he reached out and touched Pop’s hand and said, “Let’s go.” I couldn’t believe he touched him. Now I wanted to touch him too, but Tommy had already stood up and said, “Come on, people are waiting.” So I had to get up. I hate to admit this, but I was jealous he got to touch a dead person and I didn’t. I’m sure it’s a sin to think that.
After we got up, we went to the receiving line and first said hello to Uncle Mike, who was standing next to the coffin. Uncle Mike is big and strong and wasn’t crying. He shook our hands and gave us a hug and told us Pop is in a better place. Uncle Mark was next to him and he looked like he’d been crying but he made a joke about how funny we look in our cheap suits. He didn’t shake our hands or give us a hug but instead pretended to punch Tommy in the stomach and messed up my hair. My mom was next on the receiving line. The minute I saw her, I grabbed her around the waist, squeezing her as hard as I could, and started crying. I don’t know why that happened but I couldn’t control it. She tried to tell me everything’s OK, but she couldn’t because she was crying too and was probably having trouble speaking because I was squeezing her so hard. That’s when Tommy decided to be a dick and just walked out of the funeral home, not even saying anything to our mom or Gilligan. I wanted to kill him.
After mom wiped the tears from my face and I gave Gilligan a hug, I walked through the crowd looking for Tommy and I was getting so mad that I said to myself, When I find him, I’m not gonna say anything to him, I’m just gonna walk up to him and punch him in his mean face. Then I saw him. He was sitting in a chair in the middle of the back row of the funeral home. He was stuck between two old biddies in black who were saying their rosaries and he was crying, like really crying with a red face and his whole body heaving up and down.
After the wake, we all walked across the street to a bar and everyone was in a much better mood. Even my mom was smiling and laughing as she told everyone about Pop taking her to the bars on Third Avenue while he had his pints and sang his songs, so he did, and she would sit on the bar and wait for him to finish his antics and throw her onto his shoulders so they could head uptown to the next bar. Everyone laughed and toasted and shouted Pop’s name and they drank their drinks and told more stories.
The one sole surviving Irish musician from Pop’s kitchen sing-alongs, Brady, the fiddle player, raised his glass and said, “Let this be for the soul of Pop McSweeny.”
Everyone raised their glass.
“May it be received,” they responded before they drank.
Gilligan told everyone that she thought Pop must have known the Lord would be calling for him soon.
“Wouldn’t you know, when I went to look for his suit to be buried in, I couldn’t find it anywhere until I closed the bedroom door and there it was on the hook and it had just come from the dry cleaner’s a few days earlier,” Gilligan said. “Mind you, this is a suit he hadn’t worn in twenty years, and why would a man get the urge to send a suit that he hadn’t worn in twenty years to the dry cleaner’s unless the Lord had given him a sign and touched his shoulder and whispered in his ear that the suit was in need of a press? Because if you’re going to be meeting our savior you can’t be wearing a wrinkled suit.”
There was silence after she told that story and all of Pop’s friends and family nodded. My Uncle Mark then turned to me and asked if I’d like to say a few words or tell a story. I shook my head.
“Come on, kid. If you can’t tell a halfway entertaining story about one of the funniest men you’ll ever meet then you’ve got no right to stand at this bar or be part of this family.” I looked to my dad and he shrugged.
“Your Uncle Mark is right. Tell us one thing you remember about your grandfather.”
I couldn’t believe my dad was doing this to me. I didn’t know most of these people and wasn’t even supposed to be allowed in the bar, but I had no choice.
“OK,” I said. “There was this one story Pop told me that he thought was so funny, he told it to me a bunch of times. He said the night my dad proposed to my mom, he and my mom went out to celebrate and they were sitting in a booth at a bar and my mom was crying.”
Uncle Mike jumped in, “She’s always been given to the tears, hasn’t she?” The people that knew her well all nodded.
I said, “But this time she was crying because she was happy. But then somebody told you guys, her brothers, that they saw your sister in the bar down the street crying. So, you two ran in there and didn’t ask any questions—you grabbed my dad and dragged him outside and were about to beat him up when my mom ran out screaming at you to stop, and she had to show you the ring to prove that she was crying happy tears and not sad tears. And then all four of you walked up the block to the apartment to wake up Pop and tell him the good news but he was out drinking. So, you had to go to every bar in the Bronx to find him and when you finally did, he looked at the engagement ring my dad gave my mom and he just shook his head and said, ‘That won’t do, so it won’t.’ And you all walked back up the Concourse to the apartment and Pop took out Grandma’s old engagement ring and gave that to my dad, even though it wasn’t as nice as the ring my dad got my mom because Pop got Grandma that ring when
I didn’t get any laughs because it’s not really a funny story, but I was told I was allowed to stick around. My mom then had to show everybody the ring and as she did the smile from their wedding album returned to her face.
2
So, I was sitting on my bed one night looking at the big maple tree outside my window. It was a windy night and most of the leaves had fallen off and these thick nasty-looking branches were reaching out in all directions, going this way and that way, whipping back and forth, and there was this one branch that was scratching the outside wall of my room.
When I was a real little kid, that scratching sound would scare the shit out of me. And if I’m being honest with you, it can still be pretty scary now but I’m too old to run into my parents’ room and get into bed with them.
Except sometimes, when my dad is working midnights, I still sneak in to sleep with my mom. We listen to this radio show she loves, Jean Shepherd. He’s this guy that sings silly songs and tells stories and it’s really good for falling asleep to. I love the stories about when he was a kid. If he’s telling a really good one, like the one about being a paper boy, me and my mom will stay up till 11:30 p.m. when he goes off the air just so we can hear how it ends. If she’s getting tired and turns off the radio before one of his stories is over, she’ll ask me if I’m still awake and I’ll pretend to be sleeping so I don’t have to go back to my bed. I used to be able to sleep in her bed all the time but now that I’m older she says I need to learn how to sleep on my own. I tell her I already know how to sleep on my own, but I’d rather sleep in her bed and listen to Jean Shepherd.
“But you have your own radio in your own room. Listen to Jean Shepherd in there,” she tells me, but she doesn’t understand it’s more fun to listen with her so that we can laugh together and talk about the parts of the story we liked best.
Those are probably my favorite times with my mom, and I know they’re her favorite times with me because every time we do it, she hugs and kisses me like I’m still a little kid and calls me Kneeney and tells me these are her favorite times with me. The Jean Shepherd show always starts with this song that sounds like the racetrack when the horses are going to the gate. The call to the post. If I hear that bugle call coming from her room and my dad’s not home, that’s my signal to sneak in. I’m like one of the horses at Belmont—time to leave the paddock.
I know a little bit about horse racing because we live close to the Belmont Park racetrack where they hold the Belmont Stakes, and because my dad loves to “play the ponies.” Every year in the fall, me and my brother Tommy will go with him and some of the cops he works with to the fall meets. There’s a big event at the meets called the Marlboro. My dad says it’s our lucky race since we live on Marlboro Road. And he’s right. Every time we go to the track for the Marlboro Meet, we win.
I love our days at the track and not just because betting on races is fun but because my dad’s partner on the cops, Carmine Cappabianco, knows one of the trainers and we always get to go down to the stables with him and see the horses up close. Once, I even got to sit on one of them. We bet on Carmine’s friend’s horse that day, but he lost. Tommy said that’s why we were allowed to sit on him. “He had no shot of winning. They’d never let you sit on a winner.”
So, like I was saying, I was sitting in bed, looking out the window because usually there’s something interesting happening on the street corner. We live at the intersection of Marlboro Road and Page Road and the corner across the street from our house is a major hangout for the older teenagers in our neighborhood. Depending on the time of day or the season of the year, there’s always something fun to watch. There’s this one couple, Linda Leary and Paulie Fontana, who always show up around eleven o’clock when most of the others have taken off and these two will sit on the curb under the streetlight and make out for hours. And I mean literally, for hours! I know this because I’ve watched them a bunch of times. There have been nights when I’ve gone to the bathroom or went to talk to my mom to see what show she’s watching or one time I even fell asleep for a few hours and when I looked out the window again, there they were, Linda and Paulie, still going at it. I haven’t kissed anybody yet, but I can’t imagine wanting to do it for hours at a time.
But that night, it’s windy and cold out and the corner is quiet and I’m getting sleepy when I suddenly remembered I had to hand in this English assignment the next day. Like with most of my homework, I’d waited to do it until the night before it was due. You see, I’m not great at being a student. I mean, I’m not a moron and I get OK grades and I’m not one of those kids that just hates going to class. When it comes to school, I could take it or leave it. But when you’re in sixth grade, you have to take it, right?
Anyhow, my homework was I had to write a poem and what made it really suck even worse than a normal poetry assignment was it had to be about Jesus. I go to a Catholic school, by the way: St. Joes. So, this wasn’t the first time I had to figure out words that rhyme with Jesus. Breezes is one of my go-tos. And wheezes. And sneezes. And cheeses. You get the idea. It’s hard. But poems with sneezes and cheeses and wheezes don’t go over too well with the nuns. If you went to a school that had nuns, then you’d know what I’m talking about. That’s where the big maple comes in.
I’m watching the tree’s branches sway back and forth in the wind and all the smaller branches are reaching out toward the sky like little tentacles and I get this idea that this old tree is Jesus. I imagine that the maple tree struggling in the storm is like Jesus struggling to speak to people in a screwed-up world. The branches reaching out into the terrible windy night are like Jesus’s hands reaching out into the terrible sad world to heal people and make them feel better when they’re scared or lonely or, if they’re like my mom, sad that the world is changing. The big thick trunk of the tree shows how strong Jesus is and kinda represents his heart and soul. And all the roots are his words and prayers reaching down into the earth for people to find when they’re farming their fields or making sandcastles on the beach or digging for worms to go fishing or making holes in the street for new sewers or building a basement for a building, you know, basically anything that people do with the dirt of the earth. Anyhow, that was kinda the idea.
I know it sounds stupid but in the poem it sounded better because it all rhymed, except this time I didn’t rhyme anything with Jesus. And it was a poem, so it didn’t really need to make sense, right? It just needed to sound good and give you a feeling, which I think it did.
So, I hand in this lame assignment the next day and didn’t think about it again. I figure I’ll get a B minus if I’m lucky but I might get a C because I didn’t proofread it and I’m a terrible speller and I have really shitty handwriting. Talk about something the nuns hate. Bad handwriting. You would think it’s one of the seven deadly sins the way they go crazy over it.
When my mom and dad went to Catholic school they said the nuns were even tougher than the nuns we got at St. Joes, which is hard to imagine, until they tell you the stories about getting cracked on the knuckles with the ruler if you had shitty handwriting. Or worse than that, they’d crack the boys behind their legs with that skinny wooden stick they use when they’re showing you the different countries on the map or pointing to the different presidents’ pictures that hang above the blackboard. My dad said he got it so bad one time that the backs of his thighs were bleeding, and he had to spend all day at school sitting at his desk while the blood dried. When he finally got up at the end of the day, his school pants were stuck to the scabs on his legs. He knew he couldn’t tell his mother because the old Irish back then didn’t believe the nuns or the priests could ever do any wrong, even if they made you bleed.
“If I told my mother, she woulda said I musta deserved it and given me an even worse beating for upsetting the nuns in the first place,” my dad said.
He had a real problem on his hands when he got home from school that day because when he tried to take his pants off he couldn’t do it without ripping those scabs off, which he said would have hurt worse than the beating. So, his brother, my Uncle Tim, suggested they fill the tub with water and my dad could sit in there to soften up the scabs. But they realized if he did that, their mother was sure to see the blood in the tub and on the towels and find out about the beating so they decided they would walk over to the river and jump in. The problem was it was January in New York and to jump off the pier on the West Side of Manhattan wasn’t like jumping into the Mississippi River like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
