with his index finger, and said, “I hate your guts.” “I know, Jamie, I know,” the elder man had said, putting his arm around his brother’s shoulder. “And well you should.”
“And your mother, too, carting pie from Annie over here,” John said now, sipping his drink. “She must be scared.”
“Stop,” said Tom again.
“Do me a favor,” John Scanlan said suddenly, his eyes narrow, shrewd as a predatory bird’s. “Help us out in the business or your brother will be pushing ladies’ lingerie with the sheenies down on 38th Street. I don’t think he knows his ass from his elbow.”
“I’ll think about it,” Tommy said.
“How’s the building going, out by you?”
“They’re working fast.”
“The men are coming this week to clean out your new house. Your mother has them waxing the floors and washing down the walls.”
Tommy squared his shoulders, and all the sympathy he had felt evaporated, as though the blood was draining from his body. He was cold with the emptiness of his antagonism and his fear, and he knew how scared he was when he began to wonder if his father’s despair and weakness had all been a ploy to lead to this moment.
“We don’t want the house,” he said. “We’re fine where we are. Really. Give it to Joe. He and Annette will be thrilled.”
John Scanlan closed his eyes, and Tommy wondered if he had drifted off to sleep. Then slowly the heavy lids came up, and Tommy saw that his father’s eyes were like blue bullets, aimed straight to the heart.
“No mortgage payments,” he said.
“I can handle my mortgage payments,” Tommy said.
“Not without a job you can’t,” John Scanlan said, and Tommy heard in his voice the word “Checkmate.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You figure it out, buddy boy. I’ve done my part. I gave you a good job at that concrete company, and I’ll give you a better one over to the factory, and I bought you and your wife a house fit for a king and queen. I’ve done my part. It’s time you did yours.”
“Why are you doing this? I’m a grown man. I run my own life.”
John Scanlan let out a great snort, and then began to cough, a cough so long and hacking that Tommy thought he would never catch his breath. For a minute Tommy thought he’d like to just let him choke to death, and then he poured his father a glass of water and handed it to him. Finally John was quiet again, his chest heaving. The two men stared at each other. Tommy knew that his father was going to die, and he knew that John Scanlan had set himself a task before he did so and that that task was to see that the last of the Scanlan boys was exactly where he wanted him to be. He knew, too, that the family would gather round, waiting, waiting, for Tommy to do this one small thing for a dying man, and that if he did it, that which made him who he was would be lost forever, and he would become what he had so often been called: one of the Scanlan boys. One of the old man’s sons. A fight to the finish, they called it in cowboy movies, and so it was, and Tommy knew he would lose. Suddenly John Scanlan smiled at him, and Tommy knew that they had both been thinking the same thing.
“This won’t work,” Tommy said.
“You want to bet?” John said. “I’ll bet you a baby grand piano for that new living room.”
Tommy stood up. He could hear his mother outside, talking to the nurse. “Why?” he said again.
“I owe it to you, son,” John said. “You’d only make a mess of it yourself.”
“No.”
“Tom,” the old man said when Tommy was at the door, “your wife’s expecting again, James said.”
Tommy nodded.
“Good,” said John Scanlan. “I’m happy to hear that.”
There was a long silence. Tommy could hear his father’s breathing, a rumbling trapped inside the sunken chest. His father’s eyes narrowed, and the breathing become more labored. “This one last thing,” the old man said, his hand over his heart.
“Jesus,” Tommy said, “you’re really doing it. Pat O’Brien and the deathbed scene. The old Irish dad and his last request.”
“I’m more alive than you are, sonny boy,” John Scanlan said.
“Go to hell.”
“Listen, Tommy. Let me let you in on a secret. There is no hell. There’s no heaven, either. There’s only this. You have to make the best of it.