"We spend a whole life searching for
All the things we think we want
Yet never really knowing what we have."
--The Night the Lights Went Out in NYC, The Ataris
THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN NYC
Part One
Perhaps it was that Spot Conlon had come home to die, or at least to visit the gravesite of his mother who already had. I'd passed him on the street in the East Village, outside of the Horus Café on 6th Street and Avenue B. His eyes were blue and glazed over as if he'd had too many drinks and too much hookah and grabbed by a sudden impulse, I'd reached out and touched his arm.
"Sean Conlon?" I said, a question and a comment both at once.
"Fuck off," he said and swatted at my hand.
"Sean, it's Anthony."
"Fuck me," he said and then fell into a wondrous speechlessness. Even in his stupor he knew the weight of my words.
I laughed. I already had, a long time ago. "What are you doing here? I thought you left New York, for good."
"I did. I came home to see my mam."
But Kathleen Conlon had died, that much I knew. Cancer had finally done her in while we'd still been in high school.
He elaborated. "I come home once a year to stop by the grave. You know, to pay my respects in person. Show her some of the pictures and all that."
"Why didn't you ever call anyone?"
"It just didn't seem like a good idea."
I left his remark alone.
"So where have you been all these years?"
"My citizenship's still good in Ireland," he said. "I was living with my mother's sister Margaret."
"You never reconciled with your father?"
"He was a tough bastard," Sean said. Then he paused. "Mam never told him I'm gay. Maggie's a lot like Mam."
I looked Sean up and down. He was the all-American boy with an Irish passport. It had been thanks to his mother, of course, because she'd been the one to bear Sean in her homeland and then come to America to raise him. He'd been absolutely devastated to learn of the cancer.
"Where are you staying?"
"I'm giving it one last go with my father." he said.
For a moment I didn't know what to say. Then I offered, "You can stay with me, at least for a bit."
He took a deep breath. The alcohol was making him tired.
"No," he said. "No, but thanks. Look, Anthony, it's late, I've got to go."
"If you need anything—"
"Yeah, sure," he said. There was no reflection of the old Spot Conlon. This was nothing but a pale, skinny, nervous imitation. "It was nice seeing you, Anthony. Good luck, and take care."
Without waiting for a reply, he turned, and he left, just as easily as he had done all those years ago.
………………………………………………….
A week later we were both standing in line for $2 falafel at Mahmoun's.
"Sean," I called. "Sean, behind you."
He turned around and I motioned for him to let a few people go before him with their orders.
"I would've thought you'd have left by now," I said, pleased at the prospect of another chance.
"The anniversary of her death isn't until next Wednesday." he said. He did not look pleased to see me again.
"When are you going back to Ireland?"
"I don't know."
He wasn't making the conversation easy at all. "So you're staying in Brooklyn?"
"Yeah, with my father."
"He any easier to live with?"
"No."
I wanted to ask him why he was so unhappy but if the anniversary of my mother's death was next Wednesday, I'd be unhappy too. Accordingly I bit my tongue.
"Here," I told him, "Let me treat. It's the cheapest food in Manhattan, anyway, so it won't break my wallet."
He smiled but the warmth did not quite extend to his eyes. It faded just as quickly and he was left silent.
"So what do you do in Ireland?"
"I do construction work in Dublin."
"Must be a great city," I said.
"It's shit, but I love it like I love New York … just kinda feels like home, I guess."
I pressed further. "You must be very happy over there."
"Happy enough," he said. Then, in an instant, he was all seriousness. "Look, Anthony, it's great to see you and all, but life's a little different now and I don't feel comfortable with this whole arrangement."
"What arrangement?"
"This … you … all the questions. I came home to see Mam's grave and then I'll just be off again."
"Sean, I'm not trying to make things difficult—"
"My whole life is in Ireland now. It's new and has no past."
"Look, let's just get our food and go out for coffee or something simple."
"No. Thanks, but no. Respectfully, of course."
"Sean, can I do something for you? Can I write my mobile phone number down on a piece of paper and give it to you?"
"I probably won't call."
"You don't have to make any promises." I grinned. Then I sobered. "Please."
"Fine."
I scribbled both my mobile number and home number on the back of some long-expired D'Agostino's promotional advertisement that I'd forgotten and lost in the depths of my wallet.
"There," I said. "I feel like this is the end of some horrible date."
"Oh, you only wish," Sean's face stayed straight before breaking into the tiniest of smiles. "Like I said, I probably won't call."
"That's alright," I said, "Just as long as you know that you have the option."
………………………………………….
The phone rang very early in the morning the following Wednesday. When I said hello, a breathy pause filled the line.
"Anthony Higgins?"
"Sean?"
"Do you want to meet me at the Union Square Station in half an hour?"
"Yeah, yeah, what—"
"Go down to the L in the basement." The line died.
Still groggy, I leapt from bed and filed into the bathroom. A sleepy reflection with messy black hair greeted me as I turned on the tap.
It struck me suddenly that in those years since Spot – Sean – had left, I'd changed, too, as witnessed in all those lines creasing the corners of my eyes. We only twenty-four, the both of us, still young, but I was aging before my time and never before had it mattered at all.
Even thought I knew that the L was the only train to Bedford I was still resentful of the stairs involved in getting to the platform. Once at the bottom, however, the sight of Sean Conlon awaited me and I strode over to him.
"Hey, Sean," I said gently and smiled. A fading image of Sean's lithe body arching beneath me flashed across my mind.
"I hope I didn't wake you?"
"Don't worry about it," I said. "What's up?"
The sound of the train approaching hung in the distance of the tunnel.
"I thought maybe you'd like to come along," he said, fidgeting.
"To where?"
"To visit my mam."
We stood back as the train roared into the platform and then walked aboard with all the businessmen in their suits.
The ride was silent, as the subway always is, and quick. Painless, I suppose. When we emerged onto Bedford Avenue, the sky was filled with soft gray clouds that amplified all the colour in the world.
I knew from long ago that here, in his crowded, ethnic part of Brooklyn, Mrs. Conlon had been laid to final rest in a mausoleum rather than into the ground. It was a beautiful little building – memorial – and I could hear the Spanish grocer next door arguing with his American wife in their second-floor apartment. We opened the door and stepped onto the silent marble floor.
The names immortalized onto bronze plaques were an entire world of nations themselves: Conlon, of course, but also Fernandes, Marovich, Shevket, Bertolli, and so many others.
I asked softly, "Do you want me to wait outside?"
"It's a tough day for me … I'd like someone here … you, you can sit down."
My footsteps resounded off the marble as I went to sit down next to Sean, surprised that he wanted someone to be near to him. He'd always been a solitary creature.
He put his splayed hand on the plaque. "Hello, Mam. I'm sorry I haven't been around too much." An assortment of photographs lay scattered on the floor. "Aunt Maggie says hi, she sends her love."
A strange tone had crept into his voice and I wondered if he ever felt foolish talking when no one could hear him. Then again, maybe his mother was with us at this very moment.
"Maggie's new baby is fine, a big healthy girl named Maureen. She's beautiful, looks just like you." He tucked a picture of the baby behind the corner of the plaque.
I noticed then a picture of Sean himself, standing with his arm around the waist of another smiling boy with red-brown hair and big, bright green eyes. Gently I reached for it and picked it up; it was obviously a love-worn photograph and it folded in my hand.
"Who's this?" I asked gently, and a great pain struck my heart. I realized: Sean was still beautiful.
He looked at it tenderly. "That's Michael," he said, reached for it as if it were a child. "He says hello, too, Mam." Then he turned slightly to me. "Michael's my boyfriend of three years. We live together in Dublin."
"And is he Irish, too?" My chest felt as if it would collapse. Michael was a very handsome boy.
"He was born and raised on a sheep farm in County Kerry. He's Catholic and he's Irish and if I could marry him I would do it."
He swallowed hard; I could see the muscles of his throat move. In that instant, in a certain way, I felt betrayed, dejected, felt as if he had broken and cheapened the love that had once been between us. The intensity of my anger shocked me, and I looked away from the smiling photograph. Had I really been so stupid as to hope that things could always be the same? But had it all been for nothing?
"Michael and I are looking for a new place, Mam, in the countryside. We want to open our own pub and live off that."
"So that's it, then?" I said. He turned his cold blue eyes on me. "So you've got everything you want, and that's the end of your story?"
"Oh, no, Anthony," he said. "Oh, no, I think it's only the beginning."