by Benjamin Fine

Mattie stood by the register, like he had for years, but he was old now, really ancient, bald and stooped. His brother Herbie had died and there was some Spanish fellow flipping eggs over at the grill. His son Barry was gone. The crowd was different. The men from the Brass and the other factories sitting around before the morning horn sounded and jawing about the union or girls were also all gone and Mattie’s was now filled with white collars in suits, and well-dressed women, grabbing a quick roll and coffee before catching the train to the city. They all came from the fancy condos that were put up where the factories used to be. I sat at the counter on one of the old red vinyl covered stools and looked out of Mattie’s front window and up the street towards my mother’s apartment.  All I saw were new buildings; the old world had faded off and her decaying brown brick building stood out like a relic.

Years ago when I worked at the Brass, Mattie’s Place was special. Each morning, I met with most of the other guys for breakfast here and for a short while each day we let the rest of the world pass us by. Sitting there, before heading to the factory, I relaxed and smelled the hot coffee brewing and the bacon sizzling. Mattie worked the register, his brother Herb manned the grill and Mattie’s son Barry was the counterman and waiter. The guys would talk about everything; the union, the bowling league, sports and girls. For me though, it was the music. I would have a roll and coffee, drop in a quarter or two and listen to the jukebox. The sweet sounds of oldies made my day. Most of the fellows didn’t move until the horn at the Brass started to blow. I looked around and noticed that Mattie had taken out the jukeboxes. I guess those are a thing of the past, but sitting here it seemed like years ago, and in my thoughts I heard Dion and Frankie Valli.

Some older guy, grizzled and beat up, wearing a frayed jacket and tattered work boots, walked over to the register. He looked like someone I should have recognized from the old days, but I didn’t know him. “Hey Mattie” he called out “Charlie Ryan died last night.” The man was loud and I could hear everything he said.

Mattie looked up and shook his head. “Charlie Ryan, I haven’t heard that name in years. I thought he was dead a long time ago.”

“Nah,” the man said, “he was wet brained and lived in the state facility out on Route 74. He finally kicked last night; must have been late eighties.”

“All he drank, he must have been pickled,” Mattie chuckled. “Occasionally I see some of those other drunks from the Paradise and they’re still drinking.” Mattie turned to where I was sitting and asked, “Hey Danny, you knew Charlie Ryan didn’t you, from back in the day?”

I was startled. I didn’t think that Mattie noticed me or even remembered me. I haven’t lived in the neighborhood for years and only come into Mattie’s Place every other month or so.  Today I was in here by accident. Richie Vigilio, my ex brother-in-law, died and they’re having a memorial service for him at the Napoli Club across the street. Tonight is Christmas Eve, Richie’s service is noon to three, and then I’m picking up my mom to take her to my place in Freehold for the holiday. I got here early and slipped into Mattie’s for some breakfast.

“Yeah I knew him Mattie,” I answered, “but not well, just a nod to say hello. His daughter married Ronnie Rohrbach. Remember him? He worked in the Brass with me.”

It was just a nod, that was true, but Charlie Ryan meant a lot more to me. That old drunk and the dead look in his eyes changed my life.

The Paradise Bar and Grill was two doors down from Mattie’s Place, right on the avenue. It was a typical dimly lit neighborhood bar, with the standard blinking neon sign on the front window. Charlie Ryan was part of a bunch of old retirees from the factories who spent most of their time getting wasted at that tavern. When I picture Charlie, I see him standing at the bottom of a long hill waiting for me. Over the years, whenever I’d spot him, the lines across his face, leathered and deep, brought me back there.

Like I said, my mother’s apartment is across the street in the one old building still standing, hanging on like my mother and some of the other old-timers. Charlie lived in one the private houses on that street. The Brass, where my dad put in thirty-five years as a welder, was down the block. Now, the Brass’s huge red brick buildings, that you could see from almost anywhere in town are gone, and the whole factory property is covered with fancy condos. The basketball court the Brass management built for the workers is now the condo association community center. Let the workers play ball during lunch hour was probably some vice president’s thought; keep them happy and it will take the sting out of the union.

In high school, music was my passion. I taught myself the electric guitar, fronted a garage band and learned the piano and keyboards. After graduation though, I swept aside all of the music; that was kid’s stuff. It was on to the real world; the Marines and then a job. I fell right into the “life” as we called it.

Like most of the guys I knew, I enlisted, and spent three years in the Marine Corps. I was one year in Stuttgart and two years in the states; got my Marine Corps attitude and the standard old fashioned USMC tat. When I came home, my Dad, who was the union shop steward, pulled me aside. He was a big man, an inch taller than I was, at six feet, and he weighed at least two fifty. He had a red face, smoked constantly, and when he spoke to you his words were punctuated by a hacking cough. He put his hefty arm around my shoulder and told me, “I set up a job for you at the Brass as an apprentice welder. You’ll take it, won’t you?” It wasn’t really a question; of course I took it. I followed without thinking, and went into the lifestyle of everyone in my world. That was the life I had envisioned as a kid, and I never thought there was much else I could do.

Six months later, I married Patti Vigilio, my girlfriend since sophomore year. We were both twenty-two and we said the vows at St. Ambrose two blocks away. Father Tom, who knew us since we were children, did the mass. Patti grew up in an apartment right down the block. Her father worked at Semsron across the road from the Brass. Within a year Patti and I had our first son Marty, named after my dad and then a year later, our second, Vincent, after hers. By twenty-five I was a regular welder with two kids and living in an apartment across the street from my folks. There were big dinners with my family on Christmas where my mom would make roast turkey and potatoes, the only dishes she cooked reasonably well. Then there were big dinners with the Vigilios on Easter with Virginia ham, baked chicken and pasta. My life was just the way it was supposed to be.

In the late afternoons, after work, all the guys stopped off at the Paradise and had a few, played pool, shot darts and unwound. My dad, my older brother Marty Jr., and my Uncle Paddy were all there. Charlie Ryan was always there drunk. Occasionally he asked for a handout and someone would front him a few bucks for a beer.

Our apartment was small and my two young boys were noisy so I started staying later and later at the Paradise. The later I stayed the more wasted I became. The booze and the beer made the sweet music swirl around me and I liked the feeling of drifting above the crowd. I saw nothing wrong in what I was doing. How many nights had I seen my father wander in drunk from the Paradise and just collapse in his easy chair while my mother said nothing? He never missed a day of work afterwards.

At first, my wife Patti never said a word. She knew nothing else, had grown up in the life and for years she had seen her father doing the same things. Occasionally, but only occasionally, she got angry. “Why didn’t you come home earlier?” she yelled. “I made lasagna and its completely cold;” but I was faithful, gave her my checks and that’s how it was.

As the years passed though, the nights at the Paradise grew longer and each drink pulled me lower. The Paradise grabbed onto me and the hold of that bar became stronger than the hold of my family. I gave the Paradise a lot of money and it began to show. I cashed my checks at DeFillipo’s Market on the avenue and gave Patti less and less while the bar got more and more. Patti tried to make do with what I handed her, but it was difficult. I knew it was tough for her but I went right on. As she struggled, her anger turned to bitterness, and then to resentment. Wandering in drunk, night after night, I scared her off. She might have fought another woman, but how could she fight the Paradise?

Then the layoffs started. First, Semsron closed down and a developer started building condos on the plant site. The neighbors and the unions fought the construction, but stopping the building seemed like trying to hold back the ocean. “That’s the future” the town government told us as they let the contractors continue. “We’re revitalizing this town for a new age.” It may have been the future, but the guys from Semsron, many of them my friends, were fucked. The Brass held on for another year and then they laid off the unskilled labor. At first, I was a bit protected, both by being a welder and by my father’s position with the union but eventually the Brass closed three of their four buildings and I was out. Uncle Paddy retired and joined Charley Ryan and the Paradise bunch. My brother got a job as a fireman over in Hawthorne. My dad told me not to worry. “I’ll get you back in son. They always need welders.” Then the weeks dragged on into months. I did nothing, sat around, watched TV and then went to the Paradise in the late afternoons as if I was still working. Patti got a job as a receptionist at a dentist, a cousin of hers, and her mom watched our boys. I was drunk every night and a bunch of us looked like younger versions of Charlie Ryan and the old winos. As I rolled down hill, the blowups with Patti got worse. Money was tighter and I skipped the rent, despite the angry words from the landlord.

I hadn’t worked for almost a year when Patti moved out.  It was July and it was hot and sticky. I came home drunk from the Paradise and Patti was waiting in our living room. The boys weren’t around. I fell into my lounge chair and she stood over me.

“Danny I can’t take it anymore. I took the boys over to my moms and I’m moving over there also.”

It wasn’t unexpected so I sat there and said nothing. If I was sober I might have fought for her but I wasn’t. My silence made her angrier.

“Say something Danny. Don’t you care?”

I still said nothing and she shook her head in disgust and left. It wasn’t life as I envisioned but, like everything else, events carried me along.

Losing Patti didn’t destroy me as much as her leaving destroyed my image of the world. I guess I loved Patti; she was always there. In my world, in high school you had a girlfriend and Patti was mine. You then went in the service and got married when you got out. You went to work in the factories, lived in the neighborhood, and raised your family. I knew I had ruined our life in the smoke and booze of the Paradise but emotionally I couldn’t understand why Patti walked out. Didn’t she see her father doing the same things I did and my father and my uncle? Didn’t she understand that was the way life was? My world, which seemed so solid to me, began to crumble and come apart when Patti left.

Soon after, her folks’ apartment building, where they had lived for almost forty years, was sold for more condos, and her father, working as a night watchman after thirty years as a foreman at Semsron, was looking for a new place. When he found one, Patti and her folks, along with my kids, moved across town. I unloaded my apartment and rented a small back place in one of the only private two family houses left on the street.

Finally they closed the Brass and my dad retired. He sat in his apartment each day, smoked, downed beer after beer, and watched TV until he died. My mom made him sandwiches, brought him brews and cigarettes and watched him fade away.

Even alone and broke, each night I went back to the Paradise. I did whatever I could for the drink money. Des Fitzgerald was a fancy ass bookie who wandered in every once in awhile to collect. He wore an expensive suit with a red flower in his lapel and sported fancy shoes. I asked him for a buck. He slipped off those shoes and with a condescending sneer asked me, “You’re Marty Gilbride’s kid, right?” I nodded yes and he handed me the shoes. “Kid they got a shine kit in the back. Spit shine these good enough and I’ll lay a few bucks on you. You’re old man was a straight up guy, always paid his debts.” I felt like a piece of garbage. I had seen Charlie Ryan running errands and kissing ass for years, and here I was doing the same; threw away my pride for a shot of booze. I did it, took my cash and it bought me a few beers while the music played.

It seems strange to me that Charlie Ryan died on this particular day. Maybe it was just fate teasing me. It was on Christmas Eve to the day thirty years ago, I wandered out of the Paradise and oddly enough I wasn’t drunk; I only had enough for a few beers so I drank till the cash dried up. My whole family was across the street at my parent’s apartment but I couldn’t bring myself to go there, couldn’t bring myself to face them.

It was snowing, a cold December half-rain and half-snow. The wind chilled me and cut right though my body. Outside of the Paradise, in the wet slush, I spotted Charlie Ryan lying face down. I could see his breath as the snow bubbled beneath his nose. There was a crowd of passerbys, looked like a bunch of new yuppies that had moved into the freshly constructed condos. All were well-dressed, and didn’t look like any of the old neighborhood people. They were probably headed off to some hoity-toity Christmas party, hors-oeuvres and white wine. One of them barely missed stepping on Charlie. One of the others looked down at the body and asked, “He’s alive, isn’t he? Maybe be we should drag him back into the bar over there,” pointing at the Paradise. Another of the group, who appeared to be the leader, shook his head, “Just some drunk old fool. Leave him be.” The rest nodded and moved on.

I walked over and tried to rouse him. “Hey Charlie get up, it’s cold out here. You’ll freeze to death,” but Charlie was silent and wouldn’t move. I struggled a bit and lifted him to his feet. He lived in a frame house next to our apartment building and I half dragged and half carried him to his front steps. I knocked and his wife came to the door. She wore an old faded pink house coat, her hair in curlers and a cigarette dangled from her lips. Ashes fell onto her chest.  “Who are you?” she barked at me and coughed and simultaneously brushed some of the ashes off of her clothes. She reeked of alcohol. Mrs. Ryan’s Christmas Eve was cigarettes and slugging down cheap gin all alone.

“He passed out by the Paradise” I told her “I brought him home.”

She looked at poor Charlie, barely standing and holding onto me.  “Fuck him, you should have left them there. When he sobers up he’ll crawl home.” She then slammed the door in my face, leaving me there with Charlie.

I stood for a bit in front of the Ryans’ door, then again half carried and half dragged Charlie across the street to my tiny apartment and brought him inside out of the cold. I shoved him into my big easy chair, the one piece of furniture that I kept when Patti left, and then went to make some coffee. Charlie slumped in the chair and said nothing. I brought him coffee and tried to hand it to him but he just stared at me. His eyes seemed as if I could look deep inside of him.  He had a half dead look that pierced right into me. The pupils were deep red but his eyes were still bright blue and that look seemed to speak to me from the old drunk’s soul. “Son” they said “you’d better change your ways or you’ll be the same as me. Look deep and you’re looking at yourself.” I looked at those dead eyes again and they spoke to me like a hook in a three minute record, “You’ll be the same as me. You’ll be the same as me. You’ll be the same as me.” His mouth never uttered a word but I heard the words as clearly as if he had a bullhorn. I knew it was silly but I was frightened and started shaking. I left him with the coffee cup and went into the bathroom to try to calm my nerves. When I came back, the front door was open and Charlie was gone. The coffee cup had been placed carefully on the floor by the chair. I closed the door and picked up the cup and placed it on the small kitchen table. Then I slumped into the easy chair and tried to sleep, but Charlie’s near-dead eyes wouldn’t leave me.

I never had another drink. I went sober for a week and found myself trembling and dying to go into the Paradise, but I white-knuckled it and didn’t. Then I started the meetings, the whole bit. I went every morning to St. Ambrose, sat there and listened, but for me it was all Charlie’s eyes. Every drunk I ever met who’s gotten sober talks about one night like this. Most say it’s the night they met God, but for me it was Charlie’s eyes and that voice.

I’m thirty years sober and I managed to pick up the pieces of my life. I went back to school and back to music. I’m a music teacher now in Cranford. Life though offers no happy endings. I lost Patti and whatever relationship I had with my older sons Marty and Vin. They were better off without me but I miss that part of my life, bad as it was.

I turned back to Mattie and repeated, “Yeah Mattie I knew him, but it really was just a nod to say hello.” I then shook my head and said, “Too bad that he’s dead though, all the old-timers checking out.”

I paid the tab and walked out onto the Avenue. On the sidewalk in front of Mattie’s, I looked back to my right and stared at the Paradise. It was still standing like my mom’s old building, and it still looked the same. The neighborhood and most of my world changed but the Paradise seems to go on forever.

It was eleven and I still had an hour before the service so I set off for my mom’s apartment. I walked into the entryway and the old building smell was there, a mix of smoking and cooking and booze. I walked up the three flights and rang her door bell. She answered, still in her night coat, with a cigarette dangling from her lips.  She’s old and gray but still smoking. My father had emphysema before he died, but that didn’t slow her two-pack a day habit. She was surprised to see me. “Why so early?” she asked, “I didn’t expect you till three.” She was born right in this town, but her voice still had a bit of an Irish lilt that she picked up from her parents.

“There’s a memorial service for Richie Vigilio at the Napoli Club at noon,” I explained. “I have to go Mom, he was my friend.”

“Patti will be there,” she told me, “You be nice to her.”

“Of course I’ll be nice to her mom,” I answered.

“She should have stuck it out,” my mom started an old conversation that never ended. “Look at you now. You turned it all around.”

I shook my head. This was stuff that was said so many times that it meant nothing.  I had to answer though. “Mom it was my fault. You know that.”

She shook her head but said nothing else. Then she walked into her kitchen, came back with a cup of tea and put it down for me on the kitchen table. I took a sip or two and then told her I’d be back for her about four. “Tammy and the kids are excited for Christmas and Marty Jr. said that he and Sherry are stopping by,” I told her.

I walked onto the Avenue and then down the two blocks to the Napoli Club. It was next door to DeFillipo’s Market, which was still open and still selling authentic Italian food to the old-timers that continued to live here. The Napoli Club was in an old ornate building put up by all the Napolitanos in the neighborhood. If you were a Calabrese or a Siciliano you couldn’t join. For an Irishman like me, I only stepped inside on special occasions. Ritchie, Patti’s older brother, had moved after the Brass closed. He became a contractor, did well, but he still kept his ties to that club and to the neighborhood.

Richie knew a lot of people and there was a crowd milling around on the lawn outside of the club. I recognized many of them and some might have recognized me, but I didn’t stop to talk. I nodded at those that looked at me and walked inside.

At the far end of the meeting hall I spotted my older son Marty, standing at the bar. From a distance, I could have sworn that it was my dad. Marty is a plumber and he is big and gray and red-faced like his grandfather. He joked with the guys around him. I started to walk over but my daughter-in-law Connie, Vinny’s wife, came up to me and said hello. My granddaughter Tina, four years old, held onto her leg. She was cute and shy and looked a bit like Patti, my ex. I hadn’t seen Tina in two years.

“Hi Connie.” I said.

“Hi Danny,” she answered and then told Tina, “Say hello to your Grandpa honey.” Tina just hid her face behind Connie’s leg. Except for her mom calling me Grandpa she had no clue who I was.

“How are things going Connie?” I asked.

“All right” she answered, but she seemed anxious and reticent. Before I could ask her more, my ex-wife Patti walked over. I hadn’t seen her since Tina’s christening. She never remarried and had let herself get old. Her hair was short and curled and she had let it go gray.

“Hi Danny, nice to see you,” Patti said. It was the first thing she said to me, not in anger, in I don’t know how long. “It’s good of you to come.”

“I’m sorry about Richie,” I told her, “He was my friend no matter what happened between you and I.”

Then she said “You’re a teacher now. That’s so hard to believe.” She smiled and sort of laughed, the first time she smiled at me since we were married thirty years ago. Connie and Tina had walked away.

“Funny how these things happen,” I answered and smiled back at her. Then I asked her. “How are things going with you? I see Marty over there, where’s Vinny?”

Patti hung her head. “He needed a drink. He went over to the Paradise.”

I was startled. “Needed a drink? The Paradise?” It was strange hearing that and then Patti told me.

“He’s been out of work and he’s been drinking heavy. It’s hard on Connie.”

“Can I do anything?”  I asked her but I was shaken by what she told me. Vinny and I never spoke but he was still my son.

She shook her head and said, “Nothing to be done.”

I didn’t know what I could do but I left the Napoli Club and walked back over to the Paradise. The memorial service could go on without me. I peered into the front window of the tavern into the darkness inside. Right at the middle of the bar, nursing a drink was my son Vinny. At least he wasn’t sitting at the end of the bar in Charlie Ryan’s old seat.

I took a deep breath and walked into the Paradise. In that instant, thirty years melted away, as I adjusted to the dim light and smelled the stale beer odor. Walk Like a Man, the old Frankie Valli song, was playing on the radio.  I walked over to my son and put my hand on his shoulder. “Vinny,” I said to him.

He wasn’t startled or surprised and just turned and looked at me. “What the fuck do you want?” he asked.

I didn’t know the answer and I had no idea what to say so I asked him “What are you doing here Vinny?”

“Making the rest of the world disappear,” he answered. “What do you care anyway?  You drank away our lives. I thought that’s what our family did.”

“Vinny, don’t wreck your life like I did. Think son, please,” I pleaded.  He waved me off and turned back to his drink. I was nothing to him and nothing I could do or say would change that. Any advice from me was worthless.

I walked out of the Paradise and left him sitting there. Everything goes full circle. He’ll have to find his own Charlie Ryan.

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Dr. Ben Fine is a mathematician and professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut in the United States. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Fairfield University and is the author of fifteen books (twelve in mathematics, one on chess, one a political thriller, and one a swahbuckler about pirates) as well over 130 research articles, fifteen short stories, and a novella about Pirates. His story “August 18, 1969” published in the Green Silk Journal was nominated for a Pushcart prize. His story “From the Dambovitsa to Coney Island” was an honorable mention winner in the Glimmer Train Literary Contest. His story “The Schuyler Diamonds” won First Place in the Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards in the Mystery/Crime Category. His story “My Mother, God and the Big Blue Ford”, published in Green Silk Journal won Honorable Mention in the 45th New Millennium Writing Awards. He has completed a memoir told in interwoven stories called “Tales from Brighton Beach: A Boy Grows in Brooklyn.” The stories detail his growing up in Brighton Beach, a seaside neighborhood on the southern tip of Brooklyn, during the 1950’s and 1960’s. Brighton Beach was unique and set apart from the rest of New York City both in character and in time. His latest novel “Out of Granada” was released in 2017. His author website is https://benfineauthor.com