Roy was twelve years old when his mother and her third husband, a jazz drummer named Sid “Spanky” Wade, told him that they were going to move out of Chicago to a suburb north of the city. They had already paid for the beginning of the construction of a new house and the foundation had been laid. The next day, a Sunday, the four of them—Roy’s mother, her husband, Roy’s one-year-old sister, and Roy—drove out to see it.
Roy had no desire to leave the neighborhood, and when he saw the property in Winnebago Gardens, a new development in the middle of nowhere, only sidewalks and streets and other houses under construction, no people, not even a kid on a bike, he knew immediately this place was not for him. The thought of being stranded like a lost Legionnaire in the Sahara made Roy shiver. He disliked Sid Wade and Sid disliked him; and Roy’s mother, as always during her marriages, was either on the verge of a nervous breakdown or in the throes of collapse. His mother’s marriages—of which there would eventually be five—inevitably and rapidly deteriorated into disappointment and fear which found expression in the form of hysteria and vicious vitriol, behavior that terrorized not only her husband of the moment but Roy and anyone else who had to deal with her. This proposed move to the suburbs, to “somewhere quiet and less stressful,” as Sid Wade said, would surely salve her condition. City life made her nervous, agreed Dr. Martell, a heart specialist and old friend of Roy’s grandmother’s, who provided pills for his mother even in the middle of the night.
Several days after their excursion to Winnebago Gardens, Roy was having dinner with the family when Sid Wade began telling Roy what he could and could not take with him when they moved.
“I’m not moving,” Roy said. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll take care of my own things.”
Sid Wade dropped his fork onto his plate, his heavy-jowled face turned crimson, and he said, “Of course you’re moving. We all are.”
“No, I’m not. I’ve already made arrangements to live next door with the McLaughlins. Mr. and Mrs. McLaughlin said it’s all right with them. Jimmy’s going into the army next month, so I’ll have his bunk in the room with Johnny and Billy. I told Mrs. McLaughlin I’d contribute money to the household out of my pay delivering for Kow Kow. I’ll be fine there.”
Roy’s mother stood up from the table and put her dishes into the sink. Her face was green and her lips were trembling. Her body shook and she was crying.
“Look what you’ve done to your mother!” Sid Wade shouted.
Roy’s little sister, upset by his loud voice, began crying, too.
“If your father were here,” Wade snarled, “he wouldn’t put up with your insolence.”
“I’m not being insolent,” said Roy. “And don’t talk about my father. You didn’t know him and he’s dead. You don’t know what he’d say or do. If he were alive, I’d go live with him. Johnny and Billy are my best friends and Mr. and Mrs. McLaughlin are good people.”
Frank McLaughlin worked as a doorman at the Drake Hotel and his wife took in laundry. They were from Ireland and spoke Gaelic in their house. They let their sons drink coffee in the morning and Margaret McLaughlin made great peach and strawberry pies in the summer. Roy couldn’t wait to go live with them.
Sid Wade and Roy’s mother began arguing. She closed her eyes and fell down on the floor. The baby was screeching and Sid Wade wouldn’t stop yelling, carrying on about how Roy should be sent to reform school, that he’d never be any good just like his gangster father.
“He did time and you’ll do time!” Wade said. He snorted like a buffalo and his little eyes disappeared.
Roy could hear his mother moaning.
“You’re killing your mother!” screamed Wade, though he made no attempt to pick her up off the floor, where she was now writhing like a Moroccan fakir’s cobra being replaced in its basket.
Roy rose from the table and walked out the back door, down the steps, through the yard and into the alley behind the garage. It was windy and cold and he was wearing only a T-shirt. Mr. Anderson’s old red Studebaker was parked in the alley between his house and the McLaughlins’. Roy knew that Mr. Anderson never locked it, so he walked over, opened the passenger side door and got in. He sat there looking through the windshield. The sky was almost dark, there was a thin, pale yellow ribbon running through the gray. At the far end of the alley two men came out of the rear door of The Green Harp tavern. They were smoking and laughing. One of them was wearing a blue zipper jacket and the other was wearing a brown one. Both men were hatless. Roy watched them standing and talking and smoking, their hair waving in the wind. Mr. Anderson had left an opened pack of Lucky Strikes on top of the dashboard. Roy took one, put it between his lips and punched in the lighter.
Three months later, Roy’s mother told him that Sid had defaulted on their installments for the house in Winnebago Gardens and forfeited the down payment, so they weren’t going to move there. A week after that, Roy came home from school one day and found Sid Wade picking up his clothes and other belongings from in front of the house where Roy’s mother had thrown them. Later the same day Sid moved out and Roy’s mother said she was divorcing him and going to work as a receptionist in Dr. Martell’s office.
Jimmy McLaughlin came home from the army on leave for a few days after completing basic training. Roy and Johnny and Billy were sitting on Johnny’s bunk listening to him. Jimmy was lying on his bed in his uniform smoking a Chesterfield, telling them about life at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. Johnny had taken over Jimmy’s job washing dishes at the Chinese restaurant, Roy had taken over Johnny’s delivery days, and Billy, the youngest McLaughlin brother, a year younger than Johnny and Roy, who were five years younger than Jimmy, now worked at Kow Kow, too, sweeping up and taking out the garbage.
“It’s good to be back home,” Jimmy said, “even if it’s only for a week. You don’t know how much you miss it until you can’t be there.”
“What did you miss the most?” asked Johnny.
“Strange things, little things, mostly.”
“Yeah? Like what?” said Roy.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jimmy. “Just seein’ Mr. Anderson’s red ’52 Studebaker parked in the alley is one, I guess. It gives me a good feelin’ knowin’ it’s still there.”