Snow in August by Pete Hamill Page B

wanted to cry but didn’t, because his father didn’t cry, and he was sure his father would
     laugh at him for crying. On the way home, Tommy Devlin said he would take him to the Grandview again, when he came home, but
     he never did. That Monday, he went away to the army and never came back.
    His mother took him one more time, when his father was in North Africa. She didn’t smoke, so they sat in the orchestra and
     saw a musical called
The Gang’s All Here
. But all through the movie, Michael kept thinking about his father. He wished he could go up the carpeted stairs, past the
     candy machines and the bathrooms and the entrances of the mezzanine, all the way to the balcony. He wished he could go up
     and down the aisles and find his father sitting alone. Smoking a cigarette. Wearing the blue suit and black polished shoes
     that were still in the closet at home. He wished he could hear his deep voice. He wished he could jump on his lap and hear
     him tell a story.
    For a long time after that, and after they knew that Tommy Devlin was dead, he did not want to go to the Grandview. His mother
     never mentioned her dead husband when they talked about a movie at the Grandview. She just said it was “too dear.” Ninety
     cents to get in, while the Venus was only twelve cents on Saturdays and Sundays before five o’clock. Still, Michael longed
     for the Grandview the way he sometimes longed for his father. He passed it on long walks and gazed in at the murals; he studied
     the showcards in their glass cases, telling of coming attractions. John Garfield. Betty Grable. Humphrey Bogart. John Wayne.
     At the Venus, all the movies were old; they returned over and over again, the images ragged and often scratched. At the Grandview
     they came straight to Brooklyn from the movie houses of Manhattan. Now it might be different. No more
Four Feathers!
No more
Frankenstein!
Now he could see the newmovies at the Grandview out of loyalty to his mother, even if there was a ghost in the balcony.
    “Will we get in for free?” he asked.
    “We’ll see about that,” she said, and chuckled. “First let me do the work.”
    The deal was done. Three men arrived one Saturday morning and took away the coal stove, using hammers and chisels to separate
     it from the crusted cement foundations that kept it steady, pulling the stovepipe out of the wall and patching it with a circle
     of aluminum. Then they brought in the gas range: white, gleaming, with four jets on top, an oven, legs that looked like the
     legs of women, and even a clock. They connected it to the new gas line that ran up the side of the building, tested the jets
     and the oven, and then thumped down the stairs, leaving behind bits of broken iron, torn linoleum, drifts of coal dust, and
     a chisel. When the other tenants could afford to spend a hundred and thirty dollars for a gas range, they could be connected
     too. For the moment, the Devlins had the only one in the house, and it was free.
    “Well,” Kate Devlin said, “let’s have a cup of tea. We can clean up the mess later.”
    They divided the janitorial work. His mother changed the hall lightbulbs when they burned out and polished the brass mailboxes
     every other week. Together they rolled the battered metal garbage cans from the back of the hall to the sidewalk for pickup.
     They struggled with the much heavier ashcans, filled with ashes from the coal stoves that remained in the other apartments
     and from the coal-fired hot water boiler in the cellar. The other tenants came in to examine Kate Devlin’s wonderful gas stove,
     but they still used coal stoves for cooking and heat in the kitchens, while kerosene heaters warmed their living rooms. The
     women expressed envy and hope that they wouldhave such a glory soon, if only their husbands would stop wasting money in Casement’s Bar, or if they could finally win the
     Irish Sweepstakes. Mr. Kerniss sent word that he would install central heating the following