With Help From Michael O'leary

Chapter 11 Neighborhood Bank

The subterranean basement of Neighborhood Bank, three floors below ground level, where the armored car drivers took the freight elevator down to deposit monies received from the Federal Reserve Bank, served as a bomb shelter during both World Wars. The employees, who worked with piped in music and filtered air, believed that Horace haunted the basement. Horace, a janitor at the bank during the roaring twenties, maintained the furnace by shoveling enough coal in the roaring fire to keep the Browmens, as he referred to them instead of Brahmins, from complaining that they were cold.

Happy to have a job during the desperation of the twenties, Horace sang as he shoveled. When not singing, he smoked the discarded cigars he found in the trash. Horace had an unlimited supply of cigars because many who received cigars did not smoke or did not smoke cigars. He saved counterfeit money to light his cigars, money that he was supposed to have burned in the furnace, and he felt like a millionaire whenever he lit a 50-cent cigar with a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill.

During a robbery, in 1929, bank robbers trying to find an escape route stumbled upon Horace shoveling coal. He startled the robbers when he came out from behind a furnace as dirty as the coal he shoveled. Surprised to happen upon someone in the subterranean basement, the robbers mistook him for a G-man and mistook his shovel for a shotgun. They shot him dead.

They caught and convicted the robbers, yet, long after oil replaced coal; those who have worked in the subterranean basement vaults counting money still hear the pinging of Horace's steel shovel hitting coal and the honey sound of his baritone voice singing, Swing Low Sweet Chariot.

The bank with its auxiliary generators served as a shelter when Hurricane Carol knocked out the power in '53 and during the blizzard of '78. Serving a Democratic and Catholic, blue-collar community; the bank stayed open serving coffee and donuts until after the polls closed when John F. Kennedy ran for President in '60. The bank opened their doors as a gathering center when Oswald assassinated the President in '63 and closed during the presidential funeral.

When the Boston Strangler murders panicked the residents in the early sixties, Neighborhood Bank mailed flyers explaining how customers could keep themselves safe. The bank sponsored a letter writing campaign when the military shipped several of the neighborhood boys to Vietnam and donated money to establish scholarship funds in memory of those boys who died. The bank helped the residents of South Boston cut the red tape to bring over their relatives from Ireland for menial labor jobs during the economic boon of the eighties.

When the tall ships came to Boston Harbor, the bank allowed their customers access to its roof that stood three stories taller than any South Boston building and allowed them access every Fourth of July to view the fireworks held on the Charles River Esplanade during the Boston Pops concert. The bank opened its doors when fire destroyed six triple-decker homes on A Street and funded accounts for the neighborhood to donate money to the families who lost everything. The bank used its lobby as a command post when rescuers searched for 5-year-old Colleen O'Brien offering a reward for her safe return and helped pay the funeral expenses when they found her dead, murdered by a neighborhood pervert.

"These changes in job, in neighborhood, and in customers," said Mr. McCarthy when Michael did not respond, "could be the best changes that ever happened to you." He smiled, "Who knows, you may meet someone, get married, have children, buy a house, and manage your own Earth Bank branch." He paused. "If you would rather not leave Massachusetts, Earth Bank has branches in Lexington, Concord, Newton, and Wellesley, along with 30 other cities and towns within the Commonwealth. Some of the cities that I mentioned are fine communities to live, to start a family, and to raise children. They have some of the best school systems in the country." He smiled. "I'll give you the highest recommendation to whichever branch you decide to go." Then, he corrected himself. "I mean, to whichever branch they decide to send you."

Michael raised his line of vision from Mr. McCarthy's feet to stare at the hair that grew from the mole on his chin. Is it not enough that my friends and family pressure me to marry and have children and, now, even my boss pressures me to conform to his imagined design of my life. McCarthy's droning voice interrupted his thoughts.

"There are advantages to working for a large financial institution that has branches in most states and in most countries. If I had an opportunity like that in my career, I would have not stayed her another minute." He waved his hand around as if he were talking about the entire neighborhood. "There's nothing holding you here. You must be as tired talking to the same customers who walk through that door, everyday, as I am."

Michael listened to Mr. McCarthy, not saying anything to encourage his dissatisfaction.

"You could transfer to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, or Iowa where the standard of living is cheaper or to Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee or Georgia. They even have a branch close to Disney World." He paced as he talked. "The cost of raising a family and buying a home are much less in those parts of the country than here in the Northeast. Here a modest house will cost you two and three times what it does most other places in the country." He pointed up his index finger to make a point. "They have branches in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. If you like Winter sports, those are perfect places to work and recreate." He laughed. "You could ski to work and then turn around and ski home to your wife and children."

Again, thought Michael, here we go with more pressure to marry, have children, and buy a house.

"Yes," McCarthy furrowed his brow, "Especially for someone young and with a bright future, as you do, change is a good thing." He continued. "Why, when I was about your age...before the war...back then...you were lucky to have a job...then...after the war...in the fifties...that's how I started my banking career...but, in the sixties...and the seventies...then, during the eighties...and the nineties...now, the new millennium..."

Michael had stopped listening to him when he was recollecting the start of his career in the sixties. He had heard if all before from Mr. McCarthy and, now, with Neighborhood bank closing, McCarthy appeared to need the comfort that came with telling somebody, anyone who would listen to his rants and ravings, about his past experiences peppered with advice on what they should do to not make the same mistakes that he had made.

"Perhaps, one day," Michael tuned Mr. McCarthy's voice back in, "Earth Bank will reopen a branch here and you can request a transfer back to your old neighborhood." He placed a fatherly hand on Michael's shoulder. "You are a good man, son, and have been an exemplary employee. The take-over requires that they close this bank. Neighborhood Bank will no longer exist after the first of the year." He removed his hand. "You must make your decision, now, Michael."

Mr. McCarthy gazed through the brass and glass doors of the bank at the street. His daily ritual of waving to customers as they passed the bank stopped today; he ignored those who waved him their hellos. Something that he fostered in every bank employee not to do and reinforced daily in his policy of customers service, he now blatantly violated.

"I know how you must feel, but you could not possibly feel any worse than I feel, now." His eyes welled up and his voice cracked. "They are razing my bank to replace it with a 7-bay ATM station and sold the rest of the land to the condominium development next door for parking." He pounded his fist in his hand. "Can you imagine destroying a bank that has served this community for more than 100 years, so that some Yuppie bastard can park his damn SUV closer to his condo while running over with a freakin' cell phone glued to his ear to use the ATM?" He pressed his hands deep in his pant pockets. "I can't." He paced, again. "Can you imagine cars parked where my lobby is now?" He turned to look back and pulled a hand from his pocket to wave his arm towards the rear of the immense room. "Imagine cars parked behind the tellers' cages, in my vault, and in my office."

"The future," said McCarthy, "will be one gas station chain, one supermarket chain, and one bank chain. Whatever happened to the Monopoly Law that they passed in '35?" He looked at Michael. "With the loss of free enterprise, a socialistic government will control everything, just as George Orwell predicted in his book, 1984. Soon, we'll all be dressed alike and reciting passages from out of a small book that we must keep with us at all times. We'll lose our freedom of choice along with our right to disagree."

"When I started my career thirty-seven years ago," he fell quiet. Then, he said, "My manager, Mr. Moran, said that the automobile and automobile loans would make this bank prosper and financially secure while ingratiating us to the community. Now, the parking of automobiles will break this bank and destroy this community. The big banks will exploit this community by abandoning their customers in favor of land developers who, for a scenic view in exchange for a high rent, will forever change the character of this neighborhood by forcing the good folks who have lived here all of their lives out."

"What do we do with all of those paintings?" asked Michael looking at the pictures that lined every bit of wall space of the bank.

"Oh, we'll have to return them to Mrs. McNaulty. She was kind enough to allow us to display them with the hopes of making a sale or two." Mr. McCarthy examined the few paintings that decorated his office, each painting highlighted a different landscape of Ireland with a tag below identifying the location of the scene, the artist name and telephone number, and the price of the painting should anyone want to buy one. "Beautiful, aren't they? It makes me want to retire to Ireland." He paused. "Yet, I would never leave here." He paused, again. "This is the greatest country in the world."

Michael looked around the room with the belief that Ireland could not be that green, that bright, and that colorfully happy. He thought about the war of religion. He thought about the terrorists who murdered so many innocent people. He thought about the terrorism and the civil war, the Catholics against the Protestants and the Irish against the English that tore Ireland apart. He thought about the poverty that persisted for hundreds of years. He thought about the children and their future. When he refocused his attention to the paintings that lined every wall of the bank, they appeared less green, less bright, and not as happy as before.

He realized that he did feel worse than Mr. McCarthy did. At least, Mr. McCarthy, now at the end of his career, had the opportunity to serve his entire career at one place within the neighborhood that he loved and where he lived. Michael felt comfortable in his job; he loved his neighborhood and like his customers. He did not want to leave it and them. He felt that Earth Bank was ripping him away from the life that he had so dearly wanted to lead. He hated Earth Bank for that. He wished he could start his own bank and call it, "O'Leary's Savings and Loan." He thought about a calendar filled not with landscapes of Ireland but with mini-portraits painted by Irish artists of the people of Ireland and given to every customer of opened an account.

Mr. McCarthy stopped talking and Michael lowered his stare that went from his chin to his feet. He considered everything that he Mr. McCarthy had said and wondered, if after they turned the bank into a parking lot, if Horace would stay or leave, finally. He hoped that Horace stayed to haunt the ATM machines of Earth Bank. He wished that Horace's voice would come over the loud speaker of the ATM machine with him singing, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, before filling the customers' withdrawal with coal instead of cash.

When he looked up, finally, he was no longer in Mr. McCarthy's office at Neighborhood Bank in South Boston; instead, he was at the North End branch of Earth Bank with an old woman dressed all in black standing in front of his teller's window.

Chapter 12 Mrs. Enunzio

She had a genderless face with skin that never sought shelter from the sun. Dry and wrinkled, her flesh reminded him of the worn and cracked leather car seats from his father's 1968 Chrysler Imperial. Her dark eyes, reflecting nothing, appeared like periods after a sentence that did not have another thought after it. One not to wasted money on makeup to mask her jaundiced complexion or to conceal her pockmarked skin; she covered her coiled gray hair with a long shawl of black lace. As fated to someone in their advancing years, the growth of her nose kept pace with the growth of her ears giving her a gargoyle like appearance. Her rounded shoulders created a slight hunch in her back making her appear like she carried something heavy all the time.

Her appearance and her clothing, his stereotypical image of a witch, would make for a scary Halloween costume. Yet, her youthful mannerism of quick hand and eye movements, and her walking and talking fast, made him suspect that she was younger than she appeared.

"Good morning," said Michael. "How may I help you?"

"I'm Mrs. Enunzio," she said with a backward tilt of her head.

"Hello, Mrs. Enunzio." Michael repeated her name as a way of remembering it, as taught to him by Mr. McCarthy. "I'm Michael O'Leary, transferred from South—"

"Wheresa Angelo?" She hurled the question at him like vomit projecting her attitude with it and used another backward tilt of her head to emphasize her words. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand before he could answer and said, "I only deala with Angelo."

Michael instantly summed her up. Accustomed to first and second generation Irish, some Jewish and immigrant Polish and his share of impatiently demanding Yuppies at Neighborhood Bank in South Boston, this unfamiliar Italian customer at the North End branch of Earth Bank did not impair him from cataloging her as rude, arrogant, and ignorant. Although he switched his professional personality to that of a steward aboard an airplane with a difficult passenger, he had little patience for her bad behavior and Mrs. Enunzio had plenty of that to give. They should have closed this North End branch instead of the South Boston branch, he thought. I should be there instead of here.

Michael noticed details about people. He thought it odd that her hands were not as old looking as her face. He took pride in the fact that he could describe anyone who he had seen in the street, even if he had only seen them for a few seconds. He treated his recall for detail as a game that he played with himself. His mother said of him that he should have been a portrait painter or a sculptor. Maybe later, he told himself, whenever he thought about doing something more creative. Maybe, later, when he retired, he would smear paint over canvass creating an image or chisel stone into something artistic. Now, he enjoyed his game of names and faces.

It started as a way to remember customers' names. Easy matches were names like Mr. Small, who because he was so tall, reminded him of his last name. Mrs. White had translucent skin, skin that develops like the image of a ghost as you age and disappear, finally. Mr. Evans wore his hair parted down the middle, even on both sides. His game evolved into looking for as much details as he could and those unaccustomed to his observation felt that he stared at them. The people of South Boston had grown accustomed to his examination, but the people of this neighborhood did not appreciate his scrutiny, especially from someone who had flaming orange hair. After receiving complaints about his character study, Mr. Florentino, the Branch Manager, asked him not to appear so obvious in his search for information. Michael continued his secret name game but, this time, more discreetly.

He did not think anymore about Mrs. Enunzio's youthful hands. Perhaps, she used hand lotion or wore gloves. He did not care because he did not like her and, whenever he did not like someone, which was unusual because he liked everyone, he lost interest in he or she being a secret contestant in his character study game. Still, he thought of her name, Mrs. Enunzio, and because she dressed all in black, he thought about her as a nun, an evil nun or e-nun, who should live in a zoo, thus using that as an aid to help him remember her name. All of this name game played through his mind within a few seconds of watching Mrs. Enunzio fidgeting in front of his window.

"They transferred Angelo from Earth Bank's North End branch to Earth Bank's Charlestown branch," he said smiling, "and when they took over Neighborhood Bank and closed it, they transferred me from South Boson to here, the North End." He shared his information with her in his friendly manner wanting to give her the benefit of doubt and another chance for her to redeem herself with him before he wrote her off. "Go figure," he shrugged. "I'm just an employee and am at the mercy of their whimsy where they will place me." He laughed. "Maybe, next year, they will transfer me to Ireland," he laughed, again, "or to Italy."

Michael wished in the buyout and subsequent take-over of Neighborhood Bank by Earth Bank that they had transferred him to Charlestown, another Irish part of Boston where he had family and could have had a place to trade gossip for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch.

"I'm Angelo's replacement, Michael," he said when she did not respond. He gave her the smile that he saved for his most difficult customers. "How many I help you, Mrs. Enunzio?" He repeated her name, made eye contact, and smiled, again." Mrs. Enunzio, how may I help you?"

Even though he was born at Boston City Hospital, schooled in Boston Public Schools, and lived in South Boston all of his life, an Irish Brogue inherited from his mother surfaced with his Irish temper. Although it was a rare occasion for his temper to take control of his mood, it happened now. He noticed that his brogue seemed to anger her. He made it thicker, as thick as the head of an Irishman when told that he cannot have another pint and that he has had enough.

She stared at him as if he was a foreigner in her country, when it was the opposite. She was the foreigner in his country.

"How man I help you?" He repeated, yet, again.

"Ehhh!" Like a gunfighter going for a gun, she jerked up her right hand and, tilting her head in the direction of the vault, said, "I needa to opena my box." She exaggerated the O of open and enunciated the word My like she owned the bank and hissed the X of box like a serpent at the ready to strike her victim with poison.

"Do you mean that you need to gain access to your safety deposit box, Mrs. Enunzio? Or do you want an application to rent a safety deposit box." Michael knew what she wanted but repeated his series of questions just to annoy and, hopefully aggravate and agitate her. "Or do you have a lock box with the bank for business cash receipt deposits?" Michael thickened his brogue when she still did not respond to his question. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Enunzio, but I did not understand what you meant when you said, I needa to opena my box."

"Wheresa Florentino? Getta me Florentino, nowa!" She turned from Michael and yelled in the direction of the branch manager's office, "Florentino! Florentino! Veni que!"

Michael saw Mr. Florentino quickly approach."

"Ahem," Mr. Florentino appeared behind her clearing his throat.