Bronx Requiem(49)

Instead, Walter took several civil service exams, including one for the NYPD. Phyllis worried about a reserved, young black man with a studious bent joining the police department. She had visions of Walter being hurt, or shot, or marginalized. Walter understood Phyllis’s concerns. When he also passed the exam for a position as a parole officer in the Department of Correction, and Phyllis urged him to take the safer job, he agreed.

Over the years, Walter worked hard and made his way up the ladder. They both worked in various locations around the city. Phyllis never landed a teaching position in their neighborhood, but she didn’t mind traveling by subway and bus to wherever she had to go. She used the time to read, or listen to music, two of her favorite pastimes.

After a number of years, Walter ended up in the parole office within walking distance of their peaceful, comfortable apartment.

They lived quiet, almost contemplative lives. Phyllis was the one who pushed to see an interesting exhibition at the Met, found discount tickets for Broadway shows, or persuaded Walter to see an art film at BAM. Walter agreed to accompany her, mostly to please her. She would playfully chide him about being such a homebody. It never rankled or upset him. Any attention from Phyllis made him happy.

For his part, Walter was more likely to ask Phyllis if she’d like to go for a walk. Walking seemed to help the tall man unwind. Phyllis wasn’t as athletic as Walter, and sometimes she had a little trouble keeping up with his long strides, but she never minded the effort. Being with Walter was the most important thing. And the long walks gave them time to talk about whatever was on their minds, as well as comfortably lapse into silence when the mood hit them. Most of the time Phyllis talked while Walter walked and listened.

They were an attractive couple. Walter, tall, handsome in a down-to-earth way, his demeanor a bit solemn. Phyllis, a perfect match for him in terms of height and bearing, more pretty than beautiful, with a quick, winsome smile that won over nearly everyone she met.

Walter, of course, had his challenges. There were many, many parolees who came through his office he knew were never going to escape the horrors of the debilitating penal system. For those, he tried to make the inevitable more bearable. For the few who still hadn’t committed crimes that would condemn them to decades of incarceration, Walter tried to piece together whatever stepping stones back to society he could. A GED course. An internship at a corporation willing to offer one. A program that helped people in the penal system with résumés and clothing suitable for interviews.

He relentlessly pursued companies that might qualify for a grant or a subsidy to employ ex-convicts: supermarket chains, restaurants, warehouses. It was slow, tedious, often heartbreaking work. Many times, just when he had a candidate qualified and next in line for a job, something would destroy all his efforts. Little things and big things. An arrest for doing something impulsive or stupid like shoplifting, or jumping a turnstile. A lapse back into drug or alcohol addiction. Unexpected pregnancies. Traveling out of state. Even being in the company of the wrong person could send a parolee back to prison, back to square one where Walter might have to wait years to start over.

Phyllis’s job challenged her, too, but brought her almost daily rewards. She loved teaching. And she loved the kids. For Phyllis, reading was the key to awakening minds. She knew if she could teach a child to read, the entire world, whole and wonderful and complete, would open up to them.

In such things, as in all other matters, Walter and Phyllis shared with each other a complete, quiet, confident love that sustained them. Until the day when Walter lost Phyllis much too early to breast cancer at the age of fifty-six. Just when they were envisioning the next phase of their lives, retiring and growing old together.

The loss shocked Walter to his core. Phyllis had always been such a vibrant, vital woman, with picture-book perfect posture. And strong. She’d been blessed with a wonderful body that Walter loved to hold and touch. And then everything had betrayed them. And she was gone, and Walter was alone, sliding into a world bereft of those special things Phyllis brought. Occasionally, he would force himself to go to a museum or a movie. But gradually, his life became mostly his work. The only other mainstay was his church, but too often the quiet solitude and peaceful atmosphere of St. Charles Borremeo’s felt very lonely to Walter.

Walter made sure not to think about Phyllis too much. But as he packed a small carry-on bag opened on the bed where the two of them had slept together for so many years, he couldn’t help but remember her.

He thought about Phyllis until he felt too sad, and then turned his attention to thinking about what he was doing with James Beck.

Ah, Mr. Beck, thought Walter. He had come into his life a couple of years after Phyllis’s death, bringing a rough, aggressive vitality that both worried Walter and energized him. James Beck shared Walter’s dedication to helping men trapped in a ruthless, dehumanizing penal system. Not many. Just a few whom Beck and his inner circle had taken on as their own. But once committed, Beck would stop at nothing to make sure that man never saw the inside of a prison again.

The stopping at nothing both worried Walter and invigorated him. He had to admit, Beck had resurrected him. Walter knew Beck had saved him from falling into a debilitating depression after Phyllis. Without Beck, Walter could never have imagined himself packing a bag late at night to take a spur-of-the-moment trip offering unpredictable consequences.

Walter smiled. Shook his head. Even now, before he’d set out, Beck had made him feel a bit young and reckless.