That Rainy Day: A Novel

By F. de Sales Meyers

As Veronica Adamo grows up motherless in an Italian neighborhood in East Baltimore, she passes her time listening to her jazz musician father play the piano, hanging with the neighbor boys, crabbing at the dock, and swimming in the dark harbor waters. With her poor and broken best friend, Dalton Braskey, always by her side, Veronica eventually matures into a woman who attends college. But when she captures the eye of Karl Jasinski, a fast-talking, handsome musician, everything changes for Veronica.
Without a mother to guide her, Veronica throws caution to the wind and soon falls prey to the dark world that surrounds Karl. Lured away from common sense and her friendship with Dalton by drugs, good times, and easy money, Veronica struggles to escape her fathers despair about his failing career and fear of losing her. But when he finally reveals the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of her mother at the same time Karl shows his true colors, a now emotionally fragile Veronica asks Dalton to do the unthinkable as her life comes full circle in one life-changing moment.
That Rainy Day shares the poignant tale of a young womans coming-of-age journey as she strives to deal with loss and lifes unfortunate twists and turns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532002953

F. de Sales Meyers

F. de Sales Meyers earned a Bachelor of Science degree and National Key from the School of Journalism at Boston University. After serving in the navy during World War II, he worked for the state department in the Public Information Office of the Department of Health and Hygiene. That Rainy Day is his debut novel.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

T hose who knew Veronica Adamo when she was a girl wished they could say what she might have become if she had lived. But they couldn’t say. They could only remember her now as a shadow from the afternoon sun that passed along the street and then faded away while the brightness around her hurried the night to bring the darkness down into empty hollowness, without shouts, without the joy that somehow echoes on and on.

There was little time and even less history to her life, and in her death there was no fame or even notoriety to cast her name windward. There only remained a void where she had once been, with very little to fill it for those who mourned and suffered her absence, only forgetfulness left to work its softening way.

None can say now, or even guess, what the loss of her was to the world. The universe did not know her until it owned her, much as it did with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself.

There were scant days given to her for the fulfillment of promise that life should so generously provide. Her existence contained none of that which so evokes eternity and remembrance. There was nothing more to her than that which so quickly came to be her final, sole possession, an ending of life itself, and even then without an echo at all.

And does any of that matter now, or should it all be abandoned? Uselessness always is better off abandoned or dismissed. Perhaps there is only to be a memory that she was a pretty girl who briefly became a woman to a man, and yet was slain by the only one who truly loved her, the same as she loved him. But he who ended her life was not able to explain why any of this happened.

CHAPTER 1

O n a warm sunny day that children believe will last forever, knowing in their hearts it won’t and so crowding themselves into every minute of it, several boys and one girl ran up and down an old wooden wharf that jutted out into the harbor in East Baltimore. All of them held long-handled crabbing nets. Alone with themselves, released from the capturing and punishing world beyond where they raced, they shouted to each other excitedly, pointed downward to the dark water, and then quickly dipped their nets to seize the blue crabs idly swimming by and hurl them into the tin buckets ranged along the pier.

The girl holding a net, running and shouting the same as the boys, was Veronica Adamo. Her body was as slim and athletic as the bodies of the boys. She was dressed as the boys were, in denim shorts and a light shirt, but her shirt clung to her chest, now showing the beginning of low mounds of breasts. Otherwise, she was in no way much different from the boys, her hair as short, her legs as lean and brown, no more than they a child of the day, not yet known to night.

She was a girl, nevertheless, and that was reason enough for the recently masculine awakenings of the boys. All of them felt that when they slyly looked at her now and saw the emerging breasts, as all boys soon learn to do, and imagined the thrilling promise of femininity that for the time being they could only gaze at sideways and in wonder.

Also there on the wharf was a boy who seemed at first to be just as the others were. Yet he did not leap and run as they did. Instead, he sat quietly on an upturned bucket and grinned broadly at the excitement around him. When he stood up as Veronica approached him, it was apparent his left leg was shorter than his right. When he walked, it was as though he did not know of the lameness of his body and, as every one of them around him knew, though he did not, of the crippling of his mind.

The boy’s name was Dalton Braskey, but in the years following the heartbreak of the husband and wife who begat him, when it became apparent that he was not to be as all boys are, he had come to be known as Dolly, simply because he was unable to repeat accurately the name pronounced over him in baptism at St. Adolphus Catholic Church.

When those around him noticed and talked to Dolly Braskey, most of them had come to believe that he only understood the words spoken to him if those words were fundamental and direct. And so, over the years, all his replies became simple, slowly spoken imitations of what he was allowed to hear, and to learn, and he was never expected to be anything more than he was now, an instrument empty of expressive sound.

With all of that, however, his face was his own, not markedly reflective of his retardation, and when he smiled, as he often did, the revelation was as though astonishment had leaped abruptly into delight.

So Dolly had his place in the life of everybody around him, out and away, yet somehow always there, something there as an amazement, and always as present without explanation, as are air, fire, and water in this world. And so he went on with his life, unbounded, it was supposed, by thought and, perhaps, even by love.

The boys on the wharf now followed Veronica to where she sat down on the dock beside Dolly.

When all of them except Dolly took sandwiches from brown paper bags, Veronica handed one of her own to him, and he smiled at her and began to eat.

One of the boys, at a distance from Veronica, laughed a little. Dolly, how many crabs you got in your bucket? the boy asked, really without malice.

All the boys laughed at that, however.

Yeah, Dolly, another said. How many you catch today? You got them under that bucket you’re sitting on?

Dolly don’t like crabs, another said. That’s why he don’t catch any.

Veronica spoke quickly to that. He likes crabs, she said. They don’t have to be in his bucket. He can catch all he wants.

He don’t even have a net, another boy said. You know how to catch crabs without a net, Dolly? They in that upside-down bucket you’re sitting on?

The boy extended his long net toward Dolly, and when Dolly reached for it, the boy pulled it away quickly.

All the boys laughed as Dolly fell clumsily from the empty upturned bucket, smiling in the way most thought was without joy.

The boys jumped up then and formed a loose circle around Dolly as he struggled to get up from the dock.

Dolly Polly! Dolly Polly! Where’s your dolly? Where’s your dolly? they shouted in unison, from obvious practice.

Dolly turned away from them and, childishly, put his hands to his face. He made no sound, no response to their jeering.

The boys continued the Dolly Polly chant until Veronica, in raging fury, hurled herself against the circle of boys, knocking them from one side to another, pushing them away violently and leaving them terrified by her ferocity.

Leave him be! she shouted. Leave him be!

She flailed at the boys, and they retreated.

Veronica took Dolly into her arms, and he removed his hands from his face.

You okay, Dolly? she asked. Are you okay?

Yes, Ronica, Dolly said. Yes, Ronica.

Veronica glared at the boys.

You’re all bastards, she said. You’re all stinking bastards!

Aw, Veronica, the first boy said. We were only playing.

No, she said. You laugh at him. He’s never done anything to you. He’s never done anything to anybody.

Veronica, how come you always act like you own Dolly? He ain’t nothing to you.

I don’t own him. He’s my friend.

The boy stepped back a bit from Veronica and Dolly.

Does Veronica own you, Dolly? he asked. Are you her slave?

Dolly looked at Veronica a moment before speaking. Ronica is my friend, he said.

We’re your friends too, Dolly. But we don’t act like we own you, always telling you what to do. Do what you want to do, not what Veronica makes you do all the time.

He can do anything he wants to, Veronica said. I know what he wants to do. And so does he. And that’s that!

The boys were quiet awhile, eating their sandwiches and throwing bits of the bread into the dark water around the wharf to attract the crabs. There was silence around them on that scrap of their earth. Africa, across the dirty water in front of them, was as unknown to them now as was the year that would come as a regrettable surprise to make them men.

The power of the afternoon sun, no more aware of them than if they had been arctic birds or finned fish, caught up to them then, and one of the boys removed his shirt and shoes.

It’s hot, he said. I’m going in the water.

Yeah, another said. Let’s go in. Nobody around to stop us.

All the boys removed their shirts and shoes and jumped into the water, splashing around like schools of dolphins from the unbound sea that never had ventured that far into the fouled harbor.

Come on in, Veronica! one boy shouted. The water’s warm.

Yeah, Veronica! another shouted. Take off your shirt, and jump in.

Yeah, show us your little titties, another said, at a safe distance from her on the wharf.

Veronica only glared at them.

Dolly watched the boys, amused by their commotion and the sound of their splashing.

Come on in, Dolly! one shouted.

Veronica won’t let him. Will you, Veronica?

Dolly can do anything he wants! she shouted back. Anything you can do!

Oh yeah! Jump in, Dolly! Jump in!

The chant began again. Dolly Polly! Dolly Polly! Where’s your dolly? Where’s your dolly?

The boys paddled back and forth in the water. Dolly’s scared! Dolly’s scared!

Dolly looked apprehensively at Veronica.

Ronica won’t let you, will she, Dolly? Ronica won’t let you!

Shut up! Shut up! Veronica shouted.

Furious then, she grabbed one bucket and emptied the crabs into the water. And then she went up and down the wharf, flinging all the buckets and crabs into the water, as far out as she could throw them.

At that, the boys only laughed wildly, swimming back and forth and ducking underneath the surface of the water to avoid the thrown buckets and crabs flying at them.

Jump in! Veronica said to Dolly. Jump in! Show them! Jump in!

Dolly waited, watching Veronica’s eyes.

Jump in! she said again. Go ahead!

I can’t, Dolly said.

Yes, you can. Do it! I’m telling you to do it. Do it!

You don’t have to do what Veronica says, Dolly, one boy in the water called to him.

Yes! Veronica cried. Show them! Do it, Dolly! Do it!

Dolly limped to the edge of the wharf.

The boys watched, floating out a little distance from him.

Dolly looked back at Veronica a moment, smiling just a little before he leaped in. And then he immediately disappeared beneath the surface, no more disturbing to the water than a casually thrown rock.

Veronica ran to the wharf’s edge and stared down at the spot where small bubbles were the only motion on the dark water.

Swim! Swim, Dolly! she shouted down to the water where nothing could be seen. Do it!

The boys swam over to where Dolly had disappeared.

He can’t swim! Veronica cried. He can’t swim! Get him! Get him!

The boys dove expertly under the water, found Dolly, and brought him to the surface. All together, they dragged him onto the wharf, where he lay facedown, choking and coughing up the harbor’s filthy water.

Veronica took him in her arms. Oh, Dolly, she said. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you do that.

He better go home, one of the boys said.

No, he’s all wet, Veronica said. Frances will kill him. We’ll wait till he dries off.

The boys were subdued as they silently looked at Veronica, with Dolly cradled against her legs, just lying there, his eyes closed, as if he were far, far away from all their torments.

After a while, the boys put on their shirts and shoes. They picked up their crabbing nets and looked out over the water to where their buckets of crabs had vanished. They laughed a little about that and then began to walk away from the wharf.

Dolly be okay? one of them said.

Yeah, he’ll be okay now, Veronica said. You’re okay, aren’t you, Dolly?

Dolly opened his eyes to look up at her. Yes, Ronica, he said. Okay.

The boys departed, and when they were out of sight beyond the old brick warehouse of the pier, Veronica began to cry.

I’m sorry, Dolly, she said. I’m really sorry. I’ll never do that again.

Okay, Ronica, Dolly said. It’s okay.

Dolly smiled in that