The Unhappy Life of Riley

by Lloyd B. Abrams

Riley Youngar’s claim to fame – his sole claim to fame, unless one takes into account the then hospital record-setting 38 hours his mother spent in labor – was that his name was comprised of all five vowels, plus the two “Y”s, which served as a sixth vowel and a consonant.

This was not to imply that there were any literary or journalistic traits associated with this particular attribute, aside from Riley’s eventual devotion to the daily newspaper’s Word Find puzzle. Still, Riley considered himself something of a wordsmith, although he would be hard-pressed to actually define the term.

After those 38 hours of misery – of pain and pushing, with the offer of medication refused by his mother for who knows why – she wanted little to do with her newborn son. The love his mother was hoping to have for her baby, her own flesh and blood, as it is said, was a love that she would never share with the man who had impregnated her, for he was married to another and soon moved across the country.

Promises made to her were never to be kept. If she could have, she would have given Riley away. But she hadn’t because she believed deep down that things like that were just not done. So indifference, hostility, bitterness and resentment ruled the nascent mother-son relationship after his delayed entry into the world. And from then on.

Scene in Riley’s first grade room at age 6

It is the middle of March. Miss Nussbaum is the second teacher, not counting the substitutes, that Riley has had. The first had left on maternity leave at the end of January. After Riley’s mother missed the meeting last week, his teacher had set aside time for a second.

Riley’s mother is sitting and fidgeting in a child-sized chair next to her son. It is not his assigned desk; his is in the back of the room. The teacher is perched on the front edge of her desk.

“I have Riley’s report card here, Mrs. Youngar.”

“It’s not ‘Youngar,’ miss. It’s Dancher. Miss Dancher. Youngar is his father’s name.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I’ll make sure Riley’s record is changed.”

“Thank you, so ….”

“Anyway, Miss Dancher, Riley is very respectful, a very quiet boy. But he is not making adequate progress, especially in communication arts.”

Riley’s mother is examining the report card and notices the many D’s and F’s and P’s circled in red. She waits for the teacher to continue.

“I’m afraid that Riley is going to be left back unless he gets special tutoring.”

Respectfully and quietly, as always, Riley is taking this all in.

Because this caring teacher is soon replaced by a third, another novice, Riley gets no extra attention, no special help. When he does get his final report card, at the end of June, he can decipher it well enough to understand that he is being promoted to second grade anyway.

There were twelve extraordinarily ordinary years that Riley spent in the public school system. The strange Youngar boy with the uncombable hair always sat in the back row in the corner behind the Williamses and the Wilsons and, once, a trouble-maker named Richard Xavier, who didn’t last long in the school. Nobody paid much attention to Riley. It was as if he were invisible. He usually did some of his homework, he usually passed enough of his tests to get by, though barely, and he always kept to himself. There was nothing notable about him and nothing especially endearing.

Some students crave attention, shooting their hands up to be called upon. Riley Youngar shrank down in his seat to gaze out the window, to follow contrails in the sky, to studiously observe the pigeons roosting in the nooks and recesses of the building next door.

Schoolyard scene in fourth grade at age 9

Riley has just finished his brown-bag lunch, yet another peanut butter and jelly sandwich he’d made the night before. If nothing else, his mother has taught him to be self-sufficient. Hunger is quite the motivator.

He is wandering aimlessly in the schoolyard, trying to fit in, smiling hard to look happy, and searching for a place to stand, where he would attract the least attention. Several children start chanting, “Smiley smiley Riley! Smiley smiley Riley!” over and over. It soon becomes a chorus, a claxon of noise. And, of course, a weapon. He refuses to answer them back but he also refuses to let them see his tears. Finally, he breaks away and runs past the schoolyard monitor into the building, where he stands, whimpering, next to his classroom’s locked door until lunchtime is over.

Sometime around the middle of the eighth grade, his second of three years in junior high, Riley was a month past his thirteenth birthday. Even though he had never once stepped inside a Hebrew school class, and even though his mother made no pretense at acting Jewish, let alone being observant – no lighting of shabbos candles, no prayers, no walking to shul, even on the high holidays, no challah, no matzoh, no celebrating Chanukah, no nothing – she got in into her head that Riley at the very least had to have a bar mitzvah.

Riley was officially Jewish because of the matrilineal link, but his actual connection to Judaism was nil. On the day of his bar mitzvah, Riley’s mother had him come home from school at lunchtime. Riley did not mind, of course, because he hated his gym class that followed lunch, which afforded even more opportunities for humiliations at the hands of his classmates and the teacher – the school Nazis, as his mother put it. Riley’s mother had him change his pants, and put on a white dress shirt which she had just pressed, and presented him with a clip-on dark blue bow tie.

Scene in the rabbi’s study at age 13

A musty, smoky office, with dust-covered books on rickety shelves lining the walls. Riley’s mother is sitting on a hard-backed chair next to the door. Riley is standing next to the rabbi. A prayer book, with its binding scotch-taped, is open in front of him on a shtender, a book-sized easel on the desk. The Torah remains locked away in the sanctuary.

“You are going to be reciting your haftorah. Now repeat after me” The rabbi says a few words in Hebrew, then Riley repeats them as best as he can. Riley’s mother appears to be smiling, although her locked expression is probably a stoic response to the agonizing slowness of the process, and her son’s obvious discomfort.

After fifteen minutes, at most, the rabbi announces, “Genug shoyn” – it’s enough already – and then stands up, proclaiming, “Mazel tov, mazel tov! … siman tov and mazel tov!” He smiles at Riley with cigarette-stained teeth, shakes his hand, and then smiles even more broadly as Riley’s mother hands him a crisp hundred-dollar bill.

Scene at the takeout place a half hour later

On their way home, they stop at Kwong Ming’s, with its plexiglas shielding, and several tables covered in oilcloth. Riley and his mother sit down across from each other. Every time the door opens, a cold draft swirls in. A young woman comes from the back and wipes off the table with a damp rag. “You know what you want?”

Riley’s mother answers, “Yes. A number seven combination and a number two for the boy,” as she points towards the display of the meals above the counter. The dishes are the least expensive ones on the menu.

A few moments later: “Oh, by the way, Riley. I’m so proud of you. So I got you something.” She reaches into her handbag, and hands him a watch. No bag, no wrapper, no fancy box … just the watch.

Riley smiles, says “Thank you, Ma,” and slides it onto his wrist. It fits just right and looks just fine.

“You take good care of it and it’ll last a very long time.” He examines it carefully. It’s a Timex, and also has the date in a tiny window. He notices, too, that the crystal is already scratched.

It is the very beginning of Riley’s twelfth year in school, including kindergarten, but it is Riley’s second time around in tenth grade. It is the school’s written policy that there must be a parental conference for any child who has been held over. Riley’s mother had been called in for a conference with his guidance counselor but she had already missed one appointment.

Scene in the high school guidance office, at age 15

In the cramped cubicle, Riley sits next to his mother as the guidance counselor examines Riley’s “five-by-eight” – actually, a lined, letter-sized card with a series of handwritten entries on the outside and folded in half so that it would contain copies of his report cards and transcript.

“I’m sorry to inform you, and she takes a deep breath, that Riley failed almost all of his classes last year, and he never showed up for summer school. As you must realize, he unfortunately needs to repeat tenth grade.”

“I thought he was passing his classes.”

“Did you ever see any of his report cards?”

“No, not really,” Riley’s mother replies. “I trust him to do what’s right.

“When he comes home from school, he goes right to his room and starts doing his homework. I thought he was doing okay.”

“Maybe this year will be a fresh start for him. And so here’s a copy of his schedule.”

On it are English, social studies, algebra, earth science, lunch, phys ed, exploring music and Spanish. Neither Riley nor his mother are told that many of his academic classes would be populated by repeaters – mostly ne’er-do-wells – in the hope that the presence of Riley and his left-behind classmates would not pollute the incoming tenth graders for whom they might still have some hope.

The guidance counselor gets up from her desk, shakes his mother’s hand and Riley’s and says, “Let’s hope he does better this term.”

Scene in eighth period Spanish, at age 16

By the end of December, most of Riley’s classmates had stopped attending their last period class, and many of their other classes throughout the day. Riley’s teacher thinks it is just as well, since many of them had been restless and disruptive by the end of the school day. She also appreciates the atmosphere of the smaller class and has the students sitting at desks arranged in a circle. Unlike many of Riley’s other teachers, she is one of the few exuberant ones who still continues to engage her students throughout her five classes. But it is a fluke of the department schedule that she has been stuck with the eighth-period repeaters.

One of the girls is sitting directly across from Riley is wearing a short skirt, a tight sweater and too much makeup. She is either unaware of or unconcerned about the attention she is attracting as she slowly crosses and uncrosses her legs. Or maybe she’s doing it on purpose. Riley’s eyes are fixed on this female display; he is having trouble keeping track of the make believe Spanish supermarket conversation going on around him. At one point, their eyes meet. After that, she is even less careful. After the bell rings, she asks, in a voice loud enough to make all the students turn around to watch, “Hey, perve! Yeah, you! Didja like what you saw?”

Riley slinks out of class as laughter follows him down the hall. It is the last time he attends Spanish class.

It is also the last time he ever walks into that school.

Later, in bed, and for many days and weeks and months following, he incorporates the enduring memory of that glistening white triangle between her legs as he rubs himself to a climax. He just can’t get that scene out of his head.

Despite his mother’s half-hearted protests, he gets up late, then lazes around the apartment all day or he slips out and actually makes tentative acquaintances – if not actual friends – with fellow dropouts and wannabe bangers who hang out at the park.

They smoke weed and share cigarettes, fool around on skateboards, diddle the girls who stick around and seem to be constantly starved of attention. In bad weather, they sneak into a dank basement in one of the nearby apartment buildings, where they can hear rats skittering in the dark.

They’re not exactly bad kids. Yes, they do their fair share of shoplifting. They’ll ride off on a bicycle just because it wasn’t properly locked and secured. They’ll sell items of jewelry hidden away in their parents’ chifferobes and wear clothing pilfered from their siblings. But c’mon … doesn’t everybody?

Sick of his bullshit, and also sick of her own cheap, wasted life, his mother finally gave him an ultimatum: “Get a fucking job, get a fucking life or move the fuck out. I don’t wanna see your loser face until you do.”

As she gave him the ultimate ultimatum, she also handed him the telephone number of one her uncles, Ray Asner, who was a manager at a wholesale butcher in the meat market district on the lower west side.

Scene at Lombardo’s Wholesale Meats, at age 17

When Riley shows up late one morning the following week, Uncle Ray introduces him to the Grasso Civelli, the owner. “Your uncle says some good things about you Riley. But you better get yourself cleaned up. Even though you’re gonna probably be covered by blood and guts by the time your shift’s over, you gotta show up neat and clean. I start you off at minimum. And I don’t stand for no bullshit. We gotta deal?”

They shake hands as Uncle Ray nods his approval.

So every morning at six, Riley dragged himself into the meat-cutting room at the Lombardo’s.

By clock-out time at three, he was chilled to the bone, despite longjohns and thermal-lined hoodies, despite wool socks and a down-filled vest. Nothing could keep him warm.

Summertime, he got a bit of respite during a smoke break. But breaking a sweat, then going back in, felt like suicide.

“Listen, Riley,” said his foreman, “either you do your work or you’re gone.”

“I can’t take this shit no more, man.”

“You heard what Grasso said. No bullshit … capiche?”

“C’mon. I feel like shit most of the time.”

“So why doncha just fuckin’ quit?”

When the dark days of winter came, there was no respite.

And so Riley was gone.

A recounting of the next few years chronicles the downward spiral of a city kid with no skills, no ambition, no hope. Anyone can fill in the story arc of Riley’s next years spent panhandling, stealing, shoplifting, selling weed, selling pills, selling whatever he could get his hands on – sometimes even selling his body. But all the time, selling out, selling pieces of himself, selling his soul.

And then there was the descent into heavier drugs – heroin, methamphetamine, PCP – whatever was available.

Nor was Riley’s mother exempt. She was forced to pay, under the penalty of eviction, for the damage after he broke down the apartment door and stripped the place of anything valuable, not that there was much to take. But she didn’t call the cops. What for? What the hell were they gonna do? And, as she confided to a neighbor, “He’s still my baby … he’s still my son.”

Riley even tried breaking into an apartment downstairs where the two faggots lived. He thought it’d be an easy score. But he was wrong. He got a beat down so severe that it almost ended his life.

After an anonymous call, the police discovered him in an alley behind a dumpster in a puddle of what-the-fuck?, battered and broken and barely coherent. Much later, many days later, the doctors told Riley that he almost died on the table and that they suspected he’d have long-lasting brain damage.

He struggled to mumble,“Maybe you shoulda let me die.”

Street scene on Lexington Avenue at age 21

Riley is standing in the middle of the sidewalk, in front of the main entrance of Hunter College. He is attempting to read a tattered printout plucked from a pile of trash along 68th Street. He is oblivious to the people who are forced to pass around him, rushing towards the entrance to the subway. One long-haired young woman, probably a student, who looks, to him, a lot like the girl from Spanish class and who is preoccupied with her cell phone, bumps hard into him. When she turns to apologize, her scrunched-up face belies how much she is disgusted by Riley’s stained, khaki surplus army coat, the greasy, uncombed hair that hangs over his ears, but, most of all, by the smoky, rancid stench of piss that envelops him.

Street scene on Riley’s 23rd birthday:

The coroner’s wagon pulls away with Riley Youngar’s body zipped up in the regulation black plastic bag. The chatter on the street is that he had been a junkie for some time, that he would inject, inhale or swallow anything he could get his hands on, that he had AIDS and he was close to end-stage and he had been doing nothing for it.

And that he died of an overdose … “you know how it is … like he wanted to die.” And that someone must’ve slipped him a hot shot, an ending he so badly wanted.

Riley’s mother was eventually located so she could identify his body. After she missed her first appointment, she splurged for a cab to the morgue at Bellevue. When the blinds were raised, and she saw her son lying inert but peaceful on the gurney, she started to moan and wail, “Oh my baby … my poor, poor baby. You had everything going for you.

“Why’d you do this to me?”

– This story, originally written in 2005, was resurrected from my “Works in Progress” folder

Rev 2 / November 9, 2005 .. Rev 8 / April 29, 2020

Up to the beginning of the story

April 29, 2020 … Copyright © 2020, Lloyd B. Abrams