by Wally Lamb
When the new school was finished, the archbishop came down from Hartford for the dedication. I invited my cousins Vitaglio and Lena up from Brooklyn. They came on the train to New London with their brats, the seven of them loaded down with bags and packages and luggage for their overnight stay. My house was like Grand Central Station that Saturday night! Lena and Ignazia cooking and yakking away in the kitchen, Lena’s bambini squealing and chasing each other and Concettina from room to room. . . . Vitaglio and I played bocce ball up in the backyard and got a little drunk on the homemade wine he had brought up from the city. At bedtime, Vitaglio kissed Lena goodnight and I kissed Ignazia. Then he and I went upstairs to bed. Before he got between the covers, Vitaglio went down on his knees to pray.
“What are you asking God for?” I joked. “A million dollars? Two million?”
“I’m not asking Him for anything,” he said. “I’m thanking Him for good food and wine, good health and famiglia.”
He got up off the floor and into bed, sighed, and went immediately to sleep. I reached over and extinguished the lamp, then lay there in the dark. The ceiling above me looked as black and vast as the Atlantic Ocean had looked on those long nights of crossing to America. I felt again the despair I had felt during those endless nights of passage. I thought about all that had happened since—what I had accomplished and what had come to me. Tears dripped down the sides of my face and into my ears. Lying beside me, Lena’s husband snored away. I was not much for praying—had given up all that after I left the seminary school to become a mason. But somewhere in the middle of that night, I rose from bed and went down on my knees. I thanked God for the same things Vitaglio had thanked him for—health, home, famiglia—and for helping me rid myself of the Monkey, too.
Next day, it seemed like every Catholic in Connecticut was there at St. Mary of Jesus Christ Church to witness the dedication of the new school! After the Mass and the ribbon-cutting, there was a special banquet and speeches in the church hall downstairs. (Guglielmo wanted me and Ignazia to sit at the head table, so that’s where we sat, right next to Shanley, the mayor.) This pezzo grosso gave a speech, that pezzo grosso gave one. Someone read a telegramma from no less a dignitary than the Governor of the State of Connecticut! Father Guglielmo was the last to speak.
“Stand up, Domenico,” he said. “Stand up, please.” So I stood. Every eye in that hall was upon me.
Without the help of Domenico Tempesta, Guglielmo said, the new parish school would not have been built. “We are forever grateful to this man.” Then four of the children from the new school came forward, giggling in spite of the looks the nuns gave them. They handed red roses to Ignazia and gave me a little box. “Open it, my good friend! Open it!” Guglielmo told me. He was giggling like those foolish schoolgirls!
Inside the box was a red ribbon tied to a medaglia (silver-plated, not gold). Stamped onto one side was the cross of Jesus Christ and the Lamp of Knowledge. Engraved on the other side were these words: “To Domenico Tempesta, With Sincere Appreciation from the Students of St. Mary of Jesus Christ School.” That’s what it said.
The archbishop stood and came forward. He took the medal from the box, lifted it over my head, and hung it around my neck. Then everyone stood up, gave me ovazione in piedi. Vitaglio and Lena, the Tusias, even some of the workers from American Woolen who had come—all of them off their chairs and onto their feet. Their hand-clapping made so much noise, I thought maybe the church would fall down!
Ignazia stood up, too. And the girl. Ignazia was holding that bouquet of roses they’d given her. The week before, I had handed her eight dollars to get herself a little something extra for the dedication ceremony. She’d bought material for a new dress for Concettina and a velvet hat for herself—bright red one, same color as those roses and the ribbon around my neck! I turned and looked at my wife. She was the prettiest woman in that crowded hall . . . standing there, clapping and blushing, wearing her new red hat. Then she put the flowers on the table and took the girl’s hands—made Concettina’s little hands clap, too.
“Papa! Papa!” Concettina said. “Hooray for Papa!”
I was all right until I heard that. Then I had to blow my nose and leave the hall for a few minutes. “Speech, Mr. Tempesta!” people called from the crowd as I tried to get out of there for a minute or two. “Make a speech! Make a speech!”
But all I could do was thank them and wave and blow my nose.
42
Ray and I sat side by side in the wood-paneled office of Fitzgerald’s Funeral Home, banging out the details: closed casket, no calling hours, private burial.
“Funeral Mass?” the undertaker asked. He had an overly helpful manner, seriously bad false teeth. The Fitzgeralds had retired since Ma’s death—had sold this guy their business and their name.
“Funeral Mass?” I repeated. Ray’s yes and my no came out simultaneously.
“He was religious,” Ray said.
“He was crazy,” I snapped back. “It’s over.”
It was False Teeth who brokered the compromise: priest at the graveside, a simple private service. The only other sticking point was what to do afterward. “Most people have a little something,” the undertaker said. “But you don’t have to go that route. You do whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“It’ll be around noon by the time it’s over,” I pointed out to Ray. “People will expect something.” I told him I’d order some food from Franco’s, go over to Hollyhock Avenue early and help him set up stuff—that over at my place, even a small crowd would be packed in like sardines. Ray gave grudging approval to the plan and I sat there thinking, hey, he grew up in that house. Our grandfather built that place. Why shouldn’t we have it there?
When I got home, I made a list: people who’d been decent to Thomas over the years—had treated him like a human being. The names and phone numbers fit on an index card. That was hard, making those calls—asking one more thing from the few people who’d already “anted up” on Thomas’s behalf. I saved the two hardest calls for last.
“You have reached Ralph Drinkwater, tribal pipe-keeper of the Wequonnoc Nation. If this is Tribal Council business . . .”
I closed my eyes, stammered the particulars to Ralph’s machine: 11:00 A.M., Boswell Avenue Cemetery, a twenty-minute service. “No big deal if you can’t make it,” I said. “It’s just that . . . Well, if you want to come . . .” Hanging up, I asked myself what the hell I was shaking for. I’d just been talking to a goddamned answering machine.
But I wasn’t lucky enough to get the machine when I called Dessa. He answered. The potter. “Eleven?” he said. “Okay, I’ll tell her. Anything else we can do?”
I closed my eyes. Thought: yeah, stop saying we. “Uh-uh. Thanks. Nope.”
There was a three- or four-second pause where “Goodbye” should have been. Dan the Man was the first to break the silence. “I . . . I lost one of my brothers,” he said. “Six years ago now. Motorcycle accident.”
He’d lost one of his brothers? I wasn’t even whole anymore.
“My brother Jeff,” he said. “He and I were pretty tight, too.” I closed my eyes. Promised myself this would be over in another ten seconds. “Gone for good: it’s tough, man. Out of the five of us, Jeff was the only one who’d ever pick up the phone, find out if you were still breathing. . . . Well, you hang in there. That’s all I’m trying to say. You want her to call you back when she gets home?”
No need, I said. She could if she wanted to.
After I hung up, I ripped up that index card list of names and numbers. Tore the pieces into smaller pieces. At least that part was over. Halfway across the kitchen, I stopped, doubled over by it.
Gone for good.
If your twin was dead, were you still a twin?
It was sunny the morning of the funeral—warm for April, but windy. Someone had planted red and white tulips in front of the headstone. Dessa, maybe? I knew she came out to the cemetery pretty regularly to visit Angela’s grave, across
the street in the children’s section. Not me. For me, that cemetery was like a land-mine field. Angela, Ma, my grandparents. And now my brother, too.
“JESUS, MEEK AND HUMBLE, MAKE MY HEART LIKE UNTO THINE.” CONCETTINA TEMPESTA BIRDSEY, 1916–1987 RAYMOND ALVAH BIRDSEY, 1923– THOMAS JOSEPH BIRDSEY, 1949–
The headstone was midsized, salt and pepper granite. Ray and Ma had bought the plot right after she got sick, I remember. She’d called me afterward. Said they figured I might marry again—that I’d probably want to make my own arrangements—but she needed to have Thomas taken care of. She was going to have Thomas buried with her.
The wind kept swaying those tulips, bending them one way, then the other way, ding-donging the heads together. A late frost would zap those mothers.
False Teeth had said six pallbearers was the usual but that we could make do with four. That’s what we did: made do. Ray, me, Leo, and Mr. Anthony from across the street. The casket was heavier than I thought it’d be. Toward the end, Thomas had outweighed me by fifty or sixty pounds. All that starchy food and sedative. All that sitting around down at Hatch.
Most everyone I’d invited showed up. Leo and Angie (minus the kids), Jerry Martineau, the Anthonys. . . . Sam and Vera Jacobs came. The Jacobses—husband and wife cooks down at Settle—had always been good to my brother. Cards on his birthday and Christmas, that kind of thing. Thomas had kept them all. I found twenty or thirty of them, dated and bound together with an elastic in a box with his other stuff. So I’d put the Jacobses on my list. If he’d kept those cards, they must have meant something. Right?
Dessa was a no-show. Dessa and Ralph Drinkwater. Well, I told myself, what goes around comes around. Here’s your personal history coming back to kick you in the teeth, Dominick. You betrayed both of them. Gave him up that night at the state police barracks. Gave your grieving wife up every night you’d wake up and hear her sobbing down the hall and just lie there. Not get out of bed. Not go to her, because it hurt too much. . . . Survival of the fittest, Birdsey: this was what it got you down the line.
The priest was goofy—not one of the regulars over at St. Mary’s, but someone they’d had to dig up from Danielson. I felt bad for Ray. He’d been volunteering over at St. Anthony’s for more than twenty years—plumbing, electrical work, yard work every spring and fall. But not one of those three priests could wiggle out of his “previous commitment.” . . . Father LaVie, this guy’s name was. He reminded me of someone—I couldn’t quite think of who. He’d sounded young over the phone, but then, in person, he wasn’t young. Late fifties, maybe? Early sixties? Shows up at the cemetery wearing sandals instead of shoes and socks. What was that all about? Trying to play Jesus or something? Like I said, it was warm for April, but it wasn’t that warm.
It hurt, though, whether I deserved it or not: Dessa’s not being there. All during the service, I kept waiting for her late arrival—kept picturing in my head how I’d gesture her over next to me when she got there. Hold her hand, maybe. Because our history was more than just the crash-and-burn ending. And because Thomas had loved her, too. “Dessa’s my very, very, VERY best friend,” he used to say. He told me that lots of times. . . . A car door slammed in the middle of things, and I thought, here she is. Here’s Dess. But it was Lisa Sheffer, hustling down the hill, her trenchcoat flapping behind her. Good old Sheffer, late as usual.
Father LaVie. Father Life. . . . He performed that hocus-pocus they do with the incense, fed us the usual about ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Read us some Scripture. Anything special you’d like? he had asked me over the phone. No, I’d said. Whatever he thought might be appropriate. And what he’d come up with was that same psalm I’d heard Thomas recite a hundred times. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. In verdant pastures He gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me. . . .”
Father LaVie had asked me about Ma. Breast cancer, I’d said. Told him how she used to worry herself sick about what was going to happen to Thomas after she died. “They were close?” Father LaVie had asked. “Like two peas in a pod,” I’d said. Two peas in a pod, two coffins in the ground. Mrs. Calabash and Mrs. Floon. . . .
Near the end of the service, Father LaVie closed his prayer book and put his hand on Thomas’s casket. Made us a Walt Disney ending: Thomas and Ma, reunited in Heaven, all of their burdens lifted. He smiled over at me, and I smiled back, thinking: George Carlin. That’s who he reminds me of. . . . Thinking: Free at last! Free at last! They’re “playing nice” in Heaven!
You go downstairs now, Dominick. Tell us if Ray comes. I made a special treat for you in the refrigerator. . . .
I looked over at Ray. He was scowling, pulling on the tips of his pallbearer’s gloves. My teammate, my accomplice.
What goes on in this house is nobody else’s business. You hear me?
Aye aye, Admiral! Yes, sir! . . . My eyes found Doc Patel’s eyes. She gave me a nod, a half-smile. Can you read it on my face, Doc? That worst day—the one I’ve edited out of all our little powwows? Can you see our secret, Doc?
Go downstairs, Dominick. Watch out for Ray. This wouldn’t be any fun for you.
Yes, Ma! Sure thing, Ma! Will you love me then, Ma?
And she was right, too. It wouldn’t have been any fun up there. It was stupid, what they did. Ladies’ hats, ladies’ gloves, those tea parties up there. The older we got, the more their “playing nice” humiliated me. . . .
More tea, Mrs. Calabash?
Yes, thank you, Mrs. Floon.
I hated them being up there. Hated being their stupid lookout, eating whatever bribe she had put in the refrigerator that day. Listening for Ray, watching out for the Big Bad Wolf. I hated it, Ma. I wanted you to stay downstairs. To love us both. . . .
I remembered everything about that day: the weather (gray and drizzly), the clothes I was wearing (dungarees, Old Yeller sweatshirt). Our supper—beef stew—was simmering on the stove; the kitchen windows dripped with moisture from the bubbling pot. Ma had left me pudding that day: butterscotch pudding and whipped cream in a squirt can. We’d been begging her for weeks to buy that canned cream. . . . We were fifth-graders now. It was humiliating. He was too old to “play nice.”
I made five of them, Dominick—four for our dessert and an extra one just for you. Not too much cream, now. One nice-sized squirt and that’s it. Save the rest for supper.
I lined them up on the counter, assembly-line style, and squirted: five puddings, five leaning towers of whipped cream. I ate them one after another—ate so fast, it gagged me. Why shouldn’t I? What was she going to do about it? Tell Ray? Squeal on me to Ray? I looked in the toaster at my cream-slopped face. He’s got hydrophobie, son. You got to shoot Old Yeller because he’s got hydrophobie. . . .
I heard them laughing up there. Why, Mrs. Calabash, these crumpets are absolutely divine. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
The sugar canister caught my eye. I reached over, removed the lid, and knocked the canister onto its side. Dry rivulets spilled onto the counter, then onto the floor. A white sugar waterfall. I flicked my wrist, made sugar fly. Crunched sugar under my shoe.
More tea, Mrs. Floon?
Yes, thank you, Mrs. Calabash.
I picked up the flour canister next. Plop, plop-plop-plop onto the floor. A fog of flour swirled at my feet. It felt good, making this much of a mess. It felt like justice. Snatching the can of cream, I shook it until it blurred before me. Began at one end of the counter and finished at the other. Thomasisabigstupidfuckfacejerk. The spout bubbled, gurgled; the empty can hissed. I lobbed it, as hard as I could, against the refrigerator.
“Dominick?”
I didn’t answer her.
“Dominick?” The clatter had interrupted their little game; she’d come to the top of the stairs. “Dominick?”
“What?”
“What’s going on down there?”
“Nothing.”
“What was that noise I just heard?”
“Nothing. I just dropped something.”
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br /> “Did anything break?”
“No.”
For several seconds, silence. Then her footsteps retreated back to the spare room. Mrs. Floon, these crumpets are simply delirious! You must give me the recipe! The door squeaked shut again.
I walked the length of the counter, my fist pounding through the whipped cream message. Pow! Pow! Pow! Fuck! Face! Fuck! Face! Whipped cream flew everywhere. I spotted our supper on the stove, pulled open the drawer and got the ladle. Ladled stew—our supper—onto the floor, onto the flour and sugar. Mixed up the mess with the toe of my sneaker. Stomped on it. Skidded through it. My head banged; my heart pounded. I felt powerful. As powerful as Hercules, Unchained. She’d cry when she saw it. They both would. Ma would be mad and scared. . . .
I turned back to survey the wreckage I’d made and there he was: Ray.
He was standing at the entranceway from the dining room. There’d been no car driving up the driveway, no warning. I had no idea how long he’d been watching me.
He didn’t yell. He just kept staring at me, studying me. We waited.
I felt weak-kneed, dazed. Relieved for my brother. Ray had finally caught me, red-handed, standing in my own evidence. It’s over, I thought; now he knows: I’m the bad twin. I’m the troublemaker. Not Thomas. Me.
He looked scared, not angry. And that scared me. “Where’s . . . where’s your mother?” he asked.
I touched my face. Felt whipped cream in my eyebrow, my hair.
“Answer me.”
Why wasn’t he screaming? Walloping me? Was the mess I had made somehow invisible? “It was an accident,” I said. “I’m going to clean it up.”
“Where’s your mother?” he asked me again.
He’d had car trouble that day—that was why I hadn’t heard him. He’d gotten a lift home, been dropped off in front. I stood there, the failed sentry.