On the way to the concessions for lunch, they passed through the tents where the food contests were judged. She spotted the blue ribbon on her mother’s berry pie and a yellow on her braided bread. The meatball contest wouldn’t be judged until later in the day, but there was Clarice Irene Grady, hovering over her fare like a mother hen over her eggs. She waved and winked, gave a not-very-subtle thumbs up in Dan’s direction before shooing Benny along.
Finding a place to sit and eat wasn’t hard. Charlie and Johanna were unacknowledged king and queen of the picnic. Space emptied the moment they were spotted, joking shouts for Mayor McCallan making Charlie blush and Johanna nudge him in a see-I-told-you manner. Benny hugged herself about the waist, absorbing the general mayhem and good feeling too long absent, too long ignored. Happiness filled her so full nothing else could get in, not even when Dan went to get her the promised cotton candy and Charlie hugged her hard and tight.
“She told you,” Benny accused.
“Of course she did. Now you have no choice but to tell him, because I’m not going to be able to keep this secret long.”
Benny kissed his cheek. “You squeal and I’ll bite you good.”
“Promise?”
“Charlie!”
He lifted her off her feet and twirled her once. “Welcome back,” he said close to her ear, and set her on the ground again just as Dan returned with the cotton candy and an unconvincing glare.
While the two men mock-battled over her, Benny drifted out of herself. All the months of avoiding him, avoiding telling him, whirred like dust in a summer wind. In this soundless joy, Dan left off battling Charlie to gather her to him, his arms around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder. In this fragile moment between then and now, Benny stopped herself from moving his hands to her abdomen and letting the hardness of it tell him for her. She wanted it to be something they’d both remember all their lives, after all. But she didn’t.
When their car stopped on the top of the Ferris Wheel, Dan put his arm around her and pulled her in close. He rested his head to hers and everything welling inside of him washed into her, became the same sensation passing back and forth, back and forth. He tilted her face up, his pale eyes gobbling down every word in her head. A tender kiss lit Benny’s insides, burned through her so that it was not enough. They kissed on the top of the Ferris Wheel, as it went round and round. At last the ride stopped and they broke apart reluctantly, only slightly self-consciously, and all thought of doing anything but getting back to his lips went the way of the summer breeze.
Hand-in-hand, Benny and Dan strolled to the judging tents and waited for the results of the meatball contest. Her mother came in second. Though she held up her red ribbon and smiled triumphantly, Benny knew her disappointment cut deep. Instead of insisting they help eat the meatballs still left in the pot, Clarice said she was going home to wash up before the fireworks started, and refused Benny’s help.
“You have fun and leave your mother to her pouting,” Peadar Grady told his daughter. “She’ll be just fine.”
After another mayhem-meal with most of Bitterly at the concessions, Benny thought she would tell Dan about the baby on the ride to the cemetery, but it was probably best not to give him the news while he was driving. During the fireworks, she decided, and was content. As he pulled through the gates, Benny realized she hadn’t been to the cemetery in a few days, and hadn’t even thought about it or Augie in passing. Too happy to feel guilty, she nonetheless closed her eyes and listened hard.
“What?”
Benny opened her eyes. “What, what?”
“You just sighed.”
“I’m happy.”
Dan took her hand and squeezed. “Me too.”
“You mind if I make a visit before we go sit with your mother?”
“Not at all.”
Dan slowed at the same tree she always parked beneath. Benny wouldn’t go to Henny’s grave this night of all nights. Even the thought was enough to wiggle loose the chinking of her present happiness.
“Not here,” she said. “Go past your mom’s grave, to the old section by the woods.”
He opened his mouth as if to speak, but he only nodded and continued through the cemetery. He stopped the truck in the exact right spot, turning off the engine.
“Give me a moment first, okay?”
“Sure, Ben.” He grinned big. “Go break up with your boyfriend.”
Benny cocked her head, her mouth dropping open as memory kicked in. “Oh, jeez. You knew?”
He nodded sheepishly. “I was here one day, helping Charlie with the sprinkler system. I saw you over here, and did some snooping.”
“You mean stalking.”
“Hey, I was worried. You were acting strange.” He tapped her nose with a big, square finger. “Even for you.”
“Ha-ha.” She stuck her tongue out at him. Leaning across the seat, she kissed Dan quickly. “Two minutes,” she said, and bolted out the door.
He wasn’t there. Not in any depth she could feel him, anyway. She stood silently still at his gravesite, reading the epitaph—
Katherine Weller Fiore
September 13, 1919 ~ January 28, 1976
*
August Fiore
July 4, 1908 ~ July 7, 1980
“Happy Birthday, Augie,” she whispered. “I hope you can hear me. I’m here with a friend. His mom rests”—She turned and pointed—“right up there. We’re going to watch the fireworks with her. He does it every year. So, see? I’m not the only one who hangs out with the dead.
“I’m sorry. I’ve said it a bajillion times, but I am. I miss you, Augie. And I miss hearing from Harriet through you. Did you make her up just to make me happy?” She sighed. “I’m going to New York with my mom on Monday. I’ll find Flora, or find out about her, and I’ll help you keep your promise. I swear it.”
From the truck parked at the side of the cemetery road, Dan waved to her.
She waved back, waved him over.
He got out of the truck and came her way.
“I want you to meet Dan,” she told the tombstone. “He lives in the house you built. Did Harriet tell you he still has the concrete with your kids’ handprints in it? I asked her to.”
Still nothing. She couldn’t even pretend.
Footfalls on the dry grass, then Dan’s arm slipped across her shoulders. “So this is my competition, huh?”
Benny nudged him. “I’ve been told he was very handsome.”
“He’s also very dead. I’m pretty confident I’m better looking at this point. I’m positive I smell better.”
Benny laughed. “He’s the man who built your house.”
“Ah, right. August Fiore built it for his Weller bride, yes. I didn’t know he was a friend of yours.” Dan glanced up at the sky. “Much as I like meeting your friends, it’s getting dark. The fireworks are going to start any minute.”
“Oh, sorry.” Benny touched Augie’s gravestone. “I’ll be back.”
She took Dan’s outstretched hand, and, glancing once behind, followed him back to the truck.
* * * *
“He is her lover. I can tell.”
“So?”
“Sew buttons. You know how I feel about her.”
“August Fiore, you are so dead she can’t even feel you standing right next to her. What right do you have to say anything about her taking a man as her own?”
“Plenty. If only I could…”
“Could what?”
“Harriet?”
“What now?”
“You don’t go any closer to the living, but you can, isn’t that so?”
“Don’t go getting any ideas, Augie.”
“But I have them. So many of them. Won’t you do this? Please?”
“No.”
“You are cruel.”
“Refusing this childishness isn’t cruel. It’s practical. You’re dead. And you’re bored. Just wait and
see if she finds your daughter for you. If you can move beyond this place, you’ll forget all about your infatuation with dear Benedetta.”
“So you say.”
“So I know. Wait and see.”
“I will never forgive you for this.”
“Remind me to weep about that in a hundred years, if you’re still here.”
Chapter 17
Sigh Legends Of The Moon
Benny’s hand in his was all that kept Dan on the ground. He’d never been much for whimsy. Today was an exception he hoped would become the norm. The sweet, slightly nutty, completely captivating woman beside him made all things possible, even making Daniel Greene the younger a man who could fly.
Weaving through the tombstones to the one marking his mother’s grave, Dan’s whimsy-balloon deflated just a little. Miranda Irene Greene once loved Tim, Charlie and Henny like sons. She’d have loved Benny by default, if for nothing else. He was certain she would have anyway. His mom loved everyone, and Benny was easy to love.
“I brought a cooler,” he said as they settled on the blanket he spread on the ground. “Beer? Water?”
“Water. Thanks.”
Dan handed her a bottle of water, cracked a beer for himself. Benny scooted between his legs, rested her back to his chest. They sat facing the tombstone, silent as his mother in her grave.
“She was only forty-one,” Benny said softly. She tilted her head back, looked up at him. “That’s just a year older than you are now. She was too young.”
He took a bigger-than-necessary pull from his beer, swallowed the lump rising in his throat. “The cemetery is full of those who died too young.”
Instead of stiffening as he feared, Benny snuggled more comfortably against him. “I don’t think I knew she died this time of year. Is that why you watch the fireworks with her?”
I watch them with her now because I didn’t when I should have. When I could have. Dan lifted the bottle to his lips, then set it down without drinking. “The accident was on the Fourth. Dad was drunk, as always. Mom left me and Evelyn with our friends and took him home. They never got there. He died on impact. She hung on a few days.”
Benny brought one of his hands to her lips, kissed it tenderly, lingered there. “I’m sorry, Dan. I didn’t realize…there’s only your mom’s name on the stone. I thought…” She took a deep breath. “It must have been so hard, losing them both at once.”
“It was hard losing Mom,” he said. Above, the first stars twinkled to life. The pale pink and deep purple on the horizon would soon be gone, and the first rockets would blare into the sky. Dan gathered Benny closer. He buried his face in the hair at the nape of her neck. Love he never believed he’d feel for another living person soothed the rage, the grief this time of year always presented like an offering to old demons long quelled but never vanquished. He could tell Benny why his parents were not buried together, that he refused to subject her to an eternity with him for appearances never close to true. He could tell her he believed his mother crashed on purpose rather than continue on another day. He could tell her about abuse and depression and how badly parents could fuck up their kids’ lives. But if he spoke the words, those demons so close to the surface this time of year would get loose, and Dan was not going to give them the satisfaction of ruining this day of days.
“When I was, oh, about eleven…” Benny spoke, her voice like a whisper out of the past. “I found a kitten out behind the post office. It was way too young to be separated from its mother. Cutest little thing. I was so afraid it would die. My dad is really allergic to cats. As it happens, so is Peter, but he wasn’t born then. Anyway, I knew I couldn’t keep it, but I couldn’t put it back and hope someone else came by. I sat there crying for hours before someone noticed me and asked me what was wrong.”
“You cried on a street corner in Bitterly, for hours, and no one stopped?”
“So I’m being dramatic.” She laughed as softly as she spoke. “Let me finish my story.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
She smiled up at him. Above, the first rocket launched into the sky. “A man stopped. He said, ‘Aren’t you Timmy’s baby sister?’ And I think I told him I wasn’t a baby. He asked what was wrong and I showed him the kitten. He took it from me and held it against him, to keep it warm, he said, because kittens so small couldn’t regulate their own body temperature. He told me he’d take care of the kitten, if it was okay by me. His daughter had been asking for one. I thought he was the nicest man ever.”
The hair on the back of Dan’s neck prickled like a thousand ants skittering along his skin. Dan remembered the kitten. Evelyn had it until just before she and Paul moved to the renovated house on Division Street. “So what’s your point? That my dad wasn’t all bad?”
Benny sat on her knees, her arms winding about his neck. “I didn’t know your father. Tim was scared of him, but I was just a kid. What would I have known? My point is that it’s easier to remember the bad stuff, because we can be glad we don’t have to deal with it with anymore. Remembering the good stuff is harder.”
He never missed a daddy-daughter dance.
Dan closed his eyes, blocking out the fireworks sparkling and Benny’s beautiful face. He rested his head to hers and tried. He tried so hard. But whatever good memory of Daniel Greene the elder might exist in his head, he couldn’t bring it out.
“I’m sorry.” Benny took his face in her hands. She kissed his nose, his cheeks, his lips. “Dan, I’m sorry. I was trying to help. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine, Ben,” he said, tried to grin and made it halfway to one. “It sucks to find out the funny-man is really the tragic clown, huh? What’s that opera? Pagliacci?”
“I have no idea.”
“And you call yourself Italian?”
“Don’t joke.”
Tears rolled down Benny’s cheeks. He thumbed them away. “Better to laugh,” he said. “My dad took too much from me, Benny. I’m not letting him have any more. I’m damn sure not giving him tonight.”
“You can’t bury these things.”
“I don’t bury them,” he said. “I let them go. There’s a huge difference. The past is the past, and unless you have some sort of time machine, there’s no changing it.”
“But—”
Dan kissed her silent.
“—you can be—”
He kissed her again, pulling her gently closer. Benny straddled his hips. She wound her arms about his neck, made no protest when he teased the t-shirt free of her jeans and slipped his hands underneath. Her body arched to his touch. She sighed against his lips. Overhead, a burst of light. A boom. Illuminating his mother’s tombstone. His moment’s pause gave Benny the chance to speak.
“You can be sad with me, Dan,” she said. “Okay?”
“How could I ever be sad when you’re around?” Rolling with her onto the blanket, his heart lurched. She squealed a half-hearted protest. Dan reached for the buttons of her jeans.
“Here?” Benny whispered. “On your mother’s—”
Dan kissed her, swallowed the words he refused to hear. If he did, it would spoil everything, and he wasn’t about to let it happen.
“She’s not here.” His fingers flicked open the top button, started on the second. “This is just a place for bones, Benny. Just their bones.”
* * * *
You can do this, Benny. You can totally do this.
Leading Dan up the back stairs to her apartment, her hand in his, Benny gave herself the pep talk of her life. This was it. In moments, he would know they were having a baby. Would he weep? Whoop? Crack a joke? Whatever his reaction, Dan was going to be happy. Benny knew this beyond all doubt. The trembling of her insides wasn’t fear, but the good kind of anticipation, akin to, if not the same as, the belly-churning sensation of making love to him in the cemetery. The goth-chick ever alive within her found it incredibly sexy even if it seemed a bit morbid to her adult self. At the time, she hadn�
��t cared, and still didn’t.
“I feel like a kid sneaking into your house when your parents aren’t home.” Dan kissed the back of her neck as she fumbled with the keys. She shoved him playfully off and opened the door.
“First of all,” she said, “my parents will see your truck in the driveway when they get here. Secondly, my dad’s going to grin like a Cheshire Cat and, thirdly, my mom will probably make us breakfast in bed, so…”
“Breakfast?” Dan waggled his pale eyebrows. “Is that an invitation to stay the night?”
“What did you think we were coming back here for?”
“Round two?”
“Daniel!”
“What? You think I can’t?”
“I know you can.” She tweaked the front of his jeans. “I’m counting on it.”
She hung the keys on the hook beside the door, peeled off her hoodie and tossed it onto the couch. “Make yourself comfy. Want a glass of wine or something?”
“Sure, thanks.” Dan flopped onto the couch, legs spread and arms across the back.
Benny closed her eyes and turned away before Henny’s ghost superimposed itself in the exact position. The past was the past. There was no changing it.
“Red or white?” she called from the kitchen.
“Red’s good.”
She uncorked the bottle of merlot waiting months for someone to drink it. Pouring, Benny squelched the image of Henny drinking from that glass, eating from that table, sleeping in that bed she hoped to take Dan to after she told him about Cricket. She poured herself lemonade. She sat beside him, a leg curled under her.
“You didn’t have to open a bottle for me,” he said. “I’d have had lemonade.”
One of us needs to toast what I have to tell you with wine.
No, no, no. She needed something better.
That wine’s been sitting on my counter since before you knocked me up.
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