“Oh, God, no! Don’t hurt me anymore, please!!”
“No, no more pain, only death. Like her death, painless and quick. Like Gianna’s.” My grip on his skull tightened.
I prepared to sever his spine with a swift twist. Benson opened his eyes, and I stared into his frightened, bloodshot gaze. He trembled like a mouse in a cat’s clutches.
“You know what you are?” I whispered. “You’re a pawn. You may have captured my queen, but you’re still nothing but a pathetic little pawn.”
I let go of him, stood up, and shuffled toward the door. When my hand touched the doorknob, I stopped. Her family needed justice.
I retrieved the dirty yellow telephone from the end table and carried it to where Benson still lay supine on the staircase. I handed him the receiver.
“I’m calling the police.” I dialed the number. “You’ll confess to Gianna’s murder or I’ll melt all your fingers together into two useless paws.”
He drew the receiver to his ear. “H—hello?”
“Ask for Detective Brunner in Homicide,” I said.
Benson did as he was told. When the call was over, I replaced the telephone on the table and turned to him.
“I’ll watch this house until they come for you. Don’t think of leaving.”
“I won’t.” He wiped the blood from his nose. “I am sorry, really. Like I said, I didn’t—”
“Shh.” I held up my hand. “I know. I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry you were dragged into this. I’m sorry you ever existed. But if it weren’t you, someone else would have pulled the trigger.”
“I don’t understand.”
I opened the front door and said without looking at him, “Neither do I.”
When I returned to the police station, I found Beelzebub still sitting on the steps. He saw me and leapt to his feet.
“I thought you were in there.” He jerked his thumb towards the building. “I’ve been waiting out here in the freezing cold for two hours. Where the hell were you?”
“I went to visit Mr. Benson.”
“Who?”
“Gianna’s murderer.”
“Oh.”
“At least the man directly responsible, the man who pulled the trigger.” I began to walk down the street away from the police station. Beelzebub followed me.
“Did he tell you why he did it, who was behind it?”
“No.”
“How did you kill him?”
“I didn’t.”
Beelzebub stopped. “What? You didn’t kill him? How come?”
“He was only an instrument. Killing him would have meant no more than if I had destroyed the gun that held the bullet.” I turned down a narrow alleyway. “I wanted to kill him. I thought it would make me feel better. But nothing can do that. Nothing will ever do that.” We walked in silence for a few moments.
“Hey, Lou?”
“What?”
“Are you gonna be okay?”
I stopped and faced him. He squinted up at me, his tiny nose crinkled like a rabbit’s.
“I mean,” he said, “you seem, like, I don’t know, dead or something. I’ve never seen you like—”
“Why?” I whispered.
“Huh?”
“Why, Beelzebub? Why did you do it?”
He stopped squinting. “What?” He took half a step back. “Do what, Lou?”
“You didn’t have to go so far. Look at me now. You’ve destroyed me.”
“I don’t know what—”
“Is this what you wanted?”
“—you’re talking about. I never did anything to—”
“DON’T LIE TO ME!!” I rushed at him and hurled him to the ground. In half a second, my boot was at his throat. He squeaked in protest, but could not struggle.
“No, Lou! I never—”
“Don’t you dare lie to me, Beelzebub. After what you’ve done, I won’t let you tell me it wasn’t you. No one else could have wiped Benson’s brain so clean, no one else is as good as you at making them forget.”
“Lou—”
“You killed her! You killed her, and I want to know why. Tell me!”
Beelzebub choked and flailed. I removed my boot from his neck and kneeled on his chest. He gasped and wheezed for a moment.
“I had to . . . I had to do it, to save you.”
“Save me?!” I grabbed his collar and shook him. “You killed the only one who was capable of saving me. How could you do that to me?”
“That’s—that’s just it. She would have saved you.” He emitted a strangled cough. “Couldn’t take that chance.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Of you, making it to the other side, without us. We need you.”
“You think I would have left you behind, sought redemption only for myself?”
“For her . . . yeah.”
I stared into my brother’s strange blue eyes and knew he was right. I let go of him and stood up. “Then you knew how much she meant to me.”
“I knew.” Beelzebub rolled on his side and coughed again, several times. “I knew, but I didn’t know.” He lay his forehead on the pavement. “So what are you going to do to me?”
“I don’t know. How can I punish you when you’re as damned as I am? Hell is already your home.” As soon as I said this, I knew what I had to do, and that I’d have to do it quickly. I turned my back on him.
“You’re fired.” I began to walk away.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He scrambled to his feet and ran to catch up to me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what I said.” I did not look at him, wanted never to look at him again.
“You’re cutting me off? Banishing me?”
“Yes.”
“Lucifer, you can’t mean this. Wh—where’ll I go? What’ll I do?”
“Frankly—”
“I wasn’t the only one, you know.” He pulled on my sleeve. “I’ll give the others up if you just don’t send me away. Please.”
“I know you didn’t act alone, Beelzebub.”
“Don’t you want to know who it was? Hey, it—it wasn’t even my idea!”
“I don’t care.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“I don’t care about the others,” I said. “I only ever cared about you.”
“Lucifer, this is me you’re talking to—your old buddy. I was the one who believed in you first. I was the one who pulled you out of the fire after the Fall. I’ve always been there for you!”
“Then why betray me now, after all this time?”
“Why? Because I’m evil! And I thought you were evil, too. If anything, you’re the one who betrayed all of us. Falling in love, like some weak, stupid human. How can we ever trust you again after that?”
“‘How can we trust you?’” I said. “Beelzebub, there is no more ‘we’ for you. You can never come back, and ‘we’ can no longer know you.”
“Why? Because you said so? Maybe you’re the one who should be banished.”
I grabbed him and covered his face with my hand so that I could hold him in place without seeing his eyes.
“Leave me now, Beelzebub. Live out your measly existence on this earth however you please, but never approach me or our brothers. If I ever see you again, I will end you, do you understand? I will end you.”
His voice was muffled under my palm. “You don’t have that power.”
I leaned close to his face and whispered, “Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t. I do know that it will hurt us both a great deal for me to try, and I will try.”
He stopped struggling and placed his hand on my wrist. I slowly let go of his face. He was crying. I felt sick.
“You can’t forgive me?”
“No. Not for this.”
“Everything I ever did,” he said, “was always for you.”
I took his other hand. “Then do this one last thing for me. Leave me.”
Beelzebub looked
away, then nodded. He moved to embrace me. I stepped back, out of his reach. He shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled down the street, not looking back. I stared after him until he disappeared into a crowd of shoppers.
37
Requiem Aeternam Dona Eis, Domine
Gianna’s funeral was three days later, in Pennsylvania. I spent those three days with her family, who were as inconsolable as I. Rosa wept constantly, awake and asleep. Valium had no effect on her. Walter spent most of his time taking Bobo for walks. Even the wake was a somber affair. The enormous quantities of alcohol we all consumed at it made us even more morose.
I would often go out alone, to run errands for the O’Keefes or just to get away. One day I sat in my car outside a supermarket and watched the people go in and out, occupied with their lives.
How can the rest of the world carry on and on and on without her? They breathe and move and eat and walk and shop and laugh. Everything still lives on. Everything lives.
But not her. And not me.
The sobs that racked my ribs would have split a human in half. I had not even death to look forward to, just an endless fall into nothingness.
The morning of her funeral was cruelly sunny and cold. Outside the church, Marcus handed me an opened envelope marked “To be opened when I buy the farm.”
“I found it in my sister’s safe deposit box. It was the only thing in there.” I slid out the piece of paper inside. “Check out the date,” he said. “She wrote this on the day she died.”
Dear Marcus
(or Matthew or Luke, if Marc has gotten himself dead already),
I know this sounds really morbid, okay, but I’ve come up with a list of Bible readings for my funeral. It occurred to me this morning that this was really important, and I figured I’d better get on it, in case I got hit by a bus or a meteorite or something. Don’t laugh. Those things happen to people, you know.
Anyway, here they are:
Song of Solomon 5:9–16
Psalm 31
1 John 4:7–19
Luke 15:1–7
They’re a bit unorthodox, but don’t let Mom talk you out of them, because they mean a lot to me, and hopefully a lot to someone else. Thanks.
Ciao Bello,
Your little sister Gianna
P.S.: Tell Louis I love him, and that I’m waiting for him (at least until I find a foxier angel).
“I don’t know what this is all about,” Marc said, “but we’ll do as she asks.”
“May I keep this?” I asked.
“Sure.” He stared at the envelope in my hand. “Sometimes I can’t believe . . . it’s like it hasn’t really hit me yet. I feel like I’m outside my body somewhere watching myself mourn, and I . . .” He passed a hand through his hair. “I’m scared of what’ll happen when I come back inside myself. When I have to be me again and figure out how to . . .” Marc turned away. I touched his arm, but he moved it out of my reach. “No, I can’t cry, I’m a goddamned pall bearer!”
He kicked a stone into the parking lot. “I’m tired of this already,” he said. “I want her to come back.”
I stood silent while he kicked another rock, then another. Then he looked up and said, “Check it out. Adam’s mom.”
An elderly woman dressed in black slowly crossed the parking lot. She approached us and held out her hand to Marc, who took it in both his own.
“Marcus, I’m so sorry. I just don’t know what to say.”
“Me neither. Thank you for coming.” He squeezed her hand. “Mrs. Crawford, this is Louis Carvalho. He was—”
“I know who you are.” She accused me with large, sorrowful eyes. I looked away. I heard her pat Marc’s shoulder and say, “I’ll go in and see your parents now.”
As Adam’s mother walked towards the church, Marc pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.
“Only when I’m in mourning.” His face hardened with the first drag. “In the last ten years, I’ve been a nonsmoker for a total of fourteen months. I’m thinking of giving it up entirely.”
“Smoking?”
“Not smoking.” Marc looked at his cigarette. “Everyone should have something in their lives that doesn’t go away.” He let out a deep, harsh breath. “I feel so fucking old today.”
I said nothing.
He glanced at me, then said, “Why don’t you go inside and sit down with Mom and Dad and Grandmom? The mass should be starting any minute.”
I entered the church and moved down to the front pew, my eyes on the floor as I walked. Rosa moved over so I could sit on the aisle. She gripped my hand for a moment, then grabbed her enormous pile of tissues again. Her sniffles were deafening in the silence.
The procession began while a small choir sang the “Lacrymosa” from Verdi’s Requiem, at my request. Its melancholy notes chilled my heart as I thought of Gianna’s tearful reaction to it on the night of her death. Her brothers, along with some cousins, accompanied the coffin down the aisle, then joined Donna and Dara in the pew behind me. After the introductory rites, Marcus stood and climbed the stairs to reach the lectern.
“A reading from the book of songs:
‘How does your lover differ from any other, O most beautiful among women? . . .’
‘His head is pure gold;
his locks are palm fronds,
black as the raven . . .’”
Afterwards Matthew rose and took Marc’s place to read the psalm.
Have pity on me, O Lord, for I am in distress;
with sorrow my eye is consumed;
my soul also, and my body.
For my life is spent with grief
and my years with sighing . . .
Once I said in my anguish,
‘I am cut off from your sight’;
Yet you heard the sound of my pleading
when I cried out to you.
Then it was Luke’s turn to be Gianna’s mouthpiece:
Beloved, let us love one another because love is of God . . . The man without love has known nothing of God, for God is love . . .
Our final theological debate, and I don’t get to talk back to her. I almost smiled.
The priest stepped forward with the Books of the Gospel. “The Gospel of the Lord according to Luke: ‘He addressed this parable to them: Who among you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wasteland and follow the lost one until he finds it? And when he finds it, he puts it on his shoulders in jubilation. Once arrived home, he invites friends and neighbors in and says to them, “Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.” I tell you, there will likewise be more joy in Heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent.’”
I saw what she had planned with this choice of scripture. She lulled me with the love poem, played to my fears with the psalm, made me wonder with John’s letter, then sent the Gospel in to bat cleanup. I gazed at her coffin.
You’re amazing, I told her. Yes, I understand. I miss you.
Her fantasy about my return to Heaven clearly included a reunion between us. I wished that were possible, even in the unlikely event that I would ever get there. By now she was no longer Gianna O’Keefe but a mere essence with no recollection of her earthly life, no memory of any existence other than perfect bliss. If I could be with her in Heaven, I would have busted down the door the night she died.
The priest gave a short homily, then the prayers began. As soon as I knelt, my tears began to flow again. I struggled to keep from shrieking my grief against the walls and rafters of the church.
I did not partake of communion, though part of me longed for a taste of comfort. I remained on my knees until it was over.
The men came forward to accompany the casket out of the church. Luke stumbled, his eyes blinded with tears. Matthew laid his hand on his twin’s shoulder. The choir began to sing “Amazing Grace.” By the end of the
first verse, only the choir was still singing; everyone else was either choked with sobs or wailing outright. Rosa, silent, walked between me and her mother. Either denial or Valium had finally taken hold of her.
For the first time, I was part of one of those highway funeral processions I’d always mocked. I sat in the front passenger seat of the main limo, with Marc and his parents in the back.
“You okay, Mom?” he said when we were on the road. “You look like you’re not completely with us.”
She said nothing.
Minutes later, we arrived at the enormous Catholic cemetery and wound our way through an elaborate maze of headstones to get to the grave site. The pallbearers set Gianna’s coffin over the grave, where it was surrounded by so many flowers it was barely visible.
“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life . . .”
My hands covered my face as the priest crumbled the soil over the coffin.
“. . . ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . .”
The others recited the Lord’s Prayer through chattering teeth while I stared at the grave site and knew I’d forever hate the smell of flowers.
“Rest eternal grant to her, O Lord.”
“And let light perpetual shine upon her,” we said.
When it was over, and the others had driven away, Gianna’s family and I stood next to the grave in silence. One by one, they too retreated to the warmth of the limousines, until I was left alone by her side.
I drew a red-and-white rose from inside my coat and laid it on top of the casket.
“Gianna, I’m sorry I let you down.” I gripped the smooth side of the coffin. “All I ever wanted . . . was to be worthy of you.” My knees gave way, and I sank to the ground. “May God have mercy on me.” I hung my head to soak the frozen soil with my tears.
All at once a warmth enveloped me, as if a blanket had been wrapped around my body and held snug by an unseen force. I drew in my breath so sharply I almost choked.
There was a presence. I looked over at the others to see if they had noticed it, too. Marcus and the limo driver were smoking cigarettes and chatting across the hood of the car. Everyone else was hidden within the limousines.
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