by Ray Daniel
I pictured the people who would sit in the audience at the church. Auntie Rosa would be sitting out there. Sal would be there. So would Sal’s sisters, Cousin Adriana who lived in the North End and Cousin Bianca who lived on Long Island.
Cousin Bianca was now Bianca Goldman, having married Ben Goldman and converted to Judaism. It had nearly killed Auntie Rosa, and my mother wasn’t too happy about it either. Yet the Goldmans would surely be there, with their unbaptized son, Jake.
My mind skipped and jumped around the family tree, around my dad and his philandering, around the dead second family, Talevi and his threats, Graxton and his loans, Sal and his brutishness.
There must have been something to write, but I never found it. I woke up the next morning, my head pounding, my alarm clock blaring, and the pad of paper on the counter having nothing more on it than another moisture ring and a new whiskey stain.
I got dressed, put the empty sheet in my pocket in case something came to me, and headed toward the North End.
It was time to bury my mother.
Forty-Eight
I climbed the small pulpit on the altar at St. Stephen’s Church in the North End and gazed out at the audience of mourners. The audience gazed back, faces empty, silent, waiting for me to say something about my mother’s life. I reached into my jacket pocket, pulled out the sheet of paper from last night, still blank. I traced my finger around the whiskey stain. My head pounded. I didn’t know what to say.
St. Stephen’s Church sits on Hanover Street in the North End. It’s down the street from Sal’s haunt at Cafe Vittoria, and across the street from the famous Paul Revere statue. If Paul Revere’s horse were to jump off his pedestal and gallop across the street, he’d run right through the St. Stephen’s doors.
Bulfinch designed the church in 1803 for a Congregationalist parish. It looks more like a town meeting auditorium than a Catholic Church. Jesus did not hang from an outsized cross over the altar. Instead, a little platform allowed the speaker to see to the back row. I stood on the platform facing two columns of long pews. An empty balcony ran around the church’s long rectangular space. The organ filled the balcony across from me. The woman sitting at the organ rested her hands in her lap and glanced down at her watch.
My mother’s casket lay before me, its contents positively identified by dental records. Auntie Rosa had picked the casket. She sat in the second row, Cousin Sal on one side of her and Cousin Adriana on the other. The women wore black dresses and long, somber expressions. The rest of the Rizzo/Testa/Goldman clan sprinkled itself through the church. Uncle Walt sat in the middle of a pew, his face upturned toward me. Jael and Bobby sat together in the back. Hugh Graxton sat behind Sal.
Sal crossed his arms and frowned at me, his index finger tapping his elbow. He was right. I needed to say something.
“My mother made gravy for me—” My throat dried. I coughed. Started over. “She made gravy for me the night she died. I have always thought of her gravy as her special gift. It was the best gravy in the world, and she was the only one who could make it. Auntie Rosa’s gravy is excellent, but it’s different. My gravy is okay, but it’s not as good.”
Where was I going with this? I looked out across the audience.
“The thing is … she had her problems. You know. Her housekeeping wasn’t the best.” A nervous chuckle skittered through the family. “She sometimes lost her temper. She sometimes took things personally. Even so, I always knew that she was doing her best. I always knew that she loved me the best way she could.”
Grief filled my throat and pulled my cheeks tight. “She was my only mother. There’s nobody else who will love … I’ll never taste her gravy again.”
I looked into audience. Bianca was sobbing into her husband’s shoulder. Auntie Rosa dabbed at her eyes. Sal’s mask had cracked and he reflected my grief. Their emotions flooded into me, overwhelming my defenses. Tears slid down my cheeks. Bobby handed Jael a handkerchief. Jael was crying. Seeing her break destroyed my last defense against the emotions that pulsed within me. I knew what to say.
I let the rage overwhelm me. “But we all know that she didn’t just die!”
My family settled in for the last lines of a good Catholic eulogy. They expected me to say how my mother didn’t just die, that she lives on in Jesus. That this woman who never went to church, didn’t make confession, and didn’t believe in Communion, was going to bypass all the church’s dogma and go straight to Heaven. That she was in a better place. That her suffering had ended. They expected me to spout the comforting cliches of a funeral service, but I didn’t.
“My mother didn’t just die,” I repeated. “She was murdered!” I pounded my fist on the lectern. “Someone burned down my mother’s house and murdered her!” I pointed at the casket. “She had many faults, but she didn’t deserve the life she got. She didn’t deserve her hoarding sickness. She didn’t deserve a cheating husband, and she didn’t deserve a son who visited her only twice a year. She deserved so much more than any of that. And she is going to get it.”
The crying in the audience had stopped. They stared at me, eyes wide.
“And I swear, with God as my witness, that I will find whoever murdered my mother and kill them.”
I folded the stained, blank paper, put it in my jacket pocket, and looked from person to person. Every one of them dropped their eyes as mine met theirs. Every one, that is, except Jael. When we made eye contact, she met my gaze and nodded her confirmation.
I leaned into the microphone. “May this be the will of God.”
Forty-Nine
“Tucker, you put the fun into funeral,” said Hugh Graxton.
“Shut up, Hugh,” said Sal.
“Yeah,” Uncle Walt said. “We just buried the guy’s mother.”
Graxton gave Walt a hard glance, but he shut up.
The fire was dying in Antico Forno’s brick fireplace, my family’s traditional post-funeral restaurant. Attending funerals as a child, I would sit in front of that fireplace, watching the shifting logs reduce themselves to ash while my mother and her family transitioned from mourning to eating to drinking to laughing; returning to life after spending the day wallowing in death. At my father’s funeral, the owners of the restaurant had ignored my ID and let me drink wine along with my family, while a younger cousin watched the fire. My mother’s funeral was no different, though instead of me, my first cousin-once-removed Maria Rizzo sat in front of the ashes. The funeral was over. Only six of us remained, sitting around the table.
Death, the great leveler, makes for strange table companions. The FBI man Bobby and the alleged Mafiosos Sal and Hugh Graxton ringed the table alongside Walt, Jael, and me. Uncle Walt drank a Pabst Blue Ribbon. Sal and I drank limoncello, an unholy matrimony of lemonade and grain alcohol that Sal had made in his apartment. Jael, Bobby, and Graxton drank Scotch.
The limoncello slurred my speech. “Yeah. Shut up, Hugh.”
Sal said, “Though I have to admit, that was the most fucked-up eulogy I’ve ever heard. I thought Father Dominic was going to fall off his chair.”
I said, “It’s true. I’m going to get whoever killed my mother.”
Sal said, “Hey, don’t get me wrong. I understand the urge. Burning? That’s a fucking horrible way to go. Still, having fifty witnesses who can say that you promised to kill the fucker looks bad in court. It’s even worse if one of them’s a priest and the other is an FBI agent.”
Graxton said, “They don’t teach you this stuff at MIT?”
“How to get away with murder? No. Must have been a Zoo Mass elective.”
Bobby said, “I didn’t hear anything incriminating.”
Sal said, “There you go, Tucker. The FBI’s got your back.”
“We live to serve,” said Bobby.
Jael leaned forward. “The problem is not getting away with the revenge. The problem is taking revenge on the r
ight person.”
Graxton said, “Yeah, Tucker, listen to Jael. You had better be absolutely positive that you’ve got the right person.”
Sal said, “I say fuck revenge. It’s a sucker’s game.”
Bobby said, “Really, Sal? Never thought I’d hear that from you.”
Sal said, “The first step in revenge is to dig two fucking graves.”
Jael finished her Scotch. “If you find the right person, it is not revenge. It is justice.”
Sal said, “If you find the right person.”
I had a plan for that. It was time to put it into motion.
I drained my limoncello. “The right person is going to come
to me.”
Sal finished his limoncello and poured us another. “Why?”
There are all sorts of lies. There are lies that keep trouble from starting: No, that doesn’t make you look fat. There are lies that smooth over missed appointments: Stupid BlackBerry! There are lies that hide your second family: Honey, I have a meeting in Pittsfield. Then there are the lies that can get you killed. I was about to tell one of those.
“I have my dad’s notebooks,” I said.
Bobby said, “What?”
I continued the lie. “They were in a shed in the back yard.”
Sal said, “Shred them.”
“I’m not going to shred them. I’m going to use them to find my mother’s killer.”
Sal said again, “Shred the fucking stuff. Get out of the revenge business. It’s dirty.”
Bobby said, “Sal’s right about that. But don’t shred them, give them to me. You gotta let it go.”
I looked at Jael and asked, “Should I let it go?”
Jael said, “Were you serious about what you said in the church?”
“I swore to God, didn’t I?”
“Many people swear to God. Few of them know what it means.”
Bobby said, “So you think the person who killed your mother will want the notebooks? Do you have any idea who it is? If you do, give me the notebooks and let me do my job.”
I drained my drink and reached for the icy blue bottle that contained Sal’s hooch. I poured myself a glass and drank. It was really good. The lemons were the perfect dessert flavor. The sweet end to the spaghetti dinner, though Antico Forno was also unable to replicate my mother’s gravy.
I looked straight at Graxton, said, “I have no idea who killed my mother.”
“Don’t look at me when you say that,” said Graxton. “I had nothing to do with it.”
Outside the window a young couple examined the menu, trying to decide whether to eat here or at one of the hundred other restaurants in the North End.
I pointed. “You see those two?”
Everyone looked. Graxton said, “Yeah?”
“They had nothing to do with it.” I finished my drink and stood. “As for the rest of us, we played our parts.”
Fifty
Jael and I walked down Salem Street, the bricks doing their best to catch my limoncello-addled feet. When we reached the end of the street, we crossed into the park that bisected the city. I let Jael lead the way. We turned at the park, turned again at Hanover Street, and continued on toward Government Center. I thought we were heading for the train station at Haymarket, but Jael had planned a detour.
Just before we reached Congress Street, Jael turned and led me into the ghostly, smoking chimneys of the New England Holocaust Memorial. The chimneys, square towers of glass etched with six million numbers, towered above us. I followed Jael, craning my neck to see the top of the each chimney. She stopped and stood in a chimney marked as Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I yearned to lean against the glass, but the feeling that I’d be stepping on the dead kept me standing. “Why are we here?”
Jael stood on a grate by the first tower. An unpleasant steam wafted up, enveloping us. “I come here when I am upset.”
“Why are you upset?” I asked. “I mean, beyond the obvious.”
“I wish you would not improvise.”
“Improvise?”
A tourist pushed past on the way to examine other death towers. Streetlights pushed through the etched glass, making Jael’s eyes glitter. “Do you have the notebooks? You’ve never mentioned a shed.”
I looked beneath the grate. Warm steam and an LED star field confronted me. I looked away. Toward the end of the Memorial a woman crouched in the path, touching the small stones that edged it. Limoncello and fatigue bore down.
“No. I don’t have the notebooks.”
“Then you were improvising at dinner.”
“Yes.”
“I wish you would not do that. It is impossible to predict what will happen.”
“No, it’s not. It will get a rise out of whoever who killed my mother.”
“It will get you killed. Someone may try to take the notebooks. They will not accept ‘I made it up’ as an answer when they torture you for them.”
“I was hoping you would help me avoid that.”
“I will help you, but I may not succeed. I could also be killed.”
The thought jolted me. I had always though of Jael as a force of nature, permanent and invincible. But that was foolishness. She could die because of me. I was okay with exposing myself to danger in this plan, but I had compromised her. My cheeks reddened as shame trumped fatigue.
I said, “I’m sorry. You’re right. It was a stupid thing to do.”
“Yes,” said Jael. “It was.”
“What do I do now? Go back and tell them I was lying?”
“No. The pillow has been torn and the feathers are scattered. There is no way to get them back. We must move forward.”
“How?”
“You must cast the net farther. There is another who must hear your claim.”
“Who?”
“Your friend, Lucy.”
“Lucy?”
“She has been involved with this situation since the start.”
“How could Lucy be a spy? She has had nothing to do with this.”
“Lucy was with you when JT was shot. She may have been providing a diversion.”
“That was a coincidence.”
“Also, she was with you when you were beaten.”
“That’s just silly.”
“If I were spying on you, that is exactly what you would say about me.” Jael’s eyes took on a perky twinkle. She batted her lashes and said, in a perfect Southern accent, “Why Mr. Tucker, you flatter me with your attention.”
I stared at the transformation. “My God. Who are you?”
Jael’s eyes returned to normal. “I am your friend.”
My Droid played the Boston Bruins theme song. Bobby.
“Give me those fucking notebooks, you moron,” said Bobby.
I watched Jael touching the numbers on the glass column and said, “I don’t have them. I made it up.”
“Christ, Tucker. I wish you wouldn’t improvise.”
Fifty-One
Lucy edged her way to the rim of the small dock and looked back at me, her smile as wide and bright as the cloudless Indian summer morning. The dock stood in the middle of the Boston Public Garden. I wrapped an arm around Lucy. She rested her head on my chest and we waited for our turn to ride the Swan Boats. Tomorrow the boats would be put away for the winter, but today they were playing host to the diehards who wanted to get in one more ride.
I’m not sure what was in the water in late-nineteenth-century Boston; those people were construction maniacs. They built the nation’s first subway station, won the first American League pennant, and planted the nation’s first public botanical garden, starting work on the Boston Public Garden in 1856 and finishing it by 1859.
The Boston Public Garden features a small manmade pond. The pond is long, thin, and pinched in the mid
dle where those same nineteenth-century Bostonians built a little suspension bridge across it. The Swan Boats began operating in 1877 and have been gliding under that bridge ever since.
The hot weather had abbreviated Lucy’s outfit. Her short cotton skirt stretched across her hips and moved with her thighs, while her white tank top scooped to expose a tiny bit of cleavage. My stomach did a pleasant flip as my body responded to hers, my first pleasant feeling since I had buried my mother a week ago.
Lucy wore sunglasses but still shaded her eyes with her hand. “Here comes our boat.”
The Swan Boat crew unloaded the previous passengers at the other end of the dock and slid the boat down to our end. Lucy and I were first on the dock and would be sitting in the front row, confident that there would be no waves breaking over the prow of our fine craft on this perfect September day. The boat glided to a stop. I guided Lucy in ahead me, admittedly driven less by chivalry than by an opportunity to look at her hips in that skirt.
I sat next to Lucy. She tickled my ear with her lips as she whispered, “No life preservers?”
I said, “We’re only thirty feet from the shore. If we sink, I promise I’ll carry you to safety.”
“I’d be all wet and muddy. Would you still want to carry me?”
“I’d especially want to carry you.”
Lucy giggled and nuzzled my neck with her nose. She said, “I’d like that.”
A shiver rolled through me and I said hoarsely, “Me too.”
The boat set off. Its captain, a blond college girl with a steady hand on the tiller, pedaled evenly to drive the boat forward. Swan Boats have always been pedaled. We were riding in one of the newer Swan Boats, designed and built in 1918, back when the Red Sox were a dynasty led by Babe Ruth.
I put my arm around Lucy’s shoulder. She nestled into me as we watched the Public Garden glide past. People sat on the shore, some having picnic lunches, others sleeping.