A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself

by William Boyle

  Still no Rena.

  Pescarelli pours their beers.

  Mo looks lit up with life. “What a morning,” she says, lifting her cup and tapping it first against Wolfstein’s and then against Pescarelli’s. “Here’s to it.”

  “I like you,” Pescarelli says to Mo. “You’ve got a real touch of class about you.”

  Wolfstein gets up and goes back to the bathroom to check on Rena, taking her bag with her because she’s not leaving it behind anywhere ever. She half-expects Rena to be gone, so she’s not entirely shocked when she finds the little bathroom window open, its tattered blinds clanking against the high part of the glass, and Rena nowhere to be seen.

  With Lucia on the run, Rena must be thinking she doesn’t have time for the cops. That deep panic must’ve set in. Wolfstein understands, she does. She just wants to help. She doesn’t know how far Rena could possibly get, though. Cops are everywhere. Buses will be held up, no doubt. There’s no car Rena can take. She has no idea where Lucia is.

  Wolfstein considers going back to the booth but then decides to climb out the window to go look for Rena.

  The window opens on a narrow parking lot that butts up against back ends of businesses on the main strip. Wolfstein scans the area, wondering if she’ll see Rena trying to pick a lock or break a window on a car. She knows it won’t be long before Pescarelli and Mo are on her trail, too.

  At the end of the lot, Wolfstein looks right, which is where all the action they left in their wake is still unfolding. The bus in the distance, the plane, Crea, spinning cop lights, more ambulances, everything.

  To the left is a quieter stretch of street running alongside the twin lake. She sees Rena, lurching close to a white Toyota Camry with its wheels up on the curb. Wolfstein calls out her name. Rena looks back.

  “Where are you going?” Wolfstein says, as she closes in.

  “I need to bury Adrienne,” Rena says. “She needs a proper funeral. What we did, leaving her, it’s not right. And I need to find Lucia. I can’t believe I lost the number for the phone I bought her.”

  “My house is a crime scene. We don’t have any leads on Lucia.”

  “I can’t just sit and wait,” Rena says, fighting with herself. “I’ve gotta do something. That’s my daughter and my granddaughter. I’ve gotta make an effort. Adrienne should be taken care of. She needs her mother. And I’ve gotta look somewhere for Lucia. I’m all she’s got now. I know she’s tough—or she thinks she’s tough—but the world will chew her up. She’ll lose the money. She’ll have nothing and no one.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to go back,” Rena says, her desperation intensifying. “I want to get my daughter. I want to give her a proper burial. What kind of mother am I, running away? I want to find Lucia. I want to raise her right.”

  “I’ll help, however I can.”

  Rena suddenly notices something back behind a cluster of office buildings and starts walking toward it, harried. Wolfstein follows.

  They cut up a gravel driveway, through the yard of a law office, and come back out on Stage Road, at the far end of the block, away from the police station and O’Leary’s. What Rena saw, Wolfstein now knows, is a chapel. A beautiful little Catholic chapel with white siding and a thatched roof. Sacred Heart, it’s called. Like something in a little European town. Feels out of place on the same block as the police station and O’Leary’s, a seedy funeral home across the street, some rooming houses next door, a staggered disarray of other buildings whose purpose seems to be in question.

  “I need to pray,” Rena says.

  Wolfstein’s been to a few churches or chapels or whatever. For weddings and funerals. And there was that deconsecrated church she and Mo did a scene in. There was also one night at a chapel in Vegas when she almost got hitched to some high-stakes gambler named Keoghan. She remembers his pastel blue sport coat and the heavy dose of shitty cologne he wore. He had the laugh of a villain, but he was sweet, and she was drunk enough to think that marriage was a swell idea. Luckily, Mo had been along for the ride and sober enough to talk her out of it.

  Rena pushes through the red doors into the chapel. Wolfstein’s right behind her. It’s quiet inside. Light falling on the pews. Churchy smells. No sign of anyone. A bare altar. Cross up on the wall. Stained-glass windows. All the shit she expects. It’s pretty, but stifling and unpleasant. She feels the weight of guilt and shame.

  “I need to pray,” Rena says again, and she falls to her knees in the aisle and crawls toward the altar.

  She’s fucking snapped, Wolfstein thinks. And with good reason.

  “Rena, sweetie, get up,” Wolfstein says.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Whatever I did, I’m so sorry.” Rena is pleading with God. Her voice is full of rage and regret. She’s expecting an answer.

  The way the morning’s going, Wolfstein half-expects God to pluck the roof off the joint and stick his hand inside and scoop Rena up like he’s King Kong and she’s Jessica Lange.

  That doesn’t happen, of course. Rena continues her sad crawl. It reminds Wolfstein of the time she saw Valerie Sugar, drunk or high, crawling up the driveway at Mac Dingle’s house, begging for coke, begging for pleasure, begging for anything. People ignored Valerie. They let her pass out behind the back tire of a rented limo. Wolfstein guesses she should just ignore Rena now, let her cry the pain out, let her figure her own way through this tangled mess, come to terms with what happened to Adrienne and with Lucia taking off for parts unknown.

  “Why?” Rena asks God. “Why would you let this happen to me? Haven’t I always been good? Haven’t I always tried? Why did you take my daughter from me? Why did you let her get killed like that, so horribly?” Rena’s crying now, the words thundering out, spit-stringy. She really thinks she’s talking to someone.

  “I’m here,” Wolfstein says. “It’s just me. I’ll help you through this.”

  Rena starts saying the Our Father like a priest trying to exorcise a demon from a possessed girl. She sounds like the priest but also seems jangly and loose-limbed, as if she’s the one possessed. Wolfstein knows that’s what trauma and grief can do. They’re flooding in now, raining down on her, crashing against the rocks of her soul, if there’s such a thing as a soul. Rena’s head must be a hurricane of brutality: Adrienne being killed; hitting Enzio with that ashtray; Crea with his hammer and gun; Richie splayed like a snuffed candle in the back of that coroner’s van; Lucia with her bare feet and big dumb picture of a world that could be less than mean; probably even going back to her husband on that stoop.

  Wolfstein doesn’t know the words to the Our Father. Not really. She starts saying it along with Rena anyhow, picking up the words as she goes. They’re ingrained in the culture enough that it’s not difficult to settle into the rhythm of the prayer. “I’ll pray with you, it’s okay,” Wolfstein says, setting her bag down on the floor and pressing a hand against Rena’s back.

  They’re at the base of the altar now, and Rena collapses there, head on the first step, crying harder, stammering.

  Wolfstein thinks of prayers as words flung out into a void. She pictures children kneeling at their bedsides with their hands clasped together, women and men clutching the arms of dying spouses, ballplayers crossing themselves as they step to the plate, soldiers in peril, on and on like that, all these wild prayers rising like smoke over the world and dissipating after too long, unheard, unanswered, nothing but sounds that end nowhere in particular.

  To Wolfstein, all of humanity is wrapped up in the emptiness of prayer. And, yet, what can she do but encourage Rena, be a friend. Her role is determined.

  A priest—an actual priest in his black clerical clothes—emerges from a door beside the altar. He’s young, fortyish, with oily skin and bald patches on his head. His shirt is dusted with dandruff. He’s got deep grooves in his face, and he’s short, maybe five-three. “Hello?” he says. “Are we okay?”

  The way he says, “Are we okay?” really bothers the sh
it out of Wolfstein. Obviously, we’re not fucking okay here is what she’s thinking, but she doesn’t say it like that. Priests, you’ve gotta sidestep around like a homeless nut with a shiv. Anything can set them off. In Wolfstein’s experience, anyway. She’d put the percentage of normal priests she’s met at about a third. And she saw plenty of them in Los Angeles, some doing meaningful work, many in the gutters and lurking, deranged and fever-eyed, at the edges of sin.

  “We’re not very okay, no,” Wolfstein says.

  “Can I help?”

  Rena crawls toward him on her hands and knees, prostrates herself before him like a sick peasant, grips his shoes. “Father,” she pleads. “Father, please.”

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Will God forgive me? Please.”

  “Do you want to confess?”

  “I’m the worst.”

  The priest turns to Wolfstein. “Maybe she needs a doctor?”

  Wolfstein squats at Rena’s side, strokes her back between the shoulder blades. She talks up to the priest: “My friend Rena here’s had a rough day.”

  The priest takes a step back, crosses his arms, fixes his gaze on Rena. “My name is Father Hughes. Tell me how I can help you, okay? I’m here to help. God is listening to your prayers, I can assure you of that.”

  “God isn’t listening,” Rena says, seeming to look for herself in the glare of Father Hughes’s shiny black shoes. Her voice catches.

  Wolfstein’s taken aback by Rena’s words.

  “He can’t be,” Rena continues. “If he was, I would feel helped. I don’t feel helped. I’m nothing. I’ve got nothing. I believed all the wrong things and look where it’s gotten me.”

  Father Hughes leans down now. He reaches out for Rena’s hand. “God is with you. Whatever’s happening, he’s with you. Rena—that’s your name? Such a pretty name. Trust me, okay?”

  Rena nods.

  “Rena, honey, get up,” Wolfstein says.

  Rena does stand, acting momentarily as if she’s going to shake this off and get it together. She swipes at her cheeks, runs her hand against her mouth, straightens her back.

  “There you go,” Father Hughes says.

  “I’m just so angry,” Rena says in a whisper, looking woozy suddenly. She collapses against Father Hughes, hugging him now, eyes closed, begging forgiveness again, asking God to set things right.

  And then she’s silent, passed out or blacked out or delivered by her anger to some other realm of consciousness, her head on his shoulder. It reminds Wolfstein of those wild nights where she screwed herself to sleep.

  “She’s asleep?” Father Hughes asks over her shoulder.

  “Fainted, I guess,” Wolfstein says, tapping Rena on the shoulder. “Good thing she’s so light.”

  “She must be exhausted.”

  “She’s had a rough run.” Wolfstein’s having a hard time loosening Rena’s grip; she’s clutching the little priest the way a child clutches a stuffed bear.

  “She’s really squeezing me,” Father Hughes says.

  Finally, Wolfstein gets Father Hughes free and carries Rena over to an empty pew. She’s on her back, out cold. Wolfstein asks Father Hughes if he has a car and he says he does, that it’s parked in the back. Wolfstein says she’d hate to put him out any more than they already have but asks for a ride, not far, just to a quiet motel somewhere so they can collect themselves. He nods and says he’d be happy to help.

  They carry Rena out to his dumpy Altima in the driveway and put her in the back seat. Wolfstein returns to the chapel for her bag and then sits next to Rena in the back, Rena’s legs sprawled in her lap.

  Father Hughes gets behind the wheel. He digs around in the glove compartment and finds a box of Marlboro Lights and a book of matches. “You don’t mind if I smoke?” he asks Wolfstein.

  “Of course I don’t,” Wolfstein says. “Can I bum one?”

  “Sure thing,” he says, passing one to her and then striking a match and leaning back to light it for her. He lights one for himself next and rolls down the window and takes a long drag.

  Rena stirs, says something in her sleep.

  Father Hughes jumps in his seat, spooked by the lady who fainted in his arms.

  Wolfstein laughs. “Take it easy, Father,” she says. “You’ll be okay.”

  RENA

  Rena is next to Vic in the back of the ambulance. They’ve got a mask on him, the paramedics. His shirt is ripped open, and they’re talking to him even though he can’t hear them. His eyes are closed. She’s holding her rosary. There’s blood, crawling like vines off the edge of the gurney.

  She can’t hear anything. She’s thinking of the day Adrienne was born. She’s seeing Vic, sitting in the hospital room, holding his newborn daughter, his collar open, that tumbleweed of chest hair puffing up from his neckline, that big, beautiful smile of his.

  “She’s gonna grow up to be famous, I can already tell,” that’s what Vic said to the nurse in the room with them.

  And then she’s at the house five days later. He’s rocking Adrienne while Mama Ruggiero stands nearby, pacing, concerned that he’ll drop her. Rena is watching from the couch, where she’s all set up with pillows and blankets, tired, barely having slept since Adrienne was born.

  In the ambulance, the sound of the siren spins in her head as they rush to the hospital. The sound of the tires squealing below her as they take a hard turn.

  She’s saying Vic’s name. She’s praying. She’s trying to picture God, listening to her prayers. She wonders what other people see when they picture God. When she was a girl, she pictured a king, white beard, throne, flowing robe. Now she pictures a man on a street corner, warming his hands over a fire in a garbage can, like a lost member of some doo-wop group. Why a man? What if God is a woman or a cloud of smoke or something you can’t even see? A voice emanating from a light. Matter. A vibration.

  She wants Vic to open his eyes and open his mouth and to say her name. She wants to see him look at her with love, the way only he can. He’s been good to her, hasn’t he? He’s been a good man, no matter what bad things he’s done. The world pulses with violence. Violence made the world. The weak get trampled. Vic’s figured out how to survive, that’s all. He’s been good. Gentle Vic. See, that’s proof. They made that his name because he was tender, soft-voiced, meticulous. She leans over and kisses his hand now. Splatter of blood there. The raised softness of a vein. Liver spots like spilled coffee on a map.

  She prays for an ordinary day. Watching the morning talk shows, listening to a ballgame, letting Vic’s work seem far away, stirring gravy, making spedini, a hug in the kitchen, putting on a wash in the cellar, the quiet tremble of their old house.

  When they arrive at the hospital, everything is so fast. They’re out of the ambulance, hit with warm air from the whooshing doors of the ER.

  And then Vic is on a chaise lounge at Gershwin’s, and Rena is aware that this isn’t the waking world, it’s a dream or something like a dream, not quite living inside a memory, something more elastic than that. Vic is smiling. He’s got on a striped Speedo. He’s tan. His eyes are full of love. He’s not Young Vic, and he’s not Old Vic—he’s somewhere in between—but he was never this age when they were at Gershwin’s together.

  She looks down at herself, at her legs. Is she the director of this dream, or whatever it is? Her legs are covered in fur. Not hair. Not like she hasn’t shaved. Animal fur. Smooth, soft. She touches the fur and she’s expecting silkiness, but she can’t feel anything.

  “I don’t remember this,” Vic says.

  “Neither do I,” she says.

  He leans over and kisses her. The kiss has the feeling of fading away before it even starts. Their tangled mouths become fuzzy.

  His face is snow now. She’s a girl, in her puffy winter clothes. She’s dipped her head into a snowbank on the sidewalk outside her house even though her mother is yelling from the front stoop for her to stop. Stoops. Something about stoops. Her father is n
ext to her mother, reading a newspaper, smoking a cigar, not dressed for the weather. Her nose is buzzing from the cold. She looks down at her gloved hands. She plucks the glove from her right hand. That animal fur again. And now she has cat claws, not regular human nails, and she smiles because she’s a girl and she’s cold and she figures she must be some sort of miracle.

  And then she’s old, dying in some sad bed in hospice, tubes strung from her. She recognizes the room, though she’s never been there. The future, maybe. Flowers are everywhere. The walls are flowers. The ceiling is a black hole. A nurse is puttering around, angry, saying something in a language that sounds like music. The fur on Rena’s hands and legs is white now. She’s shaking like old things shake. She feels thunder in her body, and rain. She thinks her bones must be made of rotting wood.

  “Nurse, where is he?” she asks, and she’s not sure who she’s talking about, and the nurse’s response is just someone holding down the keys on an out-of-tune piano.

  The flowers begin to pour out of the walls like water. They cover the floor. They rise up the sides of her bed. The nurse drowns in them. She makes a crinkling sound, like a present being unwrapped on Christmas morning. The flowers cover Rena. They don’t smell like flowers. They smell like an ashtray.

  Rena wakes up with a start in a dark motel room, heavy shades drawn, TV tuned to the old movie channel. A painting of a waterfall like the one by Mo’s mother hangs on the wall. Rena sits up and sees Wolfstein on the other bed, smoking a cigarette, crying.

  Wolfstein looks over and notices that Rena’s awake and dabs at her eyes with the heel of her free hand. “Now, Voyager,” she says, pointing at the TV screen with her cigarette. “You ever see it? Bette Davis.”