Mr. Bubko’s diminishment was profound. Every time Lucy saw him (not much; only twice since she’d first gone to his house in March), he looked more and more like someone had taken an eraser to his body, scratched away swaths of his flank and his face. Soon he’d be gone. Why didn’t this make Lucy happy? She held up a one-minute finger to Ms. Mann and approached her father.
“Thanks for the chops,” he said.
A few weeks before, Lucy had asked Ron to send over a care package from the shop. “You ate them?” she asked. “You’re eating?”
“You look nice,” he replied—glancing in the direction of the butcher, hoping he wouldn’t join them. Ever since the giant wop had evicted him from Florence Fini’s memorial, Walter Bubko had remained on alert. For months, he’d wondered how close this guy was to his daughter, how much he might know about her past. Now they were husband and wife, signed and stamped, a nipper on the way. She’d probably told him everything.
Lucy thanked him for the compliment, and Mr. Bubko nodded, said he was a little tired; he was looking forward to sitting down.
“We’re not having a party,” Lucy quickly informed him. She offered to call a cab, but he said he had his car.
“Really, no shindig?” he chirped, an attempted playfulness that did not play well with rotten teeth.
“Really,” answered Lucy.
He felt sure the girl was lying.
“I’ll send more meat,” she said. “If you want.”
He couldn’t digest it anymore. Still, he hungered for whatever scrap of kindness she might offer. “Sure,” he said. “Thank you.”
For Walter Bubko, the hope remained—that, although he’d seen his grandson only once (a flash of white by the old woman’s casket), he might get to know this new kid better.
“All right then,” he said, reaching forward. “I’ll just…”
Lucy accepted her father’s hand, though steered clear of his kiss.
She told him to take care of himself, before turning away toward the detective. “Rebecca. Why don’t we…?” She took Ms. Mann’s arm and led her into the hall, halfway down the corridor. She could see her father at the far end, descending the stairs. Part of her wanted to call out to him, but what could she say?
She waited until he was gone before meeting Ms. Mann’s anxious gaze. Lucy knew then not to ask the question, the only question that existed. In lieu of that, there was nothing to talk about. They smiled at each other like old lovers.
That’s really what it was like, sad and strained. They’d been so close once, or so it had seemed. These days, Lucy knew, Mann was giving most of her attention to other cases. Lucy couldn’t help but feel resentful, even jealous. Mann, it was clear, felt guilty. Now they were standing together in an overlit hallway. Why had Lucy dragged the detective out here as if there were important business to discuss?
“I just came to…” Mann began.
“I’m glad you did.”
When an official type walked by with a sheaf of papers, Lucy looked down, waited. “I always feel like I’m in trouble in places like this.”
Mann knew the history. “Well, not today,” she said.
It was awkward. Ultimately, Lucy couldn’t help herself. “So? Is there any…?”
The detective shook her head. “No. Nothing.” Adding, a moment later: “I shouldn’t have come.”
“It’s fine,” said Lucy. “I wasn’t expecting news.”
Ms. Mann fidgeted, brushed the back of her head. She’d dyed her hair, all the gray was gone. Brown locks, unbunned, fell to her shoulders. She looked smart and trim in beige slacks and a tight black sweater. “New look going,” Lucy observed.
“What? No. Just spring, I guess.” Mann blushed. Everything out of her mouth was wrong. She looked at her watch.
“Don’t look at your fucking watch,” snapped Lucy.
Ms. Mann swallowed, said nothing. When she began again, it was quietly, her eyes no longer on her wrist but on the floor. “I did everything I could. I’m still doing what I can. I haven’t—”
Lucy stopped her. “No. It’s my fault. I say shit, you should know that by now.”
The imp, Frankie had called it. That wild thing inside her.
“What’s that?” asked Mann.
“Nothing.” Lucy shook her head and laughed, placing her hand on her belly.
The detective noted the gesture, felt a sudden rush of heat—or was it anger? She adjusted her sleeve. “I don’t know if I ever mentioned it…”
Lucy looked up. “Mentioned what?”
Ms. Mann took a deep breath and met the woman’s eyes. “I can’t have children.”
Lucy Fini didn’t seem to understand. The detective elaborated. “Physically, I mean. I’m not able to—”
“Wait wait wait,” stammered Lucy. “Why are you telling me this?”
Mann said she wasn’t sure. “Edgar was important to me.”
Lucy clenched her fists, furious at Mann’s choice of tense. But she let it go, and when she embraced the detective it was quick. As they said their goodbyes, both women smiled and waved, pretending that this was not the end.
* * *
Outside the courthouse she avoided looking at the sky, which was very blue. A ragged cloud like the pelvic bone of a large animal drifted south. The newlyweds headed in the same direction, straight home. There was no rented hall to go to, no party; Lucy hadn’t lied to her father.
Ron, of course, had wanted one. He’d wanted a church, a priest, the banks of flowers. He’d wanted the rings, the mentions of God and eternity, the whole shebang. Give him a glass of champagne, a smear of wedding cake, he knew he could bang the future into shape. For the first time in his life he understood what it must feel like to be an artist. The desire to make something beautiful, lasting. He was poised, ready.
Yet he didn’t push his luck. He’d agreed to everything Lucy had wanted (which was nothing). He’d even said, “Fine, babe,” when she’d told him, the day after accepting his proposal, that there could be no honeymoon.
Still, it was their wedding night. He wanted to give her something extra. Something more than just a good pounding. He wanted to show her what was in him, what was possible. This wasn’t just another Tuesday night, this was—(he looked up; it was the sort of thought you could only share with your dead mother)—this was fate. This was Fortuna. In time his wife’s other story would fade. Especially after he took her away from this house where the ghosts still had a hold on her. In fact, he didn’t want to spend their first night in any bed upstairs. He had a plan.
“Why don’t you take a bath?” he suggested. “Relax for half an hour.”
They were standing in the kitchen. Lucy noted something funny in his voice.
“What are you up to?” For the past few days she’d observed the growing collection of twist-tied plastic sacks by the back door, a duffel bag, a small pile of boxes—and now there was a large nylon case long enough to hold fishing poles. Ron had said they were supplies for the shop, and Lucy, believing him, hadn’t bothered to snoop. Now she was suspicious. “Those better not be presents.”
“Take your bath.”
“Or suitcases.”
He gave her a little push. “Bath. Bubbles. Go.”
She headed toward the stairs, reminding him of their no-honeymoon agreement. “Least of all, a fishing trip.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a butcher,” said the butcher. “I hate fish.”
* * *
The hot water was a relief, slowing Lucy’s mind and expectations. She stayed in the tub until she was puckered. Before a fogged mirror, she dusted herself with powder, and then put on a new maternity nightgown—a short black number, with a slight ruffle. It was supposed to be sexy, but made her look like a chambermaid stealing a watermelon. She pinned the carnation to one of the shoulder straps, knowing it would make Ron happy.
But when she went downstairs he wasn’t there. The bags in the kitchen were gone, as well. The watermelo
n shifted position, and Lucy was afraid that the butcher had had second thoughts. She ran to see if he might be in one of the other bedrooms. All she encountered, though, were the footprints of a ghost, the faint trail of her own powdered feet. Back in the kitchen she leaned nauseously against the counter. It was then she saw something moving outside the window.
There he was, in the yard.
She was so relieved she laughed—even after she realized that he’d put up a tent. It was huge, with a peaked roof like a log cabin.
A long time ago, Frank had stolen a tent from a garage sale—but of course they’d never used it. Never made it to any of the places they’d dreamed of going. Venice Beach, Machu Picchu. A backpack full of almonds and dried apricots.
Lucy stepped outside and watched Ronald David Salvatore, not with anger, but with a soft confusion that allowed for tenderness. He was fussing inside the tent, his butt sticking out, and when he emerged it was with an extension cord that he dragged toward the house.
“So this is it?” asked Lucy, and Ron said, “Hold your horses.” He moved toward the outlet by the back door.
“Wala!” he crooned in Pepé Le Pew French.
The tent, lit from within, glowed like a paper lantern. The sun was setting; the air was already getting cool. Ron took Lucy’s hand, telling her she looked gorgeous. The tent flapped in a steady breeze; it seemed impatient, unnaturally luminous. If Lucy was remembering correctly, Ron had set the thing directly over one of Frank’s holes. Filled in now, of course—but memory was a tireless excavator. Lucy could picture her lunatic husband holding Edgar over the freshly dug earth. She’d found him there, eyes blazing, at five in the morning. He’d been reluctant to hand over the child, claiming he needed to show Edgar where the river was. Later that day, Frank had been taken back to the hospital.
“Would you like to go on a little trip?”
It was only Ron, though, whispering in her ear.
“Sure,” she said, serving up a smile, and together they walked over the weedy, dandelion-dotted lawn and entered the tent.
“Christ Almighty,” sighed Lucy.
An air mattress draped with purple satin sheets took up nearly half the space. The remainder of the floor was covered by a faux-fur rug the color of squirrel.
“Are we filming a porno in here?”
“You want to?” The butcher flashed his very white teeth. “We can do it on my phone.” He kissed her neck and then poured her a glass of non-alcoholic champagne.
The walls undulated, the belly of a whale. Lucy extended her foot and toed the watery edge of the satin sheets.
Superslut.
The word arrived in her head not as sound but as picture—faint blue lines scrawled across Edgar’s forearm.
But that couldn’t be right.
Lucy suspected she wasn’t thinking straight; felt dizzy. “Are you sure this stuff’s non-alcoholic?”
“Positive,” said the butcher.
When she went to put down the drink, she noticed the glasses—matching flutes etched with slender flowering branches. Florence’s wedding set.
“Where’d you get these?”
“From the china cabinet. In the dining room.”
“Those aren’t yours, Ron.”
“Don’t pull away.” He was trying to rub her shoulders.
“I just don’t want you rifling through the house.”
The butcher said he was sorry, meant it, continued his kneading.
Lucy huffed impatiently. His touch felt good, but she couldn’t let him in—couldn’t accept the advice that constantly came her way.
As heartless as it may seem, your life must go on.
Isn’t that what one of the pamphlets had said? Or maybe the phrase was something she’d heard at that ghastly meeting she’d attended back in February. Parents of Missing and Murdered Children. POMMC. “Welcome to Pom-C!” everyone had shouted in greeting, pronouncing the acronym as if it were some friggin’ sports drink.
The butcher’s breath traveled down Lucy’s neck—slow wet kisses.
She forced herself to keep still. She’d made this marriage, this bed—and, despite the tacky purple sheets, she now had to lie in it. The butcher helped her down, arranging her like an invalid against a small mountain of pillows. He’d thought of everything. Beside the mattress, on a linen-covered box, white bowls and silver spoons shone in the poisonous yellow light of an electric lantern. On a hotplate a pan of beef stew was just coming to a simmer. Lucy reached over and turned it to low, saying that it smelled good, but she wasn’t hungry.
“That’s okay.” The butcher kneeled, put his lips between her breasts. She leaned back onto the pillows as he drifted south—his big hands pushing up the black nightie, tugging down the low-rise maternity panties.
“Don’t rip them,” she said. They hadn’t been cheap. Maternity gear was highway robbery. With Ron at her thighs, she let her thoughts drift to the envelopes of cash thrust at her at the courthouse. There was no greed in these thoughts. The truth was, she wanted nothing to do with the money. Why did people think that they could buy her sadness from her? Like the check she’d received from that Jimmy Papadakis. Twelve thousand, one hundred and six dollars, and forty-seven cents. A Light for Jimmy hadn’t even had the decency to round it the fuck off. As if Edgar’s value could be calculated down to the penny.
Lucy moaned. She was furious. The butcher’s tongue entered her. She spread her legs to give him better access.
Maybe she’d tear up the checks. Maybe she’d burn them.
“Oh my God.” Her muscles were already beginning to shake. It took so little these days to get her going—her body pitifully sensitive, always ready for dissolution, oblivion. She looked down from her stack of pillows. The butcher’s head was hidden below her swollen belly, but she could hear him licking. She imagined the sound coming from her womb, from the child who was clearly going to be a giant, like its father. Her stomach was enormous—so different from the modest bump that had been Edgar. The memory made her want to pull away.
But oh he was good! He was a genius with his tongue, goddamn him. Lucy was in the hole now, in the dirt, moving through the soft pliant earth. A hole that keeps going is a tunnel, Frank had said. But where would it take her? Frank’s father had worked underground, too, building a tunnel, a passageway connecting two cities separated by water.
“Ahhh,” she cried, wishing to forget, knowing very well that forgetting was a kind of remembering—it only made room for something else.
“Deeper,” she instructed the butcher, reaching down around her belly to find the thick swag of his black hair. She pushed, forcing his head into a more animated conversation with her vagina. She wanted him to scream, wanted his voice to carry all the way through to where the light was.
“Yes.” The word hammered out as she thrust her pelvis upward. The butcher slid his hands under her buttocks to assist. When her neck tilted back, she saw the tiny pins of light and could not understand how the sky had gotten inside the tent.
A clear plastic rectangle was sewn into the ceiling. Through it the stars were visible, though blurred. It reminded her of the last glimmer she’d had of Pio’s car—the roof of the LeBaron, a golden rectangle vanishing into the water with Frank. “Shut the lamp,” she instructed the butcher—who, without stopping his fervent flicking, reached out his arm to click off the lantern.
So many stars—a swarm, flying into the tent, into her eyes, between her legs. Long needles piercing her body. She squinted them into finer points. The Machine, the Bridge, the Slip. Frank had had such peculiar names for the constellations, but Lucy had barely listened—refusing to understand her husband’s calculations until it was too late.
Where was the red one, though? Frank had said the red star was important. Would die one day, he’d said, but its death would be beautiful. As Lucy’s head rocked from side to side, she knew that her son was gone. She tried to stop herself from coming, but it was impossible. Let it happen, she thought, let it go—and a
s the hot liquid rushed into the butcher’s mouth, Lucy knew, in her bliss, that she could never be forgiven.
62
The Bridge
The Earth turned. Above the tent the stars shifted position. The red star, Betelgeuse, had already slipped below the horizon. Later, during the day, it would drift invisibly overhead, camouflaged by sunlight. Lucy wouldn’t see it again until October, when it reappeared in the night sky over New Jersey.
Betelgeuse was dead, though no one on Earth knew this yet, as its light still traveled here. The star had died over five hundred years ago—and its death had been spectacular.
One day, humans will witness how it had ended—the supernova burning for weeks, visible even at noon. Of course, the star’s earthly death will be merely a delayed broadcast—ghost fire. Still, it will enter human history as a day of great importance, this old death happening as if it were new. The celestial catastrophe with its expanding halo of light will seem profound to those who witness it, an echo of their own story. Death remembered as life.
Lucy Fini will not survive to see the show.
Long life is wished to those that come from Lucy Fini’s womb.
* * *
She woke, shivering. The butcher had stolen the covers—the satin, greased by moonlight, pulled up to his neck. Lucy tugged down her nightie, could feel the pin of the carnation scratching her flesh. She tried to reclaim some of the sheets, but Ron had rolled in them, was firmly wrapped—his head sticking out of what seemed a huge purple cocoon. The beef stew was congealed and the bottle of sham champagne had toppled, wetting the faux-fur rug. The tent smelled meaty, sweet. Florence’s wedding flutes were empty. Carved with a diamond, the old woman used to brag whenever she showed anyone the garishly etched glasses.
When Lucy sat up, her head swam. The light inside the tent was grainy, like an old photo—the air filled with infinitesimal dots. Lucy swatted them away, only causing more to appear. It was funny: in all her years of drinking she’d never really felt drunk. But now that she was sober, she felt sloshed half the time—the world at an odd tilt. Her bad leg ached as she crawled toward the zippered door—the black line in the fleshy nylon like a scar, like stitches. She saw the blood again on the kitchen floor; Edgar’s finger.
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