by Jim Shepard
It was Bruno. He didn’t notice the click.
Bruno said, “I’m not gonna give it up. I am not gonna give it up. I told her, ‘If there’s anything to find out, I’m gonna find it out.’ I am on the case.”
“Todd, get off the phone,” his mother said sharply. He hung up immediately.
Outside, somebody emptied what sounded like a load of rocks into a garbage can. Todd sat on his bed and folded his hands and looked at the phone, his legs, and Audrey, curled again onto her back, snoring, her incisors still showing.
PART TWO
NINA
In strangolagalli, you lose a man in your family that’s it, you wear black the rest of your life. I have a great-aunt over there still in mourning; her husband died in 1944.
Sandro says this’ll kill one or both of them, meaning the Monteleones. He thinks they’re gonna go to pieces. I tell him maybe the husband. Maybe Tommy Senior. As for Lucia, are you kidding? She’s the kind of woman, if there were no fronts on her kitchen cabinets, her kitchen would still look neat.
I was thirteen when my father died. He died in August in a heat wave. We sat under the grape arbor he built in the backyard and received the family. One of us had to keep running around the front to get the people arriving, because our doorbell didn’t work.
It was the kinda bell you couldn’t hear when you rang it, so you didn’t know if it was broken and you should knock, or if you should wait to see if anybody came, or what.
My mother was in black. It was so hot the asphalt was soft, and she had a black sweater on. I remember flies around her head. She watched us kids play in the tomatoes. It was so hot in there among the stalks you could hardly breathe. And you got the pesticide powder from the leaves all over your hands.
The family gathered around the big cement table, and she sat off by herself. Everyone paid their respects, but nobody wanted to crowd her.
She dabbed at the top of her forehead with a napkin. She watched people come and go. She asked how we could play so hard in the heat, and made us come out of the tomatoes and sit in the shade. She said we were pazza. With her dialect it sounded like pots. She said even the animals knew better.
The grapes were in, and we ate them off the vine while we sat there. You had to be careful in the big clusters for spiders.
My sister squeezed the skins so that the centers would pop out. Then she ate just the skins.
What I never told anyone was that the week my father died I dreamt he was asking me to go get medicine for him—he couldn’t get out of bed—and I wouldn’t. And he looked at my face like he knew that I would’ve gone for my mother.
That was my secret while I sat and ate the grapes.
Poor Lucia. Perry she was proud of, but Tommy—you know. Tommy was the first.
How do we get used to this? That’s the secret. How do we do it?
My mother thought here in America the big problems were always just about to get worked out. Polio, TB, influenza, bad roads, prejudice. Someone was off somewhere making new medicines, working out the answers. Our job was to sit tight and hope it happened in time. God protected babies, drunks, and the United States.
In bad times, like when my younger sister got sick with the influenza that killed my baby brother in Italy, my mother would sit in her chair in the kitchen and close her eyes and name the villages surrounding Strangolagalli. Bovile, Ciprano, Monte San Giovanni, she would describe them to herself. We’d tiptoe around the house while she talked about orchards, terraces, and fountains.
When my father died, we waited for her to do that, and she didn’t.
She was spotty about Mass afterwards. When the priest would finally see us, he’d take us aside to see if we were okay. What were we going to say?
I was there when he finally cornered her. She’d managed to avoid him for a little while. He told her something about God’s will, and she quoted back to him an old Calabrian saying: that God was in charge of everything, but the devil was in charge of the timing.
BRUNO
I was raised mostly by my aunt and uncle. They’re dead, too. My mother, when she went out, it was to pick up something for dinner. My father had a little den and used it.
He was apparently a massive pain in the ass even before they crushed his legs. He got a little money out of that, but how much was compensation then? He hung around the house and listened to the radio and complained. He covered his legs with a blanket even in the summer, and I had to tuck it back in when it slipped off. He drank Old Sunnybrook, this rye that took the print off coasters. The label said, “Takes the wrinkles out of your face and makes your asshole smile.” No lie. Look it up.
My aunt told me when he died, “Your father just was never happy, you know? He just never figured out how to be happy.” We’re standing there at the grave site, and she tells me that.
I was fifteen years old. I felt like telling her, If we knew how to fix that, we’d all be in clover.
My aunt, the one that died, she was best friends with Lucia.
Tommy I knew from when he was a little little kid. He ran a paper-route scam from the time he was about eleven. He’d come by and collect twice for the same week, once from the father, once from the mother. He’d wait until one or the other was out.
My aunt had him figured out early, starting writing down his visits on a pad near the phone. The first time she caught him, she said, “I don’t think so, Tommy,” and he knew enough not to push it. The second time she took him by the hair and brought him inside and showed him the list. She said that at that point he said—his head all twisted around, she’s still got him by the hair, eleven years old—that it was his feeling, in a case like this, that the customer was always right.
One thing you had to say about Tommy: this was no lazy guy. This was a young man who could operate. You woke him 6:00 A.M. Christmas morning and put him down in East Dipstick with seven cents, and by noon the next day he had somebody by the balls.
When he wanted to piss me off, he called me Uncle Bruno. He’d go, So you think I should go easier on ’im, Uncle Bruno? You think I should be more patient?
I’d say, Hey, a cavone like you, you’re gonna do what you want, whatever I tell you.
Lot of people are curious as to what happened to Tommy Monteleone. Let me tell you: a lot of people.
The police, they’re like having Andy of Mayberry on the case. They come into the house: Did anybody threaten your son’s life recently? Okay, fine, and that’s the end of that. They look at this, they look at that, have a nice day, thank you very much.
Old man Monteleone still in his bathrobe; he lost the remote, so he’s poking the channel buttons on the TV from his chair with the other end of a broomstick.
One cop actually got interested in the show while the other one was talking to Lucia.
I told Lucia I was gonna find out what happened. She said, “You been a good friend a his all along, Bruno.”
That’s all true. Though as Tommy would say, So what?
Friendship’s friendship and a wonderful thing. But this is money we’re talking about. This is me.
JOANIE
The happiest I’ve ever been was in fourth or fifth grade. The sisters were always looking out for you, always believed in what you could do. I placed high on an achievement test and instead of moving me up a grade, which I didn’t want, they tutored me on my own when things were too easy. That was on their own time. They brought books in extra, and when I finished them, they’d just feed the shelves. I’d do my exercises and then go over and pick out something and sit quietly while everyone caught up. I read most of Dickens that way, and a lot about the Maryknoll missionaries.
They also got me a little encyclopedia I could keep in my desk. I worked my way through it, A to Z.
They thought I was artistic, so they let me design the bulletin boards. That was a big thing, because the bulletin boards went all the way around the room on top of the blackboards. I had to keep to the basic theme, but other than that I could do anyth
ing. In December, we had Advent; in May, something blue with the Blessed Mother in it. In June, the Sacred Heart. They were so nice to me, when I think about it. I’d go to a separate room during subjects I was way ahead in and sit there by myself, drawing pictures and cutting and pasting colored paper.
I won seven straight spelling bees. I was the girls’ champion. It was always arranged boys against girls, and the girls would root hard for me. You could see even then that we figured we didn’t win many things, so it was good to win those.
I still have the crucifix I got from the seventh one over my old bed at my mother’s house. The cross is that fake marble: white with blue swirled through it. The Jesus on it is gold.
Because I was advanced, I was big in the festivals. I loved the Feast of the Blessed Virgin: we all dressed in our white dresses and got to carry flowers. Three or four of us had special parts to say for the congregation. Mine was always “Mary, intercede for us”—three years in a row, “Mary, intercede for us.”
I think they connected schoolwork with spiritual grace. If you were advanced in one, you were advanced in the other.
They used milk bottles in the catechism books to illustrate the various states of grace, like our souls were little refrigerators. Mortal sins looked like bottles of chocolate milk. Saints would have, like, cases of regular milk. I remember I imagined venial sins as pints.
I imagined our souls like white bedsheets instead, with chocolate milk spilled on them. And I remembered my mother saying that after you washed something so many times, it never got so white again.
But making a good confession: you walked out of that church with such a lightness, such a beautiful feeling.
As I got older I got along better with the priests, because I was a wiseass and I was not demure. There were priests who’d like you for that, but the sisters usually didn’t.
I’m sorry, now, I didn’t get along better with the sisters.
The Monteleones follow me around the house. At night, when I close my eyes, I see the road and Tommy coming out of nowhere.
It’s like Nancy asked me once, when she was sleeping with a guy she didn’t like, “How’d I end up here? At what point did I end up here?”
I blame Gary. If he hadn’t left us, I wouldn’t’ve been driving. It’s not fair, but neither is what happened to me. Lying there in the dark, I think all this should be dumped on him. But then I remind myself that he didn’t kill anyone and I did.
In every possible situation, now—just standing around, while other people talk—I worry about giving myself away. Behind everything, there’s this other life.
This morning I sat on the floor in the kitchen before Todd got up and thought, Hypocrite. Hypocrite. Hypocrite. Hypocrite.
And then at other times—I can already feel it—the guilt goes away. That simple. And I can feel myself living with it the way people learn to live with not being taller, not being more beautiful.
In bed at night I say to myself, I’m not like this. I’m the same as always inside. And that’s not true.
So I tell myself, You’ve got to tell somebody. You’ve got to go to the police. Tomorrow—tomorrow you’ll go to the police.
And then I think about Todd upstairs and think, Will he go to the police?
And I remember the way he looks now when I do something for him: the way the dog looks off to one side when you put her food down, like she’s not going to be swayed that easily by something like that.
TODD
I called the police three different times in the last two days and I haven’t stayed on the phone yet. The guy answers and I hang up. The phone’s busy and I hang up. The phone’s ringing and I hang up.
I called Information in Seattle, Tacoma, and Sacramento, trying to find my father. They found a G. Muhlenberg in Tacoma, but no Muhlberg. I called it anyway.
The guy who answered told me there was no Gary Muhlberg in a three-hundred-mile radius. I musta woke him up.
I called Father Cleary back. I figured I could stay anonymous. Then, when he answered, I hung up, because I figured I couldn’t.
I called another parish. I called St. Ambrose in Bridgeport. The woman at the rectory told me that their Father didn’t have phone-in hours, and I said what if it was a spiritual emergency, and she said I could come in. I said I couldn’t come in, because I was a handicapped guy and the motor on my wheelchair was broken. She said Father could come out to me, what was my address. I told her I lived in another parish. She asked why I didn’t go to the priest in my parish. I hung up.
My mother had no idea I made these calls.
I gave up calling. I couldn’t think of anyone else to call. I couldn’t think of a single other person to call. There was a radio advice guy, but that was long distance and would cost money and my mother would see the bill. There was no one to talk to. I felt like putting a note in a bottle and dropping it out my window. I started writing letters to my dad.
Dear Dad,
How are you? Things here could be better. Mom and I ran over and killed a guy.
Dear Dad,
How are you? Things here could be better. Do you remember Tommy Monteleone?
Dear Dad,
How are you? Mom and I have had a rather rough time lately.
Dear Dad,
How are you? Mom and I need help.
Then I scratched that out, too. It sounded too desperate. Maybe that was why he left us, because we needed him so much.
I ended up staying up all night. At about two, I snuck downstairs and watched cable. I watched for about an hour. The TV screen was the only light in the house.
Then I thought there might be something about where my father went after Colorado upstairs in all his stuff in the attic. After he left, my mother and my grandmother piled everything of his that didn’t get thrown out into a big chest with a lid in the attic. So I went up there.
I didn’t even know what I was looking for. A map with a dotted line going from Colorado to some other place? A card from a friend of his saying, If you ever leave your family, come stay with me? Even not knowing what I was looking for, it’s amazing how little I found. A bunch of letters he wrote to my mother a thousand years ago. They were wrapped together with electrical tape! I had the feeling she wasn’t planning on reading them again anytime soon.
Also a photo of him at the beach. I don’t think I was even born yet.
Also at the bottom of the trunk, in a little flat box like you keep Christmas cards in, a satin book that said OUR WEDDING.
I spent the rest of the time I was up there just looking through that. It got light out in the little crappy window covered with cobwebs over the stairs. I found photos of the reception, photos of everyone getting ready. My father looking jokey with two other guys, and a flat metal bottle in his pocket. I found their wedding ceremony they wrote for themselves. With the priest, I guess. Some of the prayers and stuff they didn’t write. The rest of the time I was up there, I read along in their ceremony, trying to figure out which words were my father’s.
Of course she was going to the funeral. She barely knew the family, saw the deceased twice a year, if that: of course she was going to the funeral.
She’d talked her mother out of picking her up. She was going; that was enough. This way she could come and go on her own, and her parents could stay afterward as long as they wanted.
Todd was staying home. He didn’t need to go through that, and not all the kids were going. The official story was that he had a fever.
She’d been up the whole night before. She felt like she was dreaming on her feet. When it got light, she made a pot of coffee, six cups, and drank it all. It didn’t seem to have an effect. She stood in front of the mirror at 7:00 A.M., putting on makeup. She tried to work up a little determination. This was her day to become presentable. To look alive. To start to take control of her life. Her eyes seemed half closed.
She put down her blush applicator. She ran her hands through her hair and pulled it back so tight she Chinesed her e
yes.
Todd was snoring upstairs in his bedroom. She wiped her hands on her robe, and long hairs spiraled and floated to the floor. She left everything where it was and went up to check on him.
He was across his bed sideways, his feet and arms hanging off. It was already warm, but she pulled the sheet a little more over him. He turned in his sleep and said in a kind of delirium, “It was Wednesday.”
She looked around the room. He’d taken his posters down. Pieces of Scotch tape spotted the walls. There was a framed magazine photo of a Minnesota Viking, but that was it. The clean clothes she hadn’t folded were in one pile and his dirty clothes were in another. The piles overlapped. There was a map of the western United States taped to the wall by the phone. Colored pins were stuck in various cities. Whether they represented places he thought his father might be or had been, she didn’t know.
She went back downstairs and waited for more energy, or for time to pass. She felt thwarted and useless in her own house. She let the dog out.
She must’ve fallen asleep, or at least into some kind of daze. Hearing the upstairs shower brought her out of it, and she shook off the grogginess by making another, smaller pot of coffee, decaf for Todd. The phone rang.
It was Bruno. He wanted to know if she wanted a ride to the funeral.
She rubbed her eyes for a while before answering. “I don’t,” she said. “I want to be able to leave early.”
“So do I,” he said. “You think I wanna hang around there all day?”
The line was silent. She understood he was waiting her out.
“C’mon,” he said. “We can cheer each other up. You’re ready to go, we’re outta there.”
She leaned against the wall, wedging the receiver between her ear and the plaster. “All right,” she said. “I won’t be ready till the last minute.”