Thieves Never Steal in the Rain

by Marisa Labozzetta

  “Earth to Barbara: My phone videotapes. So does everyone else’s.” He was leaning in the doorway of the dressing room, watching her as though he hadn’t seen her half naked since the first night they made love 20 years ago.

  “I want real photos too.”

  “I’ll print the stills and you’ll have your photos.”

  “You’ll forget and your party will forever be on a thumbnail or whatever you call it.”

  “It’s a ThumbDrive. Maybe you’d prefer some daguerreotypes.”

  “That would be so cool, Lenny.”

  “You were born in the wrong century.”

  “Someday the kids will appreciate the history I’m leaving them.”

  “They appreciated the in-home movie theater I had built for them more.” He was gloating. “By the way, thanks for doing this.”

  “We couldn’t let your 60th birthday go by like any other day”.

  “We could have had it at a restaurant. This is so much work for you.”

  “We have this big house, and everybody loves coming here. Don’t you think so, Lenny? Don’t they like coming to our house? My cousins will help. Besides, what else have I got to do now?”

  “You think it’s so great out there?” he said. “You’re lucky you don’t have to work. I know tons of women who would give their eyeteeth not to have to.”

  Her temples pulsated with the mere thought of their life after the twins, Matthew and Elena, left for college in the fall. She longed to be pregnant again, to feel productive 24 hours a day. Working while she was carrying the twins had been like putting in overtime.

  “You’re my Martha Stewart.” He slipped a black silk sports jacket over his black cashmere turtleneck.

  Comparing her to the woman whose domestic skills had built a megabucks empire did little to mitigate her fears of the impending empty nest and her regret for having let her school librarian certification expire long ago. She did love the idea of the party, however, the planning, the decorating, and preparing the food that would make her guests ooh and aah and stuff themselves. The party had occupied her from morning to night. Friends would be arriving soon, and her family was coming from Massachusetts. Yes, the party had provided the perfect outlet for her at a most vulnerable time.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t tell people not to bring gifts. I don’t need anything except for the Dow to keep climbing,” Lenny said, running a comb through his curly gray hair and smiling with approval into the full-length mirror Barbara had abandoned. He patted the bald spot at the back of his crown.

  “No one will notice it if you don’t sit down, since you’re taller than most of the guests,” she told him. “By the way people don’t believe it when you tell them not to bring presents. They just agonize more over whether or not they should bring a little something because they’re afraid they’ll be the only ones who listened and came empty-handed.”

  “See what I mean. You’re the wise one.”

  “I hate when you patronize me, Lenny.”

  “It’s supposed to rain tonight. Hard.”

  “Can you put the old carpet out in the front hall? Please,” she added softening her take-charge tone.

  Lenny didn’t like to be talked down to. He was in the habit of advising wealthy clients, albeit on financial matters only. The house was Barbara’s domain. She couldn’t let water seep between the seams of the refurbished pine floorboards, and wasn’t about to let the Persian prayer rug she used for a doormat get soiled.

  “Where do you want your precious rag that’s there now?” he asked.

  “The birthing room.”

  The birthing room was a small space off the kitchen, designed to give 19th-century women privacy during childbirth, while its proximity to the kitchen’s open hearth meant boiling water was accessible. The former owners of the sprawling Gothic Revival had used it as a mudroom; Barbara and Lenny had turned it into an office. Although they still referred to it as the birthing room, it had become the catchall for rainy-day carpets, table leaves, mail-order catalogs, and holiday presents.

  The house had been built by a prominent banker in the early days of the New Jersey town as a wedding gift for his only daughter and her parson husband. When the daughter died in childbirth, the banker became so crazed that he shot the vicar, drowned the baby, and then committed suicide. A nasty story, Barbara thought, but then these old houses were filled with nasty stories that intrigued her. Rumor had it that the house was haunted; Barbara never doubted it.

  The very first night they spent there, Barbara had awakened to the sound of footsteps running up and down the back staircase that led from the birthing room to the second-floor hallway. It had been a child’s or woman’s pitter-patter, not the heavy tread of a man. A few days later, she had been changing the sheets when the full-length beveled mirror of her bedroom dresser began to violently swing back and forth like a seesaw. Another time, the doorknob rattled and the door shook with the force of someone desperately trying to open it. None of this had frightened Barbara, who believed there were spirits that, for one reason or another, had difficulty moving on to the spirit world. Lenny told Barbara she was just exhausted from the move.

  After the birth of the twins, the spirit grew more restless. A force occasionally pushed Barbara as she walked from the kitchen into the birthing room. Sitting at the rolltop oak desk, she often felt a rush of cold air. Assuming that one of the children had come running in from the yard and left the birthing room door ajar, she would check only to find the door tightly shut. When she nursed the twins in the antique armless rocker, an undeniable presence breathed over her shoulder. One hot summer evening, she had pulled down the babies’ blankets to the bottom of the crib only to find the babies covered up again later, the blankets tucked neatly under the mattresses.

  Convinced that the unhappy spirit of the banker’s daughter was behind it all, Barbara enlisted the aid of a tall and straight woman with an excellent reputation for authenticity regarding the extrasensory. The woman wandered through the house and settled in the birthing room, where she felt the spirit’s presence most strongly and located the source of its misery. There she meditated, and speaking gently yet with authority, the psychic gave the spirit the permission it had denied itself to leave the house. For a number of years it appeared that the spirit had done just that.

  Lately, however, knick-knacks seemed to move from one side of the mantel to the other. Pictures of her children shifted ever so slightly in direction on Victorian lamp tables. From time to time, a red Depression glass vase, always filled with fresh flowers, went from the center of the coffee table to all four of its corners and back again, as though it couldn’t decide where it preferred to be.

  One day, much to her disappointment — because she had begun to miss the ghost’s quirky company — Barbara caught the culprit. It was her mother, very much alive, sneaking out of the living room with a pair of crystal candlesticks and a Limoges candy dish. Norma Ficola stopped in her tracks.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” Barbara told her mother. “You’re a dead ringer for the man in the moon who always looks like he got caught with his pants down.”

  Norma liked new, and she delighted in finally being able to express her decorating preference to her daughter on a daily basis, since she and her husband had relocated from Boston to a new condo development in Barbara’s town. Barbara had wanted them to move into an assisted living complex, but Joe Ficola refused to reside with “old people” and swore he’d never set foot in a nursing home. “Better dead,” he said of the prospect.

  As she confronted Norma with her booty, Barbara understood that her mother would like to smash each fragile item on the floor so she could sweep up the tired past, empty it into the trash, and vacuum up any residue.

  “You’re lucky to be married to a wealthy man,” Norma said. “Why would you want to surround yourself with somebody else’s junk?”<
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  ***

  Yes, Barbara was lucky. Lucky to have been born lucky: the envy of her cousins at every church bazaar and firemen’s fair when they were growing up, winning handsome talking dolls, a bicycle, even a deep-fryer. She had slipped into her chosen university with mediocre SATs because the school had been short of women that year. She had never received a speeding ticket or contracted an STD in her youthful days of sexual indiscretion. She had gone on the blind date with a considerably older man who would become her husband because the woman he was supposed to meet that evening had suffered an appendicitis attack. She had been spared widowhood on 9/11 because that husband, who arrived daily at eight a.m. at his brokerage firm in the World Trade Center, had run over someone’s mangled muffler and had gotten a flat tire on the George Washington Bridge. She had conceived twins on the first try — two for the price of one — and enjoyed the financial freedom to stay home and raise them. While she had made the mistake of having a brief affair with her house contractor early on in her marriage, her husband never found out. She was so lucky, she must have stepped in shit, her Uncle Marco used to say. She disliked the expression, because it implied that there was something dirty about her luck — dirty and smelly and hard to get rid of.

  “God never gives anyone more than they can handle,” Norma liked to say, but Barbara didn’t believe that for a second. There were people she knew on whom God just kept dumping problem after problem, as though he was waiting for them to go under, when Lord knows they didn’t deserve it. The banker’s family had been a perfect example. Thus had Barbara become a prisoner of her own luck, feeling guilty about possessing it but at the same time filled with an overwhelming feeling of responsibility for safeguarding it. Perhaps her good fortune was a result of positive karma — a former life well lived — or the respite before a sorrowful one to come. For Barbara, the past was forever leaking into the present and the present slipping away into the past. This drove her to chronicle everything, from family barbecues and vacations to spelling bees, class plays, and athletic events. Her walls were like museum exhibits; images of ancestors in gilded frames worked their way up her staircase wall and traced her children’s lineage on both sides. Vintage typewriters and radios lined a shelf in her family room. One floor-to-ceiling case in the library housed at least 30 leather-bound photo albums in chronological order and rare books with intriguing inscriptions that made Barbara try to imagine their owners’ lives. She saved major newspaper stories, including the sinking of the Titanic, which she had found in the basement of her college dorm.

  When she picked up an 18th-century piece of porcelain, it vibrated to her touch, transporting her to its place of origin. She dreamt about dancing with Che Guevara and she could swear she had attended Marie Antoinette’s execution. Apart from a genuine desire to preserve history, in some bizarre way she sensed that if she did, her family would continue on a trouble-free path.

  “Throw it out!” her husband Lenny insisted. But she couldn’t. Not a letter, not an envelope, not Aunt Minnie’s dehydrated fox fur with its pointed teeth that Minnie clamped onto its tail to keep it securely draped over her bony shoulders.

  When her parents had sold their home in Boston, Barbara cried about all the items her mother had given to the Salvation Army or left out in the street for greedy antiques dealers — complete strangers — to snap up. She hadn’t even first offered them to Barbara. Her mother could have jinxed their luck, temped the fates by discarding objects that had held an important place in their lives and in those of countless others — the engineer who had been robbed of his patent, the nonunion assembly-line worker. She never bought something old; but she bought a piece of history, as well as some part of the person who had crafted it. Lenny liked to call her the director of the ASPCJ — the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Junk.

  Twice a year, she combed three hundred acres of antiques vendors gathered in a neighboring town with the hopes of coming away with a side table, a piece of carnival glass, even as little as a brass door hinge. It was as though she was bringing home a stray cat left to die a slow death by its owners. She used all this to fill the true gem — the old parsonage she and Lenny had spent years restoring.

  She often sat in the living room with a cup of coffee, studying the intricate patterns of the marble hearth or the carved corner moldings around the windows and pretending she was living in an era where she would have been wakened by a servant in a crisp apron and cap. The maid would have arrived with an elegant breakfast on a tray and opened her drapes before preparing her bath. Those were the times when she missed the ghost most, times when she would have liked to pour the banker’s daughter a cup of tea or coffee and compare notes. How does it feel for you to be a prisoner? she would have asked. For in their way, they had been kindred spirits — soul mates. Barbara amused herself with the puns; nevertheless, it saddened her to know that she had thrown away her opportunity the one time she had actually disposed of something — or someone — and set the ghost free.

  ***

  Aunt Vita brought her famous rice balls, Aunt Frances her eggplant, Aunt Terry her sesame seed biscotti, Aunt Myra her rugelach, and Barbara’s mother, Norma, store-bought potato salad. The sisters-in-law, all married to Ficola brothers, placed their contributions on the kitchen island and told their daughters to take over.

  It had been a slow process for the cousins to “take over” from these women who had commanded so many holiday events, but the older ladies — three Italian, one Jewish, one Yankee — seemed to welcome the chance to retire into the living room where their husbands were already intent on a TV football game before the remainder of the guests arrived.

  “I have to stop eating these, Barb,” said her skinny cousin Nancy with the short black bob, as she popped another scalding bacon-wrapped scallop into her mouth, and then, taken aback by its temperature, looked for a split second like Olive Oyl if she’d been goosed by Popeye.

  “Why? Finally can’t fit into your size-four wedding dress?” Barbara said.

  “I still can,” Nancy protested. “I put it on every anniversary.”

  “It sneaks up on you,” Rosemary said in a bitter tone. This was the first thing she’d uttered since her arrival. “And before you know it, you can’t get it off.”

  The others looked at her, wondering if she was talking about why her husband had left her.

  “Could you lower the heat, Barb?” Joanna asked, as with one hand she picked stuffed clams off a baking sheet and arranged them on a platter while her other fanned her face with a dish towel. “I don’t know if it’s me or the oven.”

  Now, Joanna, there was a woman who knew that life could pull the rug out and send luck upside on its ass before your very eyes, Barbara thought. What could be worse in this life than the loss of a child? That was even worse than the absence of one for Nancy all those years, until the arrival of little Pierre .

  “Want one?” Joanna held the platter in front of Angie, the youngest yet largest woman, with the blond Lady Di hairdo and thick neck who sat quietly folding napkins at the kitchen table. Angie shook her head.

  “Nice dress!” Nancy complimented her.

  “You can borrow it when you gain a hundred pounds. Better yet, you can hot-water wash it and put it in the dryer, and wear it tomorrow.”

  Bad genes, bad luck. Poor Angie, Barbara thought; her life was a futile battle to starve herself.

  ***

  Around nine, the lights were dimmed and Barbara carried out a sheet cake ablaze with 61 candles. Lenny inhaled, made a silent wish, and was about to exhale when the candles were snuffed out. The crowd squealed with delight; Lenny pursed his lips and looked at Barbara with admiration. Trick candles. A great stunt to play on a guy who prided himself on being on top of his game. Only Barbara knew there was nothing tricky about the candles. Something warm filled her veins, like a shot of cognac on a cold night: she was back, or more likely she had never gone.


  While everyone sat or stood juggling plates, forks, and coffee cups, a group of Lenny’s college friends donned leather jackets and sunglasses and performed a rendition of “The Boy from New York City,” substituting broker for boy. Matthew and Elena presented a slide show of their father’s life assembled from pictures Barbara had given them — ranging from a naked Lenny propped up on a blanket to his most recent golf tournament. The gifts were opened and by ten-thirty it was all over; no one stayed up late anymore. Nancy and Jean-Georges put Pierre to sleep in one guest room; Rosemary retired to the other. Angie’s parents went to Norma and Joe’s condo. Joanna and Elliott, Angie and her boyfriend Roy, along with other out-of-towners, went to a hotel. Lenny swept back into the dying fire a few burning embers. He flipped off the outside porch light. Barbara vacuumed the kitchen floor.

  “The rest can wait until tomorrow,” Lenny shouted over the vacuum’s roar, beckoning her to follow him upstairs. Barbara’s father would never have said that. Even sex didn’t trump cleaning up. Joe was never able to rest until every last piece of furniture was in its proper place and every dish had been washed and returned to the cabinet. The Ficolas liked order. And although Barbara was “dead on her feet,” as her mother liked to say, from so much work, she stayed up a while longer, until the sink was clear and the living room retained no trace of the festivities.

  She had told the twins to make a pass with the vacuum cleaner and to take the gifts to the birthing room, but they had disappeared upstairs without performing either task. They were spoiled, and Barbara knew it had been her own doing. When it came to the house, the children could never meet her standards for perfection, and they had learned to take advantage of their mother’s controlling yet good nature. This resulted in Barbara’s undertaking everything herself. Barbara made excuses for them, fully aware that she’d been wrong to put so much emphasis on her belongings rather than teaching them responsibility. She picked up the stack of gifts next to the fireplace and carried them into the birthing room.