The Good Sister

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  For the first time I can ever remember, I don’t dread climbing into bed tonight. Father is staying in the hospital at least through the weekend. He had a heart attack.

  Do you think God answered my prayers and punished Father because he’s evil? Do you think He’ll listen if I ask Him to make it so that Father never comes home again?

  Chapter 6

  On a monochromatic Monday afternoon, Jen turns the car onto a wide boulevard near Delaware Park, where large houses are set against a sky the same shade as the dirty slush in the gutters. Absently noticing that the wet March snow is already starting to stick, she turns the windshield wipers a notch faster. According to AccuWeather, the temperature will have plummeted into the twenties by dusk, with well over a foot of new snow in the forecast before the thermometer boomerangs up into the sixties by midweek.

  The storm started earlier than predicted, though. The meteorologists had said it would begin snowing late this afternoon, but already a coating of white dusts the rooftops, bare branches, and grass on meticulously landscaped properties.

  If it weren’t for the unobtrusive wooden signpost and awnings that shade the tall windows and stretch along the front walk, the three-story white house in the middle of the block would look like any other. But it isn’t like them at all.

  People live in those other homes. Some of the aging residents have been there since Jen was growing up on a nearby block lined with equally old, albeit far smaller and less dignified houses set much closer together than they are here.

  But in her lifetime, no one has ever actually lived in the stately black-shuttered mansion with the signpost and the awnings. It’s been used for one purpose only, as evidenced by the signpost:

  “CICERO AND SON FUNERAL HOME.”

  Back in the old days, the sign read just “CICERO FUNERAL HOME.” But then Glenn Cicero grew up and followed in his father’s footsteps, and old Mr. Cicero proudly changed the name. He passed away a few years ago, but Glenn has left the sign the way it is.

  When Jen last saw him, about a year ago at her great-uncle Frank’s funeral, he said, “No reason to change it. My son Connor tells me he might want to go into the family business, too.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “Seven.”

  Jen nodded, smiling politely, wondering whether any seven-year-old truly wants to think about growing up to become a mortician, even if it is the family business.

  The Ciceros have presided over many a Bonafacio family funeral, and quite a few others Jen has attended over the years. Just the sight of the stately old structure is enough to send a pall over her on an ordinary day, when she barely gives it a second glance.

  Today, however, she drives past the funeral home with slow deliberation, noting that the large gravel parking lot alongside it is already full, and the street is lined with parked cars.

  The wake for Nicki Olivera doesn’t even start for another fifteen minutes, but dark-clothed mourners are lined up out the door. Groups of teenagers cluster on the walkway; crying girls shivering bare-legged in dresses console each other alongside uncomfortable-looking boys in dress pants, down coats, and sneakers.

  Jen takes a deep breath; exhales shakily.

  Oh Lord. Suddenly, Nicki’s death has gone from surreal to shockingly real.

  This is going to be brutal enough for the adults who are attending. But for those poor kids . . .

  For Carley . . .

  Jen fleetingly considers sparing her daughter the ordeal.

  No. She has to go. She needs to go, in order to fully grasp the shocking reality that Nicki is gone.

  On Saturday morning, Jen had faltered right before they told Carley the news, when she saw her lying there in bed. She was clutching her stuffed flamingo, Bubblegum: a long-ago birthday gift from Nicki. Childhood innocence personified.

  She knew that Carley was about to lose something that she’d never get back. Not just in the literal sense—not just the monumental loss of her friend, which in itself would leave a void that would never be filled.

  But Carley’s world was about to be shaken because of the way Nicki had died. An accident, or an illness . . . that’s one thing. But when someone deliberately chooses death, without explanation or warning . . .

  But you don’t know that, Jen keeps reminding herself. You haven’t seen Nicki in a while; you don’t know, and Carley probably didn’t know, what was going on with her.

  When they told their daughter the news, she went from disbelief—asking “What?” over and over—to hysterical tears.

  They had to reveal that it was suicide. There was no point in lying.

  “But . . . but that means she’s not going to go to heaven!”

  Jen tried to console her, telling her that the church had changed its views on suicide, but she could tell Carley wasn’t buying it. She’d spent too many years in an old-fashioned parochial school to completely disregard what she’d been taught about the mortal sin of taking your own life.

  It wasn’t until hours later, when the initial shock and grief had subsided, that Carley wanted to know exactly how Nicki had done it.

  “With a knife,” Jen said reluctantly and then, seeing the look of horror on her daughter’s face, she hugged her close and consoled her as a fresh wave of tears broke.

  The violence of Nicki’s death, more than anything else, is what’s been troubling Jen.

  You always read that it’s the male victims who use knives or guns to kill themselves. Not women. Certainly not young girls who cower behind the couch pillows just trying to watch one of the old Scream movies at a sleepover.

  “No! I can’t look!” Nicki shrieked as Carley giggled. “Are there blood and guts, Carls? You know I can’t deal with blood and guts!”

  Remembering the many overnights Carley and Nicki spent together, Jen wonders, yet again, how Nicki could have changed so drastically in six or seven months.

  What was going on in her life that made her decide to end it?

  If Carley has any idea, she’s not talking about it.

  Now Jen is grateful that the girls have drifted apart, for her own daughter’s sake. This would have been even more torturous had it happened when they were inseparable.

  But then, maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all. When Jen thinks about Nicki, about how alone and desperate she must have been feeling, her heart aches for the girl.

  Could a friend have saved her?

  Could her mother have saved her?

  Jen remembers what she was thinking just the other day when she and Thad were discussing Carley’s trouble at school.

  That’s what moms do. We fix things for our kids and we worry about them and we ask about their day when they walk in the door . . .

  Was it only a few days ago that it seemed like the worst thing in the world was to have your daughter victimized by the mean girls at school?

  Jen thinks about her friend Debbie, wondering how she’s coping, wondering how you can possibly go on when you’ve lost a child.

  Whatever you do, she warns herself, don’t go and ask her that when you see her. Don’t blurt out anything stupid.

  She’s had two days now to figure out exactly what she can say to Debbie at a time like this, and she’s come up with only one acceptable thing.

  I’m so sorry.

  It’s what she said when she called Debbie’s house on Saturday morning and got voice mail. “It’s Jen. I just heard, and I’m so sorry . . .”

  Too choked up to go on, she hung up mid-message.

  When she finally pulled herself together and called back, the voice mailbox was full and no longer accepting messages. She sent a carefully composed e-mail. When that went unanswered, she texted Debbie’s cell phone a few times—no reply.

  Yesterday, she made a tray of ziti and took it over there, along with a dozen of the untouched peanut butter cooki
es and the sponge cake she’d intended for the new neighbors.

  Debbie’s sister-in-law from Ohio, whom Jen had heard about but never met, answered the door. She said Debbie and Andrew were at the funeral home, “making arrangements.”

  “Tell them that Jen was here, and that I’m so sorry, and—”

  Again, she choked on a lump in her throat and couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she asked Thad later in frustration. “Why can’t I be one of those people who always says the right thing and has perfect composure, grace under pressure . . .”

  “Because you’re a Bonafacio,” he reminded her, and he was right.

  How many times has Jen—or one of her sisters, or her mother—said just that, in an effort to explain why when they talk, they talk too much; when they laugh, they laugh uncontrollably; when they cry . . .

  Same thing.

  “It’s because we’re Bonafacios.” Her family—the women in her family, anyway—tend to be overly emotional, and they lack filters. That’s just how it is.

  At this point, Jen feels as though she’s drained every last teardrop in her body. But she knows that when she sees Debbie, she’s going to start sobbing again.

  She drives on past the funeral home, flipping her turn signal and braking carefully on the slick pavement at the stop sign. She makes a right and brakes at the railroad tracks, looking both ways before bumping across them.

  Once, years ago, the signal failed at a crossing in the neighborhood. That was the official story. But an eyewitness claimed that the teenage driver, Jimmy Fazzoleri, was trying to beat it.

  He didn’t make it.

  Jen was just in elementary school then, but she remembers the horror of that accident, the tragic, violently morbid tale told and retold by her sisters and their friends until Jimmy had taken on folk hero status.

  Still—it was an accident. No one ever speculated that Jimmy had taken his own life. Either he’d been the victim of malfunctioning electronics or he’d done something foolish and reckless, and he was killed. Tragic, but hardly inexplicable.

  Not like this. Not like Nicki.

  Jen drives on, heading toward Sacred Sisters to pick up Carley for the wake.

  She had expected her daughter to jump at the chance to stay home from school today, but Carley insisted on going.

  “I have an algebra test sixth period, Mom.”

  “You can make it up.”

  “He only gives you one chance to make up a test.”

  He is Carley’s dreaded math teacher, Mr. Sterne, one of the few laypeople on the staff. She’s convinced he doesn’t like her.

  What a shame that gentle Sister Louisa, who taught algebra back in Jen’s day, has long since retired. Life would surely be more pleasant for Carley if she’d been greeted at her new school with smiles of recognition and “Isn’t one of the Bonafacio girls your mother?”

  When Jen was there, it was “You must be the Bonafacio girls’ baby sister!”

  Debbie once asked her if it ever bothered her, but it never did. Rather, she felt welcomed into the fold.

  But today’s teachers—other than half-blind Sister Margaret—don’t know Carley from any other student, and Mr. Sterne, in particular, seems to be making things difficult for her.

  “If I don’t take the test today, I’ll have to do it tomorrow,” Carley told Jen this morning, “and I can’t because I have the funeral.”

  “Carley, no teacher would penalize you for missing a test for something like this. Woodsbridge High is excusing anyone who wants to go to the wake or funeral.”

  “But that’s because Nicki went to Woodsbridge, and anyway, Mr. Sterne’s really strict! Those are the rules.” Carley, with her fierce sense of right and wrong, was on the verge of fresh tears.

  “It’s not so black and white. Trust me, sweetie, you can—”

  “He only bends the rules if you have a doctor’s note!”

  “I’ll write him a note.”

  “You’re not a doctor!”

  “Then I’ll come in and talk to him. Just don’t worry about school rules at a time like this.”

  “Mom, I’m only getting an 87 in algebra so far this quarter and it’s going to drag my average down. This test can bring my grade up if I do well, but I’ll forget everything I studied if I don’t take it now.”

  To her credit, Emma, having eavesdropped on the exchange, waited until Carley left the room before announcing, “She’s crazy.”

  “Emma—”

  “She acts like she’s failing with an 87! I wish I had an 87 in math! Or in anything!”

  “You can have an 87. You can have 100.”

  “No one gets 100.”

  “Sure they do.”

  “I mean besides Carley. And I almost got a 90 one time last year. I got an 88, but I almost—”

  “Almost doesn’t count, Emma. Almost isn’t good enough.”

  “I hate when you say that.”

  “Well, it’s true. You should be getting nineties. Or hundreds. You just need to work harder at it like your sister does.” As soon as she’d said that, Jen wanted to take it back.

  She does try not to compare the girls, knowing it only contributes further to their resentment of each other. But she was overtired and overemotional and overprotective, in that moment, of Carley.

  “Why can’t I stay home for the wake?” Emma wanted to know. “Carley’s not the only one who’s sad about Nicki around here.”

  “I told you, Daddy and I think you should just go to the funeral on Tuesday.”

  “Can you please stop calling him Daddy? Can’t you just say Dad?” Emma rolled her eyes.

  Jaw clenched, Jen amended, “Dad and I think you should just go to the funeral.”

  “But why?”

  “Because the wake will be too upsetting for you.”

  “I went to Uncle Frank’s wake.”

  “That was different. He was old and sick for a long time. When it’s someone your own age, it’s much harder.”

  Plus, Emma can be such a drama queen that there’s no telling how she might react at the funeral home. It would be just like her to fall apart and create an emotional scene, robbing a quietly grieving Carley of her parents’ attention at a time when she needs it most.

  Reaching the next stop sign, Jen makes a left onto Dogwood Street, feeling as though she’s driving on autopilot. Good thing she knows this neighborhood as well as she does the one where she now lives with Thad and the girls. Better, really, in some ways.

  There’s still constant new construction in their suburban development, and businesses on the highways surrounding it are mostly chain stores and restaurants that seem to come and go or change hands with startling regularity.

  But some of the houses in this neighborhood have stood for well over a century, many with a single last name on the mailbox for decades. Countless small factories that thrived here in her childhood have long since closed, but Jen drives past a number of flourishing locally owned businesses that, like the funeral home, have been run by the same family for generations. Sgaglio’s Market, Mackowiak’s Polish Deli, Louie’s Bar on the corner of Redbud, where generations of neighborhood kids learned to hold their liquor . . .

  Rounding the corner onto Wayside Avenue, Jen spots one of the few brand-new houses in the neighborhood, one that would be far more at home on a suburban cul-de-sac. The white center-hall Colonial, an architectural anomaly on a block lined with close-set homes dating to the early 1900s, spills over the small lot like a fat man in a middle airplane seat.

  The house was built to replace the Arts and Crafts bungalow that burned to the ground a year or two ago, tragically killing the female owner.

  “That was Joe and Betty Bardin’s daughter Sandy,” Jen’s mother, Theresa, said when it happened. “She was your sister Madon
na’s age, but she went to Griffin. She boarded there even though it’s only fifteen miles from her house. They were always trying to be fancy, the Bardins. Remember?”

  Jen did, but only vaguely.

  Now she pitied the poor woman Maddie and her friends used to call Snobby Sandy. What a horrible way to die, trapped inside a burning house.

  “She’s going to be laid out at Cicero’s,” Theresa Bonafacio reported, and asked Jen if she wanted to accompany them to the viewing.

  She declined. It seems her aging parents are always telling her about wakes and funerals these days, or talking about their own.

  “When my time comes . . .” her mother will say.

  Her father is less delicate. “When I croak,” he’ll begin, and proceed to give explicit directions—usually involving his belongings. He’s convinced that his daughters are going to fight over his wheat penny collection or autographed Connie Francis albums.

  Jen’s parents will be at the wake today.

  “You know, if this had happened years ago,” her mother said, “there wouldn’t have even been a wake or funeral. But the church has softened its views on suicide, thank goodness.”

  That was exactly what Jen had told Carley. The difference is, Carley wouldn’t accept it.

  Jen does. There’s no way that a merciful God would keep a troubled child from going to heaven. Absolutely no way.

  Her mother agreed, and added, shaking her salt and pepper head, “It would have killed Ro if her granddaughter couldn’t have a Catholic burial. It might kill her as it is.”

  Mom and Debbie’s mother, Rosemary Quattrone, go all the way back to when they attended Sacred Sisters together many years ago. That schoolgirl connection was the first in three generations of female friendships between the two families.

  Carley and Nicki used to push their dolls around in baby carriages talking about how their “babies” would grow up to be best friends, too.

  And now . . .

  Jen swallows hard as the familiar yellow brick facade looms up ahead. The building rises two full stories atop an elevated foundation with low basement windows where the science labs, locker rooms, and custodial quarters are located. On the two main floors are symmetrical rows of tall, paired windows framed and paned in peeling, white-painted wood.