Sons of Dust

by P. Dalton Updyke

  “Right?” Her eyebrows drew together. “Right about what?”

  He watched her face, but couldn’t read the light in her eyes. Maybe there were too many years between them. “I don’t know,” he said, “that was the message. If anything happens to me, tell Katie she was right.”

  Kate turned her head suddenly, as if she were looking into too much light. “I don’t know what she meant. Are you sure that’s all she said?”

  Marcus paused, then slowly nodded. “You don’t know what she was talking about?”

  Kate didn’t look at him. “No.”

  There wasn’t any doubt in his mind. She was lying.

  Chapter 4

  Gina

  Gina loved the PAV. She loved how it was always safe. In the basement room smelling of vodka and sauerkraut, she felt at home. The PAV hadn’t changed over the years. The walls were paneled in fake wood, the floor cement painted green. Long tables were lined up, ends touching, in five rows. The tables were covered in white linen tablecloths because the women of the PAV scoffed at the idea of using paper. So messy, they said, so easy to tear. A waste of good money.

  An oil painting of the Polish Eagle hung on the wall, its wings spread as if about to take flight. At least she used to think the eagle looked about to take off, but Bo told her once the eagle was about to land, and Katie thought the eagle wasn’t flying anywhere.

  “He’s just posing,” Katie had said. “He’s just pretending to fly.”

  Every Sunday, the Fateckis would come to the PAV after Mass with all the other neighborhood families. They’d have dinner together, sitting at the long tables covered with soft, snowy linen, and after Father Sanderslas said the Blessing, they’d pass around bowls laden with homemade kielbasa and stuffed cabbage. If Gina closed her eyes, she could picture her grandmother dressed in her best black Sunday dress. Her grandmother only owned two dresses at a time; both were black, one for everyday wear and the second her “funeral” dress – the one she’d be buried in, God forbid she should die young. As soon as the regular dress became too tattered to mend, it would be cut into dust cloths, sewn into shirts and a new dress would be made, wrapped in tissue paper and placed carefully into the hope chest, taken out only on Sundays. In Gina’s lifetime, her grandmother had made nineteen funeral dresses.

  Gina couldn’t walk into the PAV without imagining her mother, pearls gleaming against the satiny cloth, her white hair pulled up in a loose bun, the gold crucifix dangling between her breasts. Her mother was a large woman, big-boned and strong. Her hands were the size of a man’s and she could work for hours without tiring. At the PAV, her mother would gossip with the other women in Polish, their voices rising and falling in rhythms that reminded Gina of music. Here, in the old basement hall reeking of cigar smoke, she used to be “pleasantly plump,” never fat. The women used to ooohhh over her, pinch her cheeks and tell her mother over her head, “This little one is made for children, yes?”

  No.

  Not made for children.

  Not then. Not now. Apparently, not ever.

  Gina stood by the sink, drying dishes as Mrs. Yarowski handed them to her. The chatter around her was quiet, subdued.

  “- the butcher said the price is going up another fifty two cents!”

  “Yie, I heard that, too. What you think about Bosauvia?”

  “A sex fiend, I heard.”

  Gina opened a cabinet door, put the dish away, separating Mrs. Kesvilhovitch’s voice from the rest.

  “-a pervert.”

  “No!”

  Gina wasn’t sure who Mrs. Kesvilhovitch was talking to and she didn’t want to turn her head because she was afraid if she did, they’d know she was listening and stop talking. She picked up another dish.

  “Yes! My Stephen said he heard at the Jewish bakery this morning that Bosauvia was murdered!”

  “No!”

  Gina didn’t have to turn around to know Mrs. Kesvilhovitch was nodding. She could picture it easily enough in her mind. “Murdered!” the old woman said again, and this time, Gina thought she heard glee in the thin voice. “The police are sure, my Stephen said.”

  “But who would do such a thing?”

  And now Mrs. Kesvilhovitch would be shrugging, rolling her eyes. “Who knows? Crazy in the head.”

  “But who would do this to Marion’s daughter? She is such a good girl!”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Gina dried the dish, put it on the shelf, reached for another.

  “My Stephen says she was loose.”

  A shocked gasp. “Oh, no! I don’t think such a thing. She went to Mass every Sunday.”

  “You think Mass made her pure? Ach, you’re naïve if you think that, Yjospehia. She had the devil in her. Even her mother knew that. Marion lights candles every day! When I asked her what she was praying for, she said, ‘my daughter.’”

  Gina had heard enough. She turned around, the plate in her hand shaking with anger. “Your Stephen is wrong,” she said to Mrs. Kesvilhovitch. “The only reason he told you Bo was loose was because she turned him down! He was jealous she wouldn’t have anything to do with him!”

  “That is a lie!” Mrs. Kesvilhovitch’s voice shook, “My son-“

  “That’s enough, Agnes!” Mrs. Yarowski said sternly. “You should know better than to speak ill of the dead. And poor Bo not even in her grave yet! Shame on you.”

  Twin spots of color hit Mrs. Kesvilhovitch’s cheeks, and she looked about to reply, but Mrs. Yarowski didn’t give her the chance. She touched Gina’s arm gently. “All done for now, dear. Why don’t you go into the hall and visit with your friends. Was that Katrenjia I saw in the church?”

  Gina nodded.

  “Go on, then. Visit with her. Catch up. Put what this woman said out of your mind. She is too ignorant to know better.”

  “Thank you,” Gina started to say, but Mrs. Yarowski shook her head.

  “We do this for each other, always,” the old woman said. “No thanks is needed for that.”

  Gina opened the door to the hall and the noise overwhelmed her. The sound of conversation was abrasive after the low voices in the kitchen and Gina had to brace herself before walking into the throng outside the door.

  It’s safe here, she thought. It’s always been safe here. And no thanks is needed for that.

  Somehow, she hadn’t expected so many people to come to Bo’s funeral. She knew that Bo had a lot of friends, but the Polish community had dwindled over the years and funerals like this one were few and far between. She moved through the crowd, saying hello and smiling as best she could. When she reached the far corner, she saw Bo’s mother sitting near the front of the hall. Mrs. Caveleska was surrounded by women and as Gina watched, a baby toddled by the old woman and one of the others, she thought it might have been Mrs. Koval, picked the child up and put him on Mrs. Caveleska’s lap. Mrs. Caveleska’s arms circled the child, holding the baby close, and after a moment, she began to play patty cake with him.

  There was a burst of laughter and Gina turned toward it automatically. A group of old men were sitting at the end of a table, laughing at a piece of paper being handed around. Gina didn’t have to get any closer. Off-color jokes were popular here.

  The door opened and there was a blast of cold air. Kate came in first, followed by Marcus and Vinny. Kate looked worn, her face pale even in this light. She held her arms around her waist, tight, as if holding herself together. Her eyes traveled over the crowded hall.

  How do we look to her? Gina wondered. Old fashioned? Stuck in a rut? Hopeless?

  Marcus saw her first. He leaned down, said something to Kate and then Kate’s gaze shifted, came to rest on her. They began threading through the tables, stopping every now and then to speak to someone. When they reached Gina, she was struck by how old they looked now. All of them.

  **

  They went to a steak house on Route 1. Kate had decided to stay a few days, she said, because she had a few things to do for Bo. Gina wanted to ask wha
t things, but there was something about Kate that didn’t lend itself to asking questions. She was remote. Not that, Gina corrected, removed. Removed from them.

  As they ordered drinks, Gina noticed that Kate kept looking at Marcus, then away, as if she couldn’t look for long. Vinny tried to fill the silence, but it was mostly hopeless. The memory of Bo was a ghost between them.

  “We used to be so close.” Gina hadn’t meant to speak out loud, but all three looked at her. Her cheeks burned. She looked from Marcus to Vinny to Katie. “You were my family.”

  Kate dropped her eyes and lifted her drink. A cosmopolitan. She took a long swallow. The waitress came back to them then, a small, thirtyish woman with a ponytail too blond to be real. She reeled off the specials of the day and it wasn’t until she was looking directly at Gina that Gina realized she hadn’t heard a word the woman said.

  “Chef’s salad and a bowl of chowder, please.”

  Kate ordered the same, and when the woman had finished writing their orders, she shoved her notebook into the pocket of the short apron she wore. “Another round?” she asked.

  Marcus said yes before anyone could say otherwise and the waitress moved away, leaving them alone again. The silence was heavy. Gina turned to Kate and asked, “What do you do now?” just to fill the quiet with sound.

  “I’m a nurse.”

  “Really?” Gina smiled. “I am too. Pediatrics.”

  “So what kind of nurse are you?” Vinny asked, reaching for a roll.

  “I’m a hospice nurse.”

  “A what nurse?”

  “Hospice. I work with terminally ill patients.”

  “Terminally ill?” Vinny was frowning. “What? Like dying?”

  Kate nodded.

  “Jesus,” Vinny said. “How can you stand that?”

  “I love my job.”

  “Love it?” Disbelief was etched in every syllable of Vinny’s voice. “How can you love that?”

  “I just do. I can’t explain it.”

  “So you work in a hospital, taking care of people about to croak?”

  “I work for a private agency. We work with patients who have chosen to pass at home.”

  The silence was longer this time.

  “That’s creepy,” Vinny said finally. “The poor bastards know they’re going to die?”

  Kate nodded.

  “And they know you’re there to--”

  “-help ease their pain, yes,” Kate finished. She lifted her chin and Gina had time to wonder why she was being so defensive before Kate went on, “I make the end easier for them. That’s what my job is, Vinny. I sit with those poor bastards as you called them and I hold their hand and listen to them and try to make their last few days as easy as possible. I love what I do and I’m good at it.”

  Watching Kate talk, it dawned on Gina why Kate had chosen to work with the terminally ill. It was because of her father. Because of –

  --the Kowalski Funeral Home. It stood on the corner of Congress and Essex Streets, directly across from the Forest Field. Kate’s father, JoJo Kowalski, often said it was a good thing the barn across the street had burned down. The fire had provided perfect parking. Shut a door, open a window, he’d said. Fire insurance money for you. Parking for me.

  JoJo Kowalski was a small man compared to the other men in the neighborhood. He stood almost 5’6” in his shoes and had a habit of rocking forward on the balls of his feet so that he was almost on tiptoe. Gina used to think he did that to look taller.

  “Uh uh,” Bo said to her once. “Katie’s Dad used to be a track star. My Dad told me. Mr. Kowalski could jump higher than anybody at St. Stand’s when they were in high school. I think he stands like that out of habit.”

  When Gina looked at Mr. Kowalski again, she thought Bo was probably right. He looked about to jump.

  The Kowalskis lived on the third floor of the funeral home, the only single family home on the block. The house was one of the oldest in Chelsea. Brick and clapboard, the white Colonial had been updated with wiring and windows, but the house still held an air of ancient. The downstairs portion was partitioned off into three viewing rooms. Four wide brick steps led to a carved oak door with a stained glass window. The door swung into a large lobby area carpeted in deep burgundy. The lower half of the walls were paneled, the upper half wallpapered in burgundy flocked print. The viewing rooms were to the left, the right and directly in front of the lobby. Next to the door leading into each room was a white pedestal table and a guest book open to a blank page.

  Bo said she associated red with death, on account of Katie’s dad and the funeral home, but it was Katie who said red was hell.

  Katie’s friends never used the staircase that filled the area between the first and front sitting room. They used the back stairs, the rickety set that led to a back door which opened into the Kowalski’s kitchen. Katie’s bedroom was down a short hall. It was pale lavender, with white lace curtains and white furniture. There was a brick fireplace set into one wall, and china dolls and lace doilies adorned the mantel. Gina loved Katie’s room. It was so feminine. Katie had a ruffled bedspread and lace pillows, stuffed animals and a pink doll house with windows that really opened and closed. Even the picture of the Sacred Heart was pretty, the thorns around the heart drawn in thin squiggly lines. If you looked at it quick, you could almost forget it was a picture of a heart and think instead it was a watercolor painting of a rose bush with a single purplish-colored rose in the center.

  Gina shared a room with her two sisters. Their furniture was mis-matched hand-me-downs, the walls painted a bright blue. There were no curtains on Gina’s windows, only beige shades. And the picture of the Sacred Heart was a frightening piece of work, the picture of Jesus not much better. Gina was convinced Jesus’ eyes followed her around the room. His gaze wasn’t comforting. It was accusatory. Gina’s mother didn’t believe in frills.

  Whenever they played, Bo and Gina and Katie, it was Katie’s house they went to. Katie was an only child, her mother a quiet woman with beer-colored hair and a Marlboro dangling from her hand.

  Monopoly was their favorite game and for one whole summer, they played every day. They spread the board on the lavender throw rug, red, orange and blue money scattered around their knees. Bo was always the banker –

  --“Cause I’m better at math,” she said.

  There was a tray of soda on Katie’s desk and Gina pushed herself off the floor to pour a glass. That was another thing about Mrs. Kowalski. She didn’t mind if you ate in the bedroom.

  “You’re so lucky,” Gina said suddenly.

  “Lucky?” Katie looked disgusted. “Why am I lucky?”

  “Cause you’re an only child.” Gina touched one of Katie’s dolls, fingering the ruffled pink dress. “You have so many pretty things.”

  “Yeah,” Bo giggled. “And cause you’re an only child, you’re spoiled.”

  “I am not spoiled!” Katie sat up on her knees, her cheeks pink.

  “Sure you are,” Bo said, “but that’s not a bad thing. You’re not a snob or anything.”

  “I am not spoiled!”

  “You’re just lucky,” Gina cut in. “I wish I was you.”

  “Are we going to play, or what?” Katie asked, her cheeks still pink. Her voice was a little higher, but Gina wasn’t sure if that meant that Katie was angry or hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” Gina said as she settled back on the rug. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “I’m not mad, okay? Let’s just play.” She reached for the little silver dog.

  The sound of chanting drifted through the vents and Gina shivered.

  “What is that?” she asked finally.

  Katie rolled the dice. “What’s what?”

  “That noise.”

  “No fair!” Bo said loudly. “You got Park Place again!”

  “What noise?” Katie asked again.

  “Listen!”

  Katie and Bo looked at her, the cards spread out between them. “Don’t yo
u hear that?”

  Katie’s eyebrows drew together. “What are you talk-“

  “The chanting!” Gina hissed. “Don’t you hear the chanting?”

  Katie’s expression changed and she grinned. “That’s not chanting. That’s praying. There’s a memorial service going on.”

  “Right now?” Bo squealed.

  Katie looked surprised. “Sure. Why not?”

  Gina and Bo exchanged a look. “It’s a school day.”

  “So? You think people can’t be buried on a school day? Jeez. My Dad even does memorial services at night sometimes.”

  “At night?” Gina shivered. “That’s creepy.”

  Katie shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  “Yeah,” Bo giggled, “and Katie’s so used to it she can’t sleep without the sound of praying coming up the vents.”

  Katie gave Bo a little shove. “Uh uh. It’s your turn.”

  But Bo must not have cared about her turn anymore, because she leaned over the board and lowered her voice. “You know what’s really creepy?” she asked.

  Gina wasn’t sure she did want to know, but she nodded anyway.

  “The lab,” Bo whispered. “That’s wicked creepy.”

  Katie pushed Bo again. “Shut up! You’re not supposed to tell!”

  Gina looked from one to the other. “Tell what?”

  Bo stared at Katie, who finally shrugged. Bo instantly scooted around so she was facing Gina. “Katie showed me the lab last week.”

  “What’s the lab?”

  “You know, the place where Mr. K fixes up the bodies.”

  “Fixes up the bodies how?”

  Bo glanced at Katie again, but Katie wasn’t looking up anymore. She had her head on her knees.

  “Well, Katie said the first thing her father has to do is drain the blood out of the bodies-“

  “No sir!” Gina burst out. “That’s not true! You’re making that up!”

  “No, I’m not! Pinky swear! Tell her, Katie.”

  “It’s true,” Katie’s voice was muffled.

  Gina felt a little sick. “But why does he drain out the blood?”