Death Will Help You Leave Him (16 page)

So Massimo knew a drug dealer when he saw one. That was interesting. He must think we were a nice, normal couple Frankie had traded up to from the evil companions.

“Please give our condolences to Mrs. Iacone,” Barbara said. “Or if it’s possible in person?”

We didn’t know if Silvia worked at the bakery in normal times. Maybe she was home in bed, with Frankie’s aunts flapping around her and making lasagna in her kitchen. Like Luz’s aunts.

“She is at the grave,” Massimo said. “She goes every day. It makes her agitated, but I can’t stop her, no one can stop her. She gets down on her knees and curses God. The priest is understanding. He tells me, ‘Give her time. God is patient, He will wait until she is ready to forgive Him’.”

“Do you think she would mind if we showed up?” Barbara asked. “We could pay our respects to Frankie too.”

“I think she would be pleased. She talks to Frankie when she kneels there. She calls him her baby boy. She brings fresh flowers every day. She has already planted a rosebush that will grow and flower every year. She tries to forget the bad times, when he became a man and chose the wrong road for a while. It will do her good to be reminded that he had changed— though I warn you she will cry too, thinking how he is gone before taking more than the first few steps. The cemetery is big and confusing. I will tell you exactly how to get there.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “We really are very sorry.”

“It will mean a lot to us to talk with Mrs. Iacone,” Barbara said truthfully. “And as long as we’re here— can we have half a dozen little cheesecakes and six of the chocolate cannoli?”

The day had clouded over when we got outside. A chill in the air reminded me that November was on the way.

“I thought you were going to let me choose the pastries,” I said.

“You would have chickened out,” she said. “After that heavy conversation, you wouldn’t have wanted to break the mood by buying cake. And he really is a great baker.”

“I notice I’m carrying the boxes again.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, “don’t be such a big baby. Here, give them to me. I’ll put them in my bag.” Barbara’s bag was a tote the size of a mail pouch. “Let’s buy some flowers to bring. Here’s a florist shop two doors from the bakery.”

We found the cemetery without any trouble. Its massive iron gates stood open. The gray day suited our surroundings. Some of the monuments were elaborate. Weeping angels. Massive crosses embellished with doves and Celtic knots and crucifixions. Family mausoleums big enough to house the homeless. We both read some of the inscriptions aloud. Some of the verses were unintentionally funny. Some were touching. On the older stones, weathered by pollution, the epitaphs were unreadable.

“There won’t be a stone yet, will there?” Barbara asked. “In Jewish burials, it’s a year till the unveiling.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think there’s any rule about when you get a monument. They’d have to be up to ordering it. He’s gone back to work, but she’s still overcome. Then it would take time to get the inscription carved.”

“Look at that,” she said, drawing closer to me as we passed another recent burial. “They’ve just dumped the flowers on the grave.” The flowers, still in their vases, had withered.

“Depressing.”

“I hope they’ve taken the dead flowers off Frankie’s grave.”

“Mom’s already planted a rosebush,” I said.

Just inside the gate, we’d picked up a map with lettered sections and numbered plots. The guy at the desk had scribbled down a series of left and right turns.

“We make a right here.”

“Look,” Barbara said, “down this aisle, two sections or so farther on. Is that her?”

I squinted into the distance.

“It’s a woman kneeling,” I confirmed. “Let’s get a little closer and see if she’s cursing God.”

It was Silvia, all right, shrunken and bowed with grief. She wrung her hands and moaned wordlessly, rocking back and forth. Just before she spotted us, she raised her arms and shook her fists at the leaden sky.

“Why?” she howled. “Santa Maria, why?”

It made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

Barbara tugged at my arm. She jerked her head at the nearest mausoleum. Plenty of room for a large family. She walked her fingers in a circle. If we circled the monument, we could approach her pretending we hadn’t heard. But it was already too late.

Silvia turned her head as if her neck swung on hinges in need of oil. She looked even worse full face, her gray hair stringy and untended, dark smudges under her eyes. She spoke as if continuing a conversation.

“I have no more pride,” she said. “My son was my purpose, and he’s gone.”

The rosebush, its name tag still clinging to a bare branch, crouched at the head of the plot. The disturbed earth, roughly the shape of a coffin, looked raw. Six feet under, I thought, that’s where Frankie was now. I pictured him with his mouth full of dirt, even though I knew he’d be encased in wood and varnish and baby blue satin for a while yet. They didn’t seem much of a protection against worms and time.

“He was the sweetest baby,” Silvia said. “Very solid, good to hold. If I squeezed him, he felt dense, like a sack of semolina. He never cried.”

Barbara stepped forward and laid her flowers on the grave. When she started to back off, Silvia grasped her hand and drew Barbara toward her. But her eyes went past Barbara to me. Maybe she thought a man would have the answers.

“You were his friend.” They kept assuming that. All I had to do was not deny it. “Can you think of any reason? I keep asking God and the Blessed Virgin. They were parents, they should understand. Why now?” Her mouth twisted in a bitter travesty of humor. “Oh, I know that he took drugs. They think because I’m an old woman that I am stupid. Who do they think he came to when he was in trouble? Twice, three times I gave him money when he said that bad men had threatened him. Leg-breakers, he called them. How could a mother let them break her own child’s legs?”

In recovery, we called that enabling. If an addict could always count on somebody to pick him up, he never had to admit to himself he was face down in shit and needed to do something different. But mothers were hard to convince.

“That is the thing I keep coming back to,” Silvia said. “I do not understand. For this terrible thing to happen, he must have been in big trouble. But he knew he could come to me. Yet he said nothing. He called me the morning he left that place— the rehabilitation center. He sounded renewed— alive. I thanked Santa Maria for looking after him and bringing him safely through. I thought his troubles were over.”

And so they were.

“We wonder what happened too,” I told her. “As you said, it doesn’t make sense. Who else might he have confided in?”

Barbara patted Silvia’s shoulder and withdrew her hand, which Silvia had held all this time.

“Maybe he thought it would be dangerous for you,” she said, “if he told you about whatever was going on.”

The tears in Silvia’s eyes spilled over and tracked furrows down her cheeks.

“You are right,” she said. Her voice cracked on the words. “He must have wanted to protect me.”

“Who else was he close to?”

“His cousins. There are many in the family. They all played together as children— everybody lived in the neighborhood. Now the younger generation is scattered. They make pizza in New Jersey, they work for big law firms in the city. There were friends, too, since childhood. Now they all have wives and children of their own. I knew them all. They came to Frankie and Netta’s wedding.” Her voice went dull with despair. “I see them all again at Frankie’s funeral.” She added, “I look at them and hate them for being alive. I am a terrible old woman.”

“Oh, no!” Barbara cried. “Any mother would feel that way.”

Silvia looked at her with a spark of interest.

“You think so?” Her eyes slipped from Barbara to me. “Do you have children?” She meant the pair of us. We both sputtered, flustered. I recovered first.

“Not yet,” I said. “But we can pray.” I told the truth. I said the Serenity Prayer every time I went to a meeting.

“Which of them was Frankie closest to?” Barbara asked. “If we can find one he confided in, we might be able to understand how it happened.”

“That would ease my heart,” Silvia said. “It is torn out and eaten by dogs. I can never be whole again. But knowing might bring me a little peace. What a terrible world, where mothers have to know so much.”

“We’d be glad to help,” Barbara said. Silvia didn’t know how true that was. “Can you suggest someone we might talk to?”

Silvia thought it over.

“He would not have told a man,” she said finally. “If it was a matter of a fight, yes. Defending himself, he would call on his
amici
. But we do not know what it was, this thing that got him— finished him.” She couldn’t say “got him killed.” I could understand that. “If there was nothing he could do— if there was something he was ashamed of— he would tell a woman.”

“Netta?” Barbara asked.

“Not Netta.” She sounded sure. “Netta was the mother of his children. He would protect her. Especially now, with a new little one on the way.”

To me, the logical next on the list would be his girlfriend. I wondered if Silvia knew about Luz the way she knew about the drugs. But if she did, she didn’t say so. And if Luz knew anything, she would have told us.

“There is his cousin Carola. As children, they did everything together. They always whispered secrets. Oh, Netta was there too, but Frankie and Carola were older. She tagged after them. Sometimes they let her play, sometimes they chased her away. Only later, when Netta was a beautiful young woman, did Frankie court her.”

“And Carola?” I asked.

“We used to joke that they would marry some day,” Silvia said with a reminiscent smile. “This would be when they were very small, you understand, no more than six or seven. Frankie adored her. If older boys threatened or bullied her, Frankie would clench his little fists and square up to them, even if they were twice his size. Once he gave a big boy of twelve, a neighbor, not a cousin, a nosebleed by butting him with his head.”

Barbara dug her nails into my arm. I wished she wouldn’t do that. I got the point— that in Frankie’s world, even his mother thought it was okay if he got violent, as long as he could justify it. The road from there to “I only hit my woman when she makes me mad” was paved with bloody noses.

“What happened to Carola?” I asked.

“She was Netta’s maid of honor,” Silvia said, “and almost as beautiful as the bride. But soon after that, she moved away. She got a little apartment in the city, in Greenwich Village, and began to study painting. Frankie took me and Massimo to see her paintings once, in a gallery. It was crowded with people not from Brooklyn, all dressed in black and sipping white wine so bad that we would have thrown it down the sink.”

“Did you like the paintings?” Barbara asked.

“They were colorful,” Silvia said. “I like a painting that tells a story of nice people— a family, the Virgin with her child.”

“And Frankie kept up with her?” I asked.

“I am not sure,” Silvia said. “Lately he said no more about her. But if he had a secret, he might have gone to her. Everyone else— they are all here in Brooklyn, they gossip like noisy sparrows, even the men. If you tell one, all the others soon know. But Carola— she has gone her own way.”

“Carola’s last name?” Barbara asked. “I wonder if we might have seen her paintings.”

Any moment, I thought, Silvia would come to herself and the information would dry up. But she remained docile, like a person in a trance.

“If you live in Manhattan, maybe you have,” she said. “She calls herself Bugatti. At least she married an Italian.” Her lips pinched together. “She got divorced not even a year later, but she kept his name.”

“Would we have seen her at the funeral?” I asked.

“She didn’t come.” Silvia shook her head with a dragging motion, as if it was too heavy to hold all the way up. “I don’t know why. She sent beautiful flowers.”

I felt a drop of water on my face, then another. It had begun to rain. Silvia still knelt on the ground. She wasn’t young and supple. Her knees must be locked into place by now.

“Can we help you up?” I asked, reaching for her elbow. “You don’t want to stay here getting wet.”

She shook her head.

“Where would I go? My son no longer feels the rain. I will keep him company a while longer. You are a nice young couple, kind to talk to an old woman with a broken heart. But now you should go away.”

We left her kneeling in the rain.

I came into the coffee shop just in time to hear Luz say to Barbara, “I don’t understand why you go everywhere with Bruce, like he’s what my aunts would call a
novio.
What about Jimmy? Doesn’t he mind? Why doesn’t he come along?”

“Jimmy’s like some fancy wines— he doesn’t travel well. Cross a guy who thinks research is better than chocolate ice cream with a computer nerd, and you get the perfect armchair detective.”

“He came to— to Brooklyn,” Luz objected.

“A miracle,” Barbara said. “We all needed support— I went to support you, Jimmy came along to support me.” I could see the sly smile through the back of her head as she added, “I would say Bruce went to support Jimmy, but I have a hunch he really came for you.”

“That is ridiculous,” Luz said with what I’d call appropriate dignity. “And you still haven’t explained why it is okay for you and Bruce to run around two by two, like—”

“Like animals in the Ark,” I supplied. They both looked around, startled. I pulled out a chair, swung it around so I could straddle it backwards, and threw a leg across it. “That’s how detectives work, Luz. I’m Holmes, she’s Watson.”

“Like hell you are!” Barbara said. “I’m Holmes, you’re Watson.”

“Watson is the dim one,” I explained to Luz. “You can draw your own conclusions.”

Barbara hastened to change the subject.

“I’ve got Carola Bugatti’s address. She lives in Park Slope— nice neighborhood.”

“Didn’t Silvia say she lived in the Village?” I asked.

“She did. I guess Carola moved back to Brooklyn.”