Every Single Second (20 page)

“What’s that? What do you see? Say
carrot
. What’s that? Say
bunny
.”

Did Vinny know he couldn’t talk? Or did he think he was actually making sense? His baby brow furrowed as he stared at the page. What if something really was wrong with his brain? What if he didn’t grow out of this but was always behind, the kid who was not quite right? She tightened her arm around him.

“Fish,” she insisted. “Say
fish
!”

Salvatore sat beside them. “Eel,” he told Vinny. “Say electric eel.” Suddenly, he sat back. He looked stricken. “Anthony’s going to fry in the electric chair.”

“What? Who said that?”

“People.”

“Don’t listen to people.” How many times had Mom told her that? Always it made Nella angry, because how could you help listening? Now some mash-up of her mother and Sister Rosa sprang from her own lips. “People will say anything. It doesn’t have to be true or even make sense. You know about sticks and stones, right? Sal, listen.” When Nella looped her other arm around him, he actually let her. But then she couldn’t think of anything more to say.

NELLA’S TURN NOT TO TELL

now

T
he sidewalk tables were empty. No one was buying lemon ice in Terraci’s. The souvenir shop had a
HALF PRICE SALE
sign in the window. The lights were on at the bocce court, but no one was playing. The landslide had swept through and left a ghost town.

A small scissors snipped at Nella’s heart. She’d hoped Sam would call her. Or maybe even come over. Probably she wasn’t a good enough kisser. Probably after they said good-bye he smacked his forehead and wondered what he was thinking, kissing a girl with size-ten shoes and a thing for hedgehogs. Snip snip, went the scissors. Hearts really did have strings.

Nella should have been feeding Mr. T, but instead she lingered in the shadows of the bocce court. Overhead, a plastic bag crinkled in the branches of a tree.

Across the street, a girl was climbing the hill. A girl with a hat pulled low, despite the heat. Head down, she walked quickly.

Angela.

The cemetery gates got locked at five thirty, but every neighborhood kid knew how to sneak in. Nella had never tried it, out of loyalty to Dad, whose job was to clean up the empty beer cans and replace the yanked-out flowers. She followed Angela past the gates to a spot where the wall curved and at last became low enough to climb. Angela scrambled over. Nella hung back, watching. This was the wildest part of the cemetery, the closest it came to untamed. Angela hesitated a moment, getting her bearings, then set off down the slope. Nella scrambled to follow.

Along a faint footpath, up a shallow rise. Night was closing in, and Nella followed the golden gleam of hair poking out beneath the hat. Fireflies winked and something small scurried through the undergrowth. If Nella had believed in ghosts, she’d be scared by now.

It wasn’t long before she knew where Angela was going.

Another curve in the path, and there, there she was.
Marie, reaching for the unreachable. It had been forever since the two of them brought her presents and wished she would speak to them. A twig crunched beneath Nella’s foot, and Angela spun around. For a moment, her face lit up with happiness.

But then she yanked off the knit hat, and her hair spilled over her shoulders in a wavy tangle. So much hair, golden and shiny, a princess’s hair. It should be beautiful—it was beautiful—but it was all wrong. Her braids! Where were Angela’s neat braids?

“I told you to leave me alone!”

Nella gripped the back of the curved stone bench. She could feel the day’s warmth still trapped inside.

“Promise not to tell anyone you saw me here,” Angela said then.

“But why?”

“Just promise!”

“Okay.”

How many times had they promised each other things? Big things, little things, important or silly things. They used to confide every secret, good and bad. The dusk nibbled away at Angela. Her hair was like this part of the cemetery—wild, uncared for. Lonesome. Lonesome hair.

“Since you were dumb enough to follow me”—Angela stuffed the hat in her pocket. Her hands clasped and
unclasped, like they were having a fight—“I’ll tell you. I did go see Anthony. We talked through a glass thing. I wasn’t allowed to touch him.”

“That’s so mean.”

Angela chewed her lip.

“How is he? Sorry, talk about dumb! He must be terrible.”

“He told me what happened that night.”

Did Nella want to hear this? She didn’t know.

“He said . . . he said the baby was crying so loud. It filled up his ears. It filled up the whole world.” Angela’s hands grew still. “When I was little, he always came when I cried. Papa would be gone and she wouldn’t pay attention, but Anthony . . . he was always right there. He’s still that way. I hate to cry in front of him, because he gets so upset.”

Nella gripped the back of the bench.

“He heard the baby crying and Mrs. Manzini screaming and . . . and he lost it. He said it was like somebody else took over, and all he could think was he had to save them. He heard Papa’s voice telling him he wasn’t a man and . . .” Angela looked into Nella’s eyes. “He wouldn’t tell me where he got the gun. He said don’t worry, it would be all right.”

He always said that.

“My father wouldn’t talk to Anthony. He waited outside in the car.”

“He should have! Anthony needs him.”

Angela gave a small, startling snort.

“Do you know what paranoid is?”

“Umm . . . scared?”

“Times a million. It’s being scared of things you can’t see.”

“You mean . . . like hell?”

“Worse.”

“Worse than hell?”

Angela began picking pebbles off the back of the bench. The pebbles Nella had set there one by one over the years.

“My father talks to people who aren’t there. Ghosts or demons.” One by one, she dropped the pebbles into her palm. “Since they put Anthony in jail . . . I don’t know if Papa ever sleeps.”

“Ghosts?”

“He can’t stop thinking about the people he saw die.” She was dropping the pebbles faster now. Some missed and hit the ground. “It all comes back over him, and it’s like he’s right there again. He sees and hears and smells everything, even the blood gurgling in his buddy’s throat.”

A memory engulfed Nella: lying in their sleeping bags on Nella’s bedroom floor. Angela whispering,
My father killed people. He watched his best friend die
. A terrible taste flooding her mouth. Pulling her own sleeping bag tight around her, so that no part of her touched Angela.

Time spun. It twisted and collapsed into a thin, transparent disk.

“He’s been dead five years, and my father still hears that sound.”

The gathering darkness smudged the edges of things. It softened Marie’s face, so it looked like the stone was giving way, like she was turning real. Nella pressed her feet flat against the ground. There were no such things as ghosts.

“He can’t stop wondering why he got to live and those others didn’t.”

Marie moved her hand. No she didn’t! Nella shrank back against the bench.

Her father had a ghost too.

“He’s trapped, so he keeps going around and around. He can’t go backward to change what happened, and he can’t go forward to forget it, so he’s stuck. Stuck in the same time, forever. Just like Sister says hell is.”

Angela closed her fist over the pebbles. She took a step back.

“Since Anthony went to jail, he’s worse. Anthony could talk him down, but now . . .”

With her fist, Angela pushed the hair away from her face, and that was when Nella realized: Anthony was the one who did her braids. She never could have done them
so neatly by herself. After their mother left, he must’ve taken over. No wonder Angela had always worn braids, even though she knew they were dorky. Nella could see Anthony’s quick, sure fingers spinning gold. She could feel them brush her own cheek.

“Anthony meant to do the right thing,” she said.

Angela rattled the pebbles like dice.

“It’s too late to talk about that.”

Too late.
Those were the ugliest words. The cruelest words. Time’s worst trick of all.

“My father hid his gun. It’s not in the case where he always kept it.”

The breath went out of Nella.

“I asked him where it was and he said never mind.”

This was too big. This was too much.

“You can’t stay there. What if he . . . Call your aunt in Pittsburgh! Make her come get you.”

Just like that, Angela hurled the pebbles. They hit Nella’s cheeks and forehead, stinging.
Bullets,
Nella thought. Stumbling, she bumped against Marie.

“How can you say that?” Angela cried. “You think I’d leave Anthony? He took care of me and watched out for me my whole life. He loves me more than anybody. He loved me when nobody else did.”

“But . . . your father doesn’t know what he’s doing. You
said so yourself—he doesn’t always know where he is. He could hurt you!”

“He won’t.”

“How do you know?”

Angela was one of the fierce warrior angels, the ones who grasped shining swords.

“You can’t tell anyone. If you do, they might put my father in the hospital or who knows what, and then where will I go? If they make me go someplace else, who will Anthony have? Who’ll be here for him then?”

“But . . .” This wasn’t right. Nella knew it.

“I can’t leave Anthony. If anybody knows that, it’s you.” She stepped closer. “You followed me. You made me tell you. Now you have to keep it secret.”

How could Nella do that?

“You owe me. You know you do.”

“All right,” whispered Nella.

Angela grabbed Nella’s hand. Nella thought she’d make her pinkie swear, but instead she curled it around Marie’s hand, then covered it with her own.

“Swear on Marie.”

“I swear.”

Angela turned and ran.

What did Nella just do? Did she stick by her secret sister, or betray her more deeply than ever before?

What the Statue of Jeptha A. Stone Would Say if Only, if Only It Could

B
lame it on my foolish bird. Her bright wings. Her happy, jumbled song. The way she flies, as if the air were liquid and she a rolling vessel, steering home. To me.

Tonight, a child leaned against me and wept. I recognized her, from an autumn afternoon years ago.

My stone heart stirred.

Ow.

Hark unto me, Jeptha A. Stone: Coming to life is painful.

How I yearned to speak to her! What I would have given to say one word of comfort. To tell her she was not alone.

You mortals who still draw breath. You who can yet speak. Do you have any idea what power you possess?

Instead, I had to watch her walk away in the dark. My heart ached with fear.

Yet appearances often deceive. Perhaps she is stronger than she looks.

I, Jeptha A. Stone, pray it is so.

MI RICORDO

now

N
ella got up early the next day, but Dad was already on the porch, drinking coffee. The sun still hadn’t reached the top of the cemetery wall, and the moss at the base looked like black velvet. A yellow-flecked bird rode the breeze like an invisible roller coaster.

People in some religions, Nella knew, believed in reincarnation, where a spirit slipped free from a dying creature to live in a new one. She of course believed in an immortal soul that went to heaven or hell. But watching the bird disappear over the cemetery wall, for a moment she let herself pretend it was the spirit of someone buried there, set free to fly in the blue summer air.

“You’re up early,” Dad said.

“I had bad dreams.”

“You and me both. Want to tell?”

She shook her head.

“Me either.” He drained his mug and stood up. “It’s going to be another scorcher. We’re using so much water this summer, we . . .” He stopped, looking at her. “What?”

“Nothing. I mean. Dad? Do you believe in fate? Or do you think we get to choose how our lives turn out?”

Dad whistled under his breath. Just that second, the sun glided up over the stone wall. He squinted, like he was trying to see the answer, and now Nella was embarrassed.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s just another one of my dumb questions.”

“Just because I don’t know the answer doesn’t mean it’s dumb. It probably means the opposite.”

She watched him walk down the street. The secret Angela made her swear to—it beat up inside her, struggling to get out. Nella could feel its beak, its claws, its panicky wings. How could she keep it trapped in there? It was tearing away, desperate to get out.

Dad walked with his head down. Secrets. You thought you were keeping them, but maybe they were keeping you.

He was almost to the corner when Nella realized he’d forgotten his lunch. She grabbed it out of the
refrigerator—Mom always made it for him the night before—and dashed after him.

“It’s so frustrating.” The nursing aide acted as if Nonni was deaf. Or even more insulting, as if she couldn’t comprehend. “She won’t do her therapy. Not physical, not occupational, not speech.” The aide counted off Nonni’s sins on her fingers, then heaved a dramatic, put-upon sigh. “There’s only so much we can do with a patient who won’t cooperate.”

When the aide turned her back, Nella pressed her hand, thumb tucked in, against her nose. The sign for
drop dead
. The corner of Nonni’s mouth quirked up. A glimpse of old, awful Nonni! Nella got excited.

“I won’t tell Dad what a bad report you got,” she promised her great-grandmother.

Nonni put a finger to her lips. “No Daaaa.”

Nella almost told her,
Dad, say Dad,
the way she did with Vinny.

Nonni plucked at her blanket’s loose threads. Nella was not supposed to upset her. But she was suddenly sick to death of bland small talk.

“Dad told me about how you visited him every Sunday while he was in jail,” she blurted out. “Did you have to talk through glass?”