Authors: Bill Loehfelm
Fresh Kills (36 page)
I was an adult, at least chronologically. But by my count, I’d been seventeen for fourteen years. And the past few days had forced me to realize I was fucking tired of being seventeen years old.
FOURTEEN
I SAT NAKED ON THE END OF MY BED, FRESHLY SHOWERED AND shaved, elbows on my knees, listening to the rhythmic clicks of the dog pacing the wood floor in the apartment above me. A cigarette burned in the ashtray at my feet. I watched the smoke spiral and curl though the sunlight up toward the ceiling. The clothes I’d run through the day before, getting ready to visit Molly, lay scattered on the bedroom floor. The late afternoon sun heated my bare back. I could sit here forever, I thought. That was what I wanted. Just to sit. Never answer the phone, never answer the door. Let the mail pile up in the mailbox. Let the world turn, indefinitely, like an empty carousel, without me.
But the cigarette would burn out. The sun would go down. The dog overhead would settle in a comfortable corner somewhere and give up his pacing. These things always happened. The ball game always ended, no matter who won or lost, the bar always closed, whether I had made the rent or not, Molly always went back to David, no matter what we’d done in bed the night before. And in a couple of hours, my sister would drop one of her new black dresses over her head, pull on her heels, sling her purse over her shoulder, and walk down Richmond Avenue to Scalia’s funeral home.
All the way home I’d felt well-martyred enough to justify leaving my parents’ house. I hadn’t abandoned Julia; she had sent me away. I was just doing what she’d told me she wanted. But now, a few miles and a couple hours away from the scene of the crime, I doubted my decision. I didn’t doubt her relief at finding me gone, but I realized I’d simply repeated myself. I’d walked away and left her alone with everything.
I thought of her, preparing to spend the evening with our dead father, memories of our dead mother, and a smattering of play-acting strangers. Preparing to spend the evening alone, again. It seemed too much to ask of her, no matter what she said she wanted. It sure as hell wasn’t something I’d want to do. I wiggled my toes on the floor, getting restless again already. Hollowed-out as I felt, I didn’t know what I had to offer Julia if I went.
I couldn’t pretend I’d forgiven our father, or that I’d even begun to understand him. I understood him, and me, and us, less than ever. In fact, I’d started to miss the man I’d leaped the bar over, whiskey bottle in hand. I missed the man who smiled drunkenly at me as I reeled into the family kitchen, a tire iron clutched in my fist. I recognized I had a sick list of father-son moments to look back on, a selection quite different from the photos in Julia’s box. But I knew the men frozen in those moments. I understood their reasons and their roles. They were the devils I knew, and losing them destroyed the only compass I had ever used. It left me with only the devil I didn’t know. Me. Now.
But Julia wasn’t asking for forgiveness or understanding, of me, of her, of our family or anyone in it. She wasn’t asking me to plan my future, to tell her who I was, or what I would be. She wasn’t asking me not to be hurt, or angry, or confused. All week, she’d really only asked one thing of me. Show up. Be there. She asked me not to be so fucking selfish. To not be so fucking scared. To be brave her way, brave with an unclenched fist.
I knew this was my last chance. The funeral would be too late. And my relationship with my sister, which I cherished and neglected with equal force, which already had been fragile for years, would fracture beyond repair. My family, which I had spent so much time and energy trying to deny and escape, would be gone. And I could never touch this bed, walk in this room, look in any mirror, without knowing I was the one who killed it. There’d be no yellow tape and there would never be an investigation; there wasn’t a single witness. But none of that would matter. I would know.
And that might be enough to kill me.
Sitting there on the bed, my thoughts horrified me more than any I’d had about my father coming back from the dead, more than any memory I had of him. I looked up at the ceiling. The dog steps over my head had stopped. I looked down at my feet. My smoke had burned out. I thought again of the empty carousel, only this time it was still, dark, and abandoned. Like that, it wasn’t a carousel at all. It was just another piece of junk.
I stood and picked up something off the floor to wear. It didn’t matter what; I wasn’t headed to the funeral home just yet. First, I had to stop at the Mall and buy a new suit.
half an hour early, Julia was the only one there. She knelt before the casket, her head bowed. At either end of the casket sat a few modest pots of flowers, roses, lilies, and forsythia, my mother’s favorites, on tall wire stands. Underneath the flowers, bunches of shamrocks spilled out of their pots. Behind the casket exploded an enormous monstrosity of color. My father’s company had to be responsible for that. It was certainly nothing my mother or my sister, never mind my father, would produce.
I imagined some guy at an overflowing desk, calling a florist with an order number he knew by heart, then hanging up and unwrapping a sandwich. These were the same people who’d given my father a tie tack for his thirty-year anniversary with the company. A tiny chip of emerald at the center of a New York City manhole cover. At the time I’d been deeply offended on my father’s behalf. He’d been thrilled. He’d kept his tie on all the way home from work for two weeks.
I walked halfway up the aisle, then sat waiting for Julia to finish her prayers. Even with her back to me, she looked lovely, her blond hair at rest against her back, her shoulders straight and strong. After a few minutes, she pushed herself up with a sigh and turned. It took her a few steps before she recognized me. Her eyes popped open wide and she slowly laced her fingers together over her stomach. She stopped, and stood there, waiting for me to come to her. When I got up and walked toward her, she smiled.
We held each other for a long time, her cheek pressed against mine, one hand spread open between my shoulders, the other on the back of my head.
Thank you
, she whispered. I told her she was welcome before I let her go. She grabbed my elbows and stepped back from me, looking me up and down. She took another step back and crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow at me.
Thank you
, she whispered. I told her she was welcome before I let her go. She grabbed my elbows and stepped back from me, looking me up and down. She took another step back and crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow at me.
“You’re in a suit and you’re early,” she said. “Who are you and what’d you do with my brother?”
“You know how Dad used to hit the ceiling if we were late.” I straightened my jacket. “I didn’t want to cause any more trouble than I already have.”
Julia took my hand. “Apology accepted.”
We sat, Julia still holding my hand. “So,” she said.
“So,” I replied. “Here we are.”
We sat in silence for several minutes. Eventually, Julia released my hand and nodded at the front of the room. “You have anything to say to him?”
The question was a bit overwhelming. Anything to say? Everything. Nothing. I figured our plan for me to give the eulogy was still in effect. “No. Not now. Tomorrow.” I turned to her. “If it’s all right with you, I think I’d like to just sit here for a while and be quiet.”
She touched my face. “That’d be fine. As long as you’d like.”
So we sat there. Me, Julia, our father, and somewhere in the air with us, in the roses and lilies, in Julia’s hair, in her profile, in her breathing, was our mother. None of us spoke a word.
In the hall behind us, other mourners from other rooms shuffled past. I heard the pause in their footsteps as they stopped in the doorway. I wondered what they thought about the two of us sitting there in the otherwise empty room. The room hardly seemed empty to me. It felt, in fact, way too small to hold the four of us.
Joe Sr. came in to check on us, to ask if everything was in order. It was, we told him. The flowers? Excellent. The good father was on his way. We were in no hurry, we said. The room was comfortable? It was. He set his hand on my shoulder. There were ashtrays in the courtyard, he said. I should feel free to make use of them. I said I would. Very good, he said and he vanished. I leaned back in the seat and crossed my legs. I started to say something, thought better of it, and stopped.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Forget it.”
“Oh, go ahead,” Julia said. “Say it.”
“Well, you think anyone else will show up?”
Julia patted my knee. “Sure they will. It’s early yet. Not that I care. It’s enough that you’re here. That’s what I really wanted.”
people did show up. A few men from the office, none of whom seemed to have known my father very well. They had little to say after introducing themselves, and they huddled around the water cooler in the corner. A few of the neighbors came. They introduced themselves, as well; I had never met a single one of them in my life. They’d all come to the block after I moved out. They had the decency not to ask what we planned to do with the house. Two of Julia’s friends from school arrived, a tall, willowy brunette and a short, stumpy redhead.
Mr. Fontana waddled in, his wife by his side. I was happy to see him. His wife, a surprisingly attractive woman with long silver hair, wept copiously and nearly squeezed the breath out of me. She would cook for us tomorrow, we’d be home? I told her we would. I knew we’d eat for days. She couldn’t keep her hands off Julia, hugging her, grabbing her hands. Julia seemed to love it. While they chatted, Fontana merely hugged me quick, kissing me on both cheeks. He suggested we duck outside for a smoke. I loved the idea, I told him. I offered him my arm and walked him outside.
After we lit up in the courtyard, I thought, this is the moment I’d been dreading. Now the stories would come, about my father, about what a great man he was, about how much he’d be missed. And I’d have to hold my breath and my tongue. Just clench my teeth and bear it. But Fontana said nothing at all. He just stood there and smoked, content, his eyes roving over the plants in the courtyard. Whatever he was thinking, he didn’t seem inclined to share it and that was fine with me.
When I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray, he did the same with his cigar. He patted my shoulder before he took my arm again.
“You’re a good man,” he said.
I nodded and led him inside.
As I eased Fontana down next to his teary-eyed wife, I noticed another group had arrived. Three large men, enormous really, all shoulders and bellies, about my father’s age, stood at one end of the casket. There was an entirely different air to them than the other furtive groups huddled around the room. They didn’t seem to care how much space they took up. They laughed, and didn’t care that their laughter echoed around the room and into the hall, if they were even aware of it. They didn’t whisper. They kept hitting one another.
I cast a quizzical glance at Julia, who was across the room with her friends. She caught the question and was on her way to me when the priest walked into the room. Even the big guys went quiet and sat down. Right in the front row, across the aisle from Julia and me. They bowed their heads and folded their hands immediately, as if loath to have been caught doing anything else, though the priest had yet to even reach the front of the room.
The good father went first to Joe Sr., who shook his hand and pointed out my sister and me, alone in the front row. The priest came to us, bending to kiss my sister’s cheek, shaking my hand, introducing himself as Father McDonald.
He asked us to bow our heads and he rested a soft hand on each of us, imploring the Lord to look after our young souls in our time of grief and sadness, and reminding us that though we had lost our father and mother in this life, we were still His children.Our parents would be waiting for us with open arms in the Afterlife, he said. I wondered if I would have to take an elevator or the stairs from Heaven to Hell and back again. I pictured my father and the Devil. My father complaining of the heat and Lucifer wondering if God had outsmarted him again by burdening him with this trying soul from Staten Island. My sister must have noticed my grin because she bumped her knee hard against mine.
After the Amen, Father McDonald lifted his hands and went to the front of the room. I watched him as he thumbed through a Bible full of bookmarks. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Jimmy and Rose taking the seats right behind me and Julia. Rose blew me a kiss, smiled at me, her eyes sad. I twisted in my seat and shook Jimmy’s hand. He held on for a while after I was ready to let go.
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