Authors: Bill Loehfelm
Fresh Kills (5 page)
After she tidied her makeup in the bathroom, Julia joined me on the couch, sitting close beside me, and we watched the Mets fall further behind.
“Has Jimmy called back?” she asked.
“Jimmy who?”
“McGrath,” she said. “I called him when I got in.”
“Jeez, what’d you do that for?” I asked.
“Because I knew you wouldn’t,” she said. “Just like when Virginia dumped you. For Christ’s sake, your father just died and Jimmy’s your closest friend.”
I sank back into the couch. “Jimmy and I don’t talk so much anymore.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Julia said, shaking her head. “What happened? What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “Nothing happened. Just life, you know?”
“Call him in the morning,” she said. She stared at me, waiting for a promise to do what she said. She’d have a long wait.
“Can we talk about something else?” I asked.
“Actually, we do need to talk about the arrangements for Dad,” she said. “The wake, the funeral Mass, all that.”
“The hell we do,” I said. Me and my big mouth. She so set me up for this.
Julia chuckled like she knew exactly what I was thinking. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said, “but things have already started. I called Scalia’s and arranged for them to receive and prepare the body. They even agreed to handle the insurance for us. I didn’t want to make any of the formal, final arrangements without talking to you.”
“About what?” I said. “I’m not interested in formal arrangements. How much of a bribe would it take for the coroners to take him right to the Dump?”
Julia crossed her arms and sank back in the couch. “That’s disgusting,” she said. “And it’s rude. A lot of people from the Towers were laid to rest at Fresh Kills. It’s where they found Eddie Francis. That, at least, should matter to you.”
“You’re right about the Dump,” I said. “It’s better company than the old man deserves.”
Julia snatched up the remote and muted the game. “Enough. There’s going to be a wake, and there’s going to be a decent funeral. Like in a normal goddamn family.”
I turned to face her. “That’s what you wanna do? Fine. You wanna try and make some pretty pictures out of this mess? Fine. But don’t expect me to participate in it.”
“This isn’t about pretty pictures. It’s about doing the right thing.”
“You spent years trying to do the right thing by him,” I said. “What’d it get you?”
“This is about more than him,” Julia said. “It’s about Mom. It’s about us. Give me one good reason you can’t take a week out of your oh-so-exciting life and do the right thing by your family.”
“I don’t want to,” I said. “That’s reason enough. The best thing you could do for
us
is leave
me
out of it. What’s the point? All right, you’ll be there alone if I don’t go, but other than that, why should I go? It’s bullshit. Everyone knows how he and I felt about each other. It’d be a joke.”
us
is leave
me
out of it. What’s the point? All right, you’ll be there alone if I don’t go, but other than that, why should I go? It’s bullshit. Everyone knows how he and I felt about each other. It’d be a joke.”
“There will be other people there,” she said. “I want
you
there. That’s not a good enough reason to go?”
you
there. That’s not a good enough reason to go?”
“Don’t do it, Julia. Don’t make me choose between how much I love you and how much I hate him. It wrecks my head. I’m getting a headache already.”
I got up to get another beer. I brought one for my sister, pouring it into a glass first. She drank it just like Mom did.
“You tell me to ignore how I feel about Mom,” Julia said, turning to me as I sat beside her. She sipped her beer and set it on the coffee table in front of her. “Why don’t you do the same with Dad? You got your wish. He’s dead.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her. “First of all, I didn’t get my wish. He didn’t suffer extensively before he died. So, while I’m satisfied, I’m not happy. There’s a difference. Second, can you forget how you feel about Mom? It hasn’t stopped affecting your decisions. It’s the whole reason you’re here. I still hate the old man and I will make my decisions accordingly.”
Julia’s eyes got very deep and she patted my knee. “You can’t know how unhappy it makes me to hear you say that.” She turned her head to the TV. “Delgado just homered. They’re only down by one now.”
“They scored?” I stood and pointed to the TV. “See? See how the old man ruins my life? First time in weeks I get to see a goddamn Met game in peace and quiet and I miss the big hit because we’re talking about him.”
Julia grabbed a belt loop on my jeans and pulled me back onto the couch. She smacked me across the back of the head.
“Gimme a break,” she mumbled. “Not everything bad in your life is his fault.”
“He’s haunting me already,” I said. “Look, there he is. Sitting on the Braves’ bench, in uniform. The betrayal never ends.”
She rubbed my back and laughed, nodding toward the TV. “I don’t pay attention to this silliness. I’m only in front of the TV because it’s fun to watch you watch the game.”
I screamed at the ump when he called an obvious ball four a third strike on David Wright to end the inning. “There is no justice in this world,” I said. “The whole league is in conspiracy against me and my boys.”
“Junior, you have the strangest set of loyalties I’ve ever encountered in another human being. All this emotion over millionaire strangers who probably wouldn’t let you clean their spikes and yet you won’t even call Jimmy about Dad.”
I just rolled my eyes. This was an old conversation. At least as old as the Mets’ enduring habit of getting torched by the Braves. I watched the Mets’ second baseman fumble a ground ball, blowing a golden shot at a double play. Now, instead of the inning being over, it was first and third with the clean-up hitter at the plate. Get one back, give up two; that was how my boys did against Atlanta.
“I’m counting on your loyalty this week,” Julia said.
“I thought we’d settled that,” I said. I eyed the remote, wondering if I should grab it before she got the chance.
“I need you there,” Julia said, “and I think you need to be there.”
“Maybe you’re right. I wanna see him put in the ground myself. Just to be sure this isn’t some sick joke he’s playing on us.”
Julia went a little pale and reached for her beer. “It’s going to be a closed casket,” she said. “Remember?”
She stared at the television, at the commercials playing between innings, lost in thought. I sat there beside her, staring at my palms, embarrassed for the cruel jokes I’d made. I could feel the angry heat radiating off her skin.
Waiting for her to cool down, I wondered how the Mets had gotten out of the inning, if there’d been any further damage before the third out, and about what Waters had told me. Were there things he wasn’t telling me? He’d been a cop forever; he must’ve had more gruesome conversations than ours. Yet he’d seemed unnerved by it. They’d found the murder weapon, but Waters still said there wasn’t much that was useful at the scene. I wasn’t a cop, but I knew there were all kinds of things a gun could reveal. What could be more useful to a murder investigation than the murder weapon? Why did I care?
I tried to think of something else, something useful and kind to say to Julia. She was as stubborn a person as I knew, and, despiteher comments about needing me there, if she wanted services, they were going to happen, with or without me. She would do it all herself if she had to. She had so far and was already maybe keeping score against me for leaving her alone with it. I took a deep breath.
“What do you need from me?” I asked.
“First, I want you to take me to the Mall tomorrow,” she said. “I need clothes for this. The wake, the Mass.”
“The Mall,” I groaned. “You’re a painter and you’re short on black clothes? I hate the fucking Mall. It’s everything . . .”
Julia silenced me with a glare. “You’re coming with me. I’ll buy you lunch. I can’t argue about this anymore.” She stood and headed for the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
She stopped at the foot of the stairs. “I’m exhausted. I’m going upstairs to read for a while and then I’m going to bed.”
“It’s barely six o’clock,” I said. “You need to eat something. Let me take you to the diner.”
Julia looked at me, and then up the stairs, rubbing her hand up and down the banister. “I need some time alone.”
I got up off the couch and went halfway to her. “I’m sorry I’m such a jerk. I’ll buy you a salad and we can start this conversation over.”
She shook her head, held her hand up for me not to come closer. “I want to get an early start on tomorrow. We have a lot to do.”
I returned to the couch, my beer, and the game. After a while, I realized Julia was still standing there. I ignored her for about thirty seconds. Then my skin started to itch. “What?”
“You might want to start thinking about the eulogy,” she said.
I stared at her for a long time. “You’re kidding.”
“Who else is there?” she asked. “You’re the oldest son. It’s your job.” I was speechless. Had my sister lost her mind? “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You know I’m right. We’ll talk more about it later. Maybe you can talk to Jimmy about it.” She walked up the stairs.
I stretched out on the couch, one leg thrown over the back, one foot on the floor, trying to relax into my first real moments of peace and quiet since Purvis had come to my door.
When I woke up, it was dark out and the game was in extra innings. Carlos Beltran, the Mets’ All-Star center fielder, stood on second base, clapping his hands, infield dirt staining his uniform from his knees to his number. The cameras panned the ecstatic Shea Stadium crowd. Beltran had tied the game in the bottom of the eleventh with a two-out, two-run double. I was pleased, but my knowledge of the inevitable muted my enthusiasm. I knew Beltran would be stranded at second base. He would never make it home, and the Mets would find a way to lose the game, rendering Beltran’s big hit only a pretty but meaningless highlight in what was ultimately a losing effort.
The Mets held on through the twelfth, but I couldn’t get back into the game. Instead of getting caught up in the excitement of extra innings, I found myself wishing they’d hurry up and get it over with. The commercials before the thirteenth seemed interminable. Unable to sit still, I stood and stretched. My legs and back ached from the long weekend hours behind the bar. I felt short of breath and the house suddenly seemed claustrophobic. The walls seemed too close, the ceiling too low. Though I knew Julia slept heavily, I couldn’t help feeling that my every movement disturbed her. What I needed, I decided, was to get the hell out of the house. And it didn’t much matter where I went.
I found house keys hanging on a wall rack in the kitchen. The keys dangled from a Farrell High School key ring, a maroon and gold rubber lion’s head. There were tooth marks, mine, around the edges. I slid the ring over my finger and studied the keys in my palm. I’d made a big show of leaving them behind when I moved out, one semester into my three-semester college career. I’d never had another set of keys to my parents’ house. I’d never needed them.
I slipped them into my pocket and looked around the kitchen, debating whether or not I should leave Julia a note. Just in case she woke up in the middle of the night and felt compelled to come looking for me. I didn’t want her thinking I’d broken my promise to stay with her and gone back to my apartment. I found a pen in a kitchen drawer and scrawled a quick note on a piece of paper towel. Just that I was out, but I’d be back.
When I tossed the note on the table, I noticed Julia had left one picture out, propped up against the cardboard box. A photo of my father at a banquet table, wearing a tuxedo. He raised a pitcher of beer with one hand and held a full glass in the other. Next to him, his elbow on my father’s shoulder, sat a blond guy, about my father’s age, holding up a beer glass, the bow-tie on his tux undone. I had no idea who he was. Both men were laughing like fools at something only they could see. The photo was dated four years before I was born, the year of my parents’ wedding. Something I couldn’t put my finger on convinced me I was looking at their wedding reception.
I looked at my father’s hands, searching for a wedding ring, but I couldn’t see his fingers. The beer was in the way. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t place the blond guy. And it bothered me. I did have some vague memories of my parents with other adults, or at least of adult voices floating up from downstairs while I was in bed. But I couldn’t put his face with any of the voices.
My parents did go out at night, my father pacing as my mother scrambled to feed us dinner and get herself together. I remembered Julia and me being left alone at night when we were little, sometimes until very late. I’d wait up until the headlights turned into the driveway and then I’d bolt upstairs, jump into bed, holding my breath until his voice told me his mood. Sometimes I heard only the muffled voices of my parents, barely distinguishable from each other, discussing what I figured to be all the fun they’d had out in the mysterious adult world of the night. Other times, I could hear my father yelling about something she’d done, or hadn’t done, or said, or hadn’t said. On those nights, I didn’t hear my mother’s voice at all. But for hours after the yelling was over, I could hear Julia sniffling in the room next door.
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