The Broken Ones (12 page)

The old man was holding open the oily flap of a tent. “Foolproof it is, sir. S’not cheap, mind.”

Oscar shook his head. “Nothing worthwhile is. Wrapping paper?”

The old man wrinkled his nose at the lost sale. “Try Mother Mim.” He gestured farther along.

Three stalls up, Oscar found a late-middle-aged woman, trim and healthy-looking in jeans, white shirt, and sunglasses. In a glance, he took in her wares laid on purple silk: hand mirrors; a manicure set; a collection of highlighting pens; a framed Maxfield Parrish print; rolls of sticky tape and an old green stapler; jars of homemade jam; small fired-clay totems: dolphins, zodiac figurines, the double face of Janus; a fish tank empty of water but holding sawdust, a twisted length of branch, and a dozen small brown skinks. At one end of her bench was a little brass tripod—from its apex swung a little chain with a crow’s beak at the end, and beneath the beak was a metal plate engraved with a twelve-pointed star and symbols at each ray that Oscar didn’t recognize. The woman turned to him.

“What can I do for you?”

“Mother Mim?” he asked.

“I am.” The woman had a friendly voice. “Why the hat? It’s not sunny.”

“It’s good for rain, too,” he replied. “Why the sunglasses?”

“Same deal. Something in particular?”

“Cellophane, if you have it, or wrapping paper. The old bloke three doors up said you might have some.”

Mother Mim bent beneath the counter and straightened holding a box. She reached in and produced a folded square of faded red cellophane. Oscar lifted it. Its corner was torn, it had a hole in the center, and was patched with tape.

“This is garbage.”

“It’s slightly used,” she admitted.

“It’s holier than the pope, look at it.”

She leaned forward and pulled off her sunglasses. Oscar flinched. Her lids hung slack, like drapes over dark windows—there were no eyes in her sockets, and he could glimpse the purpled flesh that lined her orbits.

“Well, aren’t we particular,” she said, taking back the cellophane and rustling in the box.

“How did you know I wear a hat?” Oscar asked.

The woman smiled. “Same way I know there’s leather under your left armpit. I can hear it.” Her clever fingers searched in the box. “I pulled them out myself, in case you’re wondering.” She laughed. “I know, what an idiot. But I was just seeing a bit too much of my ex-husband. Still, quite a good outcome. Now I don’t see him, but I see other things.” On the counter she placed another square of clear, virgin cellophane and dropped onto it a length of satin ribbon. “Three dollars.”

“No way.”

She shrugged and lifted the cellophane away.

“Wait.” He placed a length of three unopened condoms on the bench. She felt them and smiled coyly.

“An offer?”

“A trade.”

“A shame.”

She had a nice smile. She vanished the condoms and pushed the cellophane and ribbon toward Oscar. As he reached for them, she took his wrist. “Now. Read your fortune?”

“I can’t afford it.”

She didn’t let him go. “A free taste. A thank-you for an easy transaction.”

The blind woman’s grip was surprisingly strong. She ran a cool, dry fingertip across his palm. After a moment, she frowned and released his wrist.

“Well?” he asked.

“I’d lose the hat,” she suggested.

Oscar picked up his cellophane and ribbon. “Why?”

The woman replaced her sunglasses over the empty sockets. “You need to watch the skies.”

Under rain, the cemetery was all cold grays and dark greens. Rainwater trickled down Oscar’s back and drops dripped heavily from the brim of his hat; warm water ran up his sleeves. He heard snatches of clattering, like the chatter of mechanical teeth, and could smell cut grass, soapy water, and damp soil.

The clattering stopped suddenly and was replaced by
slide-clunk, slide-clunk
.

“
Stu cazzo!
”

Oscar peered over the headstone he was washing. Alessandro Mariani was drenched. His gray hair was plastered down on his clean-shaved, wan cheeks; his arthritic knuckles looked like a row of cicada husks. He was grimly shoving at the hand mower. Oscar had tried to dissuade his father from coming out here when it was raining, but Sandro was implacable. Worse, the old man stubbornly refused to let Oscar do the mowing, insisting that his son perform the less masculine tasks of washing the grave and changing the flowers.

Sandro Mariani gave the mower another frustrated yank, and his face opened up in a surprised flare of pain. “
Pezzo di merda
.”

Oscar squeezed out the sponge, pulled himself wearily up on the black marble. After nearly five years, this fortnightly ritual had gotten no easier. If anything, it had gotten worse. Vedetta had been the leavening influence in their small family; after she succumbed to breast cancer, there was nothing to warm the cool space between father and son.

“Dad. There’s grass caught in it.”

Sandro either didn’t hear or ignored him. “
Sta migna
.” He attacked the handle of the mower, shaking it harder and harder with every word:
“Inutile. Iarrusu. Piseddu.”

Oscar exhaled through his teeth and walked over.

“Dad! There’s a chunk of grass, here in the—”

Oscar reached for the mower, and Sandro, like a child whose toy is in peril, tried to snatch it away. Another electric jolt of pain grounded on his wrinkled face. “Leave it!” Sandro snapped. “I’ve got it.”

“It’s jammed!” Oscar said, and knelt. More cold rain ran down his back. “Just don’t fucking push it while my fingers are in it, okay?”

Sandro was an unhappy passenger attached to the machine. “Don’t swear here.”

“You were swearing.”

Oscar pulled at a thick knot of lush green paspalum lodged between
the curved blade and the fixed edge. The thought of it biting into his fingers reminded him of the huge auger blade in the sewage plant. Christ, who could throw a child into that, dead or alive?

“Well?” Sandro said. “Hurry up. You want to drown?”

“Sometimes.” Oscar yanked the clump free. “There.”

Sandro pushed the mower. The wheels turned and the three blades whirred. He grunted, then looked down at Oscar. “What are you sitting down for? Are you finished?”

Oscar bit his tongue and went back to his mother’s grave.

The men worked another quarter of an hour, saying nothing, until the flowers were set, the grave was washed clean of grass clippings, and Sandro Mariani had kissed his swollen fingers and touched them lightly to the polished marble. Rain pummeled the flowers. Oscar picked up the mower, weeding tools and bucket, and followed his father’s footprints back to the car.

“Where did you get these? They’re shit.”

Sandro Mariani inspected the fruit and greens Oscar had brought. Oscar stood at the kitchen bench that had changed little in thirty years, making up dough for
ossa dei morti
—“bones of the dead”—sweet biscuits. He threw a small handful of flour over the laminate worktop and pointed to lemons, basil, and spinach.

“Those there are from my garden. Those”—he nodded at apples that were more brown than red, and a pawpaw that, like Lazarus, was three days past prime but still going—“from the markets.”

“Henh,” his father said, a sound that covered a thousand shades of disappointment. “No rabbit?”

“I’m not paying for rabbit. I can shoot rabbit.”

“Anyone can shoot rabbit. The difference is between talking and doing.”

“Well, I couldn’t. I was working yesterday.” Now was the moment when a father whose son had followed him into the same trade might ask, How is work? What are you doing? Anything I can do to help? But not my father, Oscar thought. Sandro Mariani didn’t discuss police work at home. “I’ll get you rabbit next weekend.”

“For
coniglio in sugo
. So, potatoes, too.”

“I’ll try.”

Sandro rolled his eyes as if that, right there, spelled disaster. He scowled at the dough Oscar was kneading. “And what are you trying to do with that, talk it into bed? It’s not a nipple, don’t tease it.
Impastilo!
Here.” He nudged Oscar aside and drove his knurled fingers into the brown dough.

“You want to live my life, too?”

“No, thank you. A mouse in a fucking cattery has a better life than you.”

“And yours is such a treat. All your friends lining up to visit.”

Oscar went to the cupboard and got down two shot glasses, then to the pantry for the grappa. There was barely a half inch of the amber liquid.

“Where’s all the booze?”

Sandro looked up a moment, then returned to the dough. “I did some drinking on Tuesday.”

Oscar thought that if anyone had a right to develop an alcohol problem it was his father, but he’d never known Sandro to drink alone.

“What happened? Catch a glimpse of Mrs. Colless in her scanties?”

Mrs. Colless had lived next door for half a century and had looked sixty when Oscar was a boy. Sandro didn’t smile.

“Someone died,” he said.

“On Tuesday?”

Sandro pounded the dough. “Jesus, is this
Sixty Minutes
? No, he died a few weeks ago. I found out on Tuesday.”

“You must have really liked him.” Oscar sloshed the remaining ounce of grappa. “Or her.”

“Him,” Sandro said, and his face darkened. “Hated him. I hope he burned slowly.”

Sandro flicked his eyes at his son, as if realizing that he’d said too much. Oscar watched. It was his chance now to do the asking. Who was he, Dad? What did he do to warrant drinking half a bottle to his demise? Was he a dirty cop? Someone you put behind bars? And what do you mean, burned? But a five-year silence felt too wide, too deep.… Oscar turned away and replaced the bottle in the pantry. “I’ll get you some more.”

Sandro nodded and began dividing the dough.

Oscar touched the camp oven over the gas ring. The metal was
barely warm. He followed the gas hose under the sink and tapped the bottle.

“You’re out of gas. Have you got more?”

Sandro raised his floury hands in exasperation. “What am I? Madame Tussaud?”

“That’s the wax museum, Dad.”

“Take your genius self downstairs and look.”

The basement floor was covered by an inch of tea-colored water that smelled of roots and clay.

“Dad! You’re flooded!” Oscar listened. “Dad!”

Above, the gramophone had started and he heard the faint strains of Al Martino singing “Spanish Eyes.”

Oscar sighed, took off his shoes and socks, and looked around for where to begin the rescue. He found a pile of roof tiles and set out four short stacks, then lifted the washing machine onto them, cursing his father for keeping a contraption that was useless without electricity. An old Genoa chair was already wicking dampness up its tapestry sides; he used the last two tiles and a doorstop to lift it above the water. A timber door wedge floated like a tiny boat into the bathroom in the corner. Beside the workbench were two piles of cardboard boxes: one was a neat stack of three boxes; the other was a haphazard tower that had clearly been moved from the original pile. The bottom boxes were swelling with water. Oscar began shifting them to the workbench, looking into each as he moved it. The first box contained empty preserve jars; the next held angling magazines (though Oscar couldn’t recall ever having seen his father fish) and old copies of
Reader’s Digest
dating back to the seventies—he knew without looking that the “Increase Your Word Power” vocabulary pages would all be tabbed and marked with ballpoint pen. The bottommost box began to sag open when Oscar lifted it; he caught its dripping bottom before it dropped its innards. His mind flashed again to the dead girl’s body and how it slooped when it was lifted from the auger pit. He placed it on the bench and bent to the box at the top of the neater stack—the box it seemed that Sandro had moved the others in order to find.