Edgar and Lucy Read online

  “Mr. DePinto from down the street takes us. His wife is there.”

  Lucy found an empty seat and sank into it, feeling a sudden anger at Florence. How dare she take Edgar to the cemetery without asking permission. She pulled the boy into her lap.

  “You go there to see Pio?”

  The boy nodded and shyly took hold of his mother’s fingers. His father’s name was carved on the gravestone, too, right below his grandfather’s. Francesco Lorenzo Fini.

  Ridiculous, Lucy had always thought, to put Frank’s name there without a body to go with it. She wondered how much the kid knew. What combination of lies and truth had Florence fed him? In time, hopefully, he’d forget whatever stories the old woman had concocted. History would be erased. There’d be no more visits to the cemetery, or to fucking peddlers or cobblers. If Edgar wore down a pair of shoes, they’d throw the damn things out and drive straight to some civilized department store.

  But these valiant thoughts only brought Lucy to a troublesome cul-de-sac. Because what was she to do with the boy, really? Who was going to take care of him? He had nightmares and food issues and exceptionally pale skin that required a pharmaceutical-grade sunscreen. Florence had seen to all those things. Florence had been the one to tend to him after school, and on Saturdays when Lucy was at work. And what if she wanted to go out in the evening? How many times a week could she afford a babysitter? Did she even make enough to cover basic expenses? She had no idea. Every week, she’d given cash to Florence, and Florence had taken care of the bills. But now there’d be no pension check from Pio. Would she have to sell the house? But certainly Florence had left it to Edgar. It would have to be his decision. Oh my God, she’d be trapped there until he was eighteen.

  “Ow!”

  “What?” Lucy looked at the eight-year-old still on her lap.

  “You’re digging your nails into me.”

  Lucy let go of his hand. “We shouldn’t be sitting here anyway. We should talk to some of these people, don’t you think?”

  “I guess,” replied Edgar, unconvinced. “Mr. S is here.”

  “Who?”

  “Your friend.” In his head, he heard his grandmother say suitor, because for once the old woman’s word had hit the nail on the head.

  Lucy glanced across the room and saw the butcher, in a dark blue suit, standing awkwardly beside a squadron of lilies. What the hell was he doing here? She’d told him not to come. Florence had always accused her of dancing on Frank’s grave. She didn’t want to be accused of dancing on Florence’s, as well.

  The butcher caught her eye and lifted his hand. Lucy returned the wave meekly, with disastrous timing. Through the archway, just behind the butcher, emerged the last person in the world she wanted to see. Her father. He caught the last flutter of Lucy’s wave, and thinking it for him, grimaced and made his way into the room.

  No. No. He had no right to be here. Lucy started to shake.

  “Edgar, why don’t you go talk to the Heftis?”

  “I don’t want to talk to Toni-Ann.”

  “Edgar, please. Just go say hi. I’ll be right back.” She gently pushed the boy off her lap. Both the butcher and her father had come a few steps closer. Lucy marched toward them, colliding with the butcher first. He took her arm firmly.

  “Luce, I just wanted to stop by and—”

  “Ron, thanks, yeah, that was nice of you but—”

  “I wanted to pay my respects.”

  She nodded cordially but could feel her face flush with an inexplicable fury. “It’s not like you knew her.”

  “No, I know, I just—”

  “This is really not a good time.”

  “Of course not.” The butcher squeezed her arm tighter.

  Lucy could see her father lurking, waiting for his moment. The closer he came the weaker her limbs felt, as if all they remembered now was submission and defeat. She’d have to face him immediately, before all her strength was sapped.

  But the butcher persisted, indefatigably condolent. “I had a meat platter sent over to your house, for afterwards.”

  “I’m not having a get-together. I don’t even know half these people.”

  “If you want me to stop by later…”

  What did he want from her? What did either of them want?

  “No, I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

  “When my mother died…” the butcher said.

  “She wasn’t my mother,” Lucy said in a somewhat hysterical voice—and the shrunken Schlip couple, who were standing nearby, turned to her with their dried-apple faces.

  “Okay,” the butcher said, “you’re upset. Why don’t you sit down?” He took more of her body in his warm hands. The fact that she wanted to give in to him so badly only made her lash out more.

  “Stop it. Get off me. Get off.”

  “Is this man bothering you?” Lucy’s father stepped forward and placed a hand on his daughter’s body, which was now at liberty.

  If her recoil from the butcher’s ministrations was demonstrative, it was nothing compared to how she lurched back now: a great swooping movement involving a side-flung arm that struck Netty Schlip under the chin.

  Lucy was too flustered to apologize. She turned to her father, a short stout man in a brown suit, and lifted her fists with bar-brawl bravado.

  “Touch me again and I’ll knock your goddamned teeth out.”

  “Lucy, please.” His voice was the same as ever, gravelly but strangely high-pitched.

  “Please? Please what? Please knock your teeth out?”

  Netty Schlip wished the girl would stop saying that. Though she’d not been injured by Lucy’s hit to the chin, her dentures had slipped. Her husband was tending to her mortifications behind a crucifix of yellow roses.

  Walter Bubko was close enough that his daughter could smell the sham mint of his breath. “I saw the obituary and I thought maybe…”

  Lucy lowered her fists and waited, while the man swayed on his feet like a buoy in a stiff breeze. He ran a palm over his slicked-back black hair, as if to steady himself. “I felt it was time.” The man bowed his head. “I thought maybe I could meet the boy.”

  “I would like you to leave.” She stood straight and made an effort not to shout. “Now.”

  “Lucille.” Her name in his mouth was ruin itself. And there she was again in that house, with that fear, the man’s arm lifted at the merest excuse.

  “What makes you think you can come here?” She was now shaking so visibly that Mr. Wong, compelled by a sense of propriety, closed his eyes.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” her father said.

  She’d not spoken to this man in nearly fifteen years. Even at her mother’s funeral, more than a decade ago, she’d kept her distance. Frank had been by her side that day. Florence had been there, too. Perhaps if she’d talked to her father then, when she was still young, surrounded by the Finis, who loved her—perhaps then she might have found it in herself to forgive him. But it was too late now. Time was the thing that ripped out your heart and left you cold. With a haughty lift of her chin, belied by quivering lips, she turned to the butcher.

  “Ron, would you please make this man leave?”

  “You don’t need to do that,” her father said. “I’ll just sit in the back. If the boy wants to talk to me, that’s where I’ll be.”

  “He’s not talking to you.”

  “That’s for him to decide.”

  “No, actually, it’s not. He will never talk to you. He doesn’t need a fucked-up drunk in his life.”

  Her father smiled, as if to better show the waste of his face, the contours of his skull. “He’s already got one of those, huh?”

  Lucy smiled back—her raised lips a kind of shield. How awful that their faces could meet like this and recognize each other. But it was good, too, because she could see, beyond the blight of his aging (something for which she might have had sympathy), that he was the same man from her childhood, the same evil fuck.

  “Come on now,”
he said, “let’s not be like this. I’m sorry.” He reached for her hand again, but Lucy discreetly pulled it back.

  “No. This is it, Dad. You leave. You just … you leave.”

  Walter Bubko turned toward the casket. “I’ll just go up and say my piece to Mrs. Fini.”

  “Don’t even try.” That her father could imagine he had any right to stand in the old woman’s presence was absurd. Lucy felt the shaking return to her legs. Florence was dead. Florence was dead—and her father was in the room, alive, flesh and blood, making demands. Though Lucy had no experience in such matters, she knew it was up to her to preserve the sanctity of the old woman’s farewell. At the same time, she wished the old woman would rise from the coffin to protect her, as she had done in the past. Florence or Pio or Frank, sometimes all three of them, standing on the porch, telling the drunken man who’d come for Lucy to go away; go away or they’d call the police. “She doesn’t want to see you.”

  Her father made a move toward the front of the room.

  “Ron, stop that man. Ron.”

  The butcher was unsure what was expected of him. He turned toward the sloshed man in the brown suit. “Sir.”

  “Always acting brave when you have a boyfriend around, huh?” her father said. When the giant man did nothing to physically impede him, Walter Bubko proceeded toward the coffin.

  “Ron,” Lucy begged again.

  The butcher was still uncertain. But then Lucy gave him a look of such pleading belligerence, a look that was shocking to see on the face of someone who wasn’t a child.

  “Sir.” The butcher put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “Get your paw out of my way.” He shrugged off the familiar grip of the bouncer. “Still go for the guineas, huh, Lucy?”

  Okay, the butcher thought, assessment complete: asshole. No one called him a guinea, especially not some drunken Polack. Ron Salvatore would do his part, despite the occasion. He grabbed the short man by the shoulders.

  As Walter Bubko was dragged away, muttering obscenities, the peddler turned to the cobbler. “Redheads.”

  The cobbler nodded, in agreement that surely it must be the pretty girl who lay at the root of the trouble. “Sad day,” he said. “Florence was a nice lady.”

  “Eyes like a hawk,” the peddler added. “Could spot a bad artichoke from a mile away.”

  Wearily the men turned their gaze from Lucy to the casket, where that miniature child was hovering again. How the old woman had adored him. Both merchants would tell, if asked, how she’d often arrived with the boy in hand, only letting go of him when absolutely necessary. Even then, he would stay close to her, lingering like a little white cloud. Like a ghost.

  Lucy didn’t watch as her father was removed. Standing alone, she surrendered to the kind of tears she’d managed to keep at bay for nearly seven years. In a cold funeral parlor in Ferryfield, New Jersey—viewing room 2—Lucy choked before the blaze of her own history. The Finis were gone; they were finished. Florence and Pio and Frank.

  She looked at her son. He was kneeling once more at the front of the room, a blemish of brightness in her already dazed world. A spotlight meant for Florence’s body was shining on his white hair.

  Edgar Allan. Well, he was a Fini, too, wasn’t he?

  And what the hell was he putting in the coffin?

  * * *

  Earlier, before the floor show (Netty Schlip Slapped! Drunk Dragged Away!), Edgar had obliged his mother and talked to the neighbors. Toni-Ann Hefti, in a puffy green dress, sat hunched over between her very erect parents. When she saw Edgar, she looked down and put her wet fingers farther into her mouth.

  “Hello, dear,” Mrs. Hefti said.

  “Hello.” Edgar pulled at the collar of his shirt, which had started to feel a bit strangly.

  “Sit up, Toni-Ann.” The girl’s mother gave her a tiny whack on the back. “What did the doctor tell you about posture?”

  “We’re very sorry,” Mr. Hefti said.

  “About your grandmother,” his wife added.

  Edgar wondered if she talked to everyone like they were an idiot.

  “Didn’t you want to say something, honey?” Mrs. Hefti whacked the girl’s back again, as if that’s where the controls were.

  Toni-Ann shook her head.

  “She’s never been to one of these before,” Mr. Hefti said. “We thought she should experience it.”

  “I like your sneakers, Ed-guh.”

  Mrs. Hefti frowned and patted her daughter’s leg. “We told her people die. Yes, they do. People die.”

  Edgar hoped Mrs. Hefti wouldn’t say it a third time.

  “Right, Toni-Ann—what did we tell you?”

  “People die,” the girl parroted.

  “That’s right. It’s just part of life.”

  Edgar didn’t think this was the kind of thing you should tell a retarded person. He barely wanted to hear it himself. Mrs. Hefti was probably a terrible mother. Maybe all mothers were like this—bossy shovers, miffed that their kids were less than perfect. Plus, he didn’t like the way the woman was using his grandmother’s death to make a lesson for someone who drooled.

  “Flow-rinse,” Toni-Ann said quietly.

  “That’s right. The old lady.”

  “Always gave us tomatoes,” Mr. Hefti said to the girl, as if to jog her memory.

  “I know,” Toni-Ann said grumblingly to the floor. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “She didn’t sleep well last night,” Mrs. Hefti explained.

  “I have dreams,” Toni-Ann said, leaning in toward Edgar. “You know how they get big sometimes?”

  Mrs. Hefti patted the girl’s leg again. Obviously, it was a back whack that turned her on and a leg pat that shut her off. Toni-Ann slouched, deflated.

  “Well, she was a good neighbor,” Mr. Hefti said, wrapping things up. “A good person.”

  “She’s at peace now, that’s all that matters,” Mrs. Hefti concluded in a pained whisper. Both she and her husband nodded in a way that made Edgar think they might be doing long division in their heads.

  “I love her!” Toni-Ann blurted suddenly.

  “You love who?” Mrs. Hefti asked.

  “Flow-rinse.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Toni-Ann.”

  “I love her.” The girl rocked her chair.

  “Loved, sweetheart,” Mr. Hefti corrected. “Past tense. When someone’s not here anymore—”

  “Don’t encourage her, Bill, for God’s sake. You didn’t love her, Toni-Ann.” Mrs. Hefti turned to Edgar. “She gets like this. What she means is she liked your grandmother.”

  Toni-Ann shook her head and rocked her chair with greater fury. “L.O.V.E.”

  “If you’re going to be like this, we’re taking you home.”

  “No!” Toni-Ann said. “I have to talk to Ed-guh.”

  Before her parents could protest, Toni-Ann stood and dragged the boy a few feet away. Tears welled in her sleepless eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Ed-guh. I give it back, okay?” From a pocket in her puffy green dress, she produced the prayer card, streaked now with purple stains. Edgar felt dizzy, slapped in the head by time.

  Had it really been only four days since he’d walked from his house and tripped and dropped the card? Just four days since Toni-Ann had snatched up his grandmother’s property—which he himself had stolen only five days ago? Could so much happen in so little time?

  Because his life had changed utterly—a fact that struck him only now, standing before the dimwit girl. Edgar gulped as Toni-Ann pushed the prayer card toward him.

  “Nelly To-to-to…”

  “Tortelli,” Edgar said quietly.

  “Yes,” said Toni-Ann. “Funny.”

  She was crying now—her face a mess. She smeared its wetness into Edgar’s cheek.

  The girl’s parents detached her and led her away. Edgar watched them leave the room without a word to his mother, who was still arguing with the red-faced man with greasy hair. Th
ere was nothing to do but go back to the woman in the giant butter dish. Edgar knelt and placed the prayer card deep in the shimmery folds of her nest.

  “She said she was sorry,” he whispered—apologizing as best he could for everyone.

  “Flow-rinse.” His final prayer, and the first time he’d ever spoken his grandmother’s Christian name.

  * * *

  People came and went; mostly went, as it was getting late. For Lucy and the boy it was all the same now, a half-bodied dream of the sort that comes in late-afternoon naps or in fever.

  When Dominic Sparra arrived, dressed spiffily in a black suit, with his beard neatly trimmed, he went straight up to the coffin and kneeled before it. He was a stranger to Edgar and Lucy. Florence, of course, had never mentioned her disastrous date with the man—and her prior history with him had happened long before Edgar and Lucy were born. Dominic knew a different Florence from the one they knew. He had different regrets, different joys to relinquish. He reached into the coffin and took Florence’s hand.

  “He’s touching her,” Edgar said. “Ma, he’s touching her.”

  “What do you want me to do?” said Lucy.

  “He’s gonna mess her up.”

  But Lucy only shrugged, exhausted, and closed her eyes.

  “Belle gambe,” Dominic Sparra said; not to the dolled-up corpse in front of him, but to a memory he had of a younger Florence. A girl standing at water’s edge in a bathing suit—a bathing suit she’d made herself, with fabric flowers stitched fetchingly over the breast. “Bella figura.”

  The old man crossed himself in the name of a father and a son and a holy spirit whose existence he no longer accepted. But he knew Florence’s belief had persisted—pious to the very end, just like his own wife. Dominic often wondered if Florie had married Pio for his name as much as anything—as if it were some seal of approval from the Almighty, a promise of the man’s worth. But Dominic knew otherwise. Pious Pio had cheated on his wife endlessly. Had Dominic beat him to win Florence’s hand, he would never have betrayed her. And he would have given her healthy children, a pack of them. Poor Florie. A handful of miscarriages, and then, finally, that pazzo Frankie, late in life. Pio’s infidelities had cursed him, if one believed in that sort of thing.