Edgar and Lucy Read online

  Anyway, Edgar liked the meatballs. When his grandmother made them, she always put one, freshly fried, on a small white plate, before delivering the rest into the bubbling sauce. A special gift. A naked sauceless meatball, just for him.

  “You’re turning him into a real Italian,” Lucy once joked.

  “He is Italian,” the old woman replied without levity.

  “Half Italian,” Lucy corrected. “I’m not Italian.”

  “No, you’re not, dear.” Upon which, the old woman put her hand on the boy’s head and watched him eat his naked meatball.

  Lucy was never up to fighting for her own team. The Polish. What had the Polacks ever done for her? These Italians had taken care of her, at least. And, besides, this was the old woman’s house. Lucy had never meant to stay here all these years after her husband’s death, but here she was. And there was the boy, happy, eating.

  Actually, the boy was not undilutedly happy. His mother, his grandmother, yes, it was true: to be alone with either of them was sweetness itself. But combine them and things tightened, a constriction Edgar felt in his sensitive, divining throat. When the two women spoke to each other, Edgar felt their untrue voices somehow coming from inside his own body, as if he were the liar. But what was it all about? Why did their voices change in each other’s presence? He saw a great deal at 21 Cressida Drive, but understood little. The first time he did the math and realized that there was no actual blood shared by his mother and his grandmother, it frightened him. Technically, they were strangers.

  If Frank were around maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, thought Edgar. Frank could take on some of the responsibility. But Frank was dead—and, as far as Edgar could see, dead people didn’t do anything except get whispered about in kitchens. If there was a ghost, it was the name itself, hissed or swallowed, breathy air between the two women.

  Both were widows. Another complexity they had in common. Edgar remembered the old woman’s husband better than he remembered his own father, which wasn’t saying much. Still, there were a few things he could manage to recall: the thick cloud of cigar smoke around his grandfather’s La-Z-Boy; how the old man never called him by his name but referred to him only as boy, the word often shouted in a fairly startling tone. Sometimes the old man walked in circles in the yard, talking, it seemed, to himself. Edgar would watch from his bedroom window on the second floor. Even at five, the boy knew it was possible the old man wasn’t talking to himself, but to Frank.

  People were still talking about Frank, in one way or another. Edgar wasn’t easily fooled. Brought up in a haunted house, he had a keen sense of when someone was conversing with the dead. A person could be stirring red sauce or putting on lipstick when, in fact, what she was really doing was walking through a cemetery. Widows! They were almost like witches, weren’t they? They were deathy. They had secrets.

  Edgar reflected on the fact that he had never seen his mother, not once, set foot in his grandmother’s bedroom. Edgar couldn’t even imagine her here, especially at night, with the Virgin rubbing her hands over the flame and the angel floating in her dress of light. He knew it was not an atmosphere in which his mother would be able to breathe. He knew, if she walked in here, she would immediately fall dead.

  “What are you thinking about, Mr. Big Eyes?”

  He looked at the old woman from his perch at the side of the bed. She was already falling back asleep.

  “Gramma?”

  “Yes?” she said. She was patient with the boy, with his silent staring spells. With his darling little thoughts, which is how she imagined the things that moved inside his head. In fact, she saw them, the boy’s thoughts, little blue wheels rolling over sunny pastures. She was drifting off.

  “Tell me,” the old woman said. But her eyes were already closed.

  “Can I have some of the perfume?” Edgar whispered.

  “Mmmmh,” the old woman sighed, fading.

  “I can?”

  Edgar knew she was gone. Her breathing changed. He watched her bosom float away on sea-waves. There was no embarrassment. He knew her body better than his own. Better than his mother’s, certainly. It was the old woman’s bed he climbed into after a bad dream. Nightmares weren’t uncommon with the boy, and the old woman always welcomed him, should he gently wake her, at any hour, with his delicate hand.

  * * *

  Lucy knew. Sometimes she’d hear the boy gasp, coming out of one of his dreams. She’d hear his bed creak as he got up to find comfort, not with her. She didn’t mind the boy’s choice. She had enough trouble sleeping as it was. The old woman slept like a stone. Not that Lucy would ever prevent the boy from climbing into her bed. She would accept her duty, gladly, should Edgar ever call her to it. But he spent more time with the old woman; certain tracks got laid, certain habits. Was Lucy jealous? No. No. She didn’t mind the physical fact of Edgar’s choice, but sometimes she just didn’t care for the idea of it. There were nights, of course, when she craved a body next to her. Yet, even then, she knew the boy wouldn’t be enough to ease her loneliness. He might make it worse, his skinny sleeping body instinctively burrowing into hers for warmth. What room did she have for such innocence? The bodies she craved tended toward violence.

  * * *

  Edgar eased himself off his grandmother’s bed and went straight for the bottle. He had permission, didn’t he? He touched it (still cold); he lifted it and pressed it to his cheek. The ghost of a scent lingered on the glass. When he removed the stopper and pointed his nose toward the opening, he knew to close his eyes. Powder and flowers and spice—and now sweet grass, sweet sweat. He tilted the bottle and wet his finger, quickly carrying the precious fluid to the taut skin just behind his right ear, then behind his left, as he’d seen women do on television. The liquid tingled, a subtle electrification, as the scent changed, bloomed, became an extension of the boy himself. It was Edgar; Edgar electrified by flowers. The charge was exhilarating, and he could feel the rush of his blood. He stole some more, just a bit, and swiped it across the front of his neck.

  Time stopped, as it rarely does. The boy breathed, unnoticed by life or death. Breathed himself into himself. It was as if there were two of him, and each kissed the other, agreeing on something. Exactly what, neither could say. They could only say: yes, this. This.

  * * *

  He stood in the hallway. Eight years old, sleepy—someone should have sent him to bed. He looked toward his room, and sent himself.

  But wait. A burble of laughter. Or was it an owl? Edgar leaned against the wall, listening. The sound was coming from downstairs. He moved toward the banister. The owl was his mother.

  But the sound was wrong. His mother’s real laugh was something else, flames shooting from a ten-story building. Nothing could put it out but the fire itself. And if you stood too close, you were doomed. It was a leaping, contagious cackle. But downstairs, now, it sounded like a doll’s laugh. High-pitched but breathy, like a paper horn, spiking at intervals, steady and mechanical. Maybe it wasn’t his mother. As he walked down the stairs, he wondered if he was in the right house. Sleepiness was doing funny things to the pictures on the walls. Where there should have been a painting of a sailboat, there was now a painting of a huge sunlit cleaver emerging from the sea. At the bottom of the stairs, he caught a glimpse of his grandmother’s black piano, an impeccably polished upright that seemed to have gained some weight since last he saw it. He regarded it as if for the first time—the keys like loose teeth, bright whites and rotting blacks that could fall out at any moment. Maybe that’s why no one played it anymore. Someone, he noticed, had turned down a few of the framed photographs that rested on top.

  And the boy could smell cigarettes, and cigarettes weren’t allowed in the house. After the old man had died, Florence had said, enough (her exact words were “I’m done with that stink.”). His mother was supposed to smoke on the porch.

  Hee hee hee, went the doll, as Edgar entered the living room. Mr. S quickly pulled his meaty hand from between Lucy’s legs.r />
  “Eddie,” he boomed from the couch. “Eddie, my man!”

  Lucy tugged at her dress. There was a sweating bottle of booze on the coffee table, the vodka she kept in the freezer (it never froze, to Edgar’s amazement).

  “What are you doing up? What did I tell you?” Lucy brushed back her hair with her fingers. Her pink lips were slightly smeared.

  “I thought you were going out.” Edgar didn’t look at his mother. He watched the cigarette in the ashtray, watched the forbidden smoke rise in curls of script. “I wasn’t spying on you. I didn’t know it was you.”

  “Who else would it be?” said Lucy, standing, putting her hands on her hips like a sixteen-year-old.

  How old was she anyway? Edgar wasn’t sure. Thirty, maybe, but she looked a lot younger, standing like that, and with her lips smeared like she’d been eating jam.

  The butcher stood, as well. Edgar couldn’t see any blood on his clothing. Still, he wasn’t pleased when the man moved toward him.

  “He’s all right. Just checking on his mom.”

  The man touched the boy’s head with the same hand that had been between Lucy’s legs. As well as inside pigs and chickens and cows. Edgar froze.

  “Whoa,” the butcher said. “What do you smell like?” He leaned in and began to sniff.

  “Na-nothing,” Edgar stuttered, taking two steps back.

  But the butcher pursued him. “Is that perfume?”

  “No. I spilled something.”

  Edgar suddenly wished he could fart. He had heard that there was a boy in his school who could fart on command. Edgar couldn’t even manufacture a burp, a skill that every other boy in the world seemed to possess. Supposedly it was just a matter of swallowing air, but how did one swallow air? Edgar pressed his knees together and prayed for flatulence.

  Lucy was sniffing now, too. The boy waited for a snotty comment from a sixteen-year-old, but, instead, his mother smiled. Her face relaxed, as if something important had been clarified. A tiny whoosh of air streamed from her nose. Was she laughing at him? She leaned down and kissed the boy’s lips. She stared into his eyes and stroked his hair. Edgar knew she was drunk. They had shared odd moments like this before—moments in which the world dropped away and it was just the two of them, half asleep, with a nervous red thread quivering between their chests.

  “Oh, baby,” she said, shaking her head. More air came out of her nose, three short bursts of it. Sometimes, to Lucy, it all seemed so absurd. Again, she kissed the boy. Her burden. Her funny little albino fruitcake.

  “I should get going,” the butcher said.

  “Hold your horses,” Lucy barked. And then sweetly, softly, to Edgar: “Would you please go to fucking bed?”

  The boy nodded, but didn’t move. Why was his face burning? Why did he feel like crying?

  Lucy turned, put out her cigarette, and grabbed the butcher’s arm. “Come on. I want to go to Larson’s.”

  “We can have a drink at my place,” he suggested.

  “I don’t want to be in a house,” Lucy said. “I want to be out.” She heard her voice—sharp and ridiculous—as if it were coming from a woman standing beside her. Why was she getting so riled up? The man was going to think she was a bitch. She adjusted her dress and, in an effort to get back on track, slipped two fingers between the buttons of the butcher’s shirt and caressed his belly.

  Edgar watched them as they put on their coats in the foyer. He waited for his mother to look back, but she didn’t. Only the butcher looked back. He stared at the boy and offered no discernible gesture of farewell. Edgar closed his eyes, hoping the man could no longer smell the scent that, amazingly, almost diabolically, still lingered upon his skin.

  2

  Two Wineglasses and a Banana

  Annabelle (“Nelly”) Tortelli (b. 1934–d. 1946). Edgar looked at the prayer card and did the math: twelve years old. Possibly eleven, if she’d died before her birthday. Death was no softy; he might have claimed Nelly the night before her party—the ice cream cake (Happy 12th!) already in the freezer. The thought of such an unfortunately timed demise stuck in the boy’s mind. He pictured a white-faced girl, arms crossed in a coffin, surrounded by stacks of elaborately wrapped presents. Surely God would let Nelly open them after the mourners had left. The girl’s white fingers undoing the red ribbons; the ripped paper thrown into the convenient wastebasket of the coffin. It was possible. What the dead did behind the backs of the living was anyone’s guess.

  At breakfast, Edgar was prepared to ask his grandmother about the girl, but as soon as he placed the card on the table he remembered that he’d filched it. It was a small treason; still, he couldn’t risk its exposure. His grandmother was smart. Give her one clue and she kept sniffing. Of course, he’d washed thoroughly this morning, but it was impossible to know if all traces of the perfume had been erased. His moment with the butcher had left him with a peculiar sense that it might be wise to keep secrets. A person’s desires, the things a person found beautiful, were probably best kept to oneself. Hadn’t he learned that already? You couldn’t just say, “Oh, how pretty,” when you saw the daffodils on your teacher’s desk, which is exactly what he’d done one morning last spring. The words had popped out of his mouth unexpectedly—a genuine rush of delight and admiration overcoming his native shyness. He hadn’t realized he’d said the words to anyone but the daffodils until Ralphie Francovilla clasped his hands together and exclaimed, in a fluty voice and with a flourish of limp wrists, “Oh yes, very pretty!” Three boys standing behind Ralphie had leaned their heads together to form a tight coven of laughter.

  Boys could not use the word pretty. Nor could they mess with Chanel Nº 5. Edgar knew that now by the way the butcher had practically recoiled at the sudden loveliness of his aroma. As the old woman approached with a carton of milk, Edgar reclaimed the prayer card and slipped it into his pocket.

  She poured the milk over the boy’s cereal and sat down beside him, with her cup of coffee, to watch him eat. It was a habit of hers Edgar generally found endearing, but today he was uncomfortable under her gaze, nervous. Even those who loved you best were bound to find the flaws if they stared long enough. To lose his grandmother’s favor would be the end of everything. Unlike his mother, whose light flashed on him only intermittently, like the beam of a lighthouse, the old woman was nothing less than the sun. The idea that she might think less of him filled the boy with shame.

  How could he have known that were he to desire more of the perfume, she would have given him every last drop? She would have rinsed his white hair with it. She would have taken her time machine back to the beginning and asked the priest to christen the boy in the stuff. If Edgar wanted Chanel Nº 5 on his cereal instead of milk, she would have found the request difficult to deny. More than anything, she wanted the boy to be happy. The way her son had not been happy. Well, yes, he’d been a cheerful child. A clever boy with a great capacity for wonder, not unlike Edgar. It was the end, and the road approaching it, that had been so disastrous—a shadowy chaos that, still, she could not penetrate. When she awakened this morning, Frank was clearly in the house—some part of him pulsing in the darkness.

  “Happy birthday,” she’d said. One had to mark such occasions, even if the words felt like nothing more than a stone dropped into a bottomless well. She wondered if Lucy would even remember. The girl was getting more and more forgetful, it seemed, where Frank was concerned.

  “Do you want more milk on that?” The flakes in Edgar’s bowl were looking a little dry.

  The boy shook his head—a pale replica of his father.

  “Have more,” the old woman said, pouring the milk. “You’ll choke on it if you don’t have enough liquid.”

  That Edgar looked so much like the young Frank was a complicated blessing. It felt like a second chance. But it felt dangerous, as well, like a time bomb. The last few months of Frank’s life, his face had become unrecognizable—warped, the old woman supposed, from the weight of the terrible invisibles that
had pursued him.

  But what were they, these thoughts that had made her son’s hands tremble? Even his eyes had trembled, like compass needles turning in dread toward some dark and unimpeachable north.

  After the fact, people had always put it too simply. Frank Fini had gone crazy. Florence resented it when it was summed up in this way. Too tidy. As if you could put your son’s death in a filing cabinet and be done with it. Even her ancient cousin Sabina, Frank’s godmother and a woman stitched from kindness itself, had succumbed to the cruel conveniences of such language. Pazzo pazzo pazzo, almost as if she were spitting into the boy’s grave. It was a ridiculous word. Who wasn’t a little crazy? No one, that’s who. The old woman had her eyes open. She saw the housewives talking to themselves in grocery stores, the businessmen gesturing and shouting as they walked alone down the street. “They’re on the phone,” Edgar would tell her, but she could never see a phone. “It’s in their ear,” Edgar would say. The boy had a vivid imagination.

  She looked at him now, across the table, eating his cereal in such a deliberate and careful way. Oh, if she could have a tall glass of this child every morning, she would live forever. Sometimes she worried that her love for Edgar was too strong, a covetous earthly love, a love against God, a love to reclaim lost things. But what love wasn’t that? What love wasn’t a reward to counter an old wrong? Anyway, it wasn’t something she could control. How she felt about the boy was how she felt. Love was love, and it was always a monster.

  She thought of the others. Her dear sisters, all gone. Edna in the car crash with Jimmy. Gussie, peacefully in her bed just two years ago. Cynthia, horribly, with that cancer in her womanhood. Her childhood friends, Grace, Pauline, Nelly—sweet Nelly! The old woman hadn’t thought of her in years. The dead girl’s face fluttered across Edgar’s, and then vanished.

  Oh, and Pio, of course, her husband. She tended to forget about him, God rest his soul. It was a devil of a thing to admit, but Pio was not the great love of her life. The boy was. This boy, here at the table. Pio was stormy, quick-tempered, with a foul mouth. Frank had been the same.