Edgar and Lucy Read online

  She scanned the yard, trying to recall exactly where Frank had dug. Even after seven years, she couldn’t forget the spot by the elm, where she’d found him sitting before an opened patch of dirt, the baby in his arms.

  “I’m just showing him,” Frank had explained. “So he knows where it is.”

  “Where what is?” she’d asked.

  “The river,” he’d said.

  That had been the largest hole, the deepest. The others had been smaller excavations. One by the large oak and one by each of the dogwoods—and then a series of holes closer to the fence, where Florence grew her tomatoes.

  Lucy knelt before the elm and tore at the cold grass. She began slowly, but the more she dug, the angrier she felt. Had she really been so deluded that she’d believed she and Frank could escape, end up in a little house in upstate New York? As she scooped up the dirt, there seemed to be no bottom to the hatred she felt—for herself most of all. When she broke a nail, she stopped her clawing, picked up the shovel, and moved toward the tomatoes.

  * * *

  Toni-Ann watched anxiously from her bedroom window. Mrs. Feen was digging up Mr. Feen’s holes. The girl remembered them from when she was little. She’d seen Mr. Feen making them early one morning, after she’d woken from a nightmare about the flying monkeys in the pillbox hats.

  As Lucy sank the shovel into the dirt under the tomato plants, Toni-Ann chewed her fingers. The day Mr. Feen had dug up the yard, he’d been taken away in a police car—his wrists locked in big silver bracelets. Mrs. Feen and Flow-rinse had followed in another car. There’d been a lot of crying.

  Toni-Ann had never told anyone about the gun she’d seen Mr. Feen bury. She wasn’t a tattletale. Plus, why make things worse for the people next door? Sometimes she wished she could make time go backwards for them. Because they hadn’t always been sad.

  In the old days, on summer nights, the Feens ate their dinner in the yard under Christmas-tree lights. They were always laughing. One time, the old man gave Toni-Ann a sip of wine from across the fence. “Don’t bother the people,” her mother used to tell her. But one of the Feens would always say, “It’s no bother, Mary.”

  Sometimes they even used to let Toni-Ann come into their yard. Mr. Feen would lift her over the fence. He was skinny but strong, and when he told stories he used his hands like an actor on television. He was always kissing Mrs. Feen. Toni-Ann had never seen a bigger pair of smoochers. It was nice over there, back then. Flow-rinse was always pushing a piece of food into Toni-Ann’s mouth. Soft, salty mounds of snow-white cheese, paper-thin ham over cantaloupe canoes, spaghetti that tasted like the ocean. Once, when Ed-guh was a baby, Mrs. Feen had let Toni-Ann hold him—and ever since then, she’d loved him best.

  Of course, that was when things got bad for the Feens. After the baby came, Mr. Feen started to shout a lot, and he was always wandering around the yard like he’d lost his keys. When he’d finally gone away for good, the Feens pretty much stopped talking to Toni-Ann—though Flow-rinse would always send over a box of tomatoes in the summer.

  The priest had said that Flow-rinse would watch over them now. Toni-Ann pictured a slow-moving blimp circling the neighborhood. But whenever she looked up at the sky, all she ever saw were birds or airplanes or clouds—and none of them had the right face.

  26

  Egg

  Frank Fini buys the gun on a Tuesday morning. He pays cash, handing it directly to his cousin Vincenzo, who deals in small to midsized firearms—a business he conducts from the back of a motorcycle shop. There’s no paperwork, no application forms, it’s easy. Frank tells Vincenzo that he needs to protect his family—and Vincenzo nods, licks a blackened thumb to count the money. He’s never liked Frankie (too handsome, too smart, too lucky—married that sexy Polack, who Vincenzo still hopes to screw one day). “You want me to load it for you?” he asks, and Frank says, “Please.”

  Vincenzo sees that his cousin’s hands are shaking and how his eyes dart around the room. “If you’re in trouble,” Vincenzo says, “I don’t want to know.”

  Frank says nothing, and takes the gun.

  When he gets home, Florence is scrubbing the dishes. She speaks over her shoulder, telling him the baby is sleeping.

  “Wash your hands, Frankie, and I’ll make you a sandwich.”

  “No,” he says. “I have a…” He gestures vaguely toward his belly.

  “Have a ginger ale,” Florence says. “You want a ginger ale?”

  Frank can tell that she’s afraid of him, the way she repeats herself.

  “I’ll pour you a ginger ale,” she says as he’s walking away.

  Sometimes, he’s afraid of her, too—this woman who sneaks garlic into sick children’s ears and sprinkles holy water on her garden.

  Upstairs, he peers into the crib and watches the alien form of his son—the white face twitching with visions. It occurs to him that this newborn has been with him forever, watching, taking notes. Frank feels ashamed—and worries how he’ll be remembered. When he looks at the gun, it seems impossible now. He doesn’t want to leave his family yet. In the closet he unzips the plastic cover that protects his old wedding tux, hides the gun in the left pocket of the jacket. Later he’ll put it somewhere safer, somewhere he might forget.

  Besides, it’s not the only way.

  When Lucy gets home from work, he fucks her quietly on the floor beside the crib—and then the three of them sleep for nearly two hours, until Florence wakes them for dinner. There’s ricotta cheesecake. Pio pours sambuca into everyone’s coffee; he’s in a good mood, having won two hundred bucks this morning with a Pick 6 lottery ticket. The dollar-store banner (I JUST GOT PROMOTED TO GRANDPA!) still hangs in the kitchen.

  Later, Florence brings three slices of cheesecake to the Heftis, to thank Mary for the egg (she’d been one short for her recipe). Mary asks how things are, and Florence, still flushed from the sambuca, says they couldn’t be better.

  Frank, who’d barely touched his dinner, sits on the porch until nearly two in the morning. Lucy stays with him the whole time, stroking his neck. Her touch is the only thing that still works. “Don’t stop,” he says.

  She doesn’t.

  It’s cold outside; they’re wearing coats.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he says, staring at the sky. He points to her star and she smiles.

  She tells him how much she’s been saving up in tips.

  Every now and then he turns toward her, and they kiss.

  27

  Harvest

  The man stopped the truck at the corner of Cressida and Laurel, claiming it would be better if the boy arrived home by foot. “That way you won’t get in trouble.”

  At first the comment confused Edgar, but then he realized the man was right. If anyone had done something wrong, it was himself, for imposing on the kindness of a stranger. It wasn’t the man’s job to take care of his stupid finger. “I’m sorry if I bothered you.”

  “Not at all,” the man said. “Bother me anytime. If you want, I can give you my number.”

  He’d been debating whether or not to take this risk. Not that he wanted to do anything more than talk to the boy again—and maybe, one day, to drive him to the house where the other boy had been, just to see what that would feel like. “Let me just…” The man fished a pen from the ashtray. “Do you have a piece of paper?”

  Edgar felt inside his pocket. He pulled out the stray grocery list he’d found on the street (Eggs, Tampons, Frosting). He’d been carrying it around for days, still imagining it might be some kind of message from Florence.

  For Kev, the man wrote at the bottom. When he put down the numbers, he proceeded slowly, making sure his fours looked like fours, instead of nines. His wife had always said that his penmanship was worse than a doctor’s.

  “You mentioned something about a cemetery,” the man said. “I could maybe take you there sometime. If you want.”

  The boy shrugged, but the man felt encouraged by how carefully the kid folded t
he telephone number—so carefully, in fact, that he seemed to be performing a magic trick.

  “I just”—the boy blushed—“I don’t like it when the folds mess up the writing.”

  “Yes,” the man said. “You’re very clever.”

  * * *

  Edgar hesitated by the hydrangea, wondering how he’d explain the fresh bandage to his mother. Also, he wanted to understand what Mrs. Hefti was up to. Her yard had been raked clean of fallen leaves—but now she was standing on a stepladder, actually picking the remaining leaves from the lower branches of a small tree.

  “Stubborn,” she said, noticing Edgar. “Stupid things won’t fall.”

  She picked a few more. “Be a doll and take these from me, would you?” Edgar came closer to receive a handful of blazing leaves. “Better to get them off the tree now, before they make a mess. You can put them right there in that plastic bag, dear.”

  “Can I keep this one?” asked Edgar, holding up a particularly stunning specimen—a five-pointed beauty whose mottled reds and yellows made the leaf seem as if it had been plucked out of a sunset.

  “Be my guest. They are pretty, I’ll give ’em that. Toni-Ann always wants to save them, too. Puts them in water, like they were flowers.”

  Edgar planned to give the rescued leaf to his mother. It was only fair to forgive her for her meanness (digging through his grandmother’s purse; trying to throw out the braid of hair, not to mention the Virgin’s head). The truth was, he’d been mean to her, too (telling her that she didn’t really love Florence). The leaf would be an apology. He’d give it to her and then the two of them could start the day over. Maybe they could drive to VanDervoort Park to see the swans.

  Edgar stopped at the bottom of the front steps, noticing something in the rhododendrons. The tip of whatever it was stuck out from the green leaves like a snout—a small, shining cylinder. Kneeling on the pavement, Edgar reached for it—then gasped.

  It was a boy’s pee-pee. Well, no, not a boy’s at all—it was extremely large, made of rubber or plastic. Edgar’s mind flashed to the images on Jarell Lester’s phone. Supersluts.com.

  The boy wondered if someone were playing a joke on him. He turned and peered about the yard in case Thomas and Jarell were hiding in the bushes.

  The coast seemed clear, and so he examined the oversized appendage more closely, wondering if his own thing would look like this one day. He knew that it had to get big to make babies. But this big? He’d need longer legs. Sometimes it seemed ridiculous to have a body; why couldn’t people be more like clams, with all their soft stuff hidden under a shell? Edgar grimaced. It would’ve been nice if there were someone he could talk to about this kind of thing. It was probably for situations like this that most boys had fathers.

  As he turned the dildo around, it suddenly began to vibrate. He could feel the tremors travel up his arm and hum through his entire body. It was kind of funny, actually, the way the thing was wriggling in his hand like a charmed cobra. Waaa waaa waaa went the little motor, and the snake rolled its head as if it were drunk. Edgar laughed and let his body go slack. For a moment all worries vanished from his mind. He even barked—a sound he’d not made since the night he’d watched his mother get ready for her date with the butcher.

  But today his mother was staying at home. He’d have her to himself. He stood, shut off the penis, and stuffed it into his pocket, using his shirt to cover the several inches that remained exposed. He pushed at the taped front door and ran into the house.

  “Ma?” He adjusted himself a bit. “Ma! I’m back!”

  * * *

  Lucy was kneeling in the garden, a smear of dirt across her cheek. She’d found nothing.

  What did she expect? A love letter, a box of chocolates, an explanation? She was a fool to have made any effort at all. Frank had left nothing because that’s all there was. She felt a wave of nausea and vomited into one of the holes.

  She was empty now—a sensation that was strangely hopeful. For the first time in her life she had no fear of death. She’d already died in that other story, hadn’t she—so fuck it. She stood, wiped her filthy hands across her chest, dragged her thoughts back to Earth: a beer, a shower. She’d been maudlin for too many days, and she wasn’t going to let herself get sucked back into something that was finished. She kicked a clod of dirt from her shoe so hard it flew against the back wall of the house.

  Maybe she and Edgar could sell the place and drive away. Really drive away this time, though. Start again.

  If that was the plan, she had a lot to do. Fix the front door, call a Realtor. But first she’d give the kid his pill, change his bandage. Get him some dinner. Edgar liked Old Peking. She’d order from there.

  “Hey, buddy,” she said, because there he was. He had a bright red leaf in his hand and a pornographic bulge in his pants.

  “Hey,” the boy said happily. “I brought you a—”

  He stopped, taking in the state of the yard, the shovel resting on the ground beside his mother. There was a big hole in the middle of the lawn, some smaller ones by the trees, but the most terrible thing was the tomato patch. His grandmother’s plants had been completely dug out of the ground and were lying in a tangled heap, their dirt-clodded roots horribly exposed like giant chicken feet.

  Edgar was speechless. He touched his stomach.

  “Don’t shoot me,” Lucy said. “I can explain.”

  Tears came to Edgar’s eyes.

  “You could have waited.” The leaf in his hand fluttered to the ground.

  Lucy knelt down in front of the boy and hugged him. “I’m sorry.”

  At her touch, Edgar’s tears came in earnest.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay, baby.” As Lucy pulled him closer, she felt the disconcerting hardness in his pants. “What is that?” she asked, moving her hand toward it.

  “Nothing,” said Edgar, pulling away. He wiped his nose, adjusted his shirt. “It’s mine.”

  28

  Biggleberry Island

  Egg-Flower Soup. Szechwan String Beans. Triple-Delight Chicken. Edgar requested chopsticks, but then used them like tweezers, eating one grain of rice at a time.

  After the meal he sat quietly, tracing with his finger the embroidered outline of a fleur-de-lis on the tablecloth. When Lucy offered him her fortune cookie, he eyed her suspiciously. “You don’t want it?”

  “I know you like them.”

  Edgar cracked both open and, as he nibbled, slowly warmed to his mother.

  “Fortunes?” she said. “You wanna read them to me?”

  Edgar shrugged and picked up the tiny scrolls. “‘Success is made of ten thousand little pains.’”

  “Ow,” said Lucy. “What about the other one?”

  “‘Soon new addition to your family.’”

  “Ow,” Lucy said again—and this time Edgar smiled.

  “You can have one if you want.” He held out the fortunes toward his mother, success in his left hand and the new addition in his right.

  Lucy declined. She’d begun to trace a fleur-de-lis herself, as if it were the other end of a telephone by which she might better communicate with her son.

  “Do you like it around here?” she asked, tossing off the question as breezily as possible.

  “Around where?”

  “This town. This house.” Lucy gestured dismissively. “All of it.”

  Edgar was still chewing on a fortune cookie. “Yes,” he said tentatively. “I like it.”

  The truth was, he wasn’t really sure. So much had changed lately.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Just curious,” Lucy said. “Just curious.”

  Edgar could tell his mother was in a mood. When she repeated herself, it meant she was having thoughts. “Do you like it here?” he asked her.

  “Not really,” she replied.

  Edgar felt a flutter of panic.

  “I mean, I like you,” she said.

  Edgar traced the fleur-de-lis harder. He didn’t care f
or this conversation; it was making him sad again. “Do you want to watch TV?” he said.

  “Or we can rent a movie?” suggested Lucy.

  “Predator,” Edgar said immediately. “There’s a new one.”

  “No, that gives you nightmares.”

  It was true, but he still wanted to see it. “We can just fast-forward when the monster is feasting.”

  * * *

  At the rental box there were no copies of the new Predator, and Lucy chose a well-reviewed romantic comedy about a group of extremely fat women who visit a magical island in hope of becoming skinny.

  Lucy, drinking beer as she watched, was unimpressed. It turned out that the magic was learning to love one’s self. In another move of stunning implausibility that made Lucy mutter, Are you fucking kidding me?—an international conference center on another part of the island was hosting a group of overworked wealthy men in candy-colored Bermuda shorts. Summer-camp hookups led to moonlit walks and poolside betrayals, and ultimately to a large group wedding. Even as Lucy rolled her eyes through most of Biggleberry Island, she kept reaching under her T-shirt to test her belly fat.

  Despite her padding, Lucy was still a beauty. But, because no man had said so lately—at least not directly to her face—she felt distinctly in need of a few shimmering pink biggleberries. Even Ron, who seemed to like her curves, would eventually crave something more miniature. No way was she going to let the butcher seduce her, only to betray her later. She shifted position on the couch. It would have been more relaxing to have watched Predator, and seen skinny women being eaten alive.

  Edgar enjoyed it, though. He laughed innocently at the fat jokes. The women’s puffy ankles reminded him of Florence. At the end of the movie, he had another minor attack of tears—which Lucy treated by attempting to divert the boy’s attention.

  “Oh, your bandage!” she said. “Let’s change it.”

  “It’s already changed.” He held up his hand.

  “Oh,” Lucy said, confused. “Who—”