“How come I’ve learned more about my own daughter from talking to you than I do from talking to her?”
“Because you’re her mother.”
I didn’t return to the scene of the crime—TruckStopUSA—but I drove by it on my way to Milwaukee on Sunday afternoon. I had to push aside involuntary memories—the bullet wounds, the weight of the gun in my hand, peeing by the side of the truck. Leaving DNA evidence on the tarmac.
I was still glad Jimmy was dead, but it would have been better if he’d simply gone away, disappeared. And I was dreading the vigil. I didn’t see how I could face Tommy. It was not impossible, of course, that Tommy was “glad” too. Or, rather, relieved. But I doubted it. I didn’t think Tommy was that kind of person.
I was thinking of the bed in the Palmer House. All those pillows, and the chocolates on the pillows when we came in that night. The awkwardness. The false starts. The goodwill. The final uncomplications of bodily desire.
The vigil was held in Tommy’s apartment. The funeral would be in the morning at a church. I didn’t want to go to either, but as Jimmy’s mother-in-law, I had no choice.
I had crossed a line, of course. Another Rubicon. There was no end of Rubicons. No going back. Not that there’s ever any going back. But what was the nature of this line? I’d committed a mortal sin. I’d known it was wrong to shoot Jimmy. It was an act of free will, I knew it was wrong, but I’d gone ahead and pulled the trigger.
Actually, there was a way to go back. I knew the drill: contrition, confession, satisfaction. But I was in no mood to turn around.
I left my car at the hotel, the Knickerbocker Hotel, where Paul and I had stayed a couple of times, about half a mile from Tommy’s apartment. I walked—I needed the exercise—down Prospect, a tree-lined street on a bluff overlooking the lake, but the view of the lake was blocked by apartments, and large houses (mansions, actually), including the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music.
I rang the bell, was buzzed in, and took the elevator to the eighth floor. The top floor.
There wasn’t much drinking at the vigil. Not like the Polish wakes that I remembered where people banged down potato schnapps and vodka. The apartment was full. Some people were sitting in a corner with a priest saying the rosary. Out loud. In Italian. Fingers active. I didn’t join them. I was surprised to see the coffin, on a stand or dais in front of the windows, which looked out over the lake. I was glad it was closed.
People commiserated, asked about Stella. How much did they know? I wondered. I was going to have to talk to someone. Not at the wake, but later, sometime. Maybe a shrink. Would a shrink have patient confidentiality? But shrinks didn’t do talk therapy anymore. Just pills. Maybe I could take a pill.
I could see a car ferry going out. An ore boat coming in. Ships passing in the night. Pictures of Jimmy on a table in front of the coffin. Stella too. Jimmy and Stella together.
Most of the people were older. The vigil had an old-fashioned feel. An old aunt sat by the coffin. She was crying seriously. In black. She was from another world. Unembarrassed. She hugged me, wouldn’t let go, spoke to me in Italian. “My daughter, now my grandson. He used to . . . come by my house . . .” She spoke with such a strong accent that I could hardly understand the words. But I could understand the grief—unembarrassed, unrestrained.
Everyone asked about Stella. I said she’d been in an accident. I hadn’t prepared my lie very carefully and didn’t know what Tommy had told them. I said that she’d gotten banged up in the parking lot at TruckStopUSA. A friend had brought her to Galesburg. It wasn’t a very good lie, but it was the best I could do.
Some of Jimmy’s high school friends were there, and some of the men from the market. Nil nisi bonum. No one was speaking ill of the dead. There was some talk, among the friends, of going down to the truck stop to find out exactly what the hell had happened and take care of it themselves. But mostly people circulated happy memories, turning Jimmy’s life into a string of anecdotes. The consensus seemed to be that Jimmy had been a little wild, a good kid, but wild. Even Tommy, who should have known better. Tommy, who didn’t want Jimmy to live in his house. Dubious pranks were turned into humorous escapades: Jimmy drag racing down Broadway (the market) with one of the trucks; Jimmy’s first car, a 1975 Mustang; his string of accidents with both cars and trucks; the drum set he bought from Goodwill and set up on the sidewalk one night in front of the warehouse; stealing the night watchman’s little house, taking it up in the elevator to the second floor; shooting rats in the alley with a .22; hiding in the banana cellar under the sidewalk and pretending to be trapped; stowing away on the car ferry and getting tossed off the boat in Ludington. Tommy had to wire him money to get home. Then instead of buying a return ticket on the car ferry, he hitchhiked up through the Upper Peninsula and then down to Milwaukee. Wearing his blue leather jacket and wrap-around sun glasses in church on Good Friday, and the priest refusing to serve him the wafer at communion. The time he forgot to close the door on a car of corn and somebody called Tommy, and by the time he got down to the freight yard a hundred crates of corn had gone missing.
I had a sense of living in a different world. Not just from the people at the vigil, but from the whole world. I had become invisible to all these people. And to my daughter, too. And to Ruthy (probably). I suppose everybody is invisible in this sense. Maybe my problem was that I’d become invisible to myself. I needed a drink, a snort of potato schnapps or Irish whiskey, something stronger than a glass of red wine. Something to turn myself into a different person, at least for one evening. But who?
I stayed till the end. The old aunt—Tommy’s mother’s sister, Jimmy’s grandmother—was planning on spending the night in front of the coffin. Tommy tried to send her home with her niece. “I’ll stay up,” he said. “I got to talk to Frances a little anyway.” But she refused to go.
This was a talk I didn’t want to have. I poured myself another glass of wine.
“So what do you think happened? Jimmy told me she jumped.”
“He pushed her, Tommy. On the exit ramp.”
“That’s what she told you?”
I nodded.
“Go figure,” he said. “She was the best thing that ever happened to him. How’s she doing? Does she know about Jimmy? I mean, what happened?”
“The police notified her on Saturday. They came to the hospital. She was two months pregnant. Miscarried in the hospital.”
Tommy put his arm around me, and it felt good.
“How’s she taking it?”
“She’s pretty upset.”
“In Gounod’s Romeo e Juliette,” he said, “Juliette forgives Romeo for killing Tybalt.”
I was startled, more than startled. I thought for a minute Tommy was offering to forgive me for killing Jimmy, and, caught off guard, I almost said I was sorry.
“It’s the morning after their wedding night,” he went on. “He’s still in her room. The sun comes up. Romeo knows he’s got to leave, but Juliet begs him to stay just a little longer. The prelude’s scored for four cellos. She forgives him and they sing the third love duet. They sing in thirds: ‘Nuit d’hymenee . . .’ And then he leaves.”
Tommy started to sing, “ Va, je t’ai pardonne . . .” but soon broke down. “You speak French?” he asked.
“I can read French,” I said, “but I can’t speak it very well.”
“You don’t need to. It’s the music that creates the character, it says what the words can’t say. Would you like to hear it?”
“I don’t think so, Tommy. It’s too sad, and too late.”
“It’s not very long,” he said.
Tommy put the CD on and found the track. The cellos began to swell, and after a few measures Romeo and Juliet began to sing. I couldn’t understand the French, though I recognized, or thought I recognized, the famous lines about envious streaks lacing the severing clouds in yonder east. But Tommy was right. I didn’t need to understand. The music created the characters. Romeo and Juliet on their w
edding night. The morning after, actually. But what was I supposed to make of this?
“You know, when you first meet Stella you think she’s a supporting character, somebody’s friend, a comprimaria, like Flora in La Traviata, or Susanna in Figaro, but she turns out to be a leading lady, a real diva, but not so temperamental. A nice person, like Mirella Freni. It’s Freni on the CD, by the way. And Franco Corelli. Two Italians singing French. A studio recording. Freni did Juliette at the Met in 1968. That was the last time she sang in the U.S.”
“Paul had a DVD of Verdi’s Otello with Mirella Freni and Placido Domingo,” I said. “He used to show it to his Shakespeare class.”
“They did it again at the Met in 1991,” he said. He took the CD out of the player, put it in the sleeve, and handed it to me. “Play it for Stella.”
The old aunt said something in Italian that I couldn’t understand. “In just a minute,” Tommy said. Due minuti. Holding up two fingers.
“I’m taking my aunt back to Italy in January. Right after Christmas. I go every year. I told Stella and Jimmy I’d take them, too. Maybe you and Stella would like to go. My treat. You got some vacation at Christmas, don’t you? They’re doing Tosca at the Teatro Cilea in Reggio Calabria. That’s my hometown. Not Maria Callas, but it’ll be good.”
Aunt Tina wanted another candle to replace one that had burned out. Tommy got another candle and lit it. He held the lighted match for a few seconds. I could see his red hair. I was standing at a crossroads, or perhaps a fork in the path. I could see a long way down one road, could see all the way to the end of my life: ten more years of teaching Latin, if they didn’t drop the Latin program first; a retirement party; a stack of detective novels on the table next to the bed; crossword puzzles; maybe another trip to Italy, to Verona. But I couldn’t see very far down the other road. I could see Tommy lighting the candle, but I couldn’t see all the way to Reggio Calabria. When I looked up at the window, I couldn’t see the lake. Just the reflection of the coffin, and Tommy’s aunt, Jimmy’s grandmother, watching Tommy light a match and hold it to the candle. The coffin was blocking the way. All brass and dark wood, reflected in the windows. Heavy as lead.
“Think about it,” he said.
He covered his face with his hands, and I could see that he was crying, and I was sure he didn’t want me as a witness.
“Tommy,” I said. “I’m sorry. Can I get you something? More wine? Tea?”
He shook his head. “Sit with me a minute.”
He led me into the bedroom, off the entryway. The bedroom offered another view of the lake. The drapes were open. The moon was full.
He lay down on the bed with his clothes on and asked me to sit next to him. I sat on the edge of the bed and put my hand on his forehead. He put his hand on mine and moved it to his chest.
“Would you lie down next to me?” He moved over to make room.
“Tommy,” I said. “This is not a good time. Your aunt . . .”
Tommy said something in Italian that I didn’t understand and pulled me toward him and tried to kiss me.
I pulled back. He pulled harder, and I pulled harder too. Enough. I could feel the balance of power shifting, not just physically, but spiritually.
“I thought . . .” he said.
“Go to sleep,” I said.
Aunt Tina was still sitting by the coffin when I walked over to say good-bye to her. She said something in Italian that I couldn’t catch. She took my hand in hers and repeated herself. Niente da fare? I think she was saying. “Nothing doing?”
“Non stasera,” I said. Not tonight.”
“Started out Polish,” Tommy said. “Then Italian. Then hippie. Now gentrification. Sciortino’s Bakery’s still here, but it’s not really an Italian community anymore.” We were standing on Brady Street in front of Saint Hedwig’s, while the bell tolled slowly, summoning the mourners. It was an old-fashioned Catholic funeral with no nonsense about sharing memories of the deceased. Just the basics. Once the preliminaries were over the priest, his hands joined together over his black chasuble, made a profound bow and recited the confession: “I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary ever a Virgin, to Blessed Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John the Baptist, to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all of the saints, and to you brethren, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed.”
He struck his chest three times and went on: “Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore, I beseech Blessed Mary ever a Virgin, Blessed Michael the Archangel, Blessed John the Baptist, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all of the saints, and you brethren, to pray to the Lord our God for me.”
It was the first time I’d heard the Confiteor in English. I was tempted to strike my own chest three times, but I was distracted by thoughts of Paul. Maybe I’d made a mistake with Paul. Just sending him off with no ceremony. Till later, of course, when we put the ashes in the ground in Hope Cemetery, and then the memorial service.
And then somebody died during the funeral! Jimmy’s funeral. Right at the beginning of the Kyrie. I could see that something was wrong. An elderly woman three or four pews in front of me tipped over, disappeared except for an arm sticking up over the back of the pew. I could see her hand, fingers moving, as if she were waving good-bye. Another woman, younger, was kneeling beside her, whispering into a cell phone. The priest finished the Kyrie and kept right on going. The hand stayed in place above the back of the pew, but after a few minutes the fingers stopped moving.
By the time the ambulance arrived people were lining up to receive holy communion and the paramedics had trouble wheeling the gurney down the aisle. By the time the priest got to the Dies Irae the old woman had been hustled out on the silent gurney.
Afterward, back on Brady Street, Tommy started to laugh as he was getting into the limo to go to the cemetery. I laughed, too. Even Stella and Ruthy laughed. Later. When I told them the story. Everybody laughs when I tell that story, and I’ll bet you’re laughing, too. What are we talking about here? Cosmic irony? Some kind of irony for sure, but I’ve never figured out exactly what kind. The woman had come to the wrong funeral.
“You want to ride in the limo to the cemetery?” Tommy asked.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got to get back.”
He put his hand on my arm and I felt an involuntary response, a deep-down drum beat. “I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “I was out of line.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
“But I meant what I said about going to Italy after Christmas. You got some vacation after Christmas, don’t you? They’re doing Rigoletto at San Carlo in Naples—maybe I didn’t mention that before—and Tosca at the Teatro Cilea in Reggio Calabria. Maria Callas did Aïda there in 1951. I was twelve years old. It’ll be good. Think about it.”
I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
9
Virgo (June–July 1997)
I was eating a soft-boiled egg and reading the Sunday supplement of the Galesburg Register-Mail, which was still sitting on the harvest table. Ruthy, who’d taken a few days off, had gone back to work. I was glad for her support, but I was also glad to have Stella all to myself for a few days. I’d been reading to her, but she’d fallen asleep. The house was quiet. It seemed to me that we were living in a house where all the furniture had been covered with sheets to protect it from the light. Jimmy’s death was a grand piano. Stella’s miscarriage was a sofa on which no one sat. Stella’s lesbian lover was a barrister’s bookcase. I didn’t mind. Better Ruthy than Jimmy. Besides, Lois and I had experimented when we were rooming together for our freshman year in Belmont House at Knox. Stella going to mass on Sunday as if it were the most natural thing in the world? I saw going to mass as a big armoire. And Stella’s failure to call me after Paul’s death? This was huge, like a four-drawer lateral filing cabinet or a big stand-up desk, like Paul’s railroad desk. The question was, how to uncover these large pieces of furniture, pull off the sheets so that we
could move around the apartment comfortably instead of on tiptoe.
Stella had been making her presence felt by being cranky. She didn’t want to be left alone, but she didn’t light up when I came into the room and sat on the edge of the double bed she’d been sharing with Ruthy. I kept probing for an opening, but talking to her was like playing tennis against myself, which I hoped was a good sign. She wanted coffee, then tea. She wouldn’t drink either coffee or tea unless it was in her special cup.
“We could paint your room,” I said. “I’m thinking the opposite walls eggshell white and the front wall coral.” The fourth wall, the outside wall behind the bed, was brick, like the outside wall in the living room. There was no window, so legally the room was a “den,” not a “bedroom,” but there was a large double closet.
“Is there any tea?” she asked.
“I can make some.”
“I’ll have some if it’s already made,” she said.
I started to clear off the small desk that had been Stella’s in the house on Prairie Street—putting books, papers, pens, mechanical pencils in a banker’s box. The desk was an odd shape—small, but fat, deep. It wouldn’t fit through the door to her bedroom on Prairie Street. “You remember how your father had to take this desk apart to get it into your room?”
“Yes, Ma, I remember.”
“The movers had to take it apart to get it out of the room.”
“Right.”
“I’ve made some space in the closet,” I said. “Ruthy bought some underwear, socks, jeans, and T-shirts for you at Target.”
She rolled over onto her stomach, her head turned away from me.
“Would you like another chapter of The Wind in the Willows?”
But she was already asleep. I could see a pulse along her neck. A lock of hair had fallen over the side of her face. I pushed it aside. Her face was warm. After a few minutes she kicked off the flannel sheet. She wasn’t wearing anything but panties. Her face was pale, washed out, but I could see the young girl in her profile. I could see Paul’s face, too, and the funny faces he used to make when he was shaving, and Stella’s own funny faces, and I could see her history inscribed on her body. The large mole on her left arm that she tried to shave off with Paul’s razor. The long scar on her leg from jumping off the balcony into the spirea bushes when they were in bloom and looked like big pillows. The small scar on her forehead, just under the hairline, from falling out of the jungle gym on the playground at Hitchcock Elementary. The broken big toe from turning a cartwheel in the living room and breaking the glass on the tall bottom shelf of a bookcase. I pulled the sheet up over her legs. We never replaced the glass, but I sold the bookcase for nine hundred dollars to the people who bought the house. On her back were the marks where one of the kids from the Salvation Army (behind our house) shot her with an air rifle. They took turns shooting each other in the back till the commander saw them one day and confiscated the air rifle. The scar between thumb and first finger: a wine glass had broken while she was drying it. Standing in the kitchen, a mother-daughter moment.