Tina laughed. “When you came rushing into Grandpa’s hospital room, all those bells and beeps going off!”
“Yeah, I knew I’d see you again. I felt it.”
The damaged part of her heart was telling her: oh sure, it’s your job to take care of the patient, comfort the family. And when he dies, you’ll move on to the next patient, the next family and all this will be part of your job. But her soul told her a different story. Maybe she could let go now, maybe she could trust a man in her life again. Look at Grandpa; still looking for Grandma.
Maybe she could believe in love again.
“We’re moving into the apartments just down the street,” she said. “I’ll be able to walk here.”
“The Oaks?”
“That’s the one.”
“When?”
“I sign the lease Friday and then we can move in end of the month. They needed to paint it, fumigate, that sort of thing.”
“Give me a heads up and I’ll help you, okay? That’s a nice neighborhood.”
She searched his face for any sign of insincerity. Looking back, she should have picked up on Quincy’s annoying habit of drumming his fingers against a table or coffee cup, the soundtrack for his lies. But James had nothing to hide.
“Okay, I’ll do that.” She glanced at Joshua who held his teddy bear tight as he sucked on his pinky and drifted to sleep. “I better get him home.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“Yes, you will.”
He closed her door. She watched him glide back inside, but before he shut the door, he turned to watch her drive away. He was still in the doorway, waving, when she rounded the corner.
thirty seven
Eddie vowed he would never return to Lebanon. Except for an occasional thought of Rosemary, Eddie gave Lebanon a passing nod, a blip in his travels to the life he knew he was meant to lead.
Now here he was, back home.
The first room he tackled was the living room, figuring he’d discover very little by way of artifacts from his childhood. His mother had given him everything he wanted: his paintings and sketches, still probably occupying some musty corner of the attic of the home he and Marianne had shared, baby clothes his grandmother had knitted for his arrival into the world, report cards and early artwork, some old LPs of Chicago Transit Authority, Hendrix, Blood, Sweat and Tears.
By noon, he had stripped the living room and the second bedroom (Mom always called it the sitting room) of their sparse contents, his mother already having pared down her and Pop’s possessions years ago when they sold the house and moved to an apartment.
Tina would be thrilled. He’d ship two sofas, two recliner chairs, a couple lamps, a television and stand, and two end tables, all high-end furniture, along with pieces they had kept from his childhood home. Like the end tables: octagonal storage units, really. He checked to see if any Seagrams was stashed away, a favorite heist of his when he wanted to be the cool dude at the high school parties. Eddie always brought the booze.
What he did find in one of the tables was a shoebox filled with slides. He took them out, one by one, held them up to the light to view the Kodachrome miniatures of his long, buried memories.
They had saved something of Rosemary after all.
Her third birthday—in a park with a pony. Yes, she loved ponies. There was Pop holding his little girl, her twisted legs dangling like a marionette’s. He held her hand out to the pony’s mane. That smile on her face.
He viewed the next slide, then the next, and more after that, all vignettes from “that time” as Mamie often referred to it.
First Holy Communion.
Birthdays with balloons and a cake-smeared Rosemary.
The Barbie doll Christmas.
Ah, there he was. Chubby as ever. His ten-year-old self crouched next to the wheelchair, and as always, his left eye squinting into the sunlight. Rosemary threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, her little body twisting in her chair to reach him.
He had given her an ice cream cone—or fed it to her. She had trouble holding onto things for long. The melted cream smeared her mouth and hands—the same mouth and hands that grabbed him to kiss him. Mom must have had the camera . . . no, it had to be Pop. Mamie’s first instinct would have been to wash her daughter.
Eddie appreciated the composition of the photo, a close-up, unusual in the sixties when regular people were getting used to operating a camera, the days before the Instamatic, one-touch shot. The F-stop and the light had to be manipulated to get this close. He couldn’t see Rosemary’s wheelchair, the shot was from the chest, up.
What he could see was his cheek smeared with the ice-cream kiss.
Eddie placed the photo on top of the slides. He willed himself to go back to that day . . . where had they been? It wasn’t often the four of them would venture too far from home. His mother’s anxiety would claim the best of her, and she concentrated far too much or worried about every little thing, working herself into a state of exhaustion, complaining about how hard it was, which would escalate into a flat refusal to go any further.
Pop, on the other hand, enjoyed these outings. The care he took to capture this shot—a candid moment—shone through every pixel.
Now he remembered: the Street Fair. All of Lebanon’s downtown streets (three in all) were shut down for a weekend to host booth after booth of baked goods, funnel cakes, ice cream, hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken pot pie, games, spin art. Rosemary had finished her last bite of a chocolate Mr. Softy—the one he had fed to her—when she threw her arms around him. Pop caught the moment; he must have been waiting for it.
Eddie fished through the slides to see if he could find any leading up to that moment. Surely, it would have been one hell of a coincidence for him to have been that lucky. And there they were, Eddie offering the cone to his sister. A full face shot of her grinning from ear to ear, ice cream dripping down her chin. Another of Eddie, his mouth opened as wide as his sister’s as she goes for another bite. There was Mom’s hand, wiping Rosemary’s chin.
And there he was, again offering the melting mess to his little sister.
She would have been beautiful had she not been born so damaged. Large brown eyes like the Lillos, curly black hair his mother dressed in bobby pins every night, relishing her daughter’s mass of soft curls when she brushed them out. Rosemary’s affliction caused her face and brow to twist into expressions that made her appear angry. But at rest, she was lovely.
Rosemary didn’t make it to dating age, no dances or proms, no football games. No wedding. The closest event Mom got to preparing for an event like that was her daughter’s funeral.
And even then, he was the one who had to take care of doing it right: of making sure Rosemary took with her the most important item—those ruby shoes.
He packed up the slides and placed the box on the passenger’s seat. Tina needed to see them. She had her aunt’s eyes, after all.
Later that afternoon, Eddie visited Holy Cross Cemetery, surprised that he found its profound silence comforting. They were buried together, mother and daughter. Mom atop Rosemary, he imagined, in the same grave. A simple brass plaque, recently struck, adorned the site.
Rosemary Lillo 1958 - 1966
Mamie Krisky Lillo 1928 - 2007
A space beneath his mother’s name awaited another inscription. The plot was recently mowed and someone had planted day lilies which were beginning to flower. Eddie surveyed the assembly of headstones surrounding his sister and mother, all Krisky’s or Spitz’s, his grandmother’s maiden name. He looked around for the Lillo family plot and had found it on the other side of the road, across from his sister and mother, a collection of older, weathered stones bearing the names of Antonio, Rosario, Vincenzo, Charles, AnnaMaria, Bella: uncles, grandmother, aunt.
For all of his fascination with the undead, and the many cemeteries or cemetery sets he had occupied, a chill crept into his spine.
He was walking on his relatives.
Grandm
a AnnaMaria. Her meatballs melted in your mouth. She rarely spoke. A white-haired woman who enjoyed sitting on her porch glider holding reign over her extended brood as they played Army in her postage stamp- sized backyard, he and his cousins firing imaginary muskets made from tree branches, abandoning them for hand-to-hand combat, surrendering to AnnaMaria’s hand claps, which signaled the beginning of the feast.
And what a feast.
Pans of steaming lasagna, cheese melted in puddles over thick, red sauce. Platters of meatballs and sausage, onions and peppers fried in olive oil, loaves of crusty bread, hot from the oven. Bowls of salad, olives.
The adults—these adults resting in eternity beneath him: Antonio, Rosario, Charles, Vincenzo, their wives, Aunt Bella, a spinster who bustled after AnnaMaria, hopping to her quiet commands, filling every inch of the table with heaping platters of meat and starch and greens—the grown-ups already half-crocked on Chianti or homemade wine from Uncle Tony, smoke from their cigarettes and cigars curling into the air, mingling with the heavenly scent of frying garlic and bubbling tomatoes.
And Rosemary. Dear, sweet, broken Rosemary, was the belle of the ball in her wheelchair and ruby shoes. Sometimes she wore a rhinestone tiara and rhinestone cuffs, embracing her role as Princess of the Lillo family. So many subjects surrounded her, offering her bits of meatball, a rigatoni dripping in sauce, a spoon of sweetened mascarpone.
These memories took him by surprise. They were not the usual story of his life, the one he had told himself in preparation for his flight to the West Coast so long ago. That story was filled with rejection and affront, mockery and isolation, entrapment, failure. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, to Eddie, was a grave, just like the one he stood upon: a place of unfulfilled expectations for being born male and first, the brother of a severely handicapped younger sister, a role he could never walk away from nor live up to. And then, when she had died so unexpectedly, so unnecessarily . . .
No one said it, the words never formed, the atmosphere of his childhood absorbing the thought, but it was palpable, ready to be plucked from thin air at the slightest provocation.
He had heard people whisper.
He had carried that uncertainty with him all his adult life, that phrase for which everyone stopped short, but rested on the lips of Antonio and Rosario and Charles and Bella, AnnaMaria and on the Krisky’s and Spitz’s, Grams and Uncle Mike, Joey, all the cousins. Like the last drop of blood he insists be placed on the lips of his vampires after they feast, the last admission of guilt.
His fault.
Poor kid to have to live with that.
Eddie returned to Rosemary’s and Mom’s grave and sat down, cross-legged next to the brass plaque.
As steady as his voice and the eruption of memory allowed, he spoke aloud to his sister, his mother, the quiet breeze passing through the maples and oaks.
“You know the truth now. You know how much I loved her, protected her. I was only fourteen, Mom. Fourteen.” He wiped his face with his sleeve, sucked in the sweet air of a freshly-mowed lawn. “Pop will be here soon. He’s probably seeing you right now, talking to you. He sees all of you.” Eddie chuckled, the taste in his mouth bittersweet. He rose, found a small, smooth stone and placed it on the bronze plaque.
“Watch over me, okay?”
On the red-eye back to L.A., Eddie held fast to the briefcase filled with the slides as if he were holding his world together: two units torn, separated, now finding a place. Ragged edges of his life; but he realized he had been thriving in its imperfection his whole life.
A film premiere waited for him, and the hype in the magazines had already begun churning. That was the world he occupied. And though he never thought it was possible, he had found room for Tina and Joshua—even Pop.
For him, that was good enough.
thirty eight
“I was afraid with the conspiracy going on around here, something had happened to you.”
Grandpa scuttled his wheelchair to the front door when he saw Tina and Joshua arrive, unusual as he had taken lately to a half-wakeful state where throughout much of Tina’s visit, he spent dozing in his chair or muttering about measurements of a job that had come into the plant and that had to be completed in a week.
“What do you make of it?” Tina asked James as they walked Grandpa to the little playground down the street so he could watch Joshua enjoy the baby slides and miniature castle. He was smiling, a prince among his subjects, his wrap-around sunglasses and baseball cap protecting him from the afternoon sun.
“Just part of skewed perception,” James said. “Paranoia and suspicion are part of the disease. I’m sure he sees us gathering in the kitchen, talking or discussing the patients. It can appear conspiratorial.”
How could she get enough of the way James dipped his head when he contemplated an answer? And always, his answers arrived well thought out, measured to give her reassurance.
“You guys are planning something.”
“Now, Grandpa, what would we be planning other than getting you some sunshine and letting Joshua run around?”
“Something,” he answered, quiet, barely perceptible.
James winked at her. “Look here, Frank. There’s a nice big oak to sit under so you don’t have to be punished by the sun too much and you can watch Joshua wear himself out with his newfound skills. Not bad for a Friday afternoon, eh?”
Tina marveled at James’ command of Grandpa’s moods. He relaxed immediately, his body telling it all: crossed legs, an elbow propped on the arm of the chair. James removed his cap, smoothing Grandpa’s hair, and gave him a sip of ice water.
“Go on, get that young man moving about,” he called to her. “We’ll watch the proceedings.”
For over an hour, they sat like that, James and Grandpa under the tree, watching Joshua walk from one end of the playground to the other, his arms held out to balance, each step a wonder.
Grandpa clapped and laughed as Joshua bounced on the big yellow hen, his face a bit uncertain, even a little afraid, as Tina held fast to him with each bounce. Her shoulder started to ache. She knew she couldn’t sustain Joshua’s solid little body for very long while the wound was still mending. And from what the doctor had told her, there was a good year of healing ahead.
She tried limiting the use of it, relying only on her left side, but Joshua still had trouble balancing so when he began to dip to his right, she had to catch him however she could.
The next thing she knew, they had both fallen on the wood chips, Joshua landing on her shoulder.
James ran to her. She tried to conceal her pain, but it shot through, straight to the other side as if lanced with a spear. He picked up Joshua and tried calming him, but he wriggled and fretted, his arms outstretched to his mother.
A dread, a hopelessness, boiled up from deep inside, worse than any nights she had spent as a child, weeping under the bed covers, waiting for her dad to return. How could she tamp it back down when her grandfather sat under the tree, helpless in his wheelchair, his arms moving but unable to propel him, his future certain—and fatal? All this came to her in a torrent of emotion, as if someone played a tape in the sky: Joshua in the arms of the kindest man she’d ever met, a man who looked at her the way no one else could, who knew she had to work this out, she had to sit there, on the wood chips, shaking with the pain of it all, allow the weight to consume her and settle into the ache of her shoulder while he soothed the baby and Grandpa at the same time, this wizard of kindness, this master of understanding.
She turned away from them, the wood chips biting through her shorts, tears streaming down her cheeks, because the images would not cease.
Eddie’s farewell note.
Trying to reach him again and again.
Grandpa growing more confused, stumbling.
That kid, a gun in his hand.
Falling on Joshua.
Blood smeared on his beautiful baby face.
Eddie sitting at her side, Eddie bringing her home to the bungalow, plumping
pillows under her arm as she held the baby in the other.
A warm hand cupped her shoulder. “What can I do?”
Tina wiped her face on her sleeve, dared to look at him. How awful she must look, tear-streaked, puffy-eyed, snot running from her nose.
The baby was back in his stroller, next to Grandpa, under the tree: two guys needing wheels and the kind assistance of others. One would grow into a man, able to navigate the world on two strong legs, and one would return to the womb of his soul. Her men. The privilege of seeing one through to adulthood, the joy of having spent half of her life under the protection and love of the other.
How could she let him go?
How could she say good-bye?
“Can I help you up?” James extended his hand. “Joshua’s fine. He and Frank are having a lovely conversation.” His smile calmed her, the rumble in her gut beginning to subside, the ache in her shoulder growing dull.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Tina, you’re lovely. There’s nothing to be sorry about. From the moment I saw you, I knew just how lovely, and how strong, you are.”
He helped her up, careful to favor her good side, and held her there in his arms. “I want to share this with you. It’s too much for one person to carry. Do you think that’s why we met?” He pushed aside a strand of hair, caressed her cheek.
She glanced at Grandpa and Joshua, both distracted by the antics of a squirrel.
“I think my grandmother sent you. She had this habit of coming in at the last minute and making everything okay.” Tina laughed, wiped her face again. “Everyone would get swept into her cyclone, she had tremendous energy! She could drive everyone nuts around her because she’d go from one thing to another, expecting you to keep up, but you know, we all depended on her. We knew she could fix anything, make it all right again.”
Twice a Child Page 19
