The Lonely Witness

by William Boyle

  THE

  LONELY

  WITNESS

  A Novel

  WILLIAM BOYLE

  for Katie Farrell Boyle

  It’s a wonderful life that you bring

  Life is a series of obsessions one must do away with. Aren’t love, death, God, or saintliness interchangeable and circumstantial obsessions?

  —E. M. Cioran, Tears and Saints (translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston)

  I don’t know what the chords are. They keep changing all the time.

  —Nick Cave in One More Time with Feeling

  Around here it is not a matter of finding the truth but of deciding which lie you live with better.

  —Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters

  1

  When Mrs. Epifanio opens the door, Amy can tell right away that something’s wrong. Monsignor Ricciardi had told her a few months ago, when she started doing this, that Mrs. Epifanio was prone to fits of dementia, that some days she’d probably seem very confused about where she was and what year it was and who was dead or alive. But Amy’s only seen that side of Mrs. Epifanio once or twice. She’s usually cheery and bright-eyed in the morning, so lively for a ninety-year-old, standing with her shoulders hunched, her bobby-pinned, rose-colored hair wild, her taped-on-the-bridge-of-the-nose glasses hanging recklessly around her neck.

  She’s wearing a housedress now, which isn’t normal. Amy knows she likes to get dressed up for communion. Usually, she’s in a floral-print blouse and slacks. Her eyes are almost quivering, as if she’s on the verge of tears, though it’s sometimes difficult to tell with an old woman. She looks over Amy’s shoulder, out at the street, glancing up and down the block.

  “You okay, Mrs. E?” Amy asks.

  “I’m sick over here,” Mrs. Epifanio says.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know Diane, the woman from church who sits with me four days a week?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Last two days, her son comes in her place. Vincent. Real creep. I sit at my kitchen table, playing solitaire, picking at my Meals on Wheels; he goes into my bedroom and starts digging around. I call into him, I says, ‘I’m gonna call the police!’ He says, ‘Don’t worry, Mrs. E,’ like we’re pals. ‘I’m just cleaning up a little.’”

  “You sure?” Amy asks.

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Maybe you imagined it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What’s Diane say?”

  “He says she’s sick with the flu. I can’t get through to her.”

  “What time’s she usually get here?”

  “Ten.”

  “And you’re worried he’s going to come again?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about I hang around and we straighten this out?”

  “Oh, that’d be wonderful. Thank you, dear.” Mrs. Epifanio looks relieved.

  Amy motions to her bag. “I’ve got communion for you.”

  “Come in, come in,” Mrs. Epifanio says. She points down the narrow hallway, where a door opens on her small kitchen.

  Amy crosses the threshold.

  “You know, I was just telling my grandson Rob all about you on the phone,” Mrs. Epifanio says.

  “Rob is Elaine’s son?”

  “Yep. They live over in Metuchen. Supposed to come visit again on Sunday, but we’ll see. ‘Amy Falconetti,’ I says to him. ‘Originally from Flushing. Brings me communion. Such a nice girl. Pretty. Dark hair. Tattoos, just like you,’ I says to him.”

  “That’s really nice to hear.”

  Amy’s not sure how Mrs. Epifanio knows about her tattoos. They’re all on her back and thighs, traces of her old life. Word gets around, she guesses. Someone found out, saw her in the summer with a tank top and shorts on and spread the word. She’s not embarrassed about her tattoos, and she doesn’t regret them. It just feels like they belong to someone else. It’s also still weird to her that she has dark hair. It’s been a few years since she dyed her blond hair eerie black, and she’s never quite adjusted. She sometimes looks in the mirror and can’t recognize herself. But it felt like a necessary change.

  “Just the truth. Last one who brought me communion, Immacula, you should’ve seen her.” Mrs. Epifanio puts out her arms like a zombie. “Walking dead. Kill you to have a little enthusiasm? I mean, I know it’s not the most exciting thing in the world, bringing communion to an old lady who can’t leave the house, but I think you’ve gotta carry yourself with grace. And you do.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. E,” Amy says. “I try. And I always look forward to seeing you.”

  “I’m better than all the other ones, right?”

  “All the other what?”

  “All the other old bags you visit.”

  Amy laughs. “You’re great.”

  They’re in the kitchen now: Mrs. Epifanio settling onto her padded chair, Amy sitting across from her. The table is strewn with scratch-offs, church bulletins she’s brought over the last few months, word-puzzle books, prescriptions, junk mail, and pillboxes. Amy always takes in the picture on the wall: Mr. Epifanio as a young man, standing in a subway tunnel with a clipboard in his hand. Amy’s not sure what exactly he did—it’s tough to get straight information from Mrs. Epifanio—but she’s pretty sure he worked for the MTA. He died back in 1986, right after the Mets won the Series, which Amy will never forget, because she was in first grade and Queens was rocking. That was more than thirty years ago now. Crazy how time moves.

  Amy’s always listening to Mrs. Epifanio tell stories about her husband. Mostly they seem to revolve around his clowning around in bars or staying up all night to hunt a little mouse with a BB gun.

  “You doing okay with your pills, Mrs. E?” Amy asks.

  “My pills,” Mrs. Epifanio says, waving her off. “Who knows anymore? Half of me’s going this way; half of me’s going that way.”

  “The visiting nurse is still coming?”

  Mrs. Epifanio nods into her chest. “She comes. I can’t hardly understand her with that Russian accent.”

  Amy welcomes this opportunity to transition into administering Holy Communion to Mrs. Epifanio. She’s supposed to hold off on any conversation until after the parishioner receives, but that’s awfully tough to enforce, especially with Mrs. Epifanio, who is starved for company. Amy uses the shortorder rite that she uses for all lonely widows. She takes the Bible, the cross, the candle, and the white cloth out of her bag. Then they go through their prayers.

  The reverential attire Amy’s wearing—blue slacks and a white blouse—is a far cry from how she used to dress. For years, she had pretty strict fashion rules: rockabilly-girl hair, sometimes with a bandanna, paired with pencil skirts, swing skirts, cropped trousers, swing trousers, short-sleeved shirts, vintage sweaters, sarong dresses, and halter-necked tops. Everything was red, white, black, and navy, with polka dots, stripes, checked gingham, or leopard-print patterns. Acceptable motifs included cherries, skulls, anchors, horseshoes, dice, bows, and pin-up girls. She wore flats or pumps on her feet. It was like she was always dressing to go see Social Distortion or serve as an extra in a John Waters movie.

  Memories of her past life—past lives, really—come only in flashes now, a haze of bars and music and tattoos and drugs and booze and women. Things getting dark with Merrill, her gutter-punk girlfriend with scabies and a mean dog on a frayed rope leash. Meeting Alessandra at Seven Bar, where Amy worked for years, and then moving here, to Gravesend in Brooklyn, to live with her. That was five years ago. Alessandra hated the neighborhood and had spent her life trying to escape it or stay away, but she’d been filled with guilt about leaving for Los Angeles after high school. She’d wanted to make it as an actress and hadn’t been a
round when her mother got sick and died, so she’d decided she should stay for a while and tend to her father. Like almost everything with Alessandra, the decision was more a projection of who she thought she should be rather than who she was.

  They were happy for a bit. Amy took the train into the city to pour drinks at Seven Bar, while Alessandra stayed with her father and got a little extra work in movies here and there. When Alessandra’s father died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism, she ditched Amy and moved back to Los Angeles without much notice. Amy sank into a big, black depression after that. She thought about chasing after Alessandra but didn’t. She sold all her records for cash, quit her job at Seven Bar, ate cheap, lonely meals at Liu’s Shanghai on Bath Avenue, her favorite Chinese place. She stayed behind. Staying behind was what she’d always been good at.

  She went into St. Mary’s one day, when she thought she was being followed by a man after getting off the train at Bay Parkway. Her childhood church in Queens came back to her in an instant. The organist was practicing in St. Mary’s. She was beautiful. Her name was Katrya. She was Ukrainian. Amy felt safe. She started going to church weekly again for the first time since middle school, since before her mother died.

  She liked Pope Francis. He seemed to reflect everything good about Catholicism. She decided she wanted to do something useful. She wanted to help. She’d spent enough time not helping. She became a Eucharistic Minister, went around and brought communion to old people, mostly old ladies like Mrs. Epifanio. She liked hearing their stories and making them smile. She liked that they thought she was so young, even though she was in her mid-thirties now and was starting to feel old.

  After she receives, Mrs. Epifanio closes her eyes and prays quietly. She crosses herself and then uses a toothpick to dislodge some of the wafer from between her teeth.

  When they’re done with the rite, Mrs. Epifanio says, “Can I get you anything? Coffee? I have some delicious seeded cookies. Some good rolls, too. I’ve got a hundred of those little cartons of orange juice from Meals on Wheels. You like orange juice? Take a few. Take them all. I don’t drink orange juice.”

  “I’m fine,” Amy says, looking up at the clock. Ten to ten. Diane—or her son—is set to show up soon. Amy wonders if Mrs. Epifanio is just dreaming it all up. What she’s fully expecting is that Diane will show, Amy will ask about Vincent, and there won’t even be a Vincent.

  “I’m not imagining this,” Mrs. Epifanio says, as if reading her mind.

  “I believe you,” Amy says.

  “It’s too bad this Vincent’s such a creep. He’s about your age.”

  So many of these old ladies feel the need to try to hook her up with their grandsons, nephews, guys from the block, anyone they can think of. Amy always shakes it off. Most of them she doesn’t even consider telling the truth. You can only explain so much to a ninety-year-old who has spent her whole life thinking one way.

  “Yeah, doesn’t sound like my type,” she says to Mrs. Epifanio.

  “He’s got these nasty eyes.”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. E. Maybe it was just a nightmare.”

  “You’ll see.”

  The door opens a few minutes later. She does see. The man she assumes is Vincent walks in. He’s got the key. He’s at least five years younger than she is, maybe not even thirty. He does have dark, unsettling eyes, with dark hair to match. He’s wearing a black trench coat, looking like one of those Columbine shooters from back in the nineties. He’s skinny. He’s got a dirty smile.

  “And who are you?” he says, coming into the kitchen and sitting across from her at the table.

  “See?” Mrs. Epifanio says. “What’d I tell you?”

  “Why do you have a key?” Amy asks Vincent.

  “It’s my mom’s. She’s sick with the flu. Asked me to come over and sit with Mrs. E in her place.” Vincent waves at Mrs. Epifanio like she’s blind or an infant, raises his voice to talk to her. “How you doing today, Mrs. E? You remember me from the last couple of days? Vincent.”

  “Go shit in your hat,” Mrs. Epifanio says.

  “She doesn’t like me much,” he says to Amy.

  “She says she called your mother and can’t get through,” Amy says.

  “My mother can’t even get out of bed. Who are you, you mind me asking?”

  “I’m from church. I bring Mrs. E communion.”

  “Okay, well, we’re all good here. ’Less you got one of those little wafers you want to throw my way. I’m the only one I know loved the taste of them as a kid. Like licking a nun’s armpit. Hey, you’re not a nun, are you?”

  “I’m not a nun.”

  “All I’d have to do is lick your armpit to find out if you’re lying.” That smile. Yellow teeth. Foul breath she can smell from where she’s sitting.

  “Who talks like this?” Mrs. Epifanio says.

  “Mrs. E doesn’t need you today,” Amy says. “I’ll be sitting with her until your mother gets better.”

  He rubs his hands together and doesn’t respond.

  “Have you been back into her bedroom?” Amy asks.

  He exhales, as if he’s exhausted with this line of questioning. “My mother told me to dust in there.”

  “Mrs. E isn’t comfortable with that.”

  Vincent stands. “Look, lady. I’ve got better things to do. I’m trying to do my mother a favor here, that’s it. You don’t want me around, I’m out.”

  “Leave the key, okay?”

  “I’m not gonna leave the key. It’s my mother’s.”

  “It’s Mrs. E’s house.”

  “I am most definitely not leaving the key.” Vincent starts to walk down the hallway, then pauses to turn back and address them. “I don’t know what the fuck this is about. Try to do something nice and you get treated like a thief. Diane’s not gonna be happy.” He goes out through the front door, leaving it unlatched and slightly open.

  Amy gets up and goes over to close the door behind him. “Jeez,” she says, as she comes back to the table and sits down again. She’s been trying for a while not to curse so much.

  “I told you I wasn’t imagining it,” Mrs. Epifanio says. “Maybe we should call the cops.”

  “They won’t do anything.”

  “I don’t like that he has the key.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I’ll sit with you awhile longer. We’ll figure out a plan. Do you have Diane’s number handy? Let’s try her.”

  Mrs. Epifanio leans on the arms of her chair and rises to her feet slowly. She makes her way over to a pantry on the far side of the refrigerator. She comes out with an ancient green address book. “Her number’s in here somewhere,” she says. On the way back, she stops to open the refrigerator and grabs a few small cartons of orange juice, cradling them against her chest. When she gets back to the table, she pushes the address book and the orange juice in front of Amy. “Have an orange juice,” Mrs. Epifanio says.

  “Oh, I’m okay,” Amy says. “Really. Thanks.”

  “Have one.”

  “Maybe in a bit.” Amy flips through the address book, all yellowed pages and Mrs. Epifanio’s nearly illegible script. Lots of names and addresses and numbers are scratched out. A stack of Mass cards is stuck in the middle of the book.

  “Probably ninety percent of the people in there are dead,” Mrs. Epifanio says.

  “That’s sad,” Amy replies.

  “It’s sad to think that I’m in someone else’s address book and they’ll just scratch me out when I croak like I scratch them out when they croak.” Mrs. Epifanio laughs.

  “What’s Diane’s last name?”

  Mrs. Epifanio thumbs her chin. “What is it? I say her last name so rarely. Grasso? No. That’s her neighbor Edna… . Marchetti. It’s Marchetti. Same last name as my cousin Janet.”

  Amy finds Diane’s number in the last column on the M page. She goes over to the rotary phone on the wall and dials it. She lets it ring ten times before hanging up. “Nothing,” she says. “For a second I thought
Vincent might pick up.”

  “I appreciate the company. I really do, Amy.”

  Amy walks down the hall and peeps through the curtained window in the door. Vincent is in front of the apartment building across the street, vaping, pacing through his cloud of smoke. He seems to be talking to himself.

  She goes back to the phone and dials the rectory. She tells Connie Giacchino, the secretary, that she can’t do any more home visits today. She explains that Mrs. Epifanio needs her help. Connie says Monsignor Ricciardi will certainly understand and maybe Immacula will be willing to step in. Amy thanks her and returns to the table.

  “I’ll get out the cards,” Mrs. Epifanio says. “We can play Rummy 500.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Something about Vincent has Amy extra uneasy now. It occurs to her that he reminds her of someone. When she was a sophomore in high school and living full-time with her grandparents, she watched from her bedroom window as their neighbor Bob Tully strangled a man to death in his driveway and then dragged him into his garage. The man’s face was red, his eyes were popping, he was gasping for breath. Bob Tully’s hands were monstrous. He was thick-necked and so strong and seedy-looking. Amy often saw him from her window, because she had just started smoking and she spent a lot of time blowing smoke out over the fire escape. He looked up at her as he was dragging the man to the garage and smiled. Did he really look like Vincent, or is she just conflating their faces in her mind now?

  Bob Tully must’ve seemed old to her then, but he couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight or twenty-nine. She didn’t call the cops, didn’t say anything to her grandparents. She closed her blinds and wondered if she’d actually seen what she thought she’d seen. The next day, Bob Tully came out as she was walking to school. He was peeling an apple with a pocketknife, smiling, saying she didn’t see what she thought she saw, and she should just forget anything she thought she saw, and if she didn’t, there’d be a lot of trouble, because girls with big mouths sometimes wound up hanging from trees. He showed her the knife. She’ll never forget his thumb on the knife. She saw Bob Tully around a lot after that. He’d wave to her from his stoop. The more she stayed quiet, the nicer he was.