Sorry for Your Loss

by Jessie Ann Foley

  The kitchen was filled with the familiar Sunday smells of baked garlic bread and slow-simmering meat sauce, but underneath it Pup could smell something cloyingly sweet and acidic, like decaying fruit, or the taste that fills your mouth just before you throw up. The origin of the stench was Luke. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen, his head lolling like a boxer’s in a late round, while Pup’s parents stood huddled together directly across from him, looking defiant and furious, but far older than he had ever remembered them looking before. It may have been a trick of the light, though, because even Luke looked haggard and haunted; they regarded each other in the middle of that room like the three lone survivors of a shipwreck. Not one of them had even noticed Pup’s entrance. Stepping to one corner of the room, he lifted the camera that still hung around his neck from the party and pressed the shutter, then retreated to the breakfast nook, as shaken and disturbed by what he’d captured as an embedded photographer in a foreign war.

  “What’s so important to you?” his mom was demanding. She was making the same mistake that Pup had made in the past, the mistake of trying to reason with Luke when he was past the point of reasoning. “I just don’t understand what is so important that you haven’t been here three weekends in a row. And then when you do come home, you show up like—” She made a vague gesture with her arm. “Like this.”

  “Like what, Ma?” Luke bared his teeth at her in the grotesque approximation of a smile.

  “You know like what. Like a common stumble bum.”

  “Mother.” Luke leaned against the breakfast nook, his back to Pup, and dug out a cigarette from his pocket. “I will have you know that ‘bum’ is no longer a politically correct term. How could you be so insensitive to our viaduct-dwelling brethren?”

  “Don’t you dare light that cigarette in this house.” Pup’s dad’s voice was low and furious. He was wearing his World Series T-shirt with the dribbled bleach stain along the sleeve. “Just when the hell did you start smoking, anyway?”

  “I am a man who’s full of surprises.” Luke stuck the unlit cigarette behind his ear, pushed himself upright from the table and lurched toward the fridge. He swung the door open, bent down, and peered inside, pulling out a foil-covered plate.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” his mom said. “I made that plate for Pup!”

  “It’s okay, Ma,” Pup said softly, and every head swiveled toward the place where he was sitting at the breakfast nook, all of them suddenly registering his presence at the same time. “He can have it.”

  “He certainly may not. If your brother wants to go out drinking all day every Sunday, that’s his business. But I’m not going to feed him his dinner if that’s how he’s going to behave.”

  “You’re not feeding me,” Luke said, raising his voice to a whiny pitch that was meant to mock their mother’s way of speaking, and that made Pup look away in shame. “I’m not sitting in a fuckin’ high chair while you spoon some pureed carrots into my mouth. I’m just eating.” He took the foil-covered plate and stumbled through the open doorway toward the long wooden dining room table. As he passed her, Pup’s mom reached up to grab the plate, but Luke, with a crisp, precise movement—sort of impressive for a person who was as drunk as he was—swatted her away with his free hand.

  “Hey!” The broken blood vessels squiggling across his father’s cheeks surged an angry purple. “Don’t you touch your mother like that!”

  Luke ignored his father and kept walking. They all followed him out to the dining room but stopped short in the doorway, unsure of what to do next, as he dropped onto the wooden bench, slung the plate onto the table with a clatter, and peeled off the foil.

  “Give that back.” Pup’s mother’s voice simmered with choked rage. “I told you. That plate is for Pup.”

  “Ma,” Pup pleaded. What was wrong with her? The woman who avoided conflict at all costs was now suddenly ready to go toe to toe with a whiskey-drunk Luke? Didn’t she know yet that the only way to handle him in these situations was not to engage with him at all? “I ate already. He can have it.”

  “See?” Luke smiled again, that hideous baring of teeth. “Permission granted.”

  He ducked his head toward the plate, scooped up a hunk of pasta with his bare hand, and shoveled it into his mouth.

  “That is enough!” She was yelling now. Pup had not heard her yell at anyone—not even at the television when a poppet doll had gotten completely lowballed by the eighteenth-century toys expert on Antiques Roadshow—since before Patrick died. In a way, it was sort of nice: proof that the fiery woman who had raised eight children was still inside of her somewhere. She reached across the table and grabbed the plate from beneath Luke’s hands. He was on his feet in an instant, still chewing, the pasta hanging out of his mouth like strings of intestines. With another precise, brutal movement, he whirled around and yanked the plate back. Pup and his father stood paralyzed as his petite mother, still dressed in her purple skirt from Sunday mass, and his drunk, hulking, brother, whose belly had gone slack with alcohol but whose shoulders were still humped with muscle, grappled for a long second with the plate of Bolognese. And then Luke’s hand was grasping her shoulder, his thumb digging into her collarbone, shoving her away from him with all the violence and contempt the darkest part of himself could muster. She flew backward and the plate was in the air. It turned once and then hit the hardwood, cracking down the middle like a half-moon, the sauce exploding against the faded floral wallpaper like blood spatter, while Pup’s mother landed heavily on top of the plate with a painful thud.

  “Mom!” Pup dropped to the floor, his knees squelching in cold pasta, as she struggled to catch her breath. Beside him, Luke was deflating like a balloon. His rage, choked off from its source of oxygen, had collapsed. He only looked small and mean and so terrified at what he had just done it had nearly sobered him up.

  “Ma,” Luke whispered. Their mother gasped and floundered on the floor like a caught fish, her legs churning in the red mess, meat sauce caking in her hair. If it wasn’t so awful, so humiliating and violent and awful, it almost would have been funny. She flailed her arms, and then her breath finally caught, first one huge gulp of air and then another. Then, she was still, breathing evenly and moaning softly, her cheek pressed into the wet floor.

  “Oh, god,” said Luke. “Ma. I didn’t mean to.” He fell to his knees, on the other side of her body from Pup. He prostrated himself on the floor next to her so that his face was inches from hers on the hardwood. “Please,” he said. “Ma. I didn’t mean to.”

  “Get out,” their father said quietly, putting his foot between his wife’s face and his son’s. “You no longer live here. Get your things and get out of this house.”

  “Mom.” Luke was only speaking to her. He was only seeing her.

  “Out!” roared their father.

  “Pup.” Luke looked up from where he was lying next to their mother. His voice was pleading again; the same voice he’d used on the roof the night Pup had taken his photograph. “Tell them.”

  “Tell them what?” Pup hated himself for beginning to cry.

  “You leave Pup out of this!” shouted their father. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it!”

  “Dad—” said Pup.

  “No!” Their father held Pup back with a shaking forearm. “Just get the hell out of here!”

  “I’m sorry,” Luke whispered. He rose slowly to his feet. The front of his jeans and shirt were stained red, as if he’d just committed a brutal murder. “I’m sorry.” He looked around wildly, at his father, at Pup, at his mother who was huddled, breathing softly, on the floor. In three strides he was in the kitchen and kicking open the back door, so hard the top hinge sprung away.

  “I’m sorry!” He was howling now, and in his voice was a grief so overwhelming, an anguish so dark that even Pup, who thought he knew a thing or two about pain, could not even recognize its bottom. “I’m sorry!” Luke wailed again, doubled over with it, and then with a wild shove that ripp
ed the door off its other hinge and sent it clattering onto the deck, Luke ran out through the street-lit yard and disappeared down the alley.

  Form:

  objects that are three-dimensional and can be viewed from many sides

  20

  THE NEXT DAY, FINALS WEEK BEGAN. Two exam periods per day for four excruciating days, as if the school administration enjoyed prolonging the torture for as long as possible. The day was blue-skied and beautiful, but Pup walked to school cotton-brained and filled with dread. He’d stayed awake practically all night listening, half in hope and half in fear, for Luke’s lurching footsteps on the stairs. He didn’t remember falling asleep. He dreamed of nothing, as always. In the morning, he came downstairs to find his mom puttering around the kitchen like nothing was wrong, except that every time she turned or leaned down to pick something up, she grimaced in pain.

  “Mom.” He reached up to the cabinet to get her instant oatmeal. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, dear,” she said, breathing shallowly. She took the box from him and moved gingerly toward the stove. “I just slept on my arm funny last night.”

  “Mom.” Pup looked at her. “Are you serious? You know I was there, right?”

  She turned her back on him and began shaking the oatmeal into a saucepan. “I just don’t want any more trouble,” she said quietly.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I’ll be fine. And I don’t want you telling Annemarie or any of your other sisters about this.” She poured water into the pan and turned on the stove. Then she covered her face with her hands. “I just don’t want any more trouble.”

  “Okay, Mom. Okay.” Pup went over to hug her, but as soon as he put his arms around her, she cried out in pain.

  “Please,” she said, backing away. “Just tell them, if they ask, that I tripped on Adalyn’s teething giraffe, okay?”

  He agreed quickly, without hesitation. He was so used to covering for Luke, it no longer really even felt like lying.

  It occurred to Pup, as he joined the stream of kids heading through the school’s main entrance before the first exam period, that he hadn’t so much as cracked open a book to study for finals. Which seemed, at this point, like the least of his problems. He took his usual shortcut through the locker room and had to sprint the rest of the way toward his Spanish classroom because Señora Perez had a policy of locking the door on late test-takers. He’d left the house in such a daze that he’d forgotten everything but his camera, and he had to borrow a pencil from the very unimpressed girl who sat in front of him. He sweated his way through sixty brutal minutes of vocabulary, conjugation, and translation, before Señora Perez had to nudge him awake, not gently, during the audio portion at the end. Finally, mercifully, the bell rang, and as Pup walked out of the classroom stupefied and brain-scrambled, he almost walked straight past Izzy, who was waiting for him in the hallway.

  “There he is!” She threw an arm around his shoulder. “State art show winner and ladies’ man.”

  “Huh?” He looked at her in confusion. Had she heard somehow that he’d gone to a party with Abrihet and the rumor mill had taken it from there?

  “Yeah! Brody told me all about you and Maya.”

  “Wait. Me and Maya? Me and Maya?”

  “To be honest, Pup, I’m so happy for you.” She clapped her hands together, the way Mrs. Barrera did whenever someone in Pity Party had a breakthrough. “So, are you two, like, dating now? Are you going to call her? Or was it just a random hookup?”

  Pup carefully placed his pencil, which he’d forgotten to return, behind his ear.

  “Izzy,” he said. “I didn’t hook up with Maya Ulrich.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No. Brody did.”

  Izzy took a step back, the smile fading from her face.

  “But he told me . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I would have called you last night to tell you. But I wanted to give him the chance to do the right thing and tell you himself. And I got sort of preoccupied last night. My brother—”

  “But that can’t be.”

  “I was right there. When they were . . . doing stuff. I mean, when she was doing stuff to him. I left the room after that. I’m really sorry, Iz. He’s such an asshole.”

  “Pup.” Her eyes were suddenly brimful of tears. “I can’t believe you.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “I know you never liked me and Brody together, and that’s fine. I can live with that. But to sit here and lie to me? To try to sabotage it?”

  “Izzy,” he said. “I’m not lying. Why would I lie?”

  “You know why.”

  Her voice was rising. A crowd of sophomore girls began circling nearer to gorge on the drama like vultures.

  “Brody wouldn’t cheat on me. And he definitely wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “Yes, he would. He did. Because he’s a total—”

  “Stop.” She held up a hand. “Just stop. What, you want to be the hero? Save me from my horrible boyfriend so I can run into your arms instead? I know how you feel about him. And I know how you feel about me.”

  “Izzy, you know me. I would never—”

  “Yeah, I do know you, Pup. Ever since freshman year you’ve been tagging along after me like some sad, abandoned puppy dog. You’ve never been able to stop worshipping me for a minute to just be my friend. It’s pathetic.”

  “Wait a minute, Izzy.” He reached out his hand to her, but she ducked away.

  “Don’t touch me. And don’t call me anymore either, okay?”

  At that moment, Brody came ambling around the corner. He was gnawing on a churro stick from the cafeteria breakfast menu and his upper lip was furred in sugar. Izzy ran to him, crumpling into his arms. The sophomore vultures, seeing that the drama was over, scattered away down the hallway, and Brody locked eyes with Pup over Izzy’s heaving shoulder.

  He was positively grinning.

  21

  PUP MUDDLED THROUGH HIS ENGLISH EXAM as best he could and fled school the moment the final bell rang. The last thing in the world he felt like doing was wedding cake tasting with Annemarie and Sal, but he’d promised them weeks ago he would go, and if he suddenly turned down the opportunity to eat free pastries, they’d know something was up.

  He arrived at the bakery a few minutes before they pulled up, which gave him time to window-shop the neat trays of éclairs, the rows of fat red strawberries dipped in white chocolate, mini crème brûlée crusted over with golden sugar, and cream-filled cannoli dusted with bright green pistachios. His stomach growled. He wasn’t the type of person who lost his appetite when he was sad.

  “I have to go, Jeanine,” Annemarie was saying as she climbed out of the driver’s side while Sal followed behind her with a cup of coffee, winking at Pup and making a yapping signal with her free hand. “Yes . . . I will ask him. . . . Yes. . . . I’ll call you later. . . . I don’t know what time. Later.” Annemarie hung up, and dropped her phone back in her purse.

  “God, am I glad to see you.” She gave Pup a quick hug. “What. The hell. Is going. On?”

  “What do you mean?” Pup’s palms were already sweating.

  “Well, I spent the morning with Mom and Dad at the ER. Apparently, Mom has a dislocated shoulder. What do you know about this?”

  “I guess she tripped and fell over baby Adalyn’s teething giraffe.” Pup Flanagan, he thought. Ever the obedient son.

  “That’s what she claims,” Annemarie said. “But what I want to know is: What really happened?”

  “I wasn’t home last night, remember?” He stuck his sweaty hands in his pockets. “But, I mean, if she said that’s what happened, then I guess that’s what happened.”

  “So when you got home—had she already fallen?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Did you see her?”

  “Uh, no. She was already asleep.”

  “Then how do you know she’d already fallen?”

  “Because I saw her
this morning at breakfast, and she told me! Jesus, I thought I came here to eat cake, not get the third degree!”

  “Was Luke there when you got home last night?” Sal asked. “Sorry to pry, Pup. But—was he?”

  “Luke?” Pup looked back and forth between Sal and his sister. “No,” he said, guessing, hoping it matched with whatever his mother was telling everyone.

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “I texted him this morning,” said Pup. “But I didn’t hear back.” It was the first truthful statement he’d made since the beginning of their inquisition. He’d written: I don’t want to talk to you. Just write back so I know you’re alive. He hadn’t gotten a response.

  The server arrived at their table with a pot of tea and a large silver tray of cake slices, each labeled with its own little card: Vanilla buttercream. Flourless chocolate with fresh raspberry coulis. Salted caramel with crushed pretzel crust. Banana walnut. Red velvet rum.

  “This all looks delicious,” Sal said, smiling up at him.

  “Oh, it is.” He gave them a little bow. “Enjoy, everybody!”

  “Thank you!” they all called brightly, smiling at each other stupidly as he folded the tray and turned away.

  “Her arm is in a goddamn sling,” Annemarie said, her smile dropping as soon as the server had disappeared through the swinging kitchen doors. Sal picked up a fork, carved out a piece of the flourless chocolate, and held it out to her. “Come on, honey,” she said. “We’re supposed to be having fun here.”