Whisper to Me(69)

“Hey, Cass,” said Dwight. “You joining group today?”

“Not today, Dwight,” said the Doc.

“Hey, ****, you okay, Cass?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I think I … realized something. About myself.”

Dwight nodded slowly. His big, kind eyes were full of sympathy. “That’s good, Cass,” he said. He always used your name when he was talking to you. I think it was a trick he learned from the cops. “I mean, it doesn’t feel good now. But it’s good.”

I nodded at him. I couldn’t talk.

“I’ll see you next week,” he said. He was wearing a T-shirt that said NJPD SOFTBALL on it, under a crest.

I nodded again. Then I walked out of the hall and through the bowling alley, past the glowing lanes, the iridescent balls. And out onto the dusk-lit street. It was raining, softly, the droplets hanging in the air, almost seeming to rise up from the concrete; a cold steam, everywhere.





I started by leaning against the outside wall of the bowling alley, but my legs wouldn’t hold me up.

I slumped down until I was sitting on the damp ground. It soaked through my pants, numbed my butt. I wished the mist would numb me all over.

Around me, the street shimmered. The mattress store on the other side, the 7-Eleven. The cheap hotel with the flashing sign: VACANCIES.

That was how I felt.

Like a vacancy.

At the same time, there was another scene superimposed on the street, bleeding into it. It was the restaurant, Donato’s. The bar counter was over the bowling alley, the pizza oven was behind me; the tables with their red-and-white-checkered cloths were covering the street, the

tiles

were gleaming where concrete and asphalt should be. Ghost figures came and went; waiters, customers. Dad wasn’t there—Dad was in New York, talking to a new tomato supplier, one who flew the tomatoes over from Tuscany. Mom and I were holding the fort, as he put it, running the Sunday night shift—I was taking orders and she was hosting, greeting people as they came in.

Dad didn’t like leaving us alone. That was one of the worst things, one of the ways his fear and his foreboding ended up getting confirmed, ended up bricking him into the personality he started out with already.

He’d bought Mom a gun. A small pistol, two shots—a Derringer. I don’t think it was legal, but he got it from some gun fair somewhere. The idea of it was that you hid it in a sock or something. Only she didn’t like it, didn’t like carrying it, and she didn’t have it on her that day.

She left it in the restaurant safe, where she always left it.



Anyway. She was so beautiful. Dark hair pinned up, spilling out in wavy strands, a gray dress, no makeup. Everyone who came in was captivated by her; you could see it. I wanted to look like her one day. To move like her. To smile like her.

Then I was shaking Parmesan over a woman’s amatriciana and I heard my mother gasp—you know how you recognize your parents’ voices even when they don’t say anything?

I turned around, and there were two guys standing just inside the door. They both wore ski masks. They were both big. One of them was holding a shotgun and the other a baseball bat. It happened so fast. Faster than your reading this. Faster than my typing it, and I type fast. I took an online course.

“Empty the register,” said shotgun guy to Mom. She moved over to it, moved strangely, jerkily. She pressed the key to make it open but nothing happened; she must have gotten it wrong; her hands were shaking. She banged it with the side of her hand and the tray shot out. She started pulling out money. The guy closest to her, the one with the baseball bat, held out a bag—an ordinary plastic bag from a supermarket—and she stuffed the cash into it.

The other guy handed another bag to the diner closest to him. “Pass it around. Watches. Wallets,” he said.

Everyone in the restaurant took off their watches, took out their wallets.

“And jewelry,” said the guy.

Women started removing their earrings. Mom too. They were emeralds surrounded by diamonds, the only nice jewelry she owned; Dad bought them from Tiffany’s for their ten-year anniversary. She nearly ripped them out of her ears and handed them over to the guy who had taken the cash.

Pretty soon the bag came back to the guys.

They turned, began to leave, took their eyes off Mom for a second.

Mom hit the button under the cash register, the panic button that Dad had insisted on installing, an alarm with a link to the local PD. I don’t know why she did it.

Correction: I do know why she did it. Because times were tough, that’s why. And the restaurant was barely breaking even. We couldn’t afford to lose that money.

The alarm started blaring. The two men stopped, and their heads twisted to look at Mom. They didn’t even say anything; they didn’t shout or curse or anything like that—the one with the baseball bat just took a step toward her, and swung.

The bat struck the rear side of her head with a sound like an ax burying itself in a wooden log. She dropped instantly, as if a magician had removed her legs. She sprawled on the tiles. I started screaming then; I don’t remember this, but it was in a lot of witness statements. I screamed and screamed and screamed. One of the cops we spoke to afterward said a diner had described it as the worst sound he had ever heard. Said he hadn’t known a human being could make that noise.