We Are Not Ourselves(90)

Ed and Connell scarfed their meals. Eileen stared into her plate to avoid conversation and took her time eating. After the plates were cleared, Sandro approached grandly, the waiter behind him bearing a dessert platter.

“With my compliments,” he said. “I’d like you to choose one each.”

Sandro had chosen this of all moments to allow his circumspection to falter. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“We’re celebrating tonight,” he said. “Believe it or not, we’ve been here thirty years. You’re one of our oldest customers.”

He must have seen her stiffen.

“I don’t mean oldest,” he said. “Longest-standing.”

“We don’t need three.”

Sandro turned to Ed. “You see?” he said, a hint of pique in his voice. “This is why she still has such a nice figure.”

Ed smiled warmly, registering no tension, though Connell squirmed in his seat. Sandro left.

“Here’s to the end of the year,” Ed said, raising his glass and taking the little bit of wine left in it down in a gulp.

“Here’s to finding a house,” she said. Ed held out his empty glass. Connell raised his water and the three of them clinked.

“Here’s to high school,” Connell said. They clinked again.

Ed looked at her. “Good luck,” he said.

“With what?”

“Finding the right house.”

“I told you I found the right one.”

He turned to Connell. “Good luck in high school.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Good luck to all of us.”





31


His mother yelled for him to come outside. When he did, he saw her leaning on a shovel in the garden box, where she’d spent a lot of time lately. Anytime he left for a game on the weekend, she was hunched over a plant, flashing a spade in her gloved hand, or spreading enriched soil from a bottomless bag.

“I want you to bury this for me.” She handed him a statue that looked like the ones on the breakfront in Lena’s apartment. It depicted a man in a red gown holding a baby, probably Jesus, dressed in pink. She pointed to a space between rose bushes. “Put the hole here,” she said.

“How far down?”

“Start digging. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“Why are you burying this?”

“St. Joseph is supposed to help people sell houses,” she said. “You have to bury him upside down, facing the street.”

“Do you believe that?”

“It can’t hurt,” she said.

He felt the shovel strike something hard. He cleared some dirt away and saw a large rock. He trenched around it and pulled at it. It came up slowly, like a recalcitrant root. He took off his shirt, hung it on the railing, and kept digging. He was enjoying his new physique. He had grown about four or five inches that year. He watched his muscles tighten and release as he worked.

“This is the second one I got,” his mother said as he dug. “The first one cost four dollars. It didn’t feel right. It was white plastic. Just Joseph; no Jesus. I brought it in to the girl at the religious store. I told her, ‘I need a good one, not this chintzy one.’ She showed me this. She said it wasn’t intended for burial.”

“How much was it?”

“Forty bucks.”

It seemed like a lot of money to bury in the ground. When he had cleared the space of backsliding dirt, he dropped the statue in headfirst, covered it up, and stomped the mound to make it flat again.

“What if it doesn’t work?” he asked.

“It’ll work,” his mother said.





32


She gave the listing to Cindy Coakley’s sister Jen, who was with Century 21 in East Meadow. It might have been easier to go with someone local, but she wasn’t about to leave any money in the neighborhood that she didn’t have to.

The next thing she had to do was tell the Orlandos. She went up the back staircase to the second-floor landing and listened without knocking. She could hear them all in there—Gary and Lena too, from the third floor—watching Wheel of Fortune and laughing. Donny was good-naturedly yelling at the set, calling out answers and cursing the contestant.

Selling meant throwing them out on the street, or at least putting more burden on Donny, who wrote the checks for both apartments. Brenda didn’t make much money at Pathmark; Gary’s odd jobs never lasted; and Lena was past the point of being able to work.

She went back downstairs. The next day, after steeling herself, she headed up again. She heard some murmurs of conversation and knocked. Brenda opened the door onto the dining room, where Donny and Sharon were sitting at the table.

“This looks like a bad time.”

“Not at all!” Donny gestured to an empty seat. “You want to join us? We have plenty.”

She felt herself drift into the apartment. Brenda disappeared into the kitchen.

“Did you eat?” Donny asked.

“I don’t want to trouble you.”

“Sit down,” Donny said. “I’ll get you a plate.”

The truth was, she was hungry. Ed and Connell were going to stop at a diner on the way home from Connell’s game; she’d been planning to heat up leftovers. A big pasta bowl sat in the middle of the table with huge, gorgeous meatballs under a blanket of deep-red tomato sauce.