We Are Not Ourselves(91)

Sharon regarded Eileen with elfin eyes over a glass of soda. Brenda came in with steaming garlic bread wrapped in tin foil.

“Are you joining us?” Brenda asked.

Donny grabbed a big forkful of spaghetti and ladled out a few meatballs and poured a little lake of sauce around them. Before Eileen could answer, he handed her the plate.

“I guess I am,” she said.

Sharon’s plate was taken and the girl smiled silently across the table at Eileen. She had beautiful straight hair and striking features. She was nine years old, shy and gentle, the compensation for all the dead ends and suffering in the family, and remarkably unspoiled, though they all doted on her. Her radiance was like a recessive gene come to life after generations of hibernation in the bloodline.

Brenda said grace, a habit Eileen had abandoned at her own table after trying it out for a while after Connell was born. Her conscience rumbled as Brenda spoke the familiar words and added a makeshift prayer.

“This looks amazing,” Eileen said nervously after everyone had crossed themselves.

“Thank you very much,” Donny said, winking at her broadly. “I try.”

“That’s rich,” Brenda said. “You can’t even boil an egg.”

Donny caught Eileen’s gaze and gestured theatrically with his eyebrows as he spoke to his sister. “What do I need to boil an egg for,” he said, “when I have you to do it?”

“Keep it up,” Brenda said. “You’ll find poison in your coffee one morning.”

Donny smilingly bit his outstretched tongue and shivered in triumph at having provoked her. Sharon giggled through the whole exchange.

“Did you want to talk about something, Eileen?” Brenda asked. “I was trying to get everything on the table; I forgot why you came.”

“Would you let the poor woman eat? Look, she has a mouthful of food, and you’re asking her questions.”

Eileen held a finger up while she chewed. Donny looked at her with placid interest. He had a kind, broad face with exaggeratedly fleshy features, like those of a prizefighter. He had a boxer’s broad back and meaty hands. He could have become a depressive like his brother or a gambler like his father but he had sought to make a life for himself instead. He used to run with a tough crowd, the kind that in retrospect was almost wholesome in comparison to the drug gangs that roved the neighborhood now. She stopped seeing them around the house after Donny’s best friend Greg from up the block wrapped his motorcycle around a streetlamp. Donny got a job as a sanitation worker through his father. He still worked on cars, but now only on his days off and more as a hobby than as a source of income. The Palumbos let him park whatever he was working on in the back of their driveway.

“What I really want to know,” Eileen said, “is how you make this sauce. Mine never tastes this good.”

“The key is to use fresh sausage. Spicy or sweet, whatever you like. Good stuff, nothing cheap. You have to burn it in the saucepan.”

“On purpose?”

“When you have a nice charred coat, you put the tomatoes in. The acid eats the burnt part off the pan. It gets in the gravy. I’ll show you sometime.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Donny said. “Our mother’s is better.”

“For once this idiot is right,” she said. “No one’s is better than my mother’s. I’m okay with that. I have time to perfect it.”

“She’s gotta perfect it,” Donny said. “She needs something to bait the hook.”

“That’s enough out of you.” Brenda smacked him on the head. It was impossible not to get caught up in the high spirits around the table. It was no wonder Connell didn’t come right down when she came home from work, why she had to go up and fetch him.

“I’ve been hearing your car make some noises I don’t like,” Donny said as he pulled on his chin. “You know what I’m talking about?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Let me take a look at it. Maybe I can catch something before it turns into a problem.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I can take it to the shop.”

“They’re gonna charge you an arm and a leg. I’ll do it for nothing, and I’ll do a better job. I can keep that thing running forever.”

“Thank you,” she said guiltily. In her nervousness she had put her finger through one of the lace stitchings on the old tablecloth and broken it. This was going to be even harder than she’d thought. How could she tell him that the first chance she got she was going to buy a much nicer car? She placed her napkin in her lap and pushed herself back from the table.

“You okay?”

“I ate a bit quickly,” she said.

“Brenda’s cooking will do that,” Donny said. “You want to get through it as fast as possible.”

Sharon chuckled.

Eileen wanted to abandon the plan, go downstairs, and come back when she’d be more collected, but there were signs to put up, and she was going to need access to all the apartments.

“Who wants dessert and coffee?” Brenda said after the clinking of forks on plates had died down.

“I don’t want to put you out any more.”

“Nonsense. Have a seat inside. I’ll make a pot.”