Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(83)
Carmen noticed that Manny was missing—that in itself wasn’t unusual. Manny wasn’t good mixing with a lot of people, and she tended to wander off. It had taken her a long time to become comfortable with the nucleus of the Pagano family. Add in the Uncles’ associates and the circumstance of violent death, and this was probably a horrible place for Manny to be. But Luca wanted her with him and safe. Feeling uncomfortable herself, Carmen went looking.
She found her in the cold, frozen back yard, sitting on the bare metal base of a patio chair, alone and bundled up in a white down coat. She didn’t seem to notice Carmen coming out.
“You okay, Manny?”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah. I just needed a minute. People confuse me.”
The first years of Manny’s life had been traumatic and devoid of any love or affection—or even care at all—and her brain had not formed important capacities for social bonding and communication. She had learned later and developed coping mechanisms, but she did not naturally understand most people. “Confuse you how?” Carmen sat on another bare chair; the cold of the metal made her thighs quickly numb.
“Just my usual stuff. Trying to figure out how to read the people here and coming up with nothing. I guess I never really had to deal with death before. I think I expected more crying. I don’t know. I didn’t expect laughing. It freaked me out a little. I’m not sure how to be. I’ll probably say something wrong.”
“Yeah…grief is probably the most confusing emotion we have. Everybody expresses it differently, so I don’t think your flashcards will help.”
“I wish I’d stayed home.”
“I think Luca wants you close. He wants you safe, and he feels better when he’s with you.”
“Yeah. I know. But we were in the living room and everybody was staring at me. So I came out here.” She looked straight at Carmen for the first time. “Should you be out here? Is the baby okay in the cold?”
“She’s fine. But your fingernails are blue. Why don’t we go in? There’s a TV room down cellar—it’s probably quiet there.”
Manny nodded, and they went in and down to the cellar—which was more elaborate than most people’s houses. The TV room was empty. The television was really a movie screen and a projector, but it had cable. They turned it on and sat together watching Friends reruns. They didn’t talk. Carmen doubted either of them was actually watching the show, either. But it was probably the best place in the house for both of them.
oOo
Lorenzo Pagano was buried on a bright, cold midweek morning. The family gathered at the funeral home for a final private visitation and vigil and to follow the hearse in a procession to the funeral service at Christ the King Catholic Church. Rosa and Eli were home, as were Uncle Ben and Aunt Angie’s three daughters—Lita, Cella, and Lucie—their husbands, and their children. Carmen hadn’t seen her cousins, all of them older, in years. She was happy to reconnect, and they all made a fuss about her prominent belly.
Again, Carmen was struck by the oddity of funerals, the pleasure of reunion amidst the grief of mourning.
Visitation had occurred for two full days, and the family had been continually present. By this last morning, to those who had spent hours with it, the closed rosewood casket at one end of the room had almost become a mere piece of furniture and the gathering more of a mixer than a mourning.
But when Mr. Andolini came into the room and announced that it was time to go to the church, and people began to file out of the tall double doors, Carmen noticed that Nick and his mother walked arm in arm to the casket. Aunt Betty leaned on her son, and Nick kissed the top of her head, resting there. Caught up in the quiet sorrow of that moment, Carmen stopped and watched, unaware that she was staring.
Then Uncle Ben and Carmen’s father walked up to the casket, their faces weary, their carriage somber. They took Aunt Betty into their care and led her out of the room.
And Carmen realized that only she and Nick were left among the mourners. Mr. Andolini stood at the door, and two of his assistants were just outside. They would move the casket on its bier to the front door, where the pallbearers would take it to the hearse. The only other occupant of the room was a thick man in a black suit, black shirt, and white tie. He was familiar, but Carmen didn’t know his name. One of the Pagano Brothers’ soldiers, acting as bodyguards, she assumed. Since Uncle Lorrie had been killed, thick men seemed to be everywhere.
Nick stood staring down at the casket, his legs spread and his hands clasped in front of him. Carmen wondered if he was praying. But Mr. Andolini cleared his throat and gave her a beseeching look, and Carmen went up to the casket.
Though she knew Nick’s reputation was fearsome, she didn’t fear him. He was seven years older than she was, and he hadn’t exactly been her playtime buddy growing up, but he’d been a nice kid and had hung out with her, Carlo, and Luca more than Uncle Ben’s older girls, all of whom had been girly girls. He’d always been intense, though—the kind of kid who played every single game to win and took every challenge as a moral obligation. He hadn’t been a sore loser, not one to upend a game board in a fit, but if somebody made a tough play on him—say, hit him with a ‘Draw 4’ card in Uno—then for the rest of the game, he’d gone for them like Sherman through Atlanta.
He’d drifted off after school, when he went to work for his father and Uncle Ben. In the twenty-five years or so since, he’d been something of a shadow in the family, always at Mass, always at family gatherings, always present, but never really connected.