Coming Home (48 page)

And about Danny’s widow.

In despair, he dropped his head onto his folded arms and fell
asleep right there at the kitchen table.

***

The funeral parlor was in an old Victorian mansion on a quiet side
street in town.  Rob helped Casey out of the LTD and took her by the arm, and
with slow, measured steps they walked the half block to the entrance.  Trish
met them at the door, patted him on the arm and spirited Casey away into the
next room, where people were gathered in small, hushed clusters.  The cloying
smells of death and flowers hit him simultaneously, and he panicked.  There was
no way he could go through with this.  He spun around and escaped through the
door he’d come in, thundered down the steps to the flagstone walkway, reached
into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette.

He drew the smoke in deep, his surprised lungs expanding in
welcome.  Beside him, Travis Bradley said, “I thought you quit smoking,
MacKenzie.”

He let the smoke out slowly.  “I did.”

“Taking it up again, are you?”

He took another long, sweet draw on the cigarette.  “I don’t think
I can do this, Trav.  I don’t think I can go back in there.”

“Get rid of the damn cancer stick.  We’ll do it together.”

Reluctantly, he dropped the first cigarette he’d had in eighteen
months and stepped on it, and with Travis by his side, he walked back through
the door.

Some of these people he knew.  Most of them he didn’t.  He looked
everywhere but at the casket as side by side with Travis he took the longest
walk of his life.   “Who’s the guy hanging over Casey?” he demanded.

“That’s my cousin Teddy.  He’s a pain in the ass.  The stevedore
over in the corner is his mother, my Aunt Hilda.  She’s Dad’s older sister. 
The pretty one who looks like Casey is my mother’s sister, Elizabeth.  And the
ravishing blonde beside her is the love of my life.  Keepa you hands off.”

And then they were standing in front of the casket, and he
couldn’t avoid it any longer, because this wasn’t just death, this wasn’t just
some abstract concept, this was real, and this was Danny.

Except that it wasn’t Danny.  It was some wax figure that looked a
little like Danny, hands folded in mock reverence, wearing the clothes that Rob
himself had picked out of Danny’s bedroom closet.  They’d combed his hair wrong
and they’d put some gunk on his face to make him look like he was in the full
flush of vibrant good health, except that he wasn’t, he was dead, and nothing
they could do would make one iota of difference. 

He clutched the edge of the casket.  “Fiore,” he said, “you
goddamn stupid son of a bitch.”  His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. 
“How the hell am I supposed to get through the next fifty years without you?” 
This wasn’t in the script.  There were too many words left unsaid, too many
songs left unsung.  Before his eyes, Danny’s face blurred and disappeared. 
“Jesus, Trav,” he said, “get me out of here before I lose it.”

Travis hustled him out a side door and onto the verandah.  Rob
sank onto a wicker chair and buried his head in his arms, and while Travis
patted his shoulder awkwardly, he sat there and bawled like a baby.

He felt better afterward.  Not great, but better.  “Damn,” he
said, trying to find a discreet place to wipe his runny nose.  “Why the hell
can’t I ever remember to carry a handkerchief?”  Danny had always carried a
handkerchief.  There was one tucked into his breast pocket right now.  Maybe he
could sneak in and blow his nose on it and then put it back.  The thought
actually brought a smile to his face because he knew what Danny’s response
would be.

“What?” Travis said.

“Nothing.  Geez, I must look really great.”  The mental picture of
his ugly mug with a drippy nose and swollen eyes was frightening.

“Nobody’s looking at you, MacKenzie.  Nobody’ll even notice.  You
ready to go back inside?”

“No.  But I can handle it now.  I guess I needed that.”

There were new faces he hadn’t seen the first time around.  Casey
was still sitting in the same corner, and Teddy was still monopolizing her, and
he developed an instantaneous, bone-deep dislike for Cousin Teddy.  Casey
looked up and saw him, and something in his face must have gotten through to
her, because she spoke to Teddy and then she got up and threaded her way
through the maze of people to him. 

He opened his arms and she stepped into them, and they clung to
each other in absolute understanding, rocking back and forth in a private world
of pain that nobody else could penetrate, only it was all turned around
backward, because he was the one who was crying while her eyes were dry, and
she was the one who gave comfort although it was her husband who was dead.  “I
love you,” she whispered fiercely.  “I hope you realize that.”

He tightened his arms around her.  “I know, sweetheart.  I love
you, too.”

“God, Rob, what am I going to do?”

He smoothed her hair.  “They say it gets easier with time.”

“According to who?”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “Some goddamn fool.”

“Will you come with me?  To see him?”

This time it was easier.  He stood guard so she could have
privacy, glowering at anybody who came within ten feet of her.  “Rob,” she
said, “do you have a comb?”

He patted empty pockets, shrugged apologetically.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” she said without censure.  “Will you
find me one?”

He bummed a comb from Travis and watched while she fixed Danny’s
hair.  “Thank God you did that,” he said.  “It was driving me crazy.”

She stepped back, and he thought he detected a tremor in the hand
that held the comb. “I’d like to go home now,” she said.

At three-thirty the next morning, he was awakened by a light in
the kitchen.  He stumbled out of bed and pulled on the gray sweats that were
balled up on the floor.  He found Casey sitting at the table with tweezers and
manicure scissors, trying to remove her own stitches.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he said.  “Have you gone around the
bend?”

Her eyes were glassy, whether from grief or Valium, he wasn’t
sure.  But the frustration he recognized.  She shoved a clump of hair away from
her face.  “Damn it all, Rob, will you help me?  This is making me crazy.”

He peered closely at her arm.  The wound was still red and
angry-looking, and he felt mildly nauseated.  “You need a doctor for this kind
of thing, Fiore.”

“Bullfeathers.  You city boys are all alike.  Around here, we
don’t go running off to the doctor for something as simple as having stitches
out.  We just do it ourselves.”

He couldn’t believe he was allowing himself to be roped into
this.  He scrubbed his hands with hot water and antibacterial soap and dried
them on a clean paper towel.  And scowled.  “Did you sterilize those things
first?”

“They’re clean.”

He wasn’t convinced, but he knew it would be useless to argue. 
One way or another, she would get her way.  One way or another, she always
did.  He pulled a chair up at an angle to hers, stretched her arm across the
corner of the kitchen table, and picked up the tweezers.

It took him two hours to remove those eighteen stitches.  By the
time he was done, her face was the color of Philadelphia cream cheese, and he
had rivers of sweat pouring down his sides.  She never made a sound the whole
time, but he knew precisely how many times he had hurt her.  He cleared away
the mess, then took a wad of cotton and applied peroxide to the jagged gash. 
He knew damn well it hurt, but she just bit her lip and took the pain.  “Never
again,” he said, capping the bottle and tossing the cotton into the trash. 
“You hear me, Fiore?  Never again.”  And then he went into the living room and
collapsed in a shuddering heap on the couch.

None of this was real.

Not the vast crowd of friends and acquaintances whose stunned
silence was occasionally punctuated by weeping.  Not the flowers whose cloying
odor made Casey retch, so many flowers that the church couldn’t hold them all
and Rob had ended up sending out a truckload to be distributed to a half-dozen
local nursing homes.  Not the incessant drone of the minister, who spoke in a
language which should have been familiar, but which made no more sense to her
than Mandarin Chinese.  Not the intricate patterns of stained glass, nor the
crimson carpet at her feet, nor the hard wooden bench behind her rigid back.

And certainly not the mahogany casket before the altar.

If she breathed too deeply, if she moved too suddenly, the steely
band of control that held her together would loosen and she would shatter into
a billion crystalline fragments.  She concentrated her attention on Rob’s
knuckles, bone-white between her clenched hands.  In a world turned alien, Rob
alone remained familiar.  Rob alone could hold her from tumbling headfirst into
the black abyss that gaped open at her feet.

The minister finished his sermon.  As Bob Dylan sang softly from
the overhead speakers, they came forward to speak, one by one, dozens of people
Danny had known and worked with over the years.  His friends.  Her friends. 
Their friends.  They all shared memories of Danny, pieces of the relationships
they’d shared, if only for a brief time, with Danny Fiore.  She listened
woodenly to their stories, knowing she should feel something besides
indifference.  Her attention wandered, and then Rob was leaning toward her. 
“Casey,” he said, into her ear.  “It’s over.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending, until she realized people were
stirring, lining up to file past the casket.  She released his hand and watched
as the color returned.  Row after row, they came forward to pay their last
respects to her husband.  Each of them stopping to speak to her, to offer their
condolences, to give her a widow’s due respect.  Until the last of them had
gone, and she and Rob were the only ones left.

He touched her shoulder.  She stood up, and the room seemed to be
revolving in slow motion.  Each of her legs weighed a thousand pounds.  Lifting
first one leaden foot and then the other, she followed Rob’s lead in a macabre
dance.  When she reached the casket, she stopped.  Rob released her arm and
stepped back, and she lay her hands against the polished mahogany.  It was
hard, cold, smooth as glass, lined with scarlet satin and ornamented with shiny
brass handles.  She slipped off her wedding ring and worked it onto the pinkie
finger of Danny’s left hand.  It only went as far as the first knuckle.  She
lay both her hands on his, took a long last look.  Bent and kissed those cold
lips.  “
Ciao
,” she whispered, “
caro mio
.”  And she raised her
chin and turned away.

Rob was standing with his back to her, his shoulders squared, his
head held stiffly erect.  She wet her lips.  “Rob?” she said.

He took a long, shuddering breath, but didn’t turn around. 
“Yeah,” he said softly.

“I’ll be waiting in the foyer.”

He nodded, still not looking at her, and she left him there with
Danny.  In the church’s cloak room, she gathered up her coat, her scarf. 
Shrugged into the maroon cashmere dress coat with its blood-red silk lining. 
Wrapped her scarf around her neck.  She met Rob in the foyer, and without
speaking, they walked together out the front door and onto the church steps.

They were waiting outside.  Hundreds of them, held back by
uniformed security guards and yellow crime scene tape.  The curious, the
thrill-seekers, the weeping women, the press.  At her side, she felt Rob
stiffen as flash bulbs went off in their faces.  Like a wraith, Travis appeared
at her other side and silently offered his arm.  “Just fifty feet,” Rob said. 
“That’s all you have to do, and then there’s a limo waiting.”

She nodded her understanding.

A muscle twitched in his cheek.  “Ready?” he said.

She concentrated her attention on the rough tweed of his jacket,
scratchy against her bare wrist.  Took a deep breath of brisk December air,
looked at Trav, and nodded.  Raising her chin, she said, “Ready.”

Faces, twisted with emotion, loomed like Mardi Gras masks.  Arms
reached out to her, hands grabbed, patted.  Voices called out her name.  By
touching her, talking to her, in some twisted way they were touching Danny. 
Fame by association.  Some of them used it, like trading cards: 
I sat on an
airplane once, all the way to Cleveland, next to Mick Jagger’s hairdresser’s
next-door neighbor.  Yeah?  Well, I touched Danny Fiore’s wife the day they
buried him
.  Another flashbulb went off, another reporter called out. 
Mrs.
Fiore!  Mrs. Fiore, do you have a statement for us?
  A young woman plucked
at the sleeve of Rob’s jacket as he snarled, “No comment!” over his shoulder. 

The path before them narrowed, and as though by unspoken signal,
Travis and Rob moved in closer as dozens of sticky, anonymous hands pawed and
clutched at their clothes, their hair, their bodies.  Then, thankfully, the
limo was waiting.  Massive bodyguards held back the crowd as they stepped
inside and the door shut behind them, and Casey closed her eyes and sank into
soft leather.