Jazz Funeral (29 page)

Martin had come to fix something, but now he brought chairs for Patty and himself and Des, so they could visit in the sickroom. It was stuffy and hot and it smelled of urine.

“We heard about Ham on the TV, Patty.” Her mother’s voice was barely a quaver. “We were worried sick about you.”

“I’m sorry, Mama. I phoned and told Des to tell you not to worry.”

“Couldn’t help worryin’.”

“Well, I know. That’s why I came. I wish I could have come yesterday, but I was so busy with George …”

“That’s how it always is.”

“Yes.” Patty couldn’t tell whether her mother meant to let her off the hook, merely meant that was how it was with husbands and family deaths, or meant that Patty always put her and Frannie second. “I brought you some cakes and things.”

“Don’t have much appetite lately.”

But Frannie said, “Chocolate?”

“Lemon. With white icing.”

“Oh.” There was a silence, and finally her mother said, “I’m sorry about Ham, Patty.”

“Thank you, Mama.”

“Who killed him. Melody?”

“Mama! Why would you say a thing like that?” Did her mother think she’d done that bad a job of raising Melody? That she’d raised a killer?

“Well, it just seems natural, don’t it? Melody bein’ missin’ and all.”

“Kidnapped,” said Martin. “That poor child’s … Ashley, you go play now. Don’t listen to this.”

“I just can’t believe this is happenin’ in my own family,” said Patty’s mother. “I want to cry my eyes out every time I think about it.”

Desiree nodded. “It’s been real hard on all of us.”

“Well, I’m sorry, I …” Patty realized she didn’t know what to say. How did she apologize for her stepson’s murder?

Martin gave her a narrow-eyed look that said, “How can you look that good and rich and act that dumb?” Or so it seemed to Patty. She was the oldest; he was the second youngest. She’d left when she married, and missed a lot of his growing up; they hardly knew each other, and she hardly knew Des and Frannie either, she’d been gone so long. The others barely remembered her, she thought. They treated her like an outsider, and yet she tried—didn’t she try? Not that they noticed. She would offer again, but first she must ask the question she’d come to pose.

Ashley hadn’t heeded her uncle; she was hanging in the doorway, taking it all in, looking at Patty as if she were a movie star. “Is Melody okay?” she said, and Patty thought she saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

But Desiree, the child’s mother, spoke before Patty could, “Yes, precious, Melody’s just fine. You go out and play now.”

It struck Patty as odd that they weren’t more worried about Melody, about their niece and grandchild, who was only sixteen and missing, possibly kidnapped as far as they knew. She had called Des and spoken to her only briefly, and no one had called her back. No one in the huge Fournot family, full of siblings and in-laws and their issue, had called or come over after her stepson had been murdered and her daughter gone missing.

The thought flickered and died. She was barely aware she’d thought it before she got busy explaining the actual situation to herself.

They’re intimidated. They don’t dare come visit me Uptown, and they don’t want to call because George spooks them—they wouldn’t know what to say if he answered the phone. They can’t worry about Melody, because she seems like a fairy princess to them. They’d be worried if they thought she was human, but they just can’t grasp the idea that anything could happen to her.

Then again … maybe they know something I don’t.

She asked her question. “I was wondering—has Melody called here? Or turned up, maybe?”

Her mother snorted. “Turned up? Why, she wouldn’t know the way.”

Patty felt her face go red. It was true she’d only brought Melody over on Christmas and her mother’s birthday, though Melody adored Ashley, seemed to like the other children as well, to be happy to have cousins. But George thought it depressed her to come, and Patty thought he was right. George didn’t come at all anymore. In the days when he had, he hadn’t spoken for hours after except in monosyllables. Patty found herself stripping and jumping in the shower, or else going swimming after a visit. She never thought about it, just did it.

She and George slaved to keep Melody in the best school, in beautiful Country Day, with its arches and deep green walls upstairs, its five working artists on the faculty. They gave her a magnificent house with her own room and bath, and all the clothes she had time to shop for. They’d given her music lessons. Her life was perfect, privileged; as parents, they believed in that, preparing her for life—at Country Day, they even talked about that, preparation for life. They made the kids eat lunch with different kids every six weeks, kids they didn’t even know, so they’d learn how to handle themselves in different situations.

But this was sad, it was dirty and crowded and scary, because illness was always scary, and that of your relatives, those close to you, much more so. Patty didn’t want her exposed to it any more than George did. She hadn’t brought Melody here much; and yet, she had brought her here. She wasn’t some kind of snob who didn’t want her daughter to know her own relatives. It hurt her that her mother thought so.

“Melody loves to come here,” she said. “She loves you, Mama.”

Patty didn’t know if that was true, but she knew it was true that
she
did, did love her Mama and didn’t understand where things had gone wrong between them. Understanding that was what she meant as soon as she said it, she felt herself tearing up, hoped they wouldn’t notice.

Her mother’s eyes got a faraway look. “I doubt that girl loves anything, really. I don’t think she knows how to love.”

“If Ashley’s listening, you’ll hurt her feelings. She’s crazy about that child, and you know it.” Patty’s voice was rising, but she felt guilty, somehow; it wasn’t pure. She didn’t feel like a protective mother animal, didn’t know why her mother’s comment made her so mad. She pretty much agreed with her. Melody did like small things—Ashley, and animals, and babies, but she hated her own parents, certainly Patty. Once, Patty had thought the girl had a bond with George, but after she reached puberty and started hating the whole adult structure of the universe, she turned against George as well.

“She’s not a bad child,” said her mother. “I don’t really think she’s bad.”

She’s just a selfish little bitch.

“She just needs some guidance.”

“Well, how’re y’all feeling. Mama and Frannie?” she said instead, making her tone light, canary-like, taking charge, changing the subject.

“I feel fine,” said Frannie. “I b’lieve I’m gon’ be the first person with this thing to get better.”

Her mother said: “Nobody gets better with this thing.” She cackled like it was funny.

Patty put a hand on the blanket, feeling mushy flesh; useless flesh. But even so, her mother’s leg felt smaller than it had, she thought. All of a sudden she knew Lorraine wasn’t going to live much longer—the doctors had been predicting her death for years. Des always said she was too mean to die, and her mama liked that, had taken it on as her special slogan and had lived ten years longer than anyone thought she would, declaring her meanness nearly every day, if anyone would listen. But she was going to go soon.

“I mean it, Mama,” Patty said. “How are you?”

“Well, I get the spasms a lot.”

Patty cocked her head like a parakeet.

“Most times I can’t feel a thing in my legs—haven’t for years, but when the spasms come, it hurts me so bad I holler; Des has to bring warm towels in to make it stop. You know how you can scratch an old dog’s chest and his hind foot’ll jump around? Tha’s what the spasms are like—jus’ like a dog’s hind leg. We’re runnin’ out of towels too—ours are so threadbare you can almost see through ‘em.”

“Oh, Mama! I’ll get you some towels. You know you don’t have to want for anything if you’ll just tell me what you need. I want to get you a house so bad! You suffer so much, you and Frannie. Wouldn’t you like to have a bigger place, something with some nice big windows and ceiling fans?”

Her mother made a sound that was somewhere between a cough and a snort, something like “harrumph,” but more explosive. “You couldn’t buy us anything like that.”

“Well, George could. You know he could, and he’d be glad to. He wants to, Mama. You know that.”

“I know y’all are talking through your hats,” said Frannie. “You’re not gon’ do anything of the kind. You’ve been sayin’ you would for years and you’re not gon’ do it.”

“But Mama always says she won’t move!”

“I’m not takin’ any your ill-gotten gains, Miss Patty Big Shot. I know why you married George Brocato, and it sure wasn’t for love. You can just forget it if you think I’m touching one floorboard of any house that man buys for me.”

The room went out of focus. Patty felt her head tilt, spinning, out of her control. She always offered the house, they always refused. But this was new.

“Mama!” said Martin.

Des said quickly, “She’s overtired.” Hustling Patty out, tiptoeing, she whispered, “The medicine does her this way. Sometimes, anymore, she just isn’t herself.”

Patty’s throat had closed. Patty and George had supported the Fournots from the beginning of their marriage; George had insisted. A hammer thudded in the back of Patty’s head. The tears wanted to come out, but she couldn’t let them, couldn’t drive home if she got started.

George had been on a similar errand, had looked for Melody at the homes of his brothers and nieces and nephews, even the ones who’d been so nasty earlier that day. Nasty was a way of life with the Brocatos; you lived with it.

He’d never noticed it that much before. But today, with the weight of his son’s death heavy on him, he couldn’t stand it, felt as if walls were closing on him. His brother Phil and Phil’s wife, Nan, didn’t even ask him in, just kept him standing at the door, Phil saying, “Hell, no, she’s not here, why the hell would she come here?”

Nan had said, “Be nice to your brother,” and Phil said, “Why should I be nice to him?”

“Because he’s your brother.”

“Hell, you’re my wife, I’m not going to start being nice to you—why should I be nice to him?”

Phil thought he was funny, and usually George would have forced a smile, might have been genuinely amused; he really couldn’t remember the man he’d been two days before, when he’d had his children, when he hadn’t felt so lacerated and naked.

“Bicker, bicker, bicker,” he said. “Nobody in the whole damn family even knows how to be nice!”

His brother had said, “You and Patty do it too—come on, admit it, George, you wouldn’t be a Brocato if you didn’t.”

And before he thought, he didn’t even know what he was saying, George retorted, “We don’t care enough to bother.”

Phil said nastily, “Well, why not, George?”

He had no idea what his brother meant by that. He walked away, furious, huffing, but as he got in his car, the words echoed.

Well, why not, George?

Phil had said them so accusingly.

Why not what? Why didn’t he and Patty care? Patty cared. She was like a leech. Why didn’t George care? Care enough to bother bickering with his wife?

He shook his head, clearing it, wondering if he was short of air—he was sitting in the car, letting it warm up, even though it was eighty-two outside.

It wasn’t about bickering. But his brother had asked a question that had been nibbling at the edge of his consciousness lately: Why didn’t he care?

Patty’s who there is to love—why not love her?

That was the question, wasn’t it? With Ham gone, with Melody gone, missing—she was only missing—with the underbrush cleared out, so to speak, he was feeling closer to Patty, needing her almost.

This morning he’d almost forgotten what he didn’t like about her. He thought about it. There was nothing wrong with Patty. She was pretty. She was a good mother. She must be a good wife, she did everything wives were supposed to. She wasn’t Dorothy, of course …

How could you miss a woman who’d been dead for seventeen years?

He wasn’t exactly sure how a shrink would put it, but he thought he knew the answer, sort of—if you had half a brain, you wouldn’t. You’d get over it.

Like a man.

He was humiliated. Was he really in love with a dead woman? But he thought it couldn’t be—he hadn’t been that crazy about her when she was alive.

He put the car in drive and drove away far too fast.

Well, if I didn’t love Dorothy because she got pregnant and I got stuck with her, and then I never loved Patty because she wasn’t Dorothy, what the hell’s wrong with me?

He’d never had a thought like that in his life.

It’s the damn assholes! The Brocato assholes.

Looking at them, listening to them, turned his stomach—there must be other ways to live.

Phil lived near Audubon Park, and to George’s surprise, he found himself going there, heading for the zoo. He had a weird feeling Melody would be there—an overpowering feeling. He was as sure as he was of her name that she was there now, that he’d find her in the next few minutes. Where else would she be? It was her favorite place.

Yet, once inside, wandering among the moms and kids, the sudden elation left him. It wasn’t such a brilliant deduction he’d made. It was the final fuck-up of a man whose whole life was a fuck-up. Not his whole life. Not his business life. Just this sleepwalking—or whatever it was—involving Dorothy and Melody and Patty.

And Ham. Maybe Ham most of all.

What the fuck’s wrong with me?

I hate myself.

The zoo wasn’t Melody’s favorite place. Melody was a young woman. He didn’t know the young woman. The zoo had been the child’s favorite. He didn’t know when she had gotten away from him.

Or when Ham had.

George found Patty at home staring out the window, apparently as depressed by her efforts as he was by his. He felt a tenderness for her, an odd identification. “Baby, I know what you’re going through.”

She looked at him in surprise. He had put his hand on her shoulder. She almost jumped.