Blessed Are Those Who Weep (19 page)

 

Chapter 41

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North Beach, I peel off my dress in front of the mirror and stare at my image in my wasted red-­and-­black lace lingerie and stockings.

We walked home from the bar in silence, then I got in my car and peeled out. He must be serious about taking some time, because he didn't even try to stop me. We'll still talk, he says. But he needs to “think” about our relationship, so we're taking a “break.” He still loves me. Like that matters. If we're not together, his love is no good to me. I don't need to be loved from afar. What does that even mean?

He didn't even say how long the “break” would be, and damn if I'll ask him and beg for him to be with me. Part of me hopes he will come around and call me tonight. Or maybe in the morning? Because despite it all, I can't help but mentally calculate every missed opportunity to conceive a baby. But things must get better between us if we want to be parents. They have to. Even as I think this, I know this only proves that at least some of what Donovan said is true. But I can't help it.

Staring at the mirror, my image grows slightly blurry. As I give myself one last glance, I try to ignore the fact that my bra, the usual size I've worn all my adult life, is slightly too big and that you can see my rib cage below it.

A few minutes later, I've changed into a cotton nightie that falls to my knees, and I've curled up on my couch with the lights off. When I first got home, my apartment smelled like cat pee, so I threw open the door to my balcony.

Now I close my eyes and listen to the foghorn as the cool breeze licks at my bare legs. Dusty meows at me and leaps on the back of the sofa, pacing. He's hungry. I know I should get off the couch and feed him, but it seems like more effort than I can manage right now. After a few moments, guilt overcomes me, and by the light coming in from the street, I sloppily fill his water and dump three times as much cat food as he usually gets into his bowl, spilling it onto the floor around the bowl before I crawl back onto the couch.

After a few minutes of staring at the curtain to my sliding-­glass doors, which is whipping in the wind, I turn and bury my face in the back of the couch, closing my eyes.

A kaleidoscope of images flashes before me: Caterina in her coffin. My mother clawing at the dirt as the coffin is lowered into the ground. The last look Jack Dean Johnson gave me as I plunged the shard of glass into his chest. The way the blood seeped out around my hand so warm. Mark Emerson's lifeless eyes as he stared up at the ceiling, dead from my bullet. The blood in the toilet. So much blood. How could so much blood come out of me and I'm still alive? The bloodbath that awaited me in that Mission apartment, bodies strewn everywhere, blood smeared across the walls, heads tottering on shredded flesh.

For once I let the images wash over me without trying to tamp them down.

This is your life
.

I bury my face in the soft dark velvet of my couch. I want to cry, but crying does not come easy for me. And damn if I'm going to cry over a guy. I'll cry over something worthwhile, like the death of my sister, but not over some guy wanting to take a break from me. Not over that.

All this makes me exhausted, spent, empty. My eyelids so heavy. When I close my eyes, anticipating the nightmarish flickering of horrific images from the apartment, there is nothing. Blissfully, there is nothing—­just blackness.

The phone ringing wakes me up, but I don't move. Only open my eyes. The apartment is black. After a few minutes, the ringing stops. My answering machine clicks on. I hear a dial tone. If it's Donovan, he'll leave a message. The last thing I want him to think is that I'm waiting by the phone for him to call. In case it was my mother, I call her but get her voice mail. I lie and tell her I'm super busy at work and won't make it to Nana's on Sunday.

The sliding-­glass door is still open, and now the air in my studio is icy. I pull the quilt that is wadded up at my feet over me.

The next time I open my eyes, the light around me is gray. A typical foggy San Francisco morning. Dusty is wadded up in a furry semicircle around my head. I move him over and sit up. Unearthed from the blanket, my body instantly prickles with goose bumps. My breath appears in a cartoon bubble in front of my face when I exhale. Wrapping a blanket around me, I pad over to the sliding-­glass door, slam it shut, and crawl back onto the couch, where I drift off into a dreamless sleep.

Throughout the day, the phone rings a few times, but I can tune it out now. In the distance, I hear voices leave messages, but I just bury my face deeper. The day is punctuated by Dusty occasionally getting up to poke around the apartment. I hear him drinking out of the toilet and am relieved that he's this self-­sufficient and I don't have to get up. If I twist my head, I can see the corner of the kitchen where his food bowl is. Food pellets lay scattered on the floor, so I close my eyes again. Dusty comes back to snuggle with me for most of the day, sometimes at my head, sometimes stretched out against my back, sometimes at my feet in a puffy warm ball.

At one point, I open my eyes, and it is dark again. I could be dead and nobody would even know. Donovan will regret wanting to take a break when he finds out I died and nobody found me for days while he was at his goddamn training, won't he?

My mom will be pissed. My whole family would blame him. I can see them all at my funeral. My brother Dante trying to take swings at him while my oldest brother, Marco, holds him back. My mom and aunts glaring at him. Maybe my mom would even slap his face? My sweet nana cursing him out in Italian. She might even hold up her hand, pointing her pinky and index finger at him, giving him the
malocchio,
cursing him with the evil eye.

I clutch at the small golden horn hanging from a delicate chain at my neck. My father's
cornetto
. It didn't protect him from the
malocchio
; why would I think it would protect me?

I'm doomed to a wretched, cursed life. I lost my sister, my father. And then I killed two men. I'm being punished. Isn't that what Frank was trying to tell me in his e-­mails?

Pounding on the door awakens me. Donovan. He came back for me.

I stand on weak legs and run my fingers through my hair, which is knotted and tangled so much that it feels like I now have dreadlocks. I vaguely wonder if I have time to stick a glob of toothpaste in my mouth to disguise my nasty breath, but the pounding continues, a rapping that makes me realize it's not Donovan. He has his own key. He wouldn't keep knocking—­he'd let himself in.

The knocking stops and I hear voices, low, outside the door, then Nicole's no-­nonsense voice.

“Gabriella? If you're in there, open up, or else your landlady here, Mrs. Cossetta, is going to unlock the door.”

Mrs. Cossetta?

“I'm here. Give me a second.” My voice cracks.

I throw a robe around me and open the door. Nicole stands there with a big pink scarf looped around her neck and her nose pink from the cold. Lopez is with her, dressed in camouflauge pants and a big army jacket.

Mrs. Cossetta just rolls her eyes, lets out a big puff of air, mumbles in Italian, and shuffles off in her backless slippers to her apartment down the hall.

“What's up with the old biddy?” Lopez says, jutting his chin at her retreating form.

“She's okay.” I defend her even though we avoid each other as much as possible.

Mrs. Cossetta is the sister of my old landlord, who died last year. She only keeps me in my rent-­controlled place because before her sister died, she insisted her tenants be allowed to stay.

Nicole is bustling about my apartment, turning on all the lights, folding the quilt on the couch, and feeding Dusty. I slump back on the couch as she starts banging pots and pans around in my kitchen. Lopez is checking out my wall—­a gallery of pictures that mean something to me. They are the main items I would grab if my building caught fire.

There are pictures of my family. Me and Caterina as little girls. My mother and father with their arms around each other. My brothers playing bocce in the park. Me eating gelato. Caterina petting Nana's cat.

“Some of these are amazing,” he says, squinting. “Who took them?”

“Nana used to dream of being a photographer when she was in Italy,” I say. “But her father, my great-­grandfather, said women were meant to be wives and mothers.”

“What a waste,” Lopez says. “She is an artist. This is some motherfucking cool shit.”

It makes me sad to think of my grandmother being told to abandon her passion because of her gender. But then again, I've contended with some of my Italian relatives discouraging me from pursuing my career as a reporter, as well.

Lopez pulls out one of my dining room chairs and straddles it backward. Both of them are doing a good job of not talking about why they unexpectedly showed up. I'm not going to be the one to bring it up.

“Set the table.” Nicole sets a stack of bowls and spoons in front of Lopez.

He stands and starts whistling as he sets the table, grabbing some of my cloth napkins and making fancy shapes with them. “I used to wait tables on Union Street, man,” he says over his shoulder.

I curl up on the couch, watching as Nicole stirs a pot of something on the stove and Lopez puts in my Afro-­Cuban All Stars CD, picks up Dusty, and dances around with him, wiggling his slim hips like a belly dancer. Dusty gives me a look but stays as malleable as a rag doll. Nicole's blond head bobs to the music, and she shakes her hips a little as she stirs. I know I should get up and help or at least stop them, but moving my body off this couch seems impossible.

“Dinner is served, my darling,” Nicole says, unwrapping my pink polka-­dot apron from around her waist. My stomach grumbles as I get a whiff of the garlic bread she slides out of the oven.

I stand on weak legs. When was the last time I ate? Yesterday? No. Two days ago? Maybe.

“It's Monday, right?” I vaguely recall talking to Kellogg this morning, telling him I was staying home sick.

Heading toward the kitchen, I try to finger-­comb my hair and straighten my clothes, but it's no use. A glimpse of myself in the mirror across the room confirms what I suspected: I look like an extra in a horror flick. I have zombie hair, and my bony knees are sticking out of the bottom of my stained nightgown.

“Oh, Gabriella,” Nicole says softly as she watches me. Her face, her cheery façade, fall away. Lopez hears her voice catch and turns to look at me, as well. “Holy shit you've had us worried. I've been calling for two days.”

“I'm sorry,” I say and hang my head. Nicole grabs me in a hug. When she releases me, I try my best to cheer up for their sake. I don't want them to worry about me. They are the best friends a girl could have. I break off bits of the garlic bread and chew it as long as I can before I swallow, hoping I can keep it down despite the turmoil in my stomach.

I take small sips of the red wine Nicole brought to wash the bread down.

The chicken noodle soup Nicole heated on the stove goes down a little easier, but I take it slow, too.

Nicole and Lopez make small talk at first, but then Nicole turns to me.

“Kellogg said you could take as much time off as you need, so you don't have to worry about that.”

For the first time in my life, being a reporter feels like a waste. It seems like so long ago that I loved it so much I gave up boyfriends for my job. That seems like another lifetime and another person. Like a woman I read about in a book or watched in a movie. Was that really me?

My fiancé, the man I love and want to spend the rest of my life with, doesn't want me the way I am. He wants me to change, and I can't. I just can't. Even if I wanted to. Which I don't. And I don't care anymore. I'm too exhausted to care.

I'm slightly more alive after I eat a bit.

Nicole puts the leftover soup in the fridge and tells me to eat it for lunch tomorrow.

“I brought a baguette for your breakfast. Do I have to drive over here and feed it to you, or can you promise to eat it for breakfast?”

She already is leaving her husband and baby to be with me tonight. The least I can do is agree. I nod.

She lifts an eyebrow.

“I promise.”

Lopez is scratching Dusty behind the ears, when he stands to leave. Nicole pulls on her jacket and picks up her bag. “By the way, I almost forgot. I brought a message for you,” Nicole says, digging around in her purse. “It's from Lucy's grandmother, so I thought you might want to read it.”

She puts a pink slip in front of me before she kisses me on the cheek as she and Lopez leave.

Mrs. Castillo's message says she's going to clean out her daughter's apartment on Tuesday morning and wants me to meet her there to help.

Despite the cloak of apathy that presses down on me, my heart beats a little faster reading this. I grab my phone.

A few minutes later, I hang up. I told her I'd meet her in the morning. Even though the rent is paid to the end of the month, the landlord wants all the family's belongings moved so he can start cleaning and getting the place ready for new tenants. She wants my help with packing and sorting. She said she doesn't know anyone else here and doesn't think she can do it alone.

I look at the clock. I'm not supposed to meet her for fourteen hours. I need to visit the apartment now. Alone. As soon as I saw the message from Mrs. Castillo on that little pink slip, I've imagined being in that apartment again, looking for some type of clue that can prove Joey Martin killed his family.

Maybe if I find something soon, they can stop him and get Lucy back before something bad happens—­if it hasn't already. What that something is, I don't know, but as soon as I heard Lucy would be in his care, I've been filled with a sense of dread and foreboding.

I rush to get dressed.