Revolver (3 page)

He twists the cap off another Yuengling, flips the kielbasa, tries to slow down time enough to enjoy the moment, because in this life moments like this are all too rare. His boys fighting, Audrey running around the deck like a spaz. All of them together, kielbasa on the grill, cold beer in his hand, Claire surprising him, slipping her hand around his chest, kissing him on the side of his neck. She's happiest when everybody's home. Jim has to admit—he is, too.

Audrey Kornbluth, twenty-five, hasn't set foot in Philadelphia for close to two years.

She also hasn't seen her father, aka the Captain, in over three. Word is, he's shaved his beard because it went gray. Which must be weird—she's never seen him without facial hair. Whatever. Either way, he's no doubt the same old grim asshole.

The flight from Houston to Philly took four hours and change. She's essentially trading one oppressively humid city (the fourth largest) for another oppressively humid city (the fifth largest—or is it sixth or seventh now? Audrey's lost track). A wasted morning flying from one armpit to the next. All in an ill-fitting black dress with long sleeves that hug her arms a bit too much.

“Your grandmother asked me to remind you about the sleeves,” her mom texted her, although she speaks her texts so it came out
Your grand mopper asked me to rewind you about the Steves.

That is, Steves/sleeves to cover her beautiful fully inked arm sleeves. God forbid a young lady should show off her tats in mixed company. But she complies, because Audrey loves her Grandma Rose. Or maybe she loves the idea of Grandma Rose more. Because in real life, she's kind of a pain in the ass.

Outside the terminal the hot humid air smacks her in the face. Her long black hair goes whipping around like Medusa's snakes. Her eyes tear up. She clutches her overnight bag—oh yes, this is going to be a short visit, guilt only buys you twenty-four hours, people—and looks for the limo. For all this hassle, she was promised a limo.

No limo.

Instead what she gets is a minivan. Cyanotic blue Honda Whatever, a few years old, dinged up here and there.

She gets a sister-in-law, the only one who talks to her, waving and yelling at her, hurry up, hurry up, we're running late. Cheering kids in the back. Wait; they're not cheering. They're yelling.

This is going to be a nightmare.

She was promised a limo, goddammit.

So Audrey Kornbluth, grown-ass woman, wedges herself between two toddlers in the third row of a six-year-old minivan. A dirty finger violates the personal space around her face.

“Who are
you?
”

Patience; he's an innocent.

“I'm your aunt Audrey.”

“No you're not! Our aunt Audrey lives in Texas.”

“Psst, kid. See those buildings?” She points at the squat ugly gray terminals of concrete and glass that they are currently speeding past. “Behind them are these magical devices that transport you from one location to another. One of them brought me here from Texas!”

“Aunt Audrey is pretty.”

“You're not pretty,” says the other toddler with the certainty of a judge delivering a verdict.

Audrey twists up her face and leans in close to her nephew.

“Yeah, and you've got peanut butter on your lip.”

Audrey pulls the seat belt across her torso. It locks up. She pulls again. It locks up. Yanks it hard. Locks up. Oh fuck it. If they crash she'll be well protected by all the human meat around her.

“Who are you two firecrackers, anyway?”

Audrey is not being funny. She can barely keep her nieces and nephews straight. She hasn't been home in close to two years, and her two brothers keep multiplying, as if they're making a hedge against Armageddon. In the second row in front of her are three boys who she knows belong to either Sta
ś
or Cary, but she'll be damned if she knows which is which.

One of her sisters-in-law turns around, placing her hand on the back of the driver's seat. “You okay back there, Audrey?”

“I'm fine.”

“You look like Houston's agreeing with you.”

“Yeah, it's a cool city.”

“How's CSI school?”

“Just great,” she lies.

CSI school is going very, very badly. In fact, the University of Houston is about seven days away from saying
fuck you very much, pleasure taking your tuition money, good luck out there in the world of the desperate and unemployed.

It seemed like a fun idea at the time. Audrey grew up watching
CSI
—way before she was officially allowed to watch such gruesome things. Mom would have been mortified. Dad just smiled and looked the other way while his ten-year-old daughter was treated to the image of a human head being pulverized by a golf club or a rib-spreader going to work on a hooker's torso. Audrey reveled in it.

And she continues to revel in it. The problem isn't the science; the problem is the whirling chaos of her life that prevents her from doing the science. And universities tend not to care about whirling chaos. They want you to show up and just do the science.

The ride from the airport to the city proper takes you through an industrial wasteland of smoke and oil and machines and fire, then sports stadiums and a thousand billboards. Apparently there's a mayoral primary this month, because the ads are full of names that Audrey dimly remembers.
ABRAHAM. WILLIAMS. DEHAVEN. KENNEY.

Predictably, there's a traffic slowdown near the stadiums.

“We're going to be late,” says the sister-in-law who is driving. She's not speaking to anyone in particular, but she's especially not speaking to Audrey.

Her name is Bethanne, which, of course, Audrey mentally autocorrects to
Bitchanne
. She's never done a thing to Bitchanne, except maybe breathe. But Bitchanne is married to Sta
ś
, her older sibling, and since Sta
ś
doesn't talk to Audrey anymore, his wife follows suit. It's kind of a shame because Audrey remembers when she was just a kid and used to look forward to Bethanne coming over. She'd play all the silly girly board games that Sta
ś
and Cary refused to play. Now she doesn't talk to Audrey at all.

The sister-in-law whose skinny ass occupies the passenger seat
does
speak to Audrey, but delights in telling backstabbing whore lies. Which is far, far worse—Audrey would prefer the stony silence. The backstabber's name is Jean and she is the reason her brother Cary drinks so much.

Speaking of…

“Uh, I thought there was supposed to be a limo?”

Jean turns, puts on a faux pout and says,

“The city only arranged for two per family, honey. There's one for your dad, Grandma Rose, and Sta
ś
, the other for your mom, Will, Cary, and Gene.”

Audrey seethes as she does the family calculus in her head: okay, so the Walczak sons (Sta
ś
, Cary) get a limo ride, and meanwhile, Audrey's stuck in a cluttered minivan with the peanut butter gang. But lo! It's not just siblings in the limo. There's Will, Mom's newish boyfriend. And Gene, who is Cary's son. Gene—
the grandkid?
—gets in the limo before fat ugly Aunt Audrey from Texas?

Then again, it makes sense, she guesses. She's the adopted one. The only member of the family who doesn't have almighty Walczak blood running through her veins.

“Don't worry,” Jean says. “We're going to meet up with them near Spring Garden Street before driving up to the corner.”

“Wunderbar,” Audrey says.

The corner is where, precisely fifty years ago, on May 7, 1965, Audrey's grandfather was murdered.

Growing up, Audrey Kornbluth heard a lot about her grandpop Stan. Hero cop. Family man, only forty-one when he died, far too young, and so on.

She only saw Grandpop Stan when she was visiting her grandmother's house and had to pee.

See, the only bathroom was upstairs, and Grandpop Stan's black-and-white picture hung slightly askew on the wall by the staircase—one of three photos arranged in a triptych on the wood paneling along the shag-carpeted staircase. In order of ascension:

Her older brother Sta
ś
, who is pretty much a dick. Photo taken the day he graduated from the Academy. Audrey remembers that day clearly, which ended with Sta
ś
and Cary in a fistfight. (Is there a Walczak family gathering that doesn't end in a fistfight?)

Next in line: her father, the Captain, taken the day
he
graduated from the Academy back in 1971. Young Audrey used to laugh at his longish blond hair, which is now long gone. A Study of Her Father as Early-1970s Hipster.

And finally: Grandpop Stan, taken the day
he
graduated from the police academy (you might be sensing a theme here) in May 1951. He had close-cropped blond hair, deep-set eyes, an uneasy smile.

Staring at you, whenever you needed to go pee.

She has to admit, it used to creep her out, the way his eyes seemed to
follow you
.

That's Audrey's memory of her grandfather.

The limos pull up to the corner under police escort, followed by the motley assortment of civilian vehicles. Uniformed cops salute stiff and precise as the vehicles pass. One whole block of Fairmount Avenue, from Seventeenth to Eighteenth, has been cordoned off to accommodate rows of folding chairs facing the pizza joint. A police flag covers the memorial plaques, with four roses anchoring each corner. Bagpipers wail in the background.

Audrey climbs out of the back of the minivan and steels herself for the painful and awkward hours to come.

Her father, the Captain, climbs out of the back of the first limo. And as rumored, he is indeed beardless. His big pink cheeks are freshly shaved and raw. He's also about thirty pounds heavier. Blond hair so light it's almost gray, cropped close to the skull. The man is a mountain, considerably heavier than the last time she saw him. Which was painful, awkward, shitty.

And wouldn't you know it—the first person he locks eyes with is Audrey.

Even as he puts his sunglasses on, he continues to stare at her. No discernible emotion on his face.

Audrey flinches first and looks away. Oh god, this is going to be awful.

One by one, her siblings and Mom and boyfriend Will—and yes, even little Gene—climb out of their limos and gawk at Audrey. Wow. She actually showed up. Wonder what the over/under is on her appearance.

Mom is the first to break ranks to come over to give her a hug.

“You look good, daughter,” she says.

“The phrase you're searching for is
pleasingly plump,
” Audrey says.

“I didn't say that.”

“Ah, but you
were
thinking it, Claire.”

She always calls her mother Claire, while Claire refers to Audrey as daughter. It's a thing they do.

As the bagpipers continue to wail and asses begin to fill seats, Audrey nervously scans the crowd for other familiar faces. It's not difficult to tell the Walczaks from the Wildeys (duh), though the Wildey side is much more sparse. There will be empty chairs. Audrey considers sitting on the Wildey side, just for the hell of it.
Why yes, I'm the white sheep of the family.

The police commissioner shakes hands with her father. The mayor, she notices, must be running late.

And then, without warning, it's time to get started.

A local oldies radio DJ is the MC. Boy, what a depressing gig, Audrey thinks. At no point will he be able to lighten the mood by playing “Let's Twist Again” or “Hanky Panky.”

Audrey chooses a seat in the second row, figuring the front row is Reserved for Limo Riders Only. Cary, though, surprises her by making his way down her row and plopping his lean body down into the seat next to hers. He's wearing his police uniform even though he's just a paper-pusher.

“You're looking rather bosomy these days,” he says, nodding at her torso.

“Eat me,” she whispers.

“You're a regular Chesty McChesterton.”

“Seriously—suck it, Care.”

Cary chuckles under his breath.

The Captain—she can tell—is
this
close to turning around and telling them to shut the fuck up already. Ah, some things never change.

A monsignor from Sts. Peter and Paul gives the opening invocation.

“May the almighty God grant us peace now and forever. O God, by whose mercy your faithful find rest, bless this plaque with which we mark the place where our brothers, Officers Stanisław Walczak and George Wildey, were taken from us, as they sought to protect their fellow citizens, your people, from the certain harm that faced them. May they have everlasting life in your peaceful presence forever. Amen.”

“Psst. Here.”

Cary knocks a silver flask against the knuckles of Audrey's right hand. She pivots her wrist, grabs it.

So this is how it's going to be. Getting drunk at her grandfather's memorial. Not the classiest move ever, but oh so necessary.

Of course Audrey, being no dummy, front-loaded on the plane: two mini-bottles of Stoli, a can of tomato juice, and teensy pepper packets were the ingredients for her MacGyver-ish in-flight Bloody Mary (she told the flight attendant “My grandfather died, okay?” when he raised an eyebrow) and another fully loaded one at the Chickie's & Pete's in the terminal. So these hits from Cary's flask are just maintenance. Hell, he's just as buzzed.

The Walczak siblings have allegiances and wars going back decades. Audrey and Cary got along the best, even if they were born a decade apart and could lash out at each other with precision-strike cruelty when needed. Their mother, Claire, named them after the stars in her favorite movie,
Charade
.

Meanwhile, Jim named his firstborn after his father. Sta
ś
may have inherited the family legacy, but Audrey and Cary agree they got the cooler names. (Also, Audrey called him Josh whenever possible because it pissed him off.)

Now an honor guard is posting the colors. Rifleman, American flag bearer, state flag bearer, police flag bearer, rifleman. Everyone says the Pledge of Allegiance, during which Audrey realizes she's slurring a little. She'd better slow down, unless she plans on passing out at the banquet later.