Richard Montanari (25 page)

    'Okay.
When I was nineteen, going to Temple, I had a date with this guy - Richie Randazzo.
He invited me to his cousin's wedding in Cheltenham and I saved for three
months for the cutest little red dress from Strawbridge's. It's a size four. I
still have it.'

    'What,
you're not a size four?'

    'You are
the greatest man who has ever lived.'

    'As
if this were in doubt,' Byrne said. 'One question, though.'

    'What?'

    'You
went out with a guy named Richie Randazzo?'

    'If
you didn't factor in the mullet, the rusted-out Toronado with the fur-trimmed
rearview mirror, and the fact that he drank Southern Comfort and Vernor's, he
was kind of cute.'

    'At
least
I
never had a mullet,' Byrne said. 'Ever.'

    'I
could always check with Donna, you know.'

    Byrne
looked at his watch. 'Look at the time.'

    Jessica
laughed, letting him off the hook. She fell silent for a few moments, looking
around the attic. It occurred to her that she would never be back in this room.
'Man.'

    'What?'

    'My
whole life is in these boxes.' She opened a box, took out some photos. On top
were pictures of her parents' wedding.

    Out
of the corner of her eye Jessica saw Byrne turn away for a second, giving her
the moment with her memories. Jessica put the photos back.

    'So,
let me ask you one more thing,' she said.

    'Sure.'

    Jessica
took a few seconds. She hoped that her voice was going to be steady. She put
her hand on one of the boxes, the one with the piece of green yarn around it.
'If you have something, some memento that is a part of your life, and you know
that the next time you see it, it's going to break your heart, do you keep it?
Do you hold onto it anyway? Even though you know it is going to cause you pain
the next time you look at it?'

    Byrne
knew that she was talking about her mother.

    'Do
you remember her well?' he asked.

    Jessica
had been five years old when her mother died. Her father had never remarried,
had never loved another woman. 'Yeah. Sometimes. Not her face, though. I
remember how she smelled. Her shampoo, her perfume. I remember how in summer,
when we went to Wildwood, she smelled like Coppertone and cherry Life Savers.
And I remember her voice. She always sang with the radio.'

    
Heaven
Must Have Sent You.
It was one of her mother's favorites. Jessica hadn't
thought of that song in years.

    'How
about you?' she asked. 'Do you think about your mom a lot?'

    'Enough
to keep her alive,' Byrne said and leaned against the wall. It was his
storytelling pose.

    'When
I was a kid, and my father used to chew me out, my mother would always run
interference, you know? I mean
physically.
She would physically get in
between us. She wouldn't make excuses for me, and I always ended up getting
punished, but while my father was upbraiding me she would stand with her hands
clasped behind her back. I'd look at her hands, and she always had a fifty cent
piece for me. My father never knew. I'd have to do my time, but afterwards I
always had fifty- cents to blow on a water ice or a comic book when I got
paroled.'

    Jessica
smiled, thinking about anyone - especially Paddy Byrne - intimidating her
partner.

    'She
died on my birthday, you know,' Byrne said.

    Jessica
didn't
know. Byrne had never told her this. At that moment she tried to
think of something sadder than this, and found herself at a loss. 'I didn't
know.'

    Byrne
nodded. 'You know how you always notice your birthday when you see it printed
somewhere, or hear it mentioned in a movie or on television?'

    'Yeah,'
Jessica said. 'You always turn to the people around you and say
hey . . .
that's my birthday.'

    Byrne
smiled. 'It's like that for me when I go to the cemetery. I always do a double
take when I see the headstone, even though I
know.'
He put his hands in his
pockets. 'It will never be my birthday again. It will always be the day she
died, no matter how long I live.'

    Jessica
couldn't think of anything to say. It mattered little, because she had never met
a more perceptive person than Kevin Byrne. He always knew when to move things
along.

    'So,
your question?' he asked. 'The one about whether or not to save something, even
though you know it will break your heart?'

    'What
about it?'

    Byrne
reached into his pocket, pulled something out. It was a fifty-cent piece.
Jessica looked at the coin, at her partner. At this moment, his eyes were the
deepest emerald she had ever seen.

    'It's
a strange thing about heartbreak,' Byrne said. 'Sometimes it's the best thing
for you. Sometimes it reminds you that your heart is still beating.'

    They
stood, saying nothing, cosseted in this drafty room full of memory and loss.
The silence was shattered by the sound of a breaking dish downstairs. Irish and
Italians and booze always led to broken ceramics. Jessica and Byrne smiled at
each other, and the moment dissolved.

    'Ready
for the big bad city?' he asked.

    'No.'

    Byrne
picked up a box, headed for the stairs. He stopped, turned. 'You know, for a
South Philly chick, you turned into kind of a wimp.'

    'I
have a gun in one of these boxes,' Jessica said.

    Byrne
ran down the steps.

    By
ten o'clock they had everything in the new house. What had seemed like a
reasonable amount of goods in the Lexington Park house now filled up every
room, every corner, every cabinet. If they put the sofa and two of the
dining-room chairs on the roof, they could just about make everything fit.

    Byrne
stood across the street from the row house. A pair of older teenage girls
walked by, reminding him of Lucy Doucette.

    When
he had first met Lucy at the group regression-therapy sessions she had seemed
so lost. He did not know much about her life, but she had told him enough for
him to know that she was troubled by a traumatic event in her childhood. He
recalled her efforts at the regression-therapy group, her inability to recall
anything about the incident. He didn't know if she had been molested or not.
Running into her accidentally in the city reminded him how he had promised to
look in on her from time to time. He had not.

    'Kevin?'

    It
was a tiny voice. Byrne turned around and saw that it was Jessica's daughter
Sophie, bundled up, standing on the sidewalk in front of the porch. The front
door was open, and through it Byrne could see Peter Giovanni inside, leaning
against the handrail, keeping one eye on his granddaughter. Once a father,
always a cop.

    Byrne
crossed the street. For a long time Jessica had insisted that

    Sophie
should call him Mr. Byrne. It had taken a while for Byrne to change that, and
it looked like it had finally taken hold. Byrne got down to Sophie's level,
noticing that she wasn't as small as she had been even last year at this time.
'Hey, sweetie.'

    'Thanks
for helping out.'

    'Oh,
you're welcome,' Byrne said. 'Do you like your new house?'

    'It's
small.'

    Byrne
looked over her shoulder. 'It's not that small. I think it's pretty cool.'

    Sophie
shrugged. 'It's all right, I guess.'

    'Plus
your school is only a block away. You can sleep late.'

    Sophie
giggled. 'You don't know my mom.'

    The
truth was, he did. He soon realized the folly of his statement.

    Sophie
glanced up the street. The looming structure of Sacred Heart Parochial School was
silhouetted against the carbon-blue night sky. She looked back at Byrne. 'Did
you go to Catholic school?'

    'Oh
yeah,' Byrne said. He wanted to tell her that he still had ruler marks on his
knuckles to prove it, but decided against it.

    'Did
you like it?'

    How
to answer
this
? 'Well, do you have a kid in your school who is always
goofing off, always getting into trouble?'

    'Yeah,'
Sophie said. 'In my school it's Bobby Tomasello.'

    'Well,
in
my
school that kid was me.'

    'You
got into trouble?'

    'All
the time,' Byrne said.

    'Did
they make you sit in the corner?'

    Byrne
smiled at the memory. 'Let me put it this way. Sister Mary Alice ended up
putting my desk in the corner. It saved everyone a trip. In fact, I had a
corner office in every one of my classrooms.'

    Sophie's
face softened into an expression that Byrne had seen a thousand times on
Jessica's face, a look of compassion and understanding. 'It's all right,
Kevin,' she said. 'You turned out okay.'

    The
jury was still out on that one, Byrne thought. Still, it was nice to hear, even
if it was coming from a seven-year-old. Maybe
especially
from a
seven-year-old. 'Thanks.'

    They
fell silent for a moment, listening to the sounds of the party coming from
inside the house.

    'I
like Colleen,' Sophie said.

    'Yeah,'
Byrne said. 'She's pretty special.'

    'She
taught me something.'

    'Oh
yeah?'

    Sophie
nodded. She thought for a moment, wrinkling her brow, then balled her fists,
extended a finger, stopped, thought a bit more, started over. This time she
extended her hands, rubbed one palm across the other, lifted the index finger
on each hand, bumped fists, and pointed at Byrne.

    It
was American Sign Language for 'Nice to meet you.'

    
'Very
good,' Byrne said. 'Did you just learn that?'

    Sophie
nodded. 'It took me a few times.'

    Byrne
smiled. 'It took me
-way
more than a few times.'

    A few
minutes later he kissed Sophie on top of her head, watched her walk back
inside. After she was inside, Byrne stood and observed Jessica's family through
the window for a while. It had been a long time since he'd been part of
something like this.

    He
thought about Sophie's sign language, how determined she was, how she stayed
with it until she got it right. He considered how the oldest sayings were the
truest, like that one about the apple not falling far from the tree.

    Byrne
sat there for a long time, not moving, just rolling the fifty- cent piece over
his fingers, the memories of his old neighborhood misting across his mind.

    Someone
emerged from the shadows just outside the driver's side window of the van.
Byrne sat upright. It was Jessica. He rolled down the window.

    'What's
up?' he asked. 'Ready to move back already?'

    'You
know the paper that was wrapped around the victims' heads?'

    'What
about it?'

    'We
have a make.'