Authors: Ursula Hegi
He tried to tug his thin fingers from mine.
But I held onâtight, so tightâheld on for him and for myself. And asked him: “What if it had been me, Anthony?”
He shook his head.
“By the window? That day?”
He shook his head.
“You're the one who was there with her. What if it had been me, Anthony? By the window? Would you have pushed me out instead?”
“I didn't push⦔ Something in his eyes shifted. “That winterâ¦?”
“That winter.” I held my breath.
“That winter I learned to hunt. I was seven,” he said, his voice suddenly that of a seven-year-old. “I went to Canada and came back with an earache. Remember?”
“I know what you're doing.” By offering me his hunting story, he was dodging my question, mining for sympathy.
“I shot three rabbits.”
“Did they bleed?”
He blinked.
I felt queasy. Still, I pushed. “Did they bleed, Anthony?”
“First time you cry for ten minutes. Second time you whimper. After that it's nothing.” He stalled while the waitress filled my coffee cup. Then he said, “Most of that trip I cried.”
“You just said you stopped crying after ten minutes.”
“Crying about the rabbit, yes. But I kept crying because of the cold. Dad and Grandpaâ¦they took me hunting for hours in icy weather. When I told them how my fingers and feet were hurting, Grandpa said that was good.”
“Grandpa? I can't picture him saying that to a child.”
“He said it was good because⦔ Anthony's scrawny face grew hollowâ“a man has to understand that killing is
not
fun. I already knew that.”
I felt all stiff through my neck, my shoulders. “I'm so sorry,” I said, and as I looked into his frog-green eyes, I had other memories of tormenting himâ
how easily he cried
âmemories that made me uneasy. Bianca and I wrestling him down, sitting on him, tickling his armpits and crotch. Maybe we had to see where he was different from us. Where he was like us.
I pressed my fingertips into my shoulders, drummed them into the muscles to loosen them a bit.
“I like that Franklin of yours.”
I felt him across from me, the closest I ever had to a brother, and in that instant he became every man who'd moved through my life: Papa; Franklin; my grandpa; Uncle Victor; my third-grade teacher; even my first husband. At first I didn't like it that anything about Jonathan should remind me of these other men, considering his despicable comment about cats eating their young; but then there was that other side to him, tooâfamiliar and tender and generousâthat linked all of them. It was definitely there in Franklin and in Papa. It was also there in Anthony, despite the crap and the bluffing, and as he looked at me and nodded, I knew I could trust that he'd keep Franklin off church roofs even if he couldn't quite see why. It was enough for him that it mattered to me.
“Sorry for the Alpo,” I said, “for the tickle game, for stealing Bianca's giraffe, forâ”
“I knew all along you had it.”
“I'm still afraid of throwing it away, of being found out.”
“You could bury itâ” He grimaced. “No. That's too weird.”
“Bury it where?”
“In her grave. Butâ”
“It's not that weird.”
“If you want⦔ He bent toward me, no longer keeping me away.
“But I'd need you to do this with me.”
“Maybe some weekend whenâ”
“Next Sunday?”
“Today.” His eyes locked with mine.
I nodded. “You mean get it now.”
“You know where it is?”
When I said, “Yes,” it was with the certainty that Anthony and I would restore the onyx giraffe to my sister, today, and I felt toward him as if we'd already done soârelieved and grateful and amazedâfelt as though I were already remembering the two of us
kneeling at my twin's grave site, the onyx giraffe in my hand, smooth veins of green within other greens. Opening the earth above the coffin feels odd. We reach into the ground, not to tuck the giraffe into Bianca's coffin, but into the earth that yields to us though we have braced ourselves to come upon bone: rib or skull or femur. Yields to us.
F
loria is dying. Her husband has darkened the living room where she lies on the couch, and he's holding her hands. Julian's fingers are softer than hers
sinews and bones and mottled skin that's been burning ever since Julian peeled strips of gauze from her, miles and miles of white gauze, paring her down to this last layer of herself, to her lungs half transparent with the lace her mother taught her to crochet as a girl. White on white
light and voices hanging above her
rubbing against her
“Try this, Mama.” Biancaâ¦a spoon against Floria's teeth. “Anthony cooked this soup for you.”
“It'll be easy on your throat.” Julian. Standing between her couch and the china cabinet he made for their dance trophies. Cherry and aspen
blood and light
inlaid wood, like all the furniture he builds in his shop.
Soup like seaweedâ¦lukewarm and salty on Floria's tongue. Her nostrils feel bruised from the oxygen. A spoonful is all she can swallow. For nine days she has been dyingâever since Julian carried her out of Montefiore Hospital, his tweed coat flapping around her flimsy johnny. She made him bring her home because of the promise they made when they married, more than two decades ago. They were both fifty-five then, both old enough to consider their deaths despite this fierce-blooming passion that astounded them.
“Imagine, at our age,” she would marvel as she'd reach for him once again.
“Imagine⦔ he'd sigh as his mouth searched her skin.
Their promise was not to let each other die among strangers. “You'll be dead first,” he'd scold when he'd find her on their fire escape at night, sneaking cigarettes, or when he'd taste tobacco on her despite the cough drops after smoking.
“I'm smoking less since I married you,” she'd protest and remind him of her compromiseâno smoking in their apartment or in front of him.
But Julian wanted her to stop altogether, swore he'd take her for a visit to a convalescent home in Washington Heights where smokersâmouths eaten away by cancerâsucked on cigarettes through tubes that stuck from the front of their necks. “Is that how you want to end up?” he'd ask.
Every argument they hadâeven arguments she started whenever he repaired the furniture of her relatives for free in his shopâended with Julian predicting she'd die of lung cancer. Not that there were many quarrels in their marriage. Amazingly easy, getting along with Julian
the way she explains it to Belinda and Julian's son, Mickâboth past thirty when their parents marryâis that she and Julian left their thorns in others before they came together.
“Makes me queasy,” Belinda says, “to think of Papa with any of your thorns.”
“Jesus Christ, Belinda,” Leonora says. “Your mother is not talking about some bleeding Jesus with a thorn crown hanging from some bleeding cross.”
“It means the older we get,” Julian explains, “the more your mother and I know what's worthy of fight.”
But then Julian is proven true about the cancer, and he's not even the kind who likes to be right. Except about knowing as a young man that he loves her. Knowing on the day she marries Malcolm. Just as she knows. Telling herâwhen she calls him after her return from Italyâthat he thinks of her often.
“Quite oftenâ¦every day.”
Stunning her into admitting how she watched his eyes in the rearview mirror of the limo and imagined driving away with him.
“I almost did,” he confesses, “I almost drove past that church with you in your wedding gown. God, I wanted toâso much.”
“When I was in Italy,” she tells him, “I decided to leave Malcolm
“Malcolm⦔
“It's me, Julian.” Julian. His face above her. Gray
Years of marriage to Julian before he admits that Malcolm borrows money from him. Julian doesn't want her to know, but she prods because she recognizes the discomfort in his turned-away eyes. Long-borrowed money will cause that discomfort. Never-returned money. It's the look she's seen in the faces of her brother, her Aunt Camilla, her father, various neighbors
“â¦hisâ¦most developedâ¦skill is coaxing.”
“Malcolm coaxed me, too, sweetheart.”
“I'll payâ¦you back.”
“It's not yours to pay back.”
“Open your mouth, Mama.”
“Nothing wrongâ¦withâ¦my mouth.”
“Your mouth is just fine, Aunt Floria.” Anthony
who cooks but is not a cook. Who is a chef. That's what Leonora reminds everyone to say. Chef. Though he learned his recipes from Floria and Victor, who learned them from Riptide: layers of eggplant with sauce and cheese, manicotti or ravioli or lasagna so hot you can't touch them for minutes, just watch the cheese dribble down the sides. It's food Floria loves. Not like Julian's anniversary food, when he takes her to gourmet restaurantsâbrandy sauces and whole fish with eyesâwhere you always pay extra for the salad
“Chefs areâ¦smarter than cooksâ¦.”
“Thank you, Aunt Floria.”
“â¦especially if theyâ¦are chefsâ¦in a bookstore.”
“Ida and Joey send their love.”
Half that bookstore Anthony's now that he's married to Ida
“Oldâ¦to be aâ¦father. Allâ¦that waiting.”
“Floria doesn't mean it.” Leonora's voice.
“â¦waiting makesâ¦youâ¦cautious.”
“True enough. Ida says I'm the kind of father who buys safety gear before choosing athletic gear for Joey.”
“Sadâ¦you sound sadâ¦always sad when Ida moves outâ¦.”
Some people have several marriages. Some have one marriage. But Anthony and Ida have one separation that's disrupted by intervals of marriage
Floria has two marriages. And two wedding dresses. The first one she sewed. The second one was store-bought and too expensive
“You're always sewing for others, sweetheart.”
But the saleswomen don't understand, even though Floria clearly says “a wedding dress,” and then “a dress to wear to my wedding.” A bride her age is beyond their imagination.
“Are you the mother of the bride?”
“Are you a guest?”
“I'm itâ¦the brideâ¦.”
“Mama?”
“She said something about being a bride.”
“Laughingâ¦gas⦔
“Everyone is here, Mama.”
“Oh,” the saleswomen say. Congratulate her. Lead her to mother of the bride outfits. Outfits to be buried in.
“Beige is not a good color for me.”
“If you just put on some lipstick. Some eyeshadow.”
“I'd feel funny with all that smeared on my face.”
They suggest different shoes, a higher heel, straps though she's already wearing the shoes she plans to wear for her wedding. New dress. But time-proven shoes.
“Here is your way out,” she tells Julian that night.
“Saleswomen have trouble seeing me as a bride.”
“I've always seen you as a bride. For over thirty years I've thought of you as a bride.”
When the photos of their wedding are developed, Floria gets out the album of her first wedding, looks with her new husband at pictures of herself as a much younger bride. “I was there,” Julian says, “see, I was there, the best man,” as if he'd been with her from that day forward; as if Malcolm had been no more than a switch in her life, an idea, an inconvenience; as if she could rewind her memories and relive them with Julian. But those years of being with Malcolm are part of her life, too, and brought her two daughters
“Good. She's swallowing.”
“Hot⦔
“I'll blow on it for you, Mama.” Bianca's voice.
Hot, Floria's face is hot
from playing in the schoolyard, rescuing ants she hides in the pocket of her blouse till she sneaks them into the castle she made for them from clay. She hides the castle beneath her bed so her mother won't find the ants and kill them. “What do you think you are doing, Floria, bringing vermin into the house?” To her mother, any animal you don't buy in the pet shop is vermin
“Vermin⦔
“We don't have a problem with that, sweetheart.”
“I can give you the name of a reasonable exterminator, Julian.”
“Here is another spoonful, Mama.”
“Theâ¦castle has⦔
two turrets and tunnels that Floria pokes through the clay with her pencil. When the lead breaks, she fixes it with her brother's pencil sharpener. But Victor gets huffy because his sharpener is gummed up with clay. Victor can get so huffy. Gets huffy and wants to divorce Leonora, but then stays, while Floria divorces Malcolm
“Because of theâ¦sweaty sleep⦔
“SshhhâAunt Floria is saying something.”
“Mama?”
“Because of what?”
“Sweatyâ¦sleep⦔
and Julian loving her while silk-sweat blossoms on her neck, spreads into her hair, slicks her breasts, her thighs, while her body is cooling itself, making her grateful for its wisdom
“She says she's hot.”
“Malcolmâ¦won't touch⦔
“What about Papa?”
“I want toâ¦pay Julianâ¦back.”
“For what?”
“Whatâ¦he borrowed.”
“But we're married.” Julian. Old manâ¦so old. A glimpse into the future Floria doesn't want. “Besides, whatever you paid me would still belong to both of us.”
Tears in her eyes at the relief of money not being such a problem anymoreâ
“Don't cry, Mama.”
the relief of Malcolm no longer wasting money with his schemes; relief of not just owning her sewing machine and dummy, but every piece of her furniture, most of it newâstore-bought or made by Julianâexcept for inheriting her father's Victrola. Things she wants. No more furnished apartments. No more slipcovers. No more landlords who keep her deposit. Still, first time she and Julian move, she feels she's stealing the landlord's furniture, that she should move during the night. So accustomed to furniture staying behind, to starting out with different old furniture like that brown couch on Ryer Avenue with the musty-sweet smell
Fanning that smell away with her hands. “â¦awfulâ¦smellâ”
“Mamaâyou'll tear off the tubes.”
“Get a hold of her arms.”
musty-sweet smell of the brown couch, too big for her slipcovers, brown and too soft, with divided pillows that swallow spoons and babies and coins
“Hold still, Floria.”
“Coins. Iâ¦wantâ”
“She's getting even more upset.”
“Yes, Mama? What do you want?”
“â¦pay Julianâ¦back.”
“Just tell her she can pay you back, Julian.”
“You can pay me back, sweetheart.”
Her father tucks money into her palm the way he does with the twins. Forgetting bills and coins in his pockets just so he can enjoy finding them
“Now she's crying.”
and giving them to her. Bills and coins to pay Julian back
“Floriaâ”
“She's in pain.”
“Quiet.”
Quiet, first she must be quiet, because her father is wiping dust from a record with a folded undershirt. When the voice starts, he becomes flat as he leans into the breath of the voice, voice high and thin like a wail
“Can't we give her something for the pain?”
“When's that doctor supposed to be here?”
Floria closes her hand
hides the money from them all
“Mineâ”