Kiss of the Wolf

PART ONE

Todd was getting confirmed. Confirmation made him an adult in the eyes of the Church. At the ceremony, Joanie tried to remember her own confirmation but couldn’t. She squatted in the pew and thought dull and repetitive things like, Do I really have a son old enough to be confirmed? The bishop read Todd’s name out of sequence, the only mistake he made all day. Back at home, Todd changed into play clothes and took off for parts unknown while Joanie napped away the rest of the afternoon. The whole thing seemed like an official transition to something more unpleasant.

They still had to deal with Todd’s confirmation party that night. Joanie’s mother was having it at her house: more room, she said. They got there early to help, and while Joanie dumped antipasto from plastic tubs onto a silver tray Nina saw a mouse under the refrigerator. This was the end of the world. They all had to hunt for the mouse. Together with Sandro they moved the refrigerator, banged around under the cabinets. Todd, of course, thought they should let it go. Nina, while she set the table, stayed upset about the mouse; for her it was One More Thing.

Once everybody showed up, Todd got a watch, a cableknit sweater, and some envelopes. His father’s present had come in the mail a week early, no return address. There was a card taped to it made of a folded piece of paper. It said on the top, “Sorry to Miss the Festivities.” Todd hadn’t shown her the inside.

It was a small party. Nancy, her mother, Elena, and Joanie’s great-aunt Clorinda, so old she never said anything. Sandro, Nina, Todd, Joanie, and the mouse. Like all Italian parties, it was planned for all rooms and stayed in the kitchen. Nina started them on the antipasto Joanie’d done a lousy job of arranging, and some spinach bread. The antipasto was good, but the spinach in the spinach bread wasn’t chopped up enough. Joanie worked on a piece for minutes. Todd sat around picking at things and waiting for his father’s phone call.

Everyone knew his father was supposed to be calling.

Joanie was spear carrier. Her mother was throwing the party, her son was guest of honor, her missing husband the offstage star. At one point her mother served more coffee by leaning in front of her while she was talking, like she was the ghost nobody could see.

Everyone ate the olives and left the marinated vegetables. They lined olive pits up on their dishes like hotels in Monopoly. The spinach bread wasn’t going over. Sandro suggested Todd start the present-opening.

Todd looked over the pile and opened Joanie’s first. A lightweight jacket for school. Purple and gold, Nike. He liked it, she thought. She’d had little energy to pick something out and had decided, anyway, not to play “Can You Top This?” with her husband’s mystery gift. Todd waited one or two presents more before pulling his father’s and a few others closer. That self-restraint constricted some part of her chest.

Nina, meanwhile, went ahead with the mouse hunt. She had that look, like every part of her life had come apart and she wasn’t waiting any longer on this one. Sandro wanted to know what kind of cavone went exterminating when she had guests. He told her to get up and got on his hands and knees in her place, clunking around under the cabinets with a broom.

Gary’s present sat there, the one everyone wanted opened, until Sandro, sweating and peeved, pulled his head out from under the sink and said, “Hey, open your father’s.”

“Shut up, Sandro, why don’t you,” Nina said. “Let him open what he wants to open.”

Sandro stood up and stretched, his hand on the small of his back. He was bald and the white hairs on top of his head waved like undersea plants.

“You get it?” Nina said, meaning the mouse.

“You mind if I take a leak?” he said. He went into the bathroom. On the way out, he made a stop at the stereo in the living room. Lou Monte came on. “Pepino the Italian Mouse.” Everyone around the table was quiet. Todd had his hands on his father’s gift. Elena chewed with her mouth closed. Sandro came back from the living room. Joanie heard a skittering under the cabinet and imagined the mouse trying to get a look, too.

The present was in a square, head-sized box. The day it arrived, Todd wandered in and out of the kitchen, where they’d left it, checking it out from all angles. Now he had one hand on top of it, as if to see if it was warm. He pulled it closer. The sliding sound on the tablecloth reminded her of moving boxes, moving in.

The phone rang. Joanie answered it. Someone for Bruno. Whoever it was, he sounded pretty unhappy. While Joanie talked to him Nina put a hand to her collarbone and threw Joanie a “That was close” look. Joanie crossed her eyes at her. Todd started working on the box.

It was sealed with some sort of clear supertape. Nina got scissors.

The phone rang again, this time for Joanie. She sighed and took it around the corner, with a finger in her ear. It was Bruno: something’d come up, he’d be a little late. Joanie wanted to say, We care. When she got off, the box was open. Todd was holding the thing up.

It turned out to be a lacrosse helmet. He was controlling his face, but she could see he loved it, absolutely loved it.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Sandro said. Everyone was doing their “Great gift” murmurs.

“What is it?” Nina said, like they’d found it under a rock.

“It’s a lacrosse helmet,” Sandro said. “Don’t you know nothing?”

“No, I don’t know nothing,” Nina said. “I should know an across helmet?”

“It’s sports,” Sandro said.

“Pardon me,” Nina said. “I thought it was olive picking.”

Todd didn’t try it on. He was holding it by the facemask. He loved lacrosse and had wanted something like this for months; she could see it in his face. Before this second she would have been as likely to say he was interested in the Flags of All Nations, or dolls.

Eleven years old: wasn’t that too young for lacrosse? Where’d he hear about lacrosse? Who played it?

Things were awkward for a while. No one knew how enthusiastic to be. Nina refilled coffees.

It took Todd some time to get to the next present. Nancy finally said, “You gonna open mine, or what?” and he set the helmet in his lap and looked over what was left. Nancy pointed hers out.

A line had formed for the bathroom. Sandro picked up the lacrosse helmet and squeezed it onto his head.

“Don’t play around, you’re gonna stretch it,” Nina said. She was broiling sausage and peppers. She had to check on them nineteen times, and Sandro had to move his chair every time she did.

“What ‘stretch it’?” Sandro said. “It’s plastic.”

Nina asked him if he was through with the mouse. Was she going to have to hire someone, thirty-fi’ dollars an hour? Sandro ignored her.

Joanie took time out to track her feelings, like a little weather map. At this point she was hoping her husband wouldn’t call. She wanted it unanimous, what everyone thought of him. She wanted it consistent the way he treated everyone. She looked at Todd and his bad haircut and the little Band-Aid that wouldn’t stick on his hand and was surprised, the way she was always surprised, not by her own meanness but by its persistence.

Sandro got back on his hands and knees with a Mother of God sigh and clacked around under the sink again with the broom handle. It was like he was trying to warn the mouse, not catch it. Nancy poured Joanie more wine, then sat back and made fun of her vacant expression.

Joanie woke up and nodded. Nancy pointed to her gift, finally about to be unwrapped. Todd was working on it like it was a bomb.

“You don’t have to save the paper,” Nancy said. “Really.”

She was Joanie’s best friend. Joanie hadn’t talked to her at all about Gary’s leaving, and it had been two months. Nancy would come over and they’d go to a movie, split a Greek salad. Once, early on, Joanie had been crying upstairs, and Nancy sat in the kitchen and waited a half hour and then finally went home.

Todd was holding up her gift: a book called Italian Folktales.

“Oh, a book,” Nina said flatly. No one seemed to know what to make of her tone. Nancy taught at Stratford High with Joanie — English and history — and liked to give Todd books.

“See if there are any stories about Mucherinos in there,” Sandro said.

“That’s in the famous-crime-stories book,” Nancy said.

“Take that off,” Nina said. “You’re sweating in it.”

“I need this for the mouse,” Sandro said.

The phone rang again. Sandro got it, in the lacrosse helmet. He clacked the plastic receiver against his earhole and kept going, “Hello? Hello?” like it was a vaudeville routine. It got a laugh.

He said, “Joanie, it’s Bruno,” and handed her the phone. Joanie gave Nancy her “I’m not encouraging this” look.

Nancy had gone out with Bruno for a little while, high school and afterward. She still had a thing for him. She was sitting here hoping he wouldn’t call. We’re all sitting around hoping guys won’t call, Joanie thought.

“What’s up?” she said into the phone. “You hit another snag?”

“I’m on my way over,” Bruno said. Something was being whacked behind him.

“What is that?” Joanie said.

“I don’t know,” Bruno said. “They’re screwing around. I’m over here by the deli. You want me to bring anything?”

“We got everything,” Joanie said. “You’re missing all the presents being opened.”

“I was over here, you know, I thought I’d call, see if you needed something,” Bruno said. “I’m five minutes away.”

“What’s that noise behind you?” Joanie said.

“I don’t know, these fucking guys,” Bruno said. The line went muffled, as if he’d covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and when he uncovered it, the sound was gone.

Joanie shifted her weight. Todd was opening more presents. Somebody’d given him some kind of board game he wouldn’t play in a thousand years. “So you coming?” Joanie said in her “I’m getting off” voice.

“Tell ’im we got the Great Mouse Hunt goin’ over here,” Sandro said. He was whisking around under the stove now.

“Listen. Nancy there?” Bruno said.

“Yes, she is,” Joanie said. Nancy looked up at her. “Wanna talk to her?”

“Don’t bust ’em off,” Bruno said. “Her mother there?”

“Yes, she is,” Joanie said. Elena was over by the door, hadn’t said two words all night. “You wanna talk to her?”

“Yeah, give her a message for me,” Bruno said. “Tell her, ‘Mangia il gatz.’”

“You tell her,” Joanie said.

“I’m on my way,” Bruno said. He hung up.

She came back to the table and sat down. Nancy was looking at her. Joanie shrugged.

“Where’s the dog?” Nina said, like she’d just noticed the dog wasn’t around. “Why didn’t you bring the dog?” She was probably thinking of the mouse.

“She ran away again,” Joanie said.

Audrey’d had a tough last few months and had taken to running away after dinner for a few hours. Todd would go look for her, stand in the yard and wait for her to come back.

Nina turned the peppers, which had to be done by now. “That dog’s gonna be out in the woods, she’s gonna be running around, she’s gonna get bit, she’s gonna get rabbis,” she said.

“That’s rabies,” Sandro said. “Jesus God. Rabies.”

Nancy laughed. Nina was used to it. Her husband said she butchered the language like Leo Gorcey. Bruno said she had her own way of communicating, and it didn’t work.

“You are something,” Sandro said. “The other day she goes to me, talking about that poor chiboni who hit the kid, ‘Oh, baby. Nothing goes right for him. He’s got an albacore around his neck.’

More people laughed, even Elena. “Nice image,” Nancy said.

“You believe how fast they go on that curve?” Nina said. “Three times the car flipped. These people and that curve, it’s a sin.”

“I think the parents are now ascared the guy’s gonna get sued,” Sandro said.

“I’d sue ’im,” Nina said. “Three times the car flipped. They had to get that thing and tear the roof off to get him out.”

“The kid was just walking there, too,” Elena said from over by the door. “Going to get ice cream. You believe that? It’s a shame.”

“Her eyes’re open now,” Sandro said. “Her mother’s there every day, soon as the hospital opens.” He had his helmeted head on the floor next to the stove, and he seemed to think he saw something.

“Three times that car flipped,” Nina said.

“I went there and visited,” Elena said. “You go?”

“I went there the second day, with the mother,” Nina said. “You believe the perfume she wears? I think she marinates in it.”

“Ma,” Joanie said. “How about giving her a break? Her daughter’s a vegetable.”

“Don’t talk that way,” Nina said.

Joanie felt bad she’d put it like that. She’d been around Bruno too much. “They hope to God she’ll come out of it,” her mother said.

“They don’t know,” Elena said bitterly. “Doctors.

“I don’t believe that perfume, though,” Nina said. “And expensive. How could you spend so much on perfume?”

“Ma,” Joanie said.

“Hey, you ever see her?” Sandro said. He gave up and got back in his chair. He was trying to get the lacrosse helmet off. “The least she could do is smell good.”

Nina took the pan with the sausage and peppers out of the broiler and dropped it on the floor. Everybody jumped. The peppers spattered over a big area and just missed Sandro’s leg.

“Ho. Ho,” Sandro said. Everyone else made exclamations.

Someone banged on the screen door. Elena always locked it when she visited: her cousin’s sister on Stratford Avenue, one day they walked right in.

“What’s the deal with the security?” Bruno said from outside. “The Mucherinos sense trouble? Gangland hit?”

“You’re not gettin’ in without a present,” Sandro said. He was lifting his feet so Nina could clean under the table. Joanie got a sponge and some paper towels and helped out.

“Open the goddamn door I’m not gettin’ in without a present,” Bruno said.

Elena got up from her chair and fumbled with the lock. Neither she nor Bruno said anything while she worked on it. At one point something clicked and she thought she had it. Bruno rattled the handle.

Elena opened the door and stood back.

“Mrs. DeFeo,” he said, exasperated. He was still standing outside, and she was still holding the door. “Good to see you.”

“Bruno,” Elena said. She thought Bruno was hardworking but a pig. He shit on my Nancy, she had told Nina and Joanie.

“Look at this, look at this,” Bruno said, coming in. “Howdy howdy howdy howdy howdy. Todd’s party. The party for Todd.”

“J’ou bring a gift?” Sandro said. He still had his feet up in the air while Nina cleaned, and he looked like he was on a ride. Joanie told him to put his feet down.

Nina finished. Joanie could see how upset she was: mice in the kitchen, no food, the kid’s father not even here, nothing going right. At the sink, rinsing out the sponge, Joanie said, “Ma, don’t worry,” meaning the spill.

“Did I bring a gift?” Bruno said. “Is it out there on the step right now?”

He looked at Todd. Todd shrugged, as if to say, I don’t know.

“Did I bring a gift?” Bruno said, opening the screen door again. Elena was still standing beside him, waiting for him to settle somewhere before she sat down. “In terms of gifts, I think it’s time to visit Mr. Excess,” he said. He bent down for something right outside the door.

He brought in a square box. It was wrapped in newspaper. Joanie had a frightened flash that it was another lacrosse helmet, that everybody knew about Todd and lacrosse but her.

Bruno caught her looking at him. She thought, This guy. Why’s he so interested? Why’s he so hot for me?

She inventoried him. He was no kid. He was no Mr. GQ, though he usually dressed better than the other guys at Goewey Buick, that was for sure. He had baby skin, but the kind of show-through beard where you had to shave five times a day. No gray. Nice mouth, but his face was jowly. Nice shoes always, Italian, very thin leather. When he stood around like now, he kept raising and lowering his toes, a little gesture of impatience you could watch for.

She looked away and there was Nancy, taking in everything, as usual.

“The kid is a football fan, the kid is a Viking fan,” Bruno said while Todd unwrapped the thing. “Did I buy him a shirt? Did I buy him a pennant?”

Todd pulled the box free of the paper. It was a football helmet, a Minnesota Vikings football helmet.

“God,” he said. “It’s great.”

“Real thing,” Bruno said. “The one they wear.”

“Where’d you get that?” Sandro said.

“Where’d I get it? I stole it from the locker room. I own the team,” Bruno said. “Where’d I get it.”

“This must be helmet night,” Elena said.

Bruno turned around and gave her a look. “They sell ’em in sporting goods stores,” he said. “You should see. It’s a sight to behold.”

“Bruno, that’s too much,” Joanie said. “That musta cost a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Bruno said. Joanie’s great-aunt Clorinda was peering at him. He waved at her. “Bruno, have a seat,” he said. “Bruno, have some wine.”

“Bruno, have a seat,” Sandro said. “Have some wine.”

Elena’s chair was next to Nancy’s. Bruno sat in it like he’d paid for it. “How are you, Nancy?” he said.

“Bruno, I’m fine,” Nancy said.

“That’s good,” Bruno said.

Sandro got up to get another chair. He told Elena to sit in his.

He flipped the record while he was up. Because of the awkwardness of Bruno and Nancy together, everyone listened. Lou Monte again: “Please, Mr. Columbus, Turn-a the Ship Around.”

“Lou Monte,” Bruno said when Sandro came back into the kitchen toting a chair. “Very, very classy. I myself prefer Topo Gigio.”

“Mr. Sophisticated,” Sandro said. He got Bruno a glass.

“I still need to have Wayne Newton explained to me, too,” Bruno said. He turned the glass upside down and cleaned it with his napkin. “Anybody have any ideas, please get right on it. I’m listening.”

“Oh, I like him,” Elena said, from over by the door.

Nancy sang the chorus of “Danke Schoen.”

“We got a mouse over here,” Sandro said. “You missed the big hunt.”

“A mouse,” Bruno said. “You oughta get Sewer Mouth over here.” Because Audrey slobbered on him, he called her Sewer Mouth.

“Bruno, that was too much,” Joanie said. She pointed at the helmet. Todd now had both helmets bumping and clacking together on his lap.

“It cost a bundle,” Bruno said. “You guys are forever in my debt.”

He turned to the great-aunt. “How we doin’, Clorinda?” he said in his louder-for-the-folks-in-the-Home voice. “You gettin’ out?”

“Hah?” Clorinda said.

“Leave her alone,” Nancy said, but she seemed to be enjoying it.

“I said, You gettin’ out? Dance?” He danced a little figure across the table with his first two fingers.

“Ha,” Clorinda said.

“Nina, siddown,” Sandro said. “The antipasto’s enough.”

Everyone agreed. She brought over the remaining sausage and peppers, with some garlic bread in a smaller dish. She seemed to feel better once she had them on the table.

“How’s business, Bruno?” Sandro said. He liked to bait him, for laughs.

“Don’t talk to me about business,” Bruno said, pouring wine.

Sandro said he looked like he was doing good. Todd yawned widely. It was pretty late for him already, Joanie thought.

Hey, do I look at your bankbook?” Bruno said. “What’re you, the IRS?”

“I thought maybe you could lend me some money,” Sandro said. He winked at Joanie.

“I’ll lend you this,” Bruno said. His hand was between his legs.

“Bruno,” Nina said.

He folded his hands in prayer before him and shook them to show what he had to put up with. “Hey, I’m sorry. Today I had the three lonely guys. The last guy, he wanted to be my friend. He wanted to be with me forever. The guy wants to talk, he wants to relate, he wants to go for long walks in the moonlight, he wants to do everything but buy the fucking car. Pardon my French.”

He caught Joanie’s eyes before she could throw Nancy a sympathetic look. He always, always anticipated her. Two days after Gary left, she’d suddenly been bedridden at her parents’: couldn’t eat a thing, threw up night and day, sweated like a horse. Bruno called the house. “How’s Joanie?” he asked. “She sick yet?”

Nancy passed him the garlic bread, and he took it without looking at it. “This guy, I led him all around the lot, we come into my office to talk numbers. He sits down, he goes, ‘Field of Dreams. There’s a great movie.’ I thought, Give me one break. Not this. Not now. Field of Dreams. Dead baseball players hang out in the tall corn. Every so often, bip, there they are again. Back in the tall corn, huh? I’ll tell you what: a guy comes in and tells me he likes that kind of movie, he might as well just spread the inside of his wallet out on my desk. Just spread it all out and say, ‘Take what you want and leave me bus fare.’”

“I liked Field of Dreams,” Sandro said. “Wasn’t that the one with Robert Redford?”

“You don’t know,” Bruno said. “Last movie you saw was Pride of the Yankees.”

They got down to serious eating. The sausages went around the table. People split them so there’d be enough. Bruno got up to go to the bathroom, and when he squeezed by Joanie on the way back, he trailed his fingertips across her shoulder. He was looking at her when he sat down. She raised her chin, worried she looked as ragged and uncomposed as a kid who ran away from home.

“I like your hair like that, Mrs. Muhlberg,” he said. She had it up, because of the heat.

“Bruno, you’re something,” Nina said, eating.

“I like her hair,” he said. He turned his palms up.

Joanie thought, At least I’m generating interest from somebody. She also liked the minor rebelliousness of the public flirting.

Before Gary took off, she’d been with Bruno at the funeral of one of Bruno’s friends, Mark Siegler. At the cemetery, they’d ended up on opposite sides of the grave. He’d made faces. She’d shot him a look, and he’d pointed to his crotch and arched his eyebrows.

“Someone called for you,” Joanie said. “Before.”

Bruno was instantly alert. “Oh yeah?” he said. “Who?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t sound happy. He said he’d see you later tonight,” she said.

Bruno looked at her. He flexed his shoulders to fix his shirt. He nodded.

They ran out of wine. Sandro stood up to get more.

“Sandro, get Joey’s homemade,” Nina said. “The one Bruno brought last time.”

“Which one’s Joey’s?” Sandro said.

“Look, there are two reds down there right next to each other,” Nina said. She held up two fingers, like a peace sign. “Get this one, not this one.” She tilted her hand to favor each finger.

Everybody laughed. Joanie looked cross-eyed at Todd. It was a thing they exchanged whenever anyone said something stupid. Sandro put his hand over his eyes.

“That’s a help, Nin,” Sandro said. “I’ll get this one.” He put his finger in his nose. He squeezed by Joanie, and they heard him going down the cellar stairs.

“So Todd’s a grown-up now,” Bruno said. His joking had changed. He looked preoccupied. Joanie filed the information: a Bruno weak spot, something to do with the call.

“Man o’ the house,” Bruno said.

Todd shrugged.

“I missed the ceremony,” Bruno said.

“Dere’re tree bottles down here,” Sandro called from the cellar.

“Get this one,” Bruno called back without raising his head, holding up his middle finger.

Joanie got up to go to the bathroom herself, laughing. The phone rang when she passed it, like she’d tripped an alarm.

She’d forgotten her husband. Todd was upright, alert again. She put her hand on the phone.

She answered it in front of everyone in the kitchen, turning so they could get maximum coverage. She said hello.

“Hello? Joanie?” Gary said. There was a sheeting noise behind him. She imagined a booth on an Arctic traffic median, the Alaska pipeline running alongside. Snow. But it was summer in Alaska, too. “Joanie?” Gary said.

“No,” Joanie said. “This’s Beatrice.” The line was quiet and she knew he was working on that: was he being played with? Meanwhile she enjoyed the reactions from the kitchen.

He introduced himself. He asked for Todd. Joanie told him to hold on and she passed the phone across the table to her son.

“Hey, Dad,” Todd said. He had the phone in both hands. “Yeah, she’s crazy.”

“You’re crazy,” Nina said to her. Joanie made a face.

She sat back down and took some provolone and bread on her plate, unable to go to the bathroom now without looking like she wanted to be out of the room.

Todd went over what he got. And the jacket, Joanie thought. “Oh, and Mom got me a jacket,” he said.

People kept their voices down. Clorinda sat beside Todd with a stiff silence, cutting her capacolla with a knife and fork. Elena murmured to Sandro. Nina looked at the receiver like her grandson was talking to Lee Harvey Oswald. Joanie could see how much it bothered her that the mess had already gotten this normalized. Everyone got away with everything except her family, and this was another example.

The mouse, she noticed, was on the windowsill.

Bruno saw it. He touched Sandro’s arm. It was crouching behind a cactus in a green plastic pot. Its back was bent. It apparently hoped it was hidden.

Todd was still talking to his dad. Sandro got up, nonchalant, to get a drink of water from the sink. He swung a hand at the mouse, a little swing, and it bolted across the counter, across the stove. Its paws made tinny scrabbling sounds on the stove top.

Sandro banged a hand after it and just missed. All four coils jumped. The mouse threw itself from the counter, little legs splaying in the air. It landed audibly in front of Joanie and reversed direction back past Bruno. He brought one big shoe down—boom—and all the noise stopped. The floor was still reverberating.

Joanie was afraid to look. Bruno looked at each of them and then down at his foot. He lifted his shoe, slowly, and on the linoleum there was a little curl of a tip of tail, like a gray fingernail.

“Dad, you should call back,” Todd said. But the party broke up before he did.

Everyone thanked Nina for having them, and Nina thanked everyone for coming. Joanie and Todd and Bruno helped with the cleanup.

At the screen door with her mother, Nancy said, “You sticking around, Bruno?” and Bruno said yeah, he was sticking around. Nancy left.

“Mrs. Mucherino does not like Mr. Mouse,” Bruno said when Nina came back to the sink.

“I’m not too fond of Mr. Minea, either,” Nina said, taking the dish towel from him.

“It’s all right, I failed,” Bruno said. “I had him right in my sights—budaboom—I didn’t finish it. I have to live with that.”

Sandro told him to give the mouse a rest.

When they were finished, they went out in the driveway and stood around Joanie’s Buick. It was warm and the crickets were loud. Todd loaded his presents in the back. The phone started ringing, but Todd didn’t hear it and no one else brought it up.

“How’s the car running?” Bruno asked. It was a ritual question, a “do I look out for you or do I look out for you?” question. He’d sold it to them. It was a dark-blue Century wagon. It looked like a hearse. It had an expanse of hood she never really got used to. He gave it to them cheap when it was three years old and had twenty thousand miles on it. Now it had a hundred and the body was dinged up, but it ran, no problem. When her father talked about it, he said, “That automobile doesn’t owe you a penny.” He pronounced it automobile.

Gary had taken the Mazda with him, so the Buick was it as far as transportation went.

Joanie told him the car ran great.

“That automobile doesn’t owe her a penny,” Sandro said.

“That car was some deal,” Bruno said. He was looking around and down the street, like he was expecting company.

“I know it,” Joanie said.

“So, you gonna go home, or what?” Bruno said. “You tired?” She could see faint hopes fading. “You’re probably tired.”

“Todd’s pretty worn out,” she said.

“Thanks a lot for the helmet,” Todd said. He’d said good-bye to Nina and Sandro and was already in the car.

Nina came and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry about the way things turned out,” she said bitterly.

Joanie told her not to worry and said good-bye. That seemed to make things worse. Sandro followed his wife into the house with a look back at Joanie that said, Thanks a lot.

They heard banging around, the raspy sound of foil torn from the roll. The crickets started up. Todd was slumped against the headrest and looked already asleep.

They stood next to the car for a minute, awkward.

“What was the deal with that call?” Joanie said.

Bruno shrugged.

“Looked like it upset you,” she said.

He snorted.

She thought, I don’t need this. She hoped something would happen.

He took her cheek with his fingertips and turned her head and kissed her. She felt a rush of caffeine. She felt her lips after his were gone.

“Bruno, don’t start,” she said.

He was looking at her. “Hey, when I start, you’ll know it,” he said. He looked in on Todd, who hadn’t moved. He cupped his hand around the back of her neck. He left.

She got in the car and started it. She turned on the headlights. The objects down the driveway were flooded with illumination. They promised her something. In the rearview mirror, Bruno’s taillights winked red at the end of the street and disappeared. She left the radio alone. She had, while she sat there, what she thought of as a little religious spasm, like she’d been confronted by objects ready to help her take part in the transformation of her world.

Todd revived on the way home. Joanie was speeding. She was charged up. She didn’t know why. He shifted around on his seat and retied his sneakers.

She was heading up 110 to the Merritt Parkway. One-ten ran along the river, with a state park on the other side. It felt like the country. The road was twisty and had no streetlights and she liked it; it never had cops on it this time of night, and she knew it well enough to go fast. Her high beams were on. Even the Buick was leaning on the curves. Presents slid across the backseat.

When she drove, she set speed contests for herself: Could she make this part of the trip in under ten minutes? Could she make all three of these lights? It was a way of getting from place to place. Her driving had gotten better since Gary left. Todd had taken to riding with his feet up on the dash, bracing himself.

They jounced along, swooping across curves and lanes. They flashed past something small and dead, with a little foot in the air, near a storm drain. Possum? Raccoon? She caught only a glimpse of it. Todd sighed. She considered various questions — Did you have a good time? Like your presents? What’d your father say? — but didn’t ask any of them.

“I wonder if Audrey came back,” he said.

“I’m sure she did,” Joanie said.

“This’s the longest she stayed away,” he said.

She didn’t have anything to say to that, so she kept quiet.

He sat up straight and turned to the backseat and rooted around in his presents. “Looking for your jacket?” she asked ironically.

He pulled out Nancy’s book. He was peering at it in the dark.

She turned on the overhead light. She steadied the wheel. “Read me something,” she said.

“Play the radio,” Todd said.

“C’mon. Read me something,” she said.

“Ma.”

“What is it, just a collection of stories?”

“It’s all different tales.”

“What’re they called? Give me some titles,” she said. They went over a bump and the car almost bottomed out. She overcorrected for a curve. Todd gave her a look.

He flipped around and found the contents page. “‘The Man Wreathed in Seaweed,’” he read. “‘The Man Who Came Out Only at Night.’ ‘Body-without-Soul.’ ‘The Little Girl Sold with the Pears.’”

“Read me that one,” she said.

“Ma,” he said.

“Just a little.”

He sighed. He rubbed his nose industriously and scratched so she could hear it. He sighed again. “‘Once a man had a pear tree that used to bear four baskets of pears a year. One year, though, it only bore three baskets and a half, while he was supposed to carry four to the king. Seeing no other way out, he put his youngest daughter into the fourth basket and covered her up with pears and leaves.’”

They passed a pull-off with some parked cars. Teenagers, Joanie thought.

“Yeah?” she said. Her eyes were on the yellow lines ribboning out and dipping and reappearing in the distance. “Go on.”

“We shouldn’t drive with the light on like this,” Todd said.

Joanie made a face at the road ahead and snapped off the overhead light. They were quiet for a few miles.

As usual, what she wanted to say would make her sound like someone she didn’t want to sound like. So she kept her mouth shut. This was the way she usually felt when he was acting up: reasonable and trampled.

She turned on the radio and cranked it. “Everybody awake, pal, let’s go,” she said. She felt reckless, the irresponsible mother.

It was a “classic rock” station. They were halfway through The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Roger Daltrey screamed.

It charged her up further. She’d been a big Who fan.

“Aw, jeez,” Todd said, sinking in his seat.

Lately, up-tempo rock acted on her accelerator, she noticed. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” segued into The Yardbirds’ “Train Kept a-Rollin’,” another all-time favorite. She touched the dial out of reflex, in appreciation, but didn’t take the volume any higher. The rhythm line galloped her into the song.

She could see the bridge up ahead and the entrance to the parkway, black water, power lines, little yellow lights doubled off docks on the Milford side.

A man, a face showing teeth, was there in front of her and took her breath. Wide eyes, a black jacket. She felt an electric spasm of shock. Todd screamed.

The body seemed to hurl itself out, lunged at her and thudded. The bumper turned him, and he cart-wheeled and hit the roof of the car. She felt the sound in her heart. She heard him carried down the length of the roof, like someone running in heavy boots, and then he was off. Their car careened right and then left and skidded into bushes that splintered and snapped along one side, like gunfire. Todd was bounced into her and she was slung across Todd. The hood flew up. They stopped.

She was aware that the noise of their shrieks and the braking had died away. The Yardbirds were louder, and into the next chorus. She turned the radio off. There was a whimpering, like someone else was in the car. She turned the engine off, but it continued, shaking and then ticking.

“Ma, what’d we do?” Todd whispered. She could see his eyes in the darkness. She checked to see if he was all right. She checked to see if she was. They both shook. The car’s ticking wound down.

She tried to get the courage to open her door. She looked back. The body was off the side of the road. One leg was crossed over the other, like someone had flopped down for a nap near the white line.

She had to get out. Someone else could come along. The guy could still be alive. She had to help. She had the feeling her life was a movie that just tore — a whole set of concerns, a world, cut away and flapping. She was looking at the whiteness of the screen.

She had to get up. She had to function. She held the wheel and could feel herself trying to shudder the fear out. It worked a little. She opened the door. Her movements occurred without her full cooperation.

She crossed the pavement to the body. “Stay there,” she called hoarsely back to the car. Todd hadn’t moved.

They’d skidded a hundred feet past it. She could see the long helixes of skid marks. She got closer and stopped ten feet or so away. This was cowardice, she knew. She willed him up. If she gave him another second, he’d stir, shake his head like someone surfacing from a dive in the pool. He’d turn to her with a look that would let her know he appreciated what a tight squeak that’d been.

There was a finger-sized area of blood, discreet, near his head.

This broke her paralysis. She crossed to him and crouched.

He was facedown. A hand and at least a leg were broken; she could see that much already. She didn’t want to turn him over. She placed a palm on his back. This seemed to her the best moment for the miracle.

“Is he all right?” Todd called from the car in a small, terrified voice.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. She moved her hand from the back and put it along the side of the neck, below an ear. She didn’t know how to tell if someone was alive. She didn’t feel anything. She couldn’t hear anything. He didn’t look that hurt, but there was the blood from his head. It was very dark. She couldn’t see where the blood was coming from.

She leaned back in her crouch, her forehead cooling in panic. She shouldn’t move him, but she shouldn’t leave him here. The car: she’d have to bring the car around, block the road, put her emergency blinkers on.

She looked closer at his head and neck. It welled up inside her like a confirmation of her worst sense of herself: he was dead. There was more blood, under his chest. She could see the edge of the jacket soaking it up like a spill.

Something cracked in the forest off the side of the road. She got up and walked fast, the little girl turning her back to the haunted house, walked back to the car. Todd was crouched inside, his head low and his knees up. One of the presents, the board game, had flown onto his lap. He clawed it away from him with some alarm.

She moved along the front of the car. The hood was sprung, but otherwise looked no worse than it usually did. She shut it and it stayed down. The bumper had a gentle dent under the right headlight. It did not stand out. The body was pushed in a little, too. She imagined people in the woods. She got in the car. She started it. She was in a new world.

She edged the gas, and they pulled free of the bushes with a bump and rocked onto the road. Leaves were caught under the windshield wipers. She turned right. She was thinking, I can go for help instead of waiting here. She was thinking the first gas station or cop car. Todd didn’t say anything.

Something scraped and dragged beneath the car and then fell away. In slow motion, she pulled onto the ramp for the Merritt Parkway. She thumped up onto the shoulder and straightened the car out.

Todd shifted around in his seat. He peered over the side of his door. “Where’re we going?” he asked.

Where were they going? “We’re gonna call,” she said. She didn’t know where.

They were going too slow. They were crossing the bridge. She could hear the whine of the bridge metal beneath them. A car rushed by her, swerved, and honked. She turned on her lights.

“That was a phone booth down there,” Todd said, meaning farther along 110. “There’s no phone booths up here.”

“We could call from home,” she said, and knew it was wrong when she said it. She looked over at Todd. He was looking at her piercingly.

Was she crazy? This was possible. She saw exit signs ahead. She slowed down and took the exit.

“Now where’re we going?” Todd said. “What’re you doing?” He sounded a little hysterical.

At the stop sign, she looked both ways. She turned left. She turtled forward under the highway, and stopped, and looked both ways again. The road, whatever it was, was dark and quiet. She turned left again.

“I’m going back,” she said.

He didn’t say anything.

Heading back toward the body, she thought of her life changed: she saw newspapers, flashbulbs, and jury trials, all images from movies. The triviality and theatricality of her imagination were appalling. You killed someone, she thought. But even that was theatrical and lacked weight, as if she were a scold.

The tires drummed back onto the bridge. A police car appeared from behind them and surged by, and its siren bolted on as it passed. As she came over the crest of the arc she saw the lights, yellow and blue, flashing around the scene of the accident. There were red taillights glowing, too: two or three cars. Her heart seized up. The police car that had passed her slowed as much as it could and careened off onto 110. She sailed frozenly by the exit.

“What’re we doin’?” Todd cried. “What’re you doin’?”

“Shut up,” she said, and he gave off a wail, and put his head in his hands, and left it at that.

God forgive me, God forgive me, she said to herself.

That meant she had to turn around again and go back. The car handled like a truck. The wheel lurched and jerked at her hands. Once again: under the highway, up the entrance ramp. It was nightmarish. She was becoming something comic. They could see the scene yet again. Various people were illuminated in red, posed kneeling and crouching around the central figure of the body. It reminded her of a Christmas crèche, and she was amazed at her blasphemy and detachment. She couldn’t conceive of herself as part of that group now: driving up, approaching the cops standing around their cars, and saying, I did this.

They were back on the bridge. Todd looked out the window at the river, his head against the headrest in despair.

You can call from home, she thought. She had to go back, she understood. But leaving had made it impossible to return: she was twice as criminal. Three times as criminal.

“I’m trying to think,” she said. Todd didn’t answer.

The car was making ominous, rhythmic scraping noises, and she thought, not even sure what she meant, Not this, too.

She passed the exit where she’d turned around the first time. She had the feeling she was coming to moral turning points, one after the other, and failing each one. She kept putting a hand to her cheek, as if to cool it.

When she slowed for their exit, Todd said, “It’s hit-and-run. It’s hit-and-run if you leave him and don’t say anything.”

Joanie took an audibly deep breath and let it out, as if she were blowing smoke. She recognized it as what she did to signal Todd during debates that things were a lot more complicated in the adult world than he realized; that sometimes she wished he only knew how patient she could be. She let the fraudulence of her response stand. Todd didn’t seem much affected by it, anyway.

“If you leave him—” Todd said.

“I know,” she said, trying to control her voice. She swung into a turn so that he slid into the door on his side. “I know all of this,” she said.

From that point to the turn into their street, she ran through variations on Why me? and Why does this have to happen now?

The garage door was open, though the light was out. She sailed right up the driveway and braked only at the last minute. Lucky he had put his bike away this time, she thought grimly. The front bumper clanked the junk against the wall. She turned the engine off and hung forward on the wheel.

Nested bicycle fenders and a hubcab Gary’d hung on a nail were still making noise. The streetlight penetrated only as far as the back bumper, so she could just about see her hands.

“You were going too fast,” Todd said.

“Was it my fault?” Joanie said. “Did he just come out of nowhere at us, or not?”

“You were going too fast,” Todd said.

“I was not going too fast,” Joanie said. “I was not going that fast.”

Todd shifted around on the seat next to her. It was possible he’d refuse to get out of the car. Decide to go next door and call the police.

“How could I have seen him in time?” she said. “What could anybody have done?”

Her ears were ringing, like she’d been shouting. She sat back against the seat and closed her eyes. She’d been going too fast.

The engine was ticking as it cooled, the way it did after the accident. Todd noticed it, too, and got out of the car and slammed the door. When she got to the front door, he was standing there with his head down, like a dog waiting to be let in.

“I’m going to call,” she said as she wrestled with the key. She swung the door inward, and he slipped by her and through the front hall.

“How ’bout some lights?” she said. He went directly to the back door.

She hit the lights and put her bag down and stood near the phone. Her chest felt the way she did at the beach when she’d breathed in too much water, too much mist.

“Audrey’s back,” Todd said. He opened the door, and the dog pitter-pattered in across the tile.

He closed it behind her and relocked it and crossed to the kitchen table. He sat in one of the chairs. Audrey checked her dish and then walked over to him and put her head beside his knee. He played with her ears. He was waiting for Joanie to call.

She had her hand on the phone. It was a wall phone, white. It reminded her of hours ago at her mother’s. She let it go and pulled open the junk drawer beneath it. She pulled out the phone book and searched the municipal section at the front. Pages slapped back and forth.

“You could just dial nine-one-one,” Todd said.

She ignored him.

She found the precinct number and dialed. Todd was looking at the dog. She had her hand on the phone, for support. It was ringing at the other end. Her index finger swung over into the cradle and pressed the switch hook. She took her hand away before he could see. Look what you’re doing, she thought, as horrified as she’d been at any other point that night. She pressed the earpiece tighter to her head. He’d hear the dial tone, she thought.

“Hello,” she said. “I’d like to report — Yes,” she said. “Yes.” She stopped. The dial tone was deafening. She thought of the story she’d read in junior high, the murdered man’s heart you could hear under the floor.

She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “They got me on hold,” she said.

Todd was still contemplating Audrey, testing the floppiness of her ears.

Minutes went by. Joanie didn’t know what to do. Her mashed ear was sore. She wanted Todd to leave, to take some pressure off the second part of her performance.

“Get ready for bed,” she said. “I’ll be right up.”

He looked up at her with surprise, and she had the terrified premonition she’d blown it. “They’re gonna want to interview us and stuff,” he said. “I can’t go to bed.”

“They’re gonna want to interview me,” she said. “They’re not gonna want to interview you. Why would they want to interview you?”

“I’m going with you,” he said stubbornly. “They’d want to interview me.”

She felt a rush of shame, his loyalty juxtaposed to her weakness, her ongoing lying.

She was still standing there with the phone.

“Try nine-one-one,” he said.

She hung up.

“I’ll call them tomorrow,” she said, but his face when she said that made her turn back to the phone, and, exasperated, as if he’d been relentlessly asking they stop for ice cream, she dialed 911. What she’d do now she didn’t know. Try the hang-up thing again?

When the busy signal came on, she angrily held the receiver out for Todd to hear.

When she hung up again, he started to cry. She crossed the kitchen and knelt beside him and hugged him. She was crying, too. The dog walked around them in circles.

She checked him again to make sure he was okay. She took him upstairs. He got undressed and into bed. She went into the bathroom and leaned on the sink, her arms spread apart and holding her weight. She used the Pond’s to take off what little eye makeup she had on and washed her face.

It was hot but breezy. Her bedroom windows were open. She maneuvered around her room in the dark and got on the bed, still in her clothes, and lay on her back. Downstairs, the dog was making the rounds, her license tag clinking on the metal water dish. Todd was crying quietly in his room.

She slapped at herself, spread her fingers over her face and pulled at it. She had to talk to people, her father maybe. She thought of Bruno, what he would say.

What frightened her most was her inability to picture the terrible things ahead. It seemed like the best evidence of how inadequate she was.

She imagined a generalized scandal, everyone’s understanding of her changed. Maybe Todd taken away from her.

You killed somebody, she thought. Someone’s dead because of you, and this is what you think about, this is what you’re worried about.

He could’ve had a family, she thought.

What was he doing in the road? What was he doing there in the road?

At some point she heard Todd get up, the bed springs, the floorboards. He was going downstairs.

She got up, too, still dressed. It was late. She was chilly and walked with her arms folded.

She found him in the kitchen. He was eating M&M’s in the dark. He’d put them in a little bowl. The bowl caused her a pang: he always got neat when he was scared.

She was going to pull a chair over next to his but suddenly was too tired even for that. She sat on the floor beside him, her head on his thigh. He didn’t say anything.

She half dozed. She had the impression he was alert, awake, the whole time. The kitchen floor, the walls, were getting lighter. Through the doorway to the living room, she could make out shapes of chairs and a small table. Did she own these things? She remembered Todd that morning at breakfast, smiling speechlessly. She remembered nodding to herself as she drove, as if consenting to her life.

“We’re not going to tell anyone, are we, Mom?” he said above her. His voice was so pitiful and despairing that it hurt too much to answer him. The M&M’s rolled and clicked together in the bowl like abacus beads. He put his hand on her head, tentatively. He came down to the floor with her and brought the bowl.

Outside, some garbage cans clanked. On the floor, his legs stuck straight out and his shoes were run over at the heels.

He finally fell asleep. His mouth was open against her shoulder. She listened to morning birds with cries like the workings of scissors. She sat there with her son and waited for the next thing.