He asked, “So why didn’t Ivan tell me this morning? Where is the vinegaroon?”
“Ivan didn’t tell you this morning because he was too upset, and I didn’t know what happened.” I went on. “He put the open pill bottle there for Josef, not for her.” I could not say her name. “We don’t know where the vinegaroon is now, but we’ve got to find it before it gets someone else. And so nobody will know we stole it. But there’re too many people at Ivan’s house.” I wasn’t sure Ivan was even listening; he was looking off in the distance as if he were a million miles away.
Max’s jaw fell open. After this had sunk in, he said, “You…you mean…” He was too stunned to go on.
“That’s the story,” I said.
Max’s face grew pale. I resumed filling in the hole, and when I was done, Max came over and picked up hunks of dug-up grass and neatly placed them on top. He tamped it all down with his Chucks. Then he said, “I just thought of something. When I was coming over, I saw Rudo in Ivan’s yard. He was barking and scrabbling at the ground in front of the porch. Maybe it was the vinegaroon?”
This got Ivan’s attention. “Oh, no! He might try to eat it!”
Brandishing the shovel, we sped around front, where I saw that the cars at the Goncharoffs’ were gone. But below the porch, there was Rudo, doing exactly what Max described, and, more frightening, the twins were with him, crazed putti dancing and giggling, encouraging his frenzy. Max shouted, “Ivan! Get the twins away! I’ll get Rudo!” Ivan ran to the twins and wrestled them away. Max yelled, “Rudo, NO!” He grabbed Rudo by his collar and dragged him off, holding him at a distance. Ivan screeched at the twins in Spanish, and they ran into the house. Then he and I tentatively approached the spot where Rudo had been digging. There were some loose chunks of concrete walk, but nothing else. “Please don’t let Rudo have eaten him,” Ivan prayed. Using the tip of the shovel, I very slowly lifted a piece of concrete. Nothing. I tried a bigger chunk, levered it up, and jumped back. “Gah! There he is!” The vinegaroon waved his claws at us and poised his whiptail. Before he could spray me, I had the big piece of concrete in my hands and hurled it down on top of him. It landed with a thud on the damp dirt. For a moment we stood silently, relieved about our rescue and the end of the vinegaroon. Then I slowly lifted the chunk again. He was completely crushed, a mass of brittle purple carapace and gluey insides, smelling of vinegar. I scooped him up with the shovel, saying, “We can’t bury him because Wiesie or the dogs might dig him up. I say we burn him.” Ivan took Rudo from Max, and, quietly opening the screen door, pushed him inside. We carried the vinegaroon off to my house.
Down at the stone fireplace at the end of my yard, we made a small pyre with dry leaves and sticks. I shoveled the vinegaroon, our hard-won trophy, onto the pyre and Max lit it. It burned slowly and smokily. Max said, “Too bad you didn’t get a crack at Slutcheon, old buddy.”
Ivan addressed the fire pitifully. “It wasn’t your fault, it was mine. You were just doing your job.”
“Ivan! Ivan!” Beatriz called, running down to us in her uniform. She ran straight to Ivan, throwing herself at him so forcefully that they fell down together. “Ivan! I’m so sorry! I thought about you all day!” Lying on top of him, she began crying. They struggled up, and Beatriz said, “Don’t worry, we’re going to take care of you!” Ivan, embarrassed, gave her a thin smile.
She wiped her eyes and asked, “What are you burning?”
“It’s the vinegaroon,” I said.
Beatriz looked astonished. “Why?”
“We need to tell her everything,” Max said solemnly.
“Well, you can,” I said. “Ivan and I don’t want to hear it again.” Max took Beatriz by the hand, leading her away. They stood together as Max explained our awful secret. Beatriz covered her face, sobbing. Max awkwardly put his arms around her, letting her cry. I’d never seen so much crying in all my eight years.
I said to Ivan, “Gimme your knife.” I took it and swiftly drew the little blade across my wrist. Then Ivan did the same. After a second, drops of blood appeared on our cuts. “You guys come here!” I called to Beatriz and Max. Beatriz was startled when she saw the blood, but I said, “We have to swear on our secret.” Max made his cut, then Beatriz, and we rubbed our wrists on one another’s, our blood mixing inextricably and for all time. It was a rite the boys and I had performed before, only with tiny pricks from fingertips, and not about so enormous a secret. We were trapped in a sticky spiderweb of lies, but it felt better knowing that the four of us were in the web together.
From the house, I brought Band-Aids. Beatriz had to go home. The boys and I went inside and watched more TV—The Mickey Mouse Club. We thought we were too old for it, but who cared. Then Mrs. Friedmann came to collect Max, carrying a warm loaf of challah. She gave Ivan a bosomy hug and said, “Dear Ivan, you don’t belieff zis now, but vun day life vill be goodt again.”
Dimma came from the kitchen. “Ivan, we’ve arranged with your father for you to stay with us the rest of this week. Maria will bring over the things you need, and you two will go back to school in the morning, all right? That might be best until things settle down.”
Ivan said simply, “Thanks.”
“Ivan, sweetheart, things will get better, I promise.”
“Okay,” Ivan said. I knew he didn’t believe any of it.
14
After school a couple days later, Ivan and Max and I went to Blessed Sacrament for a service for Elena. A kind young nun who had done volunteer work with Elena on refugee problems had arranged the service. Josef had had Elena cremated, so there was no casket, just flowers. The Friedmanns, the Montebiancos, and Mr. and Mrs. Shreve were there, although their boys were “under house arrayest,” as Mrs. Shreve put it, because of the cherry-bomb debacle at the Fiesta. Beatriz’s parents let her sit with me and Max and Ivan, and Beatriz kissed Ivan’s cheek. Maria sat in the front row with Josef, weeping quietly. Tim was there, looking very handsome in a blazer and tie. He waved to us miserably. I was surprised not to see Gellert and his family.
I don’t remember much of what took place: some mumbo-jumbo and church songs, a man from the refugee organization said a few words. Before long we were back at my house, where Dimma had offered to host a small wake. The adults drank coffee and a little sherry, talking quietly and nibbling what Dimma had put out—the neighbors had all brought things. None of this was very real to me, and it didn’t seem to have much to do with the Elena we knew. Why weren’t we all drinking Cuba libres, smoking Vogues, laughing, wearing silky kimonos, listening to “The Twelfth of Never”? That would have been a more fitting goodbye for her, as far as I was concerned.
Beatriz and the boys and I went out to our front steps and sat quietly, surrounded by the mournful drone of the cicadas. I thought about us being right where we were, performing at the Fiesta; it had been only days but seemed like weeks.
I noticed Ivan was twiddling a golden ring with three diamonds on his middle finger. “What’s that?” I asked.
“It belonged to her grandmother,” he said. “She gave it to me at the Fiesta. He doesn’t know I have it. I’m gonna keep it forever.”
Beatriz leaned in to see. “It’s so beautiful! Ivan, she’s with the angels, and she’s okay.”
Max retorted, his mouth full of a muffin he’d eaten in one bite, “Shalami, shalami, baloney! Shee’sh gone and ish jusht dusht an’ ashes now.”