During all of this, the dead boy’s mother sat on the sofa in her best meet-the-public silk dress, her knees together, her hands cupping her fat upper arms as if she were cold. She’d said nothing since the last of the evening’s guests—old Mrs. Gibson from next door, who had predictably held on until the bitter end—finally took her leave.
She can go now, she’s got it all stored up, Arlene Peterson had said to her husband as she locked the front door and then leaned her bulk against it.
Arlene Kelly had been a slender vision in white lace when Father Brixton’s predecessor married them. She had still been slender and beautiful after giving birth to Ollie, but that had been seventeen years ago. She had begun to put on weight after giving birth to Frank, and now she was on the verge of obesity… although she was still beautiful to Fred, who hadn’t the heart to take Dr. Connolly’s advice, at his last physicaclass="underline" You’re good to go for another fifty years, Fred, as long as you don’t fall off a building or step in front of a truck, but your wife has type two diabetes, and needs to lose fifty pounds if she’s going to stay healthy. You need to help her. After all, you’ve both got a lot to live for.
Only with Frankie not just dead but murdered, most of the things they had to live for seemed stupid and insignificant. Only Ollie retained his former precious importance in Fred’s mind, and even in his grief, he knew that he and Arlene had to be careful about how they treated him in the weeks and months ahead. Ollie was also grieving. Ollie could shoulder his share (more than that, really) of clearing away the remains of this last act in the tribal death-rites of Franklin Victor Peterson, but tomorrow they would have to let him start going back to being a boy. It would take time, but he would get there eventually.
The next time I see Ollie’s socks under the coffee table, I will rejoice, Fred promised himself. And I will break this horrible, unnatural silence as soon as I can think of something to say.
But he could think of nothing, and as Ollie sleepwalked past him into the den, pulling their vacuum cleaner by its hose, Fred thought—with no idea of how wrong he was—that at least things could not get worse.
He went to the doorway of the den, and watched as Ollie began vacuuming the gray pile with that same eerie, unguessed-at efficiency, taking long, even strokes, first pushing the nap one way and then pulling it the other. The crumby remains of Nabs, Oreos, and Ritz crackers disappeared as if they had never been there, and Fred finally found something to say. “I’ll do the living room.”
“I don’t mind,” Ollie said. His eyes were red and swollen. Given the age difference between the two brothers—seven years—they had been amazingly close. Or maybe it wasn’t so amazing, maybe that was just enough space to keep sibling rivalry to a bare minimum. To make Ollie something like Frank’s second father.
“I know,” Fred said, “but share and share alike.”
“Okay. Just don’t say, ‘It’s what Frankie would have wanted.’ I’d have to strangle you with the vacuum hose.”
Fred smiled at that. Probably not his first smile since the policeman had come to the door last Tuesday, but maybe the first real one. “It’s a deal.”
Ollie finished the carpet and trundled the vacuum to his father. When Fred pulled it into the living room and started in on the carpet, Arlene got to her feet and trudged toward the kitchen without looking back. Fred and Ollie glanced at each other. Ollie shrugged. Fred shrugged back and began vacuuming again. People had reached out to them in their grief, and Fred supposed that was nice, but golly-willikers, what a mess they had left behind. He consoled himself with the thought that it would have been much worse if it had been an Irish wake, but Fred had quit the booze after Ollie was born, and the Petersons kept a dry house.
From the kitchen came a most unexpected sound: laughter.
Fred and Ollie stared at each other again. Ollie hurried for the kitchen, where his mother’s laughter, which had seemed natural and easy to begin with, was now rising to a hysterical pitch. Fred stepped on the vacuum cleaner’s power button, killing it, and followed.
Arlene Peterson was standing with her back to the sink, holding her considerable belly and nearly screaming with laughter. Her face had gone bright red, as if she were running a high fever. Tears coursed down her cheeks.
“Ma?” Ollie asked. “What the hell?”
Although the dishes had been cleared from the living room and den, there was still a ton of work to be done here. There were two counters on either side of the sink, and a table in the kitchen nook, where the Peterson family had taken most of their evening meals. All these surfaces were loaded with partially eaten casseroles, Tupperware containers, and leftovers wrapped in aluminum foil. Resting on top of the stove was the carcass of a partially eaten chicken and a gravy boat full of congealed brown sludge.
“We’ve got enough leftovers for a month!” Arlene managed. She doubled over, guffawing, then straightened up. Her cheeks had turned purple. Her red hair, which she had bequeathed to both the son standing before her and the one now underground, had come loose from the clips with which she had temporarily tamed it, and now stood out around her congested face in a frizzy corona. “Bad news, Frankie’s dead! Good news, I won’t have to go shopping for a long… long… time!”
She began to howl. It was a sound that belonged in an insane asylum, not in their kitchen. Fred told his legs to move, to go to her and embrace her, but at first they wouldn’t obey. It was Ollie who moved, but before he could get to her, Arlene picked up the chicken and threw it. Ollie ducked. The chicken flew end over end, shedding stuffing, and hit the wall with a horrible crunch-splat. It left a circle of grease on the wallpaper below the clock.
“Mom, stop. Stop it.”
Ollie tried to take her by the shoulders and pull her into a hug, but Arlene slipped under his hands and darted toward one of the counters, still laughing and howling. She grabbed a serving dish of lasagna in both hands—it had been brought by one of Father Brixton’s sycophants—and dumped it on her head. Cold pasta fell into her hair and onto her shoulders. She heaved the dish into the living room.
“Frankie is dead and we’ve got a fucking Italian buffet!”
Fred got moving then, but Arlene slid away from him, too. She was laughing like an overexcited girl playing a spirited game of tag. She grabbed a Tupperware container full of Marshmallow Delite. She started to raise it, then dropped it between her feet. The laughter stopped. One hand cupped her large left breast. The other lay flat on her chest above it. She looked at her husband with wide eyes that were still swimming with tears.
Those eyes, Fred thought. Those are what I fell in love with.
“Mom? Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, and then: “I think my heart.” She bent to look at the chicken and the marshmallow dessert. Pasta fell from her hair. “Look what I did.”
She gave a long, whooping, rattling gasp. Fred grabbed her, but she was too heavy, and slithered through his arms. Before she went down on her side, Fred saw that the color was already fading from her cheeks.
Ollie screamed and dropped to his knees beside her. “Mom! Mom! Mom!” He looked up at his father. “I don’t think she’s breathing!”