At one end of the block a funeral was being held and at the other end a wedding would begin in an hour. It was ironic: at our house people were arriving dressed like ice cream cones, pastels and sorbets (the tuxedo I’d rented was called Chocolate), bearing gifts wrapped in silver and lavender, while down the street you never saw so much navy and black. Beginnings and endings. This corner and that.
My sister Yvonne was marrying Chris the Sicilian. Our family had its doubts. Only a month ago Chris had sold one of my brothers a Cadillac for a song. Mint condition, 1964, black interior of leather. Well, not quite mint; there were the holes along the side—bullet holes or repair holes, depending on who told the story. And the fact that the test drive took place at three in the morning, around the graveyard at St. Augustino’s. But my sister had been married before; everyone fell back on that for reassurance: this time she knew what she was doing. Her first husband, Mark, modeled and waited tables, and would have been perfect except that he was better looking than Yvonne. I think he weighed less, too, by the time they divorced, though they were still friendly. He was here today, helping my mother with the buffet; she didn’t know what to do with some of the unattractive dishes Yvonne’s roommates had contributed to the party. Mark told her he had a feeling for aesthetics. He would find some way to “elegantize” the eggplant and squash.
My beat was car parking, which I got by saying I wanted to serve drinks. My brother Leon, who’d begged to park cars, now circulated, asking guests to name their poison. We’d worked this out last night. Every time we met we slugged down a Kamikaze each. Our Uncle Cy was mixing everything in plastic champagne glasses, and the Kamikaze, served in a glass with such circumference, carried a powerful nose.
A good many of the guests were neighbors. Our family, whom my father called “Catholic only in theory and size,” had lived here twenty-six years. We knew everybody, including the Gypsies on the corner, the ones having the funeral. There’d been a large debate about inviting them. They hadn’t lived in the neighborhood long enough to be automatic guests. Plus, they insisted on painting their house Pepto-Bismol pink every spring. It’s embarrassing to have to admit that my family would discriminate on such a basis, but it’s dishonest to say that they didn’t. It wasn’t just the paint (every spring, for God’s sake). A year, even in Chicago, couldn’t do enough damage to merit a painting that often. It was the furniture on the lawn, or what used to be the lawn.
One of the first things the Gypsies did when they moved in was pave their front yard in big concrete squares. Then they set up a sofa and a bunch of chairs and a table. They spent a great deal of time out there, not really talking, not socializing exactly, just sitting and watching the street. The men stood on the corner, also not talking, most of the day. I’d see them when I went to school; they’d be there when I got back. They broke for dinner around six, then reassembled, toothpicks in their mouths, about seven. The Gypsies had become a neighborhood landmark now, something I pointed out to friends I brought home for the first time. I’d show them the house with the swastikas in the rock work, explaining that before Hitler they meant good luck, then the Gypsies’ pink house, the clan out front relaxing on their furniture as if a TV game show was on in front of them, pleasantly numbed and distracted.
But today I saw no one on the furniture; in fact, the couch had disappeared altogether. The men, however, still stood on the corner, all in their suits and bow ties. One of them was tuning a violin, the nee-no, nee-no of catgut on catgut carrying down the block. The oldest man, I guess the grandfather, and I had a waving relationship so I waved today, smiling slightly at both of us in our monkey suits. He just nodded in my direction, his head heavy, it seemed.
The car I was waiting for was my Cousin Gerita’s. She drove an orange Spitfire that I was dying to park. We’d already used up the curbs on both sides of the street, so I would have to take it to St. Augustino’s and park in their lot. Two blocks; out of sight of the house; me and the Spitfire. I’d take Leon if he was convenient. I was only sorry we had to have the wedding at our house. If this had been Yvonne’s first wedding, we’d be at St. Augustino’s and nobody’d notice if I was there or not. Me and the Spitfire and an hour to kill.
But it was my father’s business partner, Mr. Payton, who showed up next. His tie, though he was old and infirm, was thin and leather and silver. His wife wore a silk turquoise pantsuit that washed around her like so many scarves in a breeze. “Daniel,” Mr. Payton coughed out to me, as if proving he could so remember names, bowing his head once while he pressed the warm key to his Lincoln in my hand. He’d separated it from his fat ring of other keys, as if I’d race over and rob his house, given the chance. He didn’t even break stride. He was doing crooked things with money from his and my father’s hotel business, but nobody’d been able to prove anything. The whole affair gave my father ulcers. As I navigated the Paytons’ tub of a car to the church, I remembered it was at one of Mr. Payton’s hotel functions that Yvonne had met Chris-the-probable-Mafioso.
When I got back, there were three other cars double-parked outside our house, the third one Gerita’s. She’d washed it for the occasion. Its eyeball headlights shone. Gerita was leaning on the car she’d parked in front of, thin legs crossed at the ankles. Her dress was a silly bright yellow, but she looked great anyway.
“Hey, Cruiser. Nice tie.” She reached up as if to straighten it and I looked down. She flipped me on the nose. “Gotcha.”
“Leon’s serving drinks,” I told her.
“And doing a damn fine job.” She nodded to the hood of the car she leaned on. Three Kamikazes waited. “Do me a favor and park my baby before you belt these down, huh Danny?”
“Who came in the other two cars?” I said.
Sighing, she waved a finger in the air. “A fart. His mother. Her sister. Another fart. Several brats. You think Yvonne will stay married this time?”
“Why not?”
“Good enough. Hope springs eternal. By the way, did I mention I like your tie?” She smiled and I made as if to look down again, nodding my head up in time for her to miss my nose. “I think you’re quicker drunk than not,” she said, heading with an exaggerated swagger for the house.
St. Augustino’s lot was filling with our party’s cars. Some people didn’t wait for me to park them, just drove over themselves. I watched the people I didn’t know unload, but they didn’t look like Mafia to me. They looked, if it was possible, duller even than my relatives. Whenever I got in a group like that, a group of sort of middle-aged people with little kids, all wearing basically the same thing, I started thinking, This group is expendable. I don’t even know where it came from. I would get it riding the El or standing around in a department store or in the waiting room at the doctor’s. A group like that could vanish from the face of the earth and nobody’d notice. That’s what I’d think. The problem, of course, is that there I was, trapped among the expendables.
I ran back to the house, dying to get into the Spitfire, but cars were starting to pile up. My heart dropped when I saw my mother standing at the curb looking up and down the block, I presumed for me.
“Let Leon help me,” I told her, but she scowled, as if I’d addressed her in German.
“What’s going on over there?” she said, aiming her glare down the block.
“Funeral.”
“Whose?”
I shrugged. “Where’s Leon?”
“How do you know it’s a funeral?”
“I saw the casket.”
“They got a casket there? In the house? What do they mean having a funeral at home?” She hardly paused before lighting into me. “What are these drinks doing on Cy’s car? Did you put these here, Daniel? Alcohol can ruin a car’s finish. You should know that. I see Princess Gerita made it.”
“Be nice.”
“You be nice—you don’t touch those drinks.” She stared at them evilly, tempted, I could tell, to dump them. This wedding would give her ulcers. She and my father would have a matched set. She loved Yvonne’s first husband. She’d adopted him, hoping for a reconciliation, a reprieve at the last minute. Yvonne hadn’t told her that Mark was gay, that he’d already found a new lover. My mother is a person you can’t imagine breaking this sort of news to. So Yvonne told her they didn’t spark. Period. With Chris, there was spark. There was lightning. That was probably what my mother objected to, all the electricity the two of them set off.
Yvonne’s roommates pulled up and I cringed along with my mother, though we’d both seen their car plenty of times. They’d hand-painted an old Falcon purple and gold. Over the hood was an enormous silver cross. Other identifiable shapes dotted a landscape of gold clouds and purple hills. A rainbow broke in half when the passenger door opened. Neither of my sister’s roommates had a driver’s license or insurance, and whenever they parked they always left the key in the ignition. They’d once told me they believed responsibility had to come from within.
“You put that car somewhere out of sight,” my mother hissed, turning for the house before Jennifer or Cleo stepped out.
Jennifer, tall and humorless, didn’t say a word to me as she passed. It was because I refused to call her Cassandra, which was her witch name. No joke—she thought she was a witch. But Cleo gave me a pat on the shoulder. “It’s very exciting, isn’t it? I love weddings.” She had flowers pinned all over her.
After I parked their car and the four others that had kept me from the Spitfire, I looked around to make sure neither Gerita nor my mother was in sight, and shot the Kamikazes down. I’d made Gerita promise me that if, God forbid, she died, she’d leave me her car. She’d told me that if she died, God willing, it would be in her car and she wouldn’t leave anything recognizable for the living.
As I was adjusting the seat and the radio and the window and the gearshift and finally the rearview, I saw the Gypsies. They were coming down the street, lined up like a parade, the coffin rolling along on a wagon. I turned in the seat, willing them to disappear. They were coming my way, to St. Augustino’s, of course, but that isn’t what I thought of immediately. My first impression was that they were descending on me like an army, slowly but inevitably. When I was a kid, that’s how Yvonne would chase me, not fast, but terribly slow, her feet falling like thuds of doom behind me.
I revved the Spitfire and took off with a squeal. I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t to show off. I just wanted to get away from the Gypsies. I didn’t want to ruin their procession; I didn’t want them to ruin my drive. But before I got to the end of the next block, there was Chris, sauntering with his groomsmen toward our house. Their silver tux jackets flapped in the wind and they passed a bottle among them. Chris was football-player big and so were his friends. Dressed alike, as they were, they looked like a team headed for victory. I honked and, after some confusion on Chris’s part about where the noise had come from—for an instant his face had taken on a hard, aggressive, fuck-you kind of look before he saw who it was—he waved me down.
I checked the rearview again. Sure enough, there, reaching the end of our block, were the Gypsies, a bigger but less authoritative team, making their way our way. This was the end of my Spitfire ride, cut short before I’d even lost sight of my house. To make things worse, curb space had opened not ten yards in front of me. I made the best of parallel parking—shifting the full pattern each time between reverse and first—and then climbed reluctantly out, remembering to leave the radio at full force for Gerita to ignite to.
“Dan-yell!” Chris hooted. “What’s the story with these yahoos?”
“Funeral,” I said. My encounters with Chris were always tinged with my fear that he would find something to dislike about me and then punch me in the nose for it. Not that he’d ever touched me. Not even that he wouldn’t recover quickly—the next time he saw me, he’d have completely forgotten what he’d disliked before. We’d start fresh. Clean slate. But then I’d be just as likely to show my flaw again, get punched once more.
“What?”
“A funeral. Someone has passed on.” The procession waited at the corner for the cross traffic to clear. They didn’t pile up, but instead stayed in parade formation. I heard violins.
“Passed on what?” his best man said. They all laughed, stomping around one another and wiping their mouths. My mother’s new ulcers had a hard day to look forward to. The bottle they drank from was cherry vodka. Cherry vodka! I almost laughed. He probably was Mafia; who else could be seen in public with such a dopey drink.
The Gypsies crossed the street, one man on either side of the procession holding a flat, no-nonsense hand up to stop traffic. Please God, I prayed, don’t let this become a scene. Though I fell back on it frequently, prayer had never done me any good. Today it failed, as always. Chris’s gang of tuxedoed hoodlums began whooping.
“Come on guys,” I said in the direction of the Gypsy grandfather. He was close enough that I could see his right eyelid twitter; he’d heard me. And, lucky me, Chris had not. I’d separated myself from him and his friends by staring, perplexed, at the houses on the other side of the street, as if trying to remember an address.
“Nice duds, dude,” one of Chris’s team said.
“Which one’s the corpse?”
“Don’t you guys know ‘Beer Belly Polka’?”
The Gypsies, with the exception of the grandfather’s eyelid, showed no sign of having heard them. They faced St. Augustino’s and plodded on as if they wore blinders. The coffin seemed small to me, the way the mummies at the Field Museum seemed small: it was hard to imagine a human fitting the confines. Obviously, someone in the group had made the coffin: its grain was rough and there were knotholes, like two big brown misaligned eyes, facing me. At the rear of the group were the musicians, two violins and a huge bass. The music was weepy and too slow; I imagined baying hounds and tearful women. Chris’s friends extended their left arms at their chins and sawed—air violins. Two little boys carried the bass, stooped over and scooting backwards like crabs, while a fat woman played, her arms circling the instrument. They were admirably coordinated.
“What a fucking blimp,” Chris said, as the woman passed. She was the end of the parade. Her buttocks rolled under her faded black dress like the haunches of a rhino. I sighed, relieved they’d gotten by without incident.
“I’m about to become a married man!” Chris yelled at their backs. “Let’s not have any more dying today, got it?”
Back at the party, Yvonne was explaining her philosophy to Gerita. “Every few years you have to change your life,” she said. “I think about who I was the last time I got married—it’s like a whole nother person. Remember? I was blond.” Yvonne now had wiglike black hair, dry and frazzled, cut in the shape of Cleopatra’s.
“But it’s not just hair,” Yvonne told Gerita. “One day I woke up and decided I wasn’t happy being who I was. So I changed.” She’d dropped out of college, begun steadily gaining weight, divorced Mark, moved in with the witch and the midwife. “You just have to set your mind and change,” she told Gerita, wide-eyed with wonder at the simplicity of it.
“I change my life every day,” Gerita said. “You think I would have worn something this subdued to a wedding yesterday?” She looked around at the pastels, rolling her eyes at me.
“Yvonne,” I said. “Your husband and his henchmen hath arrived.” Chris and the group had gotten sidetracked at the door, slapping backs with the rest of the men relatives, but I still felt responsible for delivering them into someone else’s jurisdiction.
“Oh,” Yvonne said, leaving us.
“If he’s Mafia,” Gerita said, “why didn’t his family throw the party? Now, that would have been interesting.”
Leon joined us, a silver tray of empty plastic glasses on his upturned palm. “If they don’t start this soon, Uncle Cy will embarrass us badly. You can bet on it. He’s looped.” Leon’s voice broke and he giggled. “More looped than even me. What’s the delay?”
“It’s the damned harpist,” my mother said, from behind Gerita. My mother was always sneaking up on people. She liked to pretend she was all-knowing. “Yvonne’s damned harpist is over forty-five minutes late.”
“Pardon her French,” I said to Gerita.
My mother smacked me on the arm. “Go get your sister in here. I’m tired of entertaining her friends.” I looked around at the people surrounding us. None of them were Yvonne’s friends; they were neighbors, strangers, relatives. They weren’t anybody’s friends. Expendables.
Gerita and Leon and I found Yvonne in the grape arbor out back. It was badly overgrown with dead vines and weeds, and its floor was covered with fallen paint chips. We used to have two porch swings hung facing each other in the arbor. Our family used to eat dessert there in the summer. I’d had enough to drink to be nostalgic about it, back when Leon’s feet couldn’t reach the ground and when Milo was still on speaking terms with my father. Yvonne had been a quiet brown-haired girl with a clever sense of humor. She always knew exactly what you meant when you said something. She’d let you know when she caught your eye.
She and her bridesmaids, Jennifer and Cleo, and her ex-husband Mark, sat cross-legged on the dirty floor. A fake-antique Pears Soap tray was in front of them, complete with gold tube, razor, and coke-filled Baggie. Yvonne looked up at us and smiled. Was it possible that her eyes had slid farther apart on her face since she was little? For a moment I couldn’t reconcile the two girls, the sister from my childhood and the sister of today’s wedding. “Tootsky?” she said.
“Yeah!” Leon dropped immediately to the floor.
“Pass,” Gerita said, though she also sat down.
“Mother wants to know where your harpist is,” I said.
“Your damned harpist,” Gerita corrected.
Leon giggled again. He was leaning over the tray trying to manipulate a line up his nose.
“Sit,” Mark said to me. “You’re so tall when you’re standing.” I squatted next to Cleo, who immediately reached out and patted my penny loafer. She was a person who just naturally touched everyone around her. It was very reassuring. I thought suddenly, If we could just get rid of Jennifer, I wouldn’t mind living with these five people. We could be very happy. How lucky I was, to know five people I liked well enough to live with.
“That’s better,” Mark said, smiling dreamily.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just sit out here all afternoon, just the bunch of us?” Yvonne said, looking at me. It was as if she’d read my mind. I felt better, believing she might have something left of her childhood self in her somewhere.
“Mm hmm,” Cleo said.
Only Jennifer seemed to disagree. She was scowling down at the part in Leon’s hair as he took a second line. It was probably her coke and now she saw it going to waste on my little brother.
“You look awfully pale,” Mark said to Yvonne.
“It’s true,” Cleo said. “Have you been taking your potassium?”
“She’s getting married,” Gerita said. “She’s got a right to be pale.”
“To sing the blues,” Leon sang.
“It’s her hair,” I said. “It’s so black she looks pasty. But good.”
“We’ll rouge you before the big event,” Mark told Yvonne. “We’ll rouge you good.”
“My mother wishes you were marrying me again,” she said, sighing, dropping her plump hands into her lap.
“I’ll tell her I’m sterile. That’ll set her straight.”
“You are?” Leon sat back, his eyes blinking slowly, like a doll’s. If we weren’t careful, he would pass out. “You aren’t?”
“Only the Shadow knows.” Mark pulled the tray from Leon. “Talk to me, Miss Pears.”
“That’s my line,” Leon whined.
“No, your line is, ‘RA hah hah hah hah.’”
Leon rolled onto his back laughing and then stayed that way, staring absently up at the twisted vines of the arbor roof.
Yvonne turned to her roommate. “I wish you had your Runes, Cassandra. I’d like to know how today will be.”
“I always have my Runes.” Jennifer said, glumly. She pulled a red velvet bag from a larger mesh bag beside her and began shaking it. Rocks rattled inside. Yvonne pulled one out.
“Well?”
“A portentous day to wed,” Jennifer said, turning the rock over in her hand.
“Portentous,” Leon echoed thoughtfully.
“Oh, good,” Yvonne said, smiling brightly. Mark and I exchanged glances.
“Will she stay married?” Gerita asked. “Ask if she’ll stay married.”
“Will I stay married?” Yvonne turned her hopeful, over-made-up eyes to Jennifer. Another stone was extracted.
“Neither yes nor no.”
“How can that be?”
Jennifer shrugged. She reached into the bag herself and pulled out three rocks, laying them before her quickly. “There’s a dark element involved in this wedding. I’m sorry, Yvonne, but that’s what the stones say.” She didn’t look sorry. Bad news seemed to brighten her.
“It’s the Gypsy funeral,” I said. “They marched by our house and left a shadow.”
“Ask it will Wrigley Field ever get lights,” Leon said, still on his back. “Wouldn’t you love a night game?”
Eventually we had to drift in. We heard harp music.
The harpist was a woman in her fifties who worked with Yvonne at the bar. She had a big happy mouth that moved along with the music she was playing. I missed most of the ceremony because I was in charge of Leon, who kept insisting we were in heaven. He tottered around the foyer, signing the guest list now and then. I had too many sets of car keys in my pockets to be comfortable sitting anyway. When the first relatives emerged weeping from the living room, I hustled Leon out the front door. It was time for a spin in the Spitfire.
The sun was behind St. Augustino’s now, casting a peculiar burnt orange shadow down the length of the block. The day had cooled since I’d last been out.
Leon waited until I’d opened his door and helped him aim his long legs into the passenger side footspace before he told me he couldn’t possibly go for a ride.
“Why not? We’ll roll down the window, cool your jets.”
He shook his head emphatically. “I’ll be ill,” he said somberly, then belched. “Very ill.”
I leaned back in the seat and hit the steering wheel with my palms. “You won’t be ill,” I said.
“I’ll retch,” he said. “Just smelling the inside of the car is making me queasy.”
“How about around the cemetery? I won’t go fast.”
“I warned you,” he said, raising his hands in a shrug.
I shouldn’t have, but I started the engine anyway. We had only a little while before we’d be missed. I’d forgotten about leaving the radio on and it screamed out at us, making my heart jump.
“Don’t think about your stomach,” I yelled to Leon, over the engine and rushing air. We whizzed around the side and back lot of St. Augustino’s and into the graveyard. Thousands of black crows took flight at the sound of the engine and thousands more when I began honking the horn. Because I’d learned to drive in the cemetery, with and without permission, I could have driven it with my eyes closed. The roadway was one lane and curved through the various sections of dead people the way I imagined the German autobahn cutting through that country. Everywhere we drove, crows flew out in waves before us, as if from the sheer power of the Spitfire’s engine. It was dark enough to turn on the headlights, but I liked driving in the dusk. I felt I could actually be headed somewhere instead of only in a long convoluted circle.
“What?” I yelled over to Leon. “What’d you say?” But it was clear from his face what he’d said. I screeched to a halt and reached over to open his door. He threw up on the running board, on the side of the seat, on his own tuxedo leg, on the pavement. In sight of the Gypsies, whose faces, once the crows cleared, were set like so many frozen white masks in my direction.
We got the hell out of there.
Back at home my father’s partner, Mr. Payton, was having a fit. He wanted to leave and I had his car key.
“Where have you been?” my father said. He never really got furious with us. He was too tired. He let my mother handle fury.
“Leon wasn’t feeling well. We went on a walk,” I said. Leon, to his credit, looked terrible. He had bags under his eyes like bruises. Plus, I’d made him drink from the backyard hose before we went in and his tie was soaked.
“Mr. Payton would like his car,” my father said.
Mr. Payton shook. Spit flew when he spoke. “Where’ve you put it? I was ready to leave fifteen minutes ago.” For a moment I could only be amazed at how angry he was.
“We have a party,” his wife said. She actually used a cigarette holder.
I volunteered to get the car, but Mr. Payton stuck his hand in my face. “Give me the key, boy.” And when I’d pulled it from the tangle of other keys, he added, “I hope you remembered to lock the doors.”
“What an ass,” I said to my father as we watched them walk down the street, Mr. Payton still ranting.
“A real ass,” Leon amended.
“Boys,” my father said to us, as if to preamble a long speech, but then didn’t go on. He rubbed his cummerbund, soothing his ulcers.
From nowhere, my mother appeared. “Gifts are being opened in there. I expect you’ll want to see what they get?” She didn’t wait for an answer. This was how she ordered us around.
But we went in. Leon in particular wanted to see how Yvonne liked her gift from him. The first time around, he’d given her wine glasses, all of which had been shattered during one of her fights with Mark.
“I like it,” Yvonne said, holding up the Swiss Army knife.
Leon beamed. “It has a plastic toothpick,” he told her. To me, it seemed a more dangerous present than the wine glasses.
They got crock pots and coasters and wall-hangings and pot holders and towels and bottles of wine. The best gift was from my Uncle Cy, a fifty-pound fruit basket he’d made himself, packed with everything that would qualify. Sitting on the table, it was taller than Yvonne. To keep the fruit upright, it was wrapped in plastic and tied with a red bow. Pineapple leaves sprouted from the top like a palm tree.
The real action of the day, the event no one would forget, I missed because I stole that fruit basket. While pretending to take all the gifts to Yvonne’s room upstairs, I smuggled the fruit basket out the side door. It really did weigh fifty pounds, and I couldn’t see over it as I tottered down the block.
The Gypsies’ house was also lighted, though not with white light, like ours, but in a sort of murky orange light, like old streetlights. For once, none of them was outside. I had imagined simply setting the basket down at the grandfather’s feet, bowing or something in sympathy, and then scurrying off. I could have left the basket on the doorstep, rung the bell, and run, but somehow it didn’t seem the right gesture on the night of a funeral.
The one blond child in the family opened the front door. Her skull was too small for her eyes, which bugged out even farther when she saw the fruit. I was struck with momentary dumbness. I had no etiquette to fall back on; I’d never made a sympathy call before.
“Come in,” someone said, from a hall door. I stepped in. Their house had a floor plan similar to ours, something you wouldn’t have guessed from the outside. The foyer, like ours, had doors leading to all the other rooms of the downstairs, with a stairway at the end.
“I’ve brought fruit,” I said, unnecessary as that was.
“Thank you,” the voice said. “Mimi, help him set down his fruit.” The little girl led me to a white sideboard and patted its top. I set the basket down and looked at it, completely embarrassed. It was really such a monstrosity.
“I’m sorry,” I said, hoping the apology covered everything—their loss (whoever it was), our family’s not inviting the Gypsies to the wedding, my new brother-in-law’s behavior, Leon’s puking at the gravesite, my ugly gift—but the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed. Outside, tires screamed around the corner. Of course, that would be one of our guests.
The voice, which I thought belonged to the grandfather, but which I now saw belonged to one of the younger men, again said, “Thank you.” He stood with his arms crossed over his suit, his eyes burning dark holes in my chest. Even Mimi had retreated from my side and stood behind him. I backed out their front door, sweating in my monkey suit, glad to be outside.
Down the block, hysteria had broken out. People were running in and out, joining and leaving a clump of others on the lawn. Our front door slammed open and shut. I thought rice-throwing must be going on, some last-minute crying and hugging, but when I approached the clump broke open and there was Chris on the lawn, face and suit black with blood. I thought, The Gypsies have killed my brother-in-law.
He got shot in the head. Grazed, I guess you’d say. We couldn’t call the police. Before he passed out, he’d made that clear, grabbing at Yvonne’s dress with his bloody hands. They were not to find out. “I used to know him,” he told Yvonne of the gunman, smiling like it was some kid from his first-grade class he’d just met again. Chris’s guests, relatives and others, had already begun making preparations, phoning a private ambulance, phoning a private hospital. The private doctor, it turned out, was already among us, attending the wedding. My sister’s second wedding ended with her husband being driven to the hospital. Yvonne couldn’t even go with him. She would be called.
His guests left soon after, thanking my father for the party. The women, including my mother, Yvonne, Gerita, the harpist, and the roommates, were upstairs. We men took the front stoop.
“Is it Gotto?” my Uncle Cy asked. “Gotto or Gambolini or something like that? Was Chris one of them?”
“Maybe he wasn’t but he wanted to be,” Leon said. “I was thinking they had to shoot at him to initiate him.”
“Who knows? What if they missed and killed him instead? I never heard of such a thing, but who the hell knows?” Cy leaned back on his elbows. “I was beginning to like him,” he said. “He was a snook but I liked him anyway.”
“That’s the past tense,” Leon pointed out.
“So it is,” Cy said, nodding. He’d pulled off his suspenders and unbuttoned the top button of his pants. Men in our family develop a certain sagginess in their old age.
My father watched the street and I took my cue from him. What was there? Our neighbors’ new cyclone fence, ugly enough on its own, but now made uglier by a threatening sign from the sheriff’s department on the gate. I could almost read the words from where we sat. They’d been among the first to leave after the shooting, though I knew they were peeking out from their curtains to keep posted. Or maybe my father was remembering when we were all little children, three boys and a girl, a brown-haired, shy, sensitive girl who never seemed to be the one who’d cause trouble. I tried to imagine what worries must be specific to fathers concerning daughters, but how could I?
I said, “Yvonne says you have to change your life every now and then.”
“Yeah?” Cy said. “Yeah?” He appeared to think about it. “Hunh,” he said. “Today must count for something.”
“Yvonne has been reincarnated as a lunatic,” Leon said.
But my father said nothing. He wiped his hand through his slick, thin hair. I thought through all the parts of his life I knew about: my mother, his business partner Mr. Payton, my brother Milo in California, now Yvonne’s new husband, Yvonne herself. It suddenly seemed to me, sitting there next to him, that I was him, I was my father and his life was happening to me, sitting on my house’s front stoop, defeated. I was a man who’d somehow ended up here, married to a woman I no longer felt sparks with, working with a man I couldn’t trust, ashamed for having lost my oldest son, so weak as to have allowed my daughter her foolish marriage, looking out a neighborhood gone not bad, but askew, with cyclone fences and Gypsies and shootings at weddings.
“How does she propose to do such a thing?” my father said. “How does she exactly change her life?” He was tired and sad and beaten. Yes, I thought, tired and sad and beaten myself, how does this miracle come about?
When there wasn’t anything left of the evening, when we’d made as much sense of the senseless as we could, we left the scene of today’s crime, the bloodstained patch of dirt by the front walk, the plastic champagne glasses upended like futuristic mushrooms grown out of some futuristic mulchy rain, the hulking shadow of the pink Gypsy house on the corner—we left it and entered our well-lit house, where soon we would be joined by the women. By then, my father would be his unfathomable self once again and I would be me, sent to retrieve my Cousin Gerita’s Spitfire.