Raising Jake Part 19

"Thank you, Jake."

"You're welcome."

"We'll finish up and leave," I say.

"No!"

Fran's voice is like iron, the voice I recall from our night together. "You finish up, and then we'll have lunch."

"Oh, you don't have to-"

"I'm making lunch," Fran says, and without another word she's back inside, slamming the door behind her.

Jake looks at me. "Looks like we have lunch plans."

"Looks like."

An hour later we're all seated around the Formica table Jake and I moved for Fran, eating grilled cheese sandwiches and drinking iced tea. Outside, the lawn is twice-mown and raked, and the privet hedges have been hacked into rectangular shapes. I've even spaded the soil around the base of the hedges, to give the place a touch of cla.s.s. Jake and I have filled four big black plastic bags with clippings and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, neatly lined along the curb for the garbage man.

I fear that Fran will want to talk about our b.u.mbling, stumbling night together, but luckily she doesn't. There's nothing much to say, really-we both know it was a drunken collision between two desperate people. Truth is, Fran seems far more interested in Jake than she does in me. She reaches out and strokes his hair.

"Your grandmother had hair like this," she says. "Same beautiful s.h.i.+ne."

Jake stops chewing. "Really?"

"Oh yes. Shame you never knew her. What a woman she was!" Fran turns to me. "I'd say she was just about the most...religious person I ever knew." person I ever knew."

I swallow some grilled cheese, nod. "She was big in church activities, yeah."

"That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way she treated treated people. It's not as if I even knew her well. I wasn't much of a churchgoer. But when my husband walked out on me, who do you think showed up at my door with a ca.s.serole?" She smiles at the memory of it. "It was one of those Italian dishes, with that weird black vegetable Italians like so much." people. It's not as if I even knew her well. I wasn't much of a churchgoer. But when my husband walked out on me, who do you think showed up at my door with a ca.s.serole?" She smiles at the memory of it. "It was one of those Italian dishes, with that weird black vegetable Italians like so much."

"Eggplant parmigiana," I say.

"That's right! That was it! Something I could never make myself. And she didn't make a big deal deal out of it. She just said, 'I hear you're having some trouble, so I made extra.' That's the kind of person she was." out of it. She just said, 'I hear you're having some trouble, so I made extra.' That's the kind of person she was."

Jake is absolutely transfixed by Fran's words. He now knows more about his grandmother than I have ever told him.

"Nice thing to do," Jake says.

"It certainly was." Fran turns to me. "Heart attack, wasn't it?"

"Yeah."

Fran strains to remember more. "Wasn't there something unusual about it?"

I force myself to shrug. "Only that she was young. Just turned thirty-nine."

Her brow remains knotted for a moment, then relaxes. Luckily for me Fran was a casual Catholic whose memory has obviously been ravaged by years of boozing.

"Well, if there's a heaven, she went straight there, I can tell you that," she says. "Really a saintly person." She smiles at Jake, frowns at me. "Can't say I thought the same of your father. Little bit of a brute, wasn't he? Whatever became of him, anyway?"

She doesn't know. She stays in this house, trapped by her crumbling hips, so she doesn't know what goes on in the neighborhood.

"He died a few years after my mother," I finally say.

"He did? From what?"

"Heart attack."

"Both parents had heart attacks?" Fran says. "Jeez, that doesn't bode well for you, does it?" parents had heart attacks?" Fran says. "Jeez, that doesn't bode well for you, does it?"

"I try not to think about it."

"I'd get a checkup, if I were you."

"I'll think about it."

"I can't believe I didn't know about your father dying! Not that I ever hear anything much. I don't exactly get around these days.... Listen, I'm sorry I said that nasty thing about him."

"It's okay. You're absolutely right. He could be a brute, all right."

I can sense Jake's excitement. He's stumbled into this mother lode of information about his ancestors, and he's going to make the most of it.

"What made him a brute?" Jake asks.

"Jake, I-"

That's as far as I get. Jake holds a hand up to silence me, without even looking at me. "I was asking Fran, Dad."

I shut my mouth. Fran can't help cackling with glee as she says, "He liked to mix it up once in a while at Charlie's Bar."

Jake's eyes widen. "My grandfather was a barroom brawler?"

Fran nods, gulps iced tea. "I once saw him knock a guy out with one punch. And it wasn't as if he was a big man, your grandfather. Had to stand on his tiptoes to reach the other guy's chin!"

Jake and Fran are laughing out loud. I feel as if the walls of this house are closing in on me.

"We've got to get going," I say. "I promised Jake I'd show him the house I grew up in."

Fran shakes her head. "I still can't believe I didn't know about your father pa.s.sing."

"We sort of kept it quiet. There wasn't a wake or anything."

"No wake!"

"He wanted to be cremated, and then we scattered his ashes at sea. He was in the navy when he was a kid."

"He was a character, all right. I'm sorry you lost him."

"Me, too."

Fran insists on accompanying us to the door. She shakes hands with me, but takes Jake in a full embrace. He has to jackknife his body to allow for Fran's walker.

"You're a nice boy. Stay that way."

"I'll try," Jake says. It's dawning on me that all my exes-Doris, Margie, Fran-like Jake a h.e.l.l of a lot more than they ever liked me.

"Thanks for doing the yard work," Fran says. "Gonna call my sons and tell 'em it's done, and while I'm at it I'll tell 'em to go to h.e.l.l." She shuts the door behind us, and it seems fitting that the last word I'll ever hear her speak is "h.e.l.l."

I'm walking, but I can't feel my feet. I feel dizzy, as if I've just given blood.

"That," I tell Jake, "was the most surreal experience of my life."

He doesn't seem to hear me. There's a dreamy look on his face as he asks, "Did your mother really have hair like mine?"

"In fact, she did."

"How cool is that? that? I inherited my grandmother's hair! Can you tell me more about her? Was that eggplant dish one of her specialties?" I inherited my grandmother's hair! Can you tell me more about her? Was that eggplant dish one of her specialties?"

"Let's sit awhile," I say as we come upon a wooden bench at a bus stop. I sit down, but Jake is too restless to join me. He paces back and forth, like a fighter eager for the bell.

"Dad, why did Fran say there was something unusual about your mother's death?"

"Jake-"

"She was trying to remember it, and you got all nervous."

"Jake. Listen to me."

"I'm listening."

"I can tell you some more things about my mother, but first you have to understand why it's taken so long for me to...get around to it."

"All right."

"Are you sure? Because this is serious stuff."

"How serious?"

"Very serious."

"Just tell me, Dad."

"I don't think you understand what I mean when I say serious. serious. This is something I've never told anybody, not even...myself." This is something I've never told anybody, not even...myself."

"Dad. What the h.e.l.l happened?"

A bus stops in front of us. The driver opens the door and waits for us to board, shakes his head when we don't, and pulls away. I take a deep breath, absorbing mostly bus fumes.

"Well, I pretty much killed my mother, is what happened."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Jake stops pacing and sits beside me, gazing at me in total disbelief. In the past twenty-four hours he's seen his father go from embittered tabloid journalist to unemployed loser to confessed murderer. Could I be telling the truth? For the first time all weekend, my son seems frightened.

"Dad. Come on."

"You heard me."

"What'd you do, shoot her? Stab her?"

"Nothing that obvious."

"Poison?"

"Nope."

"Jesus, Dad, what the h.e.l.l are you saying?"

"I'm saying I have to tell this story my own way, and it's probably going to take me a little while because I've never told it before, ever, ever, to to anybody, anybody, so you just sit there and don't interrupt and maybe, just so you just sit there and don't interrupt and maybe, just maybe maybe I can do this thing." I can do this thing."

Jake sits as quietly as a bird watcher. Overhead, a mockingbird sings in the branches of a silver oak tree. I let him go through his repertoire of imitations before clearing my throat and beginning the tale of something I've kept buried for more than thirty years to a boy who's only been alive for seventeen years. It is a story of death that is dying to be told, and once I start telling it, I cannot stop.

Mary DiFrancesco Sullivan was a quiet person, a somewhat stout woman who just wanted to be a wife and a mother-or, looking back on it, maybe just a mother.

Then again, maybe she just wanted to be a saint. And if you want to be a saint, it's going to mean trouble for any mere mortals who happen to live with you.

The funny thing is she didn't like trouble. She hated conflict, hated shouting and loudness of any kind. That's one reason she didn't like going to the movies, because they were always so loud-the screaming, the booming music, the explosions. The only movie I ever remember her admiring was The Song of Bernadette, The Song of Bernadette, which tells the story of the young girl who discovered the magical healing waters at Lourdes. which tells the story of the young girl who discovered the magical healing waters at Lourdes.

We actually had a bottle of water from Lourdes in the house. My mother dabbed it on my forehead whenever I had a fever. My father said it was tap water, and that he wished he'd thought of a scam that sweet.

Ahhh, my father.

Danny Sullivan was one of the loudest and most confrontational people in the world. n.o.body could understand how he and my mother ever hooked up. In my mind I always figured that he must have repeatedly hollered out his proposal, and she agreed to marry him if he would promise to lower his voice.

That's a cartoony version of what might have happened, but even cartoons contain a germ of truth. She was a sheltered Italian girl who'd never been far from home, while my old man had seen quite a bit of the planet's watery surface during his two hitches in the navy.