in my room and tried to stay out of their way.
The next weekend after the party, Marcy’s husband Tom put their house up for sale, and the weekend after that they were gone. I heard they moved to California. I thought things would calm down.
The Monday after Marcy and Tom left town, I came home from school and found the kitchen door was open. Mom always kept the side entrance to the house locked. Dad’s car was in the driveway. That was strange, too. He rarely came home before five o’clock. The house seemed unnaturally quiet, except for this odd drip, drip sound, like a leaking faucet. There was no one downstairs. I went upstairs. The drip sound came from their bedroom. It was blood dripping off the light fixture. Dad’s, I think. He was shot with the old shotgun he kept in the upstairs hall closet, and part of his head was gone. Some of itwas on the wall over the bed, by the crucifix with the Palm Sunday palm stuck in it.
I couldn’t figure out what happened. Later, the police said that Mom shot Dad, then turned the gun on herself. There was a huge hole in her chest, so it looked like she was wearing a red blouse and lying on a red bedspread, although both were really white. She and Dad looked gray green. People in funeral parlors aren’t that color. I saw there was blood all over, but I never got a good look at things because I started screaming and I ran out of the house and Mrs. Marshall, the nosy neighbor lady, caught me as I ran into the street. I think she called the police.
Suicide is a mortal sin in the Catholic Church, and so is murder, so there was a debate in the parish about whether my mother could be buried in consecrated ground with two mortal sins on her soul. But the Church didn’t want any more scandal, especially after the
Life
magazine story called “The Pillar Cracks: Wife-Swapping at a Suburban Church.” I didn’t think Dad was swapping. He just borrowed the wives for a while, and some of them, like Dee the Divorcee, weren’t even Catholic. He didn’t swap Mom with anybody.
Finally, the priest said no one could know what was in Mom’s mind at the time of her death and it was possible she made a valid Act of Contrition at the last moment and was genuinely sorry, so the Church let her be buried next to Dad. I wondered what Mom and Dad thought about that, lying side by side. I used to wonder iftheir ghosts were screaming at each other when I heard the wind howl on cold nights. Or maybe, now that he couldn’t chase other women, they were happy together.
After the double funeral, I went to live with my grandparents in the city. My father was an orphan. These were my mother’s parents. Mom was kind of ashamed of them, because they were fat and poor and never got past the fourth grade, and my mother had a diploma from a secretarial college. Grandma and Grandpa had a confectionery on the South Side near Arsenal Street. They sold cold cuts and comic books and penny candy and things people ran out of at the last minute like Campbell’s tomato soup for a meat loaf recipe, or milk and bread. They worked six days a week, twelve hours a day and didn’t make much money. Everyone felt sorry for me because I went from living in this nice new suburban split-level in Crestwood to a rundown apartment over an old store in the city.
I couldn’t tell anyone, but I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. My grandparents liked me. Grandma didn’t think I was ugly. She and Grandpa called me Angel. They never hit me, even once. Grandpa bought me glasses and that made me more graceful. I could see where I was going and I quit falling over things. Grandma got new clothes just for me, and I quit wearing Cousin Linda’s old things. I started putting on weight and didn’t look so gawky, because Grandma liked to fix food for me—pancakes for breakfast, pork chops and fried chicken andgravy for dinner. She made biscuits and peach cobbler and blackberry pie….
“Are you going to eat, or just stare into
The next weekend after the party, Marcy’s husband Tom put their house up for sale, and the weekend after that they were gone. I heard they moved to California. I thought things would calm down.
The Monday after Marcy and Tom left town, I came home from school and found the kitchen door was open. Mom always kept the side entrance to the house locked. Dad’s car was in the driveway. That was strange, too. He rarely came home before five o’clock. The house seemed unnaturally quiet, except for this odd drip, drip sound, like a leaking faucet. There was no one downstairs. I went upstairs. The drip sound came from their bedroom. It was blood dripping off the light fixture. Dad’s, I think. He was shot with the old shotgun he kept in the upstairs hall closet, and part of his head was gone. Some of itwas on the wall over the bed, by the crucifix with the Palm Sunday palm stuck in it.
I couldn’t figure out what happened. Later, the police said that Mom shot Dad, then turned the gun on herself. There was a huge hole in her chest, so it looked like she was wearing a red blouse and lying on a red bedspread, although both were really white. She and Dad looked gray green. People in funeral parlors aren’t that color. I saw there was blood all over, but I never got a good look at things because I started screaming and I ran out of the house and Mrs. Marshall, the nosy neighbor lady, caught me as I ran into the street. I think she called the police.
Suicide is a mortal sin in the Catholic Church, and so is murder, so there was a debate in the parish about whether my mother could be buried in consecrated ground with two mortal sins on her soul. But the Church didn’t want any more scandal, especially after the
Life
magazine story called “The Pillar Cracks: Wife-Swapping at a Suburban Church.” I didn’t think Dad was swapping. He just borrowed the wives for a while, and some of them, like Dee the Divorcee, weren’t even Catholic. He didn’t swap Mom with anybody.
Finally, the priest said no one could know what was in Mom’s mind at the time of her death and it was possible she made a valid Act of Contrition at the last moment and was genuinely sorry, so the Church let her be buried next to Dad. I wondered what Mom and Dad thought about that, lying side by side. I used to wonder iftheir ghosts were screaming at each other when I heard the wind howl on cold nights. Or maybe, now that he couldn’t chase other women, they were happy together.
After the double funeral, I went to live with my grandparents in the city. My father was an orphan. These were my mother’s parents. Mom was kind of ashamed of them, because they were fat and poor and never got past the fourth grade, and my mother had a diploma from a secretarial college. Grandma and Grandpa had a confectionery on the South Side near Arsenal Street. They sold cold cuts and comic books and penny candy and things people ran out of at the last minute like Campbell’s tomato soup for a meat loaf recipe, or milk and bread. They worked six days a week, twelve hours a day and didn’t make much money. Everyone felt sorry for me because I went from living in this nice new suburban split-level in Crestwood to a rundown apartment over an old store in the city.
I couldn’t tell anyone, but I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. My grandparents liked me. Grandma didn’t think I was ugly. She and Grandpa called me Angel. They never hit me, even once. Grandpa bought me glasses and that made me more graceful. I could see where I was going and I quit falling over things. Grandma got new clothes just for me, and I quit wearing Cousin Linda’s old things. I started putting on weight and didn’t look so gawky, because Grandma liked to fix food for me—pancakes for breakfast, pork chops and fried chicken andgravy for dinner. She made biscuits and peach cobbler and blackberry pie….
“Are you going to eat, or just stare into
Similar Books
