Backstab (7 page)

Mrs. Pennington, who talked about her eight children, except for the one boy who was in juvenile detention for car theft. Everyone
else
talked about him. Mrs. Pennington was always out of bread and milk, no matter how much she bought at the supermarket.

Mrs. Maloney, whose husband drank, and who came in with a black eye every couple of months. She was a tiny, pale woman with feathery hair, like a newly hatched bird. “She always looked scared,” I told Lyle. I was warming to the subject. I was warming to the tenderloin, too. Between bites I said, “And poor Mrs. Ritter, who got thinner and thinner, and then one day we read her funeral notice.

“Then there was Old Mr. Brackenseck, who was always looking for something soft to eat because his false teeth hurt. He married the Widow Montini, and lived on her homemade spaghetti—we didn't call it pasta back then—happily ever after. He had this money clip. I'd never seen one before. It was gold, with a dollar sign. He'd slowly peel out each dollar with great ceremony. He kept his change in a coin purse, all wrapped with rubber bands.”

“You didn't realize it, but those were your early columns,” said Lyle. “You really noticed those people.”

“I finally had time to notice. Life was so much calmer. Grandma and Grandpa didn't have screaming fights, although they did argue sometimes. She would call him a stubborn old fool and slam the bathroom door, and then later they'd make up. They didn't drink much, just a beer before dinner. Most nights, their place was very quiet. I liked that.

“The only bad thing about my new life was the way people acted around me. Whenever I went out with my grandparents, there would be this
sort of whispery buzz, and I knew people were saying, ‘That's the little girl whose mother shot her father and then killed herself. Poor little thing.'

“That's what the nice ones said. The mean ones said this would make me not right in the head and no man would marry me, because there was insanity and suicide in the family. After a while I got used to the buzz, and it died down a bit, too.”

“Now there's a buzz that follows you around when you go in a place,” said Lyle. “But it's because of your column. Everyone in St. Louis knows you.”

That was Lyle. He always put the best interpretation on everything. He was never jealous of my success. I took another bite of the sandwich. I didn't mention the other bad thing—the dreams. Some nights I would dream of that drip, drip, drip sound, but the blood would be dripping on their coffins. On real bad nights, it would be dripping on mine, and I would wake up screaming.

After a few years the drip, drip, drip dreams faded. Now I only get them when things are very bad. I knew I'd get one tonight, because of Burt's murder.

“Hello,” said Lyle, “anyone home?”

I realized I was holding the sandwich in midair.

“Francesca, I know you liked Burt, but you only saw him maybe twice a year. His murder reminds you of your parents' deaths, doesn't it?
That's why you're so upset. You aren't here. You're back in Crestwood.”

Lyle was right. I'd been wandering around in the past to keep from talking about the present. “Burt wasn't quite a friend, but he was more than a source,” I said. “He worked hard all his life, and he never asked for anything.”

“Just like your grandparents,” said Lyle.

“He did remind me of my grandfather in some ways, I guess. I admired him so much.”

“Burt? Or your grandfather?” asked Lyle.

“Both. Oh, Lyle, it was just awful at Burt's Bar.” And then I told him about the body bag, the bloody kitchen, and the weeping Dolores. Once again he listened. “Any leads on who did it?” he said.

“The police say it's a holdup gone wrong, but I think it's more than that. I can't imagine why Burt would have let in his killer or turned his back on him.”

“Or her,” Lyle said. He was always reminding me that sexism swings both ways. “Maybe Burt just made a mistake. We all do, and he was getting old. He got careless.”

“Burt was Scrubby Dutch like me,” I said. “We're very clean and very good at doing the same thing over and over again. That's why Germans make such good beer. It takes both those qualities.”

Talking about Burt's death took away some of the horror. I was glad to have Lyle to talk to. We usually talked on the phone daily. I'd tell him about a column or something interesting I saw
and he'd talk about the university. He taught English and did a little freelance writing—but he refused to work for the
Gazette.
Lyle had enough money so he didn't have to work and he said the
CG
delighted in making people miserable. I felt better when we started talking. We were good at that. We were good at loving, too. We did most things well together. Lyle was funny, he was sexy, he could wiggle both ears at once. Sometimes I spent weeks at a time at his town house on Laclede. I liked to tease him that it looked like a men's club, but I liked the marble fireplace, the stained glass, the cozy wing chairs and even the pictures of his rich dead relatives. I think he bought it only because of the huge mahogany wet bar. Then I'd get restless and run home for a few days to my grandparents' place over the store.

Lyle wanted to get married. I didn't. I couldn't marry him. I didn't see anyone else. I couldn't live without him. But sometimes I wanted to be by myself and sleep alone in my bed. Not often, but I could do it if I wasn't married and had a place of my own.

Lyle said I was afraid. That wasn't the reason. I couldn't say the marriage vows. Love and honor didn't bother me. I'd stand by Lyle in sickness and in health and for richer or poorer. It was those other five words that got me: “Till death do us part.” When you had my parents, they have special meaning.

“Stay with me,” he said, kissing my forehead and my eyelids.

“Not tonight,” I said, kissing him back. His beard was nicely scratchy and the blond hair on the back of his neck was soft and fine. Part of me wanted to stay. But even as I kissed him I said, “I need to be alone.”

I'm kind of funny that way. When I'm really upset, I like to be alone. I don't like to be touched. I knew that Lyle would try to hold me and love me and he never understands why I freeze up and don't want to be touched when things go bad. He won't say so, but I think it hurts him. I don't mean for it to. So I stay at my place. It's not really my place. I live there, but it's my grandparents' apartment. They died twelve years ago, within a few months of each other. I haven't changed anything.

One of my friends, who is now a decorator in New York, told me their place was a perfect example of Midwest kitsch and ought to be in a museum. I guess that's one way to look at it. I like it because I liked their good, ordinary life. So I kept the beige Naugahyde recliner, the picture of Christ with the eyes that follow you hanging over the Magnavox console TV, the davenport with the flowered slipcover, and my grandfather's bowling trophies. The bathroom has plaster fish blowing three gold bubbles. The kitchen still has the same gas refrigerator with the glass icebox dishes, a gray Formica-and-chrome kitchen set, and my grandmother's Aunt Jemima doll with the Sunbeam toaster under her skirt.

To me, it's home. The only change I made was
to set up my computer and laser printer on the dining room table. But I left on the table pads, to protect the finish. I also killed Grandma's African violets. It was an accident, of course. I forgot to water them when I was with Lyle for two weeks. I was secretly glad when the whole brass cartful died. There's something squishy and hairy about African violets. Grandma's other plants survived, but then philodendrons are the closest thing in nature to plastic.

Lyle put his arms around me, but he could feel me stiffen. Death makes some people feel sexy. They have this mad urge to make love. Not me. I wanted to be left alone. I put my plate in the dishwasher, found my purse, and kissed Lyle one last time. “Please stay,” he said, but this time his kiss was cooler as if he already knew my answer. I didn't even have to think about it. “Not tonight.” I said. “I need to be alone.” Lyle didn't press me, and I appreciated his tact.

After I got home from Lyle's, I stretched out in the beige recliner, pulled my grandmother's brown-and-yellow knitted afghan over me for comfort, as I do sometimes when I have to make a hard phone call, and then I got up the courage to call Ralph. I didn't want him to hear about Burt on the evening news. Ralph was a big fan of Burt's. In fact, he was the one who first introduced me to Burt's Bar. If he was working in the area, he always ate there. Ralph was shocked by the news. I knew how upset he was because he started wheezing and had to use his inhaler
while we talked on the phone. We made a date to meet at the wake.

The next day, I checked the
City Gazette
for the funeral notices. Burt would be laid out Monday and Tuesday and buried Wednesday at noon from St. Philomena Catholic Church, a lovely old nineteenth-century city church that looked like a small cathedral.

St. Louis Catholic funerals go on forever. Lyle, who grew up in the North, thinks they are barbaric and lack the simple dignity of a funeral in his Iowa hometown. I think those are indecently quick. After the drama of a St. Louis sendoff, they seem as cold and barren as a northern winter. I got a close-up look when Lyle's mother Vera died and I went to Marshalltown, Iowa, with him. Vera had the funeral she wanted and his aunts insisted upon: a rosary at the funeral home the night before, a funeral service at her parish church the next day, and stingy ham sandwiches and sheet cake in the church basement afterward. There were no flowers but ours. Vera's friends donated money to her favorite missionary society. She had a closed casket at her request. St. Louisans like to get a look at you, and a closed casket usually means something horrible. Like your mother shooting your father, and then herself.

I much prefer the three-day ordeal of a St. Louis funeral. It lets you get used to the idea the person is dead. By the time you finally get to the burial, you're happy to shovel the dear one into the ground and go on living. After the funeral,
everyone comes back to your house and there's baked ham or roast beef and hearty heavy food like casseroles and mostaccioli, potato salad and chips, and lots of beer and wine. Then you sit around and talk about the dead person and all the funny things and kind things she did, and for an hour or two she lives again, and you know that she will live in everyone's memories.

Unless your mother shoots your father. Then everyone murmurs something sad and polite, pats your hand, and disappears.

Burt had a rousing sendoff at the old Grand Funeral Home on South Grand, which looks like a twenties movie star's home, all white stucco and red roof tile. The place was packed. They had to open the big double parlor, and there was still a line out to the lobby. All the bigwigs who drank at Burt's Bar sent big expensive rubbery-looking flowers. None of them bothered to come except for Burt's alderman and the Mayor's aide, a fat red-nosed Irishman who ceremonially ate and drank and shook hands everywhere the Mayor couldn't.

The people who turned out were Burt's friends and regulars. Everyone had a Burt story. I found out he lent money to folks in trouble and fed people who were out of work, and had one family eating his chicken and dumplings on the tab for six months straight until the father found work again. It was almost like a party, until the line moved up and I had to approach the casket.

Standing between her two grown-up daughters, Pat and Rachel, was Dolores, in a badly fitting
black dress. Dolores never wore black. She looked like a stand-in who had been hired to play her. She went through the motions, shaking hands or standing still for a hug, but she hardly seemed to recognize anyone.

Her oldest daughter, Pat, steered me to the massive bronze casket covered with a huge spray of red roses and white pompons. A red ribbon said
Beloved Husband
in gold script. Burt was lying in there, his head on a white satin and lace pillow, wearing Pan-Cake makeup. My first thought was that he wouldn't be caught alive looking like this. His hair was combed funny and a rosary was wrapped around his strong hands. He didn't look like he was asleep. Not unless he slept with his glasses on. For some reason, the undertaker laid Burt out wearing his gold-rim glasses, and they looked ridiculous because his eyes were closed. I kept staring and staring at him the way I always stare at dead people in their caskets, trying to get a fix on them. It looked like Burt, and then it didn't and then it did again, sort of. It was almost like he was out of focus.

There was an old woman with frizzy pink hair and a navy-blue dress with rhinestone buttons kneeling by the casket. She said to me, “He looks so young.” But he didn't. To me, Burt looked so dead. As I peered down into the casket, I saw a bottle of Bud tucked in there, just above his elbow, with a Burt's Bar opener and a bag of Rold Gold pretzels. One of his kids must have done that. That's when I began to cry. I tried to stop,
because I wasn't family and I didn't want to make a scene.

I did notice that Burt was smiling, and it looked fairly natural for a dead person. I knew why he was smiling, too. Burt bought the Grand Funeral Plan Special back in 1956, when he was a thirty-year-old man with a young family. The plan was two hundred dollars, or two dollars a week for almost two years. Then Burt had the ultimate revenge. He proceeded to live for another forty years, until two hundred dollars hardly paid the light bill for his wake. It was the final triumph for a frugal South Sider like Burt.

I got up from the kneeler and saw Ralph come into the room. He was late, but he was dressed in his most subdued outfit—clean rehabber duds. He wore jeans and a jeans jacket and a fresh white T-shirt. There was a folding ruler sticking out of his back pocket and an inhaler in his front pocket. He looked sick and sweaty and paler than Burt.