Shoot the Moonlight Out, page 25
Lily remembers Jack disappearing for half the day after the confrontation with Micah. He said he had work or errands. A coincidence, surely. He’s right. Micah liked to play tough, liked to believe he could swim in the deep end.
Jack points to an envelope in the center of the table. He pushes it over to Lily. “Some pictures of Amelia,” he says. “I thought you might like to have them. I have doubles. I don’t know. It’s dumb. I know you feel a real connection to her.”
Lily looks through the pictures. Amelia as a girl with her mother. In high school, less thrilled to be posing for a shot. Still, smiling. Bright. “These are wonderful,” Lily says. “Thanks, Jack.”
“It means a lot to me that you’re thinking about her, that you’re remembering her, even though you never met. I wish you had known her. I wish you’d gotten to be friends.”
Lily hands the pictures to Mairéad.
“This was your daughter?” Mairéad says. “Oh, she’s lovely. I’m sorry if I was flippant before. I’ve got a weird sense of humor, and I don’t always have the best awareness of when I’m being inappropriate.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” Jack says. “Amelia was the same way. She liked her jokes dark and strange. It was like Harold and Maude around here for a year or so. She staged a suicide as a goof. Fake Halloween blood. The whole works. This was maybe two years after Janey, my wife, died. I walk into Amelia’s bedroom, and it’s a horror movie. She got me that time. She really got me. I was pissed for about five minutes but then we laughed a lot about it.”
“That’s brilliant,” Mairéad says. “A girl after my own heart.”
“You don’t see or hear her, do you?” Jack asks. “I’m sorry. I was trying not to ask.”
“It’s okay. I don’t, I’m sorry. It’s not all the time. It’s not every house. Not every spirit. You know? It just happens sometimes. It’s only happened a few times since I’ve been in New York.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No apology necessary.”
“What’s in here?” Lily asks, tapping the other envelope in the center of the table.
“Don’t be mad,” Jack says.
“What is it?”
Lily picks it up and finds her story from Spiral, winner of the Marsden-Bellwether Prize. She’s moved to see that Jack has it. It’s such a dad thing to do, like he’s proud of her for it. Her mom treats her writing like a hobby. She shows no interest in it. Doesn’t mean shit to her that Lily won that award and had a meeting with an agent, that she’s working on a novel. All Grace cares about is income. “Geez, where’d you get this?” Lily asks.
“The library,” Jack says. “It’s such a great story. I was just telling Francesca all about it. She was saying someone should make it into a movie.”
“I can’t believe you tracked this down,” Lily says.
“I’d like to read it,” Mairéad says.
Lily stuffs it back in the envelope. “I don’t think so. Not yet anyway. I don’t want you to think I’m a hack.”
“Stop.”
“One of these days.”
“You should write a story about how you killed your stalker ex-boyfriend.”
“I didn’t do it!”
Mairéad puts on a cop voice, tips a mock interrogation lamp in Lily’s face. “Where were you on the day he went missing?”
Francesca comes out of the bathroom. They all get another round of beers. The two six-packs depleted now. Jack brings out the whiskey, his Seagram’s Seven. Lily thinks twice about telling her Seagram’s Seven story. She hopes Jack doesn’t bring it up.
Mairéad tells a story about how her uncle Colin back in Dublin tried to get out of going to some dinner he was supposed to go to by dropping something heavy on his foot. He wasn’t a liar, couldn’t bring himself to lie, so he figured if he actually hurt himself he could get out of the obligation honestly. This was her uncle who also kept a jar full of piss in his yard to ward off evil spirits. Anyhow, she goes on, the thing Colin used was a fucking anvil, and he should’ve gone with something much lighter because the anvil really smashed the hell out of his foot. “It was like a cartoon,” she says. “He tipped this anvil off his workbench and it just flattened his foot. Like comically flattened it.” Tears in her eyes as she tells it.
The music of Mairéad’s voice. Lily loves listening to her.
“What happened?” Francesca asks.
“Well, first he had to call his wife, my aunt Beibhinn, to try to help him move the anvil, and then he wound up in the emergency department,” Mairéad says. “He really, truly messed up his foot. I mean, there weren’t many things worse he could’ve dropped. He had his leg up in traction for a month. He missed the dinner, so I guess he achieved what he set out to achieve.”
They all laugh.
Jack’s tapped into the whiskey. He looks as happy as Lily’s seen him in these few weeks of knowing him.
Mairéad keeps going. She has the floor, a born storyteller. “I have another uncle who got into clowning. That was his big dream, to be a clown. But he was an alcoholic bogger. Uncle Jerry. Pissed in my grandmother’s living room one night in front of the whole family. Himself, flute in hand, spraying the furniture.” This part she acts out a bit.
Jack’s laughing so hard, he’s doubled over the table. “Anyhow, he shows up to my little cousin’s Holy Communion in his clown costume,” Mairéad continues. “It’s a run-down costume. Secondhand wig, red foam nose, wrinkled yellow jumpsuit. His makeup job looks like a fucking Parkinson’s patient did it. Forgive me for saying that. All the kids in the church are crying bloody murder. ‘Why’s there a clown sitting in the pew?’ they want to know. He’s real calm. Just sort of slumped over. Probably hungover something awful at this point. The kids are wailing. Just wrecked. They either don’t know it’s Uncle Jerry or they don’t know Uncle Jerry.”
“This is at the mass?” Jack says, astounded.
“Right. Now, my father, he is firmly against clowns, and he’s had it up to here with Uncle Jerry’s routine. My father, God bless him, gets up and starts beating on Uncle Jerry with my mother’s bag. Just going to town on him. The Communion kids in all their dresses and suits start cheering. My father’s lost his fucking mind. Uncle Jerry’s making these little noises and they’re not like I’m-getting-beaten-up noises, they’re like sex noises. Grunting and moaning.”
“Oh my God,” Francesca says. “This is amazing.”
Lily proudly watches Mairéad spinning her tale. She’s again thinking what a genius she is. How melodious her voice is. The same voice that’s in her novel.
“So, finally, Uncle Jerry is up on his feet, struggling to escape my father,” Mairéad says. “The kids are watching a clown getting his ass beat all the way up the aisle. I’m sitting there thinking, How could this possibly get better? Enter Father James O’Rourke. This old demented fuck, they usually keep locked away. Ninety-four if he’s a day. Looks like a skeleton hung with silver tinsel. But, somehow, on this day of days, he’s escaped and he’s sniffed his way to Uncle Jerry. What he does is he starts yelling like he’s performing an exorcism. He has this echoey ancient voice. I’m sitting next to Granny Kath. When I tell you that she lets out a fart at this particular moment, you must be aware that I can’t do this fart justice. It’s massive. Brutal. Sounds like a chainsaw. It really thunders against the wood of the pew. And the smell. I mean, there’s several waves. First, there’s this burning onion quality but that only paves the way for the kind of diapery main stink that has enduring fucking potency. We’re all choking. Gasping for breath. I tell you, I can’t cope.”
Jack looks like he’s about to have a heart attack, he’s laughing so hard.
Mairéad pauses to take a drink. “It’s around then people start leaving. The smell’s not going away. I’m looking around at my family like, Did she poo her pants? I think she pooed her pants. Is Da still beating up Uncle Jerry? He is? Oh, good. The Communion kids are at a fucking loss. All the ways they saw this day going, this definitely wasn’t the outcome they desired.”
“Jesus Christ,” Lily says. “Did your grandmother really shit her pants?”
“She sure did,” Mairéad says. “It was kind of tar-like. Really soaked through the fabric. I heard they had to fumigate the church afterward.”
“And what about Uncle Jerry?”
“That’s the best part.”
“You haven’t even gotten to the best part?”
“Right. The best part is that Father O’Rourke—in the midst of all this madness, people filing out, choking to death on the stink—hops on Uncle Jerry and starts biting him. The fucking guy’s got dentures. And Uncle Jerry’s still making his sex noises. My father’s disgusted. If there’s one thing he never wanted to see in his life, it’s an old priest biting a clown in a church.”
“Holy shit,” Jack says. “You have a gift.”
“Is that the end?” Francesca asks.
“Pretty much,” Mairéad says. “Someone came and collected Father O’Rourke. My mother took my father by the arm and brought him outside for fresh air. Uncle Jerry was fucking fine. He stuck with clowning for another year but he stopped showing up to family events in his costume. We had to hose Gram down, which you might think would be a vast indignity, but she seemed to like it. I said, ‘Don’t get used to this, Gram. We’re not hosing you down after every poo.’ ”
“You deserve an award for that story,” Jack says.
“Well, thanks. I suppose I was lucky to have witnessed it.”
Lily’s hung up on the way Mairéad says think and thanks, no h, like tink and tanks. Really beautiful.
“I wish I had a story about my grandmother shitting her pants in church,” Francesca says. “I don’t have much money, like a few bucks to my name, but I would give it all to see that happen.”
“You know, once they hit a certain age, odds are better than you’d imagine,” Mairéad says.
They drink and laugh, laugh and drink. Lily and Mairéad have a good buzz going, and Jack remains about as steady as he always is. Lily can’t imagine him getting drunk and out of control. It was a good idea to bring Mairéad over. He seems very happy. Lily’s thankful. She’s thinking that this is what it should be like to come home to family. Everything revolving around laughter and booze. Never mind the state of the house or even the state of the world.
Meanwhile, Lily notices that Francesca’s pretty wasted. Her eyes have gone droopy. Lily feels her pain. A few years ago, her tolerance was nothing. Now it takes an awful lot for her to get wasted. “Can I tell you guys something?” Francesca asks. Her bottom lip is outturned.
“You tired?” Jack says. “You want to lie down? You can take the couch in the living room.” He turns his attention to Lily and Mairéad. “Same goes for you two. If you don’t feel like going anywhere, you can take Amelia’s room. I like having all this life in the house.”
“He killed the guy,” Francesca says. “Bobby did. He killed Max Berry.”
“What’s that now?” Mairéad says.
“He robbed him and he killed him.”
“Did you say Max Berry?” Jack asks.
Francesca nods slowly, drunkenly. “I can’t hold it in. I met Bobby a couple of weeks back. I fell for him. He said he was going to steal some money from this bad guy he worked for and we were going to go out west. It was just a dream.” The edges of her words warped.
“Are you okay?” Lily asks.
Francesca shrugs. “Max has this dumpy office in Bay Ridge. We went there. He was just going to rob the safe, Bobby was. Then we were taking off. That’s what he said. He knew where Max’s gun was. I thought he was bullshitting. And then we were there and it was happening and Bobby had the gun and there was all this stuff in the safe. It belonged to some other guy. Charlie something.” She chirps into her palm, a mix of a hiccup and a belch. “I was handing Bobby duct tape. I was just there. It didn’t feel real. I went outside. He came out and told me he killed him by accident.”
“When did this happen?”
“Last week. They just found Max. His parents found him. I saw it on the news. I didn’t do anything. It was a mistake, being there. I didn’t think Bobby was like that.”
“They found Max Berry dead today?” Jack asks.
Francesca nods.
Jack gets up, goes over to the counter, and turns on his little portable kitchen radio. He scans the AM dial, settling on 1010 WINS. A sad announcer voice booming. Weather. Traffic. Francesca is drifting off at the table. Jack puts water on to boil, probably figuring it might be good to get some coffee or tea in her. Lily wants to ask a million more questions, but she feels weird interrogating a drunk girl. Besides, she doesn’t even know her. She could be a pathological liar. She could be anything. Of course, the name jumped out at Lily. Bobby. Her former stepbrother’s name, but how many Bobbys must there be in the neighborhood, let alone Brooklyn? A fucking Bobby on every block. Two, three Bobbys. Bobbys crawling up out of the sewers.
The story gets mentioned on the news. Briefly, in passing. A murder-robbery in Bay Ridge. The body just discovered. They’re not sure when the crime was committed. Cops suspect it might be mob-involved. Jack shuts off the radio. He mixes coffee grounds and eggshells into the boiling water and lets it go for a couple of minutes. When it’s been long enough, he pours the coffee through a mesh strainer into a mug. He brings the coffee over to Francesca.
“I’m sorry I got so drunk,” she says.
“It’s okay,” Jack says.
Lily prods anyway. “Who’s Bobby? Where’d you meet him?”
“Bobby works for Max. Worked. They came over to my house. My mother was ‘investing’ ”—she puts dramatic air quotes around the word—“with Max.”
“Max Berry runs a Ponzi scheme dressed up as an investment firm,” Jack says.
“You knew him?” Francesca says.
“I’ve heard from a few people he screwed over. Took their investment, promised them high interest rates, delivered for a short time with small payouts, and then all their money suddenly became inaccessible, tied up in investments, whatever. A lot of old timers trusted him and lost their savings.”
“That’s the guy. Big milk drinker too.” Another chirp into her palm. “Anyhow, Bobby called my house later. I was in the city, getting drunk—I guess that’s what I do now—and my mom told me he called when I got in touch to let her know I wasn’t coming home that night. I called him back from a payphone at this bar and he came and met me. We just kind of fell in love, I guess. I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t even like him at first. It was just something to do. He was different from other boys, there was something intense about him. He reminded me of Matt Dillon in Drugstore Cowboy. You ever see that?”
That makes Lily’s ears perk up. Her former stepbrother, Bobby, did in fact bear a slight resemblance to Matt Dillon. Those eyes. A look like he was always surprised. Lily has seen Drugstore Cowboy but she’s thinking more of The Outsiders and Rumble Fish when he was even younger. Bobby did cruise the world with that same kind of dumbly beautiful strut. They never had much between them. He was a few years younger and the marriage between their parents didn’t last that long. A stepbrother’s not a half brother. A stepbrother’s nothing when the marriage ends. Could Francesca’s Bobby be her Bobby? The same kid who once roomed across the hall from her? The same kid she once walked in on cutting his thighs with a sharp kitchen knife and blotting away the blood with one of her mother’s nice hand towels? When Lily asked what he was doing, he said he just wanted to see how it felt. “His name isn’t Bobby Santovasco, is it?”
“How’d you know that?” Francesca says, looking shocked, almost sober for a second.
“He was my stepbrother for a while,” Lily says. She used to look at him and wonder what on earth he could ever be. He was kind of a blank slate. If she usually defined people by what they loved—what books, what bands, what movies—she couldn’t make heads or tails of him. To her, at least, he always seemed passionless. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe there was just too much distance between them. A distance that couldn’t be bridged. They had their different lives already when their folks got together. They co-existed, but there was no bonding moment, no sense of warmth ever, not even a hint of rivalry for affection or otherwise. They were just on different tracks. Even if their parents hadn’t broken up, there probably would have been very little to keep them connected.
Still, this idea that he could rob and kill someone, that doesn’t seem right. Bobby did stupid things, pointless things, but she never got the sense he did or ever would do evil things. She’s thinking, People change, though. He’s what, nineteen now? She’s thinking, Maybe these last few years have been really bad for him. She’s thinking, Not only can’t I picture him killing this Max, but I can’t picture Francesca falling for him. Bobby, ick.
“Wait a sec,” Mairéad says to Lily. “This fella she’s talking about, this is your stepbrother?”
“Former stepbrother.”
“Small fucking world.”
Francesca’s just sitting there, her mouth open, booze-soaked brain on overload. “Bobby was your stepbrother?” Seeming to say it just to hear herself say it. “You know, I’m remembering he did mention having a stepsister at some point. Whoa.” She leans in and taps the envelope containing Lily’s story. “Even said she was a writer.”
“Bobby said that? I wouldn’t even think he knew.”
“He knew. He said it sort of proudly.”
“Where is he?”
Francesca shrugs. “I haven’t seen him in a week. I went back to his apartment with him that day and then ran off. He’s tried calling me a bunch, but I’ve avoided him. I don’t know what to do. I shouldn’t have said anything.” Francesca puts her head in her hands. “Don’t tell, okay?”
“Max Berry was a scumbag,” Jack says. “Did he deserve to die? Probably not. What I’m worried about is the stuff Bobby stole. You said it belonged to a Charlie. How’d you know that?”
“Max said it.”
“Did he say it was Charlie French?”
She looks through her fingers like she’s playing a drunken game of peek-a-boo. “That’s it. You know him?”
