Backstab Read online

  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 it was 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 if their 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 and gravy for dinner. She made biscuits and peach cobbler and blackberry pie….

  “Are you going to eat, or just stare into space?” asked Lyle, calling me back to the present. Lyle Donnegan is the man I love and wish I could live with. I called Lyle after I finished my story on Burt. He liked Burt, so I knew he’d feel bad. He did, too.

  “The poor bastard,” Lyle said. “That’s awful, baby. He was a real gentleman. Are you okay? Come on over.”

  I could see him there in his wing chair, sipping single-malt Scotch. Women take one look at him and get this dreamy look in their eyes. Guys don’t get it. They can’t figure out what we see in Lyle. Part of it is the way he moves, as if he knows what he’s doing. Part of it is his beautiful clothes. I especially like his navy blazer, made for him by Kilgore, French and Stanbury, the London tailor that sounds like an American law firm. The rest is that Lyle is genuinely interested when he’s talking to you, and few women can resist that kind of attention.

  He was waiting for me at the door of his house in the Central West End. He had warmed up some tenderloin in the oven. He has this special recipe. It includes fresh ground pepper, but no salt, because he believes salting meat before you cook it makes it tough. He slow-cooks the meat in the oven and it’s incredibly tender. I hate kitchens, so I’m a sucker for a man who can cook. Lyle sat me down at his dining room table, and made sure I ate one of his tenderloin sandwiches on rye with hot English mustard before we talked about Burt.

  “You and my grandmother have one thing in common,” I told him. “You both feed me when I’m upset.”

  “We try to, but you’re not eating. You keep taking that sandwich apart and putting it back together. Are you thinking about Burt?”

  “No, I was thinking about my parents’ deaths, and how much better my life was after they were gone.”

  A lesser man would have looked shocked, but Lyle let me talk. I picked up the sandwich, and took a bite to please him. Then I said, “My grandparents had that confectionery, I told you that. I had to help out in the store, but I liked that. After school, a lot of neighborhood kids would come in to buy penny candy. I was a big shot because I got to hand them the paper bag filled with ten cents’ worth of Mary Janes, or red licorice whips or candy buttons on paper strips. I also read the comic books first when they came into the shop, before anyone else saw them. I met a lot of interesting people, too.”

  I could see the customers coming into my grandparents’ store. I could hear the bell on the door that announced their entrance:

  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.