"So what did you like about him?" I asked, turning the car up Taurus Street.
"I guess I liked that he seemed to be in his own world but that he also wanted me to be a part of it."
"Fair enough," I said, turning the car onto Crow Street.
"This town has odd street names."
"Bird streets run east to west, northern constellation streets run north to south."
"There a story behind that?"
"There're actually a few."
We pulled up to the Lorenzo house, and the street on both sides was lined with cars, including the town's four police cruisers and one state police cruiser. I guided us down a nearby alley. "I don't think we're breaking any laws parking here," I said. We got out and began walking to the Lorenzo house.
"It's windy like Chicago here," Claire said. "But gloomy like Seattle."
"I wouldn't know."
"You haven't been anywhere outside the area?"
I didn't answer. We passed a house with a pine tree crisscrossed with tinsel and gumball-like lights. "So is there a Christmas tree up at the Burke compound?" I asked.
"There is," she said. "What about at the Conroy compound?"
"Soon." We stopped in front of the Lorenzo house, its red siding and twin upstairs windows giving the façade an appearance of a reddened face in mid-sneeze. Maria stood on the porch, leaning against the wall, hands in pockets, head down. "Maria?" I said. She looked up, and Claire and I walked through the front gate and up the front steps. Maria was dressed in her state police winter gear, thick coat and black boots. Her hair was a bit longer from the last time I saw her, and it was twisted up in a bun. Her face was white from the cold air, her eyes were red from tears.
"Milton," she said, straightening up. She eyed Claire.
"Hello, Maria. This is Claire Burke, Bentley's wife and editor from the Banner."
"Where's Liz?" she asked.
"Well, Liz is at home right now, and we're kind of here on newspaper business. Claire and I just heard about your father. We're both sorry—"
"Are you really, Milt?" she said. "Didn't seem you'd be too sorry from your book."
"Oh," I said. I don't remember if I smiled. Claire later said I did, but it didn't matter. "Okay, so you read my book."
"Really made us look good, Milton."
I took out my notepad. "Could you tell me what happened to your father?"
"Jesus," Claire whispered.
Maria looked at me, mouth agape.
"Look, I won't apologize for my book, Maria. Never. Your Blackbridge probably isn't one that I'd recognize, your life wasn't like mine, and if the worst you have to deal with is having a brother who's got to pay for past sins, then I'd say you're doing okay. Now I have to put together a story on your father. You can help me, or I can go to others. I can go to the Lackawanna M.E.'s office and find out cause of death, or I can go through—"
"Heart attack," Maria said. "They think that's all it was."
I scribbled it down. "Had he been dealing with heart problems for a while?"
"He didn't take care of himself," Maria said. "Especially after Mom died. He just kind of let everything go."
"Like?"
"Diet, attitude. Mom was everything to him, you know."
"So they had a close marriage?" I asked.
"Look, Milton, I know you're doing a job, but I really don't want to talk now, okay? Can we do this later?" She shoved her hands back into her coat pockets.
I closed my notebook. "Sure," I said. I pulled out one of my new business cards and handed it to her. "Office number's on top, cell number's beneath that."
"I'll meet you in an hour," she said.
"Okay, where?"
"High school parking lot," she said, grabbing the card and slipping into the house. As the door opened, I saw Anthony Lorenzo milling about next to a dark wood china hutch. His face looked swollen, his hair gray-flecked.
The door shut, and Claire turned to me. "Little bad blood there?" she asked.
"See? You can do this journalism stuff, too. You've got a keen eye."
"I want a keen cup of coffee," she said. "You two can hash things out in the high school parking lot if you want."
***
I ran the car heater full blast as I sat in the parking lot, looking at the blocky high school building that was closed up for Christmas break. The hilltops were lost in snow clouds, smeared and hazy, the red antenna beacons glowing angrily. Stray flakes swirled and fell over the lot, and a bright blue locomotive pulled a line of hoppers and boxcars over the Susquehanna bridge from which Mom had jumped. On the other side of the building were the cafeteria windows where I watched the seasons change for four years. I wondered if the metal bench was still outside.
A knock on the passenger's side window pulled my mind back into my body. Maria looked through the window, and I waved her in. She opened the door, and thick snowflakes fluttered onto the dashboard and floor as she got in and sat down, closing the door with a thud.
"You know I can arrest you for trespassing on school property."
"And I can sue you and the state police for entrapment since you directed me to come here," I said.
"You've changed, Milt."
"Have I?"
"You think you would have said something like that when you were in high school?"
"I don't think I would have been hanging around high school in my downtime," I said. "Which reminds me: Why are we meeting here?"
"I didn't think you'd want to talk to me at my house or at your house, so it was the first thing I could think of," Maria said. "Word really getting around about your book, which is pretty interesting considering how few people in this town read."
"Should I be afraid?" I asked.
"You're not as afraid as you used to be," she said. She took off her hat, and her hair, pulled out of its bun, spilled over her shoulders. "Dad was embarrassed by what you wrote about Tony. Just kept reading it over and over."
"I really hope you're not trying to blame me for his death."
"I'm not. Like I said, Dad stopped taking care of himself long ago. Everyone knew what an ass Tony was. Guess it's just harder to take when it's in print. How's Liz?"
"You seem interested in her," I said.
"She's interesting," she said. "When you walked out that day we talked a bit. I noticed that sometimes she's elsewhere when people talk to her."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, she's listening but . . . not. I don't want to say she spaces out, but you can see her mind working through things. After you left, I told her about Tony and how he treated you. Told her how I'd see you just run home to avoid the other kids, how I'd tell other kids to lay off."
"And why did you do tell other kids to lay off?" I asked.
"Because," she said, shrugging. "You had no one else to stand up for you. Everyone knew how scared your mom was of your dad, how your family lived in that house over the cemetery. Some people said they heard screams inside the house, that they sounded different from the screams from The Swamps and the forest. You know my dad once talked to yours?"
"When was this?"
"I think you were a freshman in high school. My dad saw your dad yelling at your mother in their car outside town hall. Dad walked up to the car, knocked on the window with his baton, told your dad that if he ever saw him doing that to your mom or you again he and Lieutenant Lucci would take him out to The Swamps and give him the once over. When I saw Dad do that, it made me feel real proud." Maria's eyes watered and reddened. Outside, the snow swirled like fireflies. "People knew what you were going through, Milton," she said. "Some tried to help, you know. It must've been hard to see that, but some people cared. You just needed to look around."
"I told Liz," she continued, "just how amazed I was that you made it through high school and how you got into college on your own."
"What did she say?" I asked.
"She said she wasn't
surprised, and she said she wished how you'd give yourself more credit. She wished you were happier with yourself."
I turned to the windshield. The clouds wrapped the hills in gray blankets. A brilliant blue wisp floated through the snowy haze on the opposite hillside and hovered next to the riverbank.
"Will Lucci be taking over for your dad?" I asked.
"He doesn't want it. Told me he's getting ready for retirement. Nobody wants the damned job. Everyone just seems used to their usual lot."
"Everyone's used to what they have," I said.
"The Blackbridge way," Maria said.
"So what's next for the Blackbridge police department?"
"New police chief."
"And you?"
"Haven't figured that out," Maria whispered. She was looking at the hat in her hands, pushing and pulling at its edges.
"I'm sorry about what happened at Veronica's," I said.
"I know."
"I'm sorry about your dad."
"Yeah," she said, wiping her nose and putting her hat back on. "Me too." She opened the door, and snowflakes fluttered into the car. She closed the door and waved a gloved hand at me. I waved back, and Maria walked to the patrol car that she'd parked three spaces away. As she pulled away, I sat in the parking lot watching the snow clouds creep closer to the base of the hills. The Blackbridge streetlights and bridge lights turned on. The wisp across the river was joined by a second, and they traveled up the hillside together before disappearing into the cloudbank.
***
The tree sat on a footstool that Liz had brought up from the basement and polished with spray wax. It was a three-foot-high potted blue spruce, its roots crammed into a tall red-foil-wrapped pot. Around the pot, Liz had wrapped a long red tree skirt that draped over the footstool and onto the floor. She'd strung strands of silver tinsel and white lights over its branches, and in the gray light of the late afternoon, their reflection gleamed in the living room windows behind the tree.
"You've been busy," I said.
Liz stood next to the tree, looking it up and down, her right hand gently gripping the lights' wire.
"Living trees are better than dead ones," she said, as if talking to the spruce itself.
"I've never planted a tree."
"Neither have I, so this'll be our first." She smiled. "It's going to snow a lot today."
"So I hear." I dropped my coat and bag on the corner chair and pointed at the tree. "How'd you fit this in your car?"
"I didn't," she said. "Cashman's Gardening dropped it off. It looks nice, don't you think?" Her skin was aglow in soft Christmas light. Tinsel reflections splotched her face like dappled sunlight.
"It does." She walked toward me, and the tree lights went out. She put her arms around me and buried her face in my chest. "I think the plug got knocked out," I said.
"I hope the tree grows a long time," she said, rubbing her left cheek against my chest, staring at the wall. "A long time after I'm gone." I kissed the top of her head, and she looked up. "Come on," she said, "walking me to the kitchen."
Around the base of the tree, the electrical plug was still neatly wrapped in its factory-twisted coil, the prongs still covered in their protective plastic covers.
***
When evening arrived, Liz uncoiled the cord, removed the prong covers, and plugged in the lights. We sat on the loveseat and watched the lights blink on and off. "If you listen," she whispered, you can hear the lights sing.
I listened, heard a barely-audible high-pitched buzz as the lights coursed with current. "I hear electricity," I said.
"That's their song. Singing like birds. They emit fields all around themselves, Milton, just like power lines by the roadside or antennas on the hills. Energy just scattering anywhere and everywhere." She leaned against me, transfixed by the twinkling lights that reflected in the dark night window. We watched the lights and watched the snow flutter by the windows like butterflies.
We went to bed late that night as snow pelted the windows like sand. She slept quietly in my arms.
Chapter Twelve
Two days before Christmas, the funeral procession made its way to Riverview Cemetery, the roadsides and hillsides now covered in snow. From our porch, Liz and I watched the line of cars, civilian and police, snake through the main gate and settle at the cemetery's eastern edge. Liz and I stepped off the porch and walked to the cemetery, my gloved hand in hers. She was dressed in her cranberry winter coat, and her black bangs were covered by a thick wool cap pulled over her ears. We walked over the salted sidewalk and turned into the cemetery, following the gathering of cars and mourners. Some headstones were completely snow covered or ice glazed. Some were swept clear by family members and had their candles relighted, casting soft red glows over the cold white carpet. My parents' markers remained piled high with fresh snow. They'd stay that way until the snowmelt three weeks later.
We walked in silence, our boots crunching snow and roadside gravel. We stood at the edge of the gathering of mourners and listened to the distant words of a Catholic priest who spoke of love and service and being one with a creator. Maria stood beside the coffin with her brother. She was wearing her state police dress uniform, and he was wearing a long black coat with a gray scarf wrapped around his neck, his face beet red in the frozen morning.
Liz and I had attended the memorial service the previous night, sitting in the back of the funeral parlor, watching people whom I'd known in high school walk in, hug others, then sit in the nearest empty chair. The casket was closed, and a picture of a square-faced man with short gray hair, round glasses, and two chins smiled out at the mourners and guests. In his face I saw Maria's eyes and Anthony's nose. There were prayers and rosaries, and I said none but sat quietly with Liz, who stared straight ahead at the casket. Red candlelight danced over the white ceiling, and I thought of wisps floating over a snowscape.
When the memorial was over, Maria came back to me and Liz. Liz hugged her, said she was sorry, and I hugged Maria and realized that she was only the third person in my life whom I'd hugged. "Thanks for coming, Milton, and for the flowers," she said, pointing to the large spray of white mums, snapdragons, and lilies on an easel at the foot of the casket.
"You're welcome," I said.
"How're you feeling?" Liz asked.
Maria shrugged. "Doing fine, considering. I'm hoping the ground will be thawed enough so they can, you know."
"I'm sure everything'll work out," I said.
Maria turned around, then turned to me again. "You know, Anthony's here."
"I know," I said.
"I don't know if you'd like to say something—"
"Can you pass along my condolences?" I asked.
Maria nodded. "Okay." She managed a tight smile, then hugged Liz again. "Good to see you," she said. Then she hugged me again and waved to both of us. "Have to make the rounds," she said. "Hope you'll be at the service."
"We'll be there," I said.
"Thanks, Milton." Maria turned and moved down the line of chairs, shaking hands, hugging, giving her thanks. Anthony sat next to the coffin, staring at his father's picture.
When we left the memorial, we walked into a cold night, air raking our faces with icy fog that had crept up from the rivers.
"Why didn't you say anything to her brother?" Liz asked.
"Maria can pass along my condolences," I said, wrapping my scarf over my chin. Streetlights and headlights were haloed in the fog, and Liz's face became smoothed over with white and gray mist.
"His dad just died," she said.
"My dad died, too, and I don't recall getting a single sympathy flower from him. Then when my mom jumped off a bridge, Anthony Lorenzo used it as a source of personal entertainment."
"You could be the bigger person."
"I thought I was being the bigger person by not cracking jokes about his father," I said. "Maybe this is his first taste of mortality, I don't know. Bu
t I'm not going to assuage his feelings when he did so much to damage mine."
"Don't get locked in being angry all the time," Liz said. "It's going to just lock you in place."
I stopped and raised my hands. "Locked in place? You're starting to sound like Bentley."
"That past life isn't a life. It's just memories, just a steady state you're still locked into."
"You're not using physics-speak on me, are you?"
"All I'm saying"—she took a deep breath—"is that you need to be you and stop being just a reaction to people."
"You're saying I should forget everything I went through."
"Of course not," Milt. She stopped, placed her hands in front of her mouth as if in prayer, then folded her arms. "What I'm saying is that you keep letting others shape your present through your past. Everything you did growing up was a reaction, and you did what you had to do to get through every day. I think about you, and I'm amazed how strong you were to get through that life. But, Darling, your life now isn't your life. It's a series of strategies you created to protect yourself. But you don't have to do that anymore. You've got people who care about you, you've got a talent that's yours and no one else's. You need to start being Milton instead of Milton's shadow."
The street became thicker with fog, and cars streamed from the memorial service, headlights and taillights swallowed in white soup.
"If I'm this rotten person," I said, "why'd you marry me?"
"Because you're not a rotten person, Milton. Because I met someone who loved me without reservation, but I worry that you don't feel the same way about yourself." She grabbed my hand and pulled me close. "I know you're angry at Maria's brother, and maybe you feel as though you have a score to settle with some of the people in this town. Okay, you've got plenty of reasons for feeling that way, but I don't want you being angry forever or feeling that the score settling never ends. Because if you don't do that, you'll never be the Milton that I know's in there." She pointed at my chest.
We started walking south along Orion Street.
"So you regret marrying a damaged man," I said.
"I never regret marrying you, Milton. And I never will. No matter what happens."
And that morning two days before Christmas, we stood at the edge of the group of mourners, the icy sun of winter wiping shadows from the snow, the Lackawanna River murmuring from the cemetery's edge. We stood together as the service ended, as the casket was lowered into the earth, as everyone began piling into their cars and driving back to the Lorenzo home, as Maria stood by the graveside by herself looking down at the grave into which her father was lowered. She looked over at us, and we waved slowly. She waved back and smiled sadly before stepping into her patrol car and driving away.