Tom Piccirilli: Headstone City

“Anything will do.”

“I got an '87 Buick GN. A junker I fixed up pretty good. It's not the most gorgeous thing on the road but it'll get you around. I can let it go for a grand.”

“Take it out of my pay.”

It got Pepe's chin firmed up, his lips crimped. He was having trouble holding himself back from putting it on the line. Saying that Dane might not live long enough to pay him the money.

“If I catch two in the head, you can have it back,” Dane told him. “Where's the keys?”

Pepe grinned at that, his own eyes kind of smirky. It really was ugly.

“How about if we just call it a loaner for now? And don't run over any cops while you're in it, okay?”

There are sections of your own history that you've gone through many times before. A track that's become a trench that's become a pit. You just keep going around and around, but each time you're in a little deeper. A pattern so deep-rooted that you fell into it without knowing it was happening. After you took the first step, then the next had to follow, and the next. Laid out before you the same way it had been from the beginning, no matter what.

In the mostly quiet streets off the central plaza, rows of residences towered above the memorial arch to fallen soldiers of both world wars. A broad, tree-lined parkway led straight to the granite arch. Dane drove the GN around Grand Outlook Hall and along Outlook Park, gravel walks flanking the rolling grassy hollow.

He wanted to visit his parents in Wisewood, but with the gardens dying at the approach of autumn, the scent of rotting roses and carnations eddying through the busted floor vents, he found himself passing the entrance leading to their graves.

Instead, he took the long way around and drove the GN down the half-mile square between Outlook Park and the rest of Headstone City. It seemed to be the only way he could move through the neighborhood, this direction, every time.

Staring up at brownstones carved with the faces of the seven deadly sins. Before he'd joined the army he used to see himself in lust. Afterward, more like envy.

Now it was the hang of sloth's relaxed face that reminded him of his own features, the nearly grinning mouth, the semidazed eyes.

He had to do something about that too. His list was getting longer. He had to get moving.

It felt right being back behind a wheel, the thrum of the engine working through his chest. A union of precision between reflex and skill and tuned machinery. As always, he thought about taking it up onto the highway. Imagining the open miles of parkways leading to the Verrazano Bridge, Staten Island, and from there to Jersey and the rest of the world.

But if he got rolling he might never stop. The urge to run was powerful but futile, and it was always there.

Coming around the far edge of Wisewood, he turned the corner, passed the gates, and parked in front of his grandmother's house.

Soon, he hoped, he'd be able to visit his mother and father again. At least on foot. But it wouldn't be for a while yet, and he'd probably never be able to drive it. He was a neurotic bastard, just like Pepe had said. The pattern was too powerful, always drawing him the same way through the neighborhood. No matter how many times he tried it, he always passed up their graves, then had to lie about it later to whoever might ask.

The heady aroma of fresh-cooked pasta swept over him on the front stoop, and he walked in without knocking. He was home, and with the place came another embedded pattern he would never emerge from.

“That you?” Grandma Lucia yelled from the kitchen.

“It's me.”

Like if it wasn't him somebody else could just say, It's me, and that would be all right too.

She plodded out into the living room, carrying seventy-eight years of brass and reliability. Thick and stoop-shouldered, but with large, powerful arms that had spent sixteen-hour days toiling in post-WWII sweatshops down in lower Manhattan, scrubbing factory floors. She'd buried her father, her husband, and her son-all police officers who'd died in the line of duty before they hit thirty-and she just kept struggling forward year after year despite the assaults of the world.

Her presence drew up against him as inflexible as a natural force of the earth, like a thunderstorm. She'd dyed her hair pink and he couldn't stop looking at it. Holy Christ.

“Where the hell's the cannoli !” she shouted.

Eyes wide, feeling that tickle of anxiety he always got when Grandma Lucia used that voice. It was about the only thing that could really get to him anymore. “I forgot.”

“You get so many calls in prison you can't remember me talking to you?”

Mother Mary, that hair, it was searing his retina. “It's been a busy day.”

“Fine, they were for you anyway.” She pulled the drapes back and stared at the Buick. “That an '87?”

“Yeah.”

“It's garbage. You got it from Morales, didn't you.”

“Yeah.”

“What'd you pay?”

“It's kind of a loaner, but he wanted a grand for it.” Saying it with a quiver of shame, knowing Pepe was his only friend, but the guy had still tried to rob him. “I'm working at Olympic again.”

“You got ripped off. He probably gave you the shit Long Island run too. Didn't you learn anything in the slam?”

He thought about it. “No.”

“Come sit down in the dining room, I made ravioli.”

There wouldn't be any small talk. There never had been in the Danetello household. You said your piece, told your story, made your point, then shut the hell up. The silence tended to throw visitors off, especially around the holidays. They'd come in and nobody would be talking, and they'd think the family had been fighting.

Instead, there'd been a precision of conversation. Clipped and sharp, but usually funny. Brutal in the way it carved away the fat and got to the heart of matters. Little laughter when he thought about it, but that didn't mean there'd been bitterness. Or even anger, really. At least not before Ma got sick.

Dane found that there had always been a strange equilibrium between calm and violence. Or maybe it was just him.

Grandma cleared her throat, and he could tell she had subjects to broach. Things she needed to get out, but hoping he'd be the one to start.

It wasn't easy. The house already felt like it was pressing in on him. He could sense the remaining tensions of those who'd lived and died there. Mostly in stillness, but with loud, abandoned thoughts.

His father, a hard man of imperfect justice. His mother, a mere suggestion that dwelled in the house, unseen but still obvious, often coughing. His grandmother, a Sicilian witchy lady of sorts, a soothsayer who didn't soothe. It was her way. At nine, she'd seen the Virgin Mary in an olive grove outside Messina, in the shadow of Mount Etna. She told her local priest, who had burned her with sulfur for speaking with the devil's tongue. You heard about stuff like that and you understood why she loved chapels but hated churches.

Since then, she'd had dreams that gave her a glimpse through the thinnest part of the veil. They informed her of what was happening, who might be visiting Dane from the other side. She called it the burden but didn't treat it as such. It had been passed to him like a rock. Now he had to find out how much she already knew.

Dane still couldn't stop looking at her hair, thinking, Jesus, the hell did she do to herself?

She noticed him staring and slid a hand over the bangs, primping them. “It's magenta.”

“Oh,” he said. “Is that right?”

“Matches my nail polish. You look like you've got something to say.”

“It just takes a little getting used to.”

“You shut up.”

She uncorked a bottle of red wine and poured two glasses. He ate, sipped, and looked around the table at the remaining chairs, empty except for the muscular weight of memory.