Dave Zeltserman - Killer

“How are you, mom?”

“Fine. And yourself?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good. Your children?”

“Fine.”

“Well, goodbye then.”

She never asks about Jenny, which is expected since the two of them don’t get along, to put it mildly. As far as I go, our weekly conversations are on a par with any we’ve ever had. Our relationship has always been an uneasy truce. I don’t think there was ever a time we felt comfortable together, and while she never said as much in words, she made it clear in actions and attitude that I should’ve been the son to die early, not my brothers, Tony and Jim.

She looks the same since I’ve seen her last. Plump, sturdy frame, gray hair in a bun and as tightly wound as steel wool. Her face round and placid, her legs like small tree stumps. The black dress she’s wearing is hanging off her like a canvas sack. If she were living in a remote village near some forest in Russia, she’d look like the type of woman who could outwrestle a wolf if she had to and make Sunday dinner out of it. In her wedding pictures she was beautiful. Slender, narrow, heart-shaped face, thick black hair that fell past delicate bare shoulders. Hard to believe it’s the same person. I don’t know when she changed. Outside of her gray hair, I can’t remember her ever looking much different than she does now.

I pull the car up next to her. She gets in, and up close I notice how much older she actually looks, her skin more faded and wrinkled, her eyes duller. Still, her face is locked in a dour frown, almost as if it’s been carved out of stone. She asks where her grandchildren are.

“They’re too young for this,” I say.

“I was hoping to see them,” she says, her German-Jewish accent as thick as ever.

“Some other time.”

We both know it won’t be any time soon. How many times have we seen each other in the last ten years? Three times is all I can remember, and I think we both prefer it this way. There’s a discomfort between us. I can feel it in my gut, and even though she’s sitting stoically with her hands folded in her lap, I know she feels it too. It’s funny how I always felt so at ease with my pop, and never with her.

As I’m pulling the car away from the curb I tell her she didn’t have to wait for me outside, that she could’ve waited inside her apartment and I would’ve come and got her. She only hesitates for a second before telling me that she didn’t want me to have to find a parking space, especially given how difficult it can be finding free parking around there. It’s a bald-faced lie. There are a half dozen empty spots in plain view. We both know the reason is because she doesn’t want me in her apartment, and she certainly doesn’t want to have to explain me to any of her friends or neighbors we might bump into. As far as she’s concerned her two sons are dead, and I’ve always been something else entirely.

We drive in silence to the cemetery with neither of us bothering to make small talk. I notice her looking at the Rolex watch Sal Lombard gave me. It was stupid of me wearing it, not that it much matters. I could give her some bullshit explanation about winning it in a poker game or having a good week at the track, but she’ll know I’m lying. She has no reason to think that I do anything other than work in a liquor store, but it’s always been like she knows I make my money other ways than the job I’m supposed to have. I don’t bother explaining the Rolex to her, there’s no point.

On the way to the cemetery I stop off to buy flowers. While I do this, my mom sits silently in the car. When I return I hand her the dozen white roses I bought. Her mouth crumbles for a moment before she gets her emotion under control.

“What about for your brothers,” she says. “You can’t be bothered to buy flowers for them?”

We’re going to the cemetery for the twentieth anniversary of my pop’s death. If she wanted me to buy flowers for Tony and Jim she should’ve said something instead of stewing in all her regret. I feel a vein pulsing along my temple, and I swallow back what I want to say, instead tell her that we can split the roses among all three graves. I know she’s not happy with that, but I’m not about to go back into that store because of some fucking whim of hers, especially with the way she’d been staring earlier at my Rolex.

When we get to the cemetery I have to ask workmen for directions to Pop’s gravesite since this is the first time I’ve been there since the funeral. By this time I’ve calmed down; my mom, though, is still stewing in her resentment, an icy frigidness coming off her in waves, all over some fucking flowers. About what I should’ve expected. Anyway, I don’t care.

I find Pop’s grave. I wait by it while my mom plods along behind me. Pop’s buried in a family plot, Tony and Jim are buried there also, although with Tony the casket’s empty since the army was never able to locate his remains. There are two empty graves there waiting for my mom and me.

When my mom catches up, I hand her the roses to place on the graves. She puts six roses on Pop’s, three each on my brothers’. All three gravestones are modest. With my pop’s, just his name and the years marking his birth and death. Both Tony and Jim’s have them being loving sons, and in Tony’s case, that he died in service of his country. While we stand there, I see a wetness around my mom’s eyes, then a few tears crawling down her cheek. It’s a struggle but she keeps her mouth from crumbling.

We stand at the gravesite for around fifteen minutes, neither of us saying anything. My mom turns first to leave.

While we’re walking to the car I spot a name on a gravestone that I recognize. It’s a guy I hit for Lombard. The gravestone talks about what a wonderful person he was, a loving father and devoted husband. I remembered him as a cocaine-snorting asshole who fucked every whore he could get his dick into. He sold drugs for Lombard, and when DiGrassi found that this scumbag had been ripping Lombard off for five years I was brought into the picture. This loving father offered me his thirteen-year-old daughter to do whatever I wanted with as a way to try to save his ass. I didn’t mind icing him one fucking bit.

I realize my mom’s watching me. From the glimmer in her eyes, she knows that I had something to do with this fucker’s death, probably even knows then what I do to make my money.

Christ, she’s perceptive. Always has been able to look inside me, which pretty much explains why we don’t like to be around each other.

present

I woke up with my head splitting. Squeezing my eyes hard against the sunlight drenching the room, I lay immobilized for a long minute before I sat up slowly, making sure to move at a glacier’s pace to keep those tiny silver daggers from ripping into my brain any more than they were. Once I maneuvered myself into a sitting position, I cradled my head in my hands until I thought I could move. I realized then my cell phone was ringing but there wasn’t a chance I’d be able to reach for it. Instead, each ring sent those daggers ripping deeper into my brain. When I could finally get off the bed, I stumbled to the bathroom and splashed cold water on to my face. I was still doing that when my cell phone rang again. Grabbing a towel to dry off my face, I went back to get the phone.

My eyes weren’t functioning well enough for me to read the caller ID and I croaked into the phone instead, asking what the fuck the person wanted.

“Dad, is that you?”

It was my son, Michael. I sat on the edge of the bed and carefully massaged my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. I apologized to him for the way I answered the call.

“This guy keeps calling and making vague, tough-guy threats,” I explained. “I thought it was him calling again.”