Jim Shepard - Kiss of the Wolf

We are responsible for the bad things that happen to us. My best friend during my two years of college, Mary Mucci, she used to say that all the time. Her boyfriend was a Christian Scientist — we all have our crosses to bear — and he talked like that. Her mother had a stroke, her little sister drank, and she developed this spinal thing, and the way they saw it, she wasn’t off the hook for any of it.

When I told my mother that Gary was history, the first thing she said was, Oh, my God, come over here, bring Todd, stay the night. The second thing she said was, What’d you do?

I took a week off at school. They understood. Nancy covered some of my classes. It was like maternity leave: abandonment leave. For a few weeks I was excused as lay reader at the church.

I talked to Father Cleary. My mother’s idea. I told him the same thing I told her. I had no idea, this woman’s name had never come up, things had been more or less fine between us. Shock to Joanie. Out of the blue. You think you know someone, etc.

The lies I told them are the lies I tell myself.

So now I sit at my desk and go through my address book. It’s not a pretty sight. Whole letters of the alphabet are empty. Not just Q ’s and X ’s, either. Where’re the F ’s? Where’re the J ’s? I don’t know anyone whose name begins with J ? Some letters have, like, on a whole page, one uncle listed. I sit here with a new daily planner, amazed at the white space.

Shopping, sitting around, going to Mass, I feel pitiful. I should: I look pitiful. I’m heavier, got circles under my eyes. When I went back to school to finish the year, my kids knew. Every day was agony. I was being pitied by high school kids. Even now I get looks, like I’m walking around with a sign that says, I’m alone, I’m unhappy, don’t be mean to me.

Now it’s like people see me and say, What’s the opposite of envy?

I’ve gone out a little since. Though then I feel guilty: that’s even less time with Todd. He’s still a kid, and even on the best days he’s alone most of the time. I’m not the kind of mom to sit him down for a heart-to-heart over a plate of sugar cookies. Now he’s getting his father’s talent for shifting rooms to avoid people. Somebody comes over, he’s like a ghost: whatever room you’re in, he’s not. Sometimes I imagine a light like a little moon that won’t let us stray too far apart, a safety light he can carry in the dark when he’s alone.

What do I say to him that’ll help, that he can take with him, that’ll save him from trouble? What kind of advice that he wouldn’t formulate for himself?

What do I offer in place of his father?

Sometimes I want to get out and away from everything so much I think about a time Todd was playing outside and the dog couldn’t get to him, was stuck inside with me, and the way she stood there and would not give up, the way she gave me, over and over, that pure, insistent whine and that look at the door, like that was all she wanted.

I’m Catholic. I still have the little Nativity scenes and peekaboo Blessed Virgins from the spelling bees. When I don’t sin, I forget all about it. When I do, I remember.

The family’s helped. My mother, too, though she’s a pain in the ass. I feel bad for her. She keeps at it, keeps up her end, manages to have fun, even though the way she sees it, life’s a series of setups and disappointments. You can tell from the way she looks at things: the house, the addition they never put on, my father. Poor Nina’s family is too good-natured, pays its bills on time, never cuts corners, always grabs for the check, gets kicked in the ass for its trouble. Poor Nina just makes things worse for herself. And it’s true: it annoys her that she annoys people. She’s mostly sad, but her sadness reminds everybody else of hostility. When she says to me, Your father’s too good-hearted, it doesn’t sound anything like a compliment. I’m one of my mother’s disappointments, too, now. I’m just beginning to realize that.

I give her credit. She’s married twelve years, she finds a note — a corner of another piece of paper, she showed it to me — under the dial thing on the phone. They have to make new arrangements, he’ll call from out west. She said to me when she told me, “Ma, new arrangements.”

What do you do? The house was paid for and she had the job at the school. No one was going to starve. So what do you do? Help her out, little things here and there. Get her to get a lawyer after him. For a few weeks they ate over. I cooked extras, lasagna, stew, you could freeze it, it’d keep for a while. We cleaned. She was never one for a clean house, but she wanted his stuff out . He wrote a letter from wherever he was, said he’d send for his things. She said he could send for whatever he liked, it’d all be out on the street. Which is where it went. She had boxes full of his crap on the curb. Bicycle outfits, sweaters, magazines, pictures in frames, baseball gloves. When you looked into the box, you saw things like playing cards and rings at the bottom. It was hard on Todd, so we tried to get her to stop, but she got wild, so we gave up. Todd sat on the front porch and watched her lug stuff out until Sandro made him come inside. Before he went, he took a few things out of the boxes, to keep. Sandro let it go. What are you going to do: take things out of the kid’s hands?

People in cars came from all over Connecticut, stopped and poked around and picked out what they wanted. Maybe two people came to the house to see if it was all right. We pleaded with her to save some stuff or at least have a tag sale, but forget it, she didn’t want to hear it. Some wedding stuff she left in the attic. That was it. Finally Sandro took three boxes of what was left to the Salvation Army. Todd was so upset watching it go that I felt bad for Sandro.

It was a sin.

You just try and convince everybody it’s not the end of the world.

You feel bad for the kid. What’s he know? What’s he supposed to make of all this? And for her.

She says, “Ma, I feel bad for you. This’s all been hard on you.” That’s the kind of heart she’s got. I tell her we all have our crosses to bear. Her father and I were lucky: she never got into drugs, did okay in school. Was never too wild. The Ciufolos, they were dealing whatever they were dealing years before they got caught. Now their mother visits them up in Danbury prison. And poor Mrs. Palasino, she’s raising a grandson, the parents took off.

Joanie’s husband wasn’t gone two days, Bruno Minea was over here, asking how she was. Mr. Bacigalupe, I call him. I said she was fine, thanks, and however she was, she wasn’t receiving visitors. She’s pretty, she’s still got her looks, so every ragazzo in town’s gotta sniff around, and every one of them thinks, you know, this is damaged goods, anyway. It’s like I told her: in Filene’s Basement you don’t handle the clothes the way you do upstairs. We were over the DeFeos’; Bruno sat next to her the whole time. He’s had his eye on her twenty years; twenty years he hasn’t had a good thought about her. They go back all the way to Blessed Sacrament. You see the look on his face around her we used to see from the dogs around the butcher’s. I told her, with him sitting right there, just like my mother told me: when he’s talking to you, you keep a volto sciolto pensiero stretto —an open face and a closed mind.

For a while she was feeling better. So what does she do? Her husband tells her to fly to Chicago, they need to talk. She flies to Chicago. Todd was up all night, every night. He stayed with us. Every five minutes: when were we gonna hear? Sandro almost went out of his mind. So they talked, nothing happened, she came home. The poor kid, he was a wreck. Joanie didn’t say anything for a few days, then she came over, sat with me here in the kitchen, and cried. She said, “Ma, what’d I do wrong? What’d I do?”