“Why Claire,” her mother came up suddenly behind her, “Why sweetheart, don’t cry!”
She didn’t even know she’d been crying, but there it was, hiccupping and sobbing out of her like a child, finishing the job that had started up last night at Johnny’s kindness, taking fuel from her mother’s concerned tone. She cried on and on, amazed all the while that these great gulps of water were coming out of her. She was two people then, one watching, one doing, and the watching side marveled at the wholehearted self-pity involved, marveled that Michaelaen didn’t wake up from her noise, and recalled the smell of the pine needles from the last time … when she’d buried the cat. There had to be some meaning there, but she wasn’t sure what. Strangely enough, that had been the start of some hope in her life, being out on her own without that bastard Wolfgang. Now maybe she was feeling hope, too. You didn’t cry from despair. You breathed shallow breaths and you tried to feel nothing, but you didn’t cry.
“There, there,” her mother was saying. “They’ll find your cameras, Claire. And if they don’t, we’ll get you another. Don’t worry, Claire. Bonnie Claire.”
Bonnie Claire? She looked up and laughed. Her mother hadn’t called her that since she was a child. Ah, poor Mom. What had she gone through back then, losing a son? And telling her now with her face all screwed up in compassion that they’d buy her a new camera. As if they had any money for things like that. As if they had any idea how much even half of her equipment would cost.
“I’m all right, Mom. I’ll be fine. I guess it’s all sort of a strain.”
“Sure a strain is what it is. Why don’t you come along with me to mass?”
“Now, Mom. I’ll be just fine. You know I will.”
“I know. But all the same—”
“No ‘all the same.’ Come on. You’ve dropped your rosary. You don’t want to be late. Look, here comes Mrs. Dixon.” And indeed she was, walking across the lawn in right-angle zigzags to avoid the webs. She rolled her sparkling shopping cart behind her. They’d stop off at Key Food straight from church.
“All right, I’m off. I’ll say a prayer for you, special. Claire?”
“What?” She wished her mother would go already. She didn’t want old Dixon to see her with her eyes all red.
“That John Benedetto drove you home last night, didn’t he?”
“Mmm.”
Her mother still stood there. “All right. I won’t ask questions. Just try not to do that anymore. Go off without a word. I was worried.” She hesitated. “See you later then.”
Claire waved to Mrs. Dixon and the two women sped away, not even giving so much as a nod to Iris von Lillienfeld who stood in distressed admiration of her blooming, eight-foot-tall hollyhock.
Claire wiped her cheeks and walked across the street.
“Guten tag,” she said.
“Good day,” Iris snapped. Her lipstick was awry and an exhausted royal blue Spanish shawl clung limply to her sparrow’s shoulders.
“I … uh … I’ve noticed you out here several times and I wanted to say hello.”
“I guess dat means you gonna say hello now.”
“Oh. Yes. Yes, it does.”
“Vell?”
“Pardon?”
“Something else? You vant something else?”
“No,” Claire decided she could play her game. “I don’t want anything else.” She headed back across the street. Old codger, she grinned to herself. She knew a thing or two about reeling in a trout.
“Pisces,” Mary eyed her husband over the paper. “Try not to worry so much about financial problems.”
Stan looked up from his bowl of Sealtest vanilla-fudge. “Tales of the Vienna Woods” bombinated through the kitchen.
“All your worries will soon be over with the moon moving into Virgo.”
“It doesn’t really say that.” Stan returned to his dessert. He gave it one more squirt of Reddi-Wip.
Mary looked hurt. “Sure it does. Pisces. Right here.”
“Notice how she doesn’t show you the paper, Pop,” Zinnie said. She had her mother’s number. How many times had Mary tried to get her to stay home from work by pleading any old bad omen under Gemini.
Mary threw the paper furiously into the air, losing the page and all threat of investigation.
“Ma,” Carmela said. “You’re so naive.”
“Influenceable I might be, dear. Naive I never was. Naivety is a gift. Something, I might add, that none of my children were born with. The lot of ya come into the world with crisp frowns of revelation tattooed to your foreheads.” She started to sing one of her old Irish songs, old “Molly Malone”: “She wheeled a wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow …” Claire looked up, amused. How she had hated her mother singing those songs when she’d been a girl! It used to embarrass her to no end.