As Jo took the stone path up to the grave, she saw Calla Borelli in the distance, which reminded her to send a mass card to the house. She wasn’t close to Calla, but she knew that she was a friend of Nicky’s, and that meant she was important to Jo.
Jo stopped at the water pump to fill the can. Carrying the large bouquet in one arm like a newborn infant, she held the can with her free hand. As she turned the corner, she saw Nancy Palazzini sitting on the marble bench outside the mausoleum. Her instinct was to turn around, go home, and bring the flowers later, but Jo decided to proceed.
“Good morning, Nancy,” Jo said to her sister-in-law.
Nancy turned to face her, dabbing away her tears. “Hello, Jo.”
“The flowers are so pretty this year. I listened to Sal Spatuzza and put coffee grounds in the dirt as soon as the snow thawed, and look at this color.”
“So blue.”
“Like a twilight sky.” Jo arranged the flowers in the vase, a metal cone that hung in the center of the iron fence, and poured the water into the cone, all the way to the brim. She took a couple steps back and then moved in and fluffed the blossoms before turning down the path to go.
“Jo? Thank you. Today it’s six years since Ricky died.”
“Today?”
Nancy nodded. Jo sat down beside her. “I can’t imagine.”
“Don’t.”
The years of estrangement settled around them like a low fog. Time didn’t fall away, nor did it evaporate into the air. The women felt the weight of their estrangement every day, the ballast coming from guilt.
Nancy and Jo had meant something to each other, beyond their forced sisterhood from marriage to the brothers. They had married around the same time and had babies close together. The jokes were at the ready when they walked down the street with their prams. “What are you girls putting in the gravy over there? The Palazzini men only make boys.”
Nancy and Jo were there for one another when the babies had a fever or later when two of the boys were twelve and decided to go joyriding in a spare cab and were picked up by the cops in Queens Village. The women had given much thought to the bond that had broken between them when the brothers separated. Why hadn’t they done something? Perhaps they had so much work to do back then, they couldn’t take on one more project: making peace. It didn’t help that their friendship had been destroyed for the most superficial of reasons: they were different and did things differently, and when their husbands argued, they found reasons to feed the fury instead of stopping it.
Jo had come to the conclusion shortly after the breach that the argument wasn’t worth the loss of the family, but she remained silent.
Nancy had not come to the same place until Ricky was killed in the war, and then, only because she wanted everyone that had ever known and loved her son to help her remember every moment they might recall of his life. She would spend the next six years filling in the details like a watercolor, some aspects delicate, a few hazy, others saturated, but all of them together did not create a portrait of Ricky, just a pale version of the original. But she’d take it. Nancy was grateful whenever Ricky was remembered.
“I read your letter all the time,” Nancy said.
“I tried to remember everything about him.”
“You did.”
“I’m no writer.”
“You wrote beautifully.”
“I’m sorry Dom wasn’t there for Mike—”
“Mike wouldn’t have gone to Dominic either.” Nancy kept her gaze on the flowers.
“It’s a shame.”
“For everyone. What is a family, Jo?”
“A group of people that love each other and share a common history,” Jo said plainly.
“I wish it were true.”
“The love is there.”
“But not the history. We’ve lost sixteen years. Nobody on your side shared our grief when Ricky died. Until you wrote to me. That’s why your letter meant so much. You took the time. That’s love.” Nancy nodded.
“That’s what a sister does. At least, that’s what I believe.” Jo stood up and went to the flowers and moved the stems to reconfigure the flowers. “But it wasn’t enough. I didn’t fight hard enough for you. I guess I’m the martyr everybody says I am. I let my husband keep this vendetta going when I should have stopped it. And now my boys will pay for my weak character. I can see the cracks now. When brothers are cruel to one another and cut each other out of each other’s lives, it’s like a recipe that’s handed down. The ingredients don’t change, therefore the dish doesn’t either. My boys will turn on one another at some point because it’s what they know.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Some families inherit money, others flat feet; we got two hard-headed husbands who want to be right more than they want to keep the peace. As if they know what’s right.” Jo stood to go.
Jo placed her hand on Nancy’s as a beam from the afternoon sun lit the bright blue hydrangeas.
“That’s the exact blue I painted the boys’ room when they were little. Remember? You picked it.” Jo pointed.
“I painted our boys’ room the same color.” Nancy smiled.
“Still the same?” Jo asked.
“Long gone. You?”
“Long gone.”
Jo followed Nancy down the long gravel path out of the cemetery. When they reached the street, they embraced before parting, one went east, the other west, but somehow that day, they went in the same direction.
*
Calla stood in the kitchen of her family home. Her sisters, their husbands, and their families had left, and for the first time since their father died, she was in the house alone.
A ceramic lamp, a tiered crystal serving dish, and a small silver clock were arranged neatly on the kitchen table, each item labeled “Helen.” On the counter, stacked neatly, was the full set of her mother’s formal china, a Rosewood pattern given to her by their grandmother, labeled “Portia.” Calla put her hands in her pockets and walked out of the room through packing boxes, walls stained with the shadows of time where there had once been a work of art or a mirror.
This was now her life.