Bernie stares at me, his fat little fingers keep pushing that one strip of hair against his red scalp, again and again. He peers at me, blinking, with giant gray, watery eyes. “Goddamn, you look just like her.”
“I’m Joan’s twin? I’m looking for Joan?” My statements come out like questions. A fan whirls overhead, and I can hear somewhere in the kitchen the distant calls of a baseball game on television.
“Patrice, did you invite her to sit down? Get a drink of water?” Bernie tears his eyes away from mine for a second and glares at his wife. She shakes her head.
“I didn’t do anything, Bern. I can hardly think. You want a glass of water, or something dear? I just made pizzelles. They were for Lorraine’s baby shower but my God, that recipe makes so much . . .” She ambles into the kitchen and Bernie and I are left alone.
He coughs once. “I know I’m staring at you, I just can’t help it. You look so much like my little girl. We’ve known about you, and talked for years about maybe looking you up, but Pat’s had a hard time and we weren’t sure, you probably had a family, who knows?”
Patrice comes back, extending a glass plate of golden snowflake cookies, dusted with powdered sugar, and she shimmies into a chair opposite mine. They both study me, and I shift uncomfortably, reaching for a cookie. They’re light, flaky, and sweet, and I close my eyes. For a moment, I want this. These people, with their buttery cookies and their quiet homemade dinner in front of the Mets game and their family baby shower and church bake sales. I feel gypped.
“Honey, what can we do for you?” Patrice reaches out, her long nails tapping my knee. Every finger has a gold ring on it.
“I’m, um, looking for Joan. Is she here?” They haven’t made one move to get her. Yet, Caroline was clear that she lived here, with her parents.
Bernie and Patrice exchange glances and she takes my hand in hers.
“Honey, I don’t know how to tell you this.” Patrice does a quick sign of the cross. “But our Joanie died three years ago.”
CHAPTER 22
The room is hot, stifling, and the clock over the mantel starts its song. Three o’clock.
“She’s dead?” I repeat. There’s a wad of pizzelle stuck in the back of my throat and I start to cough. Patrice hands me my water glass and I gulp it, gratefully, wiping a drip from my chin.
“She was killed in a hit-and-run. She was a pedestrian and . . .” Bernie’s voice peters out while his mouth keeps moving. He gives a little shrug, like it happens. “It’s New York,” he finally finishes.
“She didn’t even live here anymore.” Patrice stamps her foot, suddenly bitter, her painted toenails flash inside peep-toe bedroom slippers. “She was married, moved to Manhattan, hardly ever came back.”
Bernie pats the couch next to him and Patrice stands up, relocates. He leans into her and closes his eyes, his lips move almost as though in prayer. Patrice wipes fat tears from under her eyes with her thumb.
“I’m sorry, honey, we do pretty good most days. It’s been three years after all. I never go a day without thinking of her, but I don’t cry so much anymore. But you. You’re a shock. Just how you look, your mannerisms. It’s all our Joanie.”
“Can you tell me about her?” I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I can’t leave yet.
“She was a kind person, that’s what everyone at her service said. That she was the kindest person they’d ever met. She’d help anyone. Small animals, children. She gave money to the homeless, always. Anyone with a hat or a bucket or a coffee can. It didn’t matter what they were doing, she didn’t care.”
“‘They’re not begging, they’re busking.’ She always said that.” Bernie rocks back on his haunches, his big hands covering his bare knees. He laughs. “I thought it was so na?ve.”
“She worked at the library. She had friends. She had a life, not a big one, but a life nonetheless.” Patrice waves her finger at me, her mouth twisted in anger. “Then she meets Mr. Fabulous at some library charity event and poof! She’s gone. Eloped! Not even a Catholic wedding for her mama. Some big fancy honeymoon in Paris. Paris! She’d always wanted to go to Italy.”
“Patrice.” Bernie shrugs. “She fell in love. Happens to all of us,” he nods over at Patrice with a wry smile, “at one time or another.”
“Then where’d she go, eh?” She leans in, rests an elbow on her knee. “When she died, we hadn’t talked to her in almost a year. She was mad at me.” She straightens her collar. “I didn’t want her to move away. Her life was here.”
“She grew up, you know. That’s what kids do.” Bernie rolled his eyes in Patrice’s direction and she sat back, harrumph, against the couch cushion.