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?”

I didn’t say anything. But I wanted to tell her this story I remembered, from back in Italy: this guy worked the land for this baroness and lived a long way from her. One day she sent for him, said she wanted to see him. So he walks this whole way to see her, and when he gets to the gates of the villa, there she is, way off by the house. And she makes a sign for him to stop where he is. And she looks at him through this telescope she has, just looks at him, him standing there at the gate holding his hat. Then she waves her hand, bye-bye, bye-bye, and sends him away.

My dog’s name is Audrey. She’s half Irish setter, half beagle. When we tell people that, they always look at us like, half what and half what? But she is. She’s a little bigger than a beagle, and her coat’s red like an Irish setter’s. My dad got her for us, upstate. He named her after Audrey Meadows from “The Honeymooners.” She was free. She’s nine years old. She had growths on her side, but the vet said they didn’t mean anything. He cut one off. She has white hairs on her muzzle, from stress.

I want to go to lacrosse camp this year, but I probably won’t. My mom doesn’t even know I want to go. I don’t have a stick or anything, but I borrowed a friend’s and really liked it. I watched the NCAA championships on TV. Princeton won. I was rooting for Syracuse.

School’s been over for two weeks. In gym we did crab ball, which was good but hurt your hands. We finished gymnastics. I was good on the rope climb, once I got used to the way it swayed near the top. I was a star on the springboard. I was best on the pommel horse. I sucked on the uneven parallel bars. Which is a girl’s thing.

I live alone with my mother.

We see a lot of my mother’s parents — Nina and Sandro, I call them. My friends say, God, you call your grandparents that? I go, Yeah. That’s their names. My father’s parents we hardly ever see. I guess they’re ashamed.

When my dad left, he left a note on the phone. That was it. He mighta snuck into my room and said good-bye or something, but I don’t know. I’m a light sleeper. He sent me a letter that was two pages long once he got out to Colorado, but it was not real informative. I sent him back this card I made of Audrey flying an F-16 and hanging a paw out the canopy. Audrey was saying, “WHEN ARE YOU COMING BACK?” He wrote and thanked me like that wasn’t a serious question.

The day I got his letter I watched cable twenty-three straight hours, nine in the morning to eight in the morning, still my record. My mom was a wreck. I saw the strangest ending to any movie ever. The movie was called Half Angel. There’s a good gangster and a bad gangster. At the end the good gangster goes to kiss the girl, and right in the middle of it his friend starts this gross story about this other gangster who kills everybody. His friend goes, “Yeah, Bugs himself was drooling with the lust of slaughter.” That’s exactly what he said, and the movie ends like that. I watched it twice, at 1:00 A.M. and 4:00 A.M., because I couldn’t believe it.

A few weeks after my father left, my mother and I had a fight. We had more fights than that, but this was a big one. I broke about seven things in my room, and my mother kicked open the door. She broke the lock. It was like martial arts or something. Later she said, “When did you ever have it so bad? What did we ever do to you?” So I said, “Okay,” and told her about the time we went to Moodus Lake to look at the property they bought and never did anything with. We went there like once every three years to prove to ourselves we still had it. We never used it. Where our part was, the water was all weedy and gross, like a swamp, and there was no driveway in — you had to walk through the woods — and not even a good place to camp. We all went up there, and they went off to talk to the owner of the land association or somebody and told me to lock the doors and not let anybody in and wait where I was. Where was I going? We were pulled off this dirt road in the middle of the woods. One side of the car had like smashed branches up against the windows. I just sat there. They couldn’t find him. It was like they were gone forever. Then they couldn’t find the car. They took the wrong trail or something. It got dark. I was in the backseat. I had the radio on. I thought it’d be good for them if I ran the battery down, and then I thought that was stupid, because we’d all be stuck here when they got back. Even so, I left it on. And the disc jockey or whoever must’ve put a stack of records on the turntable and gone away, because something stuck, and the station played “Down in the Boondocks” like fifty times in a row. The guy announced it once, and then it just kept coming on. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t change the station or turn it off. I kept thinking the next time the guy would come in and stop it. I wanted to see if he’d apologize, or what. I don’t know what happened. Finally I got too scared for the battery and turned it off. I could still hear the song in my head. It was pitch-black, and there were all these cricket sounds and rustlings. I spent some time closing my eyes and checking out those circles and gray things that float around behind your eyelids. I thought, They don’t even have a flashlight. The song coming back was worse than the sound of the woods: Down in the Boondocks. I sang it, though that was the last thing I wanted to do: “‘People put me down ’cause that’s the side of town I was born in. I love her, she loves me, but I don’t fit in her society.’” Then I heard them calling, and I turned on the headlights, and they found me.

Three guys walk into a bar. Roof collapses, kills ’em all. Turns out they had cancer.

Hard Luck stories. Poor Me stories. Isn’t It Sad stories. Isn’t it sad I had to do what I had to do? I looked the other way during kickbacks, I put less in the Sunday envelope, I hit my kid and now he’s got this stutter, my husband left me and I had to raise my three blind girls alone. Bruno, Bruno, poor Elena, poor Lucia, poor whoever, poor me, no one should have this much trouble. Bruno, Bruno, you’re so hardhearted. Isn’t it sad? I say, You got trouble? Too bad, my condolences, deal with it. There’s no trick to this. I’m not here as a therapist. This guy Darwin on TV had it right: you got too many legs, a fin out to here, teeth smaller than Harvey across the rock, you’re not gonna make it. And what is that? What? Bad luck? You pray all your life you don’t get luck like some people get. Guys with no eyes, guys whose whole families go down on some boat, guys who’re vegetables, get fed off a tray. People say, Bruno you wouldn’t be so hard it happened to you — I say, My father came over here, he was fourteen years old, knew four words of English — four — worked on the highways going in upstate for three days and a back-loader dumped a load of shale where he was standing, crushed his legs. Guy called, “All clear?” and my dad waved and stood there. My mother died of this simple thing because some Mick doctor couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a diagram. I’m forty-two years old, never got married, I’ve gone broke twice. Started up from nothing twice. Now I sell cars. You think I like selling cars? My life is a bowl of roses selling cars?

I came here, started working in the off-season. Everything was down. Sales were down. The economy was down. Inventory was down. Spirits were down, morale was down, the shade in my office was down. The desk they gave me, the drawers didn’t open. They probably figured, Guinea, he’s not gonna write anything, anyway. They told me I couldn’t use the coffee machine. I hadda go across the street. You imagine this? Bruno, it’s only an eight-cupper. Oh, I didn’t realize. You know what it’s like, you’re humping to sell the car, Gee, Mr. Dickhead, would you like a cuppa coffee? Okay, well, we’ll have to go across the street, see, because I got this disease and they don’t let me touch their fucking coffeepot. Gas shortage, oil shortage, money shortage, no beans for the soup: just the time to be selling ocean-liner Buicks in Bridgeport. I’m brand new at this, standing there in my — I got one suit, I change the shirt and ties day to day — and guys’re coming in without a pot to piss in, just looking for transportation, and I’m pushing station wagons with power sunroofs. Four doors you can land planes on. The whole world’s selling little Nip cars to Yupsters at eighty-percent markups and I’m selling V-8s to cane-dragging Sanka-sucking cottontops. But I sold. I sold to everybody. I sold to morons. I sold to kids. I sold to widows with bad eyesight. I sold to sharpies. I sold to Puerto Ricans. I sold to mulignons. I sold to family. I got my coffeepot. I drink their coffee now.

You don’t think I cut corners? You don’t think I did what I had to, to move inventory? You don’t think I lied to people? You don’t think I cheated people? Before we had a name for it, before we called it anything, we did it.

So now I hear, Bruno, you been lucky. You been doing good lately. Lately kiss my ass lately.

Bruno, you’re not for her, leave her alone, she’s had too much trouble.

Listen to this: I am the guy for her. I am the guy.

Bruno, she lost her husband. Hey, she lost her husband. Worse: the guy ran off and left her. She’s alone in the world. She’s gotta raise the kid by herself. It’s tough. Bruno, she doesn’t need you around, complicating things. I told her what the loan sharks used to tell me on Kissuth Street: Hey, I’m not here to observe your problem. I’m here to enlarge it.

Joanie and I go back to when we were kids on North Avenue. We go back to Blessed Sacrament. Years later, I told her I was the guy, when we were still kids. She put her hand right up to touch your mouth when you were talking. You could taste her.

What do I want from her? What are my intentions toward her? The days I don’t see her, the days I don’t hear about her, I draw her picture on the wall.

Todd was getting confirmed. Confirmation made him an adult in the eyes of the Church. At the ceremony, Joanie tried to remember her own confirmation but couldn’t. She squatted in the pew and thought dull and repetitive things like, Do I really have a son old enough to be confirmed? The bishop read Todd’s name out of sequence, the only mistake he made all day. Back at home, Todd changed into play clothes and took off for parts unknown while Joanie napped away the rest of the afternoon. The whole thing seemed like an official transition to something more unpleasant.

They still had to deal with Todd’s confirmation party that night. Joanie’s mother was having it at her house: more room, she said. They got there early to help, and while Joanie dumped antipasto from plastic tubs onto a silver tray Nina saw a mouse under the refrigerator. This was the end of the world. They all had to hunt for the mouse. Together with Sandro they moved the refrigerator, banged around under the cabinets. Todd, of course, thought they should let it go. Nina, while she set the table, stayed upset about the mouse; for her it was One More Thing.

Once everybody showed up, Todd got a watch, a cableknit sweater, and some envelopes. His father’s present had come in the mail a week early, no return address. There was a card taped to it made of a folded piece of paper. It said on the top, “Sorry to Miss the Festivities.” Todd hadn’t shown her the inside.

It was a small party. Nancy, her mother, Elena, and Joanie’s great-aunt Clorinda, so old she never said anything. Sandro, Nina, Todd, Joanie, and the mouse. Like all Italian parties, it was planned for all rooms and stayed in the kitchen. Nina started them on the antipasto Joanie’d done a lousy job of arranging, and some spinach bread. The antipasto was good, but the spinach in the spinach bread wasn’t chopped up enough. Joanie worked on a piece for minutes. Todd sat around picking at things and waiting for his father’s phone call.

Everyone knew his father was supposed to be calling.

Joanie was spear carrier. Her mother was throwing the party, her son was guest of honor, her missing husband the offstage star. At one point her mother served more coffee by leaning in front of her while she was talking, like she was the ghost nobody could see.

Everyone ate the olives and left the marinated vegetables. They lined olive pits up on their dishes like hotels in Monopoly. The spinach bread wasn’t going over. Sandro suggested Todd start the present-opening.

Todd looked over the pile and opened Joanie’s first. A lightweight jacket for school. Purple and gold, Nike. He liked it, she thought. She’d had little energy to pick something out and had decided, anyway, not to play “Can You Top This?” with her husband’s mystery gift. Todd waited one or two presents more before pulling his father’s and a few others closer. That self-restraint constricted some part of her chest.

Nina, meanwhile, went ahead with the mouse hunt. She had that look, like every part of her life had come apart and she wasn’t waiting any longer on this one. Sandro wanted to know what kind of cavone went exterminating when she had guests. He told her to get up and got on his hands and knees in her place, clunking around under the cabinets with a broom.

Gary’s present sat there, the one everyone wanted opened, until Sandro, sweating and peeved, pulled his head out from under the sink and said, “Hey, open your father’s.”

“Shut up, Sandro, why don’t you,” Nina said. “Let him open what he wants to open.”

Sandro stood up and stretched, his hand on the small of his back. He was bald and the white hairs on top of his head waved like undersea plants.

“You get it?” Nina said, meaning the mouse.

“You mind if I take a leak?” he said. He went into the bathroom. On the way out, he made a stop at the stereo in the living room. Lou Monte came on. “Pepino the Italian Mouse.” Everyone around the table was quiet. Todd had his hands on his father’s gift. Elena chewed with her mouth closed. Sandro came back from the living room. Joanie heard a skittering under the cabinet and imagined the mouse trying to get a look, too.

The present was in a square, head-sized box. The day it arrived, Todd wandered in and out of the kitchen, where they’d left it, checking it out from all angles. Now he had one hand on top of it, as if to see if it was warm. He pulled it closer. The sliding sound on the tablecloth reminded her of moving boxes, moving in.

The phone rang. Joanie answered it. Someone for Bruno. Whoever it was, he sounded pretty unhappy. While Joanie talked to him Nina put a hand to her collarbone and threw Joanie a “That was close” look. Joanie crossed her eyes at her. Todd started working on the box.

It was sealed with some sort of clear supertape. Nina got scissors.

The phone rang again, this time for Joanie. She sighed and took it around the corner, with a finger in her ear. It was Bruno: something’d come up, he’d be a little late. Joanie wanted to say, We care. When she got off, the box was open. Todd was holding the thing up.

It turned out to be a lacrosse helmet. He was controlling his face, but she could see he loved it, absolutely loved it.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Sandro said. Everyone was doing their “Great gift” murmurs.

“What is it?” Nina said, like they’d found it under a rock.

“It’s a lacrosse helmet,” Sandro said. “Don’t you know nothing?”

“No, I don’t know nothing,” Nina said. “I should know an across helmet?”

“It’s sports,” Sandro said.

“Pardon me,” Nina said. “I thought it was olive picking.”

Todd didn’t try it on. He was holding it by the facemask. He loved lacrosse and had wanted something like this for months; she could see it in his face. Before this second she would have been as likely to say he was interested in the Flags of All Nations, or dolls.

Eleven years old: wasn’t that too young for lacrosse? Where’d he hear about lacrosse? Who played it?

Things were awkward for a while. No one knew how enthusiastic to be. Nina refilled coffees.

It took Todd some time to get to the next present. Nancy finally said, “You gonna open mine, or what?” and he set the helmet in his lap and looked over what was left. Nancy pointed hers out.

A line had formed for the bathroom. Sandro picked up the lacrosse helmet and squeezed it onto his head.

“Don’t play around, you’re gonna stretch it,” Nina said. She was broiling sausage and peppers. She had to check on them nineteen times, and Sandro had to move his chair every time she did.

“What ‘stretch it’?” Sandro said. “It’s plastic.”

Nina asked him if he was through with the mouse. Was she going to have to hire someone, thirty-fi’ dollars an hour? Sandro ignored her.

Joanie took time out to track her feelings, like a little weather map. At this point she was hoping her husband wouldn’t call. She wanted it unanimous, what everyone thought of him. She wanted it consistent the way he treated everyone. She looked at Todd and his bad haircut and the little Band-Aid that wouldn’t stick on his hand and was surprised, the way she was always surprised, not by her own meanness but by its persistence.

Sandro got back on his hands and knees with a Mother of God sigh and clacked around under the sink again with the broom handle. It was like he was trying to warn the mouse, not catch it. Nancy poured Joanie more wine, then sat back and made fun of her vacant expression.

Joanie woke up and nodded. Nancy pointed to her gift, finally about to be unwrapped. Todd was working on it like it was a bomb.

“You don’t have to save the paper,” Nancy said. “Really.”

She was Joanie’s best friend. Joanie hadn’t talked to her at all about Gary’s leaving, and it had been two months. Nancy would come over and they’d go to a movie, split a Greek salad. Once, early on, Joanie had been crying upstairs, and Nancy sat in the kitchen and waited a half hour and then finally went home.

Todd was holding up her gift: a book called Italian Folktales.

“Oh, a book,” Nina said flatly. No one seemed to know what to make of her tone. Nancy taught at Stratford High with Joanie — English and history — and liked to give Todd books.

“See if there are any stories about Mucherinos in there,” Sandro said.

“That’s in the famous-crime-stories book,” Nancy said.

“Take that off,” Nina said. “You’re sweating in it.”

“I need this for the mouse,” Sandro said.

The phone rang again. Sandro got it, in the lacrosse helmet. He clacked the plastic receiver against his earhole and kept going, “Hello? Hello?” like it was a vaudeville routine. It got a laugh.

He said, “Joanie, it’s Bruno,” and handed her the phone. Joanie gave Nancy her “I’m not encouraging this” look.

Nancy had gone out with Bruno for a little while, high school and afterward. She still had a thing for him. She was sitting here hoping he wouldn’t call. We’re all sitting around hoping guys won’t call, Joanie thought.

“What’s up?” she said into the phone. “You hit another snag?”

“I’m on my way over,” Bruno said. Something was being whacked behind him.

“What is that?” Joanie said.

“I don’t know,” Bruno said. “They’re screwing around. I’m over here by the deli. You want me to bring anything?”

“We got everything,” Joanie said. “You’re missing all the presents being opened.”

“I was over here, you know, I thought I’d call, see if you needed something,” Bruno said. “I’m five minutes away.”

“What’s that noise behind you?” Joanie said.

“I don’t know, these fucking guys,” Bruno said. The line went muffled, as if he’d covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and when he uncovered it, the sound was gone.

Joanie shifted her weight. Todd was opening more presents. Somebody’d given him some kind of board game he wouldn’t play in a thousand years. “So you coming?” Joanie said in her “I’m getting off” voice.

“Tell ’im we got the Great Mouse Hunt goin’ over here,” Sandro said. He was whisking around under the stove now.

“Listen. Nancy there?” Bruno said.

“Yes, she is,” Joanie said. Nancy looked up at her. “Wanna talk to her?”

“Don’t bust ’em off,” Bruno said. “Her mother there?”

“Yes, she is,” Joanie said. Elena was over by the door, hadn’t said two words all night. “You wanna talk to her?”

“Yeah, give her a message for me,” Bruno said. “Tell her, ‘Mangia il gatz.’”

“You tell her,” Joanie said.

“I’m on my way,” Bruno said. He hung up.

She came back to the table and sat down. Nancy was looking at her. Joanie shrugged.

“Where’s the dog?” Nina said, like she’d just noticed the dog wasn’t around. “Why didn’t you bring the dog?” She was probably thinking of the mouse.

“She ran away again,” Joanie said.

Audrey’d had a tough last few months and had taken to running away after dinner for a few hours. Todd would go look for her, stand in the yard and wait for her to come back.

Nina turned the peppers, which had to be done by now. “That dog’s gonna be out in the woods, she’s gonna be running around, she’s gonna get bit, she’s gonna get rabbis,” she said.

“That’s rabies,” Sandro said. “Jesus God. Rabies.”

Nancy laughed. Nina was used to it. Her husband said she butchered the language like Leo Gorcey. Bruno said she had her own way of communicating, and it didn’t work.

“You are something,” Sandro said. “The other day she goes to me, talking about that poor chiboni who hit the kid, ‘Oh, baby. Nothing goes right for him. He’s got an albacore around his neck.’

More people laughed, even Elena. “Nice image,” Nancy said.

“You believe how fast they go on that curve?” Nina said. “Three times the car flipped. These people and that curve, it’s a sin.”

“I think the parents are now ascared the guy’s gonna get sued,” Sandro said.

“I’d sue ’im,” Nina said. “Three times the car flipped. They had to get that thing and tear the roof off to get him out.”

“The kid was just walking there, too,” Elena said from over by the door. “Going to get ice cream. You believe that? It’s a shame.”

“Her eyes’re open now,” Sandro said. “Her mother’s there every day, soon as the hospital opens.” He had his helmeted head on the floor next to the stove, and he seemed to think he saw something.

“Three times that car flipped,” Nina said.

“I went there and visited,” Elena said. “You go?”

“I went there the second day, with the mother,” Nina said. “You believe the perfume she wears? I think she marinates in it.”

“Ma,” Joanie said. “How about giving her a break? Her daughter’s a vegetable.”

“Don’t talk that way,” Nina said.

Joanie felt bad she’d put it like that. She’d been around Bruno too much. “They hope to God she’ll come out of it,” her mother said.

“They don’t know,” Elena said bitterly. “Doctors.

“I don’t believe that perfume, though,” Nina said. “And expensive. How could you spend so much on perfume?”

“Ma,” Joanie said.

“Hey, you ever see her?” Sandro said. He gave up and got back in his chair. He was trying to get the lacrosse helmet off. “The least she could do is smell good.”

Nina took the pan with the sausage and peppers out of the broiler and dropped it on the floor. Everybody jumped. The peppers spattered over a big area and just missed Sandro’s leg.

“Ho. Ho,” Sandro said. Everyone else made exclamations.

Someone banged on the screen door. Elena always locked it when she visited: her cousin’s sister on Stratford Avenue, one day they walked right in.

“What’s the deal with the security?” Bruno said from outside. “The Mucherinos sense trouble? Gangland hit?”

“You’re not gettin’ in without a present,” Sandro said. He was lifting his feet so Nina could clean under the table. Joanie got a sponge and some paper towels and helped out.

“Open the goddamn door I’m not gettin’ in without a present,” Bruno said.

Elena got up from her chair and fumbled with the lock. Neither she nor Bruno said anything while she worked on it. At one point something clicked and she thought she had it. Bruno rattled the handle.

Elena opened the door and stood back.

“Mrs. DeFeo,” he said, exasperated. He was still standing outside, and she was still holding the door. “Good to see you.”

“Bruno,” Elena said. She thought Bruno was hardworking but a pig. He shit on my Nancy, she had told Nina and Joanie.

“Look at this, look at this,” Bruno said, coming in. “Howdy howdy howdy howdy howdy. Todd’s party. The party for Todd.”

“J’ou bring a gift?” Sandro said. He still had his feet up in the air while Nina cleaned, and he looked like he was on a ride. Joanie told him to put his feet down.

Nina finished. Joanie could see how upset she was: mice in the kitchen, no food, the kid’s father not even here, nothing going right. At the sink, rinsing out the sponge, Joanie said, “Ma, don’t worry,” meaning the spill.

“Did I bring a gift?” Bruno said. “Is it out there on the step right now?”

He looked at Todd. Todd shrugged, as if to say, I don’t know.

“Did I bring a gift?” Bruno said, opening the screen door again. Elena was still standing beside him, waiting for him to settle somewhere before she sat down. “In terms of gifts, I think it’s time to visit Mr. Excess,” he said. He bent down for something right outside the door.

He brought in a square box. It was wrapped in newspaper. Joanie had a frightened flash that it was another lacrosse helmet, that everybody knew about Todd and lacrosse but her.

Bruno caught her looking at him. She thought, This guy. Why’s he so interested? Why’s he so hot for me?

She inventoried him. He was no kid. He was no Mr. GQ, though he usually dressed better than the other guys at Goewey Buick, that was for sure. He had baby skin, but the kind of show-through beard where you had to shave five times a day. No gray. Nice mouth, but his face was jowly. Nice shoes always, Italian, very thin leather. When he stood around like now, he kept raising and lowering his toes, a little gesture of impatience you could watch for.

She looked away and there was Nancy, taking in everything, as usual.

“The kid is a football fan, the kid is a Viking fan,” Bruno said while Todd unwrapped the thing. “Did I buy him a shirt? Did I buy him a pennant?”

Todd pulled the box free of the paper. It was a football helmet, a Minnesota Vikings football helmet.

“God,” he said. “It’s great.”

“Real thing,” Bruno said. “The one they wear.”

“Where’d you get that?” Sandro said.

“Where’d I get it? I stole it from the locker room. I own the team,” Bruno said. “Where’d I get it.”

“This must be helmet night,” Elena said.

Bruno turned around and gave her a look. “They sell ’em in sporting goods stores,” he said. “You should see. It’s a sight to behold.”

“Bruno, that’s too much,” Joanie said. “That musta cost a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Bruno said. Joanie’s great-aunt Clorinda was peering at him. He waved at her. “Bruno, have a seat,” he said. “Bruno, have some wine.”

“Bruno, have a seat,” Sandro said. “Have some wine.”

Elena’s chair was next to Nancy’s. Bruno sat in it like he’d paid for it. “How are you, Nancy?” he said.

“Bruno, I’m fine,” Nancy said.

“That’s good,” Bruno said.

Sandro got up to get another chair. He told Elena to sit in his.

He flipped the record while he was up. Because of the awkwardness of Bruno and Nancy together, everyone listened. Lou Monte again: “Please, Mr. Columbus, Turn-a the Ship Around.”

“Lou Monte,” Bruno said when Sandro came back into the kitchen toting a chair. “Very, very classy. I myself prefer Topo Gigio.”

“Mr. Sophisticated,” Sandro said. He got Bruno a glass.

“I still need to have Wayne Newton explained to me, too,” Bruno said. He turned the glass upside down and cleaned it with his napkin. “Anybody have any ideas, please get right on it. I’m listening.”

“Oh, I like him,” Elena said, from over by the door.

Nancy sang the chorus of “Danke Schoen.”

“We got a mouse over here,” Sandro said. “You missed the big hunt.”

“A mouse,” Bruno said. “You oughta get Sewer Mouth over here.” Because Audrey slobbered on him, he called her Sewer Mouth.

“Bruno, that was too much,” Joanie said. She pointed at the helmet. Todd now had both helmets bumping and clacking together on his lap.

“It cost a bundle,” Bruno said. “You guys are forever in my debt.”

He turned to the great-aunt. “How we doin’, Clorinda?” he said in his louder-for-the-folks-in-the-Home voice. “You gettin’ out?”

“Hah?” Clorinda said.

“Leave her alone,” Nancy said, but she seemed to be enjoying it.

“I said, You gettin’ out? Dance?” He danced a little figure across the table with his first two fingers.

“Ha,” Clorinda said.

“Nina, siddown,” Sandro said. “The antipasto’s enough.”

Everyone agreed. She brought over the remaining sausage and peppers, with some garlic bread in a smaller dish. She seemed to feel better once she had them on the table.

“How’s business, Bruno?” Sandro said. He liked to bait him, for laughs.

“Don’t talk to me about business,” Bruno said, pouring wine.

Sandro said he looked like he was doing good. Todd yawned widely. It was pretty late for him already, Joanie thought.

Hey, do I look at your bankbook?” Bruno said. “What’re you, the IRS?”

“I thought maybe you could lend me some money,” Sandro said. He winked at Joanie.

“I’ll lend you this,” Bruno said. His hand was between his legs.

“Bruno,” Nina said.

He folded his hands in prayer before him and shook them to show what he had to put up with. “Hey, I’m sorry. Today I had the three lonely guys. The last guy, he wanted to be my friend. He wanted to be with me forever. The guy wants to talk, he wants to relate, he wants to go for long walks in the moonlight, he wants to do everything but buy the fucking car. Pardon my French.”

He caught Joanie’s eyes before she could throw Nancy a sympathetic look. He always, always anticipated her. Two days after Gary left, she’d suddenly been bedridden at her parents’: couldn’t eat a thing, threw up night and day, sweated like a horse. Bruno called the house. “How’s Joanie?” he asked. “She sick yet?”

Nancy passed him the garlic bread, and he took it without looking at it. “This guy, I led him all around the lot, we come into my office to talk numbers. He sits down, he goes, ‘Field of Dreams. There’s a great movie.’ I thought, Give me one break. Not this. Not now. Field of Dreams. Dead baseball players hang out in the tall corn. Every so often, bip, there they are again. Back in the tall corn, huh? I’ll tell you what: a guy comes in and tells me he likes that kind of movie, he might as well just spread the inside of his wallet out on my desk. Just spread it all out and say, ‘Take what you want and leave me bus fare.’”

“I liked Field of Dreams,” Sandro said. “Wasn’t that the one with Robert Redford?”

“You don’t know,” Bruno said. “Last movie you saw was Pride of the Yankees.”

They got down to serious eating. The sausages went around the table. People split them so there’d be enough. Bruno got up to go to the bathroom, and when he squeezed by Joanie on the way back, he trailed his fingertips across her shoulder. He was looking at her when he sat down. She raised her chin, worried she looked as ragged and uncomposed as a kid who ran away from home.

“I like your hair like that, Mrs. Muhlberg,” he said. She had it up, because of the heat.

“Bruno, you’re something,” Nina said, eating.

“I like her hair,” he said. He turned his palms up.

Joanie thought, At least I’m generating interest from somebody. She also liked the minor rebelliousness of the public flirting.

Before Gary took off, she’d been with Bruno at the funeral of one of Bruno’s friends, Mark Siegler. At the cemetery, they’d ended up on opposite sides of the grave. He’d made faces. She’d shot him a look, and he’d pointed to his crotch and arched his eyebrows.

“Someone called for you,” Joanie said. “Before.”

Bruno was instantly alert. “Oh yeah?” he said. “Who?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t sound happy. He said he’d see you later tonight,” she said.

Bruno looked at her. He flexed his shoulders to fix his shirt. He nodded.

They ran out of wine. Sandro stood up to get more.

“Sandro, get Joey’s homemade,” Nina said. “The one Bruno brought last time.”

“Which one’s Joey’s?” Sandro said.

“Look, there are two reds down there right next to each other,” Nina said. She held up two fingers, like a peace sign. “Get this one, not this one.” She tilted her hand to favor each finger.

Everybody laughed. Joanie looked cross-eyed at Todd. It was a thing they exchanged whenever anyone said something stupid. Sandro put his hand over his eyes.

“That’s a help, Nin,” Sandro said. “I’ll get this one.” He put his finger in his nose. He squeezed by Joanie, and they heard him going down the cellar stairs.

“So Todd’s a grown-up now,” Bruno said. His joking had changed. He looked preoccupied. Joanie filed the information: a Bruno weak spot, something to do with the call.

“Man o’ the house,” Bruno said.

Todd shrugged.

“I missed the ceremony,” Bruno said.

“Dere’re tree bottles down here,” Sandro called from the cellar.

“Get this one,” Bruno called back without raising his head, holding up his middle finger.

Joanie got up to go to the bathroom herself, laughing. The phone rang when she passed it, like she’d tripped an alarm.

She’d forgotten her husband. Todd was upright, alert again. She put her hand on the phone.

She answered it in front of everyone in the kitchen, turning so they could get maximum coverage. She said hello.

“Hello? Joanie?” Gary said. There was a sheeting noise behind him. She imagined a booth on an Arctic traffic median, the Alaska pipeline running alongside. Snow. But it was summer in Alaska, too. “Joanie?” Gary said.

“No,” Joanie said. “This’s Beatrice.” The line was quiet and she knew he was working on that: was he being played with? Meanwhile she enjoyed the reactions from the kitchen.

He introduced himself. He asked for Todd. Joanie told him to hold on and she passed the phone across the table to her son.

“Hey, Dad,” Todd said. He had the phone in both hands. “Yeah, she’s crazy.”

“You’re crazy,” Nina said to her. Joanie made a face.

She sat back down and took some provolone and bread on her plate, unable to go to the bathroom now without looking like she wanted to be out of the room.

Todd went over what he got. And the jacket, Joanie thought. “Oh, and Mom got me a jacket,” he said.

People kept their voices down. Clorinda sat beside Todd with a stiff silence, cutting her capacolla with a knife and fork. Elena murmured to Sandro. Nina looked at the receiver like her grandson was talking to Lee Harvey Oswald. Joanie could see how much it bothered her that the mess had already gotten this normalized. Everyone got away with everything except her family, and this was another example.

The mouse, she noticed, was on the windowsill.

Bruno saw it. He touched Sandro’s arm. It was crouching behind a cactus in a green plastic pot. Its back was bent. It apparently hoped it was hidden.

Todd was still talking to his dad. Sandro got up, nonchalant, to get a drink of water from the sink. He swung a hand at the mouse, a little swing, and it bolted across the counter, across the stove. Its paws made tinny scrabbling sounds on the stove top.

Sandro banged a hand after it and just missed. All four coils jumped. The mouse threw itself from the counter, little legs splaying in the air. It landed audibly in front of Joanie and reversed direction back past Bruno. He brought one big shoe down—boom—and all the noise stopped. The floor was still reverberating.

Joanie was afraid to look. Bruno looked at each of them and then down at his foot. He lifted his shoe, slowly, and on the linoleum there was a little curl of a tip of tail, like a gray fingernail.

“Dad, you should call back,” Todd said. But the party broke up before he did.

Everyone thanked Nina for having them, and Nina thanked everyone for coming. Joanie and Todd and Bruno helped with the cleanup.

At the screen door with her mother, Nancy said, “You sticking around, Bruno?” and Bruno said yeah, he was sticking around. Nancy left.

“Mrs. Mucherino does not like Mr. Mouse,” Bruno said when Nina came back to the sink.

“I’m not too fond of Mr. Minea, either,” Nina said, taking the dish towel from him.

“It’s all right, I failed,” Bruno said. “I had him right in my sights—budaboom—I didn’t finish it. I have to live with that.”

Sandro told him to give the mouse a rest.

When they were finished, they went out in the driveway and stood around Joanie’s Buick. It was warm and the crickets were loud. Todd loaded his presents in the back. The phone started ringing, but Todd didn’t hear it and no one else brought it up.

“How’s the car running?” Bruno asked. It was a ritual question, a “do I look out for you or do I look out for you?” question. He’d sold it to them. It was a dark-blue Century wagon. It looked like a hearse. It had an expanse of hood she never really got used to. He gave it to them cheap when it was three years old and had twenty thousand miles on it. Now it had a hundred and the body was dinged up, but it ran, no problem. When her father talked about it, he said, “That automobile doesn’t owe you a penny.” He pronounced it automobile.

Gary had taken the Mazda with him, so the Buick was it as far as transportation went.

Joanie told him the car ran great.

“That automobile doesn’t owe her a penny,” Sandro said.

“That car was some deal,” Bruno said. He was looking around and down the street, like he was expecting company.

“I know it,” Joanie said.

“So, you gonna go home, or what?” Bruno said. “You tired?” She could see faint hopes fading. “You’re probably tired.”

“Todd’s pretty worn out,” she said.

“Thanks a lot for the helmet,” Todd said. He’d said good-bye to Nina and Sandro and was already in the car.

Nina came and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry about the way things turned out,” she said bitterly.

Joanie told her not to worry and said good-bye. That seemed to make things worse. Sandro followed his wife into the house with a look back at Joanie that said, Thanks a lot.

They heard banging around, the raspy sound of foil torn from the roll. The crickets started up. Todd was slumped against the headrest and looked already asleep.

They stood next to the car for a minute, awkward.

“What was the deal with that call?” Joanie said.

Bruno shrugged.

“Looked like it upset you,” she said.

He snorted.

She thought, I don’t need this. She hoped something would happen.

He took her cheek with his fingertips and turned her head and kissed her. She felt a rush of caffeine. She felt her lips after his were gone.

“Bruno, don’t start,” she said.

He was looking at her. “Hey, when I start, you’ll know it,” he said. He looked in on Todd, who hadn’t moved. He cupped his hand around the back of her neck. He left.

She got in the car and started it. She turned on the headlights. The objects down the driveway were flooded with illumination. They promised her something. In the rearview mirror, Bruno’s taillights winked red at the end of the street and disappeared. She left the radio alone. She had, while she sat there, what she thought of as a little religious spasm, like she’d been confronted by objects ready to help her take part in the transformation of her world.

I was going to give Joanie a ride to her mother’s for her kid’s confirmation party, I couldn’t, I had to show this Korean every single fucking thing about a Dodge Dart we had on the lot, a trade-in from 1901. He wants to see all the paperwork, he wants to climb underneath it, he wants to go through the buyer’s manual like he’s prepping for a space shot. The manual’s so old it’s coming apart in our hands. It’s six-forty-five and he’s not buying today, we can see that, but he’s not going anywhere, either.

This is a Buick dealership. I’m wearing a Buick pin. We’re surrounded by Buicks. Showroom floor is wall to wall with them. The guy goes, Do you sell Buicks here? I go, No, we give ’em away. That’s how we stay in business: giving away free Buicks.

This guy couldn’t decide on a shitbox Dodge Dart, there’s no chance in the world he’s going to spring for a full-ticket Buick.

He goes, Are they dependable cars?

I go, Look, Boulder Dam shut down a few times last year. You want me to guarantee a lousy six-thousand-dollar car?

He’s taking all this in, giving it some hard thought. The minute hand’s going around. He wants to know, Do they come with automatic transmission and air at no extra charge? I tell him, You bet they do. Not only that, but we throw in a free dinner and tickets to a Broadway show. What’s he think we’re running here, a raffle?

We’re standing around talking afterwards in the office, and Cifulo’s giving me this look, and I’m watching the clock while this guy sips his coffee and stares into space. The missus is sitting there with him and clearly has veto power but doesn’t say boo. I’m making conversation, so I ask him if he’s Japanese. Big mistake: turns out he’s Korean. The missus is miffed.

Afterward Cifulo gives me grief about it, so I tell him, What, that’s better? Far as I’m concerned, they’re boat people with an attitude. They got here earlier, they’re better? I say no. They run dink grocery stores, three dollars for a banana. There’s one guy on Barnum Avenue, I still don’t know his name, SHIMSI, the sign says. What is that? Two names? His name? BUY OUR FOOD? One thing’s for sure: you want to get some service, don’t ask Kato behind the counter.

Cifulo tells me afterward I was rude to them. This imbecile moving two units a month, if he’s lucky and his family comes in, is telling me how to run my business. I told him, What are you talking to me for? You watch Steven Seagal movies. Out for Violence, Revenge Is Mine—whatever they’re called. I told him, Steven Seagal? The man wears a ponytail? Is this the Revolution? And Sea-gal: what is that? The guy’s not a Jew anymore? And what are you, what are you, Bishop Sheehan? Mother Teresa?

So it turns out I couldn’t give Joanie this ride.

They talk about ups and downs in the car business, but we been down a while. I’m always high man for monthly sales, but what is that? Every day we stand around the showroom like CYO kids waiting for the party to begin.

Now on toppa that I gotta worry about this Monteleone thing.

Things are gonna go wrong. It’s not like things are always gonna go right. The key is how we deal with it. How do we act? I say, I can’t control everything. But I have to deal with it.

Joanie, for example. I coulda pushed it the other night, after that kiss. I wanted to push it. But it’s not right.

You got to have a little class, a little understanding of the way to do things. In Italy, the old gentlemen, they cultivate tratto, you know, a elegance, a way you handle yourself, conduct your affairs.

She’s coming around. She doesn’t know it, her mother doesn’t know it, nobody probably knows it. But she’s coming around.

There will be setbacks. I understand that. Remember: if it isn’t one thing, it will surely be another. What’s important? Your attitude.

The church was very big for my mother. She came over when she must’ve been thirty-one, thirty-two, four kids in tow and one on the way. I think the Church was a big help. It was a place she could trust, she had the priest she could talk to. Plus it was a big connection to Strangolagalli, to what she knew. Right before we came over, one of my little brothers died; he was just a baby. Our priest there, Father Picarazzi, was a big help. She was still sad when she got here, so naturally she went to the priest here, too.

She prayed a lot at home, usually early early in the morning, before we all were up. She had all the little statues in her bedroom. And the pictures with the palms still behind them from whenever the last Palm Sunday was.

Our church was St. Anthony’s on North Avenue. Not St. Anthony of Padua, who helped people find lost things — the other St. Anthony. The one in the desert who was always resisting the temptations of the devil. The devil showed up at his hut in the form of a pig. Just what the temptation was involving the pig, we didn’t know. Maybe the devil was tempting him with bacon. But how big a temptation was that? It seemed like a lot of work. He had to kill the pig, etc. Anyway, the pig was in the stained-glass windows above the confessionals on the right side of the church. I prayed on that side. I was a little girl, twelve years old, just about Todd’s age. It sounds terrible now, but I used to pray sometimes to the pig. He was small and they did him cute. I guess I didn’t believe it was really the devil. I think I figured everybody pictured in church had to be good.

The confessionals on the other side didn’t get any light. They were much darker. They were used by visiting priests. You’d go in there, it’d be like a cave. You couldn’t see the priest and you didn’t know him anyway. So you went there if you had serious sins to confess or you hadn’t been to confession in a long time. It was good for gossip: we’d watch who went over there. Oh, Mr. Motz: what’s he doing over there? So it kind of backfired on you.

It was a very Italian church. Father Favale was the priest for thirty, thirty-five years. He joked every Pentecost Sunday that our sins were committed in Italian, confessed in English, and pardoned in Latin.

There was one sister always used to joke with me that because of me she prayed to St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. She thought I was a hopeless case because I wasn’t religious enough.

She’d make notes when I was bad, like in the middle of the winter, and she wouldn’t punish me then. When it was spring and beautiful out, then she’d keep me after school. I could hear all the kids running around and having a great time, and she’d say, Nina, remember when you did this? And when you did that?

But I was good kid for the most part.

My mother was worried about my lying. I lied, you know, like kids do. I wasn’t a big liar. My mother believed as long as you never told a lie you were always on God’s side. The most important thing was to tell the truth. You did something wrong, okay. But it was worse to lie about it. And if you lied, that was bad enough. It was worse to pretend that you hadn’t lied, and to keep going: every second you lived the lie was another sin.

They’d hit us when we got caught. But not so often; it wasn’t like other schools. It was funny: when you were getting hit, you thought the world was like that. Then afterwards when you met other people who weren’t Catholic or didn’t get hit in school, you thought: it isn’t like that. And then, sometime after that, you realized the world was like that, after all. So then you thought maybe you were better off knowing early.

The worst thing up to now I ever did was commit a sacrilege. The way we were taught, a sacrilege was this huge thing, and really rare. It didn’t seem so rare to us. The sisters made it a big thing and then they didn’t. You couldn’t tell. For instance, in fifth grade these two guys got into a fight. Sister Amalia tried to break it up and got punched in the chest. She was upset. She sat there on the floor holding herself and said it was a sacrilege. The kid who did it was scared. But we didn’t believe her. We didn’t think she was that holy. Also, it was an accident, and we didn’t think you could get a sacrilege that way. We made the kid feel better. Later he was coming back from Communion at Easter and he held up his arm for us, right there in church. The sisters didn’t know what he meant, but we did: he was going, Here’s my arm; it hasn’t fallen off yet.

But there was another kind that wasn’t accidental. One year our parish priest went away and the guy who replaced him was mean. In confession he’d go, “C’mon, c’mon,” if you stopped to think. And if you said something he didn’t like, he’d say, “You did what?” You heard it all the time. It was embarrassing. Kids would come out of the booth bright red, or crying.

You couldn’t predict what would set him off. Once, I told him I stole some books from the local bookstore — nothing big, two little things on dinosaurs I put under my sweater — and it must’ve been the nineteenth case of that, that day, or he must’ve just been sick of it or something. He blew up. He said, “What did you do that for? What were you thinking?” And then he said, “You could afford to buy something like that. Your parents could afford it.” So everybody out in church knew I must’ve stolen something. And I said without thinking, “Don’t shout it,” and then he got seriously mad. He kept me in there longer than he was supposed to, just yelling at me. He kept his voice down for that. Then he gave me fifty Hail Marys and fifty Our Fathers. Fifty is a huge amount. I had to go to the altar rail and kneel there, and no matter how fast I said them — and after the first ten I was flying — it still looked to everyone in the church like I must’ve killed my mother.

The worst part was I was so scared of confession after that that I didn’t go. I kept not wanting to go to Communion. I had all these mortal sins on my soul. The sisters were like, Why aren’t you going to Communion? What could I tell them? So finally I went. The whole way up in the line I was telling myself, Go back, go back, you’re going to commit sacrilege. Because it’s sacrilege to receive with a mortal sin on your soul and you know it.

I stood there in line feeling like such a hypocrite, such a liar, the sisters thinking I was being a good Catholic while I was doing this.

After I received, I went back to my row and put my head on the pew in front of me. I looked up and there was Sister Amalia, and she gave me this smile, like she was happy I was so good. I thought, You committed a sacrilege just so you wouldn’t be embarrassed.

That night I realized people were going to Hell not only because they were bad but also because they were weak.

I didn’t do anything about it for six weeks. Every time I got Communion — because I had to get Communion, otherwise, why wasn’t I getting it? — I was committing sacrilege. Sacrilege, sacrilege, sacrilege. All my friends were ahead of me and behind me in line, getting Communion like it was no big deal. Because it wasn’t for them. And I kept it all from everyone. Who could I tell? It was like a nightmare; it was so easy to stop, and I wasn’t stopping. It was like I thought, What difference did it make? My soul was so black it couldn’t get blacker. But it was getting blacker. I thought I was setting sacrilege records. I thought somewhere God was thinking that this was all too bad. He knew everything, so he knew I wasn’t evil, but that that wasn’t going to make things any better. People were going to Hell for stealing a car or for missing Mass. I was going to get off the hook?

Then I found out you had to go to confession before confirmation. We went as a group; there was no getting out of it. And I had to confess it, because the bishop would be giving us Communion at the ceremony, and I thought, Even I can’t do that sacrilege.

So every night the week before, I was up, praying, crying, I didn’t know what. I found myself under the bed one night. Finally, the day of the confession, I was the second one in line, the whole class and Sister Amalia out there in the pews, waiting. I was so miserable by then I just gave up. I just went in and said, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been six weeks since my last confession.” And he asked why it took me six weeks. I told him because I’d committed this sacrilege. He said, “You did what?” I thought, Here we go. But when I explained it, he said, “That’s not a sacrilege,” like that was obvious. I was so relieved to hear anybody say that that I didn’t argue with him. He gave me like fifteen Hail Marys for penance. I was so happy I was all teary-eyed. I still thought it was a sacrilege, but now it was like I had special dispensation; I had a priest tell me not to worry about it.

That was the worst thing I’d done until now.

The other night when I was up with my mother, I remembered all that, remembered being up all night worried about the sacrilege.

This is worse, now, than then. It’s like there are two of me wandering around at once. I’m someone else from the person everyone thinks I am.

If I was God, I’d be harder on me than her. She’s scared and doesn’t believe in everything, anyway. But I learned every day in catechism what the right thing to do was. I was an altar boy. I helped serve Communion. It’s like when I had the sacrilege: like every day I’m slapping God in the face, over and over and over.

Services on good Friday, Stations of the Cross — my mother was one of those Catholics who excused herself from a lot of the duties because she had a hard life. That’s what she said. The idea was that God let her off on that.

I think her mother always had the harder life. My father’s always been good to her, and they’ve never been poor. Her mother had to come over from Italy with her husband and four kids, start up from nothing. When I remind my mother of that, she says, Yeah, but she didn’t have to put up with being me.

By that I think she means that her mother expected a lot of unhappiness.

My mother had this thing she would say to herself to cheer herself up: It could always get worse than this. She’d say it in this tough way, like she’d taken somebody’s best shot. I remember her saying it once when she’d taken me shopping with her at Read’s. I was six years old. I hadn’t even known she was unhappy.

She said that to me when Gary left. I said to her, “How could it get worse than this?”—even though even then I could think of ways. She said, “It just could.”

Now I say to myself, It could always get worse than this. I repeat it.

My mother’s got no patience for unhappiness. She says she has less now even than she used to. Which means she has less patience for anything that might be adding to the problem, like my father or the Church. She was secretary of the Rosary Society for two weeks, they started busting her rocks about the way she wrote up the reports, that was the end of that.

So she joked that God let her off on stuff like that. It was like going to the eleven-o’clock Mass: the really great Catholics, they were there on the dot for the seven-o’clock. My mother and I figured God appreciated that, but he also had the later one for the rest of us. If you spent Saturday night hiding bottles from your husband or bailing your kid out of juvenile detention, or you just felt so bad you wanted to lie there in bed an extra three hours, there was still that last Mass. It was like Mass for the shirkers and the exhausted.

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe, even in the Church. She just picked the rules she thought were important, for her sake and ours. Lent she never went for, for example.

She tried to bring me up right. She sent me to Blessed Sacrament. The building was falling apart; the building should have been condemned. There was a hole in the floor of the seventh-grade classroom near the heating vent: the seventh-graders could spit down onto the third-graders.

I had a sister there, Sister St. John of the Cross. I had these Martian cards then, cards about Mars invading the Earth — the whole story took up fifty-something cards. A boy I liked, Lawrence Harrigan, gave me his doubles. I was amazed by them. They had things like frost rays and heat rays: skin coming off the bone while the guy looked down and watched, these Martians grinning. Giant insects that picked guys out of cars. There was one gave me nightmares of a woman with hair like my mother on a web with a huge black-and-red spider. Lawrence said it was like Hell. Lawrence was always looking for ways to bring his problems in line with the Church.

Once a day, I asked Sister St. John of the Cross if I could go to the lavatory. I moved the time around so it wouldn’t look suspicious. I carried the cards in my skirt pocket and spread them out around the toilet in the stall. The third day I did it, wham, the stall door opens, there’s Sister St. John.

She said, “I knew you were up to something. I knew.”

I was trying to get my cards back. I would say anything. I asked her how she knew. She said she could see it in my face. She said the guilt was in my face. She said, “I can tell everything you’ve done.” And I knew she could. She’d seen through me. She knew what a horrible girl I was all along, and she’d just let me make things worse, pretending I wasn’t, her knowing all the time.

You know the only prayer I ever had that was real, that was from my heart? It was a prayer I said whenever I was really scared: PleaseGod pleaseGod oh pleaseGod, pleaseGod. That was my prayer.

When we were reading about the Passion in the garden, when the apostles were asleep and Jesus said, “Let this cup pass from me”—when he wanted more than anything else to just get out of things — that was the closest I ever felt to Jesus.

Jim Shepard (b. 1956) is the author of four short story collections and seven novels, most recently The Book of Aron, which has been shortlisted for both the Kirkus Prize and the American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal. Originally from Connecticut, Shepard now lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is the J. Leland Miller Professor of English at Williams College, where he teaches creative writing and film. He won the Story Prize for his collection Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Shepard’s stories have appeared in the New Yorker, theParis Review, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, among other publications; five have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and one for a Pushcart Prize.