Beautiful Broken Girls Page 2

  Ben wondered if summer would always be a tainted season for him now. Before he left, he touched his finger on August 8, leaving a smudge.

  * * *

  Ben made for the gate that led to the clubhouse, through shrieks and lifeguard whistles, and beyond, the tidal roar and squeals of gulls. The wooden shell housed a snack bar and locker rooms. Built around the tired pool and facing the ocean, it captured and amplified the noises of both. The manager, Kenneth Laidlaw, lingered around the entrance, waiting for him to arrive.

  “Lattanzi!” he called.

  Ben jogged past him with a wave and beelined for the locker room, rank with ammonia over urine. Boys tumbled in, first three, then five. One boy pushed another. Ben glowered at them, waiting until the last one had zipped his fly and left to begin his search for Mira’s note.

  The manager stuck in his pustuled forehead. “You stroll in twenty minutes late and sit here catching up on your fan mail?” he whined.

  Ben slid Mira’s letter into his bag. “I’m getting changed.”

  “Looks like you’re dressed. Get behind the counter. The place is jammed and Eddie’s been alone for half his shift already. Have some sympathy, Benvenuto. The dude’s been fed a tragedy sandwich.”

  Ben cringed. The manager was an ignorant putz who would never feel empathy for Eddie, but it was a convenient excuse to abuse Ben.

  “I’m aware. Thanks though.”

  “Then help the man!”

  Ben knew the note was somewhere inside the clubhouse. Mr. Cillo might have had eyes everywhere, but not between their hands at the snack bar last summer. Ben had sensed Mira coming before he’d seen her, making her way through the kinetic energy of sugared and sunburned kids. Behind her, the sun glared white. It hurt to look at her. She’d worn her father’s button-down shirt over her wet bathing suit, and it clung in places. Ben had dreamed of her that morning and felt sure she knew. It seemed possible he was still dreaming and coming to the best part. Water beaded on her eyebrows and lashes. Ben wished he could fold her inside a towel and lead her away, wished he could tell her that’s what he would like to do, but the recurring theme between them was Ben sounding stupid, and so he almost always said nothing.

  And then she was there.

  “Hey,” he murmured.

  Mira blinked. “Hey.”

  “A real live mermaid!” Eddie boomed as he came out from the supply room. Ben stiffened, waiting for the cascade of hugs and kisses between cousins, a display that tapped the hollow in his chest. Ben wasn’t jealous that Eddie got to touch the girl everyone wanted to touch. It was that Ben had nothing like that in his life. No extended family that acted like every time they bumped into one another was the first time in a year. It was excessive and vulgar and lovely, and Ben ached for it.

  “Ever hear of a towel, sweetheart?” Eddie said, pushing past Ben and leaning over the counter to plant a kiss on her cheek.

  Over Eddie’s shoulder, Mira’s eyes fixed on Ben.

  “I hate it here,” she murmured.

  “Look at the bright side. Some of us don’t have a choice every day between the club and the quarry; we gotta work for a living. We’ll get you a towel. Benny, you seen any extra towels back in the lost and found?”

  Ben slunk away for a towel, relieved for the chore. The exquisite pain of Mira’s closeness, especially when she looked slightly porny, was more than Ben could bear. He was certain his ears glowed hot.

  “Don’t!” Mira said suddenly. Ben stopped short. “Don’t bother. Francesca wants to leave.”

  Eddie planted his fists on his hips. “Someone giving you girls trouble?” Eddie’s play at being his uncle Frank’s surrogate seemed stupid to Ben, the way Eddie pretended Mira needed a protector of her virtue when his own sister fooled around with everyone. Whatever myth Mr. Cillo had created about his daughters, it was contagious, because even the same boys who sneered at the Cillos’ untouchability upheld it. Mr. Cillo’s no-dating rule was an excellent excuse to avoid the ball-busting fail of asking out his daughters.

  “Relax, no one’s giving us trouble,” Mira said. “Get me a Coke, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  As Eddie’s head disappeared inside the cooler, Mira held out a bill. Ben frowned, confused. The Cillo girls never paid at the snack bar. Not unless the manager was hovering, and even he refused Francesca’s money.

  “You know Eddie won’t let me take that,” Ben said, low and conspiratorial. She had allowed him to speak that way to her: her gesture required it. He was grateful.

  Mira pushed the wet dollar on him. “I want to pay like everyone else.”

  Mira shifted from hip to hip, tangled in the damp cage of her father’s shirt. Ben took the dollar. That’s when it happened. Mira’s two fingers, reaching past where they should, a stroke on the inside of his palm. So light he thought he’d imagined it, but knew he hadn’t, because of Mira’s smoldering look after. He’d practically danced away, looked the fool, tacked the dollar right up on the cork board for anyone to ask about. A flash of amusement, a sly smile before she padded away without her Coke, leaving wet footprints on the cement. Ben’s elation dissipated into panic, and he sweated the rest of the afternoon, wondering if Eddie had seen any of it go down. Maybe for Mira, the thrill was in the risk of getting caught. Ben knew there were couples who purposely had sex in places like alleys and golf courses and the bathroom stalls at the boat club because it was more exciting. Getting caught became what Ben and Mira feared most. Because that would mean the end.

  Ben conjured the feel of Mira’s fingertips grazing his palm, and the memory made a stir in his pants, luscious and sad. Around that same time, Mira was changing, all nervy jangle, her limbs spring-loaded. On a towel, her knees sliced at the air, discontented. Listening to her sister, she would thrust her long neck forward; the slightest sound or movement made her head snap. Coiled and constantly alert, it was as though she might leap from her skin, or from this world. In a dream, Ben had watched as Mira launched herself off the altar, her legs flush back, her popped throat bound for the sky.

  “Dude!” his manager shouted, ducking in. Ben considered how easy it would be to take off his pimpled head with a swift kick of the door. Instead, he stashed his bag in a locker and picked through a mob of sweaty kids to reach the hinged half gate that led behind the counter. Eddie’s back was to Ben, operating the shake machine and pouring Goldfish into tiny cups at the same time.

  Ben slapped an apron around his waist and cracked open a fresh mega-sized carton of Goldfish. “Help’s here!”

  Eddie swung around fast. Always ready for a fight. The cousins and siblings shared the same loosely wired nerves. Where Mira displayed the genetic reactivity throughout her body, and Connie in her hair-trigger laugh, Eddie was known for snapping. He once smacked Steven “Piggy” Pignataro for cupping Connie’s butt when he was drunk, and Piggy still had to plug his ears when the T rumbled by.

  “Geez, Benny, you took your time. Slap dogs on the turner and help me do drinks.”

  Ben quickly glanced around the snack bar space, desperate for a flash of white. Would the note be the same size as the first letter? The same color? In an envelope again? He felt Eddie’s sharp eyes on him and turned fast, plugging in the relic electric turner. “Laidlaw didn’t even warm up the turner for us,” Ben mumbled, his face hot.

  “Douche,” Eddie said, settling, turning away from Ben.

  The lunch crowd came in waves, dashing Ben’s chance to search. They worked silently until the mob subsided, Eddie at the front end, taking orders and keeping the brats in line, and Ben working the back, pushing out hot dogs, Goldfish, and sugary drinks. Ben wished more than anything that he’d come early and beat Eddie and the crowds. The action seemed to taint the place, making any note Mira might have hidden impossible to find. He began to doubt he was right. Maybe he was reading too much into it, getting too technical: did Mira consider a palm stroke “being together”? Was it even worthy of a memory? What was? Ben snuck a look at Eddi
e. What if Eddie had found the note before Ben arrived and thrown it away? Or worse: what if he had it? Ben studied the back of Eddie’s short neck. He needed to get Eddie talking. He needed to know.

  Ben waited until the last customer slapped away in her flip-flops.

  “Yo, Ed. Can I ask you a question?” Ben said lightly, washing his hands at the sink to avoid his face.

  Eddie turned and slumped against the counter, guarded. “Depends on the question.”

  Ben dried his hands with a bar towel and softened his voice. “I was just gonna ask you how you were doing, man.”

  Eddie folded his overdeveloped forearms. Fresh ink circled his bicep. The last time Ben had worked with Eddie, there was one star. Now, two new blue stars connected by swirls circled his arm.

  “Three stars,” Ben said, pointing.

  “Three stars together up in heaven now. Tight as they were in real life. They were saints, my cousins. Mio sangue. Don’t you believe anything you hear about them being depressed or nothing.”

  “I don’t.”

  Eddie went on as if he hadn’t heard. “They were fine. I mean, they were sad, about Concetta. We all were. Are. Devastated.” He rubbed the back of his neck and bulged his eyes. “But not enough to do that.”

  Ben didn’t take offense to Eddie getting his back up. He knew there were lots of people interested in the accident for the wrong reasons. He needed Eddie to know he wasn’t one of them, but Eddie was too raw to remember that Ben was one of the good ones.

  “Anyone who knew them knows it was an accident. It’s good your family’s got church and all. And Mr. Falso,” Ben faltered. “I mean, it’s got to help. To have a higher power, to look to, to look up to, when terrible things happen…”

  Eddie pushed off the counter and moved to the electric turner to spin the hot dogs. “What do I know? I ain’t been to church since … whenever.”

  Ben knew he meant Connie’s funeral. The whole thing had been a shit show, from his own parents’ uptight, robotic appearance to Eddie’s mom on Xanax propped like a rag doll in a metal folding chair to Eddie’s dad smoking on the curb with the men, including his brother-in-law Frank Cillo, cracking knuckles and talking about throwing a Molotov cocktail on the front porch of Connie’s doctor’s mansion. Half the guys in the neighborhood went just to see the Cillo girls dressed up. Francesca wore a black scoop-neck top with a skirt, like a ballerina. Mira’s dress was simple and sheer around the hem, and it whirled when she walked up to the casket and settled in a flutter on her calves when she kneeled down; Ben remembered that. They squared their shoulders toward each other, talking to no one, not even relatives, their faces pale ash. Mira strayed from Francesca’s side once, to rearrange a disordered vase of pink-and-yellow-sprayed carnations from the Parks Department, slipping the flowers into different positions with meticulous care. She never acknowledged Ben, which seemed okay—that was how they did things. It was acceptable for a Lattanzi to attend a Villela wake, but grabbing Mira Cillo and crushing her against his chest in front of her father and his parents was not.

  Both girls stayed out of the line of relatives that led away from the open casket, in which Connie was perfectly intact, if unrecognizable. Ben’s head had throbbed from the masses of stargazer lilies, cheap, since it was Easter season, their gaudy, pink blooms clobbering everyone with a medicinal funk. And though Ben was sure he hadn’t brushed against them, he found yellow powder on his sleeve. The second Ben’s parents paid their stiff condolences and left, Ben bolted and accepted a hit off Kyle’s joint right in the parking lot.

  There had been no funeral for Francesca and Mira. Only a private cremation.

  Ben wedged hot dog buns into cardboard rectangles. “I wanted to say. I know my dad and your uncle had their differences. But we feel your pain.”

  “Benny, what are you talking about?” Eddie said, shaking his head.

  Ben’s stomach tightened.

  “Not for nothing, but ain’t no one’s thinking about the Lattanzi-Cillo feud right now. In fact, maybe it’s time all that crap went away,” Eddie said, tonging hot dogs aggressively into buns.

  Ben agreed gruffly. The unfairness of Mr. Cillo warming to the Lattanzis after Mira’s death was too much to think on. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to make it about that.”

  Eddie kept his back to Ben, his shoulders relaxing slightly. “I know you didn’t. You’re one of the good ones. Guys are easier, you know. Uncle Frank’s a guy’s guy. He didn’t know what to do with girls. Feminine protection and mood swings and shit. It had to be hard. You think you’re doing the right thing: treat them like glass, keep the dogs away, protect them, hold them real close. And still this happens. Sometimes I think this family’s cursed. Like the Kennedys or something.”

  A kid waved a dollar over the counter. “Can I have a Ring Pop?”

  Eddie threw the kid a lollipop. “Suck it.” He moved to the fridge and pulled out a mesh bag of lemons and drew a short knife from the drawer under the counter.

  “Nah, you’re not cursed.” Ben pretended to wipe down the sales counter and peeked over the ledge, searching for a note tacked underneath. “The truth will come out,” he murmured distractedly.

  Eddie froze, his knife hovering over the lemons. He turned his head. “Ain’t no truth to come out. They fell.”

  Ben stepped forward. “God, everything I say keeps coming out wrong. I’m not thinking straight. Tell you the truth, Eddie, I loved them.”

  Eddie’s shoulders fell. “I know you did. Nobody knows why any of this happened.” He let the lemon roll away, signed the cross over his chest, and looked up. “Only The Man knows.”

  Their shift went along predictably, each falling to his own thoughts. Ben was glad for the quiet, scanning his eyes over every nook in the snack bar. If Eddie was paying attention, he might have noticed that Ben was taking unusual care, lifting the rubber dividers in the cutlery drawers, dusting behind massive plastic mayonnaise tubs, and inspecting the back of the money drawer. Eddie sliced more lemons than they would need for ten pitchers of lemonade. Ben enabled his distraction, grabbing a two-pound bag of sugar and three fat plastic pitchers and filling them partway with water from the tap. Eventually, Ben left Eddie with his lemons and tended the dogs. Rolling the dogs on the turner, he meditated on where he’d gone wrong in his calculations. Mira’s secret note would not be found; Ben had checked every inch of the space. His mind skipped to the next place they were alone, and wondered when and how fast he could escape the snack bar to get there. His dead ex-girlfriend was watching from somewhere above, he was sure of it, and he was failing this task. As he gazed over the empty counter, his mind played a terrible trick. He saw Mira in her father’s shirt, soaked not from the pool but from the quarry lake. Ben shivered. Pretend-Mira smiled and handed him a dripping dollar bill.

  The dollar.

  Ben dropped the dogs and walked swiftly to the tiny hall that led to the back pantry. On the cork board, among tacked-up messages begging for more hours, mysterious keys, and a coupon for Dunkin’ Donuts was Mira’s dollar. He had pinned it on the board that day, gotten busted by Mira doing it, and hadn’t cared. It seemed right, a secret reminder every day of what he was busting his butt for: eyes on the prize and such. He lifted the corner and found her note underneath, folded into a delicate sliver. His fingers fumbled, and it fell to the ground, light, achingly slow.

  Ben snatched it off the sticky floor and cleared his throat. “Eddie, you good?” he called shakily. “I gotta go to the can!”

  Eddie grunted over a mountain of chopped lemons. Ben slipped off his apron and sidled from behind the counter, ducked into the locker room. He landed hard on the bench and peeled apart the tiny folds.

  Daddy tells Francesca that it’s all in her head.

  But I’ve seen it happening with my own eyes for years.

  Now, she bleeds.

  Ben’s face burned. He thought of what Eddie had said about Mr. Cillo living among all that feminine protection. He didn’t know what
felt worse, reading about Francesca getting her period or the way it made him mad at Mira, like she was trying to shame him from beyond. He set the scrap of paper on the bench, walked to the sink and splashed his face with water. His reflection in the cloudy mirror said defeated, the butt of a bad joke. Francesca was a sore spot for Ben. She knew about him and Mira, and though she never outwardly acknowledged it—its futility made it inconsequential—he knew she didn’t approve. That overdeveloped jaw she slid back and forth, a judge-y, clicking noise that sounded like tsk, tsk. The idea that Mira would waste a note on Francesca pissed him off.

  What was all in Francesca’s head, anyway? Ben didn’t want to know. He pulled hard at the corners of his eyes as Eddie screamed.

  The door swung open and Eddie shouldered in, staring at his hand swathed in a crimson dishrag. Their manager ran behind, yelling, “You may nev-er swear in front of the guests!”

  Eddie raised his good hand to slam the door in the manager’s face.

  His face was the shade of a ping-pong ball. Ben yanked his shirt over his head and wrapped it around the dishrag, pushing Eddie gently onto the bench. Eddie stared at Ben, his mouth a tight line.

  “Can you speak?” Ben said, squeezing the mass of cloth.

  Eddie whispered, “It stings bad.”

  Ben matched his whisper. “Because of the lemon. You gotta put pressure on it. I know it hurts. But unless you do, the blood won’t stop.”

  The manager busted back in. “I called an ambulance, ungrateful as you are.”

  Eddie rose to say something and fell backward. Ben caught him with a hand on his back.

  “No way am I taking no ambulance to the hospital,” Eddie gasped. “That’s the last thing my mother needs.”

  “Is an ambulance really necessary?” Ben said.

  “Are you gonna drive him there?” the manager spat, his voice pitched up. “Besides, someone’s gotta stay and clean up. For all I know, Villela left a digit on the cutting board. The place looks like a slaughterhouse.”