Beautiful Broken Girls Page 8

  “Thanks for thinking of me. I’d been meaning to go see Eddie, check on how he’s doing.”

  Mr. Falso squinted, the sides of his eyes crinkling. “I’m not helping you break any rules, am I?”

  “Nah. They don’t need me.” It occurred to Ben that he would have no job next summer. But who said he needed to be in Bismuth next summer? The thought invigorated him. Mira’s notes were sparking that same feeling of purpose, of moving toward an end point that she gave Ben when she was living. A gift. He squinted at the sky for a second, wondering if she was up there, watching him find her notes, cheering him on.

  “It’s more important I go see Eddie,” Ben murmured.

  They entered the parking lot, bare under the sun. Mr. Falso walked slower than Ben as he slipped on a pair of rose gold-rimmed aviators. “You know, I was really glad when your mom told me you’d be open to visiting Ed. Gives you some time to chat with old Nick here.”

  “Yeah, well. Between you and me, I’m a little worried about him.” Ben turned and jammed his fists into his pockets, walking backward. Not exactly a lie. He was worried about Eddie. “And you’re the expert on this kind of stuff.”

  “A real man knows when to ask for help.”

  Eddie’s the one who needs help, far as you know, Ben thought. “Right, Mr. Falso.”

  “Nick to you, Ben.”

  They arrived at Mr. Falso’s car (small, red), in which he’d stuffed five seniors last May to drive down to Tennessee to build houses for families living in cardboard lean-tos. As Ben slid into the sunbaked seat, the smell of musk air freshener overcame him. He pressed his curved finger beneath his nose, pretending to scratch an itch.

  “So, you’re just gonna talk to Eddie, or his parents, or…,” Ben started. He needed to know if he’d be alone in that house in the way that he needed to be.

  “Let’s talk about you for a second. You’re a special kid, Ben. Your mother is worried about how you’re taking all of this.”

  Ben cringed. Special. He hated that word more than he could hate the man who saddled him with it. Mr. Falso’s mention of his special status was a buzz kill. Ancient history that had no bearing. As he told his parents, and the police, and everyone who would listen, he didn’t even remember the old coach messing with him, and it was better that way. Mira, on the other hand. Mira was real to him, maybe more so in death. He fed on her notes like sugar: they kept him high until he crashed and needed more. His blood was abuzz with finding Mira’s next answer for him, and he would not be stopped.

  “I am one hundred percent okay,” he replied.

  Mr. Falso wrapped his hands around the steering wheel in a practiced way that popped his triceps. He smiled at the road ahead. “I gotta tell you, Ben. I have seen many things. But this”—he puffed his lips and blew staccato noises through them—“this was like nothing else. You can’t expect to recover from an event like this too quickly. Everything you hear, see, and do in the next year, maybe years, will be colored by this terrible event. But know in your heart, Ben, that everything happens for a reason, and where one door closes…”

  “Another opens.”

  “Right. Some good always comes.”

  “God has a plan. We have to remember that, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense.”

  “Exactly.”

  Ben thought of Mr. Cillo alone in his Barcalounger in that house once filled with the fumes of flowery hairspray and astringent and scorched microwave popcorn. The girls’ yells, too, across the house, from any room, calls that always ended in “uh” because their names ended with the same letter. Ben imagined it smelling now of arnica, boiled water, and instant coffee; the only music the drone of the Golf Channel. Something told Ben he should pity the old man whose only two daughters were now dead, though he’d felt no pity toward him when they were alive. First, because he’d turned so many people in town against his dad, but then because he’d kept him and Mira apart. He thought Mr. Cillo should want to end his own life right about now, if he hadn’t considered it already. Surely something potent was still tucked in the back of the medicine cabinet. He’d learned from his wife’s example exactly which cocktail would stop your heart, painless and clean.

  Ben realized he was smiling maniacally and looked over at Mr. Falso, who seemed to be reciting something in his head and appreciating how it sounded. Ben wondered if Mr. Cillo was too religious to kill himself, though evidence ran to the contrary. He’d overheard his own father say—with snark, it was unmistakable—Mr. Cillo opened his law office back up two days after the girls fell. It would take an epic event to shake Mr. Cillo’s work ethic; apparently one greater than his only children exiting the earth.

  Ben was surprised to see Eddie’s dad’s truck parked at the end of the driveway. He flushed, thinking about the days he made extra cash roofing for Mr. Villela, and that one particular day he’d been sent home early. He glanced over to find Mr. Falso giving him a strange look, and swore to himself no more smiling.

  Mr. Falso pulled over a block before Eddie’s house.

  “Oh, Eddie’s house is that one.” Ben pointed, wondering why he was telling Mr. Falso something he already knew.

  “I’m pulling over here so we can talk,” Mr. Falso said. He removed his sunglasses and tucked them in a compartment above the mirror. “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

  Ben sat straighter, notes poking his soft spots.

  Mr. Falso pushed the ignition button and buzzed down the windows. Waited. Seemed to be able to wait a long time.

  Ben treaded carefully. Mr. Falso was still the object of Francesca’s misery. As grateful as he was for Mira’s notes, he was not enjoying this secret knowledge about her sister. “I guess I wonder sometimes. About the last month of Mira and Francesca’s lives, and what was happening with them. Like, behind closed doors.”

  “It’s natural to wonder what you might have done differently to prevent a tragedy,” Mr. Falso said.

  Ben shifted uncomfortably. Sitting here in this car steeped in roasted musk wasn’t getting him any closer to Mira. Ben needed to get Mr. Falso to back off. “I’m not wondering about what I could have done. I’m wondering about the stuff we couldn’t see. Things that might have … changed them.”

  “Changed them?” Mr. Falso stiffened around the shoulders. “I think I see. Was Mira different in the weeks leading up to the event?”

  Mira’s name on Mr. Falso’s lips jolted Ben. “Mira? Well, yeah. She definitely closed me off. Stopped talking to me, I guess”—They both stopped talking. To all the boys. Not just Mira—“and she—they—stopped going out. Leaving the house at all. I mean, it was summer”—No quarry. No boat club. No anything—“they—both of them—stayed in the house. In the few weeks before they did what they did. They didn’t even have AC”—which meant the windows were open—“which meant it was so hot. That’s not natural, right?”

  Mr. Falso held up his hand. “I think I get it.”

  “You do?”

  “It must be difficult to think about Mira in those last days. But you need to stop. It won’t help Mira, and it won’t help you. Mira is with God now.”

  “I’m talking about both of them.”

  Mr. Falso reached over and clasped Ben’s knee. “Of course. We both loved both of them.” He poked the ignition button and the car purred awake, rolling the block to the Villelas’ tiny cape before they stopped. “Now, you’re a good-looking boy, Ben. I mean, you’re lucky to look the way you do.”

  Ben looked away.

  “I mean it now!” Mr. Falso punched Ben’s shoulder across the console. “Look, you’re blushing! Aw, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” Ben felt his cheek as Mr. Falso pointed his finger to his own ear. “Hey, look at this ugly mug! Can you imagine these ears on a sixteen-year-old boy?” Ben couldn’t see anything wrong with Mr. Falso’s ears, but he nodded anyway. “If I’d have looked the way you look at sixteen, I would’ve had a lot more girls in my day.”

  Ben smiled despite himself.

  “Wh
at I’m trying to say, Ben, is that you had a crush on a good girl, but there will be other good girls. Lots of them. You’ll see, I promise.” He climbed from the car, unfolding like a giant, as though it was too small to contain him, when really it was Ben’s head that grazed the roof. “Let’s do this.”

  Ben gripped the door handle. It was going to be tough to look for Mira’s note. Mr. Falso banged on the hood open-handed, and Ben jumped.

  He smiled hard. “You daydreaming about those girls?”

  Ben ran his hand through his hair and climbed out of the car. He met Mr. Falso on the flagstone walkway lined with Mrs. Villela’s rosebushes. Only a few flowers bloomed, and of those, only halfway. The rest were tight buds, their leaves curled under and sucked dry by aphids. Abandoned staging rested against the front of the house, exposing red paint underneath the gray that had been half stripped when the job was aborted last spring. Mr. Falso squinted up at the house, pale lines spraying from the edges of his eyes.

  “I thought they’d have finished painting by now,” Mr. Falso said.

  Ben pressed the buzzer, and they waited seconds, then minutes.

  Mr. Falso turned to Ben, rocking on his heels. “You know you can talk to me anytime about Mira.”

  Ben swore he emphasized Mira. “Sure, Mr. F. Thanks for coming.”

  “You sure you pressed hard enough, big guy?” Mr. Falso leaned over Ben and gave the buzzer a long, hard press. Ben had grown that summer. At five eleven, he could see the top of Mr. Falso’s head where the hair was getting thin. It felt disrespectful, so he turned his gaze to the straw wreath hanging on the outer door, with its pastel foam eggs the sun had faded, their bric-a-brac dangling in places. Mr. Falso opened the outer door with a whine and tried the inner door, which opened easily. Ben followed him into the tiny alcove before the kitchen that served as a mudroom and was hit by a rush of cool air and cat urine. The house vibrated from the AC. From a peg rack hung Connie’s coat, a cheetah-patterned parka with a fur-lined hood. Forever April, Ben thought.

  Mr. Falso called out as he moved through the kitchen. “Hello? Anybody home? It’s Nick Falso, and I have Ben Lattanzi with me!”

  The coat creeped Ben out, and for a moment, he was glad that he was the kid and Mr. Falso was the adult and that he wasn’t alone.

  “Ma!” Eddie yelled from the back of the house. He entered the kitchen blinking, in a threadbare Bruins T-shirt and basketball shorts that fell too long, and his hair was mashed up in the back, his hand now expertly bandaged. “Oh, hey, Mr. F. Didn’t know you were coming.”

  Mr. Falso moved fast to embrace Eddie, who looked at Ben over Mr. Falso’s shoulder, his eyes blank. “My parents must not have heard the doorbell. TV’s too loud, and the AC makes them deaf.” Canned laughter roared from the back of the house. Eddie’s parents were too young to be holed up watching game shows, Ben thought uneasily. Mr. Falso had a lot of work in store. “You want some, uh, coffee?”

  “First things first, my man!” Mr. Falso released his hug and took hold of Eddie’s shoulders. “How are you?”

  Ben had eaten many meals at the Villelas’ and never could have imagined the kitchen in the state in which they found it. Someone had given up on the mountain of crusted plates and placed a package of paper plates beside the sink. Tall bags from Johnny’s Foodmaster covered the counter. It looked to Ben like Eddie had been eating directly out of them. Connie’s cat slinked behind him and curled around his leg, her ribs brushing his calf above the sock. On the floor was a double cat bowl with both sides empty.

  Eddie’s eyes welled with tears, and he stepped backward, waving his bandaged claw.

  “I’m good. Better than you might think, with this mitten on my hand. Now I can get a job as toll collector on the Mass Pike. I’ll fit right in. You ever see one of those guys with all ten fingers? Good money, they say.”

  Mr. Falso slapped Eddie on the back—a little hard, Ben thought. “That’s the Eddie I know. Did you say your mom and dad are in the back? Mind if I say hello?”

  “Knock yourself out, Mr. F. Remind them it’s time to eat soon, okay?”

  Ben felt his stomach drop. He’d known Mrs. Villela had taken Connie’s death hard. But the fact that Eddie’s dad wasn’t doing well pained Ben. Big Jimmy Villela (who was not big, but compact) had coached Ben in three different sports as a kid. He was the dad who shot hoops with the neighborhood kids and gave everybody day jobs in his roofing company, including guys no one else would hire. He was the first guy on the roof well into his fifties, scurrying up ladders like a goat, planting himself on the steepest pitches to show his boys they could do it. Mr. Villela was old-school, kind under his gruff exterior, like Eddie—and like Eddie, devastated when their precious Connie’s throat closed for good.

  Connie was diagnosed with her life-threatening exercise-induced allergy at age nine. It shouldn’t have taken that long for the doctors to figure it out, with her periodic fainting spells in gym. For a while, it gave her kind of a Victorian heroine chic, and she lapped it up. At fifteen, she carried around an EpiPen, and seemed to enjoy the status her perceived fragility provided. Put simply, Connie needed an edge with people, and her unusual condition provided one. Where the Cillos were all sex and unknowability, Connie was easy to know, to the point of transparency.

  Ben heard Mr. Falso straining to talk with the Villelas above the air conditioner and the Wheel of Fortune ticking on its axis. Eddie leaned heavily against the counter, his bandaged paw resting in the crook of the opposite elbow.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be working today?”

  “I gave myself the day off,” Ben said. Connie’s cat appeared and licked the tips of Ben’s fingers, which hung at his side. Ben snatched his hand away in disgust, then felt rude. He rushed to say something about the cat still being able to smell his dead dog on him, but he caught himself in time. Today was not a day to mention the dead. The cat meowed defiantly, glaring from its one good eye, the other a milky cataract.

  “C’m’ere, cat. I’ll give you some food.” Eddie moved to a lone bag on the kitchen table and reached in, pulling out a can. Ben was impressed that Eddie knew exactly where it was, then realized he was the one doing the shopping. Eddie razored the can using the side of his bandaged forearm to hold it in place.

  “You’re good at working around that,” Ben said. “Does it hurt?”

  A briny smell permeated the kitchen. The cat screamed. Eddie dumped the can into the bowl on the floor with a liquid plop and shrugged. “It hurts for a while. Then you live with it. Hard part is when it gets knocked around. Hurts fresh all over again, like it just happened.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t swim with it,” Ben ventured, thinking of Eddie diving over and over again like an automaton.

  “It’s the only thing that helps.”

  Ben leaned against the opposite counter, his butt knocking over a line of plastic prescription bottles labeled for Mrs. Villela and an orange EpiPen. As he tried to right the bottles, they skittered from his hands and bounced off the floor. The ones he managed to place back on the counter fell over and rolled away again. He chased one bottle toward the dining room, past the hanging rack of miniature spoons from places like Las Vegas and Lake George. He looked fast over his shoulder; Eddie’s head was stuck in the fridge, his square butt shining in his basketball shorts. Ben quickly tipped the rack away from the wall and out dropped a white note, folded fat and tight as an origami star.

  YES!

  Ben stuffed it into his shirt pocket and hustled into the dining room, scooping the runaway pill bottle off the floor. As he rose, he came level with four Easter baskets filled with plastic grass on the dining room table. He hustled back to the kitchen and spied the last bottle on the floor next to the cat food. As Ben reached for it, the cat swiped at his nose, and Ben yelped.

  Eddie cocked his head.

  Ben rose, rubbing his nose and mumbling about having too much caffeine, maybe. His words trailed off with every passing second of Eddie’s silence until all th
at was left were the canny strains of Mr. Falso. It felt rude for Ben to comment on the prescription bottles and the Easter baskets; it felt rude to say anything. Mira’s note burned a hole in his pocket. The fact was, Ben hadn’t set foot in Eddie’s house since right after Connie’s funeral, but now that the girls were gone, here he was, presumably checking in, but really looking for secret messages from Eddie’s cousin. That the girls were favored even in mourning was a final insult to Connie that Eddie would not bear.

  The unfairness of Ben’s visit flickered between them, hard and bright.

  “So why are you here, Benny?” Eddie said with a cold edge.

  “Checking in on you. That’s all.”

  “I saw you at the quarry.”

  “That was weeks ago. ’Sides, you weren’t exactly yourself that day. I just wanted to make sure—”

  “I hadn’t killed myself?” Eddie smirked darkly, considering Ben. “Nah, you wouldn’ta been dumb enough to say that. You know, Benny, if you were really concerned, you woulda sent me a pretty get-well-soon card with a nice note inside.”

  A nice note inside.

  The rounds of Ben’s ears grew warm. He felt sure Eddie could see the white-hot tips of Mira’s notes in the places he’d tucked them. He thought of an old movie he’d seen too young—The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her … something, where a guy killed his wife’s lover by forcing him to eat pages from his own books. He’d had nightmares for years. That Mira’s notes might someday end up in his belly did not seem altogether impossible. But Eddie’s eyes weren’t on Ben’s pockets.

  “I was worried about you, Eddie. Not for nothing, but you were acting weird at the quarry.”

  “Not for nothing, but from what I saw, you’re the one who went batshit crazy on Piggy.”