The Hour I First Believed

I laughed. “How old are they now?” I asked.

“Ma’s seventy-eight, Pop’s eighty-five. Of course, every time he gets on the phone, I get the third degree about the business. Has to point out all the things I’m doing wrong. We been selling these bagels for a couple years now, okay? Dunkin’ Donuts sells bagels, Stop & Shop sells bagels, so we gotta sell them. My pop still hasn’t forgiven me for it. ‘You’re running an Italian bakery, Alfonso. Since when does an Italian bakery sell Jew rolls?’ ‘Since I’m out of them by noontime,’ I tell him. ‘Yeah? Well you listen to me, Mr. Smarty Pants. When people come into an Italian bakery, they want rum cakes, il pastaciotto, Napoleani.’ Yeah, his generation maybe. But all those old spaghetti benders are either dead or down in Florida where they are.”

“What this place needs is another miracle,” I said, pointing toward Mrs. Buzzi’s statue of the Blessed Virgin on top of the refrigerator. Back in the days when that statue had enjoyed more prominent placement in the window out front, a rusty red liquid of undetermined composition had, inexplicably, begun dripping from Mary’s painted eyes. The Vietnam War had taken its toll by then, and when Mrs. Buzzi placed a white dishcloth beneath the statue, the “blood” stain that seeped into it had shaped itself into a map of that ravaged country. And so the Mama Mia, for a time, had become a tourist attraction, visited by the faithful and the media. Business had spiked as a result, particularly after Good Morning America came calling. A yellowing newspaper photo of then-host David Hartman, his arms around Mr. and Mrs. Buzzi, was still Scotch-taped to the back of the cash register out front. I’d spotted it on my way in.

“Hey, tell me about how I need a miracle,” Alphonse sighed. “You know what the wholesalers are getting for almond paste these days?”

“Can’t say that I’ve been keeping up with that one,” I said.

“Yeah, and you don’t want to know either. But hey, it’s a mute point. The only Italian product we move these days are cannoli and sheet pizza.”

“Moot point,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s moot point. You said mute point.”

“Fuck you, Quirky. I already passed English, okay?”

“Just barely,” I reminded him. “In summer school.”

“And that was only because I used to bring doughnuts to class and crack up Miss Mish: remember her? She was pretty hot for a teacher, except for those sequoia legs. By the way, what do you think of these?”

“The bagels?” I said. “They’re good.”

He shrugged. “They’re okay. Nothing to write home about. We get ’em from U.S. Foods and bake ’em frozen. Takes ten minutes, but they go out the door, you know? The thing my old man doesn’t understand is that you gotta swim with the sharks these days. He never had to compete with the grocery chains and Dunkin’ Donuts the way I do now. And if Krispy Kreme comes north? Orget-it fay. I’ll just hang the white flag out front and lock the door.”

“Orget-it fay?” I said.

“Yeah? What?”

“You’re forty-five years old, Al. Stop talking pig Latin.”

“Uck-you fay,” he said.

I asked him if he wanted to go out that night. Get a bite to eat, have a couple of beers. “Can’t,” he said.

“Why not? You getting your bald spot Simonized?”

“Ha ha,” he said. “What a wit. Don’t forget, you got two more years on the odometer than I do. You look good, though. You still running?” I nodded. “Life treating you okay? Other than your aunt, I mean. You like it out there?” I nodded some more. Why go into it?

On our way out to the front, he stopped me so we could ogle his countergirl. “How’d you like to stick your dipstick into that?” he whispered.

“She’s a woman, Al,” I whispered back. “Not a Mustang.”

“Yeah, but I don’t hold it against her. I’d like to, though.”

I asked him which he thought would come first: losing his virginity or getting his AARP membership card.

“Yeah, if only I was more like you,” he said. “What wife are you on now—sixteen? Seventeen? I lost count.” He stuck his middle finger in my face, then jabbed me in the breastbone with it. “Gotcha,” he said.

WITH NOTHING BETTER TO DO, I drove over to the mall and walked around. The sound system was playing that Cher song you couldn’t get away from—the one where she sings that part with her techno-electro voice: “Do you believe in life after love, after love, after love, after love…” Cher, man. You had to give her credit for career survival. She’d been around since the days when Lyndon Johnson was president and Alphonse Buzzi’s Phoenician Yellow Mustang was rolling off the assembly line. If there was a nuclear holocaust, there’d probably be two surviving life forms: cockroaches and Cher. “Do you believe in life after love, after love, after love, after love…” Hey, more power to her. I just wished they’d give that fucking song a rest.

I bought a newspaper and sat down in the food court to read it. The front page had stories about Kosovo, the casino, the Love Bug virus. In the second section, there was an article about a project at the prison. That morning? When I’d walked past and seen the inmates out there, digging around for something? Apparently, they’d been unearthing graves. Baby graves, identifiable by flat stone markers, some with initials carved into them, some not. A surveyor had come upon what had been, in the early days of the prison, a cemetery for the inmates’ infants. Back then, it said, women had gone to prison for something called “being in manifest danger of falling into vice.” Translation: they’d gotten knocked up. Raped, some of them, no doubt. Talk about blaming the victim….

Two local ministers were leading the women in the recovery project, the article said, and the administration was cooperating. They weren’t sure yet what they were going to do once all the graves were recovered, but a couple of suggestions were on the table: a healing ceremony, a little meditation park where inmates with good behavior records might be allowed to go. One of the women interviewed, identified only as Lanisha, said she felt the infants’ souls knew they were there, looking for them. Another, Sandy, said it was hell being away from her own three kids while she served her sentence. “These babies were suffering back then, and my babies are suffering now. There’s no one in this world can take care of my kids as good as I can.” It got to me, that article. For a few seconds, I was on the verge of tears over those long-buried babies. When it passed, I looked around to make sure nobody’d been watching me. Then I got up and threw the paper and my half-drunk coffee into the trash.

On my way back to the farm, I picked up a six-pack, a Whopper at BK, and cat food for Nancy Tucker. Passing the prison yard, I braked. Looked out at the field where I’d seen those women digging. There was no one out there now. I counted the ones I could see: eleven unearthed grave markers.

Maureen had left me a long, rambling phone message. The travel agency had had a hard time getting her a flight. She couldn’t get out of Denver until Tuesday night at 7:00 p.m., which meant she wouldn’t get into Hartford until 1:15 a.m. Wednesday morning. She’d probably just go in to school Tuesday, since her flight was so late. I could reach her there until two o’clock or so, but then she’d have to go back to the house, pick up the dogs, and bring them to the kennel. At least this way, she wouldn’t have to cancel out on Velvet; she hadn’t been able to get hold of her to say she was going to be away. She’d been thinking about me all day, she said; she hoped I wasn’t feeling overwhelmed. She was sorry she’d be getting in at such a hideous hour. She loved me. She’d see me soon.

That night, woozy from beer, I let myself fall asleep on the couch again rather than head upstairs. I got up in the middle of the night, peed, got up again, peed again. At dawn, I awoke from a dream. My grandfather and I were in a rowboat on a lake that may or may not have been Bride Lake. There were graves along the shore, and I was a boy again, sitting on the seat nearest the bow. Grandpa was in the middle of the boat, rowing in long, steady strokes. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Be brave. She’s all right.”

“Who?” I asked. “Mother?”

“Maureen,” he said. And I saw in the water’s reflection that I was not a boy but a grown man.

ULYSSES CAME BY THE HOUSE the following morning. He looked scrawnier than I remembered. Grubbier, too. His eyes were bloodshot, his pupils jumpy. When I handed him a cup of coffee, he took it with trembling hands.

He already knew about Lolly, he said. He’d walked to the hospital the morning before and identified himself as the man who’d found her and called 911. “The woman at the visitors’ desk was full of herself. Wouldn’t give me the room number. Kept stalling, calling this one and that one. Then finally she just told me that Lolly had died. I was afraid I was going to break down in front of her. So I left. Walked down to the Indian Leap and tied one on.”

He was okay, though, he said. He’d just come from an AA meeting. It happened now and again, him falling off the wagon, but then he’d get himself to a meeting and climb back on. “Lolly was always good about it when I messed up,” he said. “She’d get mad at first—say that was it, she was done with me. But then she’d calm down again. She always took me back.”

I suddenly realized why she had, despite the fact that she’d nicknamed him “Useless” and was forever complaining about what a lousy worker he was. Ulysses was a drunk like my father and had been my father’s friend. Over the years, he had become her brother Alden’s surrogate.

He fished into his pocket and took out his key to the farmhouse. Placed it on the table. “Why don’t you keep it?” I said. “I’m just here for the next few days, and then I have to get back to Colorado. Probably won’t come back here until the start of summer. And until then, I’m going to need someone to look after the place, make sure everything’s okay. You interested in the job?”

He looked away and nodded.

“I’m seeing her lawyer while I’m here. She can help me figure out how to pay you. So I’ll have to get back to you about that. How did Lolly pay you?”

“By the hour,” he said. “Ten bucks per.”

I nodded. “Fair enough. Just keep track of your time.”

“What about Nancy Tucker?” he said.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to feed her, empty her litter box.”

He nodded. “I got catnip growin’ wild in back of my place. I could bring her some of that when I come over.”

I thanked him for helping Lolly. “She was good people,” he said. He swallowed the rest of his coffee, stood, rinsed his cup in the sink. Without another word, he started for the back door.

“One more thing,” I said. “Lolly planned out her funeral before she died. She wanted you to be one of her pallbearers.”

He turned and faced me. “She did?”

I nodded. “Do you think you could do that for her?”