“No, no, of course not,” I said.
We got back into the car and I directed him down a road that I was fairly certain would at least take us to the right section of the cemetery. I remembered that we needed to pass the oldest part of the grounds first; the one with crypts and tall, ornate headstones inscribed with poetry and scripture. Frank drove slowly, but soon there were fewer and fewer worn and weathered tombstones and more and more modern-style flat stones that lay flush with the ground. As we entered the newer part of the cemetery, I was relieved to see statuary that seemed familiar to me: various angels, one of Mary alone and then a copy of Michelangelo’s Pieta. I suddenly recalled that my parents’ graves were across the road from a section with many children’s graves in it. My parents’ graves on the right side of the road, the children’s graves on the left. I looked across the road and saw a statue of the Good Shepherd-Jesus depicted as a shepherd holding a small lamb.
“Stop here,” I said. “Pull over to the right.”
Now what? Trees, I remembered. Between four trees. I looked out over the cemetery and saw trees everywhere. At least eight of them nearby. I took a deep breath and got out of the car.
I began walking with a show of purpose, looking down at the rows of headstones, trying, as I always did on my few visits here, not to step on anybody. It wasn’t really possible, but I tried. I kept hoping that some unusual name or a special military headstone would jog my memory, tell me I was in the right place. I looked up and tried to recall what the trees near my parents’ graves looked like. I tried to find a new grave- there were four of them, all fairly far apart. One was near a tree and a bench, so I could rule that one out. But it could be any of the others. I chose the nearest one and, feeling Frank’s eyes on me, walked with determined steps toward it.
Wrong grave.
I stood still, feeling a sudden overwhelming sense of shame.
Frank, misunderstanding the cause of my upset, put an arm around my shoulders. I saw him read the nearest headstones, saw his look of puzzlement when he realized that they were Cambodian names.
“I don’t know these people,” I said, then added, “I also don’t know where my parents are buried. I never come out here.”
He didn’t say anything, but he pulled me closer.
“I thought I could find them,” I said. “I’ve never felt what some people feel when they visit graves-what Barbara feels. She feels closer to my mother when she’s here. But even when we were younger, when my father used to bring us here to put flowers on my mother’s grave, I would wander off over there, across the road.” I pointed to the statue. “I’d read the children’s tombstones.”
“We can’t be too far away, then,” he said. “It has to be near one of the new graves, right?”
I nodded.
He kept his arm around me as we walked. We stopped at the next nearest new grave, but my parents’ graves weren’t there, either. As we headed for the third one, a caretaker’s truck pulled up. The driver, a gnarled old man, wore a straw hat, jeans and a light-green cotton shirt, work gloves and boots. He took a rake from the back of the truck and headed toward one of the trees. Seeing us, he asked, “You need help?”
“Yes,” Frank answered before I could politely refuse. “Kelly?”
“Oh, sure. You one of Mary Kelly’s nephews?”
Frank smiled. “No, only by marriage.”
“I’m her grandniece,” I answered. “You know her?”
“Sure.” He studied me for a minute. “You ain’t the one she calls Prissy Pants.”
Frank laughed. There were reasons he got along well with my great-aunt.
“You must be Irene,” the caretaker went on. “She’s told me a lot about you. You’re the reporter, right?”
“Yes. And this is my husband, Frank.”
“A cop, right?”
“Yes,” I said, “but how do you know-”
“Oh, I’ve known Mary for years. We both go to St. Matthew’s and a lot of her family is buried here. Most Sundays I see her and we talk for a while after Mass. Your aunt is quite a lady. You’re headed the wrong way,” he added, and steered us toward the grave I had first ruled out, near the bench and tree.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Oh, forgive me. No manners on me today. I’m Sean Grady,” he said, tipping his hat. “I knew your grandfather, too. Daniel Kelly was a fine man. A fine man. The Kellys own most of the plots in this section, you know. Or Mary does, anyway.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Well, she does. She has a way about her, that one.” He laughed. “I put this bench in here for her, so she’d have a place to sit when she comes to visit. She thanked me, then asked me to plant a tree so she could sit in the shade!”
“She’s been trying to reach you, hasn’t she?” Frank asked.
“Yes, we’ve been playing phone tag for the last few days,” I said. “This must be why she called.” Worried, I tried to think of any relatives on the Kelly side of my family who might have died-but the other Kellys lived out of state, or in Ireland. Why would any of them want to be buried in Las Piernas?
There were newly cut flowers on my parents’ grave; a dozen red roses, carefully arranged in the brass vase that fit into my mother’s side of the grave, probably left there by my sister. My mother would have loved them. Frank and Mr. Grady stood quietly beside me. My parents’ headstone looked odd, and I quickly realized why: the side bearing my mother’s name was polished, but my father’s side was covered with a layer of dust. More than dust, really-it was dirty. There was even a bird dropping on it.
“That bitch,” I said, to Mr. Grady’s apparent shock.
“Barbara only cleaned off your mother’s side?” Frank asked.
“Yes,” I said, so angry I could hardly manage that one word. I started looking through my purse for a tissue, but everything was blurry, including the one, big fat tear that I felt rolling unattractively off the end of my nose.
Frank knelt down, not seeming to notice that he was probably going to have grass stains on his suit pants, and took a handkerchief from his pocket. He started cleaning off my father’s side of the stone. I knelt next to him, and soon old Mr. Grady was there, too, using a big red cloth, all three of us polishing the smooth marble.
“We need some water,” Mr. Grady said, getting to his feet.
Frank worked the metal vase free from my father’s grave. “Is there a faucet nearby?” he asked Mr. Grady.
Mr. Grady pointed one out, and Frank left to fill the vase.
I moved to the bench, tried to pull myself back together. I made myself focus on the new grave, on the seams of earth between rectangles of newly placed sod. I silently debated whether or not I should do anything on Barbara’s behalf. Ever.
“Do you know whose grave this is, Mr. Grady? The one next to my mother’s?”
He shook his head. “No, no, I don’t. I wasn’t here the day of the funeral-I’m off on Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and I think this one was Wednesday. Must be somebody your great-aunt Mary knows, though.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She owns several plots here. Nobody could have been buried next to your folks without her say-so.”
Frank came back and splashed the headstone with a little water. The rest of the dirt came off, and with a little more water, the stone cleaned up nicely. Frank put the vase back in its holder, water still in it. He reached toward the roses, then hesitated, looking at me.
“Do you think she’d mind?” he asked.
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
I smiled. “No, she wouldn’t mind. She was always generous.”
He carefully pulled three of the roses from the vase on my mother’s grave.
I tried to tell myself, on the way home, that my father was past feeling any slights from Barbara, that even when he was alive, he had an understanding of her habit of distancing herself from him, an understanding I could never share.