“Or maybe at Christmas!” I said, hope springing eternal.
Liz said, “Well, I’m here now. I can help with the party.” She scooped up a deviled egg.
“Umm…okay,” I said, surprised, and not sure I wanted to share the glory for what I believed would be an epic success. So that Liz would know she couldn’t be the boss, I added, “Elena has been helping us, too. And Beatriz.” I took a sip of my beer, spirits buoyed.
“How is Elena?” my mother asked, touching Brickie’s velvety roses on the table. “She sent me a sweet note at the hospital, saying she was going to look out for you while I was gone.”
I was not going to spoil the mood by mentioning anything about Josef’s increasingly disturbing behavior, so I concentrated on submerging my crab cake in the tartar sauce dish.
“Elena is a kind person,” Dimma said.
“Kind, yes,” Brickie said, passing the green beans around.
We chatted about the neighborhood, Liz’s new school, spiders, Brickie’s flowers. I was content. We were like a normal family.
Then the warm scenario was suddenly interrupted by a deep melodic voice calling from the street:
Brickie, in the midst of passing the platter of crab cakes, froze. Then he snorted, “Harry Belafonte needs to tally his bananas somewhere else.” No one else said anything. “Another scrumptious crab cake, my dear?” he said pleasantly to my mother, who was looking down into her lap. Her roots stood out like a black scar on her scalp. She didn’t answer Brickie, and he set the platter down. He reached over to my mother’s lap and squeezed her hand. “It’s important that you eat, sweetheart.”
“The crab cakes are especially good tonight, aren’t they?” Dimma said evenly. “Estelle was very happy that you girls would be coming home to enjoy them.”
The singing continued. I knew it was James, the Jamaican knife-sharpener, coming around in his truck and summoning customers with his siren song. Max and Ivan and I liked James; he let us get in the truck and look at his knives, scissors, and tools while he sharpened them for Maria, Mrs. Friedmann, or my mother. All the ladies in the neighborhood liked him. He was handsome and cheerful, with a boisterous, musical laugh. Hearing his song now, I knew that something at our table had changed, but I had no idea what. My mother looked up at Brickie with a weak smile. “I think I would like more crab,” she said.
Brickie placed a crusty cake on her plate. “You need to put some meat on your bones.”
“Thank you, Daddy,” my mother said. “Mama.” She turned to Dimma. “Please be sure to tell Estelle how delicious everything is. I’m sorry I won’t see her.”
Not knowing what else to do, I reached across the table, grabbed a corn fritter, and stuffed it into my mouth. “Wow—that’s four, Piggy,” Liz said, her normal crankiness restored.
“That’s enough of that,” Brickie said in his most severe voice. James’s singing faded away into the evening. For a few minutes there was nothing but the clatter of porcelain and silver.
“Have you met any new people at the hospital, darling?” Dimma asked breezily.
“There are some nice people,” my mother said. “But not many interesting ones.” She pushed some food around on her plate. “Not anyone as interesting as Mr. Pound was, anyway.” She looked profoundly saddened.
“Oh, I’ll bet he was interesting,” said Brickie, his voice brittle. “I’m sure he had a lot of interesting things to say about his buddy Mussolini.”
Dimma said, “John.”
I yelped, “Mussolini got shot and they hung him upside down in a gas station!” I was proud to have something to contribute to the conversation, but nobody seemed interested and everybody was either sad or mad.
“How come nobody wants to know if I met any nice people at camp?” Liz said.
My mother smiled. “Well, did you, sweetie?”
“No,” she said sourly. “They’re all square and stupid and smell like mildew.”
My mother turned back to Brickie. “Daddy, that political mess is over now. Mr. Pound was just a harmless old man. He only talked about Italy and poetry with me. Dr. Overholser thought a lot of him, and didn’t think he was…sick.”
“Well, maybe they’ll take a look at his brain like they did Mussolini’s and they can figure out what the hell was wrong with him, then.”
Dimma slapped the table hard and gave my grandfather a fierce look.
“Do people collect brains?” I said.
“Don’t worry—nobody will be interested in yours, Scabby,” Liz said, sneering. “They probably won’t even be able to find it.”
“John, will you get us a couple more beers?” Brickie asked.
I brought the beers, glad for a job. I bowed as I presented a bottle to my mother—“Your wish is my command, madame”—and the grown-ups laughed more than they needed to. My mother hadn’t touched the crab cake but drank her beer thirstily. Then she said, quietly and as if she were far away, to no one but to everybody:
She smiled faintly. Dimma said, “That’s lovely, dear. You remember that my mother knew Mr. Pound’s mother in Philadelphia, don’t you?”
I asked, “What’s ‘dross’?” Nobody answered.
After dinner, my mother said she was tired. She went around the table, kissing everybody good night, and went to bed. I went outside to find the boys and discuss what I’d heard, particularly about Mussolini and brains.
“Yeah,” Max said. “They have his brain in a jar.”
“But how can you tell if somebody is bad by looking at his brain?” I wondered aloud. “What does your brain have to do with TB?”
Max gave me a long look.
Ivan spoke up. “Maybe Mussolini got an earwig in there. That’s what Maria says will happen if you don’t wash your ears. They’re called tijeretas in Mexico.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I heard one of Dimma’s bridge ladies say that Italians and French people don’t take baths.”
Max asked, “Are earwigs the same as screwworms?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But Brickie told me that we should look out for screwworms. The government once dropped a planeload of something called Smear 62 in Florida or somewhere to get rid of them. Brickie said they eat flesh from open wounds.”
“Gah!” said Max.
“Maybe he was just trying to scare you,” Ivan said. “To make you quit fooling with spiders.”
We thought about these things for a minute, since we weren’t particular fans of baths, either, and we certainly had plenty of open wounds all the time. I changed the subject. “Did you see James?” I asked.
“He sharpened my knife,” Ivan said, showing us. “For free!”
“He never comes around at dinnertime.” Max paused for a second before adding, “Maybe he came to see your mom.”
I was shocked by this remark, but I also felt a prick of recognition. If it was true, it made sense of what had happened at dinner. I could only say, “My mom’s TB is better and she’s coming home for good soon.”
“Maybe your mom had to go away because she liked James too much,” Max said, nonchalantly poking a stick at a spider. “Not because of TB.”