“We’ve got enough leftovers for a month!” Arlene managed. She doubled over, guffawing, then straightened up. Her cheeks had turned purple. Her red hair, which she had bequeathed to both the son standing before her and the one now underground, had come loose from the clips with which she had temporarily tamed it, and now stood out around her congested face in a frizzy corona. “Bad news, Frankie’s dead! Good news, I won’t have to go shopping for a long . . . long . . . time!”
She began to howl. It was a sound that belonged in an insane asylum, not in their kitchen. Fred told his legs to move, to go to her and embrace her, but at first they wouldn’t obey. It was Ollie who moved, but before he could get to her, Arlene picked up the chicken and threw it. Ollie ducked. The chicken flew end over end, shedding stuffing, and hit the wall with a horrible crunch-splat. It left a circle of grease on the wallpaper below the clock.
“Mom, stop. Stop it.”
Ollie tried to take her by the shoulders and pull her into a hug, but Arlene slipped under his hands and darted toward one of the counters, still laughing and howling. She grabbed a serving dish of lasagna in both hands—it had been brought by one of Father Brixton’s sycophants—and dumped it on her head. Cold pasta fell into her hair and onto her shoulders. She heaved the dish into the living room.
“Frankie is dead and we’ve got a fucking Italian buffet!”
Fred got moving then, but Arlene slid away from him, too. She was laughing like an overexcited girl playing a spirited game of tag. She grabbed a Tupperware container full of Marshmallow Delite. She started to raise it, then dropped it between her feet. The laughter stopped. One hand cupped her large left breast. The other lay flat on her chest above it. She looked at her husband with wide eyes that were still swimming with tears.
Those eyes, Fred thought. Those are what I fell in love with.
“Mom? Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, and then: “I think my heart.” She bent to look at the chicken and the marshmallow dessert. Pasta fell from her hair. “Look what I did.”
She gave a long, whooping, rattling gasp. Fred grabbed her, but she was too heavy, and slithered through his arms. Before she went down on her side, Fred saw that the color was already fading from her cheeks.
Ollie screamed and dropped to his knees beside her. “Mom! Mom! Mom!” He looked up at his father. “I don’t think she’s breathing!”
Fred pushed his son aside. “Call 911.”
Without looking to see if Ollie was doing it, Fred slipped a hand around his wife’s big neck, feeling for a pulse. He got one, but it was disorganized, chaotic: beatbeat, beatbeatbeat, beatbeatbeat. He straddled her, gripped his left wrist in his right hand, and began to push down in a steady rhythm. Was he doing it right? Was it even CPR? He didn’t know, but when her eyes opened, his own heart seemed to give an upward leap in his chest. There she was, she was back.
It wasn’t really a heart attack. She overexerted herself, that’s all. Fainted. I think they call that a syncope. But we’re getting you on a diet, my dear, and your birthday present is going to be one of those wristbands that measure your—
“Made a mess,” Arlene whispered. “Sorry.”
“Don’t try to talk.”
Ollie was on their kitchen wall phone, talking fast and loud, almost shouting. Giving their address. Telling them to hurry.
“You’ll have to clean up the living room again,” she said. “I’m sorry. Fred, I’m so, so sorry.”
Before Fred could tell her again to stop talking, to just lie still until she felt better, Arlene drew another of those great, rattling breaths. As she let it out, her eyes rolled up in her head. The bloodshot whites bulged, turning her into a horror-movie deathmask Fred would afterwards try to erase from his mind. He would fail.
“Dad? They’re on their way. Is she all right?”
Fred didn’t reply. He was too busy applying more half-assed CPR and wishing he had taken a class—why had he never found time to do that? There were so many things he wished for. He would have traded his immortal soul to be able to turn the calendar back one lousy week.
Press and release. Press and release.
You’ll be all right, he told her. You have to be all right. Sorry cannot be your last word on this earth. I will not allow it.
Press and release. Press and release.
5
Marcy Maitland was glad to take Grace into bed with her when Grace asked, but when she asked Sarah if she wanted to join them, her older daughter shook her head.