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  “Someone’s here,” Kevin or Kieran said, but he meant Rose. “Hey. Hi, ma’am. You really shouldn’t be out.”

  “At my age?”

  “At this hour. With that chest cold.” One of his blue eyes was lazy, drifting.

  Rose thought to cough again to cover for the stranger. She wondered if the wok she’d long ago ruined had wound up here in the garage. She’d cleaned it wrong and it had rusted or—

  “You should get back inside,” the officer insisted, grasping her still-burning elbow. “Mrs.—”

  “Don’t you even remember me? Gary’s mom?” The way it came out, it sounded like begging. Of course, it had been years since Rose had been Gary’s mom in any meaningful way. She touched the bulge in her sweatshirt. It had been years since she’d been in her own garage, let alone had a car, driven a car, ridden a bike, fired a gun. How quickly the briny, mildewed stench took her back to mean Vin and all his sticky cousins, the endlessly boiling pots, gritty towels, crumbs, bones, and water rings that had ultimately led her down to the sand dragging those two heavy planks that signified company. Two leaves, two meats, the vegetable side—

  Kevin or Kieran claimed not to have grown up around here. But, too bad, he’d kill to inherit a house like this, on the beach. At the door, he gave her his card. In case Rose saw anything unusual. She stuffed it into her sweatshirt with the gun, for safekeeping. Then Sloane whistled for him to move on to neighbor Tim’s house, setting Blacky off yapping for real now.

  “Fires on the beach are illegal,” said the policeman who had arrived that first time, smacking his nasty nightstick on the smoldering table leaves. “Burning some good wood there—oak, is it? I should give you a ticket. I should haul your crazy ass in.” When he’d finally gone, it had taken Rose hours to bury the rest of the charred planks in the sand. And still some animal had it partially dug up by daylight. Vin saw it and raged. Here was the proof of what he knew all along, his wife was “the redheaded devil spawn.” Then he drag-raced his moped into a Green Line bus.

  * * *

  Kids on the beach never stopped trying to dig a hole to China. And once, for a few months somewhere in the ’70s, Rose had fashioned a hair ornament out of chopsticks, like she’d seen on that actress, what’s her name, in that film, what’s it called?

  “Other than that,” she admits to Li, “when it comes to things Oriental, I’m one big dummy.”

  Li starts to nod but an involuntary shiver overtakes him. His eyes close. Bits of Fiberall dribble from his lips. He whimpers, backstroking into the table’s pedestal. Rose imagines Li’s mother teaching him to swim. A river, it must have been, not a curly, raging ocean. A safe and manageable river.

  * * *

  At first, he looked like some kind of sea monster, soaked through and wrapped in the moldy shower curtain. You could see his chest heave, but when she got up close, the rusty, tentative sound panicked her. Each breath might erupt into coughing or nothing. And the shower house was no place for him—a dank, cobwebbed lair, slick with dog pee–scented wet leaves and the butts of the Marlboro Lights she suspected her ten-year-old grandson was smoking.

  “I can help you,” Rose said. “My daughter-in-law is a doctor.”

  The stranger lurched up onto his hands and knees and puked up a gush of ocean.

  “You come into my house,” she insisted. “I have a nice house.”

  * * *

  “Ma! Ma! You would not believe the traffic! Big whoop, that Golden Venture, every single—Ma? Why are you under the table?”

  Rose opens her gluey lids; blinks. According to the window, it’s morning—low tide. A short, wide man with a graying goatee and a Yankees cap is wheeling in two Samsonites. “Thought I’d start the move-in process. Since I was coming anyways. Oh, look here, that explains it.” Gary gives a swift kick to the empty Sambuca bottle. “Tell me you didn’t drink that whole thing. Ma!”

  Rose shields her face. “I thought she was dying. I thought they were closing the beach!”

  “Will you quit yapping about that dopey whale? Ten men just drowned right out—”

  Li! It really happened! Rose finds him beside her, under the orange crocheted blanket. But his cheeks look all wrong—too flat and waxy. “Get Maureen, Gary! Hurry!”

  “What’s Maureen gonna do about a dead fucking fish? A truck already took—Jesus! Not again!”

  Now Gary’s spotted his father’s cowboy shirt. “You keep telling me you don’t need taking care of, so how come every time you get blicked, you gotta carry this shit around?” Grabbing for the fringed sleeve, he discovers—“Aah!”—there’s an arm inside. There’s a man attached to the arm.

  If Li weren’t so pale, Rose would crack up. If it weren’t for the whale dying. “You should see your face, Gary!”

  “Who the hell—”

  “This is my friend Li…Li? Oh my God! Call nine-one-one!” Adrenaline pumps Rose the strength to cradle Li’s head, to search in vain for breath or a pulse, but no. Rose crosses herself. “Call a priest.”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “He’s a Christian.”

  “He’s a criminal!” Gary pulls on his own hair, pacing.

  “Father Flynn, call. The number’s in my pocketbook.”

  “I’m calling the cops is who I’m calling once I figure out—”

  “The white pocketbook. Upstairs—”

  “Would you shut your fucking trap?”

  Vin used to say that. And though Gary has Rose’s strawberry-blond coloring, he looks just like his father now—the superior purse of his lips, the neck stubble, his fly slightly unzipped.

  “You think you can kill me and get my house?” Rose asks, calmer now that she’s decided. For once, Gary will take his mother seriously. Inside her sweatshirt pocket, the soft wood of the old revolver handle is reassuring. “You think you can kill your own—”

  “I said shut up, Ma, Christ! I’m thinking!”

  Rose cocks the hammer with her thumb the way Vin made her practice before trusting her to mind the store. Don’t forget to aim, now.

  “Holy shit! What—”

  The kick of the gun slams Rose back to the floor, where she stays, wincing, eyes on her son. So strange, the way his body writhes before it thuds, slow twist up, accent down. Like those Indian dances she saw years ago, when the Indians came to Rockaway to entertain. Of all things to think of now! That’s how foreign Gary’s body seems, falling and now slumped over his bulbous luggage, leaking. Another mess for her to clean up. And the throb connecting Rose’s elbow and neck is so all-consuming that she misses the screech of the back door somehow. It’s the odor that tells her that neighbor Tim’s arrived, his unique blend of vodka, envy, ocean, wet dog.

  “Get out!” Rose yells, and as his firefighter boots blur past her toward Gary, she quickly thrusts the gun into poor, dead Li’s hands. Fingerprints, right? She did not endure years of Columbo for nothing.

  “I saw that! I saw you,” Tim squeals, giving up on Gary and lunging pointlessly to try and revive Li. “What did you do, Rose?”

  Once more, she reaches into her sweatshirt pocket, desperate to make the message clear. “This is my house!” It relieves her to see the detective’s card does not, after all, say Kevin or Kieran, but Vadim. He’ll be the one to help her. Vadim Volistaya. Not from around here.

  One

  Ring and Run

  Friday, June 14, 2002

  “EIGHTY-ONE YEARS old.” Tim Ray is telling his ex-firefighter buddies how at “eighty-fucking-one” his neighbor Rose started smoking. “Found a stash of her dead husband’s stale stogies, and blam!” Burn holes everywhere, the new neighbors report. All the places she bumped into things, lit-end first. Tim has spent the last nine years waiting for the brick house to ignite and, with it, his own wooden Cape. What one ember on a sea breeze on a dry night could manage…All heads in the yard nod, concurring. Point is: Tim sleeps better since the Murder House sold. He lost a nostril not long ago! (Surgery.) And still, he sle
eps so, so much better.

  If the rhododendrons weren’t in hysterical white bloom, they could see across the shared beachfront lawn and in through the picture windows of the notorious dining room. There, according to everyone, a Chinese dude shot Rose’s son. Too late for Tim to correct them. Too risky too. He’d worked (and drunk) hard to forget what he’d witnessed. And, fuck it, Tim rationalized, who’d even care now?

  Fifty-nine locals just died on 9/11. Two months later, a plane crash took out five more, along with some two hundred and sixty on board. The Golden Venture disaster is now “so last century” that it’s only even mentioned in connection with the Impoliteri house.

  Almost nostalgically, Chris D. recalls one corpselike teen Asian who’d tied a bucket to his waist, thinking it’d help him float. Then the conversation swings back to Tim and his new neighbors, the Glassmans.

  They’re perfect. Scratch that. Compared to Rose (not to mention his own skimpy clan), they’re as ideal as possible. A mom and a dad, a grumpy stick-figure Gramps, two red-haired daughters and a third kid on the way. If they hadn’t been escapees from an apartment near Ground Zero, Tim would have wondered what the hell they were even doing here, in Rockaway.

  True, he barely knows them. Even after five months, this is the case. Only four-year-old Sage has logged any real time outside. They just let her out the back door, same as Tim does with his mutt, Blacky, when he’s too lazy to walk him. Lately, Blacky, the girl, and her imaginary pirate friend, Ed, spend whole afternoons in search of buried treasure. Rose’s mutant-looking cherry tree is home base.

  “Down there.” Tim points his Fresca twelve-ounce to where a chest-high brick wall runs parallel to the beach, separating sand from yard, city from private property. In the middle of the wall, partially obscured by cherry branches, a small wooden door is flapping open to let in the little gang. “See ’em?” First Blacky, toting treasure (garbage) in his jaws. Next, tiny, orange-haired Sage, fisting a jumbo plastic ketchup bottle. Finally, presumably, the imaginary Ed. The kid hauls her invisible pal and that Heinz around everywhere. “Oh yeah.”

  “Oh yeah?” Bean palms his bald spot in disbelief, a quarter-size patch of skin, flushed from his coughing.

  Smiling tightens Tim’s scar tissue unpleasantly, but how to help it? “Finally some new blood around—”

  “Whoa, Butter, your ears are blushing. Is it the mom or are you a pedi?”

  All three of the next-door females—with their bony limbs, big joints, and orange frizz—might have been drawn by Dr. Seuss. So it’s nothing like Bean McMoron imagines. But the Glassman family as a whole does make Tim feel kind of…buzzed. And he’s the only sober guy in the yard—eight months, three weeks, five days. So what’s that?

  Mark (no last name), his AA sponsor, insists Tim should be avoiding his old friends (“Friends? Ya sure?”) Bean and Chris D. Two middle-aged 9/11 heroes who still regularly chug a six-pack apiece, laugh at farts, and call women “stains.”

  “That Glassman mom’s old but she’s no stain,” Chris D. opines, cupping his hands in front of his buff pecs to describe her. “Medicine-ball tits.”

  Chris D. got a BS in PE from BU.

  “Because she’s pregnant, dickhead,” Tim says, only fueling the guy’s rant.

  “My point exactly! They’re extra-horny knocked up. More blood flow to the—”

  “Is that true?” Bean’s got two kids to Chris D.’s one, so how come he never heard of this supposed phenomenon?

  “ ’Cause you’re a fag?”

  Mark No Name is wise. And yet. These are the same guys who coach Little League and T-ball, plan memorial paddle-outs, and head up programs to take wounded veterans jet-skiing, and that’s when they are not rushing into burning buildings, working second jobs in contracting, or donating bone marrow. They would never be less than impressive to Tim. But they cannot save him no matter how hard they try or how often they stop by under the guise of coordinating visits to the fire widows.

  Not that Tim entirely minds this. Imagine the general happiness if everyone had a place like his yard to come, sit, check the waves, decompress. And the calls to the widows are, to Tim’s mind, a basic tax owed for surviving. It’s humbling to follow Denise McClary as she sews sock monkeys for 9/11 charities. It buoys him to see Maggie Shannessy organize trips to Washington, pro bono lawyers, and comedy clubs. When Trish Shea rants about “revenge enlisting” in the army, all Tim has to do is listen and she always eventually calms down and shuffles the cards for hearts. As for his old friend and new lover, Peg, each visit makes Tim pine for the next. How tempting it is to exploit her manic stockpiling of supplies for the next disaster. Too tempting. He could fuck her daily just by showing up with cases of bottled water and batteries, like bouquets. Conscience should dilute his lust. Peg’s husband, Chowder, had been Tim’s first and best buddy. Peg herself was second and second-best. A sludge of sadness clogs his chest. Tim is godfather to Peg and Chowder’s two young children.

  “You do have a way with those widows,” Chris D. says. Coincidentally? (Tim is sure he’s been keeping the affair on the QT.) “Maybe you should get ordained and be our fire chaplain.”

  “Not this again.” The brotherly vibe dies as soon as they start in nagging Tim to return to the Beach House—Engine Company 268.

  “Time’s up, Butter. Back to work. Whaddaya say?”

  What do you say when they’re still calling you Butter (short for Butterfingers) fifteen years after one lifeguarding mishap? Figured I’d quit firefighting before I get a worse nickname. What do you say when even the widows (except Peg) cringe at the sight of your mashed-in nose hole? Don’t you dare pity me while I’m pitying you. Tim’s still got eight years until his twenty-year retirement, so what the hell do you say?

  You don’t say no. So why did they make him keep saying it? “No. No, thank you.” He will not go back to the FDNY, especially as a chaplain (what the fuck?), or as a chauffeur (yesterday’s brainstorm). He will not have a beer. Or, please God, no, date one of their single or divorced sisters or cousins. He’s alive-on-sick-leave-count-his-blessings not going back. And though Bean, a lieutenant now, keeps calling him King Coward—bottle cap flicked at Tim’s head—it’s the eighth or ninth time they’ve stopped by since Tim was sprung from Peninsula Hospital.

  “What guy on sick leave can teach driver’s ed, reel in a twenty-five-pound striper, and surf Hatteras?” Chris D. keeps on.

  “Meaning?”

  “You’re only thirty-six, Butter. What else ya gonna do?”

  “Whatever scares you is a good bet,” Mark No Name advised. Flash on a carful of teenagers taking turns at the wheel, and Tim shrugs. “Keep teaching for Steer-Rite Auto, I guess. Otherwise, I don’t know…let my beard grow? Garden? I just bought these really cool Malibu outdoor plant lights.”

  Tim’s friends (“Friends?”) screw up their ugly mugs in unison. “Garden? You’re not even Italian!”

  Which is when they hear a car pull into the neighbors’ driveway. It’s too early for Dad and Gramps to be home from work running their locksmith empire (#1 in the Tristate Since ’58!). And teen June has no license (which Tim plans to remedy). So it’s a guest, a contractor, a Con Edison meter man, or just your average outsider making a U-turn. You learn to expect a dead end in Rockaway.

  * * *

  It’s that house—an ivy-choked brick square where city street meets city beach. Its windows are pocked with BB holes. The ceiling’s moist, dripping. And yet it’s not the state of disrepair that disturbs Sue. It’s the way the house has enchanted her family. Four-year-old Sage spends all her free time taking orders from an imaginary pirate. June, sixteen, swears that ghosts live inside the bedroom walls. Sue’s husband, Dan, has developed migraines and an aversion to the dining room, the very spot Sue most enjoys.

  Southern exposure.

  Good acoustics.

  The Atlantic Ocean through two large (albeit dirt-streaked) picture windows.

  Here, with her feet up on a big oak tab
le, Sue can simultaneously listen to her new iPod, mind Sage out back, and review Genesis. Not the band (though she was a major Peter Gabriel fan, early years), but the book, in which God turns out to be a cross between her father-in-law, Mozart, and Eloise. Possibly bipolar. A tyrant. Absolutely a wit. The master of understatement. When the doorbell rings, He’s just created “all there is,” and appraised it as “very good.”

  Sue decides to ignore the bell. June’s on the beach. Dan’s on the golf course. Chances are it’s those ring-and-rip kids again. Sue would just catch another look at the crumbling stoop, cracked sidewalk, and sandy trash blowing around on the dead-end street. Then again, who knows? What if? Another emergency? A lifeguard needing the bathroom? A housewarming gift needing detonating? FedEx with anthrax? Apology daisies from Dan?

  Dan believes Sue will forgive him for anything if he just sends daisies, since, once, as newlyweds, she lied and said that they were her favorite flower. Back then, Sue thought it possible to curb her husband’s extravagant nature. Or protect herself from it. To change him. And if not, so what? Back then, Dan, conversely, thought Sue’d stay the same. Suzanne Ainsley, the spacey musician Dan met on a midnight locksmith call (“The keys to the car and my apartment are in there!”), would never have demanded he stand up to his daddy the way Sue did in their latest fight. That Sue had barely known herself, let alone Dan, let alone his father, Sy, the source of so much future strife.