Part 8 (2/2)

”No kidding,” Fran said. ”When did that happen?”

”Thursday night,” said Aunt Angie. ”Uncle Vincent. I was married to Tony five years before I realized he wasn't his real uncle.”

Uncle Tony laughed. ”You were married to me five years before I realized he wasn't my real uncle.”

Grandma Spina smiled. ”That's because he practically grew up in our house, with our family. His dad was no good. A b.u.m. Always drinking. Vincent was afraid of him.” She shook her head. ”I never understood how such a kind boy come from such a mean father. Well, his mother was a nice woman, poor thing. I guess that's how.”

My dad and Mrs. Tovelli blew puffs of smoke from their cigarettes and tapped them into an ashtray at just the same time, in twin movements. Mr. Tovelli's cigar added smoke to the cloud that formed there, then thinned to a haze. Grandpa Gliamocco spoke to Grandma Gliamocco in Italian, and she spoke back to him. He translated.

”Tilda say, 'Joe Peretti wasn't mean when he wasn't drinking. The trouble was, he was always drinking.” He looked around the table. ”What do you do with someone like that?”

In the quiet of Fran and Danny's bas.e.m.e.nt, there was only the m.u.f.fled blur of laughter and shouting from upstairs. Here below there were a few murmurs of bafflement. No one seemed to know. Who could even think about it after all that good food?

”I was like that.” It was Mr. Tovelli.

Fran said, ”Oh, Frank, you were never like that.”

”Sure I was,” said Mr. Tovelli. ”When I got back from the war. For about six months. If it wasn't for the guy I was working for, I'd be dead. He dragged me out of the bar one day and said to me, 'Frank, I'm watching you kill yourself. And not only am I watching you, my money is buying the weapon. I don't spend my money like that.' He took me to his house. He said, 'You're living here for a while.' Every day after work I went home with him. His wife fed me. I played with his kids. I slept on their couch. For three months. Then I met Joanie, and things started to make a little more sense, it got easier. I can never forget what he did for me, though.”

It got quiet again then, the kind of quiet where people are wondering What do we say now?

Finally, Uncle Tony said, ”What made you drink like that, Frank?”

Mr. Tovelli shrugged his bulky shoulders. ”Oh, you know. It was the war. The war was not glamorous for me, where I was. It was not exciting. It was pretty lousy, where I was. I couldn't get it out of my head; it made me a little crazy, I guess.”

”That wasn't Joe Peretti's problem,” said Grandma Spina.

”Maybe not,” said Mr. Tovelli. ”Maybe n.o.body ever asked him. Did anybody ever ask him? That's all I'm saying.”

My dad spoke. ”My mother nearly always had someone sleeping on our couch. Half the time we didn't even look to see who it was.”

”Really, Ed?” said Fran. ”Like what kind of people?”

”Oh, I don't know.... I do remember one girl, Lila something. She got in trouble, and her mother kicked her out of the house. She was with us for a long time. She had her baby in our living room, and I think the baby was walking before she moved out.”

Aunt Mary said, ”People don't do that anymore, do they? People don't look out for each other the way they used to.”

”Sure, they do. We just don't sleep in each other's houses anymore.” Fran laughed. ”We have these dumb little houses.” She paused. ”It does seem different, though, doesn't it?”

”It's no different,” said Mr. Tovelli. ”It just seems different because when we were kids, everything our parents did, we thought that was the normal thing to do. Now we have to think about it. Just like they did. You think my boss didn't think twice before bringing a drunk home to live with his family, with his children? You think that was an everyday event for him?”

Aunt Mary said, ”He knew you were a good person, Frank.”

”He didn't know that,” said Mr. Tovelli. ”n.o.body knows that.”

”Now that's something I don't think I could do,” said my mother.

”But you washed Bobby's clothes and made him lunch,” I said.

Everyone turned and looked at me. They had forgotten I was still there.

”Whose clothes did you wash, Helen?” asked Aunt Angie.

”What are you doing here?” Fran said. ”You're supposed to be upstairs was.h.i.+ng dishes. Here. Take these gla.s.ses up, and ask Tesey if the coffee's ready.”

I clinked up the metal treads of the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. As I reached the landing, I could hear my mother saying, ”I just feel for the kids. It's not their fault” I carried the gla.s.ses to the sink; then I went back and sat quietly on the landing to listen some more.

After a while it was time to go home and to bed.

Chrisanne fell asleep right away, but I lay awake, looking up at the landscape on the ceiling. It was just the shadow of the curtains made by light from the electric Christmas candles on the windowsill, but it always looks to me like hills and trees next to a river at sunset golden and brown like an old painting. Peaceful.

I thought about Mr. Tovelli's story and the other stories. What was the difference between Mr. Tovelli and Mr. Prbyczka, between Lila something and Marie? Okay, so maybe Mr. Prbyczka was a jerk But maybe he wasn't. It seemed to me that the difference was that someone had cared about Mr. Tovelli, about Lila. Like the hero in a fairy tale who says to the monster, ”I can see your true heart!” and then the monster turns back into some good person who was just under a spell.

But how could you know who was a good person, just under a spell?

”No one can know that,” Mr. Tovelli had said. ”Maybe n.o.body ever asked him.”

”He was no good, a b.u.m.”

”Did anyone ever ask him?”

I wondered what would happen to Marie, whether I would ever see her again. And Bobby. It seemed to me that the hero was often someone outside the monster/good person's immediate family. And that maybe family boundaries are made-up lines, like state borders. And that we all need to take care of one another, somehow. One big safety net. I tried to picture a safety net that you could help hold and be caught by at the same time. Then I decided it would be a bunch of different safety nets, maybe arranged in a circle so there would always be one underneath you. In my mind, this looked like a drawing by Dr. Seuss, and it wouldn't actually work unless the laws of gravity were changed. So maybe a safety net wasn't the best way to think about this idea. Then I thought about how the kind act can be big and dramatic or so small that only one person notices, like a smile at a hard moment. A bowl of berries.

Before I fell asleep, my mind wandered a little way into the future. It was unclear what I was doing exactly, but I was dressed like Miss Epler and I was Making My Own Life Happen. I tried to see what that meant, but besides dressing in an interesting way, it mostly seemed to mean eating pie. Oh, well, it's a start.

Patty called this afternoon, before we went to Fran and Danny's. Just to talk. She does that It's only one of the things I really like about her. I call her, too. She comes here, I go there. I have a friend again.

I have friends.

About The Author.

is the author of Criss Cross, winner of the 2006 Newbery Medal. Her first novel, All Alone in the Universe, was named an ALA Notable Book, an ALA Booklist Editors' Choice, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon, and a Smithsonian Notable Book for Children. She is also the author of several picture books, including The Broken Cat and Snow Music, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book and a Book Sense Top Ten Pick. Lynne Rae Perkins lives with her family in northern Michigan.

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”You know,” said Miss Epler, ”maybe this person didn't take your friend away from you.”

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