Page 94 of Graceless

At some point I was lying on my kitchen floor with his shirt collar soaked through, looking up at the underside of the table Nonna fed forty years of Sundays on, and the crying wore down to that hiccuping aftermath that's almost peaceful, the body too tired to keep it up, and I lay there hollowed out and breathing.

And then, because it was Sunday, and because the body I come from doesn't know how to stay down past noon, I got up off the floor. I washed my face. I put on real clothes and did the thing with my eyes that hides crying from everyone except Nina, and I picked up the bread money off the dresser.

You get one morning on the floor. Then Sunday comes for you anyway.

I went to Nina's, because it was Sunday, and there was lamb.

I bought the bread on the way. Both loaves made it; nobody was there to eat the second one on the walk.

The end seat was set and empty — plate down, glass turned up — because in that family a place doesn't get pulled just because a man is late.

"Working," I said, when Nina raised the question with her eyebrows from the stove. "Something at the port. He sends regrets."

"On a Sunday."

"Insurance never sleeps."

"Nothing sleeps in this family," Connie said, from the far end. "Ask the awning guy. Sunday morning he calls me. Sunday."

"Because you told him Sunday," Nina said.

"I told him after Sunday⁠—"

They took the awning the whole length of the salad, which was a mercy, because nobody was looking at me or the chair.

Gina held out until the lamb. Then she put her fork down, and took a folded piece of loose-leaf out of her pocket, and smoothed it flat next to her plate, and looked at the empty seat.

"I made a new list," she said. "Nine questions. He said bring questions."

"He'll want the list, baby."

"When?"

"Soon," I said, and heard my voice do it — the smooth thing, the level thing — and I put a piece of lamb in my mouth so nothing else could come out of it.

Gina looked at me for one more second, folded the list back up, and put it in her pocket. She kept her hand over the pocket the rest of dinner. Twelve years old, and she already knows you guard the questions somebody promised to answer.

I helped with the dishes. I kissed everyone. I got out before the espresso, which in that house is a flight risk indicator, and Nina walked me to the door with a container of leftovers and stood there reading me the way she's read me since second grade.

"You're doing the voice," she said.

"I'm tired, Nina. It's been a long job."

"Mm," said Nina, and let me go, and I felt her watch me the whole way down the block.

The days stacked up the way days do when nobody's counting them for you.

Being left is a thing you get good at. By the third time there's a procedure.

I invented mine the year Dad went, refined it when Joey moved to Jersey with the truck still half loaded, and by the time Nonna went — the long way, the eleven-month way, where the leaving happens a teaspoon a day while every candle in the parish does nothing on schedule — I had it down to a craft. You keep the hands moving. You portion the day into swabs. You don't ask anybody for anything, because asking is how you find out what people won't do.

That first Monday I took the rolling pin out of the drawer I'd retired it to and set it on the counter, parallel to the edge.

"Welcome back," I told it. "You'll notice the position's been vacant."

Tuesday Donnie knocked, which Donnie does not do — Donnie hollers down stairwells; knocking implies a theory of other people — and stood there holding his rent envelope four days early, which has happened never.

"Where's the big guy."