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“I didn’t know,” Donni said, speaking with effort. She wasn’t sure if she sounded sympathetic or not, she felt so drained. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes, well, her family set up a Go Fund Me.” She sniffed. “Maybe you should contribute. Or are you hoping to wait them out?”
She gritted her teeth so hard she could swear she heard a filling crack. She would have bet her best pair of Louboutins that Irene hadn’t contributed so much as a nickel. “Send me the link,” she said. “And I will.”
Irene nodded before drifting away, her work done. Donni watched her go over to Opal and Poppy, both wearing rather expensive-looking new dresses.
Then there was a shift and several faces turned towards the gate. Rafe had arrived. He was wearing a suit, or part of one, which made her realize that he must have been planning on coming down all along, with or without her inadvisable phone call. Beneath the suit jacket was a fitted black V-neck and he’d gone with black motorcycle boots instead of dress shoes or brogues.
Beside him was his mother, dwarfed by her tall son. She held on to his arm with both hands, moving as if she were sleepwalking through water. Donni felt the energy change in the air as people looked over at them, shifting from ill-concealed hostility to sympathy and pity.I bet nobody is leaving her notes calling her a “whore,”she thought, feeling perversely grateful when the pastor gestured that the services were about to begin.
His mother must have been very beautiful once. She had learned to recognize it, working with other actresses of all ages. Her skin was papery smooth and mostly unlined, and she had the sort of delicate bone structure that called to mind the refined elegance of Old Hollywood film actresses, like Vivien Leigh or Audrey Hepburn. Her black sheath dress was a little too large for her emaciated frame, though, and Donni found herself wondering if the woman had just recently come out of another “episode.”
She kept her eyes trained ahead when they took the seats behind her, but the air from their movements stirred the curls at the back of her neck and made her shiver.
“Say what you want about the boy,” a woman to her left whispered. “But at least he takes care of his mother.”
Her companion tittered and said archly, “Which one?”
Donni was suddenly very conscious of the open back of her dress, the lack of bra straps, and her over-the-top fascinator, which now felt childish. She focused on the eulogist, who was reading out one of Marco’s favorite e.e. cummings poems, gripping her clutch so tightly that she was aware of her palms beginning to sweat.
“I’m tired,” Mrs. Nicastro whispered, her voice scarcely audible.
“It won’t be long, Mother,” she heard Rafe say, in a much gentler voice than he’d ever used with her or his father. “We only have to stay for the committal and then we’ll leave during the reception. All right?”
“I don’t know. The sun . . . it’s making me feel faint.”
In her periphery, she saw his arm move, as if he’d put an arm around her or taken her hand. But the shadowy figure next to him shrank from his touch.
“Not now, Rafe,” his mother said wearily. “Just leave me be.”
She heard Rafe sigh, heard the catch in it.
He didn’t speak again.
Donni continued to stare ahead, but stared ahead with a strange warmth in her eyes that had little to do with the poem or the prayer that followed. She closed her eyes during the latter, shutting out the rest of the funeral attendees for the first time. Inwardly, she was bitterly amused by the hypocrisy of it. Marco wasn’t religious at all, but he was Italian, and all Italians—or at least the ones she knew—seemed to make a production about their religious ceremonies. She’d already heard one of Marco’s cousins—the ass-pincher—sniff, “Irish Catholics! Couldn’t she find a proper church?”
“. . . we therefore commit this body to the ground,” the pastor was saying. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life. Amen.” A few people echoed theamen, some of them crossing themselves like the hypocrites they were.
After the prayer, it was time for the body to be interred.
Rafe wasn’t one of the pallbearers. Marco’s younger brother and five of his friends—what few remained—were the ones to lower him into the ground. A bitter wind rattled the leaves, causing more than a few guests to shift in discomfort, Donni included. She watched the coffin disappear into the ground, arms folded beneath her breasts, thinking not of her late husband, but her father.
Maybe, in a perverse way, she had been seeking out a father figure in Marco Nicastro. Someone to protect her from her hurts, who could provide a cushion for her to fall back on. There was something comfortable about letting someone else take care of you, after all, even if they did it in a way that put their own ego ahead of yours.Did he even love me?she wondered.Or was it the idea of me that he loved? The pretty, wide-eyed young starlet who was just unsuccessful enough to be amusing instead of pathetic?
How quickly it had all come crashing down when she couldn’t be what he wanted.
“Unforgettable” by Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole began to play and the tears she had been holding in all afternoon finally began to spill down her cheeks. No one but her would know that it was her father she was thinking of, as she quietly began to sob.
She lifted a hand to wipe the tears away and then thought better of it. After all that worrying about not crying, the dam had finally burst. People would be more likely to judge a dry-eyed woman at her husband’s funeral. They’d call her cold and callous.A whore and her blood money.
When she glanced to the side, she caught Rafe turning his head away.
He’d been watching her.
And if I noticed, she thought,somebody else might have.
It wasn’t until the reception that he sought her out. With people allowed to mingle once more, there were more condolences, more veiled remarks. She had just excused herself from a man who was telling her breasts how sorry he was for their loss when she ran into Rafe. Immediately, she found herself looking around guiltily, wondering if anyone was watching them, but Opal was talking to an attractive dark-haired man with light eyes, and Poppy and Irene were chatting with their husbands. As for the rest of the gossips, they all seemed safely occupied, so it was just her—and her stepson.
