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Mom shakes her head.
“Save the kid from looking like Cassel there,” says Barron. “Throw the stuff out. Besides, I got a line on a guy in Princeton looking to buy a painting. I need a roper. We’ll buy a dozen silk suits.”
Mom sniffs and slugs back the rest of her drink.
* * *
The burial takes place in the rain. Barron and I share an umbrella, which means that water constantly streams down the back of my neck. Barron puts his arm over my shoulders and I lean against him for a moment, like he really is my older brother who wants to protect me. The ceremony is subdued, since all the eulogies have been given. My mother’s tears appear to be wrung out.
Or maybe even she can’t compete with the weather.
After it’s over, Lila and her father get into the back of a car, and his bodyguards drive them away. She throws me a small wave as she goes.
The rest of us go to my grandfather’s house for the wake. The old women of Carney are out in force, and Grandad’s dining room table is groaning under the weight of casseroles, pies, and cold cuts trays.
A middle-aged woman in a black tweed suit is whispering to her friend. The other woman laughs and says, “Oh, no, Pearl! I’ve been married three times, and I never let any of them see me without my gloves, no less take off theirs.”
I head for the kitchen.
Mom stops me on the way out of the room. Her eyes are outlined in the gray remainder of her makeup, making them look sunken. Haunted.
“Baby,” she says.
“Mom,” I say, trying to slide past. I want her away from me. I already feel too much. I can’t bear feeling anything more.
“I know that you always looked up to Philip,” she says, as though the last six months never happened. As though the last three years never happened. The smell of liquor is strong on her breath. “But we’ve both got to be strong.”
I say nothing. I don’t trust myself to speak.
“Barron says I should move in with him. He says he worries about me being alone.”
“That’s great,” I say, and mean it. Maybe he can distract her.
One of the casserole-makers comes in and wants to console Mom. I get out while the getting’s good. Sam follows me, looking a little shaken. I don’t think he’s used to so many criminals displaying their scarred throats in one place. Daneca stays in the dining room, clearly in awe of being in the center of a worker party in one of the best-known worker towns.
I prepare to get blind drunk in the most efficient way possible. Taking a bottle of vodka out of Grandad’s liquor cabinet, I grab three shot glasses from the kitchen and automatically head to the basement.
The basement is just like I remember it from all the summers I spent here. Cool and damp, with a slight smell of mildew. I flop down onto the leather couch in front of the television.
I set up the glasses on the coffee table, pour a shot into each one, and grimly down the whole line.
I feel better, but also worse here. Better because the memories are so close. Worse because of the memories themselves.
“Oh,” I say, looking over at Sam. “I should have gotten another glass for you.”
He lifts his eyebrow and picks up one of mine. “How about I just take this one at the end.”
“Lila and I used to come down here a lot. Watch movies,” I say, waving vaguely toward the set.
Philip and Barron and I spent a lot of time in this room too. I remember lying on the floor and playing Battleship with Philip, laughing so hard I was afraid I was going to piss my pants. I remember a teenage Anton and Philip forbidding us to come into the room while they had on a horror movie. Barron and I sat on the stairs instead, not technically in the room, watching from the dark so we wouldn’t get in trouble, utterly terrified.
I pour myself two more shots. Grudgingly I pour one for Sam, too.
“What’s going on with you and Lila?” he asks. “I thought you liked her—you know, last year, when we pulled the thing. But you’ve been avoiding her since she started at Wallingford.”
Self-revulsion lets me gulp down the booze without wincing.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I say, shaking my head. “Not here. Not tonight.”
