I hugged him harder than I should have; his bones felt as light as a bird's.

He examined me at arm's length. "You look wonderful," he said.

I brushed away the idea. "How's school?"

"Oh, it's still there," he said, smiling. "I'm sorry about your grandmother. I'll miss her Christmas card this year."

"What Christmas card?"

"Oh, she sent me one faithfully every year since you graduated. Kept me posted on your various activities." He smiled at Dante. "Vermont's a beautiful state. A friend of mine and I drive up for the foliage every year."

"Gary?" I said. "Do you and Gary still live together?" Mr. Pucci blushed and nodded.

His lover's face came back to me-and their apartment -the guilty way Mr. Pucci had looked that afternoon I'd gone over without calling.

"Yes. Well..." Mr. Pucci shook Dante's hand and told me again how sorry he was.

I watched his exit into the foyer. "Former teacher?" Dante asked.

"Excuse me," I said.

Bug Eyes was holding open the door for him. "Mr. Pucci, wait!" I said. "I'll walk you to your car."

We talked for five minutes about nothing. It was the sound of his car engine that scared me enough to begin.

"I'm sorry if I embarrassed you in there about Gary just now."

"No, no-don't be silly."

"He was so sweet to me that day I showed up at your apartment. God, what nerve of me to barge over there like that. He played me Billie Holiday records before you got there. Do you still have your jukebox?"

He nodded.

"Mr. Pucci? The thing is-through this whole wake, I've been sitting in there watching Grandma on one side of the room and her church friends on the other side, wanting to apologize to someone. Except I couldn't. Dante doesn't even know about- What I'm trying to say is, it means a lot to me that you came tonight. And that you were my friend-my pal-when I was so messed up. I'm just so sorry that-"

"Let me ask you something, pal," he said. "Where were you the afternoon President Kennedy got shot?"

"Uh... I was at St. Anthony's. Miss Lilly stopped a spelling test to tell us."

"And I was at my mother's kitchen table with my cousin Dominick when it happened. Eating lunch-pasta e fagioli."

I stood there looking at him, waiting for it to make sense. "And where were you when you saw Neil Armstrong land on the moon?"

"You know where. With you, sitting on me coucn at Grandma's. It was the night after Ma got killed. You brought me an African violet."

"That's right," he said. "That's exactly right. So whenever anyone mentions the Kennedy assassination, I think of my cousin Dominick. And whenever anyone talks about that moon landing, I think of you. You and I are locked together for life, kiddo. It's fate; not a damn thing either of us can do about it. Apology accepted."

Then he drove away.

Dante slept that night on the water bed. Upstairs in Grandma's room, I closed the door and got into my nightgown. Popes and saints covered the walls. The statues of Jesus and John the Baptist seemed to stare back.

In her top dresser drawer were a small vial of holy water, handkerchiefs, nitroglycerin for her heart. In the back I found an envelope with childhood pictures of me. No pictures from my fat days-Grandma hadn't wanted evidence either. Her good red rosary beads were in their velvet case.

Without warning, a moment I'd shared with Grandma came back so powerfully and unexpectedly that it hurt me behind the eyes. It was right after she'd found out about the rape. Ma was at work and I was home from school. The shades were drawn against the sun. Grandma put on the table light and said she wanted to show me something about her rosary beads, her special ones, "They've got a little secret," she said. "I use it when things are bad." She slid up the back of the hollow metal crucifix and brought my hand up to it. When she tipped the cross, a tiny, rust-colored nugget fell out and into my palm.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A pebble from the road Jesus walked when they crucified Him. You just put it between your fingers and play with it-roll it back and forth, like this. Makes you feel better. I'll leave the beads here for you for a couple of days. In case you want to say the rosary or feel the pebble. On account of that business-what he did to you."

I'd gone out of my way not to pick them up. Then, a few days later, they were gone again. My memory always insisted that Grandma had been remote and unforgiving about me and Jack. But there, back again without warning, was that moment.

I listened for Dante, then got up and locked the door anyway. I sat back on the bed and, with my fingernail, pushed open the back of the crucifix. It was there-that pebble, the hard red nugget.

"The estate should take about nine months to get through probate," the lawyer said. "It's pretty cut-and-dried. Your wife is sole heir." She was someone I remembered from high school, Penny something, a popular kid. Now she had a hyphenated name and a puffed-out baseball glove of a face. There was a baby in a frame on her desk. She had no recognition that I was the fat girl at the back table in her English class. "The Pierce Street property and a smallish bank account. That's basically it."

"How small is smallish?" Dante laughed.

The night before I'd dreamt I was swimming in ocean water as warm as a bath. Grandma, Ma, Vita Marie, and me. The water was jade green. Breathing was optional.

"Honey?" Dante said.

"I'm sorry. What?"

"Ms. Marx-Chapman just asked if we were planning to sell the property or occupy it ourselves."

"You mean the house? Move there?"

"Uh-huh."

"No. Sell it."

Dante put his hand on my knee. "Well," he smiled. "It's still up in the air at this point. We haven't made a definite decision just yet."

"Not totally definite," I told her. "Pretty definite."

"Let me ask you something, Ms. Marx-Chapman," he said.

'Please," she said. "Penny."

"Penny. Would it be possible for us to live there at the house temporarily-while it's still hung up in probate?"

"Sure, that can be arranged." They both took sips ot tneir coffee. "Good," Dante said, smiling at me. "Great."

Connie's Superette had gas pumps now and called itself Kwik-Stop Food Xpress. Inside the store, the ceiling sagged the same way and the air still smelled damp and garlicky. Connie had been replaced at the register by a teenage girl in tight jeans and a glitter-front sweater. There was a "Coffee and Microwave Centre" where the Pysyks and I had roughed each other up that day I'd called Stacia a "dirty DP." I recognized Big Boy's whistling before I recognized the rest of him. His hair had turned yellowy gray and he'd grown himself a Grover Cleveland body. Dante ordered a pound each of provolone cheese, boiled ham, and roast beef. (I looked away when Big Boy sliced the beef.) "Don't forget about the bakery," I said. "Old ladies are sugar addicts."

On the walk back, we passed Roberta's forbidden tattoo parlor. The storefront glass had been painted over with black paint, but the peacock sign-faded and chipped- still hung over the door.

"This woman named Roberta Jaskiewicz used to live there," I said. "She gave tattoos and sold hand-painted girlie neckties. One time my grandmother saw me over there and she-"

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Dante said. He locked his eyes closed and stood frozen on the sidewalk. I waited.

"What?" I said, when he opened his eyes again.

"A poem was just beginning to form itself in my head. The idea was embryonic and now I've lost it. Thanks a lot."

For Grandma's sake, I tried to stay with the funeral mass, but my mind kept wandering away from Father Duptulski's ritual-drifting in a patternless way. Touches and sounds were what came to me: the bristly feel of Ma's neck after she came home from the state hospital with her close-cropped haircut, the pattern of creaks Grandma's footsteps made on the stairs when she went up to bed nights. The gurgle and hum of that suction machine at the abortion clinic.

"And now, we offer one another a sign of peace, asking God to remember the soul of Thelma, one of His faithfully departed, who has rejoined Him in the Kingdom of Heaven."

The old ladies' hands came at me from behind. "Peace be with you," we all said, shaking on it, like a deal. "Peace be with you."

At the cemetery, a warm Indian-summer breeze blew against my face. The pallbearers-Dante, Mrs. Mumphy's son and sons-in-law, and two old men from the Knights of Columbus-carried Grandma's coffin from the purring hearse to the platform above her grave. Twelve old people had ridden out to the cemetery. I counted them, like Grandma would have done.

When Father Duptulski was through, Bug Eyes stepped forward and cleared his throat. "Mr. and Mrs. Davis would like to invite everyone back to Mrs. Holland's home at two sixty-two Pierce Street for a luncheon buffet." For a second, I didn't realize he was talking about Dante and me.

When everyone else headed back to their cars, I stood alone and broke a red carnation off the spray that covered her coffin, kissed it and put it back. The limousine rolled smoothly and slowly over the cemetery grass. I rested my head against Dante's shoulder.

Mrs. Mumphy and three other ladies came back to the house. I sat them in a row on the water bed. "Thelma never told us she was a hippie," one of them laughed. "God rest her soul."

They murmured amongst themselves out front while Dante and I peeled cold cuts off the stack and arranged them on a plate. "Get that coffeepot going and put those blueberry squares out on this thing," I whispered. "We should have had all this stuff ready. I hate this."

My plan was to keep him busy out in the kitchen in case one of them started reminiscing about me, exposing my secrets.

"I can't tell you how profound it was-the feeling of my hand inside those gray silk pallbearer's gloves, he said. His eyes were closed again; he'd stopped working. "I think I've got to write about it now or I'll lose it."

"The hell you will," I hissed. "You stay here and help." But he was already headed for the foyer. "If you ladies will excuse me," I heard him say.

In that big, bare front room, there was no place to put the plates of food but on the floor. The ladies didn't seem to mind. They fed like sharks. I was right about them loving desserts the best. You didn't ring up people's groceries for years without learning about human nature.

I thought they'd leave after they stopped eating, but they just sat there, talking about people I didn't even know. A plump little woman, Edna, reached past me and took the very last blueberry crumb square, the one I was planning to reward myself with after they left. She bit into it and asked me if Dante and I had any children yet.

"Well, no," I said.

"Female trouble?"

Nodding seemed like the easiest way out.

"Well, it was probably all that weight you piled on a while back. My sister-in-law was a heavyset woman. Big-boned. She and my poor brother tried and tried. The weight raises the dickens with your female system." She took pictures of her grandchildren out of her purse and told me their names and ages. "Now these two are in the Talented and Gifted program at their school," she said. "The older one's doing sixth-grade arithmetic and he's only in the third grade."

"They're cute," I said, "in a hamsterish kind of way."

"Beg your pardon?" she said. The other ladies halted their conversations to listen.

"I said they're cute. By the way, you've got some blueberry stuck on your front tooth."

At their request, I hoisted them all off the bed and got the coats.

At the sink, I did the dishes and cried at how touchy and mean I'd been to those old ladies. I should have made potato salad. If only Dante had stayed downstairs and done the talking. He'd locked himself in Grandma's bedroom for over an hour. I went up the stairs, hesitated, then knocked. "Not now," he called out.

Downstairs there was a thumping on the front porch, the doorbell.

Her face looked as brown and wrinkled as a walnut shell and the black wig didn't quite fit her skull. "Remember me?" she said. "Roberta! Oh my God!"

"Figured I'd wait and pay my respects after all the old biddies left," she said. "Holy Christ, look at you."

I swung the door open wide. An aluminum walker had done the thumping. She hoisted it up the step to the foyer floor. She was wearing a lavender jogging suit and red canvas sneakers.

She clunked her way into the living room, aimed her rear toward Grandma's big chair, and free-fell backwards with a sigh. "So how you been?" she said. "Where's the ashtray?" The walker sat in front of her like a cage. With her shaky hand, she lit a cigarette. I offered to make her a sandwich. "Well, all right," she said. "Just cheese, though. I'm a vegetarian."

"The baby rat in the can of beef stew, right?"

"That's right!" she said. "So anyways, I'm sorry about Thelma. Her and I never had much use for each other, but to tell you the truth, I think we admired each other's crust." Then she told me a dirty joke about a man cursed with a three-foot penis. In that bawdy, open-mouthed laugh, you could hear every cigarette she'd ever smoked.

The provolone sandwiches I made us tasted uncommonly good. "I'm one, too, now," I said. "One what?"

"A vegetarian."

"Good for you! Meat clogs the blood vessels to your brain. Makes you think better if you don't eat it-I read it somewheres. So let me give you a piece of advice, Dolores: don't ever get Parkinson's disease. Had the shakes for over four years now-like dancm all day without a partner. She laughed at herself, so I laughed, too. "And these migraines -if I don't eat right, man-oh-boy! You know what I told the doc? I said, 'Listen, Moneybucks, I'll get rid of old man Parkinson and you and me can get lovey-dovey.' Got any beer to go with these?"

I shook my head. "I can go across to the store and get some."

"That's okay. The doc ain't exactly wild about my drinking beer with the pills I'm on. So anyways, about your grandmother-you remember that blizzard last year, the big one?"

I nodded. "We didn't get it as bad as you did."

"Yeah, well-she called me on the telephone that night to see if I needed anything. Wouldn't give me the time of day for all these years, then she calls me up during that snowstorm. Says she's just sittin' there watchin' the backyard fill up with snow and she wonders if I need anything." Roberta laughed. "Two crusty broads, that's what we both were. That's how we both made it. You got any matches around? My cigarette lighter's runnin' out- All's I'm gettin' is a spark. Yup, she and I both had a tough row to hoe-Thelma and me-but we both shut up and hoed it. Hey, how'd you lose all that weight, anyways? You were a two-ton Tillie for a while there."

I heard Dante walking above our heads. From the top of the stairs he called to me to please keep it down; he was at a crucial place.

"Who's that?" Roberta asked.

"My husband. Dante."

"Lighten up, sweetie," she called up to him. "Come down and join the party. Life's too short." She stuffed the rest of her first sandwich into her mouth. Her cheeks bulged out as she chewed and talked. "Other day, Dial-a-Ride brought a bunch of us down to Kmart. This is funny-listen to this. I was the first one done with my shopping-see, all's I was gettin' was a new oven mitt and some Polident. I go along mostly for the company, you know, just to get out. The doc always tells me, 'Roberta, you keep your mobility.' He means keep movin' around. You sit around feelin' sorry for yourself and you're dead. Sittin' on your ass can get to be a disease worse than what you got. Where was I?"

"Dial-a-Ride?" I said.

"Oh, yeah, right. So I got my stuff and the girl at the register puts these other things in my bag, too. Little free samples: gum and a comb and a marker pen. So I says to her, 'Look, girlie, I got false teeth and I wear a wig.' So she fishes back in my bag and takes out the comb and the gum. Left the pen in there. Anyways, I went back to the van, even though I knew it was locked. Figured I'd just wait and have a smoke. You can't smoke inside the van, see? So while I'm waiting there, minding my own business, this car pulls into the handicapped space right next to us-brand-new car, white and clean, and it's got this bumper sticker on it that says, 'Life Is a Shit Sandwich.' Isn't that stupid? So this guy gets out-good-lookin' fella, in his twenties. I say to him, 'Hey, handsome, tell me something.' He takes a look at my walker and gets all panicky. I'm just running in for two seconds,' he says. See, he thinks I'm going to yell at him for parking in a handicapped space, but I ain't. I don't give a rat's ass about that, you see. I'd rather walk the extra ten feet than be called handicapped. Where was I?"

She amazed me. "Life's a shit sandwich," I said.

"Oh, yeah. Right. So that guy goes runnin' into the store and here's what I did. I fished that free pen out of the bag and marched right over there to that bumper of his. Got myself right down on the ground-and I wrote-just after the 'Life's a shit sandwich' part-I wrote, 'But only if you're a shithead.' 'Course, then I couldn't get myself back up again-had to yell over to a couple of kids at the phone booth to come pick me back up. They got all excited- thought someone had run me over!"

She paused for a drag on her cigarette. "Life's a shit sandwich, my ass. Life's a polka and don't you forget it!" she said.

I felt better than I'd felt in weeks. "Uh, you were asking before how I lost the weight?..." Before I could stop myself, I was explaining about college and Gracewood and my technique of imagining mold. "You're the first one I ever told all this to," I said. "Including him." I pointed up toward the ceiling.

She stared at me without laughing. "Well," she said, "if I was you, I'd tell the whole goddamned world. Write one of them diet books-make yourself a couple million dollars."