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"You're turning him into a real Italian," Lucy once joked.
"He is Italian," the old woman replied without levity.
"Half Italian," Lucy corrected. "I'm not Italian."
"No, you're not, dear." Upon which, the old woman put her hand on the boy's head and watched him eat his naked meatball.
Lucy was never up to fighting for her own team. The Polish. What had the Polacks ever done for her? These Italians had taken care of her, at least. And, besides, this was the old woman's house. Lucy had never meant to stay here all these years after her husband's death, but here she was. And there was the boy, happy, eating.
Actually, the boy was not undilutedly happy. His mother, his grandmother, yes, it was true: to be alone with either of them was sweetness itself. But combine them and things tightened, a constriction Edgar felt in his sensitive, divining throat. When the two women spoke to each other, Edgar felt their untrue voices somehow coming from inside his own body, as if he were the liar. But what was it all about? Why did their voices change in each other's presence? He saw a great deal at 21 Cressida Drive, but understood little. The first time he did the math and realized that there was no actual blood shared by his mother and his grandmother, it frightened him. Technically, they were strangers.
If Frank were around maybe it wouldn't be so bad, thought Edgar. Frank could take on some of the responsibility. But Frank was dead—and, as far as Edgar could see, dead people didn't do anything except get whispered about in kitchens. If there was a ghost, it was the name itself, hissed or swallowed, breathy air between the two women.
Both were widows. Another complexity they had in common. Edgar remembered the old woman's husband better than he remembered his own father, which wasn't saying much. Still, there were a few things he could manage to recall: the thick cloud of cigar smoke around his grandfather's La-Z-Boy; how the old man never called him by his name but referred to him only as boy, the word often shouted in a fairly startling tone. Sometimes the old man walked in circles in the yard, talking, it seemed, to himself. Edgar would watch from his bedroom window on the second floor. Even at five, the boy knew it was possible the old man wasn't talking to himself, but to Frank.
People were still talking about Frank, in one way or another. Edgar wasn't easily fooled. Brought up in a haunted house, he had a keen sense of when someone was conversing with the dead. A person could be stirring red sauce or putting on lipstick when, in fact, what she was really doing was walking through a cemetery. Widows! They were almost like witches, weren't they? They were deathy. They had secrets.
Edgar reflected on the fact that he had never seen his mother, not once, set foot in his grandmother's bedroom. Edgar couldn't even imagine her here, especially at night, with the Virgin rubbing her hands over the flame and the angel floating in her dress of light. He knew it was not an atmosphere in which his mother would be able to breathe. He knew, if she walked in here, she would immediately fall dead.
"What are you thinking about, Mr. Big Eyes?"
He looked at the old woman from his perch at the side of the bed. She was already falling back asleep.
"Gramma?"
"Yes?" she said. She was patient with the boy, with his silent staring spells. With his darling little thoughts, which is how she imagined the things that moved inside his head. In fact, she saw them, the boy's thoughts, little blue wheels rolling over sunny pastures. She was drifting off.
"Tell me," the old woman said. But her eyes were already closed.
"Can I have some of the perfume?" Edgar whispered.
"Mmmmh," the old woman sighed, fading.
"I can?"
Edgar knew she was gone. Her breathing changed. He watched her bosom float away on sea-waves. There was no embarrassment. He knew her body better than his own. Better than his mother's, certainly. It was the old woman's bed he climbed into after a bad dream. Nightmares weren't uncommon with the boy, and the old woman always welcomed him, should he gently wake her, at any hour, with his delicate hand.
Excerpted from Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato. Copyright © 2017 by Victor Lodato. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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