Prayer (30 page)

Joey had a habit of phasing out during big family get-togethers. His word-access troubles made it hard for him to keep up, and when they were all in the same room, they weren’t great at remembering that he got lost. At some point, he’d stopped really trying.

But hearing his name, he refocused. “Huh?”

Luca spoke more slowly and faced Joey directly. “Trey’s wanting to help out at work. There anything he can do in the office?”

Before Joey could answer, Carlo dropped his fork onto his plate with a clattering flourish. “
Basta
!” He took a breath and turned to his son. “I know what you’re trying to do, Trey, and it’s not going to work.”

Now Trey let his fork and knife drop from his hands. “Why not? It’s my life!”

“Not yet, it’s not. You are going to college. I’m not going to have this fight with you again, so get used to your reality right now. You are going to take high school seriously. You are going to study. You are not going to work, and you are not going to play football. You are going to get into a good college using your brain. You are going to give yourself all the options in life you can. Period.”

Trey turned to Sabina. “Misby, come on. You said—” He cut himself off as if he’d realized he’d been about to say something wrong.

The family around the table was silent, witnessing the scene with avid interest. John was concerned, but not unduly. Fights happened in even the most loving of families, and all the damn time in this one. In all honesty, a part of him enjoyed it when perfect Carlo got himself in the soup.

Carlo looked at his wife. “What did you tell him, Bina?”

Sabina faced her husband, a steadfast gleam in her eye. “Is this the place for talk like this?”

“Our dining room? Why not?”

“Fine, then. I told him that he should make himself the chance to have the life he wants, and that college gave him chances. I said also that college is not always the right thing, and I would try to make you see that as well. He wants to work with his uncles, Carlo. It is years before he’s a man. He might change his mind, but now, that’s what he wants.”

“No.” Carlo slammed his fist on the table so that everybody’s silverware clattered.

“Whoa, bro. Watch yourself.” Luca’s narrowed eyes lased at their eldest brother. “Lot of people at this table could take offense right now.”

John shifted his regard to their father, who was staring at his untouched salmon, but his hands were fisted around his knife and fork. Yeah, he was already offended.

“Jesus, Luc. I don’t mean—I want more for him. I’m his father. I’m supposed to want more. I want him to have an education.”

“More than what?” Their father was still staring at his plate. “What didn’t your
uneducated
father give you? What don’t your
uneducated
brothers have in their lives? What
more
do you have that we don’t? You always did think you were better than the rest of us.”

“Pop, no! You’re all twisting this up. I want my kid to go to college. I want him to have options. How am I the bad guy here?”

“Because you don’t give a fuck what your kid wants!” Trey yelled and stood up. He turned to his mother. “I’m sorry, Misby. May I be excused?”

Sabina answered, “Yes,” and Carlo answered, “No.” Nobody seemed inclined to comment on Trey’s word choice, but Adele looked about ready to keel over from the shock of hearing ‘that fudge word,’ as she would have said, at the dinner table.

Scowling at his father, Trey pushed in his chair, picked up his dishes with his half-eaten meal, and left the room. Carlo didn’t turn the situation into something messier by forcing him to stay.

He looked out at his family around the table. John could see the defiance in his eyes. “Even in this family, there’s a line. How I raise my son is beyond that line.”

“
Your
son?” Sabina asked, quietly.

“Goddammit, Bina.”

Now the Lord’s name had been taken in vain at the dinner table. Adele looked like she might need medical intervention.

“I didn’t mean—” Carlo closed his eyes and let out a breath. “
Our
son. How
we
raise
our
son.”

“Carlo.” Carmen had been quietly observing until now. “You need to shut up now. Take it from me and know when to fold. You’re past the point of fixing this right now.”

He sat abruptly back in his chair, looking defeated. “Yeah, okay. I’m sorry.”

“Fuck this,” their father grumbled and picked up the meat fork. He stabbed a big rib-eye and dropped it on his plate. Then he went for the horseradish, and the gnocchi, and the asparagus in butter sauce. And tore off a big hunk of bread.

Everybody gaped at him until Manny, of all people, said, “Pop, that shit’ll kill you.”

He cut a piece of steak, smothered it in horseradish, and put it in his mouth. They all watched while he had a foodgasm. His eyes rolled up, he moaned, he licked his lips.

When he was done, he cut another piece, then smiled at Manny. “Adele’s damn salads’ll kill me just as quick, missy. I’m done playing nice. I’ve been hungry and miserable for years, and my ticker is still quitting. So I’m dying on my own terms.” He made a smug production of smothering the next piece and eating it. “Damn, that’s good. If I died right now, it’d be worth it.”

“Carlo…” Adele whimpered and then began to weep. Sitting next to her, Sabina pulled her into her arms.

“Pop, there is trouble?” Sabina asked. Everyone else was still stunned, and no one was thinking about Carlo being an asshole anymore.

“There’s been trouble for a long time, Sabina, honey. Now they say I need a transplant. But I’m almost seventy-five years old. I’m tired and I’m bored, and I don’t want to live through what I’d have to do if they’d even give an old bastard like me a young heart. I’m already half the man I was, and I’m done with it.” His voice lost some of its bluster. “I don’t want the little ones to know. Not Trey, either.”

“How long without a transplant, Pop?” Carlo asked.

John was shocked at his brother’s capacity for pragmatism. He himself hadn’t yet made his brain accept the import of the words. He’d think the sentence “Pop is dying,” and there was no idea attached to it. The concept was bigger than he could accept.

He thought of Rosa, off with her family in D.C., innocent of this scene, ignorant of this news. Rosa, to whom their father was Prince Charming, Iron Man, King Solomon, and God himself. Rosa, pregnant with a healthy baby girl but still anxious about her pregnancy. This news would devastate her most of all.

That realization made the whole thing true, and John suddenly had to fight back tears.

Pop was answering Carlo’s question. “If I behave, they say the old model’s got a year, maybe more if I’m real good. But I got no intention of behaving. I am going to die drinking scotch and eating steak. So who knows—a few months, maybe? It’s a crap shoot.”

Adele wailed.

“Woman, enough. You been braying at me all day.” He shoveled a heap of gnocchi into his mouth. When he was done chewing, he gave Carlo a challenging eye. “How about a few fingers of the good stuff, Junior?”

Carlo got up, and when no one stopped him, not even the weeping Adele, John knew that they weren’t going to fight their father on his decision. They were going to let him chase his death.

His death.

Jesus.

~ 20 ~

Despite the time—just after ten o’clock at night—Katrynn had expected the Pagano house to be loud and happy, befitting the news of this big job, one that John had told her would save the company. But as he led her into the house, there was only the full quiet of a large family being together.

She pulled on John’s hand just before he took her into the dining room—where she could see Carlo and Luca at the table, talking quietly. “Something happened,” she said so only John could hear.

He smiled, only a little, and tugged her close, bringing her into the entry to the room. “Come in and say hi.”

All the siblings were there but Rosa; the brothers all stood and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and Carmen waved from her seat. But their dad and his wife weren’t there, and neither were the spouses. Not much of a celebration.

“Did something happen?” she asked John again. “Is everybody okay?”

He turned to his family. “I’m gonna take Katrynn upstairs for a while.”

She had been in this house several times. She’d helped out in the kitchen, eaten meals in the dining room, watched television in the cellar, partied in the back yard. But she’d never been upstairs. For some reason, John’s desire to take her up there now seemed portentous and scary. At the foot of the staircase, she stopped again, resisting his pull.

“John, what’s going on? I thought we were celebrating. Did the job fall through?”

“No. We got the job. Come up, please. I need not to have an audience right now.”

“Why don’t we go home, then?”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Katrynn steeled herself for John to make a remark about them not having the same home. He’d made several, and they all dug at her.

He wanted her to move into the beach house, but she didn’t want to make a temporary change. She hated every part of moving; it literally made her sick with the stress, and she didn’t want to move somewhere and then have to move again soon. John’s house was nice, but it was tiny. One bedroom and a loft. One bathroom. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were all of a piece—a not-very-spacious piece. She wanted kids, and, though they hadn’t talked about when, she knew that he wanted kids, too. The beach house wasn’t a long-term living arrangement. It couldn’t be.

What she wanted was to find a new house together. As soon as they did that, she’d be ready to move into it. But John wasn’t ready to talk about selling his house. He loved it like it was part of his family, and maybe it was.

She’d been thinking that they’d need to postpone the wedding until they got this problem resolved, but she didn’t want to do that, either. She wanted to be married; she wanted to settled into a life with John. Plus, Sabina and Adele, and even Bev, to the extent that she could, had gone into turbo wedding gear the day after John had proposed in front of everybody at the hospital. They meant to plan an event wedding for four months from now, and Katrynn, enchanted by the thought of a sparkly Christmas wedding, was happy to go along for the ride. Her hearts-and-flowers side was in full bloom and swoon. And she would feel tremendous guilt to render all the assistance and excitement around her futile.

It hadn’t occurred to John to postpone—or, if it had, he had discarded the idea without mentioning it to Katrynn—so they were proceeding with the wedding whether they figured out the living arrangement or not.

It was a lot of pressure, and Katrynn’s stomach did a flippy thing when the topic of ‘home’ arose. Like now.

But he didn’t make the remark she’d expected. Instead, he shrugged and said, simply, “This is home.”

She understood what he needed. When he tugged on her hand again, she let him lead her up the stairs.

A long hallway led from the second-floor landing. As John led Katrynn down, a door opened on the right. Sabina stepped out and closed the door; she smiled at them. “Good evening, Katrynn.”

“Hi, Sabina.”

“Is he okay?” John asked.

“Yes. Calm now. He is angry much lately. Pop told to me that…” She paused as sadness flickered quickly over her features. “That this is the way with boys of Trey’s age. Carlo and he will find their understanding. There is too much love between them not to.”

Katrynn felt like she was eavesdropping on something private, but they didn’t seem to mind that she was there. John nodded and said, “You didn’t tell him…”

“No. That is up to Pop.” Sabina smiled again. “You are going to your room?” At John’s confirming nod, she patted his arm and said, “Be comfortable. And if I don’t see you, good night.”

John kissed her cheek, and she went downstairs. “Wait here a second,” he said to Katrynn, then went to the door Sabina had come from and knocked. “You decent, bud?”

“Come in,” came Trey’s voice.

John opened the door. “Just saying good night.”

“’Night.” Trey sounded like the quintessential disaffected teenager.

“If you want to talk, my ears are free, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

John stepped back and pulled the door to. Before it settled in the jamb, Trey called out, “Uncle?” and John leaned his head in again.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. I’m sorry I yelled at dinner.”

“Apology accepted. It happens. Sleep well, Trey. Love you, bud.”

John closed the door and took Katrynn’s hand. He took her to the end of the hall and opened a door.

The room inside was a boys’ shared room, with two matching sets of furniture: beds, bureaus, little desks and chairs. The beds were made with matching linens, and there were a few trophies and knickknacks on the built-in shelves that framed the window, but otherwise there was little sign of use. Katrynn recognized it for what it was: the room of a child—two children—who had grown up and moved out.

“This is your old room, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Joey and I shared until I moved out.”

“I thought this was your brother’s house now. He and Sabina haven’t changed your old room?”

John led her to the far bed, and they sat together on its side. “Carlo and Sabina have possession of it, but Pop still owns it. It’s complicated, but this is still the family house, and sometimes we all still stay here. On Christmas Eve, for one. We all come here after Mass and spend the night. My nieces and nephews have Christmas morning here, together, just like we did.”

His voice broke, and he cleared his throat. Katrynn remembered that there was something wrong, so wrong that he’d needed to hide her away in his childhood room to tell her.

“John, what’s going on? I’m getting scared. I thought today was a good day.”

“It was. Work is good. It’s really good. But Pop had some news, too.” Abruptly, he stood and walked to one of the built-in bookcases. With his back to her, he said. “He’s dying. He needs a heart transplant but doesn’t want one. He’s got maybe a year left. Less, probably. Jesus. This could be his last summer, and it’s almost fucking over.”

Katrynn loved her parents, but she knew that what she felt for them was nothing like what John felt for his father or the rest of his family. Hers was a family that had never settled enough to build unbreakable bonds like John knew.

The Paganos were so close that they still, even though the youngest of John’s siblings was thirty and almost all of them lived within five miles of each other, spent Christmas Eve night in their family home—which could only be so that they would all experience the entire day together.

Her father hadn’t even managed to be in the same state for her graduation. Either of them—high school or college.

She couldn’t empathize, because she couldn’t fathom a bond so deep. But she could see his pain in the set of his shoulders and the shake and break of his voice. She stood and went to him, taking his hand in both of hers. “Oh, John. I’m so sorry.”

He laughed sadly. “It’s fucked up. He’s not dead yet. He was more his old self tonight than he’s been in a long time, but I feel…I don’t know what I feel.”

“Grief.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it. Jesus, Katrynn. Pop’s—”

Rather than finish his thought, John dropped his head.

Perhaps it was empathy Katrynn felt after all—not for his feelings about his father, but simply for him. His pain was her pain, and she could feel it cramp her chest. She released his hand and insinuated herself between him and the bookcase. She tucked his head to her shoulder and held him. “I love you.”

His arms went around her and tightened like a vise, and they stood there for a long time. John didn’t speak, he didn’t cry, he didn’t move. He simply held her, his grip right on the edge of stealing her breath, with his face tucked against her neck, buried in her hair.

Katrynn held him just as tightly, her arms hooked around his neck and her hands laced in his hair.

She began to sing quietly, like a whisper. She hadn’t planned to do it, but standing there, bound so tightly together they might have been fused into one, she felt consumed by the need to offer him as much comfort as she possibly could. The words came up as if she’d gone looking for them: the first song they’d sung together, one they’d sung since more than once.
Come in, she said, I’ll give you shelter from the storm.

He flinched in her arms, and his hold got even tighter, tight enough to make it hard to sing. He lifted his head and stared down at her, and his eyes showed something she’d never seen in them before. Sadness, she supposed. The kind that bored down deep.

“I need you.”

She smoothed her fingers over his cheek. “I’m here.”

When he kissed her, she knew at once that he needed more than that, and she elbowed away the small discomfort that had arisen with the thought that they were about to have sex in his childhood bed while most of his family—including children—were in rooms in the same house. Instead, she focused on him, giving him what he needed, helping him undress her and then himself. When he walked her back to the bed, his mouth still consuming hers, his hands clutching her body, she let him move her as he wanted.

With his arms around her waist, he laid her gently on the bed. When he moved to settle over her, however, she pushed on his shoulders, and, understanding, he lay on his back instead. She straddled him, taking hold of his cock and sliding down onto it. They both shivered at the intensity of the contact in this emotional moment.

His hands dug into her thighs, and she took hold of his forearms and pulled until he came up into a sitting position. She couldn’t think of a closer, more intimate position than this: as he wrapped his arms around her, she enclosed him in the circle of her arms and her legs so that her body was in complete contact with his, embracing him utterly, inside and out.

She kissed him, joining even their breath, and John grunted and thrust under her. Together, they picked up a slow, rocking rhythm, neither of them chasing a release. Without speaking, without directing, they both seemed to know what they needed—to be close like this for as long as they could.

Eventually, John’s body changed as his pleasure began to peak beyond the need for their quiet connection, and Katrynn responded to the new tension in his limbs, the deep heave of his breath. When she came, it rolled over her quietly but intensely, and she clenched around him, keeping herself tethered to him. Still in her own throes, she felt him swell inside her, and he groaned as if in mortal pain.

When it was over, they sat as they were, in the middle of his twin bed, holding each other. Finally, John leaned back and pushed her hair back with his hands. His eyes were wet, and her neck was, too, and she understood that he had shed tears.

“Stay with me here tonight. I need to be here. I need to be close. And I need you.”

A dozen questions and hesitations leapt to Katrynn’s mind. They were in a house full of people—somebody else’s house. The bed was too narrow for two. She didn’t even have a toothbrush with her. She had work in the morning. George and Lennie hadn’t seen her since noon.