One Death, Nine Stories Read online

  An irrational number.

  Missing from the line.

  “Like Kevin,” she whispered. Her only brother, Kevin.

  She grunted against a spasm of grief inside her and clutched her rib cage. They came less often now, but anything, even algebra, could trigger one—a slosh of stomach bile flooding into the space where Kevin used to live. A breathless, suffocating feeling. When they passed, she never felt any better, just empty. Kevin was a fuckup, but still he was her only brother.

  She got up and walked over to the phone. Beside the little table was a coatrack with one of her mother’s scarves, gray cashmere, dangling limply. She reached out and touched the soft wool. Drew it to her face and smelled her mother’s hair, a scent like walnuts. Her mom was not a perfume kind of woman. Lydia had never even seen her wear lipstick since her father had died, also by suicide.

  She looked down at the answering machine. One of the reasons her mother kept the old mini-cassette player was that their father’s voice was still there, in the messages, a ghost in the machine, but real if anyone wanted to hear it. She knew Kevin had listened to it sometimes when he was really stoned. She had caught him once, sitting splay-legged on the floor, punching the buttons over and over and just staring at nothing. What a fucked-up family she had.

  Suddenly the thud of a car door—and then another—came from the street. She peeked past the side of the curtain. A taxi with her mom and grandmother had arrived home from church. Quickly, urgently, as if her life depended upon it—hurry!—she punched the rewind arrow. The tape whirred and clicked as she deleted Sergeant Benilli’s message.

  “We’re home!” her mother called from the foyer.

  Lydia had managed to arrange herself on the couch exactly as before. Black hoodie zipped all the way up, its comforting hood flopped halfway down her forehead.

  “Yes, I can tell,” Lydia said flatly.

  “Did you get some work done, dear?” her grandmother asked, completely missing the sarcasm. The two women were dressed in dark raincoats but bright scarves; Lydia could smell fresh air on them.

  “Sort of,” Lydia said, looking up briefly. Her grandma and her mother were always on a cheerfulness high after Mass, but church was like a drug: it always wore off. By supper time they’d be faking it. By eight p.m. they’d be silent and withdrawn. By nine p.m. they’d be gone to bed in their separate rooms.

  The next day at the police station in Queens Village, she handed over her cell phone to the uniformed black woman who sat by the metal detector, then waited as the woman dug briefly through Lydia’s backpack and gave her a once-over: medium-height girl with short black hair; jeans, hoodie, and a backpack; no face metal, piercings, or visible tats: no threat here.

  “Okay,” the guard said, and nodded Lydia forward.

  Lydia stepped through the doorway-like frame without a beep, then approached a counter that said information. Everybody uniformed worked behind glass, and the glass had a fine mesh of wire in it. She spoke into a little microphone.

  “Second floor,” the man said.

  The retrieval office was staffed by an older cop with a very gray face, as if he had not been outside for years.

  “I’m looking for Sergeant Benilli?” Lydia said. She handed over her driver’s license.

  “That’s me.”

  “My family got a call. We’re supposed to pick up some effects that were my brother’s.”

  Officer Benilli read her license.

  “Kevin Nicholas?” Lydia added.

  “Yes, of course,” he said. He looked up from her license. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Lydia swallowed. She could only look down at the officer’s hand that held her license; at his fingers, which were stubby but straight; at his clean, straightly clipped fingernails.

  “Usually it’s the parents—” the officer began.

  “I’m the family representative,” Lydia said, cutting him off. “My father’s dead and my mother, well, she’s not doing so well these days. This is something I can do for her.” She held full eye contact with the cop.

  “And you’re eighteen?” the officer said, looking down again at her license.

  Lydia waited. Do the math.

  He nodded and handed back her license. “All right, then. Follow me.”

  A buzzer hummed, and he held open the wire-screened door. Lydia followed him down a hall to a room with a wall of small lockers. With a key, he opened number 27.

  Lydia sucked in a sharp breath. Fuck me! The handgun lay inside—the gun Kevin had used to kill himself. What had she thought “effects” meant? How could she not have thought of this—that it was the gun? She heard herself mouth-breathing.

  “Are you sure—?” the officer began.

  She took a breath. “Yes,” she said. “I’m good.”

  Around the pistol lay a scattering of stubby, brass-colored bullets. The arrangement looked like a metallic alien insect with babies. Opening the locker—letting light in—might disturb the nest; any second now they would stir and hiss.

  “After all, it has to be done, right?” she added, trying to sound totally adult—as if they both understood the dark humor of the moment.

  “Not really,” the officer replied.

  Lydia looked his way.

  “Here’s how it works,” the cop explained. “After any kind of fatality involving a firearm, we secure the scene, the county coroner does his report, and afterward—when it’s clear that no foul play was involved, and that the gun has no history—well, we have no reason to keep it. Which is why we called you.”

  Lydia stared. “No history?”

  “It was a legally purchased firearm and has not been involved in any sort of crime.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “However, we would be happy to dispose of the gun for you,” the officer said. “Very happy, in fact. From our point of view, it would be one less gun out there.”

  She touched the butt of the gun with one finger. The last thing my brother touched.

  “I understand,” she said. “But I’ll take it.”

  “Okay, then.” The officer picked up the pistol. Keeping the dark eye of the muzzle pointed at the floor, he squeezed a button; the clip dropped from the handle. “Empty,” he said, and set the clip aside. Then he worked the pistol’s slide action with a sharp, metallic shhhh-clack! He put one eye closer to the back end of the barrel, where the bullet would come up from the clip. “And chamber empty.”

  “Thanks,” Lydia said. Stupidly.

  “Do you know anything about guns?” the cop said, not ready to hand it over.

  Lydia shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Well, it’s empty now, and I’d suggest keeping it that way. Remember: it’s not a toy.”

  And I’m not freaking thirteen.

  Three minutes later, Lydia was back outside the station with her backpack hanging heavily from her shoulders. It was amazing how dense—how heavy—a handgun was. She straightened her shoulders and headed toward the bus stop. There was a line, and by instinct she hurried to get in it, but, almost there, she jerked to a halt. What about packing a gun on a city bus? An older black woman in line stared evenly at her. Lydia averted her eyes and walked quickly on.

  She walked a couple of blocks, then caught a cab. Settled into the stale-smelling back seat. The driver waited. He looked at her in the mirror. “I drive, but I not read minds,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Lydia said. She swallowed, then said, “Eternal Rest Funeral Home. Off Springfield Boulevard.”

  At the tidy, low building, with its perfect shrubbery, the parking lot was empty; at least there wasn’t a funeral today. She paid the driver, and as she got out of the cab, brass cartridges clinked inside her backpack. The cabbie gave her a wide-eyed look, then drove off abruptly with a chirp of his tires.

  The front door to Eternal Rest was open. To the side, the chapel area was totally empty. Farther down the hall, loud hip-hop music played from an office. Someone laughed, a hearty guffaw.
Maybe that older guy, Sampson. Party time at Eternal Rest. Clearly no dead to wake up.

  She approached the open door. Inside was a small group of people: Sampson, the smooth-talking front man; his assistant, big dude Morris Something, a guy she sort of recognized from school; and a pretty woman with the styled hair of a beautician. The three were having coffee and eating donuts.

  Sampson saw her first and jumped to his feet.

  “Sorry! We didn’t hear you come in,” he said, quickly standing up and coming to meet her. It was as if he wanted to block her view of the office, its life, its warmth, its music. “Turn down that goddamn music, Morris,” he barked over his shoulder. He closed the door partway and stood before her. He was dressed in jeans and a white lab-type coat with a couple of splotches on it that she tried not to look at. “How can I help you, miss?”

  She held the backpack in front of her. He clearly didn’t recognize her. Inside the office, the music died, and then Morris looked out through the half-open door. He blinked, then his face brightened.

  “Hey!” he said, and stepped out. “Lydia, right?”

  Sampson looked at Morris with surprise.

  “Yes. Lydia Nicholas,” she answered.

  “Morris Adler,” Morris said. “So nice to see you again.”

  “Ah, sort of,” Lydia said.

  “Lydia, of course,” Sampson said quickly. “You look . . . different today—better,” he added, touching her arm and holding on to it briefly. The perfect gesture of warmth. Of condolence. And no small hint that she was not un-pretty. “How are things with you and your family?”

  She paused. “I have a gun,” she blurted out.

  “Whoa!” Morris exclaimed, and ducked behind Sampson, whose back stiffened. His eyes went to her hands, which clutched the backpack.

  Behind Morris, in the office, there was silence. Inside, the attractive woman stared at Lydia with unblinking eyes, her fingers poised over her cell phone.

  “I mean, a gun in my bag! My brother Kevin’s gun. I’m not, you know, like a crazy shooter!” Lydia said.

  “Okay,” Sampson said evenly.

  “I just don’t know what to do with it.” Her voice broke at the very end.

  “Yes, I see,” Sampson said in a measured counselor’s type of voice. He eased closer—shape-shifted, almost—to take hold of her backpack. She let go of it. Gave it over to him.

  All eyes went to the backpack.

  “I just picked it up from the police station,” Lydia continued. “The cops called and said to pick up his effects, so I did—I didn’t want my mom to have to do it—but now I have his gun.” And then, disgustingly, she leaned against the wall and began to weep.

  “Nadira, would you excuse us?” Sampson said.

  Nadira nodded. She paused by Lydia to give her a one-armed hug. “You came to the right place, honey.”

  “And Morris, don’t you have something to do?” Sampson asked.

  “Ah, not really,” Morris replied with a round-eyed, innocent look.

  Sampson looked greatly annoyed. “Okay, let’s all just relax a bit. Please, come—sit down,” he said, guiding Lydia forward.

  Morris stared at the backpack. Sampson carefully unzipped it. He reached inside and, careful to keep the muzzle pointed away, withdrew the pistol.

  “Ruger forty-five caliber,” he murmured, as if confirming some piece of a puzzle. “I guessed as much.” He quickly turned to Lydia. “Sorry,” he said. “You didn’t need to hear that.”

  She stared. “It’s not like I didn’t see what it did to him,” she said. She wiped at her eyes, more pissed off at crying than anything else.

  Morris handed her a fresh tissue. “It’s all right to cry,” he said. The phrase sounded practiced, rehearsed, part of his job at the funeral home.

  “So what do you intend to do with the gun?” Sampson asked.

  Lydia shrugged. “I have no fucking idea.”

  Sampson leaned back as if to think. “Do you mind?” he said, then turned up the radio again and punched it to a different station, one that played jazz.

  “This place gets kind of dead at times, if you know what I mean, so we play music,” Morris said to Lydia; he waited expectantly to see if Lydia got the joke.

  “Jesus, Morris! Who put a dollar in you today?” Sampson said.

  “Sorry,” Morris said with a hangdog look.

  Lydia’s mouth twitched; she looked away to keep from laughing.

  “Anyway,” Sampson said, “you now own a gun. One that has some family history.”

  Lydia stared at the black weapon.

  “Which means you have some options,” Sampson said.

  Lydia waited.

  “You could throw the thing in the river,” Sampson said, holding the gun up to look at it and turning it toward the overhead light, “which I’d hate to see because it’s such a nice piece.”

  She was silent.

  “You could sell it,” he continued, “but who knows what happens to it then.”

  Lydia waited.

  “Or,” Sampson said, turning to her, “you could keep it and learn how to shoot it.”

  Lydia’s gaze went to the pistol. “Why would I want to shoot it?”

  “Because if you keep it, you need to understand it. Be comfortable with it. If you don’t get to know it—if you’re afraid of it, or angry at it, or you blame it for Kevin’s death—then it’s gonna always be, like, radioactive. Like a dead mouse in the closet. It’s always going to smell.”

  She stared at the gun. Sampson held it out to her, handgrip first. She took it. Let her fingers close around its butt. The cool heft, the way the curve fit the valley of her thumb and forefinger—it was like suddenly having a third elbow or wrist or hand. The weight of it had a kind of current that struck all the way down through her belly to her toes. “How would I learn how to shoot it?” Lydia asked.

  Sampson shrugged. “We’re a full-service funeral home,” he said.

  At home that night, she cooked for her mother. It was their favorite family dinner, pasta with anchovies.

  “This is so nice of you,” her mother gushed. “I could have—”

  “Sure you could have cooked,” Lydia said, “but I wanted to, okay?”

  She met Sampson at the Leaf Haven Pistol & Rifle Range on Jamaica Avenue, which was only a few minutes from Queens Village and on the bus line. The parking lot was long on pickups and SUVs. Most had National Rifle Association bumper stickers or support our troops magnetic ribbons.

  “Hey!” Sampson said, spotting her. “Ready to rock?” He carried a duffel bag.

  Inside, they signed in. The clerk, a guy wearing yellow-tinted glasses, greeted Sampson by name, then moved his eyes up and down Lydia.

  “I’m a member,” Sampson said to Lydia. To the guy he said, “Guest shooter today.”

  “Always happy to see a new lady shooter,” the guy said with a wink to Lydia.

  Below the floor came dull poom-poom and thudding noises, like a percussion group tuning its equipment. There was a smell, too, with a slight bite to it, like smoke from an electric range on its high-heat oven-cleaning cycle.

  “Sign this,” the clerk said.

  When she finished, the clerk said, “Now, be careful down there, honey.”

  Lydia didn’t reply. When they were out of earshot on the stairs heading down, Sampson said, “That guy says that every time to everybody. ‘Be careful down there.’ Annoys the shit out of me.”

  “He kinda has a point,” Lydia murmured as the shooting sounds grew louder.

  Sampson draped his arm over her shoulders. “Don’t worry—I learned my shooting in the army,” he said. “Three tours in Iraq.”

  She hesitated before the steel door.

  “I have earmuffs for you, and safety glasses,” Sampson said, wiggling his duffel bag. “Everything we need.”

  The narrow shooting lanes, each protected from the others, were slightly claustrophobic, but less so when she focused on the gun in Sampson’s hands. And
then hers. He made her go through a safe pistol-handling routine a dozen times before loading the gun.

  “I’ll shoot it once first, then it’s your turn,” he said.

  She nodded and put her hands to her ears.

  Sampson stared.

  “Duh,” she said as she touched the round earmuffs already in place.

  “Here we go,” Sampson said.

  Lydia squinted.

  He turned, steadied his outstretched arm, and fired.

  It was not that loud, sort of like someone bouncing a basketball once, sharply, on a wooden floor.

  “Now your turn,” Sampson said.

  He stood close behind her—she could smell his aftershave, or maybe it was only facial soap—and steadied her outstretched arms with his longer ones. His torso was against hers, sort of like dirty dancing. But with a gun in her hand.

  “Nice and easy: squeeze.”

  The pistol bucked in her hand. The recoil struck through her wrist, arm, and trunk like a really good swing of a softball bat—that aluminum clank! of perfect contact.

  “Good,” Sampson said.

  A full clip later, she was on her own. The target was the small black silhouette of a man. Or maybe just a small black man, who grew more tattered and invisible with every shot.

  Sampson gathered up the empty cartridges. “Souvenir brass,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He put them in a side pocket of her backpack. “You’re a natural,” Sampson said as they headed back upstairs.

  “Not sure about that,” she said. In the lobby there was brighter light outside the window; the sun had come out. It was as if the world had turned a notch.

  “We’ll need some ammo for next time,” Sampson said to the clerk. “A box of .45 ACP.”

  “What’s ACP?” she asked. Now that she had shot the pistol, she felt weirdly free to ask questions, even dumb ones.

  “Automatic Colt Pistol,” the clerk said as he reached under the counter. “Gotta keep your bullets straight, okay, honey?”

  “My treat,” Sampson said. He paid for them, then handed the box to her.

  As the front door closed behind them, Lydia glanced back. “That guy was creepy.”

  “But now you don’t have to worry about creeps, do you?” Sampson said. His eyes went to the box of shells in her hand and to her backpack.