10. Chapter 5
Dashiell
Later that Week
My parents live in a duplex in a historically blue-collar neighborhood near the Mission District and the Castro. The houses here are cramped duplexes, the stores family-owned, and the gossip incessant.
I park on the street outside my parents’ house, a Victorian-style duplex. The sycamores outside the house have started to shed their leaves.
Dinner with my family could go one of two ways. Either it could settle my blood pressure, which has been raised ever since the Diamante fire, or it could send me into cardiac arrest.
You never know!
I use my key to unlock the front door and step into the foyer, which is pleasantly warm in contrast to the autumn chill that has settled over the city this week. Family pictures line the floral-papered walls, and the rich smells of my mother’s cooking float from the kitchen down the hall.
“Ma! Dad! I’m home!”
Dad is screwed firmly into his La-Z-Boy in the living room, the TV playing a football game.
“There you are!” he shouts, looking up from his iPad, where he’s probably reading the latest tech news. Though Joshua Novak is a blue-collar guy through and through, he loves reading about the latest schemes they’re up to in Silicon Valley.
He unfolds from the chair and gives me a hug, clapping me on the back, before pulling back to give me a shrewd once-over. “You look tired.”
“Gee, I think you pronounced ‘Hey son, good to see you’ wrong.”
“Hey, son. Good to see you!”
“Much better. Whatcha watching?”
He offers an answer filled with the inscrutable complexities of professional football and I process absolutely none of it. Father-son duty performed, he returns to his chair, and I make my way to the kitchen.
My mom, Barbara, is busy doing four things at once in our lemon-yellow kitchen. She pauses just long enough to give me air kisses on the cheek, carefully holding her sauce-covered spoon away from my sweater.
“Set the table, will you, honey? And say hi to Grandma. She’s already asked twice if you’re coming and if you think you’re too good for us.”
I steal a taste of the sauce—good enough to send me to a Heaven I don’t believe in. “Ma, I come for dinner every week.”
From the dining room: “Come say hello!”
I share an amused glance with Mom, grab the plates, and go to set the table.
My seventy-eight-year-old grandma is sitting at the head of the table, smoking a Kool Green and reading the newspaper.
She’s a tiny old thing, all sharp angles and delicate bones, with a fashion sense that makes her look like someone trying to cosplay Cher on a thrift-store budget.
Today, her bedazzled magenta sweater practically swallows her, rivaled for size only by her vast brunette wig.
She blows a stream of smoke from her sticky red lips and waves her red-tipped fingers at me. “So, you’re not too good for us, eh?”
“Never, Grandma.” I lean down to kiss her cheek, trying to avoid the halo of cigarette smoke. We’ve tried to get her to kick the habit, and I even offered her a vape, but she said she looked ridiculous with the little cotton-candy-colored piece of plastic.
She offers a constant stream of commentary while I set the table.
“Don’t forget the napkins.”
“I won’t, Grandma.”
“And the cups.”
“I won’t, Grandma.”
“And make sure you serve yourself seconds. You’re too skinny.”
“Grandma, it’s not polite to talk about other people’s bodies like that.”
“How are you supposed to pick your boyfriend up and kiss him if you’re that skinny?”
“Grandma!”
She shrugs and blows more smoke.
“Ma! Leave Dash alone,” Dad shouts from the living room.
Grandma rolls eyes that are heavy with mascara.
“I don’t have a boyfriend, Grandma. And besides, if I did, I prefer to be the one getting picked up.”
She cackles delightedly. “I can get you a boyfriend. You know, Finny Mannix is single again.”
“I don’t know who Finny Mannix is.”
“Yes, you do. He’s Noreen Mannix’s grandson.”
“I don’t know who Noreen Mannix is, either.”
“Dinner’s ready!” Mom calls from the kitchen.
“She’s dead,” Grandma says, stubbing out her cigarette. Mom compromised by letting Grandma smoke in the house, but drew the line at smoking during dinner.
“Who’s dead?” Dad asks, helping Mom with the dinner dishes. We’re having pork butt and potatoes with soft buttered rolls.
“That skank Noreen Mannix,” Grandma says.
“Jesus, Ma.” Dad butters a roll disappointedly.
“What? She was a skank.”
Mom touches her face. “I think my eyelid is twitching again.”
That’s how dinner goes at my house. It’s the same sort of volley every time I’m here, Grandma saying something absurd, my parents doing their best to handle it. We’re a chaotic family, but we love each other, and I’m thankful for them. Even when they make my eyelid twitch.
We’ve adjourned to the living room for hot coffee and football when there’s a loud knock on the front door.
“I’ll get it,” I say.
“Could be robbers,” Grandma says, firing up a cigarette and propping her pink orthotic sneakers on the coffee table. “Think I should get my gun?”
“Ma, you don’t have a gun,” Dad says.
Grandma blows smoke. “That’s what you think.”
Leaving my parents to handle the delicate question of whether or not Zora Novak owns a firearm, I go to the front door and open it.
There’s no one outside.
Huh. I swear there was a knock on the door.
And then my gaze lowers, landing on the welcome mat. My heart skips two beats in my chest.
Splayed on the mat is a single piece of paper, half of it charred to ashes. On the paper is an image printed in ink. Slowly, I crouch down and pick it up. My blood runs cold as I stare at it in growing horror.
It’s unmistakably a picture of my parents’ house.
This house.
Where I am right now.
Someone took a picture of my parents’ house, burned it, and left it here for them to find—or for me to find.
I flip the paper over, and then my heart briefly stops.
On the back, someone has scrawled a message in careful capital letters: You saw nothing that night.
I jump to my feet, retreat into the house, and close the door, locking the deadbolt and throwing on the security chain.
“Who was it?” Dad calls from the living room.
Carefully, I fold the paper, trying not to get any charred flakes on my mom’s precious rugs, and slip it into my back pocket. “Just a Jehovah’s Witness,” I say, the first lie that comes to mind.
“You think they’re single?!” Grandma shouts.
Ignoring her, I pull out my phone. I have to do this quickly, before my better judgment intervenes.
Not letting myself think about the consequences of this decision, I fire off a single text to Lorenzo Diamante:
Me: I need help.