Honey, p.1
Honey, page 1
Dedication
for Chris
and for the women in my family,
the warriors, who protected me
Epigraph
It is beautiful to be in love. It is also beautiful to be alone.
—OSHO
Bodies have their own light, which they consume to live;
they burn, they are not lit from the outside.
—EGON SCHIELE
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
1. One Hundred Dresses
2. Dante’s
3. A Serious Blue
4. Touch My Hair
5. Too Cool to Live
6. Richie Verona
7. Thunderbird
8. The Closet
9. Mr. Hal
10. A Cup of Coffee
11. Slipping
12. Bruises
13. Taster’s Choice
14. Whose Hat Is That?
15. Room 214
Part Two
16. Dollhouse
17. The Opening
18. Brooding
19. Raccoon
20. Vitamins
21. The Witness
22. Cinderella
23. Abnormal Tendencies
24. Detour
25. All Good Men Have Hairy Chests
26. Say Nothing
27. Collaborators
28. Ovid
29. Toms River
Part Three
30. Let Us Answer Your Questions
31. Three Phone Calls
32. Up Yours
33. Teena
34. The Angel’s Dilemma
35. Birds in the Belly
36. St. Margaret of Cortona
37. Preparations
38. A Little Peanut
39. Toothbrush, Comb, Revolver
40. Wednesday Morning, 9:15
41. Sempre la Famiglia!
42. Please Forgive Me
43. Sorry for Your Loss
44. Absolutely Right
Part Four
45. No Respect
46. The Cyclops
47. The Devil You Know
48. Kiss Me
49. Hard to Imagine
50. Trust Me
Part Five
51. Signed in Blood
52. Restoration
53. Do You Ever Ask Yourself?
54. Falling
55. Clubhouse
Part Six
56. Vittorio
57. Secrets, Lies, and Facial Powder
58. Time Passes
59. The Little House
60. Shadows
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Victor Lodato
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part One
1
One Hundred Dresses
In the tub, Honey lifted a varnished toe—Sunset Peach—to turn on the tap. She’d been soaking for nearly half an hour but didn’t feel ready to get out. A bath soothed the mind, as well as the lines on the face; one emerged not only calmer but a few years younger.
As the heat bloomed again, she sank into the remaining scum of bubbles. Her breasts floated at the surface like so much curdled pudding, and in her ears she could hear her blood. The candlelight, an attempt to evoke a spa-like atmosphere, now just seemed depressing. And there was something funereal about the creeping scent of roses. Honey glared at the ceiling.
What had happened earlier today with her grandnephew continued to vex her. She shifted her weight and groaned. Sometimes her life seemed absurd—a far-fetched movie pitch. How could a woman who collected rare Japanese porcelain, and who was so well versed in the spiritual teachings of Osho and Yogananda, also know where three bodies were buried in the state of New Jersey?
And she wasn’t talking cemeteries. She was talking the unmarked graves of so-called missing persons. Rush jobs, with garden shovels and plastic tarps. One of these bodies was quite close, in fact—just a few miles away, behind her nephew’s house, the house that had once belonged to her father, the Great Pietro. It was the house in which she’d been born.
Let us bow our heads and pray, the priest used to say, in that old stone church with its leering, overdressed saints. Let us, indeed, thought Honey. Her father and brother, and possibly even her mother, had purchased first-class tickets to Hell.
Not that Honey believed in such a place. But she could easily imagine it; she could see the flames and the pitchforks, a storybook from her childhood. The fact that it was imaginary was irrelevant. The imagination was surely all that mattered after death.
Despite these irksome thoughts, Honey scrubbed her elbows with the loofa, emulating a technique she’d once read Joan Crawford had used: counterclockwise, in fierce determined circles. It was no doubt meant to be symbolic, a slap in the face of time. Honey approved. At her age—eighty plus a dash of salt—she had every right to whatever Hollywood arrogance she could muster in the war against oblivion and ruin.
As she extended her leg to turn off the hot water, she got a cramp in her foot. Her painted toes clenched and separated like some sort of prehistoric bird. The pain was horrid. Perhaps she’d get Dominic to give her a foot rub after dinner. That is, if she didn’t croak first, right here in this wretched tub.
Honey wasn’t usually prone to such maudlin thoughts, and she blamed Michael for her current state of mind. Her waif of a grandnephew had stopped by earlier. He had to be in his mid-twenties by now, but he still lived with his parents, in that dreadful house. Honey barely knew the boy; she’d long been out of touch with her relatives. Even after moving back to New Jersey, she’d made no real effort to see them. Similarly, her grandnephew had come to visit only once before, when he’d been short on money. And why had he come today? Well, bingo!
“I know you have it, Aunt Honey.” He’d brandished his cunning dimples without shame. The kid was a looker, disarmingly pretty. “I’m family,” he beseeched at one point, trying to bribe her Italian heart. He was flirtatious for the most part, but then suddenly he’d become quite agitated, and while pacing to and fro had knocked into a side table. A porcelain vase decorated with snakes and flowers had fallen to the floor and shattered. Honey had bought it years ago, in Paris.
They’d both stared at the wreckage for several seconds, during which time Honey awaited an apology. But Michael hadn’t offered one. “That alone is probably worth more than I’m asking for. A few hundred dollars is nothing to you.”
“You’re absolutely right,” she’d replied. “But my problem is what you might be using this money for.” Honey suspected gambling or drugs. She told him she could sniff out vice better than a border collie.
At which point the boy proved to be a clever negotiator. “You weren’t a saint, Aunt Honey. I’ve heard stories.”
“Have you, my dear? Do tell.”
But Michael stayed mum, offering only a gentle shrug. He’d even blushed a little, proving he was human. When he spoke again, suggesting that the two of them might be more alike than she realized, Honey had capitulated. “Fine. Just don’t tell your father.”
As she walked away to the bedroom to get her checkbook, she’d had to suppress a smile. Because it was true enough—she hadn’t been a saint. In her youth she’d occasionally ventured beyond the pale. At Bryn Mawr she’d experimented with drugs, mostly psychedelics. And of course she’d done a little cocaine in the seventies. Who hadn’t?
Obviously, she didn’t mention any of this to her grandnephew. She just wanted to hand over the money and get him to go. And it was true, she did have plenty—all of it her own. From her family she’d inherited nothing.
“A check?” he said, when she returned to the living room. “What am I supposed to do with a check? It’s Sunday.”
“Can your passions not wait a day?” she asked. “Besides, I don’t keep that much cash in the house.” She was a fabulous liar.
“Give me less then. Give me what you have.”
Goodness, it sounded like a stickup. Honey was old-fashioned, in certain ways, and the lack of please irritated her. Please give me what you have. Simply that, and she would have handed over the cash without argument.
By this point Michael was jitting around the room again, tugging on a frond of his shaggy, unkempt hair—blonder than Honey recalled and nearly as long as a girl’s. As he paced, she studied him more closely. He wasn’t very clean, and his eyes were so dark with fatigue that he seemed to be wearing makeup. The thinness of his limbs, the chaotic stomping—something wasn’t right. His ripped shirt fell to his knees and looked more like a dress.
“What’s going on, Michael? What’s the problem?”
“Nothing’s going on.” He stuffed the check into his pocket.
“Why don’t you sit with me for a bit? We’ll talk.”
But apparently this suggestion was something to sneer at. When he picked up a framed photo of Honey in her youth and said, “Well, weren’t you the bomb,” she suspected he was making fun of her.
Still, she’d pushed on civilly. “I haven’t seen your father in a while. How is he?”
“My father’s an animal.”
Honey couldn’t argue with this assessment, but in an attempt to be politic she said, “We all are, darling.”
When she offered to make the boy a cup of tea, he seemed amenable. But then she mentioned his father again, and he snapped. “I have to go!”
Marching away, he banged into another table—th
She was so relieved by her success that it took her a few seconds to realize that Michael was gone. Peering out the front window, she saw him getting into his car—his father’s old Beemer. It was filled with junk—boxes and clothing and what appeared to be a guitar. Was the boy living in the damn vehicle? Honey gestured for him to come back, but he paid her no mind—and when he pulled out of the driveway it was with such force that he left black lines on the pavement.
* * *
In the tub, she managed a few deep breaths. Hadn’t she learned it was useless to attempt conversation with her family? Her parents and brother were dead, and while they’d never been easy, this new generation seemed worse, in that they lacked even the pretense of civility.
A pity there wasn’t a niece or a grandniece to balance out the testosterone. But her brother had produced only a boy, and that boy had begotten more of the same. And though Honey was generally quite adept in dealing with men, this expertise didn’t seem to apply to those with whom she shared her blood.
Maybe because all of these men had a bit of her father in them, and that was a territory Honey still stumbled through. She’d loved her father desperately. She’d detested him. It was as simple as that.
Perhaps the real problem was that Michael resembled her father physically—to the point of being uncanny. The blond hair, the valiant blade of his nose. The more Honey thought about it, the more it upset her—and she wondered why she’d come back to New Jersey at all, after spending so much time away.
When her brother, Enzo, was killed, she’d made a vow never to return. Nearly half her life had been spent in Los Angeles—her home up until a year and a half ago. Even after college, when she’d lived in New York City, it was as if she’d lived on the other side of the globe. Her parents had rarely visited—her brother only once. Honey had returned the favor by coming home infrequently. At a certain point she’d stopped visiting at Christmas. No doubt she’d broken her mother’s heart.
But she was different from her parents, her brother—or so she’d always told herself. At seventeen she’d left home because she wanted another kind of life. Of course, the rest of them had taken this as an insult. This wanting of other things was just not done. Her choice to go away to school had elicited a chorus of whys and what fors. There were so many men interested in her, her mother had never ceased to remind her. “Everything you need is right here.” The message was disgustingly clear: marriage trumped education.
But Honey hadn’t wanted a husband back then. She was too curious, too hungry—both of these things a sign of her perversity. Orgoglio, her mother called her—arrogant. And Honey chose not to argue, since this word also meant self-respect.
Even her beloved brother had informed her that she didn’t know her place. Her duty, apparently, was to stay home, give the family more children, contribute to the welfare of the animal, the beast that was the Fazzinga family. When she’d left for Bryn Mawr, it was at the height of her father’s power. After a long history of poverty in the broken ankle of the old country, the Fazzingas had finally, in their adopted homeland, achieved a considerable degree of wealth. They were respected in New Jersey. And feared.
“Ilaria,” her father had said to her on the day she was leaving for college—trying to claim her by invoking her given name—“I know you come back.” “Of course I will,” she told him, shaking in his presence, as she often did. He’d kissed her gravely, his terrifying mustache scouring her cheek as he slipped her a roll of bills. Nearly two thousand dollars—a fortune back then. Honey had thanked him and put it in her purse. Later, on the train, when she pulled out the green wad fastened by a blood-red rubber band, she wondered: Was it a gift? A bribe?
But what was he buying? Her silence? Her love? She’d considered throwing the money out the window, but she wasn’t stupid. She could use it to buy a hundred dresses. A new life would require new costumes, new disguises.
Philadelphia. Bryn Mawr. How she’d adored those names as a girl. They’d seemed part of a superior language, one in which there existed a word that did not exist in her father’s house. Freedom.
Perhaps it was her grandnephew’s anger that disturbed her most of all—so much like her father’s. The way the boy had barged into the house, demanding things. The living, the dead—for a moment, the story had blurred.
I know you come back. Over sixty years ago it was, but she could still hear her father’s voice. Still feel the grip of his hand, so tight it had made her knuckles crack.
* * *
Honey closed her eyes and quietly recited a mantra she’d learned years ago in Varanasi. The exact translation escaped her, but it had something to do with dispelling the mind’s impurities. She rolled through it twice, with limited success. As she climbed from the tub—no easy task—she considered the sobering fact that, eventually, she might need to have one of those dreadful support rails installed.
Limping across the floor to work out her kink, she gave a quick glance to her form in the full-length mirror. She’d stayed in the bath too long. She was pink and puckered and sweating like a butcher.
After blowing out the candles and flicking on the lights in the adjoining room, she put a towel down on her grooming chair and sat before the vanity. A peculiar woman stared back at her.
“Shall we begin?” they said, in unison.
There was still an hour and a half before her date with Dominic—but she’d need every minute to make herself presentable. She was not the kind of woman, like so many these days, who left the house in sweatpants and flip-flops, with those ghastly plastic clips in their hair.
Besides, she didn’t consider it an imposition to fuss with her appearance. The formalities of attire, of maquillage, of proper grooming, it was a pleasure for Honey, a project akin to art. And though she always employed certain signature motifs, the paintings were never the same. She allowed her moods to influence the sweep of her hair, the cut of the clothes, and especially the colors—not only of the garments but of the makeup. The fleshy peach slathered on her toes no longer seemed appropriate for her current state of mind, but it was far too late to consider a fresh pedicure.
Anyway, Dominic liked this particular shade. He said it reminded him of coral he’d once seen in South Korea during the war. The night he’d told Honey this, inspired by the madeleine of her nail polish, she hoped he might dive down and kiss her toes. Mr. Hal, a lover from her youth, had often done that, and she’d found the sensation quite pleasurable.
But Dominic was rather old-school. Which was fine. She actually liked how proper he was, especially considering what a rascal he’d been in his youth. Honey was not blind to the absurdity of her affair—dating a man who’d once been the kind of boy she’d spurned, as a girl.
And despite the lack of toe kissing, Nicky was a good lover, in his slow-motion, workhorse sort of way. Honey did not for one second take this friendship lightly. It was a wonder to her that she’d finally found a man with whom she’d happily spend the rest of her life.
Of course, such romanticism had a limited sweep, considering the fact that Honey had—what?—maybe five, ten years remaining. Dominic, who was older, probably less.
She’d met him—re-met him—a year or so ago, at Florence Fini’s funeral. Florence had been a girlhood chum, an excellent seamstress who’d made Honey a number of dresses. Wonderful things that still fit her. And though they were old, these garments hadn’t lost their youth. Florence was a genius and had stitched something eternal into her creations. Honey planned on wearing one tonight, maybe the green silk with the marigold cuffs. Accompanied, perhaps, by a thin orange ribbon in her hair, which she was thinking of doing au chignon.
Dabbing some geranium oil on her neck, Honey felt a pang of hunger. A welcome thing, because she and Nicky were dining at Dante’s. Honey adored the place, even though it was considered out of fashion, with its red velvet walls and penguin waitstaff. There was still a coat check and a restroom attendant. And if one wanted some privacy, there was a bank of cozy mahogany booths, each with its own dim, secret-keeping lamp. The light, coming through a tortoise-shell shade, was the color of bourbon.
The place, to Honey’s mind, was not out of fashion at all. It was the world that was out of joint, most people in such a rush they failed to see the beauty of lost time.
