Chapter 5: Nonna's Mass

We held Nonna's memorial Mass on the day she would have turned eighty-five.

It was held in the small Italian church in Santa Paula where she had gone every Sunday for forty years.

Sixty people filled the pews.

Her card-game friends came in black lace, leaning on each other's arms.

The ridge families came too, the ones from the gym, standing along the back wall because there were not enough seats.

Hank sat in the front row in a tie that choked him.

Bruce stood at the end of the pew in a dark jacket, and he had not taken his eyes off the door.

The urn sat on a table by the altar with white roses around it.

I wore a black dress and Hank's flannel over it, because the dress sleeves rubbed my dressings raw.

The priest asked if anyone wished to speak.

I stood up and walked to the front with my hands folded under my chin.

"My grandmother forgot my name for the last two years," I said.

"She forgot what year it was. She forgot where she put her rosary, and I found it in the refrigerator twice."

A few of the old women laughed, wetly.

"But she knew who I was every morning when I brought her coffee. She would say, there's my girl."

"At 4:17 on the fourteenth, on a road with the fire coming over the hill, she looked right at me."

"She said in Italian, you were always a good girl."

I stopped, because my throat closed.

Nobody moved.

"Sei sempre stata una brava ragazza," I said again, to the urn. "I was trying, Nonna. I was trying so hard."

Someone in the third pew began to cry out loud.

The back door of the church opened.

Sixty heads turned.

Leonard came in alone, in a black suit, with his phone nowhere in sight.

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