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CHAPTER SEVEN
“HAVE YOU SEEN ME?”
1
On an August morning in 2013, Concetta Reynolds awoke early in her Boston condo apartment. As
always, the first thing she was aware of was that there was no dog curled up in the corner, by the
dresser. Betty had been gone for years now, but Chetta still missed her. She put on her robe and
headed for the kitchen, where she intended to make her morning coffee. This was a trip she had made
thousands of times before, and she had no reason to believe this one would be any different. Certainly
it never crossed her mind to think it would prove to be the first link in a chain of malignant events.
She didn’t stumble, she would tell her granddaughter, Lucy, later that day, nor did she bump into
anything. She just heard an unimportant snapping sound from about halfway down her body on the
right-hand side and then she was on the floor with warm agony rushing up and down her leg.
She lay there for three minutes or so, staring at her faint reflection in the polished hardwood floor,
willing the pain to subside. At the same time she talked to herself. Stupid old woman, not to have a
companion. David’s been telling you for the last five years that you’re too old to live alone and now he’ll never
let you hear the end of it.
But a live-in companion would have needed the room she’d set aside for Lucy and Abra, and Chetta
lived for their visits. More than ever, now that Betty was gone and all the poetry seemed to be written
out of her. And ninety-seven or not, she’d been getting around well and feeling fine. Good genes on
the female side. Hadn’t her own momo buried four husbands and seven children and lived to be a
hundred and two?
Although, truth be told (if only to herself ), she hadn’t felt quite so fine this summer. This summer
things had been . . . difficult.
When the pain finally did abate—a bit—she began crawling down the short hall toward the
kitchen, which was now filling up with dawn. She found it was harder to appreciate that lovely rose
light from floor level. Each time the pain became too great, she stopped with her head laid on one
bony arm, panting. During these rest stops she reflected on the seven ages of man, and how they
described a perfect (and perfectly stupid) circle. This had been her mode of locomotion long ago,
during the fourth year of World War I, also known as—how funny—the War to End All Wars. Then
she had been Concetta Abruzzi, crawling across the dooryard of her parents’ farm in Davoli, intent on
capturing chickens that easily outpaced her. From those dusty beginnings she had gone on to lead a
fruitful and interesting life. She had published twenty books of poetry, taken tea with Graham
Greene, dined with two presidents, and—best of all—had been gifted with a lovely, brilliant, and
strangely talented great-granddaughter. And what did all those wonderful things lead to?
More crawling, that was what. Back to the beginning. Dio mi benedica.
She reached the kitchen and eeled her way through an oblong of sun to the little table where she
took most of her meals. Her cell phone was on it. Chetta grabbed one leg of the table and shook it
until her phone slid to the edge and dropped off. And, meno male, landed unbroken. She punched in the
number they told you to call when shit like this happened, then waited while a recorded voice