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CHAPTER TWO
BAD NUMBERS
1
The elderly poet with the Italian given name and the absolutely American surname sat with her
sleeping great-granddaughter in her lap and watched the video her granddaughter’s husband had shot
in the delivery room three weeks before. It began with a title card: ABRA ENTERS THE WORLD!
The footage was jerky, and David had kept away from anything too clinical (thank God), but Concetta
Reynolds saw the sweat-plastered hair on Lucia’s brow, heard her cry out “I am!” when one of the
nurses exhorted her to push, and saw the droplets of blood on the blue drape—not many, just enough
to make what Chetta’s own grandmother would have called “a fair show.” But not in English, of
course.
The picture jiggled when the baby finally came into view and she felt gooseflesh chase up her back
and arms when Lucy screamed, “She has no face!”
Sitting beside Lucy now, David chuckled. Because of course Abra did have a face, a very sweet one.
Chetta looked down at it as if to reassure herself of that. When she looked back up, the new baby was
being placed in the new mother’s arms. Thirty or forty jerky seconds later, another title card appeared:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABRA RAFAELLA STONE!
David pushed STOP on the remote.
“You’re one of the very few people who will ever get to see that,” Lucy announced in a firm, takeno-prisoners
voice. “It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s wonderful,” Dave said. “And there’s one person who gets to see it for sure, and that’s Abra
herself.” He glanced at his wife, sitting next to him on the couch. “When she’s old enough. And if she
wants to, of course.” He patted Lucy’s thigh, then grinned at his granny-in-law, a woman for whom he
had respect but no great love. “Until then, it goes in the safe deposit box with the insurance papers,
the house papers, and my millions in drug money.”
Concetta smiled to show she got the joke but thinly, to show she didn’t find it particularly funny.
In her lap, Abra slept and slept. In a way, all babies were born with a caul, she thought, their tiny
faces drapes of mystery and possibility. Perhaps it was a thing to write about. Perhaps not.
Concetta had come to America when she was twelve and spoke perfect idiomatic English—not
surprising, since she was a graduate of Vassar and professor (now emeritus) of that very subject—but
in her head every superstition and old wives’ tale still lived. Sometimes they gave orders, and they
always spoke Italian when they did. Chetta believed that most people who worked in the arts were
high-functioning schizophrenics, and she was no different. She knew superstition was shit; she also
spat between her fingers if a crow or black cat crossed her path.
For much of her own schizophrenia she had the Sisters of Mercy to thank. They believed in God;
they believed in the divinity of Jesus; they believed mirrors were bewitching pools and the child who
looked into one too long would grow warts. These were the women who had been the greatest
influence on her life between the ages of seven and twelve. They carried rulers in their belts—for
hitting, not measuring—and never saw a child’s ear they did not desire to twist in passing.