Grief Street

and steely as an auto bumper.
    “And this is neither the time nor place for ugly disputations.”
    Ignoring her, Kowalski said, “All these unbearable years since it happened to the little guy, Eva, they been killing me.”
    “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” Eva said this calmly. Anyone looking at her could tell the temperature was rising, though.
    “How come we ain’t ever taken a moment to come square about it?” Kowalski asked. “Not even just you and me coming clean to ourselves in this house where nobody ever comes but us.”
    “Shut up! The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.”
    “All these unbearable years I been thinking about him, you know? What he’d be like and all.”
    “Don’t say the name, it’s a stab in the heart.”
    “That’s rich.” Kowalski laughed his laugh, mocking her. “A stab in the freaking heart.”
    “Please, Joe, don’t say the name.”
    “Why don’t you say it, Eva? Say both their goddamn names. I’d like to hear you say their names. But instead, in all these years since our boys are gone, what do I hear out of you? Bible crapola. You been talking that sanctified shit until I’m gone just about as stupid on Jesus H. Christ as you.”
    “Wicked, wicked!”
    “Not to mention you been cramming me up with food, trying to kill me off early—-like it was my goddamn fault what happened. Like I’m the one needing forgiveness.” Kowalski laughed again. “No wonder I’m freaking sick and tired.”
    “Mind your dirty mouth, Joe dear. For in the Holy Bible, it saith of the crude man, ‘As he knoweth not what to say, he curseth the Lord.’ ”
    “Knock it off already.” Kowalski raised himself from the table. He unfastened the checkered cloth napkin tied around his neck and threw it to the floor. “At long last, Eva—can’t you find the decency to knock it off with the Bible crap?”
    “Joseph Stanley Kowalski, what’s wrong with you? You’re talking as if you’re possessed by Satan.”
    “Yeah, that’s right, I’m freaking Satan.” Kowalski laughed. “Sit tight now, Eva, old babe. I’ll be back.” Kowalski padded softly out from the dining room to the back hallway. He had taken off his shoes. Being heavy, he wore as little as possible at home, for comfort’s sake. He had on his socks, an undershirt, boxer shorts, blue twill sergeant’s shirt with a necktie hanging unknotted over his hammy shoulders.
    At the back of the modest house, Kowalski opened the door to what he and Eva called the guest room. This was a place where no guest had ever slept. In the gauzy past it had been a bedroom for two boys; one slept in a twin bed under a blanket with pictures of Red Ryder and Little Beaver on it, the other in a crib.
    Kowalski pulled a storage box from the dusty guest room closet. It was a wooden steamer trunk with leather straps and an arched top, the kind that smells like mildewed books. It took him fifteen minutes to find what he was after.
    He stopped in the kitchen on his way back to the dining room. He picked up the largest knife from a set of six that were sunk into a slotted pine block on the counter. The blade he chose was thick, and heavy enough to butcher a cow. He thought about taking the knife with him to the dining room. Then he thought twice.
    Eva had cut her pork chop into ten pieces...
    She used to tell her elder boy, “Always ten tiny tidbits. That’s the way a lady minds her manners.”
    …And quartered her potato, after which she quartered it again. Left hand in lap, ladylike, she forked a crescent of Potato into her mouth as Kowalski padded back into the dining room.
    He dropped a framed photograph on the table in front of her. The glass over the photo paper cracked.
    Eva calmly swallowed her potato, and said, “I haven’t my eyeglasses.”
    “It don’t matter. You can see the picture good enough.”
    “Well, but it’s a stab in the heart to see.” Eva forked up
    another piece of potato. She swallowed it, then picked up the photo. She could not resist. “Oh, I remember the year this picture was taken.”
    “Back when the world was right.”
    “Yes... Look at you, Joe.” Eva’s eyes had softened to pearl gray. “So young, and fine blond hair.”
    “Normal size, too.”
    “Look at your muscles.”
    “I was beautiful.” Kowalski pronounced it beauty-ful.
    “A dream of a man you were, Joe.”
    “Our one boy still out there? You were right about him, Eva.”
    “I was right...?”
    “Johnny,