The Mephisto Club

night.” Angela gave the pot a quick stir with a wooden spoon. “I don’t see why you had to work today, too. It’s unreasonable.”
    “It’s what I gotta do.”
    “But it’s Christmas.”
    “Tell it to the bad guys.” Jane pulled the grater from the drawer and began scraping a block of Parmesan cheese across the blades. She could not just sit still in this kitchen. “How come Mike and Frankie aren’t helping in here, anyway? You must’ve been cooking all morning.”
    “Oh, you know your brothers.”
    “Yeah.” She snorted.
Unfortunately.
    In the other room, football was blaring from the TV, as usual. Men’s shouts joined the roar of stadium crowds, all cheering some guy with a tight butt and a pigskin ball.
    Angela bustled over to inspect the green bean salad. “Oh, this looks good! What’s in the dressing?”
    “I don’t know. Gabriel made it.”
    “You’re so lucky, Janie. You got a man who cooks.”
    “You starve Dad a few days, he’ll know how to cook, too.”
    “No, he wouldn’t. He’d just waste away at the dining table, waiting for dinner to float in all by itself.” Angela lifted up the pot of boiling water and turned it upside down, dumping the cooked gnocchi into a colander. As the steam cleared, Jane saw Angela’s sweating face, framed by tendrils of hair. Outside, the wind sliced across ice-glazed streets, but here in her mother’s kitchen, heat flushed their faces and steamed the windows.
    “Here’s Mommy,” said Gabriel, walking into the kitchen with a wide-awake Regina in his arms. “Look who’s up from her nap already.”
    “She didn’t sleep long,” said Jane.
    “With that football game going on?” He laughed. “Our daughter is definitely a Patriots fan. You should have heard her howl when the Dolphins scored.”
    “Let me hold her.” Jane opened her arms and hugged a squirming Regina against her chest.
Only four months old,
she thought,
and already my baby is trying to wriggle away from me.
Ferocious little Regina had come into the world with fists swinging, her face purple from screaming.
Are you so impatient to grow up?
Jane wondered as she rocked her daughter.
Won’t you stay a baby for a while and let me hold you, enjoy you, before the passing years send you walking out our door?
    Regina grabbed Jane’s hair and gave it a painful yank. Wincing, Jane pried away tenacious fingers and stared down at her daughter’s hand. And she thought, suddenly, of another hand, cold and lifeless. Someone else’s daughter, now lying in pieces in the morgue.
Here it is, Christmas. Of all days, I should not have to think of dead women.
But as she kissed Regina’s silky hair, as she inhaled the scent of soap and baby shampoo, she could not shut out the memory of another kitchen and of what had stared up at her from the tiled floor.
    “Hey, Ma, it’s halftime. When’re we gonna eat?”
    Jane looked up as her older brother, Frankie, lumbered into the room. The last time Jane had seen him was a year ago, when he’d flown home from California for Christmas. Since then, his shoulders had bulked up even more. Every year, Frankie seemed to grow bigger, and his arms were now so thick with muscle that they could not hang straight, but swung in simian arcs.
All those hours in the weight room,
she thought,
and where has it gotten him? Bigger, but definitely no smarter.
She shot an appreciative glance at Gabriel, who was opening a bottle of Chianti. Taller and leaner than Frankie, he was built like a racehorse, not a draft horse.
When you have a brain,
she thought,
who needs monster muscles?
    “Dinner’s in ten minutes,” said Angela.
    “That means it’ll run into the third quarter,” said Frankie.
    “Why don’t you guys just turn off the TV?” said Jane. “It’s Christmas dinner.”
    “Yeah, and we’d all be eating a lot earlier if you’d shown up on time.”
    “Frankie,” snapped Angela. “Your sister worked all night. And look, she’s in here helping. So don’t you go picking on her!”
    There was sudden silence in the kitchen as both brother and sister stared at Angela in surprise.
Did Mom actually take my side, for once?
    “Well. This is some great Christmas,” said Frankie, and he walked out of the kitchen.
    Angela slid the colander of drained gnocchi into a serving bowl and ladled on steaming veal sauce. “No appreciation for what women do,” she muttered.
    Jane laughed. “You just noticed?”
    “Like we don’t deserve some respect?” Angela