Chicago howled in the distance. Early April was bogged down with the late madness of March; the wind was a banshee all across the land. Death’s grip upon the world coughed forward a numb, gray, pale sigh in the air. The lot was full of finches chirping in the dark afternoon. They were unfazed as they bobbed, red-headed and care-free, through the dead limbs of shrubbery. They eagerly picked at the red berries peeking through the dead limbs. 

“Thieves,” Marie said and took a drag from her cigarette. She then stroked the hair of her mute daughter who played with a doll in the gravel lot, a beautiful girl with her father’s black, eternal eyes. Marie looked away from her daughter and watched as the little finches took the last juices of life from the dead bushes. 

Just before Spring and the trees were being taken of their last taste of vitality. “Taking from the damned dead,” she said to no one, the cold parking lot of the funeral home causing her to tighten her red coat around her body as she watched the orange embers from her cigarette fade to ash. The smoke flared into the air and joined the miasma of hollow Spring. Her daughter seemed unaffected by the winds of winter still rambling unhinged across the sky. 

Marie’s mother was dead. Cold body pumped of taxidermy and pillow feathers, or whatever the mortician does to the empty bodies he processes. She wondered if it was like making a pillow, stuffing dead things into an empty thing to make it appear alive, to make it seem comforting. But it’s a cold slab. Like the pavement here beneath her feet.

The wake had been paid for by Tommy’s old bosses―well nearly paid for. She had gotten a few hundred dollars from them, but it was better than nothing. This was true, especially  considering her mother was not connected at all but merely one of thousands of Napolitanos, people from Naples, that had streamed into Chicago from Italy almost three decades ago. 

The first wake in the morning was empty. It was her alone and a distant cousin, now living in Milwaukee, sitting in silence staring at the small little body of her dead mother and then her silent daughter playing on the floor by the coffin. Marie’s cousin and her said nothing, but with eyes that knew eternity, they remembered this tiny, fierce woman who had parted the Atlantic to come to this country and to put forth a new life for her family line. The mightiness compounded into dead skin cells permeated by formaldehyde and the long slow whisper of a graveyard. Where does all that strength go? It wasn’t in her mother’s heart when she dropped dead, so where had it gone? She had looked at her daughter, who had been tracing shapes in the carpet of the funeral parlor as the near yet distant funeral director cleared his throat of boredom.

Marie had gotten pregnant at fifteen with little Jane. Silent little Jane. The girl was almost six now and she had hardly spoken a syllable in four years. Not since Tommy had been sent away.

The funeral director came out of the front door, his name was Richard. Riccardo, in reality, but it had been changed when he came to the country. Anglicized, Americanized, whatever that meant.

“Mrs. Livoti,” the director said with his beautiful Napolitano accent, “it is time for the second session of the wake for your mother. Are you feeling alright?”

“Jane, come here,” Marie said, her eyes never leaving the finches dancing in the shrubbery. The girl came over immediately.

Richard got down on one knee and looked at the girl, “bellissima bambina,” he laughed at Jane, a warm sound. He looked into the little girl’s dark eyes which betrayed nothing. They were empty, like dark pupils of a ghost, and a chill ran through him.

“Are the finches here year round?” Marie asked the man.

He got back up with a soft groan and looked at the pale, stern woman. Her hair rolled out from a red hat like black silk.

“What do you mean?” he asked her.

“Those red birds there,” she pointed with her cigarette hand, and then threw the butt on the ground and squashed it.

“These birds? The uccelli rossi? They are here often, yes. They love this time of year. Though I tell you, five years ago, those bushes were not here. Ever since I saw these birds, the bushes started to grow. Big beautiful bushes. I thank these birds, they are a blessing. A welcome to the garden on the other side like for your mother.” The man spoke softly, his beautiful accent becoming straining in her ears. 

Marie took Jane by the hand and went back into the funeral parlor. The lid to her mother’s coffin had been lifted again and there were those pale, baggy cheeks, blubberless of life.

She sat and stared at the box, the empty box full of an empty woman. Silent Jane sat on the pew and pointed at the only set of lilacs in the room. A small arrangement of flowers nestled in the corner already collecting dust.

Richard stood a moment outside. He hated funerals like this. He was losing money on the venture. A profit killed by poverty and a loose connection to Chicago’s crime family. Richard thought highly of his Italian friends, but often thought their truest crime was forcing lower prices on Italian owned businesses for the sole reason they all originated from the same country. This woman’s husband wasn’t even fully Italian, and she was a Siciliano.

He kept his nose in the air and listened to Chicago howl with winds again. And then he heard the crunch of gravel under car tires. A beautiful Chrysler was rolling into the lot. It was his car. The man’s car.

Richard took a comb out of his pocket and fixed his hair quickly as he watched the lights of the vehicle flick off and the motor die. Two men were in the car, one in the front driving and one in the back seat. Richard heard some muffled chatter and then the car door opened, and there he was, larger than life, like a walking skyscraper illuminating the darkness of the early Spring evening.

“Comandatore,” Richard said with clear unexpectedness.

“Mio amico, how are you?” The large man glowed through the parking lot and Richard bowed his head and shook the man’s hand.

“What can I do for you, Comandatore? Do you have another funeral you need help with? What can I do for you?”

“No, my friend, I came to pay my respects to Tommy Livoti’s wife and kid. I heard about her mother’s passing.”

Richard nodded in approval, but his eyes glimmered with confusion. “Yes, yes. In on the right. After you.” Richard opened the door for him.

The man walked in slowly, and took off his hat revealing a round face, bulldog cheeks, and a black receding hairline.

Maire heard footsteps shuffle in and saw that round, bold face, the three scars on his left cheek.

“What are you doing here, Al,” Marie said. Her hand went instinctively to Jane’s head, a soft, protective grasp.

“I’m here to pay my respects,” he said. Al took off his jacket and placed it over one of the many empty wooden chairs in the room.

“For Tommy?”

“Sure.” He walked towards the casket slowly and stood over it. He looked down into this small lady’s face. A Sicilian face, wide and dark, closed eyes that could devour the ferocity of hell, forever resting behind closed lids.

“But she’s my mother,” Marie said.

“Doesn’t matter, it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

“What do you mean? No one else is here. She’s left to rot here―like me―just in this room alone. She died like I’ll die…alone.” Marie fought tears as she brushed Jane’s hair with her fingertips.

Al turned and sat on the opposite aisle. He sat slowly and loudly, as though a monument were moving into rest after years of posing.

“You don’t know that. That’s not necessarily true,” he said. He looked at the little girl, her curly black hair, her big cheeks, those black eyes like Marie’s mother, dark and infinite.

“Look at this beautiful girl you’ve got. How can you say you’ll be alone?” He traced his fingers on his three scars on his left cheek, looking at this little girl. Jane looked down again and traced shapes into the carpet.

Marie glared back at her dead mother.

“You know,” Al said, “she’s got my cheeks.”

“My mother?”  Marie asked.

“No.” He looked from Marie back to Jane. “Jane is a beautiful name, you know.”

“Don’t you start this again, she’s Tommy’s daughter.”

“You don’t know that, he was just a kid when―”

“And what were you? Some big, tough man coming to Chicago, running from New York, Mr. Scarface? She’s got my mother’s hair and eyes. Big cheeks―what, does that make you the father of every baby in little Italy?” She said it with the venom of a cocked viper, her tears released from their strict hold.

“I know you’re upset,” he said slowly, words like a raised hammer held above an anvil, “but you do not call me Scarface.”

Marie said nothing. The two adults locked eyes, hate, forlornness, and chaos braiding each other in the silence.

Al leaned back and exhaled loudly, “you want a drink?” he pulled out a small flask from his suit coat pocket. Unscrewed it and took a swig.

Marie exhaled as well, “I think my mother wouldn’t appreciate it. She was a pro-prohibition suffragette, especially the way her brother drank.”

“Well, not for nothing, I’m not sure that she really has a say right now.”

Marie looked down at little Jane. She shrugged. 

“Well then, more for me―”

“I’ll take some,” she gently grabbed the flask from Al and took a swig. “Damn, is that rye?”

Al chuckled softly and looked at the casket. “I’m sorry it’s so empty in here.”

“Well, what did you expect? Some immigrant old lady.”

“Don’t say that, that was your mother, for crying out loud.”

“Yeah, and look at all the people here to see her.”

Al looked down and then back at Marie. “You know, when I ,moved to the neighborhood, your mother―”

“I know she was down the block from you, always helping new immigrants find work.”

“Yeah, she was. But she always thought I was smart enough to do something better. She always scolded me, but she never ridiculed.”

“She walked a fine line though,” Marie replied, “trust me, I would know. The way she chided Tommy all the time.”

“She never chided me like that. You know she always told me about you.”

“You think I don’t remember meeting you when I was fifteen? You were like a giant to me when I was in school. That was the year before I started working, being knocked up and all.”

“How old is Jane now?” Al asked.

“Six.”

“You’re twenty-one now?”

“You know this, Al.”

“Tommy too?”

“You know that too… though maybe you forgot. He told me he hasn’t seen you in a while,” Marie said, her tone accusatory.

“Well, you know how it is, I don’t like going out too much, trying to keep a low profile and what not. Tommy isn’t really quite one of us anyhow.” Al took another swig out of the flask.

“How dare you, he’s doing time for you, hasn’t said a word to anybody.”

“Because he’s a man, why do you think I am here? Just for you? It’s out of respect.”

“He hasn’t seen his daughter for two years because of you, and with his luck it’ll be another twenty before he gets out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, leaning back and looking at silent Jane.

“Daddy,” Jane said. Jane was staring back at Al.

“She seems to know,” he said with demonic pride.

Marie said nothing. Her child hadn’t said anything since Tommy had been imprisoned, since he had gone away, Jane had been dull, meandering, almost undriven. An empty vessel. 

“You know, if she was my ―”

“Shut up, Al. Shut up…Janey, little Janey, what did you say, baby?” Marie scoped her daughter up with such quick strength, it was as though Jane weighed nothing.

Jane looked away from her concerned mother and looked at her dead grandmother, light coming down from the lamp and illuminating her glowing paleness like the light from the moon. A silence crept back in the room, and Marie placed Jane back down on the carpet. The little girl moved her fingers through the carpet again, tracing subtle patterns.

“What I was saying was, if she was my daughter―”

“It was six years ago Al, back when you were a no one,”

“Weren’t you just saying how your mother would scream at Tommy for being a nobody?”

“He ain’t a nobody, he’s my daughter’s father, he’s my goddamn husband. I got pregnant and I couldn’t work for too long. We both dropped out of high school and he only started working for you and your crew because the meat packing job was niente. He got caught doing work for you.”

“He made us some damn good money. We provided, how do you think this goddamn funeral is getting paid for? Because of him and what he did.”

“Look at this place, Al. There’s no one here. No one is here to support me or my daughter. The only person I had left is dead. Dead and here you are, a pity visit.”

“A pity visit? Is that what you think of me? That I pity you?”

“Yes. You come in when nothing is left. You’re like picking berries off a dead tree, that’s what you’re doing.”
“What are you talking about? Berries?”

Marie looked away again and patted her daughter’s head, a tear going down her cheek.

Al took out a cigar and lit the tip. He took out a cigarette and handed it to Marie. She lit it.

“She didn’t approve of smoking indoors either, did she?” Al said, glancing over to the dead woman.

Marie did not reply.

“You know, when I came to the neighborhood, she took me in right away. Showed me around, helped me get on my feet, introduced me to the right people.”
“She thought you were smart,” Marie said.

“Well, wasn’t she right?” He puffed out smoke. “I remember, even though everyone was calling me Scarface, she never did. That always meant something to me. She was very respectful, your mother. Even introduced me to you.” He had this look on his face that was like an anchor to sunlight, a heavy weight that could bend the light out of your irises and melt you down with utter darkness. A cold haunt of a look, like something that was full of everything and empty of it all at once.

“I know you need help, Maire. I know you ain’t got a job, your money is running out, Tommy’s money is running out. I could help you.”

“Isn’t that what you told Tommy? And look at all the help you’ve given him, a nice buzz cut and orange pajamas he gets to wear every hour of the day.”

“Would you come off of it? You know I am trying to be responsible here, I am offering you a goddamn hand, make sure you don’t bite it while I am trying to feed you.”

“You’re offering me nothing.”

Al took another puff from his cigar. He reached his hand out and put it on Marie’ leg.

“You know how beautiful you are, don’t you, sweet Marie?”

Marie’s face morphed into that of a Bengal tiger, her teeth long white fangs that could eat the support studs out of the wall. She spoke in a low growl, her face gloaming with malice, “get your hand off of me.”

Outside, Richard was smoking and talking to Giovani, Al’s driver. They laughed about the White Sox, and Giovani, as per Al’s request, handed Richard a beautiful bottle of rye whiskey. Richard thanked the man in Italian, shook his hand, put the bottle in his jacket pocket and walked towards the funeral door. The cigarette was burning to its end, and as Richard opened the door, he paused and threw the butt on the floor, squashing it with his shoe.

At the same time, a red-headed house-finch felt the warmth that emanated from the open funeral home, and compared it to the howling winds that scraped at his feathers with the maliciousness of the unending midwestern winter and the oncoming cruelness of night. Having gotten his fill of berries from the shrubberies his great great grandfather had secreted out from his cloaca, the little red-headed finch wanted a warm place to roost. He spread his perfect little feathers, leaned forward and darted out with petite accuracy from the shrubbery and flew in over Richard’s head as the man squashed out his cigarette.

Richard hardly felt the slight movement of the finch above his head as the wind from Chicago was beginning to bristle with kinesthetic might. He quietly walked inside and closed the door behind him as the moaning death of Winter and groaning birth of Spring sonically intertwined. He heard the low muffles of conversation in the parlor, the only parlor with business on the day, as per request from Mr. Capone himself, but the rye in his jacket pocket was a strong compensation. He glanced at the quiet room to make sure none of his staff remained in the building and then went into his office to taste the illegal Canadian rye.

“Then I don’t know what you want from me,” Al said.

“Why are you acting like I invited you here, Scarface?” Marie asked accusationally.

Al stared at her with that dead-anchor weight. His fat fingers reached for her throat and the tiger-faced woman became a doe. He raised her up and squeezed her cheeks with a gravitational crush. Her cigarette fell out of her mouth and went to the floor.

“No one calls me that, especially not a dumb whore who married a dumbass incarcerated mick.”

Marie said nothing. Her teeth forcibly clenched from the dense grip in his fingers. His forefinger found its way to her lips. “Still soft like I remember, Marie. Almost like my heart. Now I am offering you one last time. You remember the empty room we are in? That’s all the choices you’ve got left.”
Silent Jane looked up at the two standing adults. The big bulldog man was towering and something about him felt familiar yet terrifying. Her mother reminded her of the Easter hame they had had just a week or so before, some beautiful thing about to be devoured.

Jane looked back at the big man, his big cheeks going red. They reminded her of her daddy who was always red in the face.

“Daddy,” Jane said again aloud.

Al melted like butter in a pan, but he tossed Marie back into her seat. He looked down at Jane and then he heard a pecking. 

A slow, light, dull pecking. He looked over to the casket. He saw a small little bird resting on the forehead of Marie’ mother. The tiny woman a collapsed universe in a casket. She had been a welcome face to Al when he first moved her, had shown him Chicago, had protected and spoken for the Italian immigrants living in Chicago. What Al had heard was the silent pecking by the red-headed finch as it used its beak to break through the thin skin of the eyelid and into the stagnant juices of the eyeball. 

“What the fuck,” Al said.

Marie saw the image and looked away. She picked up her fallen cigarette and took another drag from it. She picked up her baby and put the kid on her lap.

As smoke exited her lips, Marie said, “look and see, Al, we’ve found an animal you’ve got something in common with.

The finch again entered its beal into the eyeball of Marie’s mother and swallowed the sweet, dead flesh of the eye.

“Riccardo!” Al yelled.

The quiet room heard a stumbling of footsteps and Richard stumbled into the room, his jacket off and his collar undone. “Comandatore,” he said with a slur.

But the old funeral director saw the bird in a heartbeat and made his stumbling way over to the bird to shoo it away. The bird gobbled one more morsel and began to take flight around the room. Al watched the circus with disgust and then looked back at Marie.

She was not there. Only Jane was. The silent little girl who called him Daddy. Those cheeks, just like his. She watched as the bird haloed the room in chaotic circles and as Richard knocked over chairs in some sacreligious ceremony of destruction of death.

Al saw the bird almost in slow motion. A beautiful little bird. One of the birds he had seen outside. The ones eating all the berries from the shrubs. Though he was uncertain if their eating was the demolition of life, or through their ravenousness, the rebirth of it.

He bent down and pinched silent Jane’s cheek, a pinch of love, a pinch to ensure that blood was still in her cheeks. He tipped his hat to the little girl and left the funeral home. He got back into the car and listened to the wind howl in the dark distance of Chicago, the lights like little stars imploding.