Worn Masks Read Online Free PDF Page A

dog, but most were of a bird soaring across the sky. There
were no more new pictures. She wondered where he had gotten them, and where
they had gone to now.
    Every detail of the room stayed with her. The light switch was
attached to a string that turned on a bare bulb in the center of the ceiling.
The doubled pastry box string then was strung across the room and attached to
small eyes hooks by the wall next to the door and in the opposite direction to the window frame by the bed,
ty ing together all the angles, squares, and rectangles across the room
and into her photo-memory.
    When she closed the door she saw her foggy reflection, or was it
Uncle Paul’s eyes she saw, on a small square
of mirror hanging over a hook, the silver reflec tive almost all flecked
away. Next to it was a faded towel hanging from a large nail. Why would her
father and aunt leave all of Uncle Paul here?
     
     
    The Porch
    On un giomo che fa molto caldo or a summer scorch er, the kind of day that brings light waves in front of your eyes,
heat that prickles your skin like a thousand spiders inching over it, and
everything moving in slow motion, Mary Grace was shaken from the daze of the
heat by a stranger. It was during a run of crackling hot summer days, “Hot like the year you were born,” said Aunt
Mag gie, who Mary Grace had joined on the porch. Against the house was
the folding chair Uncle Paul used to sit on, and another that was her mother’s,
lined up along with an old wooden kitchen chair, and ending with Aunt Maggie’s
creaky rocking chair. On the other side of Aunt Maggie’s chair was a small
table with one leg propped up on a pack of her father’s matches. In the right
front corner was a wooden box with empty seltzer bottles ready to be changed
out.
    Mary Grace had heard neighbors say Aunt Maggie was a fixture on
that porch, but she didn’t quite know what they meant. She knew Aunt Maggie was
different than her mother, who most times didn’t primp herself. Aunt Maggie was
always checking her curly hair in the hall mirror before coming out onto the
porch. Often on the porch she spent time filing her perfectly shaped round
nails and polishing them with a light shade of pink polish. Then she stretched
her hands out along her long thighs until the paint dried. Mary Grace sat next
to Aunt Maggie, and was allowed to stay if she was quiet. She knew how to be
around Aunt Maggie. Unlike her mother who
would react differently each time you ap proached her, Aunt Maggie always
was ready to show her soft under body to Mary
Grace. Mary Grace count ed the wooden floorboards, with the grey paint
mostly peeled away. Each person passing nodded their hellos to Aunt Maggie, and
some she answered and some she grumbled under her breath “busy-bodies.”
    It was late in the day, but the heat had not subsided. After a
while a man approached with a cupped cigarette in his palm, dragging his feet
in heavy brown leather shoes. He had a bulbous nose, pocked skin, and large
round eyes—all so similar to Uncle Paul. Mary Grace wondered if Aunt Maggie was
thinking the same thing, when suddenly Aunt Maggie was on her feet, and the man
was stopping right at their stoop.
    “I thought I’d come by and tell you I saw the cugini . They
were sorry about Paul. It wasn’t the same going to the old country without
Paul. Sad, sad.”
    Aunt Maggie nodded at him, but didn’t seem to be able to speak.
Mary Grace came up behind her.
    “Ah, the bambina . They asked about her. Sad they would not
have another picture of her. They loved his sketches. That sister-in-law of yours
never even told them about Paul.”
    Then Aunt Maggie blurted out, “Let it all rest. My brother,
rest-in-peace, did everything he could. Ah. It is so damn hot.”
    “Yes, fa molti caldo . I just was passing this way to go to
the cleaners.” He lifted the coat over his arm upward. Tell Luigi I said ciao.
Ciao .”
    His eyes met Mary Grace’s for a split-second. Who was this man?
How did he know