Killer Smile Read Online Free Page B

mother’s stiff pink-gray hair, teased like cotton candy to hide her bald spot. Her coif smelled wonderfully of dried oregano and Aqua Net but reached only as high as Mary’s chin. Three weeks ago, it had reached to her nose. When did her mother shrink?
Can
you afford to shrink if you’re only four eleven? Mary broke their clinch. “Ma, really, are you okay?”
    “So pretty, my Maria,” she purred, her round brown eyes smiling behind her impossibly thick glasses. Her nose was strong and smile soft, and she patted Mary’s arm with fingerpads pasty from pilled flour. “It’s so nice, you come viz,” she said. Born in Italy, she usually dropped her last syllables, unwittingly proving they were superfluous. But Mary noticed that she hadn’t answered the question.
    “Ma, I’m serious, did you…lose weight?” Mary didn’t want to say
evaporate
.
    “No, no, no, a little.”
    “How much? Maybe you’re doing too much, taking care of Gabrielle?” Her mother had been baby-sitting part-time, helping out the receptionist from Rosato & Associates. Mary had thought it was renewing her energy, but maybe she’d been wrong. “Ma?”
    “I’m fine, fine. Sit.” Her pasty hand slid down Mary’s arm and she led her to the kitchen table. Her mother had been making gnocchi, and sifted flour dusted the Formica table, covering stains and knife marks Mary knew by heart. Homemade pasta dough lay in long, skinny ropes, covered with the soft indentures of her mother’s fingers. Later her mother would cut the fresh dough into tiny pillows, then pinch each pillow in two, roll it with her fingertips, and send it skidding across the floured table with a
shhhppp
. Mary eased into the padded chair, and her mother looked happily down at her. “You have coff’. You and Jud’. I put onna pot.”
    “Ma, I want to know why you’re so skinny.” Mary couldn’t hide her dismay. Here, in the House of Things That Stayed the Same, something had
changed
. The most important thing.
    “MRS. D, I’M STARVING!” Judy shouted. She would get away with it because Mary’s parents adored her. Also because she got away with everything, even with bringing her golden retriever here for a visit. Mercifully small for a golden, Penny went everywhere with Judy and had better manners. “Help me, Mrs. D! I need food. Feed me!”
    “Jud’, Jud’!” Laughing, Mary’s mother fluttered over to Judy and gave her a big hug, while Penny lapped water noisily from a chipped bowl that Mary’s father had set on the linoleum floor. Her father was all-business now, having greeted Mary at the door with a hug that crushed her cheek to his white shirt, stiff with baked-in spray-starch. Although Matty DiNunzio had long ago retired as a tile setter, he always wore his short-sleeved shirt, black Bermuda shorts, and his hearing aid when Mary came home. He also loved seeing Judy, who was now hamming it up:
    “Mrs. D, Mary wouldn’t go out to eat with me and you know why? Because she’s
working too hard
!”
    “Maria,” her mother said, waving a gnarled index finger. “Maria, I tella you, no work so hard! I tella you and Bennie! She no listen?
You
no listen?”
    “I listened, she listened, we all listened.” Mary felt vaguely as if she had just conjugated something. “Don’t start, Ma. It’s for Amadeo Brandolini, and there’s a lot to be done.”
    “BUT FIRST WE EAT!” Judy said, hugging her mother again. “How can I help, Mrs. D?”
    “No, no, you sit! Sit!” her mother replied, waving her off as she always did, because the kitchen was her exclusive territory and offers to help were construed as insults. “Sit!”
    “Talked me into it.” Judy took a seat across from Mary. Meanwhile, Penny, who had finished drinking, ran a dripping pink tongue over her chops and trotted over to the kitchen table, her black nose in the air, undoubtedly sniffing for Aquanet.
    “Okay, I make gnocchi for you, and coff’!” her mother said.
    Mary scrutinized her