by Wally Lamb
“Hey, you know what?” she said. “Would you like to get together sometime? Come over for dinner? I can make you my Jewish-Italian specialty: spaghetti and matzoh balls?” I started stammering something about appreciating the invitation but—
“I’m not asking you out,” she said. “If that’s what you think. I’m asking you over.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well. . . .”
“I’m not hitting on you, paisano. Honest. I’m gay, Dominick.”
“Oh. Right. I didn’t think . . . I mean, I don’t have a problem with . . . You are?”
She suggested we start over. “Hello, Dominick? This is Lisa Sheffer. You want to come over some night for supper? Meet my daughter and my partner, Monica?”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I said okay. Asked her what I could bring.
“Bottle of chianti and a bottle of Mogen David,” she said. “We’ll mix ’em.”
“They were so much alike,” I said. “In some ways, they were more like identical twins than he and I were.”
“Thomas and your mother? Yes? Explain, please.”
Over the phone, I’d told her what I had and hadn’t acomplished on my list. She’d given me bonus points for having made dinner plans with Sheffer—for having “engaged outwardly” instead of continuing my “love affair with inertia.” Her Majesty had granted me a two o’clock appointment.
“I don’t know. They were both so gentle. So defenseless. . . . Every year she’d go to parent-teacher conferences and come back and we’d be like, ‘What did she say? What did the teacher say?’ And every year, one teacher after the next, it’d be the same thing: how smart I was, how sweet he was. That was always the word they used: Thomas was so ‘sweet.’ And he was, too. He just was. But . . .”
“Yes? Go on.”
“He was weak. Just like she was. . . . I had to take care of both of them. And I think . . .”
She waited several seconds. “You think what, Dominick?”
“I think . . . oh, man, this is hard . . . I think that was why she loved him more. Because both of them were so goddamned powerless. . . . It was like they were soul mates or something.”
Dr. Patel sipped her tea. Waited.
“Do you think . . . ?” I stopped, stymied by how to put it. My hands started to shake.
“What is it, Dominick? Ask me.”
“No, I was just thinking yesterday that maybe that’s how she got pregnant. . . . I mean, it would explain a lot. Wouldn’t it?”
Doc Patel said she wasn’t following me.
“She was always so scared to death of everything. So powerless. So I was thinking: maybe she got raped.”
“Raped by . . . ?”
“I don’t know. By some stranger. Maybe our father was just some miscellaneous son of a bitch who grabbed her, pulled her into a dark alley someplace, and . . .”
I stood up, went over by the window. Rocked back and forth on my heels.
“It’s not like she would have fought back or anything. I know she wouldn’t have. She probably didn’t even know what sex was until . . . She probably wouldn’t even have known what he was doing.”
“No? You think not?”
I looked out the window. The river was moving fast. The trees were budding. In another week or two, those unfolding leaves would obscure Doc Patel’s view of the water. I turned back and faced her. “This one time? We were pretty young, Thomas and me—seven or eight, maybe. And we were on the city bus: the three of us.”
“Your mother, Thomas, and you?”
I nodded. “We’d gone to the movies, I remember, and then over to the five-and-ten for sodas. And we were on our way back home, okay? On the bus. And . . . and this crazy guy gets on. Walks down the aisle and sits across from us. . . . Across from Thomas and me. He pushes in right next to my mother.”
“Go on, please, Dominick. You’re safe here. Let it go.”
“And he starts . . . feeling her. Touching her. Sniffing at her.”
“Be yourself on the bus for a moment. Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Angry?”
“Yes!”
“What does your mother do, Dominick? The man is touching her and she—”
“Nothing! That’s what she does: nothing! She just sits there because she’s so . . . so weak and . . . “
Dr. Patel handed me the Kleenex box. “She doesn’t scream? She doesn’t get up and tell the bus driver?”
“No! And I hated that! . . . She was always so afraid.”
“On the bus. At home with Ray.”
“It wasn’t fair! I was just a kid!”
“What wasn’t fair, Dominick?”
“I had to defend all three of us. Myself, and him, and her. And even then . . . even when I did . . .” I was sobbing now; I couldn’t help it.
“And even then, although you protected her and your brother—fought both of their battles for them—even then, she loved your brother more than you?”
My head jerked up and down, up and down. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t stop wailing at the truth.
The boys have the muscles! The coaches have the brains!
The girls have the sexy legs so let’s play the game!
Sheffer’s daughter, Jesse, shook her pom-poms like she meant it. She’d befriended me even before I’d gotten both feet in the door. Within the first half-hour of my visit, I’d been brought down to the basement to see her gerbils, up to her room to see her Barbies. Now I was out on the driveway so I could see her Midget Football cheerleader moves. Sheffer and Monica stood flanking me while Jesse turned cartwheels. “My theory is that Olivia Newton-John went into labor the same day and they mixed up our babies in the nursery,” Sheffer said, under her breath. “There’s just no other explanation.”
Monica was a rugged six-footer from Kittery. She and another woman ran a small home-repair business. Womyn’s Work, they called themselves.
“So how’s business?” I asked her, my chin pointing toward her pickup, parked in the driveway. Jesse had fallen, midcheer, and scraped her knee. She and her mom had gone inside for a Band-Aid. Monica held her arm out and gave a thumbs-down.
“Couple of years ago? When we started up? We figured that in this economy, everyone’s just holding on to what they’ve got—fixing things up instead of building new. But it’s been leaner than we figured it’d be. My partner and I are good—we’re damn good—but you’ve got to get past people’s biases.”
“Like what?” I said.
“Like, that you need a penis in order to swing a hammer or knock down a wall.” She laughed. “No offense, there, hombre. Lisa says you’re a housepainter?”
“Technically,” I said. “Maybe not much longer.”
“That’s what Lisa said.” She and her business partner were trying to diversify a little, she told me—pick up some landscaping work, maybe some painting jobs. They were going to decide at the end of the season whether or not they could keep the boat afloat. “If not, I can always go back to my paying job,” she said. “Systems analyst. Bor-ing.”
After dinner, Jesse had to give me two goodnight hugs before Monica piggybacked her up to bed, Sheffer trailing behind them with a stack of laundry. Monica came back down first.
“Jesse’s a cutie,” I said. “Miss Cheerleader, huh?”
“Miss Pain in the Butt, usually,” Monica said. “But she’s a good kid. Throws a baseball like a girl, though.”
I smiled. Asked her how she and Lisa had met.
At the women’s shelter over in Easterly, she said. She’d done some pro bono carpentry work for them the year before and ended up on their Board of Directors.
“Yeah? Is Lisa on the board, too?” I said.
Monica averted her eyes. “Nope. Hey, you want a beer?”
We went out to the kitchen. Shot the shit about the highs and lows of owning your own business. “Hey,” I said. “If I do decide to sell my painting equipment, would you be interested?” Monica said it depended on what it was,
what kind of condition it was in, and how I felt about the installment plan. If they did start a painting sideline, they damn sure weren’t going to be able to afford new equipment.
I liked her. Liked being there that night. I had a much better time than I’d figured I would. It was after eleven by the time I even looked at my watch.
Sheffer walked me out to my car. She told me that when she was thirteen, her oldest brother had died of leukemia. “He was eight years older than me,” she said. “My hero, in a lot of ways. But, god, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to lose your twin.”
“It’s like . . . it’s like losing part of who you are. I don’t know. In a lot of ways, we were pretty different. Which was fine with me. Just the way I wanted it. But all my life, I’ve been . . . I’ve been half of something, you know? Something special—something kind of unique—even with all the complications. Wow, look. Twins. . . . And now, that specialness—that wholeness—it just doesn’t exist anymore. So it’s weird. Takes some getting used to. . . . Not that it was ever easy: being his brother. Even before he got sick. Doc Patel says I’m grieving for him—for Thomas—and for that, too. That wholeness.”
Sheffer reached over and took my hand.
“She says I’ve got to get used to my new status. Survivor. Solitary twin.”
I asked Sheffer if she remembered the day they released him from Hatch. How she had tried to warn me not to let my arrogance get in the way of my brother’s safety.
“Oh, Dominick,” she said. “Sometimes I run my mouth when I have no—”
“No, you were right,” I said. “I was arrogant. You think I didn’t get off on that little power arrangement we’d always had? Being the strong one? The twin who didn’t get the disease? . . . That’s something else Doc and I are working on—what to do with all this arrogance I’ve got left over. All this righteous indignation. It’s just sort of sitting there, parked and not doing anything. Like me, I guess.”
Sheffer took me in her arms and held me. Rocked me back and forth a little. It felt good to be held like that—held by someone who’d turned into my friend.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Hey, by the way, I like your girlfriend. She may be buying my compressor.”
I was whipped when I got home. Left the kitchen lights off and headed straight to bed. Went out—bam!—like that.
But somewhere in the middle of the night, I woke up thirsty. Fumbled my way out to the kitchen for a glass of juice. The answering machine light was blinking red against the shiny surfaces of the toaster, the door of the microwave. Blink, blink, pause. Blink, blink, pause. I hadn’t noticed it before. I hit “play” and stood there.
The first caller was Joy. Had I gotten her note a while back? The picture she’d sent of Tyffanie? Was I at all interested in seeing the baby in person? If I was, I should give her a call. Maybe we could each drive halfway or something. She said her number slowly, then said it again.
The second message was from a Dr. Azzi. “Your father’s surgeon,” he said.
The operation had gone well; no surprises. He’d amputated just a little above the knee, which was what he’d figured. He was sorry he had missed me at the hospital but would be in touch the next morning. When he’d left the hospital at eight that evening, my father was still groggy but resting comfortably.
Above the knee? Amputated? What the hell was he talking about?
Dr. Azzi’s answering service told me he wasn’t to be called unless it was a medical emergency but that he sometimes called in for his messages before he retired for the evening. The woman said she’d tell him I had called.
Was that why Ray had kept calling me? Was that what that limp had been about?
Amputated. . . .
And maybe I’d have known what was going on if I’d just had the decency to call him back.
He’d planted tulips at Angela’s grave.
Bullied my brother and me our whole lives.
I had humiliated him that day of Thomas’s funeral.
He’d busted my mother’s arm. . . .
Somewhere in the middle of the night, I went into the bedroom. Flopped onto the bed and reached under there.
Pulled out Domenico’s manuscript.
I sat up. Opened it.
I would finish it, this time, no matter what the fuck it revealed. No matter who it told me I was. . . .
45
17 August 1949
And so, by digging that poor bastardo of a stained-glass painter out of his grave, I got what I wanted. I had my wife back and I had rid myself of that crazy goddamned Monkey. I had shown both of them the folly of fucking with Tempesta.
I made a new rule. Ignazia could sleep downstairs in the back bedroom during weeknights but was now expected to visit me upstairs in my bed on Saturday and Sunday. A little comfort once or twice a week in exchange for all I provided for her and the child wasn’t much to ask, I reminded her; in marriage, a wife gave as well as took. With a little care and common sense, she could perform her duty to me without putting a baby inside of herself. And if an accident resulted, then maybe it was God’s will. Maybe her heart was stronger than that ‘Mericano doctor had said. You’ll probably end up an old gray-haired nonna with a dozen grandchildren trailing after you, I told her. God Almighty blessed family life. God provided.
She threatened to go to my friend Father Guglielmo and tell him about my new rule. “If you want me to keep your secrets about the Old Country,” I said, “then you had better keep the ones at this house, too. No squealing inside the confessional. And no squealing, either, to Signora Tusia on the other side of the house or to that dottore who scared you away from me in the first place.” Furthermore, I said, I wanted no more idle chitter-chatter with her ‘Mericana lady friends in the neighborhood. “They’ll look at that long face of yours and think you’re worse off than you are. Those women would like nothing better than to see trouble in an Italian home. ‘Mericani are nice to your face and call you ‘dirty wop’ behind your back. They want us all to fail. They wait for that to happen.”
That overpriced Sears and Roebuck baby carriage stood idle in the front hallway. Ignazia obeyed my new rules, and the child grew, and our lives went on.
Around Three Rivers, I became busier than ever: zoning board, committee member for this, officer for that. I no longer saw Josephine Reynolds. Too busy. I advised families just over from the Old Country and paisani from the mill eager to move from the row houses owned by American Woolen and Textile to homes of their own. If I had charged for all the free advice I gave, I would have been a millionaire! This was the price I paid for being shrewd with my money and successful in life. Half of the town wanted directions from Domenico Tempesta about how to live life!
In the spring of 1924, I was voted Il Presidente of Sons of Italy. (Picture in the newspaper, page two. That burned me up a little. Graziadio had been presidente the year before and they’d put his fat puss on page one.) At American Woolen and Textile, some troublemakers came up from New Haven and there was talk of organizing a union for dyers. I didn’t like the looks of those goddamned outsiders; they put ideas in my workers’ heads. When Domenico Tempesta spoke out against the union, the plan fell apart. The agent, Baxter, bought me a bottle of whiskey and had the butcher deliver a dressed turkey to my home. (The meat was tough.) He had had a talk with his father-in-law, Baxter said; there was a plan in a year or two to promote me from dye house boss to nighttime supervisor of Plant Number 2.
The politicians were talking to me, too—Democrats and Republicans. Shanley, the mayor, called me on the telephone one afternoon and invited me to his office. He sat me across from his fancy oak desk and lit me a cigar almost as long as my forearm. It was going to be an uphill battle to get reelected in November, he said. He needed every vote he could get. The Italians in town had always had poor voter turnout. He wondered if I might help to turn that around. “You’re highly respected in this community, Domenico,” Shanley said. “And, of course, if you agree to work for
us, maybe we could sweeten the deal.”
I held my hat in my hand and looked as much as I could like the immigrante stupido he thought I was. “How you say ‘sweeten the deal,’ your excellency?” I asked. Crooked politicians who wanted something had to be willing to give a little something, too.
“Oh, we’ll just keep that open for now,” Shanley said. “An appointment, maybe. A favor granted here and there. George B. Shanley doesn’t forget his friends or his friendly constituencies. It’s like having money in the bank.” I told him I would think about his request.
Walking home from that goddamned Democrat’s office, I remembered the haughty couple aboard the SS Napolitano—those two who had stood and watched the waiter kick me awake. I thought, too, about what I had shouted to the three of them as I stumbled back below to steerage: Some go up the steps and some go down. And it had proven true! I had come to this country and made something of myself. Paisani listened to me when I gave them advice and now ‘Mericano politicians kissed my ass. Everyone wanted Domenico Tempesta for a friend. I was regarded as a man of dignity and worth throughout Three Rivers, Connecticut.
Throughout the town, yes, but not inside my own home. There, my wife cooked, cleaned, and opened her legs to me on Saturday and Sunday nights as I ordered. In her duties, she was obedient. I had scared the defiance out of her. Yet she submitted to me just as the girl Hattie on Bickel Road had submitted—with distrazione, indifferenza . . . with contempt written in her eyes. And always, when I awoke in the morning, she was gone from my bed, escaped back downstairs to her sewing in the back bedroom or her scrubbing in the kitchen or to her duties to the growing girl—that split-lipped reminder that my unloving wife had known how to love a no-good redhead back in Brooklyn.