Should I bother to go and see him? I think. He raises the bar so high for first-time writers like me. I simply want to tell a story—my story and that of the people I know that may be similar to others, without having to worry about his academic ramblings.
“Wow, it’s quite the mansion!” Julie exclaims as we drive into Alfonso’s driveway. We’re there to discuss Angie’s move.
“He’s in the construction business, and he’s done very well.”
The home is more grandiose than I had imagined, a luxurious, sprawling, two-storey house, facing the Lake of Two Mountains, in the residential Laval-sur-le-Lac. The house is surrounded by empty lots still covered in underbrush, and his front yard looks newly landscaped. The bare rock garden and the rolls of turf piled in front of the garage reveal that work is still in progress. A short distance away, other homes under construction bear a large sign, Habitations A&V Construction: “A” for Abiusi and “V” for Vaccaro, the name of his partners and of his wife’s family.
By all accounts, since Alfonso arrived in Montreal a couple of years after Lucia, he has been very successful, both in business and in personal life. The Vaccaro family into which he married is well established in the city’s Italian community. One of his brothers-in-law is a notary, and another, a lawyer. The patriarch of the family, Joe Vaccaro, took Alfonso under his wing when the young man befriended his daughter and eventually made him a partner in his business.
Alfonso has gravitated toward his wife’s side of the family and rarely socializes with paesani. He speaks more French than English, like the Vaccaros who had immigrated to Montreal before the forties and had married French-Canadian women.
When his wife, Dominique, answers the door, it looks as if she has been expecting us. She’s polite but cool and leads us through the large marble-tiled foyer into the carpeted living room, with a mirrored wall, a marble fireplace, and modern all-white furniture. She then walks stiffly up a circular staircase and calls, “Alfonso, vos amis sont ici,” and disappears to the top floor.
Alfonso comes down the stairs and shakes hands with both of us. He speaks in accented English. “What’s going on at that school? I hear they had a bomb scare?”
“No, No. It was just stink bombs … nothing serious,” I say, laughing.
Comare Rosaria walks up a staircase that must lead from the basement and asks, alarmed, “There were bombs in the school?”
She kisses me. I try to explain as best as I can about the stink bombs placed in the ventilation system, but can’t find the word for stink bomb in my halting dialect.
“Madonna mia, the things these kids come up with,” Rosaria says.
“That’s not the work of kids,” Alfonso says. “It must be an inside job.”
“They’re investigating it,” I say. “Is Angie home?”
“I’ll call her,” Comare Rosaria says, and walks slowly toward the open door from which she has just come. “Angelina, come upstairs,” she calls.
Meanwhile, Julie explains to Alfonso the reason for our visit: my guardianship of Angie on weekdays so she can attend school. She mentions that my boyfriend sometimes stays over. If the news surprises him, he doesn’t show it. He looks at me and says, “I understand that your fiancée is a close friend of Jean-Pierre Menard. I know Menard quite well.”
“Oh, J.P. and Sean have been friends for years,” I answer. I don’t correct his use of fiancé. The corresponding fidanzato in Italian simply means boyfriend.
“Jean-Pierre is a good party man … heard the news about your fiancé running in the by-election. The Conservatives are pushing Martillo. You know him, don’t you?”
I shake my head.
“He has a big reputation in the community and the Italian papers are backing him. It’s going to be a tough race,” Alfonso says.
Sean’s candidature is already public knowledge, it seems, and Alfonso is more interested in discussing it than talking about Angie. I know that Alfonso has been active within the Liberal Party, especially in fundraising events for Alex Di Principe during election periods. I’m uncomfortable with the exchange. Julie is shuffling papers from her briefcase. “I don’t get involved in any of this political stuff,” I say. “Julie has some papers that need to be signed.”
Alfonso agrees to let Angie stay with me, but if the process is too problematic for me, he’ll find a school closer to home, he says.
“Not all schools offer the type of program offered at Western Horizon,” Julie says, “and not all programs are open to special students.”
“Special, special … what’s so special! I’m sure the girl can try learning something else besides hairdressing if she wants to, but I leave it up to her,” he says.
Julie then discusses Angie’s expenses and the forms that must be filled out if Alfonso wants Social Services to cover them. He dismisses her. “I don’t have time for that. I’ll cover all her expenses. I don’t need government assistance. Angie is not on bien-être sociale. She has us.”
“No need to worry about expenses for me,” I say. “We’ll settle it between ourselves.”
“But we must sign the guardianship papers. Those are a must.” Julie pulls out a long form, which she has already filled out. Just then, Comare Rosaria comes back with a tray fragrant with espresso and almond cookies “It smells good,” Julie says, and puts the form back into her briefcase.
While we drink our coffee, Comare Rosaria gets up again to call Angie. “Maybe she fell asleep watching TV,” she says.
Angie walks up from the basement, dressed in the same black pants and top that she wore at school. Her eyes are red and swollen, as if she has been crying.
Julie holds out her hand to Angie, which she accepts hesitantly. “Angie, do you really want to return to the hairdressing program, or would you rather do something else, maybe in a school close to your home?” Julie asks.
“There’s nothing close to here … except the river,” Angie says, pointing toward the window.
“That’s not true. Her aunt could drive her anywhere she wants,” Alfonso says, “but I leave it up to her.”
“I wanna go to Montreal,” Angie answers loudly, crossing her arms over her chest.
“We must tell you that, if you go back, you’ll have to follow all the school rules,” Julie says.
“Any rules for stink bombs?” Angie says with a smirk. “I wasn’t there for that one.”
“I’m sure they’ll find the people responsible for that,” Julie says. She pulls out some papers from her briefcase.
“You’ll have to sign a contract with the principal. It’s school policy after a suspension. If you break any rule, you’ll be expelled for good.”
Angie shrugs her shoulders.
“I have to sign for your good conduct, too,” Alfonso says, pointing at the documents in Julie’s hands. “Do you know what that means?”
“It means they go after you if I don’t behave. I guess what goes around, comes around.”
Julie looks at me, then at Alfonso.
Alfonso answers. “You’ll notice that my niece has a strange sense of humour when upset. It’s understandable. A lot has happened in the last few days.”
“Yes, of course,” Julie says and looks at Angie. “Angie, I’d like to finish with your uncle first. We’ll speak to you again before we leave.”
“Sure,” Angie says, “make sure you ask him about the boogey men hiding in the mountains.” She waves her hand, then slips back down to the basement.
“What was that all about?” Julie asks. “Your niece seems distraught.”
“This has been hard for all of us,” Alfonso says, “but it must be extremely hard for Angie to accept what her own father did to her mother. We’ve just received the news that my brother-in-law has finally been located in Italy.”
“Really?” I ask.
“He went to hide in Italy, in his ho
metown, of all places, as if we can’t go after him there.”
I look at Comare Rosaria and ask in dialect, “So, they found Pasquale?”
She shakes her head and sighs, “I don’t understand anything anymore.”
“I’m trying to talk to the Italian police. He’s not a Canadian citizen. But you know how slowly things get done in Italy.”
“Is that why Angie is upset?” Julie asks.
“She’s been crying all day, since she heard the news. I can’t understand why, but she doesn’t want me to go after her father. But I have no choice, he nearly killed my sister.”
“We understand,” Julie says, and she goes over Angie’s travel arrangements with Alfonso. I chat with Comare Rosaria and explain that she has no reason to worry about Angie, that I will take good care of her.
“I trust her with you … with someone else, maybe not. But with you, yes,” Rosaria says smiling. “Bella mia, it seems like just yesterday you were a little girl yourself, playing in Piazza Don Carlo.” The old woman wipes her eyes with a tissue.
On our way out, we ask to see Angie.
“I’m watching As the World Turns,” she yells from the basement. We smile at each other and leave.
In the car, Julie asks me if I feel comfortable not having clarified the paying of expenses. I explain how hard it is for Southern Italians to talk about money among family and close friends. We firmly believe in the give and take, and even if things are not always clear, it usually all comes out in the wash.
“Oh shoot,” Julie says. “I never got the guardianship papers signed. I feel so stupid. I’ll have to come back on my own.”
I laugh. I remember Alfonso negotiating his sister’s marriage to Pasquale, at the fair of Santa Lucia, as if he were negotiating the sale of a donkey. I’m sure there were no written contracts drawn, but the unspoken understanding was that Alfonso and his family would gain much from that union. The visit to his home proved that he had certainly achieved his goal. He had become wealthy by exploiting two of the most basic needs of immigrants: their craving for authentic foods, and their dream of owning a piece of land and a home worthy of an ocean crossing.
28. THE PROPOSAL
MY ANNOUNCEMENT AT SUNDAY LUNCH to my mother about Angie moving in with me provokes as big an argument as when I told the family I wanted to move in with Sean. This latest disagreement is somewhat connected to the first, because, with Angie staying with me, my ambiguous living arrangement with Sean will become public knowledge. As long as it has been kept hush-hush from the paesani, our living in sin hasn’t seemed real. How will Mother explain that she has allowed the shameful situation?
“I’ve already told Sean that if he doesn’t make up his mind, I’m leaving him,” I announce.
“After you’ve lived with him?” she asks, dumbfounded.
I understand that, in my mother’s eyes, the only acceptable option at this point is marriage. I’m a marked woman for living with him; I’ll be more so if I leave him. “You know I don’t care about what the paesani think,” I argue.
“Because you’re hardheaded. You only care about yourself,” Mother replies.
I leave the kitchen and run to the back balcony to cool down, rather than raise my voice to my mother. I never make any sense when I’m upset. I understand my mother’s concerns, but it infuriates me to be accused of selfishness when I try so hard to please.
“You’re in good company with that girl,” I hear my mother saying from the kitchen. “She’s probably just as hardheaded—like her mother. You’re all one and the same.” When I don’t respond, Mother continues, “Don’t you remember anything about what Lucia did?”
I still don’t answer. I remember the cloud of shame that hung over Lucia during our last summer in Mulirena, and, as a child, I never questioned it. Then, on the ship, I learned to accept her errant secretive behaviour and my complicity in it, not so much as normal, but as necessary. For someone whose life choices had been imposed on her, secrecy and deception seemed like the only possible way out. “Hold on to anything,” Armando had told us.
I sit on the balcony, silent and sad, until Luigi walks up from the basement where he has been practicing his trumpet. “You’ve heard what they’re saying in the papers about Alfonso and Jack Russo,” he says. “There must be something there that we don’t know about.”
When neither Mother nor I respond, he says, “What’s with the long faces?”
Mother blurts out about my crazy decision to take Angie in and the argument between Sean and me.
“She can’t go back on her word to Comare Rosaria and Alfonso,” he says, ever the pacifier between Mother and me, “but I’m sure we can work things out reasonably with Sean. I’m not working tomorrow. I’ll come and talk to him if necessary. Maybe he’ll agree to a simple civil wedding.”
I had already planned on inviting everyone over for Thanksgiving.
“Okay,” I say relieved that some of the pressure has been diffused. Luigi then resumes talking about the news.
“The papers always exaggerate,” I reply.
“There must be something,” Mother repeats. “I always said that he became rich a little too fast and too easily—for someone who knew nothing about construction.”
“Hey, you don’t need to be a genius to do well here,” Luigi interrupts. “Look at some of the people who have made it big. Most of them are illiterate. Alfonso is a shrewd businessman, and we can’t take that away from him.”
“He only became a businessman here,” Mother says. “In the paese, he couldn’t do anything right, and he used people, including your father.”
“We were too young then to understand what was going on. Today we wouldn’t let that happen,” Luigi says.
“In any case,” I answer, “he told me not to worry about any expenses.”
“For that, he won’t remain behind … now that he’s rich,” Mother says. More than anything else, our paesani hate feeling indebted to others, and will always find a way of repaying a favour. By the same token, they remember when one isn’t paid back.
When Rita comes into the room with the baby, we all sit down to lunch and the conversation lightens up. We chat about the baby’s progress and then my brother regales us with his latest jokes, until Mother changes topic again and lets me know that there are certain things she won’t forget. “We were left indebted once because of Alfonso and his friends. Your father died of heartache because of it.”
That was a painful period for all of us that we rarely speak about. Again we all remain quiet with our own thoughts.
I spend Sunday afternoon preparing the den for Angie’s stay. I remove some of my clothes from the closet to make room for hers. I pick out the books from the shelves that I’m likely to use the most. Besides the thick I Promessi Sposi and its translation, I choose three other books to keep on my night table to reread: Il Gattopardo by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Light in August by William Faulkner, and a book of short stories, Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro. I had read these books before and had been captivated by them, especially by how well—though written in different periods and in different countries—they had managed to capture the sense of their time and place while speaking to all. Despite the journalist’s highfalutin pronouncements, I must agree with him on this one writing principle. I think about removing my stack of notebooks from the bottom shelf, with the rough drafts of the story I’ve just rewritten. But, it’s unlikely that Angie will bother to read through them, and even if she tries, the handwriting is indecipherable, so I decide to leave them where they are.
I cram the clothes from the den into my already packed bedroom closet.
“You hoard things,” Sean has often complained.
“And you throw everything away,” I say.
I find it especially difficult to throw away my old clothes. They remind me of the changes in my life, the ups and downs
, the weight gains and the losses. Some pieces of clothing have never even been worn and still have a price tag on them. They were mistakes in judgment. I either had been carried away by a sale price, or had purchased the item in a panic before a special event, fearing that I had nothing else appropriate to wear. These clothes make me realize how, at times, I compromise too easily, accept what is available for fear of being without. Once the clothes make it home, I rarely return them. There is always something I like about them, and think that, maybe at a different time in my life, I might find a use for them. It must be my immigrant background, this squirrel-like compulsion to hoard things for a rainy day. It seems to me that I’m always shuffling books and clothes from one place to another.
I’m restless waiting for Sean. I haven’t been able to get rid of the nervous feeling in my stomach I’ve had since the slashed tire on Friday afternoon and then my argument with Sean. Lucia’s condition is neither improving nor deteriorating, so I can expect Angie to be with me for a longer period than I had originally thought. If Sean and I patch things up, I’ll have to worry about her sharing space with J.P. when he comes into the city.
J.P. always acts as if he owns Sean. Sean described him as a kind of mentor, someone who helped him straighten out his head, while he was aimless and living in Ottawa. The first time he visited us, after Sean and I had started seeing each other, I had prepared a special meal for him at Sean’s place. When J.P. walked into the kitchen to greet me, I was flushed from cooking. He looked me over and said, “So this is the Italian mamma.” In spite of the jovial tone of voice, I sensed a disapproving look in his eyes, and I disliked him immediately.
As J.P. visits frequently, I have become aware that Sean changes his manners when his friend is around. I worry that with a by-election in the planning stages, J.P.’s visits will be non-stop. Angie’s presence in the small apartment will make things even more awkward between us.
The Women of Saturn Page 14