The Women of Saturn

by Connie Guzzo-Mcparland

  “What a stupid thing to say,” Sean says, then begs me to reconsider. “The ball is just as important for me as it is for Di Principe. Your family is planning an engagement party, and you want to throw it all away for a comment? Please come to the ball and then we can work this out between ourselves later on.”

  Angie comes out of her room. Sean continues, “This ball is more important than you think. The crème de la crème of the Italian community will be there: politicians, radio and television personalities, business people, and representatives of various associations. We all need to put up a united front, especially because of the mudslinging and defamation going on. The Italian community is also being targeted.”

  “Di Principe and his cronies don’t represent all of the community, only their greedy selves. Don’t you understand that? I can represent myself, thank you very much. This ball has lost all its luster,” I say.

  I ask Angie to come to the apartment locker with me, and we return a few minutes later with two heavy boxes that we plunk down on the coffee table.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” Sean says.

  I shrug and ask Angie to look through the clothes for a costume for the school party. She sits, uninterested, on the sofa. I pull out a silk tie-dyed shirt and a long, gauze skirt to go with it.

  “You could be a flower child,” I say.

  “I don’t have to wear a costume,” Angie replies, her arms crossed. “And if I did, the last thing I’d want to be is a flower girl.”

  “I mean a flower child—the make-love-not-war kind—a hippie,” I reply. I hold the peasant skirt, with its bright shades of pinks, mauves, and blues, against my body.

  Sean dumps some clothes in his knapsack to return to the hotel. “I remember that skirt,” he says. “I liked it on you. Why did you stop wearing it?”

  “Because now it looks like a costume.”

  “I see,” Sean says. “So it was only a passing fad.”

  I look at him as if to say, “Yes, what did you think it was?” He had spent that period immersed in Beatles’ music about love and peace, and here he is now, working for jerks like Di Principe and in cahoots with a bigger jerk, that carpetbagger, J.P.

  Sean moves around nervously as he is about to leave. “I’ve rented a limousine and can come pick you up at six. Let me know by three if you’ll come.”

  I keep rummaging through the box and don’t answer.

  Angie is quietly watching us. She pipes up: “I want to go to a party, after school … with Linda and Gina … at Charlie’s.”

  “Of course not,” I say. “Why would you even bother asking? Your uncle won’t allow it.”

  “He doesn’t have to know,” Angie says. “I can tell him the school party is at night and I sleep here for the weekend.”

  “No way, Angie,” I say. “You go to the school party in the afternoon, and then you come home as usual.”

  “It’s the first time I have ever asked you for a favour,” Angie says, getting up. “My grandmother said I can stay here for the weekend if you let me.”

  I slip a caftan on over my clothes, and walk out to the hallway mirror to look at myself. “Angie, you’re being unreasonable. I can’t lie to your family about something like that. How long would it take your uncle to find out you had been at Charlie’s? You know he knows people there.”

  “What is he going to do when he finds out? Shoot me? Don’t tell me you never lied to your mother about things like that. Were you always such a goody-goody?”

  I find a white turban with a heavy rhinestone broach, and put it on. At one time, inspired by the Great Gatsby movie, I had worn it over wavy hair, with the broach over one ear. “Angie, I’m sorry,” I say. “With everything that’s been going on, I can’t let you go out with your friends without your family knowing about it. Who knows where I’ll be. There’s even another Halloween party up north I’ve been invited to.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sean says.

  “Susan, the secretary, is having a party up north,”

  “You’re not thinking of driving up north, for a juvenile Halloween party, rather than go to the Ritz with me, are you?” Sean says, raising his voice.

  “I didn’t say I’ll go, just that I was invited,” I scream back.

  “Oh my God, what’s with the two of you?” Angie yells and kicks the leg of the table.

  Sean jots down a phone number on a piece of paper. “Call me in the afternoon, one way or the other,” he shouts, and storms out.

  Angie sulkily turns to go to her room. “Thanks a lot for your help. I’ll tell my uncle to pick me up at school then, after the dance.”

  “You do that now. Call the house and let me speak to your uncle or grandmother.”

  Angie calls from the kitchen phone and carries on a short conversation in French, and then hangs up.

  “He wasn’t home and my grandmother is already in bed. So I told my aunt.”

  Angie goes back to her room and slams the door.

  “I’ll call him myself tomorrow,” I say. I call Angie back, and hold up the white turban.

  “What now?” Angie asks, annoyed.

  “Look at this turban. It looks great with the caftan.”

  Angie makes a face. “Then you wear it.”

  “Let’s just see what it looks like on you,” I say, putting the turban on Angie’s head. I adjust the broach over Angie’s forehead. “I need to reshape your eyebrows.”

  Angie pulls back. “Get off me. Leave my eyebrows alone.”

  “You have big, beautiful eyes, but they get lost under those bushy eyebrows.”

  Angie frowns. “If I start plucking them, they’ll get bushier.”

  “That’s an old wives’ tale. It only takes a few seconds a day.”

  “Yeah, that’s why it takes you forever to get ready in the morning.”

  “Well, I’ve already told you I care about the way I look. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Well, maybe I care about the way I look too,” Angie tries to imitate my voice. “Maybe I just don’t want to look like you.”

  I take off the caftan and put it into a plastic bag from the kitchen, together with the turban.

  Angie follows me around, talking. “What I mean is, I don’t want to be like you. I mean, you think you’re perfect. All I ever heard from my grandmother was how perfect Caterina is. Well, I’ve lived with you for a month, now. You’re not so perfect. Your life is not so perfect, and you’re a little liar.”

  “Well, the caftan is the best I can come up with. Use it if you like.” I walk back to the living room, and start preparing the sofa for the night. I can’t bring myself to sleep on the mattress on the bedroom floor

  “You’re just like her, you know,” Angie continues, standing next to me.

  “Like who?”

  “My mother. She just hid in her room, in her own little world. No guts!”

  I had never noticed how tall and lanky Angie seemed next to me. The girl is practically breathing down my neck as she speaks, and I feel a sudden urge to be rid of her constant, brooding presence. I impatiently throw a pillow on the sofa.

  “Look,” I say. “I’ve had it now. I’m just trying to help you find a costume. You could show a bit of appreciation, you know…. And there’s no way I’ll cover for you on Friday night.”

  “Of course not,” Angie says mockingly. “That wouldn’t be the proper thing to do for a queen like you—Cathy, the queen of fucking everything!”

  “Why have you turned so nasty towards me?”

  “Well, I used to think you were really hip, living with someone like Sean. But you’re just like all of the other Calabrese women—a big liar. And you have been trying to change me since I moved in with you.”

  “I’ve been trying to help you.”

  “Oh, you’re just a busybody, that’s all. Nothing is
ever good enough for you. How many times have you moved the furniture around since I’ve been here? And your bedroom—are you ever going to set it up for good? Are you really ever going to get married to your fiancé?”

  I don’t answer.

  Angie continues, “The funny thing is, you’re so ashamed to let people know you’ve been sleeping with him, when you’re not even sleeping with him, or … should I say … he’s not sleeping with you?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I say, raising my voice. “What right do you have to pass judgment on me? What do you know about life?”

  “Well, I know that your fiancé is out of the house every chance he gets. He spends more time with his snobby friend than you.”

  “Angie, just go to bed. And please stay out of my personal life, will you?”

  I retreat to the bathroom to prepare for another uncomfortable night on the sofa. When I come out, Angie has gone to her room. I hear her making noises. It sounds like she’s moving books. Is she doing homework, or snooping into my things again? Have I been a fool to let this girl into my apartment and let her disrupt my life?

  The exchange has left me unsettled. I let my mind withdraw into the village tales I heard from Antonio.

  53. THE MISSING PIECES

  HER NAME WAS AURORA; they called her the little zingara. It was the villagers’ custom to nickname people according to their family’s histories or some idiosyncratic habit. Aurora’s mother, Paola, was known as the bigger gypsy.

  Paola had the body of a goddess and who could blame her for finding warmth in Gennaro’s arms. Her husband, Micu, only responded to the feel of the olive presses in his rough hands and drank himself into a stupor whenever he wasn’t working. For years it was assumed that she served Don Cesare in more ways than one, but Alfonso’s constant scrutiny revealed that it was with the quiet widower Gennaro that she shared her leisure hours.

  Totu was only two years old when his mother died and his father Gennaro moved to Mulirena to work for Don Cesare. Aurora was born a year later, very likely, but not certainly, his half-sister. Aurora and Totu were both protégés of the childless Donna Rachele, Don Cesare’s wife. As a former teacher, Donna Rachele delighted in teaching the two children good manners and proper Italian, yet they never thought of her as their mother, more like a governess—two semi-orphans hungering for the love of absent parents.

  As children, Aurora and Totu would cross the enclosed courtyard in the back of Don Cesare’s house to go play with Lucia. The three were inseparable and Lucia and Totu grew into childhood sweethearts. Lucia’s older brother, Alfonso, resented both Totu’s and Aurora’s constant presence in his home, and picked fights with the threesome at the smallest provocation.

  Because of her blue eyes, Aurora would always play the part of angels at school. At sixteen, she was given the role of Our Lady of Lourdes. This is when Alfonso started planting stories that Totu had seduced the girl.

  Aurora had become such a fixture at the Abiusi’s home that neither Lucia nor her mother, Comare Rosaria, took notice of her comings and goings. Had they been more vigilant, they would have noticed that as the “little gypsy” developed into a little woman, Alfonso enticed her into spending long summer afternoons in the abandoned stall underneath their home, even as he scorned the girl and later forbade his sister from being seen with her.

  Aurora had always confided in Totu until she started spending time with Alfonso at the stall. Alfonso forced himself on Aurora when she was fifteen, then continued to seek her until she became pregnant. Aurora led a double life she herself could not understand. She responded to the courtship of another young man, Saverio, as if nothing had happened; she kept quiet about Alfonso’s first sexual attack, and then followed him into the stall whenever he asked. The only person who saw what was happening to Aurora was the teacher from Piemonte, Signor Gavano, who had noted a change in her behaviour. She opened up to him only when she became pregnant.

  The kind teacher spoke to Alfonso, and tried talking Aurora into telling the truth to her parents. Alfonso denied any responsibility, accusing Aurora of having become a slut for Totu and other men. In a moment of utter helplessness, she saw no other way out than by ending her own life. Everyone around her remained silent after Don Cesare convinced her old boyfriend, Saverio, to marry her. The young man accepted on condition that Alfonso’s role would never be mentioned. He had his own honour to think about too. As long as the gossip going around Totu remained unconfirmed, and chucked off to jealousy, there was still a chance for Aurora to build some kind of life with Saverio. No one knew how many months Aurora had been pregnant and so it was conceivable that Saverio was the responsible party since he had been on a short leave a few months before the incident. He knew differently, but he’d rather be blamed for his amorous ardour than for settling to marry someone spoiled by Alfonso. Don Cesare shipped Totu to Rome, not only out of fear for his safety after the rumours about Totu and Aurora, but also to keep him away from Lucia and her family. In turn, Totu became resentful of his family, the village and its petty politics, and fled from all, including Lucia.

  This part of the story resurfaced much later:

  Aurora had kept up a correspondence with Signor Gavano throughout the summer after her hospital stay, while he was on school break in Piemonte. The letters and Signor Gavano’s comments corroborated Alfonso’s role in her pregnancy. After Aurora left for Argentina, her mother showed Don Cesare the letters and they both, being as astute as they were, formed a strategy for revenge.

  They had tried in vain to threaten Alfonso with claiming acquired rights to the farm, to pay Aurora’s father, Micu, the money owed him, but with little success. Alfonso had laughed them off, since not enough years had expired for such a law to come into effect. Then they heard that Alfonso was planning a trip to Mulirena to sell his home. When Micu saw a man going into the farmhouse with Lucia from a distance, he shot him in the leg, as a warning that he meant business, and thinking that it was Alfonso. The scare worked. When Alfonso arrived a week later, he was cornered by Don Cesare and blackmailed with Aurora’s letters. Don Cesare asked for nothing less than that Aurora and her parents be given the deed to the farmhouse and land, and Don Cesare full right to the water that passed by the land. Alfonso protested, but in the end, he didn’t want his wife’s family to hear of his spotted past. His sister didn’t seem to care for anything or anyone, and he figured that once their mother moved to Montreal, there was nothing to draw her back to the village. Lands were abandoned by everyone else as they emigrated. Alfonso convinced Comare Rosaria to sign the house over to Aurora and her parents, but to keep the conditions quiet. What sweet revenge for Micu’s wife, Paola, to finally get the land from the man who had jilted her daughter and had revealed her affair with Gennaro. Don Cesare finally got the right to the water he so desperately needed. He kept these details hidden even from Totu who had become distanced from him. But when Totu’s father got ill, he felt his duty to write and convince Totu to go home and make peace with both of them.

  His letter ended with these words: “Making peace doesn’t mean condoning the past; only understanding it in its context of time and place, and accepting the finality of its passing.”

  PART X

  OCTOBER 31, 1980

  54. COSTUME DAY

  STEVE, HOLSTERS HANGING FROM HIS hips and an oversized cowboy hat on his head, aims a toy gun at me as I step up the loading dock at school. I stop and watch him try to grab a passing female student by the bum with his free hand. “Stop!” he shouts at the student, “You’re under arrest for indecent exposure.” The girl, dressed as a baby wearing an oversized diaper, giggles and scoots away.

  “Where’s your costume, beautiful?” Steve asks, as he jumps back beside me and hugs me.

  “It’s in the bag,” I answer, lifting two plastic bags and trying to squeeze out of the bear hug.

  Mike passes us and hisses, “How do
they expect us to teach in this zoo today?”

  “Lighten up, Mike,” Steve replies. “Costume Day only comes once a year.”

  “Yeah, maybe we should have a teaching day at least once a year too.”

  Halloween celebrations start early in the morning at WLHS. It’s a yearly tradition, in which students and teachers are expected to follow a regular day’s schedule, while disguised as their alter egos. Admittance to the students’ dance in the afternoon requires a costume; and a prize is awarded for the most creative outfit.

  This morning, I packed the caftan and turban, in the event that Angie changes her mind about dressing up. I also brought the Marie Antoinette costume Sean chose for the ball for me.

  “Why did you go see Antonio, the journalist, on Wednesday afternoon?” I asked Angie while driving to school.

  “Do you always have to follow me like a shadow?” she said. “I wanted to ask him about my father since he wrote about him. That’s all.”

  “How did you know to go to him?”

  “I visited him once with my mom. She went there for help when I was kicked out of school and she wanted to go to Italy in the summer. Then she changed her mind about the trip.”

  So Antonio had told me the truth. “Have you seen him since Wednesday?” I ask.

  “No, but he told me to go see him if ever I have a problem, or if I want to talk anything over with him.”

  “How come you never talk anything over with me?”

  Angie sneers. “Because you don’t have the guts to stand up to people. Like my mother, you sulk but do nothing. So what’s the point?”

  The comment grated on me. How could she possibly compare me with her mother, who had spent most of her adult life as an automaton, sneaking occasional stolen moments of happiness? I’m trying to be in full control of my life and not make hasty decisions based on emotions. Overnight I thought long and hard about Sean’s suggestion to let things cool down before walking out. There’s a lot at stake in making the right decision right now. Should I at least wait until after the ball, and in the meantime weigh all the pros and cons of staying versus leaving?