DESCENT

by Sandy DeLuca

  * * *

  One Sunday not long after I’d become Sammy’s spring offering he pulled into the driveway precisely at noon. He shook hands with my father, who was working out in the flower garden, and gently patted one of the tabby cats lounging on the porch.

  My mother asked him if he wanted a plate of lasagna before we took off. He graciously accepted.

  “Mangia,” said my mother. “I put two kinds of cheese and lots of meat.”

  Sammy ate and listened to my mother talk about Italian food and how hard she worked in the house.

  “Does your mother cook good Spanish food, Sammy?” she asked. “My husband and I sampled some good dishes while we were at the festival in Providence last year.”

  Sammy put his fork down and wiped his mouth slowly. “My mother died when I was young,” he said lowering his eyes, tucking the napkin beneath his dish. “My sister raised me as best she could. Tonya’s her name. She’s a real good cook.”

  My mother scooped up the dish. “So sorry about your mother—was she—?”

  I interrupted, “Ma, we gotta go.”

  At that moment Aunt Lil burst through the screen door. “Happy Sunday! I smelled the lasagna from down the street!” Her hair was wild and her face was flushed. She wore a fitted black dress and high-heeled sandals.

  I noticed Sammy checked her out long and hard.

  She caught his gaze and glared at him.

  “Aunty, this is Sammy.”

  “The one I’ve heard so much about,” she said, her voice flat and laced with sarcasm.

  “Come on, Sammy,” my mother said. “I’ll give you a dish to take home with you and you can eat it later. Pick out some pastries me and Lil baked too.” She flapped her hand at him. “Come on. Like us Italians say, mangia, mangia.”

  “Thank you. That’s nice of you.”

  He followed my mother into the pantry, sliding close by my Aunt. Their eyes met. Anger flashed across Lil’s face.

  My aunt watched them walk away.

  “Isn’t he cute, Aunty?”

  “Don’t like the vibes I get offa that boy,” she said dully. “Be careful.”

  “He’s nice. And all the other girls drool when they see him.”

  She was about to speak again when Sammy and my mother returned. Sammy held a casserole dish in one hand and a dish of cookies in the other.

  He turned to my mother. “I’ll get the dishes back to you this week.”

  “Come for dinner some night. I love to cook for my family. God knows Julia don’t help out at all.”

  He smiled.

  Aunt Lil nudged me.

  Then we were out the door.

  “How do you and the other women in your family stay so thin?”

  “Good metabolism.”

  “Your aunt—you look like her. Very beautiful.”

  “She sure is.”

  In an instant, his mind was elsewhere, as it often was. “Look, I gotta stop at the gym. You mind?”

  I didn’t mind where Sammy went—as long as I could be near him.

  * * *

  I long to be with someone, a man who will love me, stay with me through the night and not have to leave me for a wife, a girlfriend or for a path he must follow without me by his side.

  Loneliness is a bitch. But memories can be even worse.

  What went down in ‘71 was pure hell.

  CHAPTER 17

  I dread the sound of the telephone but crave the sensuous voice that speaks to me. He asks again if I will be meeting him soon.

  “No, I won’t go into Providence. Too much crime. Too many bad memories.”

  The soothing voice continues to lure me.

  “I need some time. Please, give me some time.”

  You’ve had twenty-one years, sweet Julia.

  * * *

  The south side of Providence was scary even in the 70s. Elmwood Avenue was just beginning to deteriorate. Some of the apartments by the park were fronts for drug dealers and pimps, and lots of poor families lived in the shabby old boarding houses off the avenue; some had to share bathrooms.

  Parallel to Elmwood is Broad Street. Cabbies hesitated to pick up fares there and I didn’t blame them.

  DePesto’s gym was on a dead-end street off of Broad. It was an old warehouse that had been resurrected. Day or night there were guys sitting on the front steps, smoking dope or drinking. Every type of car—from Mercedes to beat-up old Volkswagens—lined the pavement.

  Across the street was an old cemetery, the grass uncut and dry, the gravestones defiled, sprayed with graffiti. Mausoleums were in ruins. Stone angels had been desecrated.

  Sammy parked the car by the graveyard, shut the engine off and turned to me. “Wait here. I got some business, and then we’ll go for a drink.” He left the radio on. Joplin sang Me and Bobby McGee. The news commentator talked about the casualties in Vietnam.

  DePestos. It seemed just as eerie as the cemetery. Tough-looking cats sat on the steps. Some wore the usual hippie garb of the time, bellbottoms and colorful shirts. Others were dressed in suits, but all of them looked to me as though they belonged in some bad Bmovie.

  The windows were filthy. They seemed to be streaked with something that disturbingly resembled dried blood. I heard people cursing, and swore a couple times I heard screams coming from inside.

  Sammy shook hands with a couple of the guys out front. One of them patted him on the back and went inside with him. I wasn’t sure who he was but he looked familiar.

  Nobody noticed me, and that was fine. I didn’t want to be noticed by any of those guys.

  While I waited I changed the radio station, found Carol King singing It’s Too Late and left it.

  It seemed I spent a lot of time doing that, sitting in Sammy’s car waiting for him at one place or another.

  But I didn’t mind. Not then.

  At one point I noticed two guys and a woman as they walked across the street and through the gate of the cemetery. South Gate Cemetery, it was called. The trio carried wine bottles and they were singing. The girl looked high. She was younger than me; pale, and dressed in a turquoise blue halter-top and hip-hugger jeans. She had an arm wrapped around each guy. She kissed one, then the other.

  Both men, who looked to be in their twenties, had long brown hair, wore jeans and denim shirts.

  I watched as they led the girl through the high grass. They disappeared behind a mausoleum. I figured they took her there to ball her. A few minutes later I heard a faint, high-pitched squeal. I knew how she felt. Or thought I did.

  I turned the radio up a bit. The Doors sang Light My Fire, Neil Diamond sang Crackling Rose, and Joplin belted out Summertime, a tune my parents once told me was their favorite song. I doubted that Joplin’s version was what they’d meant.

  A half-hour passed since Sammy had gone into the gym. Some of the guys who’d been hanging around out front stood up and looked toward the cemetery. The two young men who had gone off with the girl emerged from the gate, but the girl wasn’t with them.

  One of the guys held something in his hands—something turquoise blue. The other one was laughing.

  I turned the radio down a bit so I could hear them better.

  “She decided to go home,” the guy holding the halter-top said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “She took the long road back.”

  Laughter erupted from the stairs, and it was then that I realized Sammy had emerged from the gym and was standing there with the others. A handsome, dark haired man was with him.

  Sammy nudged the man and pointed to his car. They walked toward the Mustang together and stopped near the driver’s side. I heard Sammy say very quietly, “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.” They shook hands. The man nodded at me and smiled.

  Sammy opened the door, slid inside and rolled his eyes. “Those guys are clowns, let me tell you.”

  “They were with a girl before and then—”

  “Suzy Cutridge. Big slut. They were going to party. She lives on the other side of Bro
ad. She probably cut through the back side of the cemetery to go home when they were done. Don’t worry about it.”

  The following night I read in the paper about how the cops found a young girl’s body near the river running by the cemetery. Her name was Marilyn Green, and her throat had been cut from ear to ear.

  Later, when I told Sammy about it he said, “Shit like that always happened in that part of town, Julia. That’s why you never wander around down there alone or at night—especially not the cemetery.”

  “But Suzy Cutridge—”

  “Suzy Cutridge is alive and well,” he said, shaking his head and laughing lightly, as if my suspicions were so ridiculous he had no choice but to laugh. “I saw her at the gym this afternoon.”

  I believed him. Maybe because it was easier than not believing him, or maybe because I wanted to, needed to. Maybe it never mattered either way.

  Years later, as I sorted through my Aunt Lil’s books, I found one about old Rhode Island graveyards, and learned some facts about South Gate Cemetery.

  It was established in the eighteenth century and served as a burial ground for immigrant mill workers in the city; Italian, Irish and German families.

  Around 1960 the cemetery reached its capacity and was deserted by the descendants of those who rested there. Working-class families moved into other cities like Warwick and Cranston. Younger people didn’t have the same respect for the dead as their parents before them had. Over time, the cemetery became neglected.

  The area was overrun by the impoverished, many of them poor immigrants who could barely read or write English.

  In 1978 the city declared the graveyard a historical site and began a cleanup. They trimmed overgrown vines and repaired old stones. But beneath the rubble they discovered some very disturbing things. Bones. Skeletons that at first they suspected were those that had been dug up from graves by vandals. Upon further investigation they discovered that the bones had never been buried there. The bodies belonged to people who had been missing for years. A ring proved that a woman named Violet Linders, who’d disappeared around 1970, had been murdered there. A wallet inside the tattered and worn suit coat of another rotted body proved that a local businessman named Charles Hindley, who’d gone for a drive in the summer of 1970 and never returned, met his demise there.

  And right across the street was DePesto’s gym, where I sat countless times in Sammy’s car, waiting and listening to the radio while he did whatever it was he did inside. Years later, I became convinced that the murders were connected to that gym and many of the people who frequented it. But in those days I trusted Sammy, believed in him, and loved him.

  Aunt Lil once told me: “There are stronger forces than a solitary woman’s prayers.”

  She was right. No prayers could have stopped what was waiting for me in the days ahead.

  My descent had already begun.

  * * *

  I hold my aunt’s old rosary beads in my hands, run my fingers over one of her old books entitled Magical Herbs. What secrets did she find within these dusty old pages? And what demons did she encounter when she tried to ward off the evil they unleashed?

  I wonder.

  CHAPTER 18

  I light a cigarette and gaze out the window. A bus cruises down the street, and I wonder if it’s taking a detour from the main road.

  It slows down as it passes my window. I swear I see Marla, the waitress Sammy shot to death in 1971, peering at me through a smudged window.

  The radio is blaring. I don’t remember turning it on, but I listen to the announcer as he talks about the recent unsolved murder, about the mystery of the old name tag found near the young waitress’s body, one that couldn’t possibly have belonged to her, one that is more than twenty years old.

  The bus turns the corner and for a moment it looks as though blood is trickling down the street behind it.

  I need some air, need to get all this shit out of my head, so I put my coat on, walk to the corner and turn onto the main road. Another bus rushes by, and I wonder if the dead occupy this one too.

  * * *

  I generally took the bus home from work, but on Thursday nights Sammy would pick me up from work and we’d have dinner at my house before going back to Tonya’s house to watch the kids.

  Because I had to be in earlier than most other girls my age, it was no use making plans to spend the night or to couple up with his friends. But as foreign as my strictly controlled lifestyle was to Sammy, he always said he understood. In his own rough way of being sweet, he’d say, “You’re different than the sluts I’ve been with. You’re worth a bit of sacrifice.”

  But I was frustrated, and poured my heart out to him. I told him I wanted to live in New York, pursue my art, get away from the hold my parents had on me.

  “You’d miss your aunt too much.”

  “Aunty would understand. She always tells me to follow my heart, to go further with my painting. I’d keep in touch with her no matter what.”

  “Maybe someday I’ll take you away.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Then maybe I will.”

  The way he said it, I believed him. For the first time in my life escape seemed more than a fantasy. It seemed possible. Everything seemed possible with Sammy. Everything. Anything.

  Soon thereafter came a Thursday night when Sammy failed to pick me up. He told me he was running late and said he’d meet me back at my house for dinner. I had a notion that he was buying me a surprise. He owed me money and kept promising he’d make up for it, so maybe he was getting something special for me. I’d seen him whispering to Aunt Lil the previous weekend. Maybe she had told him how much I liked the silky blouses at Gladdings, or that I’d love a copy of the Beatles album Abbey Road.

  Regardless, I was certain he’d surprise me with something wonderful. He told me he’d helped Bob Stanni with some carpentry work at a house on the East Side and that the owner was generous. She promised she’d refer them to friends in the area. They’d have plenty of work and money.

  On the way home my bus passed by my Nana’s house. My grandparents had gone up to Providence and had left early that morning because they planned to spend the day. They had friends on Atwells Avenue they planned to dine with.

  Aunt Lil had taken that day off from her job. She was preparing homemade pasta and soaking codfish for dinner that coming Sunday, which was my Nana’s birthday.

  The bus cruised along and I saw Sammy’s car parked on the corner, next to an Italian pasty shop a few houses down from my Grandparents’. A brand new green Lincoln was parked behind his Mustang. The man at the wheel looked familiar but I couldn’t place him.

  Funny about Sammy, I thought. Maybe he’d dropped by Lil’s to show her what he’d bought me. But for the pale candle-light in Aunt Lil’s windowsill, the house was dark.

  Why was the house dark when Aunt Lil loved to turn on all the lights when her parents were out?

  When I arrived at home my mother was busy in the kitchen. My father was reading the newspaper in the den.

  Moments later, headlights flashed, the sound of breaks squealed and there was a hurried knock at the door.

  It was Sammy. He stood there almost comically, holding several bags and a couple of pastry boxes.

  My mother laughed. “What you got there?”

  “Payback for all the times you fed me. I got some fresh Sicilian breads and some filled pastries.” He handed everything to my mother, kissed her on the cheek then did the same to me. I swore I smelled a familiar scent.

  My aunt breezed in a few minutes later. Her face was flushed. She was wearing a high-collared lace dress. “Pretty, Aunty. New?” I touched the collar. It slid down a bit and I noticed a red splotch on her neck. A hickey? So that was it. She was entertaining a man while her parents were away.

  She tugged at her collar nervously and glared at Sammy. They both looked back at me, and though Sammy pretended to ignore her, I got the sense that he was checking her out, as if he knew intimate s
ecrets of her body.

  Lil’s perfume trailed behind her. The same scent I’d smelled on Sammy a few minutes earlier.

  That evening at dinner Lil was silent. Occasionally she adjusted her collar. As usual, she drank too much.

  My grandparents joined us for dessert and grandfather delighted in playing some old jazz records on my turntable.

  My aunt’s hands occasionally slipped to her lap and I caught glimpses of her wincing subtly, as if in pain.

  At one point she caught me staring and said, “Damn periods get worse as you get older. I need a couple aspirin.”

  A dark shadow slithered across the mirror.

  It could have been one of the cats.

  Sammy stood close to my aunt as the evening news spoke of President Nixon and the state of the economy. They looked at the TV, but they weren’t watching it. Sammy motioned to a grainy image of a woman in handcuffs on the television. “Betrayal has its price. You can never undo it.” He leaned closer to Lil and patted her shoulder. “Never.”

  I couldn’t help but think he wasn’t referring to the image of the arrested woman. “What are you two—”

  “Oh, Cara mia, Sammy’s just talking to me about the woman they arrested last night,” Lil said. “It’s on the news now. She was from the projects and—”

  “Yeah, she abandoned her kids. Heavy shit.”

  They showed another tape of the woman surrounded by police, walking the perp walk.

  She looked guilty. But she wasn’t the only one.

  * * *

  The memory of that night lingers with me now as I inhale fresh air. A storm is coming. The dark is coming.

  Will you confess to me in a dream, Aunty? Will you admit to me what I already know, what I knew even then but didn’t want to believe, couldn’t believe? Should I pray on your old rosary? Did you pray on it later that night, Aunty? Did you think of me when you did?