The Proxy Bride

by Terri Favro

  Marcello scoops caramels and jujubes onto the weigh scale as the twins sidle up to the counter. “Hey Cello, are you going to call your Pop’s new wife ‘Mamma’? asks Jane.

  He tries to keep his voice steady. “Ida is not my mother. She’s my stepmother, I guess.”

  “Is she a wicked stepmother?” Jane wants to know.

  Judy picks up on her twin sister’s thought. “Yeah, Cello! Like in a fairytale.”

  Christie puts her hand on Judy’s arm. “Stop bugging Cello. It’s not his fault his father is old-fashioned.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with being old-fashioned,” says Marcello, coming to Pop’s defense. “He’s lonely, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, but proxy marriages are so…” Judy waves her hands in the air, trying to find the word – “…backward? Proxy brides were okay back in the olden days ten years ago when Canadian girls wouldn’t go near Italian men, but come on, it’s almost Nineteen Seventy! You shouldn’t be able to buy a woman like something out of the Eaton’s Catalogue anymore. That’s what my Mom says, anyway.”

  “Oh, yeah?” says Marcello. He tries not to show that his feelings are hurt that Claudia has been discussing his and his father’s business. “Can I get you guys anything else? I’ve got work to do.”

  Sighing theatrically, the twins stuff the magazines haphazardly back in the display rack and saunter out. Christie lingers, playing with the screen door; the bell gently tinkles as she rocks it back and forth. “There’s a Gunsmoke two-parter tonight. My folks’ll be watching TV for two straight hours. Want to hang out?” At Marcello’s smile of agreement, Christie lets the door bang shut in an explosion of dust motes.

  At exactly five minutes to eight, he hangs the SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED sign on the door. Everyone’s windows are open, an early heat wave mixing with the grit and smog of the nearby chemical plants to make the air soupy and sluggish. Tonight everyone will just want to lie on their sofas and sweat.

  Marcello slips down the narrow space that separates the candy store from Christie’s house, a high wooden fence between them. The boards are rotting but they block the view of the back alley. He doesn’t want the Hryhorchucks to know what he and Christie are up to; Mr. H. is an outwardly jovial man who runs a religious icon shop but Marcello has heard shouts and pleading in the night, bruises visible under Christie’s Cover Girl in the morning.

  He finds her waiting for him, smoking a Du Maurier by the fence. “Want one?”

  “Later. Let’s get in the car.”

  Christie and Marcello have known one another since they were little; he thought of her as a kid sister until, like a hothouse orchid raised in manure, she bloomed overnight. This past winter, the two of them developed a routine, meeting in the Chevy’s back seat to feel up one another in the freezing darkness through thick wool and heavy denim. As spring warmed the air, they’d started taking their shirts off to fondle one another, but not tonight: Marcello doesn’t want her to see the scratches on his chest. Instead he lies fully clothed but fully erect on top of Christie. Floating from someone’s TV on the warm night air, Miss Kitty’s throaty voice says Hold your horses, cowboy.

  Christie pushes his hands away. “You know what my father would do if you got me pregnant?”

  Marcello tucks her long black hair behind one ear. So thick, so soft. “The hell with your father, I’d marry you,” he says, surprised to find he means it.

  Christie narrows her eyes, almond-shaped and kohl rimmed. “But who says I want to marry you? I want to get out of here, maybe go to university.”

  Marcello snorts. “You say that now but you’ll want to get married and have babies one day.”

  Christie reaches into her shirt pocket for her cigarettes. “Who made you God? Haven’t you heard of women’s lib?”

  Great: now Christie is getting complicated. Marcello pulls himself up on the seat and leans back his head. Straightening her clothing, Christie joins him. “Why are you so sad?”

  “I’m not sad, I’m frustrated. Can I have one of your smokes?”

  The two sit side-by-side, not touching. The tips of their cigarettes flare in the darkness. Marcello can hear the sound of a commercial floating in the humid air: Cheer gets whites whiter and colours brighter!

  “Ever notice how none of the places on TV are like Canal Road?” asks Christie. “I’d love to live in that town on My Three Sons.”

  “I’ll be leaving soon, because of my Pop’s proxy bride coming,” says Marcello.

  “You’re lucky,” says Christie.

  Marcello touches the fresh bruise on Christie’s cheek, a memento of Mr. Hryhorchuck’s latest drunken tantrum.

  “I can make him stop,” states Marcello.

  Christie snorts. “What you going to do, Cello, scare him? Or beat him up?”

  Marcello’s face must have registered shame because she takes his hand: “It’s sweet of you, but I just want to get out of here. Don’t complicate things.”

  Christie goes home just before ten and Marcello heads back to the store’s front stoop. Channel 7 Eyewitness News is on next door, another three-alarm fire burning in downtown Buffalo. Canal Road is empty but male voices float on the night air.

  He crosses the street and slips through a narrow space between Kowalchuck’s Flower Shop and Vito’s Shoe Repair, emerging into a pool of yellow light thrown by a kerosene lantern. A dozen guys are ganged at the back of the flower shop, tossing dice against a chalk circle drawn on a brick wall, a cash-stuffed ball cap on the ground in front of them. When Marcello walks out of the shadows, the players stand up as one man, ready to run; when they see it’s him, they all sit down again.

  As usual, Stinky is supervising the game, his left arm blue with tattoos, the right arm ending in a ragged stump just below the elbow. His nickname comes from working at the foul-smelling meat packers for fifteen years, where he lost his forearm in a cutting machine.

  “Have a seat, kid. Got something for you.” Stinky pulls a thick roll of bills from his pants pocket, secured by an elastic band. Holding the wad of money between his knees, he peels off two twenties and a ten. “A gift from the Bank of Kowalchuck.”

  “Gift?” Marcello knows this is bullshit. “If I lose, I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay it back.”

  “So don’t lose.”

  To his relief, Marcello wins his first roll, and the next, then loses, then wins, then settles into a losing streak that burns through all the borrowed cash within fifteen minutes.

  The players around him crouch like animals tracking prey, arms bulging and knuckles popping as they shake and roll the dice. Even with no money to stake, the rhythm of the men’s voices, the bottle of rye being passed from hand to mouth, and the clicking of the dice keep Marcello company. Most are old guys in their thirties or forties, except for Marcello and a skinny kid, bright with acne, of eleven or twelve who hangs around on the outer rim of the players’ circle, following the action. ‘Bum Bum’. His mother goes door to door on Canal Road, dragging the kid with her in his mud coloured clothing and orange little-girl sneakers, trying to bum cash from neighbours, including Senior. “Signore, my boy is hungry, my husband loses all his money at craps.” But of course Senior always sends her on her way with a wave of his hand. Thanks to his mother, Bum Bum (real name: Pasquale) has a talent for begging, something the craps players exploit by sending him out to bum cigarettes, money and booze from friends up and down the street, bringing his loot back to the chalk circle for a chance to play or a share of the booze. Bumming for the craps players is how the kid got his nickname, or so Marcello hopes: there’s been some snickering among the neighbourhood teenagers that the name means something else, something to do with Bum Bum’s Pop getting him drunk on homemade wine and lending him out to a couple of guys he owed money to. Marcello tries not to even look at the kid.

  Tonight an old guy is in on th
e game, Stan, a biker from Hamilton, revered as a runner-up in the Mister Man of Steel Contest, back in 1955. Stinky claims that even though Stan don’t body-build no more, punching him in the gut is like slamming your fist into a brick wall, but when Stan crouches to roll the dice, fish-belly fat overflows the back of his leathers and he wheezes when he calls his numbers. His tobacco-stained beard stands out in white bristles, like Pappy in the comic strip L’il Abner. Stan keeps Bum Bum busy, running back and forth on scabbed, skinny legs, borrowing a buck here, five bucks there from the other players, Stan rewarding the kid with shots of rye and the odd hair ruffle.

  After too many losing rolls and turns at the bottle, Marcello sways to his feet and heads to the concrete pad of a back-alley garage; long abandoned, it’s the accepted place for defecation and quick ones with girls from the pool hall. Bladder aching, Marcello staggers toward the garage. When he comes around the corner, he sees Stan, leather pants around his knees, hand busy on his crotch.

  Marcello is about to tell him to jerk off somewhere else, when he sees that the biker’s hand is gripping something soft and round, a small head bobbing up and down, up and down, in front of him. Bum Bum kneels before the man’s trembling thighs, his hands splayed like a monkey’s as he braces his arms wide against the fence, his orange sneakered feet tucked in at the toes like a little kid at prayer. He’s too short to kneel and too tall to stand, so he works away at Stan in this painful-looking, half-crucified crouch. Marcello wonders if the stance offers some special pleasure to the boy or the biker or both, until he realizes it’s just physics, Bum Bum counterbalancing so he doesn’t topple into the trash.

  Stan’s eyes open, catching Marcello’s look. “Wait your turn, Junior,” he grunts.

  Marcello steps back into the shadows and staggers up the alley and out into the streetlights of Canal Road. Giving up the idea of privacy – what’s that, a civilized concept, come on – he exposes himself in the open, releasing a pent-up stream of urine into the gutter near a hydrant. Watching the rivulets trickle away into the storm sewer, he feels both self-revulsion and relief.

  What difference does it make, there’s no one on the street anyway.

  That’s not the point, some other part of him insists, if everyone does it, Canal Road will turn into a toilet.

  Yeah well that seems to be happening anyway, so what difference does it make if I hurry the process along?

  Gradually, the men drift away as daylight fills the alley; a few curl up to sleep against the wall, passed out from too much rye, Bum Bum among them, his face looking chapped and raw. The biker has vanished. A couple of men sneak into the flower shop to steal a cup of old lady Kowalchuck’s Maxwell House before they head to the foundry.

  Stinky hands Marcello the bottle of Canadian Club, a few fingers of rye still sloshing around on the bottom. “Kowalchuck was impressed with the way you worked Jimmy over. He wants to talk to you about another job.”

  Marcello touches his chest; the pain is back. A warning, he thinks.

  “What I did to Jimmy wasn’t a job, it was just something I had to do.”

  Stinky shrugs and smiles. “Same thing. Go get some sleep.”

  Marcello drains the CC and winds his way back to the candy store, a little springy in the legs like a Slinky on a broken stairway.

  The next afternoon, with Marcello at the counter nursing a hangover with aspirin and prayer, Bum Bum sticks his head into the store, causing the door chime to ring. Standing half-in, half-out of the doorway, he brings with him a stink of unwashed flesh. The boy’s black eyes roll over Marcello like wet marbles.

  “I seen you with that girl.”

  Marcello’s breath quickens. “What girl?” He wants to be sure Bum Bum isn’t bullshitting him.

  The kid nods in the direction of the Hryhorchucks’ house. “Old Ukrainian guy’s girl. Skinny chick.”

  Shit. Bum Bum must have peeked into the back of the Chevy on his way to the craps game. If Mr. H. hears about this and punishes Christie, Marcello will be at fault. Sticking his hand into a box of wrapped caramels, he scoops out a handful into a small bag, then twists it closed and extends it toward Bum Bum. The kid takes it but stares at Marcello like a hungry dog.

  “Licorice.”

  Marcello throws a licorice pipe into a second bag, adds another, then tosses in a handful of Lik’M Ades for good measure. He’s giving away a half-day’s wages but he wants the kid gone. More importantly, he wants him to keep his mouth shut. Bum Bum takes the second bag with an astonished grin. This is more than he expected. He starts for the door, then hesitates, deciding to hand Marcello a piece of information by way of making change.

  “That Italian chick your Pop marry – come si chiama?”

  “Ida.”

  “Si, Ida. Kowalchuck pay her way.”

  Now it’s Marcello’s turn to hesitate. “You sure?”

  Bum Bum nods. “Heard him say Senior owes him big-time.”

  Marcello suspects Bum Bum is bullshitting him. He hardens his voice: “Go away, Pasquale. Stop spying on me or I’ll beat you up.”

  His mouth drooling caramel juice, Bum Bum is already out the door. Marcello stands in the dusty silence, gripping the counter in confusion. Then he grabs the door and slams it open, the spring groaning. “Pasquale!”

  The boy turns and stares at Marcello, skinny legs poised to run again. Marcello looks up and down the street. No one’s around. “I’ll break your arms if you say anything to anyone about what you saw in my car. Now get the hell out of here.”

  Bum Bum grins and saunters away.

  3

  July 1

  Marcello awakes to an orange sky streaked with acid yellow clouds. Must be off-gassing at DuPont, he thinks. Trapped between the chemical plants of upstate New York and Canadian steel plants to the east, Shipman’s Corners can be as smoggy as a city. The surrounding farms and factories add their emissions of DDTs and PCBs to the toxic alphabet soup. Rumours are even starting to circulate about a neighbourhood on the other side of the river where babies are being born with giant heads like something out of a horror movie. With all his scientific reading, Marcello quietly suspects that the town is poisoning itself: another good reason to leave.

  After an early morning mass, he helps his father shave and dress, even ironing a shirt for him. Senior’s got the shakes. He was up late again last night with the Hiram Walker – liquid courage, Marcello suspects. How long has it been since Pop was with a woman? As he knots a soup-stained tie around his father’s neck, he tries to stop imagining the old man making love to Claudia.

  “I look okay?” asks Senior, lifting his chin in front of the crazed mirror in the flat’s single bedroom.

  “You look good,” Marcello reassures him, patting his back. What is he supposed to say?

  After Senior leaves for the airport in Kowalchuck’s Impala, Marcello starts getting the place ready for Ida’s welcome party. As he moves boxes into the storeroom, he wonders if the sky is trying to tell him something. What’s that old saying, something about a warning and a red sky in the morning?

  The Andolinis arrive early in a parade of cars led by a Caddy carrying Prima and her oldest son, followed by a string of late-model Regals, Corvairs and Ramblers; the family must be doing well. No sooner have their cars lined the curb than Prima and the other Andolini women jump out and start unloading cleaning supplies; they clatter up the fire escape to the two-room flat above the store, strip Senior’s sagging bed and carry the sheets to the coin laundry – Marcello can’t remember the last time they were washed. The women scrub the cracked linoleum floor and wipe down the ancient fridge, inside and out, with diluted bleach, Marcello nervously hovering and warning them to take care; with its exposed condenser coils, the fridge isn’t even grounded, making it a shock hazard. The women laugh and wave him off with soapy yellow-gloved hands; you’re a good boy but you a
lways worry too much, carino – stop trying to help us and go sit with the men! They’ve cooked lasagna and spaghetti with spicy sausages at home and brought everything with them to rewarm in the oven –­ a good thing, because only one burner on the rusty old Moffat stove still works. Meanwhile, the Andolini men set up folding tables and chairs on the sidewalk where they lounge drinking Red Caps while the women run back and forth at their work. Someone gets out a deck of cards.

  Marcello runs an extension cord down the front steps of the store and sets up his record player in the open air; it’s a bit of a Frankenstein, cobbled together from the turntable of his mother’s old phonograph and bits and pieces of cast-off hi-fis that he’s picked up for almost nothing at the junk shop. Not too pretty but it does the job. Marcello starts things off with selections from Carmen but the Andolinis pronounce opera too serious for the occasion and start spinning their own LPs: Dean Martin, Louis Prima, Connie Francis, Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone.

  “Now that’s music,” approves Prima, nodding her battleship-grey head in time to Sinatra crooning “Fly Me to the Moon” as she climbs the fire escape with a basket of towels.

  Niagara Glen Kowalchuck leans against the railing of the candy store stoop, arms crossed, watching the women work and the men drink beer and ante up. He’s dressed in blue jeans, cowboy boots and an embroidered rodeo shirt, his buttercup-blonde hair slicked back from his forehead and worn long over the collar, a bandanna tight around his neck like Elvis in Viva Las Vegas. He’s even got the sneer down pat. With the empty blue eyes of a husky dog, he gazes confidently out at the street, a king surveying his realm. When Gina Andolini, one of Prima’s younger, prettier daughters-in-law, hurries up the stoop with a basket of laundry, Kowalchuck reaches out to her with a “Hello darlin’” – Marcello thinks, at first, to help her with the basket – but instead he slaps her buttocks as she passes. “Ma che!” Gina says and, heaving the weight of the basket onto one hip, swats him away good-naturedly. Kowalchuck chuckles. Noticing Marcello, he gives a quick nod and says: “Big day.”