by Terri Favro
Marcello gets out of the car and, with a glance upwards to make sure he can’t be seen in his underwear, pulls on his jeans. He’s going to have to get a fresh set of clothes soon; either that or take a blanket to the coin laundry and wrap himself in it while these ones go through the wash. Damp tee shirts carpet the floor of the Chevy.
He goes around to the fire escape to climb up to the flat and is surprised to see Bum Bum sitting on the lowest step with a cup of milky coffee and a slab of buttered toast.
“Your mamma is nice,” he says, mouth full.
“What are you doing here?”
“I hear she want good food. So I bum a basket of strawberries and some wine for her.”
Marcello’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Who from?”
“Farmer from other side of canal. Swap him for a few fingers of rye left in the bottle last night.”
To his amazement, Ida appears at the top of the stairs, coffee pot in hand. “More café con leche, Pasquale?”
Bum Bum grins and lifts his cup. As Ida pours, Marcello looks at her and slowly shakes his head. She looks him straight in the eye and lifts an eyebrow inquiringly. Che?
Later, when they’re alone together in the flat, he tries to explain things to her. “The boy’s a moocher. A scrounger and a snitch. A mental defective. Other things, too, even worse. A thief, a beggar. His mother’s a beggar too. An awful family. Outcasts. And Ida, I don’t know how to put this – Bum Bum goes with perverts. For money. Understand?”
Ida puts a hand on her mouth, wrinkles her forehead and studies Marcello’s face.
“Pasquale is just a child. You think he does not deserve our pity with such a life?”
Marcello rubs his face with both hands: why does she have to make so much damn sense? “Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Just be careful around him. He’s sneaky. You give him food and coffee and he’ll never let you alone.”
Ida frowns and turns her back on Marcello. “You want to ‘help people’, you tell me, but you have no room in your heart for this child. I did not imagine you as such a cruel man, Cello.”
“Me? Cruel?” He almost points out that everyone is cruel to Bum Bum, that he was put on this earth to invite abuse, but realizes that this will only anger Ida more. She doesn’t understand rough-edged neighbourhoods like this one or the awfulness of Bum Bum’s life. Who would want the kid around? Or risk being nice to him? Although she did make a stinging point about the vow he is supposed to be taking to help the least of God’s children. He sighs.
“Mi dispiace, Ida. I’m sorry, you’re right, the boy deserves our charity, I guess.”
“And our love too I think. All children deserve love,” replies Ida hoarsely and turns her back on him, busying herself with nothing special at the counter.
Marcello walks over to Angela So-and-So’s house, where he finds her watering the lawn, and asks for a few roses from her front garden. When Marcello brings the peace offering to Ida, she accepts the flowers in silence, placing them in the cottage cheese container with the naked stalks of Senior’s trashbarrel bouquet. The two don’t speak to one another for the rest of the morning. Her silence leaves Marcello feeling hollow. He can sense the void once again, just outside the candy store door, waiting to slip in.
Marcello and Ida are still avoiding one another when Senior shuffles into the store in his ill-fitting suit, looking weary. Probably a hangover, thinks Marcello. He watches his father put an arm around Ida to kiss her on the cheek and say a few words that he can’t make out.
Senior jerks his head at Marcello. “Need to talk private business, Junior.”
Inside the storeroom, Senior closes the door and sits heavily on the cot, his eyes pouchy and tired-looking. Like Marcello, he must be having sleeping problems.
“Kowalchuck got a job for you, Junior. Some big shot business, out in the country.”
Marcello shakes his head. “Pop, I’m going to the seminary, soon as Father can arrange it. But I’ve got to start living clean. You understand?”
Senior sighs, hands on knees; he’s avoiding Marcello’s eyes.
“You do this job. Out of respect to me, your father, who has cared for you all these years. Out of respect for your stepmother Ida. Capisci?”
Marcello feels the familiar damp itchy warmth spreading across his chest. A warning. He crosses his arms.
“I don’t think so, Pop. Kowalchuck’s job could land me in jail. You too.”
Senior lifts his hands in a no discussion gesture.
“You doing it,” he says flatly. “I go to Lewiston now for two days with Kowalchuck and his mother. When we back, you do the job. That’s all there is to it.”
Without waiting for Marcello to respond, he leaves the storeroom, tossing a ciao to Ida as he passes through the store.
The rest of the day unfolds with the monotony of Gregorian Chant. Marcello pulls out the Cheer box, again and again, conscious of Ida watching him from where she sweeps the floor and dusts the shelves. After he sells a heavy Dutch issue to a blonde sailor who’s come down from the canal, Ida says: “I should learn this part of your father’s business.”
Marcello looks at her in surprise. “They’re men’s magazines, Ida. Not something you should touch.”
She shrugs indifferently. “I have seen these periodicals before. Very popular, back home. Once you go to the priests, this will be my job, yes?”
“That’s up to Pop,” answers Marcello curtly, but he’s sure that Senior would never let Ida touch the Cheer box; what decent woman would want to?
“Of course. Always, my life is up to someone else,” she mutters, picking up a copy of Photoplay and paging through it restlessly. As he shoves the box back under the counter and closes the top, Marcello tries to makes sense of Ida. Sometimes she reminds him of a little white nun, bustling around in her bleached-out clothing, cooking and preaching at him about needy children; other times, she seems a little too worldly for his liking. He’s tempted to ask if her proxy vow included to love and obey.
Does she love Senior? (Doubt it.) Will she obey him? (When it suits her.) And now she isn’t even speaking to Marcello. (What the hell did I say?) He decides to get out his chessboard and set up a game against himself on the counter.
Hunched over the board, he’s a couple of moves in when he becomes conscious that Ida is beside him. Watching him.
“You know chess?”
Ida shakes her head.
“Want to learn?”
She nods. “Yeah-sure-okay!”
Marcello starts to run through the rules but it’s quickly obvious that Ida has no aptitude or interest in the game. She seems to find the board interesting, though. She stands at the counter, repeating the names of the pieces over and over again, as if committing them to memory: Queen, King, Rook, Bishop, Knight, Pawn.
“A rook is a castle? I think it is a bird.”
Marcello shrugs. “I’m not sure why they call it that.”
“And what is a pawn?” she asks, picking one up.
“Something…powerless. Something totally controlled by others. A person can be a pawn.”
“Ah.” Ida quickly puts the piece back on the board and picks up the Queen. “I like this one best. Very powerful. She goes where she wants to go.”
That night, when Marcello walks out to the Chevy, he hears music. “Nowhere Man.” Someone is in the front seat, playing the radio. When he pulls open the front door, trying to surprise whoever is there, Marcello finds Bum Bum sprawled out, reading an old copy of I, Robot that Marcello stole from his high school library. The kid’s holding the book upside-down.
“What’s this say?” asks Bum Bum turning the book toward Marcello.
Marcello sighs. “Didn’t you ever learn to read?”
Bum Bum, shrugs and sits up. “Yeah. Just not so many words.”
Bum Bum turns off the song in mid-chorus and looks at Marcello expectantly.
Marcello takes the book, opens the back door and sits half in, half out of the car. He remembers Ida’s lecture about the importance of kindness and understanding, about being nice to the kid.
“It’s a book of stories about robots. In the future, robots are almost like people, very advanced. Like a species of their own.”
He suspects that Bum Bum has no idea what he’s talking about. He stares at Marcello over the back of the seat. “Read me.”
Marcello sighs. What the hell. “Okay. One story, then you go to sleep. The first one’s called “Robbie.” ‘Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred’. Gloria withdrew her chubby little forearm from before her eyes…’”
By the time Marcello finishes “Robbie,” it’s too dark to read; he asks Bum Bum to hand him the flashlight in the glove. He’s only two pages into the next story when he hears the sound of slow, steady breathing. He peers over the seat and sees Bum Bum curled up, the knob of one knee resting against the stick shift.
Marcello lies back and switches off the flashlight. He listens to Bum Bum’s baby-breathing and the creaking of the cicada – isn’t this heat wave ever going to break?
Sleep won’t come. Finally he pushes open the door and walks around to the front of the store. The flat light is still on. Grateful for this small mercy, he climbs the fire escape and peers through the screen door.
In her thin white nightgown, Ida is curled up on the old couch, feet tucked under her like a bird in a nest; she’s reading a Vogue that was accidentally delivered to the store with the regular order of Tiger Beat. Music plays softly, his mother’s old recording of Mario Lanza singing “Nessun Dorma,” while a small metal fan pushes the damp air around the flat. Marcello is suddenly suspicious that the fan was a gift from Bum Bum, probably something he scrounged from someone’s garbage; he can’t imagine Pop springing for it. Marcello is annoyed that he didn’t think of finding one for Ida himself in the junk shop.
He knocks lightly on the doorframe, not wanting to barge in. Ida looks up, startled; when she sees that it’s him, she visibly relaxes. “Cello! Come in!”
Marcello stands in the doorway. “I read Pasquale a bedtime story. Now I can’t sleep. Can I sit with you for a while?”
“Certo!” She pats the couch cushion beside her, then jumps up. “I make you a chamomile.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” he murmurs, watching her bustle around finding a pot and lighting the stove, tsking when a burner refuses to light.
“Ma che, this stove,” she complains, shaking her head.
“I’ll fix it for you,” he promises, taking a seat on the couch. “Maybe I’ll even get the kid to help me. Wouldn’t hurt him to learn something useful.” He glances at the page she was looking at in Vogue. “What Your Stars Forecast for July 1969.” “Horoscopes. You don’t believe in religion, but you believe in this stuff?”
“Pfff. Is just for fun. I am born on May fifteen. Toro the Bull. A stubborn sign.”
“So, you just had a birthday not long ago. How old did you turn?”
Ida looks at him, shaking her head in non-comprehension. “I turn something?”
“It just means, how old did you become?”
She hesitates, then says: “I have twenty-four years.”
Marcello laughs and shakes his head. Ida raises her eyebrows. “My birthday is comical?”
He nods. “Pop said you were thirty-four.”
Ida stares at Marcello in horror. “I look so old?”
“No, you don’t. That’s why I asked.”
Ida takes her place on the couch beside him, handing him the mug of tea. “What is your star sign, Cello?”
“No idea. My birthday’s January ninth.”
“Then you are Capricorno. A very intelligent, practical sign. This sounds like you. Read your future to me.”
Marcello runs his finger down the page, finding Capricorn the Goat: “‘Life holds many surprises large and small this month’.” He looks up at Ida. “There’s one down in the Chevy right now. Unfortunately.”
Ida laughs. “Kindness to an unwanted child will get you into heaven.” She curls up beside him, feet tucked under, as she watches him sip his tea; he can taste that she’s added a dollop of honey. She pulls the Vogue from the couch and tosses it to the floor, swinging her feet between her and Marcello, her white gown tugged tight at the knees; Marcello can see a necklace of perspiration on the lace piping on her chest, the tiny buds of her nipples underneath.
“Does something trouble your mind so that you cannot sleep?” she asks.
He looks at her over the rim of the mug. “No, just the heat,” he lies. Summoning courage, he brings himself to ask a question that has bothered him since the day he first met her: “Ida, I don’t understand why a woman like you would marry Pop without even meeting him. Was it really just that stupid story about the horses? I’m thinking there had to be some other reason to leave your family.”
“I leave Italy because of my family.”
She offers this piece of information in a quiet voice, then presses her lips tightly together, as if unwilling to share anything else about herself.
“I’m surprised your father didn’t come after you,” he presses.
Ida looks into her cup. “My father was dead before I was born, a Partisan in the Garibaldi Brigade. Shot by the Germans in the War.”
“A war hero,” says Marcello, mildly impressed.
Ida gives a stiff nod of her head. “Si. My mamma and I live alone, always.”
“You mean, alone with your brother Rico and your nonna and nonno.”
Ida pause. “Certo, with them all. This goes without saying.”
The two sit side by side, Ida staring at the floor.
Finally he says, “I’m sorry if I’m out of line asking all these questions. You just don’t seem to belong in a place like Shipman’s Corners.”
“I do not belong in many places,” she says, still not looking at him.
Marcello listens to the frenzied buzz of the cicada, the teacup cooling in his hands. He stands, sensing that she doesn’t want to talk anymore.
“Thanks for the tea, Ida. I’d better get to bed.”
As he lets the screen door fall shut behind him, Ida doesn’t wish him good night.
With Bum Bum taking over the Chevy, Marcello feels homeless. Tomorrow he’s going to have to make it clear to the boy that this was a one-time-only deal; the smell of Bum Bum’s unwashed body in the tin can of a car is more than Marcello can handle.
For tonight he’ll need to bunk out somewhere else. He walks along the road leading to the canal and scrambles up the embankment. Light stands illuminate the bollards dotting the waterway but further inland there are patches of ground in shadow. He finds a dark spot, lies on his back, says a distracted Our Father, then stares up at the night sky, looking for constellations. Stargazing always gives him a sensation similar to going to High Mass or listening to certain types of music – Beethoven, Thomas Tallis – as though he’s touching something huge and deep and unchanging and mysterious, vastly larger than himself. He gets a painful comfort knowing his suffering doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of the universe.
He wonders if the Moon knows the lengths men are prepared to go to be first to touch her. Is she aware that three Americans will soon be hurtling toward her surface, determined to mount her or die? Will she embrace them or see their coming as a violation? Stupid, stupid, he tells himself: the Moon doesn’t have feelings, it’s just a pale hunk of frozen rock in the sky. Stop anthropomorphizing.
Dreamily, he starts piecing together the stars – the Bull, the Goat, the Seated Woman – until, without thinking about it, he drops off to sleep.
7
July 11
Marcello crouches on the floor of the flat, Gianni Schicchi on the Frankenstein hi-fi, a junkyard of electrical parts scattered around him. The ancient Moffat stove is throwing up its secrets. He told Ida he would fix the stove, and it’s one promise he can happily make good on.
For Marcello, a malfunctioning machine is a puzzle to be solved, finding and fixing what ails it, an adventure. He can see the source of the trouble and, no surprise, it’s corrosion. Wire cutters and screwdriver in hand, the stove tipped precariously on its side, he tries to look up into the yawning socket of the burner opening. It’s hard to maneuver in the space because the stove and fridge have been jerry-rigged into an alcove. The flat was never meant for human habitation, thinks Marcello: it’s just a glorified attic.
“Pasquale, you’re skinnier than me, get in there and tell me what you see.”
His assistant wriggles under the listing edge of the stove and peers inside the burner hole, crusty with the residue of years of boiled-over tinned soup.
“Rust,” he pronounces.
“What else?”
“Wires. Thick black ones.”
“Any of them look worn? As if they’ve been scorched or scraped?”
“All of them. One is a sort of unravel, like when the bottom of your jeans come apart,” he reports.
“Good description. We’ll need to replace that,” explains Marcello.
He spreads tools on the floor between them. “There’s money in small appliance repair. That’d be a good trade for you.”
The boy taps his head. “Too stupid. That what my Pop say.”
“Yeah, well, he’s wrong. You catch onto things quick.”
Through the floor grate, they can hear an off-key rendering of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”: Ida, singing her heart out at the candy counter. Marcello winces slightly; she may have an ear for languages but none for music.