by Terri Favro
Bum Bum spools up a length of wire. The kid isn’t the mental defective Marcello once believed him to be. He’s actually a quick learner, if you show him what to do. He’s even picked up chess. But something is still ‘off’ in other ways, like not being able to read. Marcello has tried to teach him, working their way word by word through I, Robot, with little success. The kid keeps scrambling up letters, as if he sees them backwards in a mirror. Marcello wishes he could get inside the machinery of the boy’s head and figure out what’s short-circuiting there.
Bum Bum looks over at the grate again, scratching at his scalp. “I heard Ida’s having a honeymoon for now, but after that, the real work start.”
Marcello sits back on his heels, a Robertson screwdriver dangling from one hand. “Real work? What do you mean?”
To Marcello’s surprise, Bum Bum’s ravaged face pinks up: he’s blushing. “You know, dirty-girl stuff.” To demonstrate, he jiggles his hands up and down in front of his chest. “If someone try to hurt her, I kill them.”
Marcello sets down his hammer, shocked (and a little jealous) of Bum Bum’s protectiveness toward Ida. “Don’t be stupid, Pasquale, Pop would never let her do that kind of stuff. And no one’s going to kill anyone, except me you if you don’t keep working.”
With the stove’s guts disgorged on the floor, Marcello and Bum Bum head down the fire escape to the candy store. It’s quiet today. Ida sits on a stool reading Seventeen. She’s abandoned her skirt and white blouse today in favour of denim cut-offs and a tee shirt, her hair pinned up messily; at first glance you might think one of the neighbourhood schoolgirls was working at the counter. “How goes?” she asks.
“We’re going to need a few bucks for parts.” Digging into the cash register, Marcello pulls multicoloured bills out from under the drawer. Ida peers at them: “What type of money is this? La Regina Elisabetta has been replaced with uno vecchio Scozzese.”
“Canadian Tire money. The old Scotsman shows you can shop there cheaply. He’s, how you say – a thrifty Scot.”
Ida laughs. “Like you. Thrifty and practical. You’re an Old Scotsman yourself, Cello.”
Marcello takes the bills from her hand. “I’ve been called worse.”
The drive across the bridge into the ‘good part’ of Shipman’s Corners takes ten minutes but feels like travelling into an alternate universe in one of Marcello’s sci-fi novels. On the other side of the canal, subdivisions are being carved out of what until recently were peach orchards stretching off to the horizon; the sprawling Canadian Tire is part of a new shopping plaza built to serve families in the aluminum-sided split levels with their carports and basketball hoops and anemic gardens. Marcello misses the sugary scent of ripening peaches that used to fill the air but he likes Canadian Tire too. The store is a cathedral of gleaming hardware and sports gear, heady with the off-gassing of rubber, vinyl and plastic polymers.
Lost in the sea of bicycles and camping equipment, Bum Bum reaches out to touch the streamers on the handle of a CCM Mustang bike, lime green with fat white-walled tires. He trails Marcello from aisle to aisle as they pick up wire, burner rings and a soldering iron. The Canadian Tire money saves Marcello $2.53 at the cash. He buys a small metal tape measure with the savings and presents it to Bum Bum as a gift: “To be a handyman, you’ve got to have your own tools.” On the way home, the boy extends the tape and watches it zip back into its case over and over again.
It only takes a couple of hours to get the stove in working order. By lunchtime all four burners are heating.
“Houston, we have lift off,” announces Marcello, wiping grease from his hands with a tea towel. He offers his hand to Bum Bum who wrinkles his face in suspicion: “Why you want to touch me?”
“Men usually shake hands after they do a little good honest work together,” Marcello explains.
Bum Bum grabs his hand and shakes, gripping as hard as he can. Then he puts his face to the floor grate and shouts down, “Stove’s working!”
Ida’s voice floats up: “Bravo! I come up and make us lunch. Pasquale, could you watch the store?”
Bum Bum looks at Marcello in surprise; he’s never been entrusted at the counter before.
“Go ahead,” nods Marcello. “Just don’t let me catch you stealing anything or I’ll break your arms.”
Ida’s excitement is palpable as she runs up the fire escape to the flat; the stove with its new burners has been pushed back against the wall and the floor swept clean, as if the repairs had simply occurred by magic.
“I really not think you able to do this, you know,” she admits, shaking her head. “Once again I am in your debt, Cello.”
“It’s nothing. I enjoy fixing things.”
“All same, thank you,” she says, and touches his hand, her fingers chilly despite the heat of the day.
Marcello tries to turn his attention to gathering his tools but is uncomfortably aware that Ida is standing close to him. His nose is full of the cooking smells that cling to her clothing – oregano, basil and oil. When he looks at her, she places her hands on his face.
Just kiss her, a tiny scrap of Marcello’s brain insists before it winks out like a busted picture tube. Leaning down, he brushes his lips against Ida’s forehead and her cheeks. The edge of her ear. Her neck, here and there. Finally, her mouth. Ida kisses him back, her hands touching his face, his hair, his shoulders. His ears are full of the rhythms of baroque horns and drums, as if she is exhaling music into him. He is breaking at least three Commandments, yet feels peaceful for a change.
His embrace is so tight that Ida’s feet leave the floor; she wraps her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. His body feels like a tree growing into hers, entwined in the eye of an invisible storm. Cradling her bottom, he gives her a little boost to secure his hold. Her lightness makes him feel strong and he sways gently from side to side in time to silent music. Maybe we can stand like this forever, he thinks.
Ida draws her face back, her hand toying with the curls at Marcello’s neck.
“Voglio fare l’amore con te,” she tells him.
Did she just say that she wants to make love with me? Marcello searches her face for some sign that he’s misunderstood.
“Are you sure, Ida?”
She leans her forehead against his, and says: “Si. Subito.”
Yes. Right now.
Marcello carries her to the bedroom and spreads her on the mattress, the counterpane ruched up beneath her like the waves of a blue satin sea. Kneeling over her, he tugs off her shirt and unclips the back of her white bra. She helps Marcello pull his oily tee shirt off over his head. Her eyes widen at the sight of the red scratches on his chest as he lowers himself onto her, the crucifix around his neck dancing between her breasts.
The dresser mirror reflects their bodies in its crazed surface, Marcello’s tanned deep brown and covered in coarse black hair, Ida’s so pink and smooth she looks like she would melt away in sunlight. They are like two different species of animal, not human beings born in the same part of the world.
Ida runs her hand down the track of black hair on Marcello’s belly into the top of his jeans, drawing a gasp out of him.
A puddle of clothes collects on the floor. Ida takes Marcello’s hand and places it between her legs. Not sure what to do, he lets Ida guide him, her hand on his.
He wants to slow down but his cock bumps blindly on Ida’s belly. He can’t wait any longer. And she wants him, doesn’t she? He nudges her legs open with his thigh and enters her. Something gives way. He hears Ida’s distant voice and the pressure of her hands against his aching chest.
In a spurt and a shout, it’s over. As he floats from ecstasy to drowsiness, he realizes that Ida is crying. Despite that initial blaze of passion, something is wrong. He rolls off and sees a smear of blood across her thighs and his. Gathering her up, he says: �
�Did I hurt you?”
“A bit,” she says quietly. “I didn’t think it would be painful.”
Marcello cradles her, shooshing her and rubbing her back and going now now now, until she whispers that she needs the bathroom.
Arms and legs flung wide, half-drunk cock bobbing, he lets the humid air blanket his muscles as he listens to water running and imagines Ida with a cloth, washing herself where he’s just been. He notices a bloodstain on the counterpane and touches it with his fingers; it’s still wet. The sight is strangely satisfying. She was a virgin, he thinks happily, although a thought briefly intrudes that women bleed for other reasons.
When Ida returns to the bedroom, her little breasts peeking at Marcello from under her robe, she curls up next to him. He feels himself hardening but his conscience is stiffening too. “We can never do this again,” he makes himself say.
“Perche non? We can run away together. Don’t you love me?”
“Of course I love you, Ida. But run away? I haven’t got a cent to my name. How would we get by? Where would we go?”
“Pfff! We go to Toronto, to New York, to the Moon! Non importa. I go with you anywhere, Cello. As for money, there is at least two hundred in the till downstairs.”
Marcello brushes his hand against her nipples, feeling them harden. He can’t believe she’s letting him do this, or how beautiful she is. He could lie here looking at her naked little body all day. He wants to make love to her again. Instead he says: “You belong to my father.”
“Cello,” she says, her voice shaking, “I belong to no one at all except myself. Certainly not your father. Not even you. I am free.”
For reasons he doesn’t understand himself, Marcello feels a surge of anger: “Free? Then why the hell did you marry a man you’d never even met? What was that all about?”
“That was about your father’s deception. You and me start over.”
He sits up. “Let’s say I steal Pop’s money. How far do you think we’ll get before we’re caught? He’ll send the cops after us, Ida. He’ll say I robbed him and kidnapped you.”
Ida sits up and states something that she must have been thinking about for some time: “Your father is Marcello Trovato. You also are Marcello Trovato. Who is to say which one I marry?”
“It’s Pop’s signature on the papers, not mine,” he points out.
Ida puts her face in her hands. “If this were Italian opera, you would find a way.”
Marcello shakes his head. “This isn’t Italy, Ida. It isn’t opera. This is real life in Canada. We have to be practical here.”
“Ma che cosa dici?” says Ida bitterly. “Ah, I forgot! You are a vecchio Scozzese, not an Italian man.”
She rolls away, her bathrobe a white wall. He reaches for her, trying to get her to face him.
“Ida,” he says, and she turns to him, finally. Already, his cock is betraying him. No matter how scraped raw his conscience feels, his body insists on re-entry.
He pushes into her so suddenly this time that the pleasure is like an explosion for him – for her too, he thinks. No cry of pain this time, just wetness and warmth. When it’s over, Ida slides off him and closes her eyes.
“Ho sonno,” she yawns and touches his lips with her cold fingertips.
“Sleep awhile,” he says.
He suddenly remembers Pasquale downstairs. Pop will be back soon and he doesn’t want him to see the boy manning the counter. Or find his son in bed with his wife.
Picking his jeans off the floor, he watches Ida doze. He leaves her bed, telling himself never again.
8
With Ida and Marcello not speaking or looking at one another, even Senior notices the cold silence in the candy store. When Marcello fails to show up in the flat for the evening meal, his father approaches him. “You two have a fight or something, Junior?”
“No, just – you know, I got things on my mind.”
“Me too. Kowalchuck’s job,” frowns Senior. “You in, right?”
“Come on, Pop, you already know my answer,” says Marcello and bangs his way out of the screen door. He can feel Ida’s eyes following him. With the countdown to her honeymoon growing shorter, he wonders when Senior will make his way up the fire escape and pull back the blue counterpane on the bed to claim his rights.
Marcello walks to St. Dismas and sits in a back pew of the empty church, listening to the organist practice Pachelbel’s “Canon.” Normally he finds the piece boring, but today the steady progression of major chords suggests the existence of a peaceable, predictable world, full of happy children, kindly fathers and mothers baking chocolate cakes: no wonder people like Pachelbel at their weddings. Too early for confession, he attempts a decade of the rosary but his mind keeps slipping into thoughts of Ida gazing up at him, lips swollen and mouth open, her hands on his chest as he thrusts. He looks up at the crucified Christ over the altar, reminding himself that sometimes a guy has to make sacrifices.
But by the following evening, with Senior at poker, Marcello can stand the silence no longer and catches her hand as she walks past with a broom: “Can I talk to you in the Chevy tonight?”
The meeting starts as a simple conversation, Marcello trying to explain his duty to his father and his childhood promise to Prima to enter the priesthood. Ida sits quietly and listens, hands folded in the lap of her apron, glancing out the window. No smiles from her now, just a cold anger or something like it: frustration, disappointment, impatience. It’s hard to tell with Ida. Marcello’s speech ends with “Well, what do you think?”
Ida reaches over and touches the skin of his burning chest with a cold fingertip, between his gold crucifix and the top button of his shirt. “What a strange thing, to carry a tortured man on your chest,” she observes.
That’s all it takes to reignite Marcello. He pushes her down on the seat and starts kissing her, but knows they can’t chance making love in the alley, even after dark: Bum Bum thinks of the Chevy as his second home, a safe place to sleep or hear a story. Marcello drives them out to a farm road where the only light comes from the moon. Parked on a grassy verge next to a vast strawberry field, he refuses to waste time moving into the back seat – precious seconds ticking past – and so opens his jeans and pulls Ida into his lap with a groan. He comes with her mouth on his chest.
“We should drive back,” he suggests weakly.
Ida shakes her head. “Not yet,” she says. He can see her licking flecks of his blood from her lips. That’s when they switch to the back seat, its vinyl-covered expanse making it easier to explore one another.
Wrapped around Ida, Marcello drops off to sleep, awakening a while later to find himself alone. Looking through the open window of the car, he can see the silhouette of her body in moonlight. Arms stretched toward the sky, she’s standing at the edge of the drainage ditch, looking toward the endless strawberry fields. Marcello gets out of the car to bring her back before someone sees her – for God’s sake, get in the car, Ida – but she pulls him to her, skin against skin. With his feet in a puddle of ditchwater, he hoists Ida around him and they make love standing up, Marcello feeling like they are the only man and woman under the Moon, when something slithers over his foot. Looking down he feels rather than sees movement in the high grass of the ditch.
“Be careful, Ida, there’s something down there,” he warns, setting her on her feet.
Hands cupping her breasts, she glances down. “Is only a snake,” she tells him.
Marcello drives back into town at dawn, hoping no one will notice Ida’s ascent up the fire escape. “We’ve got to make sure we come home in the dark next time,” he remarks and Ida nods, saying nothing about how never again has changed to next time. She seems as distracted as he is. He notices something else about her: her breasts are swollen.
He mentions this change to her and worries it’s an early sign of pr
egnancy – he’s been trying to pull out of her in time, but knows it isn’t a surefire method. She explains that she is just sore from all the touching and sucking and biting; if Marcello’s hands aren’t on her, then his lips are, his teeth teasing out her nipples. He wonders aloud if it wouldn’t be safer to make love between her breasts than between her legs. Ida sighs at this, takes his hand and pushes his fingers inside her; she begs him to try but they don’t get far, Marcello eventually enters her in his usual way, his hand over her mouth as she bites down on his fingers to muffle her screams. They don’t want farmers hearing them, peering in at them, knocking at the Chevy’s windows.
Each long day stretches agonizingly ahead of him, another day of watching Ida move languidly about the store, the body he now thinks of as his, hidden under dresses and aprons. He spends the day waiting for nightfall. When he isn’t making love to her, he’s thinking about it.
Neither of them is getting any sleep. Marcello groggily stocks shelves in slow motion as Ida dreamily makes change at the counter. The proximity to her body is too much for him and he finds himself going upstairs to the bathroom from time to time to relieve the tension, one hand braced against the wall, the other on his cock, Ida’s name in his mouth.
I’m a mess, he thinks, looking at himself in a mirror, blood lines lazily tracing their way down his chest like paint drips on a wall. Afraid to sit with Ida and Senior at meals, he is starting to lose weight, his jeans already sagging on his hips. He uses the word love to describe what he feels but it’s more like obsession; Ida is beginning to spark in him the risky buzz of the craps games. He’s always taking things too far, always searching for that peak moment – but unlike gambling, the lovemaking (or call it what it is, the fucking) is one peak moment after another, like winning on every roll. He can barely stand it.