The Proxy Bride

by Terri Favro

  On the candy counter, a romantic display appears out of nowhere: a dozen red roses in a cut glass vase and a dignified gold box with a velvet bow. Marcello glances at the fancy scroll lettering on the box: Pot of Gold Premium Selection. Ida is behind the counter, reading a pup tent of a card.

  “From your father,” she says blandly, her eyes not meeting Marcello’s. “He say is to celebrate our life together. Very romantic, no?”

  Marcello flips open the box lid. Inside, a chart identifies the vast selection of chocolates, each one completely different from the other. Chocolate fondue crunch. Caramel swirl. White nougat. Every name promises pleasure.

  “Perhaps your father has more to offer than I thought,” muses Ida, examining her choices.

  “What do you mean?” demands Marcello.

  “At least he declares what he wants. Beh! Which to choose?” sighs Ida, picking out a shell-shaped dark chocolate streaked with pink.

  “Stop it,” says Marcello. If he opened his shirt, he’s sure he’d see his skin pierced by thorns, his chest in flames.

  A vision enters his head: Senior, on the floor, a red pool spreading beneath him, Pot of Gold chocolates scattered on his crushed and broken body. He remembers the baseball bat behind the counter.

  Get the hell out of here, Marcello orders himself.

  Without speaking to Ida, he leaves the store, gets in the Chevy and drives. Soon he’s raising a contrail of dust on a concession road, crossing farm lanes where he and Ida have been making love in the night. He averts his eyes and keeps moving.

  As he nears the American border, the farms give way to half-hearted towns. Fort Erie greets him with a collection of Chinese take-outs and rundown souvenir shops, Buffalo Evening News paper boxes, tourist rooms and a few taverns. One place, La Castile, is done up as a fake castle, the windows blacked out and set with iron bars like a dungeon. Atop a stone cornice chiselled with the words KING EDWARD, a billboard blares STEAKS CHOPS SPAGHETTI COCKTAILS AIR-CONDITIONED GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS! He ponders what air-conditioned girls look like.

  Dead ahead, the feminine curve of the Peace Bridge thrusts upward like a Cheer girl in ecstasy; at the top of the arch, the Stars and Stripes snap in the wind alongside the red and white Canadian maple leaf, marking the spot where one country somersaults into the other. Across the rapids, Buffalo stands as square as an Erector set, as pushy and American as a U.S. dollar bill. Marcello swings the Chevy into the lane marked TO USA and pulls up to the booth where a bored-looking U.S. Customs Officer sits waiting, beefy arms crossed.

  “Citizenship?”

  “Canadian.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Shipman’s Corners.”

  Something about Marcello’s answers causes the officer to hesitate and ask: “Where were you born?”

  “Italy.”

  “Thought I heard an accent. Let’s see your naturalization papers.”

  Marcello looks at the officer helplessly. “Look, sir: I want to enlist in the Marines. To fight in Vietnam.”

  He expects the man to shake his hand and say something like: I admire your spirit, son, but his face is unyielding.

  “Vietnam, huh? That’s a good one. We’ve had Canadians coming through here in droves, hitchhiking to that hippie festival in the Catskills. But you need papers. Otherwise I can’t let you through. Better listen to it on the radio, kid.”

  Marcello turns the Chevy away from the border, driving back under the steel claws of the superstructure that grips the rock of the gorge. You tried, he tells himself. But the border guard’s words keep echoing back to him, heavy with meaning: You need papers.

  By the time he’s reached Shipman’s Corners, he has an inspiration. Leaving the Chevy in the parking lot of St. Dismas, he knocks on the rectory door, asking the housekeeper for a word with Father Ray.

  The priest comes to the door in shorts and a soccer jersey, dressed to coach a game. “Marcello,” he says, extending a hand. “I guess you’re checking on that letter to the Passionists. I mailed it out last week.”

  For a moment, Marcello doesn’t know what the priest is talking about. Then, remembering his request for early entry to the seminary, he thanks him and changes the subject: “Pop sent me for some advice. Things may not be working out so well with this marriage of his.”

  “Not the first time I’ve heard that,” says the priest. “These proxy marriages – they never know what they’re getting into. Come on in.”

  He ushers Marcello into the foyer where, under a stylized Christ on a bloodless cross, the two have a short discussion about church law. Marcello leaves ten minutes later feeling he can think clearly for the first time in a week.

  “I want to sleep with you,” he tells Ida in the Chevy that night.

  She laughs. “You sleep with me all the time.”

  “No. I mean, really sleep with you and wake up in the morning together. In a bed. Like man and wife.”

  Ida looks at him seriously. “Okay, come to my room tonight.”

  “I have a better idea.”

  As usual, Marcello drives the Chevy out onto the concession roads, but bypasses the farm lanes where they usually park. A half hour passes without conversation, only the crackling of the car radio for company, until they see the mist from the Falls glistening under streetlights.

  Marcello slows to a crawl as they pass the gorge. Tourists in orange plastic ponchos throng at the brink, balancing children on the stonework barrier. Colours burst into view, green, pink, blue, purple, shimmering over a vast emptiness.

  Ida sticks her face out of the window: “Allora! The water has colour?”

  “Only in summer. They shine lights from a tower.”

  Ida struggles to see the water behind the rainbow. “Why do they paint colours on Niagara Falls? Aren’t they already a wonder of the world?”

  “They just want to make it more interesting, I guess. When you see it all the time, the excitement kind of wears off.” After a pause he adds: “We’ll come back for a better look after we’re married.”

  Ida stares at him. “Che?”

  “We can get the church to annul your marriage,” he answers, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding Ida’s hand. “All we have to do is get Pop to sign a paper saying it was never consummated. That means, you never slept together.”

  Ida shakes her head: “This, I’m sure he will not do.”

  “We’ll see,” says Marcello.

  Within a few minutes, they have passed through the crush of cars near the Falls and find themselves alone, driving in darkness as they head upriver where farm fields and towns cling uncertainly to the shore. As roads peter into lanes, then dirt tracks, they bump along through scrub patches of birch; beyond them Ida can make out a squat building barely visible in the moonlight. Marcello kills the engine and the two sit for a moment listening to the call and response of the waves and the creaking of cicadas.

  At the door Marcello searches in his jeans for a pocketknife, which he uses to jimmy the lock on the door (what a strange word, thinks Ida). The building smells of fish and sand and mould. Marcello doesn’t want to turn on the lights. As Ida stands in the doorway, waiting for him to find a flashlight, she hears a flurry of panicked wings in the rafters.

  “Ucelli?” she asks.

  “Not birds. Bats. Come se dice – pipistrelli.”

  She screams and throws her arms over her head. Laughing he pulls her to him. “Don’t worry, that’s an old wives’ tale about bats getting caught in your hair.”

  “Old wives?”

  “Just a dumb saying. English is full of them.”

  With Marcello leading the way, they find their way through a patch of scrubby trees out to the beach, a narrow stretch of hard-packed sand littered with pebbles and seaweed and the odd dead fish. The two of them stand looki
ng at the crescent Moon dangling over the lake like a fishing lure, Marcello’s arms wrapped around Ida from behind. “The Americans will be there soon. Imagine being the first one to touch the Moon.”

  “Very exciting,” she agrees.

  They stand in silence for a few moments looking up at the stars. Marcello has the feeling that they are actually the bright little eyes of animals, watching the two of them. They strip naked and swim just offshore, the lake as warm as bathwater. Marcello kisses and teases Ida, diving between her legs like a dolphin, Ida shooshing him: Stop it, someone hears us Cello, just before he pulls her giggling below the surface. They make love in the tug and release of the surf, Marcello’s back grinding against hard sand and shells while Ida lowers herself onto him, hands braced against his shoulders.

  Back in the cottage, Marcello chips a package of hot dogs out of the icebox with a fish knife and boils them on top of the stove in a pot so dented it barely sits upright on the burner. While they eat, Ida takes a folded paper out of her purse and spreads it on the table: a road map of Canada, much handled. Marcello points out places he’s always wanted to visit: Montreal, Winnipeg, the Yukon. Ida shakes her head and runs her finger firmly along the west coast: “Horses and mountains and ranches and ocean.”

  “I guess you could learn how to ride,” comments Marcello.

  Ida yawns and stretches. “Oh, I know already to ride. My father, he teach me.”

  Marcello clears his throat. “Your father died in the War. Before you were born. Remember?”

  Ida takes another bite of hot dog, chews it slowly and swallows before answering: “My second father, I speak about. After my mamma remarries.”

  Marcello opens his mouth, then shuts it. Best to let it go. For now.

  Later, they lie side by side on a mattress softened by a threadbare beach towel, touching one another until they fall sleep. Marcello dreams that a rock is resting on his chest, speaking in a strange tongue. When he awakens in darkness, he reaches down and discovers that the rock is Ida’s head. She’s talking in her sleep in a language Marcello doesn’t understand. Her dream-language is neither English nor Italian, nor French, which Marcello learned in school, nor Ukrainian or Polish, which he hears a lot in the neighbourhood, nor Portuguese or Greek, which some new giusta-comes speak. No, Ida’s dream language is as jagged and hard-edged as broken glass, an entirely unfamiliar tongue. He props himself up on one arm and looks down at her.

  “Are you from Mars, Ida?” he whispers, stroking her face as she mumbles mysterious words.

  Ida gropes with her hand to see where Marcello is. He catches her fingers and kisses them.

  “Shhhh, go back to sleep,” he whispers.

  When light floods the room through uncurtained windows, Marcello opens his eyes to a framed photograph of one of the Andolini uncles proudly holding up a fish on a line. A bedside table holds a stack of paperbacks, the pages bloated by water, perhaps left out in the rain or dropped in the lake; he reads the titles running down the cracked and faded spines:

  Airport.

  Couples.

  2001: A Space Odyssey.

  Diamonds Are Forever.

  Ida is still asleep. He checks his watch: it’s seven in the morning. Senior will get up soon and discover that the Chevy isn’t in its usual spot and that Ida’s bed hasn’t been slept in. Blind as Senior might have been to their love affair up until now, he’ll start to understand the way things are. They’ve spent the night together which means that Marcello has ruined Ida – not only taken her virginity, but soiled her reputation as a traditional Italian girl, which was the point of Senior taking her a proxy bride in the first place. Marcello believes that in Senior’s eyes, Ida’s worth will fall to less than nothing.

  That’ll make it easier when Marcello makes him sign whatever paper they need for an annulment – an affidavit, Father Ray called it. It’s the only way to take Ida away from Senior honourably and make an honest woman of her without having to run and hide and pretend forever. Marcello is strong, he could dig ditches for a living. If he isn’t to be a priest, he at least wants to live a peaceful, normal, decent life, properly married to Ida. Hell, maybe he’ll even get the organist to play Pachelbel at the wedding.

  9

  July 14

  “This is how you honour your father, you bastard?” shouts Senior hoarsely.

  Jagged bits of glass rain down on Marcello, splinters clinging to his hair, his jeans, even his eyelashes and the skin of this arms. He’s lying on the floor, trying to avoid Senior’s wild swings with the baseball bat. He’s just smashed the cut glass vase holding the dozen red roses but he was aiming for Marcello’s head.

  Marcello tells himself that he should have anticipated Senior’s rage. He’s just grateful that when they got back, he told Ida to go upstairs and start packing; he said that once he’d thrashed things out with Senior, he’d take her to the Andolinis for safekeeping until the annulment came through. He hopes she doesn’t come downstairs in response to all the ruckus.

  At first it looked like the heart-to-heart with Senior was going to be, if not exactly civil, no worse than awkward. When they got back that morning, Marcello found him at the counter, looking confused; the first words out of his mouth were: “Junior, what you doing buying roses and candy for Ida?”

  Marcello blinked. “She said they came from you.”

  “Like hell. You know how much these things cost?” Senior opened the Pot of Gold box and tossed a handful of chocolates into his mouth. “She no make breakfast today.”

  Marcello pulled himself up to his full height – a few inches taller than Senior – and said: “That’s ’cause she was with me.”

  “What you talking about? Nothing open this early.”

  Marcello took a deep breath and launched into his speech. He started with the love-at-first-sight attraction between him and Ida, moving on to Senior’s lies to get her over here. Then there was the fact that Ida was much closer to Marcello’s age than to Senior’s – she’s young enough to be your daughter, Pop. Encouraged by Senior’s lack of response, he proceeded to their first kiss, followed by Ida’s deflowering. Marcello thought he should leave that part in to make it clear to Senior that Ida was pure, up until four days ago, to give his father a sense of the depth of the attraction: they were helpless in the face of it, he explained. Senior stood through the entire speech with his mouth hanging open.

  Then he went behind the counter and found the baseball bat.

  Panting, unable to catch Marcello and connect the bat with his head, Senior starts hurling words: “You kill my first wife, when you give her the polio. Now you turn my second wife into a whore. Goddamn you to hell. Goddamn you to fucking hell. I spit on you, I curse you. You’re not my son.” Marcello thinks Senior is disowning him until he adds: “When your mother show up with you, I didn’t even want you. Why you not tell me you got a kid, I say. The marriage broker tell me to surprise you, she say. I should of sent you back where you come from.”

  Marcello doesn’t understand what he’s hearing until the words marriage broker sink in. His mother Sofia must have been a proxy bride, like Ida.

  “You’re not my father?”

  “You think I’d give my own blood away to the Andolinis?” rages Senior, and smashes the bat down on the pop cooler as Marcello jumps out of the way. Trapped in the corner next to the magazine rack, he takes Senior’s next swing in the gut: winded but not wounded, he staggers toward the screen door, telling himself that Senior won’t keep coming at him once they’re out on the street. Again, he’s misjudged Senior’s rage: with Marcello backing up onto the stoop, Senior winds up and swings the bat hard into his ribs, sending him over the railing onto the sidewalk. His head hits the pavement like an exploding firecracker.

  Pain crushes Marcello like a thousand football tackles, a million hits into the boards. Twin waves of nausea and a
gony rush up, pulling him into a sea filled with crucifixes and roses and chocolate boxes and Canadian Tire money; he feels like he’s floating, watching the beating happen to some other guy on a distant shoreline.

  Far, far away, he can hear shrill shouts. At first Marcello thinks the voice is Ida’s and tries to gasp out Run. But when he sees a dirty face and dark eyes looking down at him, he realizes it’s Bum Bum shouting stop stop stop stop, grabbing at Marcello’s hands, trying to pull him to his feet. No hope.

  The sky spinning over him, he sees Senior lift the bat into the clouds: instinctively, Marcello puts up his arms to protect his head, but the blow doesn’t fall. Senior is tugging at something behind him: Christie Hryhorchuck, grabbing at the bat. Stop it he’ll hurt you, Marcello tries to warn her, but the words won’t come out. He still doesn’t see Ida anywhere, thank God.

  Senior swears at Christie, then disappears from sight as if he’s been swept off his feet. All Marcello can see is blue sky, until the buttercup blonde head of Niagara Glen Kowalchuck looms into view, Bum Bum’s tear-stained face close beside him.

  Through the buzzing in his ears, he hears Kowalchuck’s amazed voice say, “What the fucking hell is going on? Get him upstairs.”

  Somehow, someone (Kowalchuk? Bum Bum? Both?) pulls Marcello to his feet, where he teeters uncertainly, the world a merry-go-round. Canal Road looks like a dreamy panoramic 3D postcard: Senior is being held in a one-armed headlock by Stinky, blue tattoos bulging on his forearm; Christie holds the baseball bat on her shoulder as if heading to a game; Mrs. Hryhorchuck has come out on the stoop in her bathing suit, cleaning rag to her mouth. The shock on Mrs. H’s face tells Marcello everything he needs to know about how he looks right now.

  Propped between a tall body and a short one, he’s being half-dragged, half-carried toward the front door of Kowalchuck Flowers until he vomits on his sneakers and falls into a void.