“Thousands,” Chi Chi corrected.
“A lot.” Kloris raised her voice. “And he’s been touring since he was sixteen. That’s a lot of dough.”
“Under the rolling pin.”
Kloris’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of a racket are you running here?” She looked around the office speculatively, as if she were calculating the rent, the bills, and the commissions Chi Chi must be collecting.
“Mrs. Rinhoffer, your daughter is Tony’s fourth wife, and they’ve spent less than a year together as a married couple—eight months, to be exact. Four of that, Tony was on tour. So that leaves four months. How do you figure a million in compensation?”
“He’s rich.”
“That money is all gone,” Chi Chi said.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Gone. Three children, three marriages. Career in decline. A tax bill with such enormous penalties, it still isn’t paid off. There’s no money for your daughter or for you. None.”
“Ginger is pregnant.”
“Congratulations.”
“One million, and the apartment.”
“I suggest you ask the father of the baby for the money.”
“That’s why I’m here! Tony Arma is the father!”
“It would be impossible. Tony has been sterile since 1953.”
Kloris was undeterred by facts. “Sometimes accidents happen.”
“With the bartender at the Isle of Capri, maybe. But not with Tony. That would be a miracle. Last time I checked, Sunnyside, Queens, is not Lourdes, France.”
“I’ll go to the papers with everything I know. He drinks, and he wears a toupee!”
“Say whatever you want. You’re not getting a penny.”
“He’s impotent!”
“Hard to get a young lady pregnant if he’s impotent.”
“Not all the time. Here and there, I’m told.” Kloris stared at Chi Chi, her eyes turned as cold as black coal at the other woman’s imperturbability. “All right,” she said. “Two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“Not a penny.”
“Listen here, you old bag—”
Chi Chi smiled. “I’ve been called worse, and from the looks of it, so have you.”
“You can’t get away with this.”
“And neither will you. Let me be clear, Mrs. Rinhoffer. If you think that you can come in here and scare me, after what I’ve lived through, you’re mistaken. I came up in the clubs and I dealt with real gangsters. You’re an old-fashioned thug. You’re here to shake me down. You want something for nothing, or in this case, money in exchange for your daughter’s body.”
“My daughter is not a prostitute!”
“You named her price. One million dollars and a piece of real estate. What do you call that, if not prostitution?”
“She was his wife. There was true affection between them. She loved him!”
“Love. That’s a big word coming from a small person.”
“You’re just jealous! She’s young and beautiful, and he left you for not one, not two, but three women.”
“Who Mr. Arma chooses to bed or wed is not my concern or my responsibility. I’m a busy lady. But mother to mother, I see what you’re thinking. The clock is ticking. Your daughter’s youth is slipping through your hands like ice. Your business will dry up in a few years. When Miss Wheedle’s charms go, and they will, so will your opportunity to extort money from old men. So you have to beat it to the bank, and fast.”
“You have some nerve!”
“Between us old girls, you’d have given Tony a tumble yourself if you thought he’d bite.”
“I wasn’t interested in him in that way,” Kloris sniffed, sticking out her chest.
“But you were. That’s why you play Songs from the Pacific on your hi-fi on a loop.”
Kloris shrugged. “I’ll get a lawyer.”
“It won’t matter. I own everything. When you listen to Gravy, Gravy, Gravy, picture my face, because I wrote it, and I own the copyright. I own the copyright on every song Tony Arma sings.” Chi Chi pulled a large black checkbook ledger out of her desk drawer, opened it, and wrote a check. She tore it out of the book and handed it to Kloris.
Kloris looked at the amount. “Three hundred dollars? You’re insane.” She threw it back on the desk.
“Moving expenses for Ginger.” Chi Chi opened her wallet and placed a five-dollar bill on the check.
“What’s that for?”
“A cab to the apartment. When you get there, you’ll find all of Ginger’s things and yours packed to go in the lobby. The locks have been changed, and security has been instructed not to let you or your daughter past the bellman post. If you try anything funny, the police at the fourth precinct will escort you back to Queens personally.”
“Where do you get off treating us like criminals? We’ve been taking care of Tony. What do you do? Nothing! You’re a bitch!”
Chi Chi sighed. “I imagine I can be.”
Rinhoffer grabbed the check and the five-dollar bill. “I will be back.”
“You can come back as often as you like. Your extortion attempts won’t work any better in the future. And next time, you’ll have to pay your own cab fare.”
Kloris began to argue with Chi Chi again, but it was too late: the phone rang. Chi Chi picked up the phone as Kloris left the office, pushing Lee aside.
“What was that all about?”
“Another woman who wanted something for nothing. Tony runs his love life like it’s a two-for-one sale at Loehmann’s.”
“Are you all right?”
“I never get used to it,” Chi Chi admitted, her voice suddenly tired. “Poor kid.”
“His fourth wife?”
“She doesn’t have a mother.”
“I just saw the woman. Lousy face-lift. Fooling no one.”
“That’s no mother,” Chi Chi said. “I’m crying because I was lucky. I have a good mother who loves me. I still need her, even at my age. So when I meet a terrible mother like that one, I know the difference.”
“You’re a better woman than I am. I don’t want to understand people like that.”
“You’ve never had to, Lee. You didn’t marry Tony Arma. Oh, the parade of characters he has brought into my life.” Chi Chi closed the black ledger and slipped it back into her desk drawer.
“Do you think he’ll marry again?”
“He can’t bear to be alone.”
“Then keep that checkbook handy.”
“If the good Lord takes me first, there will be problems. Men lose their way when they get old. We find ourselves, they get lost.”
* * *
Chi Chi walked to her apartment on Gramercy Park. She kept a good pace in the thick of the rush-hour traffic as commuters poured down into the subway stations like moles disappearing into the earth. She was grateful for her job, and pleased she still had the energy to do it.
At seventy, Chi Chi had stamina and strong legs. She had a few minor health glitches along the way, cataracts, an issue with the bones in her neck, and a female problem that was easily fixed once it was identified. Barbara and Lucille had their own health scares, but all in all, the Donatelli girls figured they were lucky. Isotta was still with them. Now in her nineties, she lived with Barbara and still made homemade macaroni for Sunday dinner.
New York City at twilight remained Chi Chi’s favorite time of day. She tried to time her walk home to be at the Flatiron Building and the Twenty-Third Street Park during the moment the peach sun slipped into the streaks of purple that hovered over the horizon in New Jersey. There was something about the blues and violets of twilight, at the confluence of the park, Fifth Avenue, and lower Broadway, with the looming majesty of the Empire State Building behind her, that gave her a sense of her place in the world. Chi Chi walked along East Nineteenth Street when she heard someone call her name.
An older man stood under the awning of the Union Square Café. He took the last drag off a cigarette before putting it out
in the brass ashcan. Chi Chi squinted at him.
“Cheech?” he said.
“Hello, Saverio.” Chi Chi stepped closer to him, to get a good look. He had stopped wearing the hairpiece. He wore a navy suit, a hot pink Italian tie, and a striped blue and white dress shirt. She had sent him paperwork, weeks earlier, which he had not signed and returned. “I understand you’re divorcing Miss Wheedle?”
“Ginger. You can call her Ginger.”
“I’ll call her Miss Wheedle. The least you can do is sign the paperwork.” Chi Chi tucked her purse under her arm. She was glad she had put on lipstick before leaving the office, and that her hair had been done that morning. She wore a sage-green bouclé suit with brass buttons and black suede pumps. She liked wearing the color of money; after all, she had earned it.
“You look good,” he called after her.
She turned back. “Save it. I prefer honesty, I think I deserve that courtesy.”
“You do look good,” he said sheepishly.
“Better than you.”
“That’s cruel.”
“Sav, you know what’s cruel? Following me to Italy, where I’ve gone to inter my son, seduce me, tell me you want to marry me again, only to return home and marry a young woman the age of your granddaughter instead. Worse? Instead of telling me yourself, you let me read about it in the paper. How do you live with yourself? I used to think you’d lost your mind every time you made a stupid choice, but that’s too easy. I am tired of taking care of you, cleaning up your messes, letting your children believe you were a good man, supporting you to them unconditionally, keeping the books, making pots of gravy when you were hungry, fretting about the minutiae, and agonizing about the big stuff. When are you going to be an adult? I even have your funeral expenses paid, your headstone engraved, and your suit picked out for when the time comes.
“I have done everything I could to make your life easier, to take the pain away. And in return, you hurt me time and time again. I have my theories about why, but they don’t matter anymore. I wake up every morning wondering how I got here. Before I put on the coffee and brush my teeth, I have to convince myself that I’m worth the cup of coffee and the dollop of toothpaste I am treating myself to, because I spent my life loving a man who valued me less than either of those things.
“And here’s the irony, Saverio: you are alive today because of me. You have money in your pocket and children and grandchildren who love you because I made sure they did. Every birthday there was a card from you, and every Christmas a gift from you. Look at me. Take a good long look. The next time you see me on Fifth Avenue, don’t call my name and don’t act like you know who I am, because you don’t. That diamond heart you gave me when you asked me to marry you, I get it now. You gave me a diamond heart because you never had any intention of giving me the real thing.”
Chi Chi turned and walked down the street. The city was bathed in sound; she did not hear Tony call her name.
14
Triste
(Sorrowful)
November 2000
The nurse opened the window in Tony Arma’s hospital room. A crisp autumn breeze blew through the room. Tony tried to inhale the fresh air, but he could only manage small, shallow breaths.
“I’m going to close it now, Mr. Arma.”
Tony waved his hand. “Thank you, that’s enough.”
“Can I get you something to drink, Father?” the nurse asked Father Joe O’Brien, the new chaplain of St. Vincent’s Hospital, as she adjusted Tony’s blanket.
The priest was young, Irish, and eager to be of service.
“No, thank you.”
“You know you’re on your way out when the combined ages of your nurse, your doctor, and your priest are less than your own,” Tony said.
Father O’Brien laughed. “I’m sorry I missed your act. I’ll get the CD.”
“There are several.” Tony folded the hem of the sheet neatly over the blanket. “I never officially retired. My agent is still in business. Lee Bowman. The last of an ilk, Padre.”
“You can call me Joe.”
“I can’t do that. I was taught to never call a priest anything but Father.”
“Your choice.”
“Just my upbringing, Father. Where are you from?”
“Scranton, Pennsylvania.”
“I played your burg. Very early on. Spring 1938. Hotel Casey. Home to Billy Lustig and the Scranton Sirens. Billy hired Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey out of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, when they were teenagers. We were all teenagers. We used to pack in the coal miners, and I used to think, Sing, boy, sing, or that will be you underground busting rock and your back. I had a lot of respect for those men.”
“Who was your favorite singer?”
“When I was coming up, the best of the best was Sinatra. Of course. The rest of us were footmen on the gold carriage of the king. You know the guys that run alongside and jump on the moving vehicle and do their best to hold on? That was us, all of us because Sinatra was in a class by himself. None of the rules applied to him. Nobody could tell him what to do. Harry James, the story went, wanted Sinatra to change his name to Frankie Satin. Sinatra refused. And that’s the difference between a star, a headliner, and the sap that sings under a blinking bulb in a side room in Vegas. The star says no.”
“Did you?” the priest asked.
“I wanted fame and fortune too much, so I agreed to everything to get them. I did what I was told. So Saverio Armandonada became Tony Arma. The name had just enough swing and sounded like a dish of macaroni. That’s what they told me at the time. But I never felt like Tony Arma—I never became him. The name didn’t mean anything to me, and if something doesn’t mean anything to you, it won’t matter to anybody else either. When they made me change my name, I gave up four thousand years of my family history—or that’s how it felt. When they take away a man’s name, they might as well cart away his conscience with it. You’re up for grabs. I did the best I could wearing another man’s shoes, but they never fit.”
“Do you want forgiveness, Tony?”
“Saverio, Father. I was baptized Saverio.”
“Do you want forgiveness for your sins, Saverio?”
“Yes, Father.”
“I give you absolution for everything,” the priest said, blessing him.
Tony sighed. “Let me ask you something. Is it true? Has a place been made for me there?”
“In my Father’s house, there are many rooms.” The priest smiled.
“Yeah, but for real and true, is there a room for me?”
“Yes, there is.”
“And how do you know for sure?”
“It’s been promised.”
“So there is a promise that will go unbroken.”
“Saverio, it’s the only one that is guaranteed. It’s the one between you and your God.”
Saverio Armandonada began to weep.
“It’s not good for your lungs to cry.”
“Tell you the truth, it feels good, Padre. Feels like I’m purging.”
“Then cry.”
He wiped his eyes on the bedsheet. “I want to see my mother again.”
“You will.”
“She said she’d be there, but I thought she only said it when she was dying so I wouldn’t be afraid when my time came.”
“She might have, but she meant it.”
Tony looked off into the distance. “I made love to a lot of women, Padre.”
“Should we say an act of contrition or a prayer of gratitude?” the priest joked.
Tony shook his finger at the priest. “Things have changed in the Holy Church of Rome since I was a kid. I might have shown up for mass more often if I had a priest like you. I do need some forgiveness. I didn’t put the women first.”
“It sounds as though you are truly contrite.”
“I never meant to hurt anybody.”
“Most of us don’t.”
“I can’t remember a lot of it. Funny how that goes. When you’re in lov
e, you think that’s all there is, that’s your unlimited universe of contentment. When it turns on you, and it always does, you can’t remember the happy times. They’re erased. Sometimes you can’t remember their names, but you see things and you’re reminded of a particular pleasure. A nightie. A stocking. A velvet ribbon. Something will trigger a memory, and the time you spent together rolls over you like a truck. I don’t remember names so much now. Times and places are better. And if they help me remember the women, that’s not half bad.”
“I imagine it isn’t.” The priest smiled.
“I didn’t learn a damn thing. Well, maybe one thing. No matter how many women you marry, every new wife wants a new kitchen. Could never figure that one out. Even when she couldn’t cook, she wanted the kitchen. Kitchens are the most expensive rooms in a house. Bathrooms are a close second. But women, they have to have a kitchen of their own.”
“There are some mysteries that we can never solve.”
“You got that right, Padre. Not in this lifetime. There’s no jam like the one you get in with a woman. They know things. They demand effort and excellence from you—more than any man. Which means you can never win. Devious connivers of the fourth degree. But I could never find a way to live without one.”
“What did your father do?”
Tony’s expression went blank. “Do?”
“For a living. His profession.”
“He made the glass that became the windshields and the windows in Ford automobiles.”
“How interesting.” The priest leaned in.
“He started in 1915, a year before I was born. And he died before he retired from Rouge. He was still working when he died. True story.”
“What was his name?”
“You writing a book?”
“No, I’d like to pray for him.”
“Leone.”
“The lion.”
“Yes. He was a lion.”
“What’s your favorite memory of your father?”
“Oh, that’s a tough one.”
“Too many?”
“Nah. Not enough.” Tony closed his eyes. “He used to make a fire pit in the winter. In the snow. Hell, it snowed from September to June back then in Michigan. It wasn’t the rust belt, it was the ice bag. Anyhow, my father would dig a pit in the snow, build a fire, and roast chestnuts in an iron skillet. And the aroma of that had the scent of the earth, but sweet. Wherever I go in the world, if someone is roasting chestnuts, I think of my father.”
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