by Lamb, Wally
“It wasn’t for my sake. Our sake. I don’t think he had any idea she was pregnant.”
As she understood it, Dr. Patel said, Domenico had wanted to leave something of himself for posterity. Whether or not he knew, before he died, of Thomas’s and my existence, we were, in fact, just that: his descendants, his link to the future. My reading his story allowed him to achieve his goal, she said. Perhaps if I kept reading it, Domenico might, likewise, help me to achieve mine.
We had gone over our allotted time, she said. We had to stop. “But come here first.” She took me by the arm and led me back to the window.
“It is all connected, Dominick,” she said. “Life is not a series of isolated ponds and puddles; life is this river you see below, before you. It flows from the past through the present on its way to the future. That is not something I have always understood; it is something I have come to a gradual understanding of, through my work as both an anthropologist and a psychologist.”
I looked out, again, at the rushing water.
“Life is a river,” she repeated. “Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother’s womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past—connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially.” She folded her hands together as if praying to what we saw below. “So, that is my opinion, my friend. Should you throw your ancestry into the woodstove? Of course not. Should you keep reading it, even if it takes away your sleep? Yes, by all means. Read your grandfather’s story, Dominick. Jump into the river. And if it upsets you, come in and tell me why.”
On the way out of her office, I got a quick glimpse of her next appointment: big, burly guy—work boots, hooded sweatshirt. We gave each other a jerky half-nod for a hello. Another “tough guy” in therapy, I thought. A fellow member of the walking wounded.
The traffic on the way home was a bitch. I was antsy. Kept punching my way through the radio stations. “Night Moves” . . . “I Shot the Sheriff” . . . “The Boys Are Back in Town.” If you cranked up the volume loud enough, it took over your whole head. You didn’t have to think. But when I got back home, pulled into the driveway, and cut the engine, the silence came back, and with it, unexpectedly, the morning my mother died. . . .
It was just me and her in that hospital room when I’d made that promise—the same one she’d asked me to make my whole life. Ray and I had been up with her all night—just sitting there, watching her suffer, because there was nothing else we could do. “She could go any time,” they kept saying: the doctors, nurses, the woman from hospice. The only catch was, she kept outlasting their predictions. Couple of days and nights, it had dragged on. We were all pretty whipped by then. . . .
The sun was just coming up, I remember. She’d been thrashing around for an hour or more, moaning, trying to yank off her oxygen mask. Then, right about when it was getting light out, she quieted down. Stopped fighting.
Ray had stepped out for a couple minutes—to make a phone call about work. And I leaned over toward her, started stroking her forehead. And she looked right at me—she was conscious at that point, I know it. . . . And I told her I loved her. Told her thanks for everything she’d done for us—all the sacrifices she had made. And then I said it: the one thing I know she’d been waiting to hear: “I’ll take care of him for you, Ma. I’ll make sure he’s safe. You can go now.”
And she did—just like that. By the time Ray got back, she was unconscious. Died sometime in the next hour. . . . Soon as she heard that her “little bunny rabbit” was going to be safe, she could let go.
I love you, Ma. I hate you. . . .
There was something Dr. Patel hadn’t figured out yet. Something I was just starting to figure out myself: how much I hated my mother for putting me on guard duty my whole life. For making me their sentry. . . .
“Playing nice” they used to call it—whatever it was they’d do up there. Dress-up: was that all it was? Thomas clomping around in her high heels, twirling around in her dresses. . . . She had no friends. She was lonely. . . .
Go downstairs now, Dominick. I made you a special snack. Thomas and I are just going to “play nice.”
And so I’d sit down there, eating my pudding or potato chips, staring at that television that, later on, would explode. Set the living room on fire.
On guard. Watching out for Ray. . . .
This wouldn’t be any fun for you, Dominick. This is the kind of fun only your brother likes. . . . Let me know right away if Ray comes. If Ray ever found out about “playing nice,” he’d get mad at all three of us. Madder than he’s ever been before. . . .
It’s not that she didn’t love me, Doc. She did love me. I knew that. She just always loved him more. Loved the exact thing about Thomas that Ray hated. Nailed him for . . . Her “sweetheart.” Her “little cuddly bunny rabbit.” . . .
I’ll take care of him for you, Ma. I’ll keep him safe. You can go now.
As if promising her would finally put me in first place, even for a minute—for one fucking minute before she died. . . . All my life, I had come in second. Number two in a two-man race. Even now I was, with her gone four years and him locked away at Hatch. Number two in our never-ending two-man struggle.
And it hurt. It hurt, Ma—being the lookout, the spider monkey—the one you never invited onto your lap. . . .
It hurt, Ma. It goddamned hurt. . . .
37
5 August 1949
I left Signora Siragusa’s boardinghouse and took residence of my vitrified brick casa di due appartamenti on 1 April 1916. I had been the first Italian at American Woolen and Textile Company to rise to the position of boss dyer. Now I became the first of my countrymen to own his own home in Three Rivers—a home I had built with my own two hands! I welcomed Salvatore Tusia, the barber, and his wife and children to the left-side apartment and received my first monthly rent, eleven dollars and fifty cents, paid to me in cash. I had wanted twelve a month, but Tusia brought me down in exchange for a haircut whenever I needed one and a daily shave. I made Tusia cut my hair every Friday, to make sure I got my money’s worth.
I wrote to my Brooklyn cousins to say I would honor them with a two-day visit at Easter. Notify the Iaccoi brothers next door, I told them. The trip would allow me to meet, at long last, my bride-to-be, Prosperine. At this time, the Iaccois and I would establish a wedding date and finalize the dowry price. In fairness to myself, I would attach to the asking price the cost of my train ticket to and from New York and a new three-piece suit, which I would wear for the trip and also on my wedding day.
At my cousins’ table that Easter Sunday, I raised my glass and made a memorable speech about the Old Country and the Tempesta family. I spoke a eulogy to Papa and Mama and made tribute to my two departed brothers. My words brought tears to the eyes of all present, except for Lena and Vitaglio’s youngest brat, who was allowed to rummage beneath the dining room table, tickling ankles and pulling at the stockings of the adults. Shameful, disrespectful behavior! When that little mosquito snapped my garter in the middle of my remarks, I reached under the table and gave him what he deserved. The crying, head-bumping, and wine-spilling that followed ruined the rest of my speech. “Well,” Lena smiled, “let’s make the best of it and eat, then, before the macaroni gets any colder.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “if you and Vitaglio cannot rule your young ones any better than this, then why don’t we ignore the dead and eat?”
That evening, I excused myself, rose from the table, and went next door to my meeting with the Iaccoi brothers. Finally, I would feast my eyes on my Sicilian bride.
Fluttering like two pigeons, Rocco and Nunzio Iaccoi met me in the foyer and told me repeatedly what a great honor it was to receive into their home a man who had made himself such a success. They took me to their parlor and offered me the largest of the stuffed chairs, lit me a cigar, and carried the standing ashtray across the room for my convenience. When they were sure I was comfortable, they called to their cousin Prosperin
e, who was waiting in the kitchen. “Uncap the anisetta, cousin,” they sang out. “Bring three glasses.”
There was a long wait and then, in the kitchen, the sound of things dropping, glass breaking. “Scusi,” Nunzio Iaccoi said, smiling so broadly that it looked like he had a pain.
Rocco laughed and shrugged, shrugged and laughed. “In almost two years of living here, this is the first time that dear, sweet girl has broken anything,” he said. “My hotheaded half-sister, Ignazia, she throws things against the wall during temper fits, and is clumsy as well, but little Prosperine is as graceful and sure-handed as any young girl I’ve seen.”
That goddamned plumber wasn’t fooling me. The girl’s obvious clumsiness is a bargaining tool for me, I thought. Something to drive up the dowry price a bit.
Nunzio returned to the parlor. “The problem was nothing, ha ha,” he said. “If only all our problems could be swept away with a broom, eh, Domenico? Ha ha ha.” The brothers’ laughter and sighs did little to conceal their nervousness.
When Prosperine emerged from the kitchen, I attempted to rise, but each of the Iaccois held me down with a hand on my shoulders. “Sit, sit,” Rocco said. “No need to get up. Rest yourself.”
At first, I could not look at her face but saw, instead, her tiny size. She was no taller than a girl of twelve. No bigger than Mama! My eyes dropped to the floor.
I looked up from her high-buttoned shoes to her black dress with its small waist. She’d pinned a cluster of artificial flowers there. My eyes rose past the anisetta in their little glasses, which she held on a small tray before her. My glance moved from her flat bosom to a cameo pinned to the high neck of her dress. When I arrived at her faccia, my jaw dropped.
“Signore Domenico Tempesta,” Nunzio said. “May I present Prosperine Tucci, your sposa futura!”
“When hell freezes over!” I shouted. Elbowing past the brothers, I made my way to their front door!
The thing that had made me drop all sense of propriety was the face of Prosperine. For one thing, she was far from the young girl those lying plumbers had promised me. That skinny hag was probably thirty if she was a day! Worse—far worse—her homely, scrawny face bore a shocking resemblance to Filippa, that goddamned drowned monkey that had bewitched my poor brother Pasquale!
* * *
That night, I twisted and turned on my cousins’ lumpy divan as if I was back aboard the SS Napolitano! Had my brother Pasquale sent this skinny bitch up from the mundo suttomari as revenge because I had drowned his “little queen”? Had my brother Vincenzo sent her to mock, once again, my chastity? Or had Mama sent a monkey for me to marry because I had forsaken her to seek my fortune in America?
“Meglio celibe che mal sposato!”*I whispered to myself. Better to die without sons than to have to make them with that!
Somewhere in the middle of that long night in Brooklyn, a church bell rang three times. Mama, Pasquale, Vincenzo: maybe all three of them had conspired and sent this monkey-woman to me! But a gift sent is not the same as a gift accepted. I decided I would wait until daylight, board the earliest train possible, go back to my big house in Three Rivers, Connecticut, and live my life as a bachelor.
6 August 1949
The Iaccois and their monkey-cousin were already in Lena and Vitaglio’s kitchen when I awoke the next morning. It was the brothers’ angry voices that roused me from my pitiful sleep. “Ha! So here’s the man whose promises mean nothing!” Rocco said as I entered the kitchen.
“Please,” Lena told the Iaccois. “Let my poor cousin eat his breakfast in peace. Shouting is bad for digestione.” She placed before me frittata, sausage and potatoes, coffee, Easter bread. Here was a woman who knew how to take care of men!
I took a sip of coffee, a mouthful of egg. I made those two goddamned plumbers wait. “A promise collapses when it is made to deceitful men,” I finally said.
How dare I accuse them of deceit, Nunzio shouted. It was I, not they, who had initiated discussion about a wife—two wives, not one, he reminded me.
“So what do you think? That I climbed up on that roof and pushed my poor brother off? What do you two fools expect me to do? Marry two women and live the life of a bigamo?”
“Marrying one of them will do!” Rocco said. “The one you promised to marry. The one who has spent two years waiting for her home to be completed and now has spent the night sobbing into her pillow because you have so grievously wronged her!”
“Eat, Domenico,” Lena insisted. “Eat your breakfast while it’s hot and then have your argument.”
As I chewed and swallowed, swallowed and chewed, I took small glimpses of Prosperine. She was seated on a chair by the window. In the morning light, she looked twenty-five, perhaps, not thirty, but she was even uglier than she had been the night before. Today she wore peasant clothes and a kerchief on that shrunken head of hers. She was smoking a pipe!
“You have falsely represented this creature,” I told the brothers. “Look at her over there, smoking like a man! She is not beautiful! She is not young!”
Nunzio stuttered and resorted to proverbs. “Gadina vecchia fa bonu brodo,”* he insisted. And I answered him with a proverb of my own: “Cucinala come vuoi, ma sempre cocuzza e!”**
“This woman is as pure as the Blessed Virgin,” Rocco argued.
“If this one is vergine,” I said, “it is due to lack of opportunity. No meat on her bones! No tette! This one would have shriveled the cazzu of my brother Vincenzo!” In reaction to my vulgarity, uttered in the heat of battle, my cousin Lena gave a scream and lifted her apron over her face. Not Prosperine, though. That one was as hard as nails!
“Beware, Tempesta,” Nunzio Iaccoi warned. “In America, there are courts of law that make sure a man keeps his word. We have saved every letter and telegram you sent.”
“Don’t try to scare me, plumber!” I shouted back. “What judge with eyes in his head would sentence me to a life with that one? She belongs at the end of an organ-grinder’s leash, not in the marriage bed of a man of property!”
Of course, I was a proper man and a gentleman and never would have spoken that way in the hag’s presence if those two brothers hadn’t pushed me to it, but now the damage was done. My eyes followed the others’ eyes to Prosperine and a shiver passed through me. Without blinking or turning away, she puffed on her pipe and glared at me with the black look of il mal occhio itself. As I have said before, a modern man such as Domenico Tempesta leaves superstition to foolish old women. But at that moment in my cousin Lena’s kitchen, I longed to clutch a gobbo, a red chili, a pig’s tooth—anything to ward off that monkey-woman’s evil eye!
My sweet cousin Lena, in an effort to end the impasse before fisticuffs broke out in her kitchen, poured coffee, passed biscotti and Easter bread to the Iaccois, and reminded us all that there had been, since the beginning of our negotiations, not one but two bridal candidates living under the Iaccois’ roof. “Scusa, Signorina Prosperine,” she said, addressing the other one without looking at her. “Scusa me a million times for saying so, but Domenico has changed his mind.”
Prosperine took the pipe from her mouth and spat out the open window. “Bah!” she said, then clamped the pipe again between her teeth.
Lena turned to me and took my hand. “Domenico, before you begin your long trip home, wouldn’t you at least like to meet the Iaccois’ pretty sister, Ignazia?”
“Let them marry off their women to other fools!” I said back. “I’m done with Iaccoi business!”
At this, Rocco raised his fists, but Nunzio pushed them back down again. “Aspetta un momento!” he said, then whispered to Rocco, who ran out the kitchen door. The rest of us waited and waited for . . . for who knew what? As for my stomach, it felt like I had swallowed the anchor of the SS Napolitano instead of my cousin’s eggs and bread and coffee!
Ten minutes later, Rocco burst back through the doorway. He had in his hands Ignazia’s immigration papers and a daguerreotype of the girl. The papers established that she
had been born in 1898 and thus was truly eighteen years of age. The photograph verified that she was as beautiful as the other one was homely—a girl well suited to be the wife of a property owner. A girl with some meat on her bones.
I was persuaded to return after lunch to the Iaccois’ front parlor and wait for Ignazia’s arrival back from her friend’s home. As I waited, I stared at the picture of the girl, and fell under its spell. Her flowing hair and full lips stirred me. Her dark eyes looked directly at my eyes. Her full face whispered the promise of a figura as plump and lovely as Venus’s.
I fell in love with that picture and fell more in love still with the flesh-and-blood girl who walked defiantly through her brothers’ front door an hour later than she was expected.
“Where have you been?” her brother asked.
“I’ve been where I’ve been!” she answered boldly.
She was wearing a woolen coat dyed as red as blood. Such a striking vermiglio had never emerged from the vats at American Woolen and Textile, I tell you! And such a woman had never lived in the tiny village of Giuliana or in Three Rivers, Connecticut. Her hair, black and wild, ended where her buttocks began. Her wide hips were built to bracket a husband and to push forth children into the world. She had cast her spell upon me even before her coat was off! At long last, I was in love!
“Domenico Tempesta, it is my great pleasure to present to you my half-sister, Ignazia,” Rocco said.
This is the one, I told myself. This is the woman I have waited for. Here before me, scowling, stands my very own wife!
But the girl gave me barely a glance. Turning to Prosperine, she asked if she had fed the company all the braciola from the Easter meal the day before. She was as hungry as an elefante, she said, and patted her belly.
“Please, Ignazia, worry later about your stomach,” Nunzio said. “Sit and visit. Show a little respect for a man of property and a factory boss!”