by Lamb, Wally
The Monkey scowled, said nothing. I squeezed her arm a little tighter. “Understand?” I asked again.
“All right, Domenico, let her go,” Ignazia said. “This is our business, not yours.”
“Anything that goes on inside this house is my business,” I told her. “Anything. And if this one doesn’t like it, she can pack her bag and get out of my hair.” At this, I tightened my grasp around the Monkey’s arm and walked her through the house to the front. Then I opened the door and gave her a little shove. “Go fetch the cheese,” I said. “Or I’ll beat you so hard, you’ll see double again, and this time without the help of a witch’s magic!”
When the Monkey reached the sidewalk, she stopped and turned back to me. “He who spits into the sky gets it back again!” she shouted in Italian.
Italian was the language I shouted back at her, too. “Threaten me until the chickens piss, you skinny bitch,” I yelled back. I would have yelled more, too, but noticed two of Ignazia’s ‘Mericana lady friends across the street. They had interrupted their little chat to stare. Idle women are always ready to mind other people’s business.
“Trouble with your hired girl, Mr. Tempesta?” one of them called.
“No trouble I can’t handle, ha ha,” I called back.
Those meddling mignotti nodded their heads in sympathy and went back to their conversation about nothing. I closed the door and vowed I would fix this little problem whose real name I did not know but who called herself Prosperine Tucci. Once and for all, I would get that goddamned leech off my ass.
It was Signora Siragusa’s aches and pains that got Prosperine out of my house. Arthritis had begun to bow the old woman’s legs and knot her fingers so badly that she could no longer run the boardinghouse without help. The signora and I made a little arrangement. Prosperine would cook and clean there in exchange for a bed in the attic and a dollar a day, which the signora paid directly to me on Saturday mornings. At last I would get back some of the money I had spent feeding and clothing her, and a little compensation for putting up with her, too. (I gave Prosperine a dollar a week for tobacco and other necessities and kept five.)
Now I only had to look at Prosperine’s ugly face on Sunday, her day off. Ignazia and the child and I would go off to Mass and Prosperine would walk over from Pleasant Hill and let herself in with the key. (That murdering pagana never went to church. Why bother? She knew where her soul was going after this life!) By the time Ignazia and I returned to the casa di due appartamenti, there she would be, sitting at my kitchen table, her stockings rolled down to her skinny ankles. Puffing on her pipe and helping herself to a glass of wine from the jug I kept under the sink. She never lifted a finger to help my wife with the afternoon meal. She just sat there like a little queen. Ha! That one was more like a pimple on the culo.
At first, Ignazia had balked at the extra work Prosperine’s leaving had put on her. She was lonely without her friend, she said. But even Ignazia saw that things were better with the other one gone during the week. Concettina began to smile at me and to talk—sometimes so many words strung together that she was almost making a speech! She was a pretty girl, except for that rabbit’s mouth of hers, and that hair as orange as a pumpkin. Some nights before I went to work, I rocked her on my knee and sang to her the little songs my mother had sung long ago to my brothers and me. When I sang, I sometimes saw a glimpse of Mama’s eyes in the girl’s eyes. Guglielmo could have been right about the red hair—my mother’s people had been from the North. It was not something Ignazia and I ever talked about. . . . Strange how those little melodies would travel back to me from the Old Country whenever I sat the girl on my lap. Some nights I’d go to work and sing them in my head all through my shift.
Ignazia liked to peek at us from the doorway when I sang to Concettina. Once or twice I even caught that wife of mine with a smile on her face. Sometimes, when she bathed the girl, I heard the two of them singing Mama’s songs together. They had both learned them from listening to me—my mother’s songs from my wife’s and the child’s mouths. A little thing like that could give me peace for an hour or an afternoon—could convince me that Violetta d’Annunzio had been put in the ground in Palermo—was suffering the torments of Hell—and that Ignazia was only my Ignazia.
I tried to complete the penance that had been assigned me—to sit and write about my life as Guglielmo had advised, but always I was too busy. A page here, a page there, with a week or two in between. I did not like to bring up the old stuff—Papa’s death at the mine, Uncle Nardo’s control over my fate, the loss of my father’s gold medal. . . . What was the good of reliving all of that? I bought a strongbox and locked up those few pages I had written—a siciliano knows better than to leave things like that lying around.
Sometimes after Mass or after a meeting about the new school, Guglielmo would ask me how my project was coming and I’d shrug and maybe fib a little and say I had written more than I had. What harm was there in that? I was a busy man, after all. Once I told the padre I was halfway to the present in the examination of my life. “That’s wonderful, Domenico,” he said. “Let me know when you’re ready and the two of us will examine it together.”
When the new school was finished, the archbishop came down from Hartford for the dedication. I invited my cousins Vitaglio and Lena up from Brooklyn. They came on the train to New London with their brats, the seven of them loaded down with bags and packages and luggage for their overnight stay. My house was like Grand Central Station that Saturday night! Lena and Ignazia cooking and yakking away in the kitchen, Lena’s bambini squealing and chasing each other and Concettina from room to room. . . . Vitaglio and I played bocce ball up in the backyard and got a little drunk on the homemade wine he had brought up from the city. At bedtime, Vitaglio kissed Lena goodnight and I kissed Ignazia. Then he and I went upstairs to bed. Before he got between the covers, Vitaglio went down on his knees to pray.
“What are you asking God for?” I joked. “A million dollars? Two million?”
“I’m not asking Him for anything,” he said. “I’m thanking Him for good food and wine, good health and famiglia.”
He got up off the floor and into bed, sighed, and went immediately to sleep. I reached over and extinguished the lamp, then lay there in the dark. The ceiling above me looked as black and vast as the Atlantic Ocean had looked on those long nights of crossing to America. I felt again the despair I had felt during those endless nights of passage. I thought about all that had happened since—what I had accomplished and what had come to me. Tears dripped down the sides of my face and into my ears. Lying beside me, Lena’s husband snored away. I was not much for praying—had given up all that after I left the seminary school to become a mason. But somewhere in the middle of that night, I rose from bed and went down on my knees. I thanked God for the same things Vitaglio had thanked him for—health, home, famiglia—and for helping me rid myself of the Monkey, too.
Next day, it seemed like every Catholic in Connecticut was there at St. Mary of Jesus Christ Church to witness the dedication of the new school! After the Mass and the ribbon-cutting, there was a special banquet and speeches in the church hall downstairs. (Guglielmo wanted me and Ignazia to sit at the head table, so that’s where we sat, right next to Shanley, the mayor.) This pezzo grosso gave a speech, that pezzo grosso gave one. Someone read a telegramma from no less a dignitary than the Governor of the State of Connecticut! Father Guglielmo was the last to speak.
“Stand up, Domenico,” he said. “Stand up, please.” So I stood. Every eye in that hall was upon me.
Without the help of Domenico Tempesta, Guglielmo said, the new parish school would not have been built. “We are forever grateful to this man.” Then four of the children from the new school came forward, giggling in spite of the looks the nuns gave them. They handed red roses to Ignazia and gave me a little box. “Open it, my good friend! Open it!” Guglielmo told me. He was giggling like those foolish schoolgirls!
Inside the box was a red
ribbon tied to a medaglia (silver-plated, not gold). Stamped onto one side was the cross of Jesus Christ and the Lamp of Knowledge. Engraved on the other side were these words: “To Domenico Tempesta, With Sincere Appreciation from the Students of St. Mary of Jesus Christ School.” That’s what it said.
The archbishop stood and came forward. He took the medal from the box, lifted it over my head, and hung it around my neck. Then everyone stood up, gave me ovazione in piedi. Vitaglio and Lena, the Tusias, even some of the workers from American Woolen who had come—all of them off their chairs and onto their feet. Their hand-clapping made so much noise, I thought maybe the church would fall down!
Ignazia stood up, too. And the girl. Ignazia was holding that bouquet of roses they’d given her. The week before, I had handed her eight dollars to get herself a little something extra for the dedication ceremony. She’d bought material for a new dress for Concettina and a velvet hat for herself—bright red one, same color as those roses and the ribbon around my neck! I turned and looked at my wife. She was the prettiest woman in that crowded hall . . . standing there, clapping and blushing, wearing her new red hat. Then she put the flowers on the table and took the girl’s hands—made Concettina’s little hands clap, too.
“Papa! Papa!” Concettina said. “Hooray for Papa!”
I was all right until I heard that. Then I had to blow my nose and leave the hall for a few minutes. “Speech, Mr. Tempesta!” people called from the crowd as I tried to get out of there for a minute or two. “Make a speech! Make a speech!”
But all I could do was thank them and wave and blow my nose.
42
Ray and I sat side by side in the wood-paneled office of Fitzgerald’s Funeral Home, banging out the details: closed casket, no calling hours, private burial.
“Funeral Mass?” the undertaker asked. He had an overly helpful manner, seriously bad false teeth. The Fitzgeralds had retired since Ma’s death—had sold this guy their business and their name.
“Funeral Mass?” I repeated. Ray’s yes and my no came out simultaneously.
“He was religious,” Ray said.
“He was crazy,” I snapped back. “It’s over.”
It was False Teeth who brokered the compromise: priest at the graveside, a simple private service. The only other sticking point was what to do afterward. “Most people have a little something,” the undertaker said. “But you don’t have to go that route. You do whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“It’ll be around noon by the time it’s over,” I pointed out to Ray. “People will expect something.” I told him I’d order some food from Franco’s, go over to Hollyhock Avenue early and help him set up stuff—that over at my place, even a small crowd would be packed in like sardines. Ray gave grudging approval to the plan and I sat there thinking, hey, he grew up in that house. Our grandfather built that place. Why shouldn’t we have it there?
When I got home, I made a list: people who’d been decent to Thomas over the years—had treated him like a human being. The names and phone numbers fit on an index card. That was hard, making those calls—asking one more thing from the few people who’d already “anted up” on Thomas’s behalf. I saved the two hardest calls for last.
“You have reached Ralph Drinkwater, tribal pipe-keeper of the Wequonnoc Nation. If this is Tribal Council business . . .”
I closed my eyes, stammered the particulars to Ralph’s machine: 11:00 A.M., Boswell Avenue Cemetery, a twenty-minute service. “No big deal if you can’t make it,” I said. “It’s just that . . . Well, if you want to come . . .” Hanging up, I asked myself what the hell I was shaking for. I’d just been talking to a goddamned answering machine.
But I wasn’t lucky enough to get the machine when I called Dessa. He answered. The potter. “Eleven?” he said. “Okay, I’ll tell her. Anything else we can do?”
I closed my eyes. Thought: yeah, stop saying we. “Uh-uh. Thanks. Nope.”
There was a three- or four-second pause where “Goodbye” should have been. Dan the Man was the first to break the silence. “I . . . I lost one of my brothers,” he said. “Six years ago now. Motorcycle accident.”
He’d lost one of his brothers? I wasn’t even whole anymore.
“My brother Jeff,” he said. “He and I were pretty tight, too.” I closed my eyes. Promised myself this would be over in another ten seconds. “Gone for good: it’s tough, man. Out of the five of us, Jeff was the only one who’d ever pick up the phone, find out if you were still breathing. . . . Well, you hang in there. That’s all I’m trying to say. You want her to call you back when she gets home?”
No need, I said. She could if she wanted to.
After I hung up, I ripped up that index card list of names and numbers. Tore the pieces into smaller pieces. At least that part was over. Halfway across the kitchen, I stopped, doubled over by it.
Gone for good.
If your twin was dead, were you still a twin?
It was sunny the morning of the funeral—warm for April, but windy. Someone had planted red and white tulips in front of the headstone. Dessa, maybe? I knew she came out to the cemetery pretty regularly to visit Angela’s grave, across the street in the children’s section. Not me. For me, that cemetery was like a land-mine field. Angela, Ma, my grandparents. And now my brother, too.
“JESUS, MEEK AND HUMBLE, MAKE MY HEART LIKE UNTO THINE.” CONCETTINA TEMPESTA BIRDSEY, 1916–1987 RAYMOND ALVAH BIRDSEY, 1923– THOMAS JOSEPH BIRDSEY, 1949–
The headstone was midsized, salt and pepper granite. Ray and Ma had bought the plot right after she got sick, I remember. She’d called me afterward. Said they figured I might marry again—that I’d probably want to make my own arrangements—but she needed to have Thomas taken care of. She was going to have Thomas buried with her.
The wind kept swaying those tulips, bending them one way, then the other way, ding-donging the heads together. A late frost would zap those mothers.
False Teeth had said six pallbearers was the usual but that we could make do with four. That’s what we did: made do. Ray, me, Leo, and Mr. Anthony from across the street. The casket was heavier than I thought it’d be. Toward the end, Thomas had outweighed me by fifty or sixty pounds. All that starchy food and sedative. All that sitting around down at Hatch.
Most everyone I’d invited showed up. Leo and Angie (minus the kids), Jerry Martineau, the Anthonys. . . . Sam and Vera Jacobs came. The Jacobses—husband and wife cooks down at Settle—had always been good to my brother. Cards on his birthday and Christmas, that kind of thing. Thomas had kept them all. I found twenty or thirty of them, dated and bound together with an elastic in a box with his other stuff. So I’d put the Jacobses on my list. If he’d kept those cards, they must have meant something. Right?
Dessa was a no-show. Dessa and Ralph Drinkwater. Well, I told myself, what goes around comes around. Here’s your personal history coming back to kick you in the teeth, Dominick. You betrayed both of them. Gave him up that night at the state police barracks. Gave your grieving wife up every night you’d wake up and hear her sobbing down the hall and just lie there. Not get out of bed. Not go to her, because it hurt too much. . . . Survival of the fittest, Birdsey: this was what it got you down the line.
The priest was goofy—not one of the regulars over at St. Mary’s, but someone they’d had to dig up from Danielson. I felt bad for Ray. He’d been volunteering over at St. Anthony’s for more than twenty years—plumbing, electrical work, yard work every spring and fall. But not one of those three priests could wiggle out of his “previous commitment.” . . . Father LaVie, this guy’s name was. He reminded me of someone—I couldn’t quite think of who. He’d sounded young over the phone, but then, in person, he wasn’t young. Late fifties, maybe? Early sixties? Shows up at the cemetery wearing sandals instead of shoes and socks. What was that all about? Trying to play Jesus or something? Like I said, it was warm for April, but it wasn’t that warm.
It hurt, though, whether I deserved it or not: Dessa�
�s not being there. All during the service, I kept waiting for her late arrival—kept picturing in my head how I’d gesture her over next to me when she got there. Hold her hand, maybe. Because our history was more than just the crash-and-burn ending. And because Thomas had loved her, too. “Dessa’s my very, very, VERY best friend,” he used to say. He told me that lots of times. . . . A car door slammed in the middle of things, and I thought, here she is. Here’s Dess. But it was Lisa Sheffer, hustling down the hill, her trenchcoat flapping behind her. Good old Sheffer, late as usual.
Father LaVie. Father Life. . . . He performed that hocus-pocus they do with the incense, fed us the usual about ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Read us some Scripture. Anything special you’d like? he had asked me over the phone. No, I’d said. Whatever he thought might be appropriate. And what he’d come up with was that same psalm I’d heard Thomas recite a hundred times. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. In verdant pastures He gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me. . . .”
Father LaVie had asked me about Ma. Breast cancer, I’d said. Told him how she used to worry herself sick about what was going to happen to Thomas after she died. “They were close?” Father LaVie had asked. “Like two peas in a pod,” I’d said. Two peas in a pod, two coffins in the ground. Mrs. Calabash and Mrs. Floon. . . .
Near the end of the service, Father LaVie closed his prayer book and put his hand on Thomas’s casket. Made us a Walt Disney ending: Thomas and Ma, reunited in Heaven, all of their burdens lifted. He smiled over at me, and I smiled back, thinking: George Carlin. That’s who he reminds me of. . . . Thinking: Free at last! Free at last! They’re “playing nice” in Heaven!