by Lisa Taddeo
The place was all pine, even the ceiling, and overstuffed with furniture and Persian rugs from the larger house I now occupied, which did indeed make it feel cozy. But the cozy feeling lent itself to some suggestion of dread. Perhaps because it reminded me of the Poconos. It was cozy there, too. Cozy like the first few minutes of a horror movie.
Lenny had a twelve-inch television on a gloomy TV stand and the bedroom was behind an accordion partition. There was a pipe and packets of vanilla-flavored tobacco. Every wall was covered in shelves for all of his books. I pictured River building the place, his arms and neck beading sweat in the canyon sun.
—Please, sit, he said, indicating a corduroy recliner.
—It’s very quiet on this side of the rock. Do you hear the coyotes at night?
—I only hear what I want to, he said, victoriously tapping a hearing aid.
When he scratched his head the watch fell down to the middle of his skinny arm. Now that I knew it had worth, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. He caught me looking. My face grew hot and I looked away, focusing my eyes on his china cabinet. I saw he had a set of Laboratorio Paravicini plates. My mother had only one, a dinner plate, that she cherished. Had I broken it, I wonder if she’d have hit me. She never hit me. I would have been okay with being hit.
—Paravicini, I said.
He nodded, impressed, which enraged me.
—We had them, growing up, I said, thinking of the lone plate at the top of our credenza, the way it shone. It never had a lick of food on it. I sold it at the house sale, along with nearly everything.
—Your family is from Italy.
—My mother was, yes. I was born there.
—Your mother is passed? he asked, without enough kindness.
I nodded. There was a spider unspooling from a web above Lenny’s head. I didn’t say anything, even when the spider was nearly on his nose.
—And your father?
—As well.
—I’m sorry. Recently?
—No.
—You were young?
—Quite.
—Dear God, child. What happened?
—An accident.
—Motor vehicle?
—No. In the home.
—A fire?
—Leonard, where is your chamomile collection? I’m sure you have one. I could make you some tea if you would shut the fuck up.
I was teasing and he smiled. Now that I knew he had a disease, I’d softened to him, but just a bit.
—I got the drug. L-dopa. How do you like that name? It sounds like a female drug lord. He also gave me Razadyne to slow down the dementia. Which sounds like a character in one of those senseless science fiction books that Lenore liked.
—Lenore read science fiction? I asked. I rose to make the tea. There was a fine bone-china teapot on the stove, which was meticulously clean, the burners lined with foil.
—Yes, Lenny snapped. Lenore was a great reader. A varied reader. Do you think a man like me could have been with someone who didn’t read?
—How do you feel with the drugs?
—It’ll take several weeks before they’re metabolized into my system, before we’ll see results. He walked to the couch and sat down. He looked like he needed to be rehydrated, like a dried sorrel. I might pump some oily water into him and suddenly he would be able to jump on trampolines again.
—You’re fond of that dress, aren’t you?
I brought Lenny his tea. He blew across its brown surface.
The white mug shook in his hand. He had a collection of those as well. I would never have a collection of anything. I had only one coffee cup. It said MY SAFE WORD IS WINE in loopy print. Vic had bought it for me on a family vacation to Napa Valley. He also brought back several bottles from his favorite vineyards. Everywhere he went, something reminded him of me. I drank the most expensive bottle—a silky grenache—one Monday while I was preparing to see Big Sky. I was delirious that evening with fear and excitement. I was so turned on that sitting on a bicycle seat would have made me come.
—Leonard, I said, to endear him to me.
—Yes?
—May I ask you a question? Why did you never have children?
—Why didn’t you? he replied.
Something cracked inside my skull.
—It’s not too late for me, I said.
—It’s not too late for me, either, he said.
I looked at him and smiled like he was irrelevant and half dead.
—We wanted to, Leonard said finally. Lenore wasn’t barren. But she was. Challenged.
—How do you know it wasn’t you?
I noticed that he was shaking all over, so I picked up the throw from his couch and draped it around his shoulders.
—Goddamn Parkinson’s, he said. Of all fucking things, Parkinson’s. I’d have been fine with cancer. The all-over kind.
—I didn’t mean to be coarse, I said.
—Of course you did, dear. It’s all right. I know it isn’t easy for you. The past is all over your face.
He rose and the throw fell from his shoulders. I picked it up as he crossed the short room. He turned to see if I was looking, but I pretended to have my eyes on the blanket as I folded it. I watched him quickly open a small black door in the wall and even more quickly toggle a combination lock. Then I heard a click, a jingle, and the little door shut. He turned back to me nervously.
—I have a taste in my mouth, he said. He walked back to the couch. I noticed what I had already guessed would be true—the watch was gone from his wrist.
—A bad one?
—Like. Copper.
—Decomposition? I asked sweetly.
—I wish I didn’t like cruel women.
—Perhaps you’d like a mint.
—It’s no use. I’m sorry you lost your parents too young.
—Thank you, Lenny.
—I like it better when you call me Leonard. But that’s another sad, old story.
—Lenny, I said, thank you.
13
I DREAMED, THAT NIGHT, OF the Poconos. I didn’t dream; that’s not accurate. I closed my eyes and played the reels that couldn’t exist in daytime.
My parents and I were out to dinner with a couple and their adolescent son, the Ciccones. We dined with this family often when we were in the Poconos—they had a home near ours, larger though tacky, with shiny black furniture and gold accents—but there was one night I remembered in particular.
The boy’s name was Joseph Jr. and he was about my age though there was nothing romantic or even friendly between us. He was the type to sling cats down stairwells. Whenever I’ve wondered what rapists were like as children, I think of Joseph Jr., his black fleck eyes across a table from me.
Joseph’s mother, Evelyn, was plump, with very dark, big hair. Her husband, Joseph Sr., was an oral surgeon. He, too, had inky hair, plus a long, swollen chin and a sexuality that has always stayed with me. We begin to form our opinions of sex very young, and for me, Joseph Sr. maintains a looming post.
I suppose it was on account of my mother, Pia, who had an inner tube of extra skin around her waist from her cesarean section but otherwise dripped with sex. Her breasts, I’ve mentioned before, were audaciously large and white.
We were sitting down at a Shaker-style table between the bar and the fireplace. A broomstick hung from the brick wall beside the fireplace alongside family pictures of the owners. Over the mantel was that reproduction of the bull. It had frightened me until just that summer.
My parents didn’t drink much. My mother generally had a light beer with dinner and my father drank red wine but never more than a glass or two. Sometimes he had a Bloody Mary with a plate of raw clams. Joe and Evelyn, on the other hand, drank vodka cocktails. I remember Evelyn’s big fingers sliding pimiento-stuffed olives off of toothpicks. They both had rumbling laughs. All four adults smoked cigarettes and the men would light the women’s, whichever woman was closest.
This night I was seated next to my mother, and J
oseph Sr. was on her other side. My father sat across from me, with Evelyn beside him and Joe Jr. beside her. I was always beside my mother. It was imperative that I could smell her and taste her food at will.
She was wearing a salmon-colored sundress with a belt of tiny tin leaves. A natural brunette, she dyed her hair blond and curled it twice a week so it was golden and spiraled. She wore these huge red-rimmed eyeglasses and a pretty shade of coral lipstick. All of her lipsticks were drugstore brands and all their tips were ground down to flattish mounds. She took out her soft pack of Marlboro Reds, and Joseph Sr. got ready with the lighter.
—Mariapia, he said, to get her attention. This was the name spelled on the gold necklace she wore. She’d been Pia in Italy, but after coming to the States she’d begun to go by Maria. It was easier for Americans to understand. After a while she started missing her real name, but because too many people at that point knew her as Maria, she couldn’t simply and quickly change it back. My father got her a Mariapia necklace to ease the transition. Joseph Sr., who would have met her as Maria, was poking fun, flirtatiously.
My mother laughed. Even her laugh had a heavy accent. She turned away from me and toward Joseph Sr. with the cigarette between her lips. His Zippo had a pinup girl on it. Long brown hair with bangs and a pink bikini. My youth was marked by such images—seeing them on playing cards or drawn crudely on bathroom stalls. It’s possible I was just poised to notice them.
My father was telling the story of a friend of his, an Indian doctor named Madan. His wife, Barbara, who suspected him of having an affair, had placed a tape recorder in his big black Mercedes. My father was speaking in the conspiratorial and hushed tone he used when he was telling a story around me that wasn’t suitable for children.
It still hurts me to even think of my father’s face. He was short and he had a big nose and he was partially balding even then, in his early forties. But he was incredibly magnetic. He was always having a good time, always laughing, but he was also responsible. He could fix anything on a car or in a house. And because he was a doctor, he could save your life. In terms of his being a father, I know I am biased, but I can’t imagine a man loving his daughter more than he loved me. Whenever I walked into the ocean—even just a few feet in—every time I turned around, I could count on him to be propped up on his elbows, watching. He had a smile on his face but really he was just waiting to save me.
—So? said Evelyn. Did she catch him?
My father took a noisy drag of his cigarette. Joe Jr. was singeing pieces of dinner roll over the flame of a votive candle. I saw my mother listening to something Joseph Sr. was whispering. My father saw this, too. But the smile never left his face. I sidled closer to my mother. She’d put on her silky navy blazer with the pussy bow. I loved the feeling of her warm flesh through dainty material. She smelled like smoke and L’air du Temps. I pressed close to her to let her know I was there.
—Oh, she got him, my father said with a crooked smile on his face. She really got him.
For years afterward I would try to make sense of that. How had Madan’s wife gotten him? What did she pick up on the tape recorder? Was it the noises of sex? How did she know the other woman would be in the car with her husband? For a very long time, whenever I saw a Mercedes, I would imagine black panties stuffed into glove compartments and silver tape recorders slipped under passenger seats, their tiny red lights blinking.
The waitress brought a bruschetta appetizer to the table, plus a plate of too-thick mozzarella sticks for Joe Jr. and me. I didn’t like food meant for children. I always wanted to eat whatever my mother was eating; this included kidneys in mustard sauce, which she’d ordered a few times in Little Italy. The kidneys smelled like urine, tangy and old, but there was something about the way my mother held her fork, the way she enjoyed food, not voraciously, like my father, but picky and graceful.
I watched her select a piece of the bruschetta, drizzled with condensed balsamic vinegar. She had very white teeth and opened her mouth wide so as not to disturb her lipstick. I watched Joseph Sr. watch her. There were always at least two cigarettes lit at any moment, even when everybody was eating. It made those dinners last a long time. Unlike me, Joe Jr. ignored the adults and entertained himself. He had a mini pinball game and another little game box wherein the objective was to get miniature marbles into certain holes. He didn’t share any of his toys, but I didn’t care. I had both my parents to look after. That whole year had been tricky; I could tell there was something I didn’t know, and I felt I couldn’t miss a moment of observation.
What followed, I didn’t fully grasp at the time; like most of childhood, some darkness is downloaded, but you can’t decode it until later—after losing your virginity, for example. My father’s beeper went off. He left to call his answering service back. For short, it was service. So that any time I picked up the phone at home and it was for my father, I’d yell, Daddy, service!
The waitress came around to take our dinner order. My mother ordered the prime rib for my father. He cherished all kinds of meat except chicken. He liked his steaks bloody and once I saw him scoop some raw meat loaf filling into his mouth from a big glass bowl in the refrigerator.
I waited to hear my mother’s order, a pollo alla Valdostana, which I’d tried once and didn’t like. Then I ordered the surf and turf off the regular adult menu. Evelyn looked at my mother.
—Kid has expensive taste.
Joseph Sr. was looking at my mother like she was a prime rib. I have always wondered why men don’t do a better job of turning off their eyes.
My father came back to the table. The color was gone from his face. I’d never seen him without a smile or an expression of anger at my failure to listen to my mother. I had never seen anything in between. There was a mist of sweat on his forehead.
—Mimi, my mother said, what is it?
My father shook his head.
—I have to go, he said.
My mother stood and went to him. I heard him, I heard what he said. As usual, everybody underestimated how tuned in I was.
—My mother was raped, he said.
—What!
My mother, with her accent, had a way of saying that word. It sounded like waht! It had an exclamation mark even when she didn’t mean for one.
I saw that Joseph Sr. heard him, too. My parents often spoke Italian to each other, specifically when they didn’t want someone else to hear them, and I did wonder why my father hadn’t communicated the news in Italian. Perhaps the word in Italian, stupro, sickened him too much. The Italian word was more carnal, more visual. Rape, by contrast, sounded like something you might eventually lock away in an aluminum drawer.
I listened as they spoke for another minute. The details were filmy. I merged them with my own experience of my grandparents’ house to create the scene. My grandparents lived in a part of East Orange that used to be a nice neighborhood but now had weeds growing in the cracks of the street. In the middle of the afternoon my grandmother let a man into the house, a man she thought was a technician of some sort, and he raped her on the floral couch where their Doberman regularly pissed. He left with her wallet, her wedding ring, and her gold crucifix. My grandmother was seventy-two years old at the time. She wasn’t slim and she wore gaudy makeup on her fleshy face. Peach lipstick that settled into the wrinkles of her lips, powdery blue eyeshadow on the withered lids of her eyes. Their whole house smelled like urine. The rapist struck her once, hard, on the face. The Doberman and the German shepherd were outside, in the fenced yard. I wondered about the cats. They had five cats in that house. She had a bruise under one eye. She’d cleaned herself up before the police came. She’d inquired with the police as to whether there was a way they could keep it from her husband. My grandfather was a cold, small, stern, racist man. In retrospect I believe he was evil. He called Black men coloreds in polite company and worse in his own home. My grandmother’s legs were big; her calves were like columns. She wore nude pantyhose, even in the summer, which made the s
kin on her legs look the color of uncooked chicken breasts, an unsettling pinkish white.
My father would be driving the two hours to New Jersey alone. He told my mother he would be back by morning. He came toward the table, kissed me on the forehead. He left his American Express on the table; my mother didn’t carry any cards of her own. He didn’t say goodbye to Joseph Sr. and Evelyn. I’d never seen him care less for other people.
After he left, Joseph Sr. asked my mother what had happened. Evelyn leaned forward like her type does, lovers of gossip.
My mother sketched the story quietly, saying the word rape even quieter, trying to make sense of it herself.
Joseph Sr. let out something like a laugh. A disbelieving guffaw.
—Who in the hell would want to rape an old bag!
Evelyn smiled despite herself and said, Hush, Joe!
My mother somewhat nodded, sharing the energy of the table’s disbelief. I felt she should have taken me home, walked away from these monsters. But she didn’t. She took out another cigarette. She gazed at the fireplace. Joseph Sr. lit her cigarette. Joseph Jr. selected from his rucksack a different palm-size game.
The waitress brought the big charcoal tray of our food. There was some talk about my father’s prime rib, and my mother told Joe and Evelyn they could have it wrapped and take it back to their house. Evelyn wondered if they should send it back to the kitchen; it was too rare for her taste. I looked up at the big bull over the mantel, his horns and teeth that, until recently, had the power to make me wet my pants. I stared at him and wished he were as real as I used to think he was. I prayed for him to animate suddenly and rip the rest of his body through the wall and gore Joseph Sr., make a rhubarb pie out of his wide dentist chest.
—Eat your food, my mother said to me. That was all she said to me for the rest of the meal.
I still remember the cheap hash marks on my slab of filet mignon and the lobster tail beside it. I knocked over the metal dish of clarified butter, but nobody saw, and I knew I couldn’t ask for another.