by John Fante
“Stop it, Papa.”
“I won’t stop it. I want to know, because I’m their Grandpa: Where’s Nicky? Where’s Philomena?”
“How do I know where they are?”
Joyce went over to Papa and sat down beside him. She spoke quietly, holding his big red paw. “There haven’t been any others, Papa Fante. Really and truly.”
This was not the way to handle him, for he could wallow in sentimentality. Sure enough, he began to get grief-stricken, his chin jerking, his eyes suddenly wet. I tried to appeal to Joyce with my eyes. It was true that I had opposed pregnancy until we could afford it. It was also true that she had been willing to risk it without money. But I had never thought of those times as distinct human entities, or given them names, those unconceived babies, and now in Joyce’s face I saw the loss, the small despair, since Papa had stated it in that sentimental fashion.
“I am talking with my blood,” Papa continued. “There’s two I’ll never see, but they’re here, someplace, and their Grandpa’s not feeling so good, because he can’t buy them ice cream cones.”
He began to weep, poking his big knuckles into his eyes and pushing the tears away. He took another swig from the bottle and stood up, a mixture of many moods, wiping his mouth, puffing his cigar, crying, savoring the wine, pleased with his role of a despairing grandfather, yet brokenhearted because the babies were not present. Father John put an arm around him, hugging him with rough affection. They grumbled something of a farewell in Italian and Papa staggered upstairs to sleep off the wine, his chin out, his chest out, bravely up the stairs to his room, triumphantly up the stairs.
We were silent a moment. Joyce dabbed her eyes and nose with a handkerchief.
“It’s the wine,” I explained. ‘The wine makes him very sentimental.”
“And you?” the priest asked.
I shrugged. “I do the best I can.”
“I wonder…”
He had to leave us. Papa had saddened him. I helped him into his black serge coat and the three of us went outside and across the lawn to his car. We shook hands.
“Watch your language around your father,” he cautioned. “He’s very sensitive.”
“I know.”
“I want you back in the Church.”
“I’ll try, Father.”
We watched him drive away, the car entering Wilshire Boulevard, the roar of the late afternoon traffic like a great river in the spring. We did not speak as we walked back to the house. She came into the kitchen after me, and I got out some ice cubes for a drink. In silence she watched me mix some Martinis.
“Does he help you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“He’ll never be a bishop. Or even a monsignor.”
“But he’s really a saint. Simple, honest, never doubting.”
“Simple, indeed.”
“He has the faith.”
“I wonder where he got his theology.”
She sighed. “I admit it. Theology does give him some trouble. He can’t explain the Mystical Body of Christ. And he doesn’t know it, but he’s really a Calvinist, and believes in predestination. All week long I’ve tried to straighten him out, but I can’t make him understand.”
Blessed be the womb that bears my son!
I kissed her and we had a Martini. She drank thoughtfully, something disturbing her. It was nearly dark now. She took her drink into the living room. In a while I went there too, looking for her in the shadowy room. She sat quietly near the window. I was surprised to find her crying softly.
“What is it, darling?”
“Your father’s right about the little boy and the little girl. Oh, why didn’t we have them?”
SIX
AFTER TWO WEEKS, Papa decided to begin work on the house. It was a most welcome decision. We were sick of the crude boards covering the hole in the kitchen floor. Dank and macabre smells seeped from the cracks, and everybody stumbled over the rough edges. The cleaning woman splintered her hand and refused to scrub the floor until it was repaired. Evil things came out of that hole. Every morning the first person entering the kitchen was startled by a frantic flight of clumsy brown bugs. Joyce called the Health Department and treatment was prescribed. But the DDT only staggered them, so that they rolled on their broad backs and gleefully wiggled their legs. In the night you could almost hear them down there, spraying themselves in bestial abandon.
Papa was usually the first up each morning, fixing his own breakfast but brewing enough coffee for all. He broke fast with a glass of claret in which floated a raw egg. This delicacy looked like a yellow eye pickled in vinegar. Joyce once saw him down this tidbit, and it was the first and only time she had morning sickness. Papa saved the eggshells for the coffee. They were supposed to improve the taste. We were tireless experimenters in coffee, Joyce and I. Over the years we had tried everything, but we liked the drip method best. Each morning it was our small ritual to grind fresh coffee beans, add a pinch of salt, and pour on very hot but not boiling water. It was an unfailing method. You got what you wanted every time: good coffee.
Papa’s formula was to scoop up fistfuls of ground coffee, dump them into a pot, and let them cook. Into this brew he tossed the eggshells and let it boil some more, producing a kind of coffee soup. It was ferocious coffee, eating up fresh cream with scarcely any change in color. When you stirred it up, your spoon stumbled over gravel and suspicious minutiae came to the top and sank again. Cooked egg white floated before your eyes, and you kept spitting out chips of eggshell. It was, in short, a hell of a mess. We sipped it dutifully, no more than a gesture, and I later had good coffee in my office. It was most inconvenient for Joyce. She loved coffee, and in order to get it she had to rush downstairs before Papa got there.
That morning Papa was in his working clothes. These consisted of the same things he wore on previous days, but without the necktie. There could be no doubt that he was stripped for action. His tool kit lay open on the back porch, a pencil was stuck behind his ear, and he stood before the patched hole with a mason’s ruler in his hand. He seemed in deep thought, squinting at the floor through cigar smoke. We smiled gratefully. At long last the job was to be done.
It was no time to speak, each of us conscious of the importance of that moment. He had made the coffee, its burnt essence penetrating the air. Joyce got cups and saucers and set them down without a sound. Papa opened his ruler and made some obscure measurements. He removed his cigar, bit off a loose fragment, and said aloud, to himself, “Must be two-by-tens.” He closed the mason’s ruler. “Got to be two-by-tens.”
“You mean the joists, Papa?” I asked.
It did something to the purity of his thought. He turned slowly.
“I ever tell you how to write a story?”
“No, Papa.”
“So mind your own business.”
He went out to his tool kit and returned with a hammer and a short crowbar. There was a shriek of nails as he ripped off a couple of temporary boards. He lay flat on his stomach and his head disappeared inside the hole. The view proved unsatisfactory. He tore off two more boards. Now he dropped down to the ground under the house. For three or four minutes he disappeared entirely.
“He knows his business,” I whispered.
“He seems very thorough.”
When he emerged, cobwebs were draped about his hat and cigar, and he climbed out, spluttering and pawing his face.
“Two-by-twelves,” he said. “Wonder why?”
“You mean the joists, Papa?”
He stared at me.
“You want to stay here and fix the floor, while I go and write the story?”
“I just asked, Papa.”
He turned away, his eyes in a vague stare. “Two-by-tens is just as good. Just raise the piers a little. Wonder why he did it?”
“Did what, Papa?”
Without answering, he walked to the window and looked out into the driveway.
“Two-by-twelves? Hell, what’s the matter with four-by-f
ours?”
He ducked out on the back porch and returned with a hammer. He replaced the boards over the hole and nailed them down. Gathering his tools, he dumped them into the kit. Then he disappeared into the back yard. When I went out to the garage, ready to drive to work, I found him seated under the umbrella. He rubbed his chin and seemed deeply disturbed.
“Everything okay, Papa?”
He spat a bit of cigar from his mouth.
“Go write your story, kid.”
Early in the afternoon Joyce phoned.
“We’ve a surprise for you.”
But I was not surprised, for I knew how this man worked. Suddenly, dramatically, he got things done.
“The best pair of hands in California,” I said.
“He’s a genius.”
No—he was not a genius, and yet there were qualities of genius about him, a dynamic brilliance that spawned after careful cogitation. Fifty years in the building trade had made him the best man in the business. Driving home, I remembered how he had stood in the kitchen, absorbed in thought, impatient with my questions. It had worried me not a little. Was the termite damage greater than I imagined? Now it was clear that I had exaggerated the destruction. Quickly, deftly, in a burst of energy, he had finished the job, and the warmth of Joyce’s voice told me she was well pleased. Once more I got that old, comfortable feeling about my house and my father. Thank God he was still alive! God grant him many new years upon the earth, and God grant me the chance to show my gratitude and admiration. This was the way I felt as I drove home, locked the garage and hurried into the kitchen by way of the service porch.
The floor had not been repaired. The same rough pine boards covered the hole. Nothing had been changed. But from the front of the house I heard a pounding, the thud of steel crushing plaster. In the living room I found them, Joyce and Papa. They were tearing down the fireplace. Dust billowed from the crashing brick and plaster. They looked insane. Joyce with a hammer, Papa wielding a crowbar, attacking the brick veneer. There was a scarf around Joyce’s hair, dust and dirt smeared her face. She wore green silk maternity slacks and a yellow blouse, and her face was hot and red with effort. Papa worked methodically, the cigar in his jaws, his crowbar easing brick out of the wall and dumping them to the floor. The furniture had been moved back and covered. A piece of canvas protected the floor.
Then Joyce saw me.
“Hello,” she cried.
“What’s going on around here?”
“We’re building a new fireplace.”
“What for?”
I stared at the wreckage. The old fireplace, for all its simplicity, had been adequate. I had tested it once and it had burned well, without smoke. It had not been a work of art but it suited the living room.
“There’s nothing wrong with that fireplace.”
Joyce brushed the dust from her clothes. “I’ve always hated it. From the day I laid eyes on it.”
“But you should have talked to me first.”
“Why? It had to be done.”
“It didn’t had to be done.”
“It’s got to come down,” Papa said.
“What’s wrong with it?”
He nodded at Joyce’s dust-covered bump. “Ask my grandson there. He don’t want no Los Angeles fireplace. He wants a fireplace his Grandpa built.”
Chattering with excitement, Joyce showed me the plans Papa had drawn on a long sheet of foolscap. It was to be a massive hearth, six feet high and ten feet broad, constructed of thin strips of Arizona flagstone. Black mortar would fill the joints. A thick unbroken stone would form the mantelpiece. According to the specifications, it was exactly twice the size of the fireplace they were demolishing. It was truly magnificent. It belonged in a Swiss chalet, a hunting lodge, or an Elks’ Club.
“But you’ll have to tear out part of the wall too,” I said.
“You leave that to me,” Papa said.
Joyce’s arms went out to it.
“It’s going to be lovely. So big and handsome. We’ll be so warm and cozy.”
“Great,” I said. “Specially when the temperature drops to twenty-five below zero, and eighteen feet of snow paralyzes the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard.”
“For my grandson,” Papa said dreamily. “It’ll last a thousand years. Nothing in the world’s gonna knock down that fireplace. Last longer than anything in Los Angeles.”
I pictured the scene, not a thousand years hence, but only ten or fifteen, when our house would doubtless be torn down to make room for a parking lot, cars driving in and out, but always around Papa’s indestructible fireplace, because it defied all efforts to tear it down.
“Papa,” I said. “When you gonna fix that hole in the kitchen floor?”
“That’s no job for me. Get a carpenter.”
I was opposed to this thing. There was a kind of insanity about it. There followed worrisome days. The materials arrived. They were dumped on the front lawn, four tons of flagstone, a mountain of sand, a pile of brick, sacks of cement, pieces of lumber. Troubled days, big holes in my house, a pregnant wife who now fancied herself a hod carrier, and an old man with a passion for building.
It was the mortar that fascinated her. Papa built a box in which to mix it: lime, cement, sand and black coloring. She could not resist the stuff. She bought canvas gloves and a wide-brimmed Mexican hat. All day long she prodded the mortar with a hoe, kneading it, stroking it, adding water. She was like a child making mud pies. It splattered her shoes, soiled her slacks. A pregnant woman should not mix mortar. You will not find it recommended in any of the books. I cautioned her against overdoing it. She scoffed. She denied it. But the stuff left telltale black spots on her sandals, on her elbows, in her hair. Even with the canvas gloves she developed a blister on her thumb.
“I burned it at the stove,” she lied.
Papa did the heavy work. He mixed the mortar, carried it to the fireplace in buckets, dumped it on the mortar board. He cut the stones, piled them into a wheelbarrow and trucked them to the fireplace. He handled the brick. But she was always fooling around. Certain stones she liked; big or small, she carried them to the job. They were pretty stones, she said, and she wanted them to show. But they were heavy, and she pulled them, dragged them, tried to lift them. Then back to the mortar.
“Give it a little water, Miss Joyce.”
She gave it a little water, then she hoed it, smoothed it. Or she sat and watched him work, and he asked for things.
“Hammer.”
“Level.”
“Trowel.”
One day at noon I caught her red-handed in the front yard, shoveling sand into the mortar box. She could not deny it because she wasn’t ten feet in front of me, the shovel in her hands, drops of perspiration clinging to her temples. I took the shovel away from her.
“Stop behaving like a fool.”
She tossed her chin and sailed into the house. I went after her. She stood at the fireplace, her arms folded, her eyes guilty and away from me.
“Keep this up and you’ll have a miscarriage.”
“Who’s miscarriage?” Papa said.
“I don’t want her lifting things, shoveling things.”
“Won’t hurt her.”
“I’m not taking any chances.”
“Won’t hurt her. Back in Abruzzi, woman works right up to the last day, washing clothes, cleaning house, fixing the land. Good for mother. Keeps the muscles strong.”
She turned to him.
“All it needed was a little sand, Papa. Just a shovel or two.”
“Shovel or two won’t hurt nothing.” He glanced at her, his eyes going soft and pleased.
“Nice little boy. Grandpa’s boy.”
“Look, Papa. She’s my wife. She’ll ruin her health. This isn’t Italy. She’s not used to it.”
“And he’s my grandson. And he’s going to be fine.”
They were ranged against me, and a wall separated us, a fireplace. I went to see her in the quiet of the night, tiptoe
ing past the room out of which Papa’s snores came like a bomb whistle. She was glassy-eyed from canon law, startled at my presence, and back to her book again.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
“It won’t be long now.”
Silence.
“I don’t care any more,” I said. “Boy or girl, it suits me fine.”
Silence.
“You’ve got to be very careful from now on.”
She put the book aside, took off her reading glasses and stared at me oddly.
“If I should die, you won’t be able to marry my sister.”
“I don’t want to marry your sister.”
“She’s very attractive. But you’ll never be able to have her. Never. It’s the law of the Church.”
“But I’m not interested in your sister.”
“It wouldn’t do you any good, even if you were.”
“But I’m not.”
“It’s a very good law. A very wise law.”
“What makes you think you’re going to die?”
“I’m not going to die. I said, if I should die.”
Ominous words. Was there some premonition of tragedy within the depths of her? What stirrings in the secret places of her psyche prompted her to become fascinated by this phase of Church law? Carefully I considered the situation. My thought was of Dr. Stanley. If we had not pestered him so much in the past, I would have called him. Alas, too often had we cried wolf. If among my friends there was one mother who could talk to this foolish girl about the folly of lifting things. But I knew no mothers. I knew plenty of wives, but no mothers.
The days of shameful trickery. For I tried to catch her now. Coming home from the office, I drove into the alley from the north instead of the south, hoping to surprise her at the mortar box. Once I parked a block away and walked the remaining distance. That time she was not in the front yard.