Berto's World_Stories

by R. A. Comunale M. D.

  “He is right, Corrado,” Dr. Lipschutz interjected. “No one would believe them.”

  Dr. Agnelli nodded. He gave her a penetrating look.

  “What’s your real name?”

  She sat silent for a moment then mumbled, “Sarah, Sarah Abrams.”

  The dentist's eyes widened, but he said nothing.

  “Do you have any family?”

  Another head shake.

  “Guys, go fetch Miss Abrams' stuff. Lyman, let me use your telephone.”

  A short time later we entered the off-limits building again. Crystal's … I mean Sarah's apartment door was still open. Sal carefully wrapped her few items of clothing in a clean bed sheet, along with some books and toiletry articles. We took a small table, a couple of lamps, and an ironing board and iron. We left the couch—too many six-legged critters were living in it. Some odd dishes, pots, utensils, and canned goods went into another sheet. There was no icebox to empty.

  As we headed outside, I saw that light hanging in the window. I took it down and threw it in the trash.

  We waited about ten minutes, before we heard the clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop of old Mandy. Sal tossed everything on board, and we swung ourselves up to sit next to Giuseppe.

  His bumblebee voice chuckled, “You boys want to ride Mandy?”

  We both said no. My rear end still ached from my last ride.

  He chuckled once more, as he offered Sal a piece of his chewing tobacco. I thought Sal was going to turn green at the sight.

  We unloaded the wagon and climbed the stairs to Dr. Lipschutz's place. He and Dr. Agnelli were sitting in the waiting area.

  “Take stuff to third floor, boys. Door has number 3 on it. I left it open.”

  They headed downstairs.

  We hauled the stuff in. It took each of us three trips, and whenever I returned to the wagon, I saw the two men talking with Giuseppe. He was nodding at whatever they were saying.

  Then Giuseppe left, and we all returned to the office. We found Sarah up and walking around, looking at the furnishings and shaking her head in disapproval. Even with a mouthful of Novocain she mumbled, “When was the last time you dusted this place?”

  Dr. Lipschutz appeared embarrassed, so she muttered, “Oh, never mind.”

  She was still a bruised lump, but her spirit seemed restored by the attention she had received. Sal moved to put his arm around her, but as he called her “Crystal” she corrected him.

  “No, young man, you call me Sarah, Sarah Abrams.”

  Dr. Lipschutz practically clapped his hands in delight.

  Dr. Agnelli also smiled in approval.

  “Sarah, we are getting you some furniture for your room upstairs. It will be here soon. On Monday, I will have one of my nurses take you to the clothing store. You will need some new outfits.”

  She sat down in the dental chair.

  “Why?”

  “Because…” Dr. Lipschutz said quietly.

  We sat there, the older men gently questioning the woman. Where was she from? Why was she there in that building? Did she have any family?

  The effect of the numbing medicine was wearing off, and Sarah's voice was becoming more understandable. I sensed that she was feeling the pain but did not want to admit it. I glanced at Dr. Agnelli, and he understood my unspoken question.

  Sarah tried answering, but the pain in her jaw was obvious.

  “Miss Abrams, I think Dr. Lipschutz has some codeine tablets here. You’d better take one now, before the pain gets worse.”

  “Yah, yah, I will get the codeine for you, Sarah.”

  He hurried to his cabinet, unlocked it, and took out a brown bottle. He unscrewed the top, shook out two pills into his hand and offered them to her.

  “Here, take, I will get water.”

  She accepted the pills from him and waited while he took a glass from another cabinet. When he saw her staring at it, he held it under running water and rinsed it carefully before filling it. Then he handed it to her.

  It suddenly occurred to me that their eyes were fixed on each other, even as she popped the pills in her mouth and took a drink.

  I heard Mandy's clip-clop once more and looked out the window. Giuseppe and his wagon were out front, now loaded with bed frame, mattress, dressers, chairs and more.

  “Looks like we got some more stuff to lug,” Sal groaned.

  We did. I have to admit I was sore after we were done, though it didn’t seem to faze Sal.

  Soon the five of us surveyed the newly outfitted, third-floor apartment. Giuseppe had even thrown in a Kelvinator refrigerator, the kind with the big coil on top.

  Sarah couldn’t stop crying, as she went from room to room. While we moved the furnishings she put on one of the dresses Sal had bundled inside the sheets. She said she wanted to look better for her “four rescuers.”

  She did—much better.

  After we left Sarah and Dr. Lipschutz in the apartment, Dr. Agnelli offered to treat us at the ice-cream parlor down the block. We readily accepted. Two root beer floats apiece later, and Sal and I were belching competitively, while Dr. Agnelli sat sipping the same glass of water. I wondered why he didn’t join us in the brain-numbing, ice-cold sugar buzzes. I learned why much later.

  Several weeks went by. Out of curiosity I stopped at Dr. Lipschutz’s office one day. The first thing I noticed was a new desk in the waiting room with a flower vase on it. The second was Sarah Abrams sitting behind it answering the telephone.

  Things were considerably cleaner and brighter.

  Just after high-school graduation Sal and I received notes instructing us to go to a particular men's store to be fitted for tuxedos. Picture two Italian boys in monkey suits with yarmulkes on our heads, watching as Sarah Abrams and Lyman Lipschutz stood under the huppah before the rabbi, sipping wine from a glass then dropping it on the floor, and Lyman stomping it into a burst of shards, a symbol of the fragility of happiness.

  I saw in Lyman's eyes the strength of giants. Sarah's eyes shone with the exorcism of Crystal.

  Mazeltov!

  The Cat

  I visited the cemetery that last day.

  Sirius the Dog Star had done its job once again, ushering in August’s typical stifling heat and humidity.

  And my father had disowned me.

  No, I hadn’t disgraced the family. I was just going to medical school and—for reasons he wouldn’t disclose—Papa wanted me to stay at home instead. Mama remained silent during our first father-son, head-to-head confrontation. She wouldn’t tell me why, either.

  I carried my two bags down the stairs of the little apartment where I had grown up. I turned back once to see Mama standing in the open doorway then headed out. I still had some final business to do before taking the bus into Newark to catch the train for Richmond.

  My legs were good then, trained in the daily campus marathon of running to and from university classes in buildings spread far and wide. They weren’t the legs that betray me now with their seven-decades-plus infirmities. Back then they easily carried me, suitcases in hand, past the church-run grammar school I had attended as a child. I followed a familiar path toward the cemetery at the edge of the neighborhood.

  I had to say goodbye.

  Every year I would visit the graves of my childhood friends and cry.

  My conceit would convince me that I cried over the inexplicable loss of young life. The truth that now confronts me is that I shed my tears in defense of my ego, the one that assumed I could save people from themselves. But fifty years of dealing with people in their weakest, most demeaning moments has proved the converse: you can only save yourself.

  Angie’s grave was first on my garden tour. Angelo d’Riggi, dead at age fifteen. He was my first friend. He was there at the beginning, when the dead lady in the river showed me what my life’s work would be.

  Damn, what a salesman or lawyer he would have been! He was a natural-born con man, the smile never leaving his face, his quick-thinking mind always seeking the
angle in every situation.

  I stood above the small marker embedded in the ground. I hadn’t been able to afford anything larger.

  So long, kid.

  I walked halfway around that city of the dead and found my second destination. Tomas Pescatore, dead at sixteen. Shy and bean-pole thin, Tomas was fast as the wind, the fastest kid in the school.

  He just couldn’t outrun a bullet.

  I wonder if he would have become a track star or maybe an athletic coach.

  I hope you’re giving the angels a good run for their money, Tommy.

  It was hot. I was young then, but even the young feel the effects of late summer, and I found myself wearying. I looked around to see if there were any other visitors, then I found a low-rise headstone to sit on. I was sure its occupant, Mr. Deligianis, wouldn’t complain. I placed my two suitcases on the grass then jumped back when something moved.

  It hissed at me in annoyance—seven pounds and three shades of brown and yellow, probably a female by its looks and size. I had disturbed its midday nap in the cool shade of the tombstone.

  Then I noticed the lop ear on its left side, twisted like a corkscrew. I smiled at the telltale genetic giveaway. It was a descendent of old Patches. What a cat he was!

  The female feline regarded me with the total disdain that only a cat can convey then lay down again. I was, as far as it was concerned, dismissed.

  Okay, Miss Cat, I’ll leave you alone. You’re the only one sleeping here who can get up later.

  She watched me through half-closed vertical irises, as I moved away.

  I walked farther down the rows and stopped—someone else was there. In roils of wavering heat rising off the ground it seemed to be a young girl dressed in black skirt and white blouse, and wearing a black beret. As I approached, youth left the face and a familiar voice greeted me.

  “Berto? Is that you, Berto?”

  Sister Grace Roberta!

  Things had changed since I last sat in her sixth-grade class. The long, black, neck-to-ankle gown with white surplice and rectangular wimple serving as a Christian version of a burka—those were gone. Now everything was exposed: the scrawny legs, the surprisingly thin arms and forearms that once wielded a ruler like a whip. Even her face was now visible, a large strawberry birthmark on her left forehead naked to the world.

  The solar glare continued to blur my vision. The sweat dripped from my forehead and fogged my eyeglasses. But there was something familiar in that face, something I couldn’t place. She came forward, the authority figure who had struck fear in the hearts of her peripubertal charges stood before me, the top of her head reaching only my shoulders.

  “Sister Grace?”

  “No, Berto, no need for deference. I have heard good things about you. Oh, don’t look so surprised. I try to follow all my children.”

  I did look at her with surprise and, yes, a bit of ego gratification at being recognized this many years later.

  “So, Berto, what brings you here?”

  She was actually smiling! I had never seen Sister Grace Roberta smile. I had seen anger, frustration, disgust, annoyance, and despair on that face, but not happiness. Maybe the old wimple made it impossible to smile.

  “Wrapping up loose ends, Sister. I’m leaving today. I start medical school on Monday.”

  “I heard, Berto. Congratulations! I always knew you’d be a doctor. You were one of the few thinkers I’ve ever taught.”

  I blushed. Even in the heat I could feel the rising blood in my face. She was one of the few teachers who could embarrass me with praise. Then she smiled again, and almost instantly her look changed to concern and, maybe, empathy.

  “You’re visiting your friends, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  Before this delft miniature I was that sixth-grade boy once more.

  “You’ve already said your goodbyes to Angelo and Tomas, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “Johnny’s not here.”

  I thought of Johnny—Giovanni—and shook my head. I couldn’t travel to Pennsylvania, so I had sent flowers every year.

  She turned and pointed.

  “Salvatore is over there.”

  “Yes, Sister, I know.”

  She nodded, gazing at the little monument about ten feet away.

  “You put up the markers for them all, didn’t you?”

  I looked at the ground, at my shoes, as I once had done when she had caught me talking in class. I couldn’t look at her. My face burned even more.

  “I knew it! You are a romantic! I always had the feeling you and Goethe would have gotten along well, Berto. You were always the brooding Werner in the midst of all those other children. I could understand you being friends with Angelo and Tomas, but why Salvatore?”

  I stared past her and the heat shimmer became an outside theatre screen, and I saw my past life unfold before me.

  “Berto, wait up.”

  I had just left the library. I didn’t feel up to hanging out with the guys that day. Things were changing within me. My body was in one of those early-adolescent growth spurts, and the awkwardness of my cracking voice, and those first few mountainous zits that would appear overnight to embarrass and torture, were sometimes too much to bear.

  “Berto, wait, it’s me.”

  Sal was running full-charge toward me. He had started the downward spiral into adulthood before the rest of us, but he had used those surges of hormones racing through his maturing body to work out and develop his muscles. He towered over my five-foot, one-inch height and was starting to look like King Kong. I think he was the first of our gang to shave.

  Sal was upon me before I could step aside, and he swept me up in a bear hug and swung me in the air like a rag doll. I was on some invisible trampoline as he laughed and easily tossed me above his head one, two, three times and more. Then he put me down.

  Thank God we were friends.

  “Berto, come on, I’m going to work out. It wouldn’t hurt you to try it.”

  He laughed and poked my nascent flabby gut with a finger that felt like it had pushed through to my spine. As I doubled over from the pain, he caught me and apologized over and over. I had to stop him from crying. He just didn’t know his own strength.

  Sal’s father found out how strong his son had become. His mother had been driven off by what we now call severe spousal abuse—battered spouse syndrome. She had left when Sal was only a year old after serving as a punching bag for her husband’s drunken frustrations too long. Neighborhood rumor had it that he had punched her so hard her left eye erupted from its socket. No one knew what had become of her. Some said her husband had killed and buried her. Others said the head injury had made her lose her memory, even the memory of her child.

  Sal soon became a surrogate outlet for his father’s rages. It was not unusual for him to come to school in those earlier grades with bruises and cuts, the kind produced when someone holds up his arms to protect his face. The thing that remains with me to this day is Sal never cried in school. Even with the bruises, his infectious grin would make the other kids laugh, especially when a ruler-wielding nun was punishing him for some minor infraction.

  “Pagliacci?”

  Then Sal’s hormones kicked in, and the whelp learned to hiss and extend his own claws. Halfway through sixth grade I remember seeing Sal’s father stumbling down the street, drunk, with a cast on his left arm and forearm and multiple bruises on his face. When I asked Sal what had happened, he took on a feral look and laughed. I did not question him further.

  As we walked through the neighborhood, on our way to what we euphemistically called the ristorante and social club, Sal spotted the big, gray-striped tomcat sitting under the stoop of the building where the crazy lady lived. The cat was sitting on all fours, slowly pulling apart the body of one of the numerous rats infesting our little luxury community.

  “Hey, look! Old Patches is eating out today!”

  We both laughed, and the dog-sized
head of the big tomcat turned toward us, all the while grinding the rat parts in its jaw. Patches was a neighborhood institution, a feral stray that belonged to no one and everyone in the tenement. He would let you pet him, even stroke his belly. He would roll over and purr loudly and lick your hand. But no one could pick him up. That was the line he drew—except for the Crazy Lady.

  On days when the white-haired, gold-star widow who had lost her son in the Great War made her rounds, she pushed her empty baby carriage through the streets. Patches would come out from under the stoop and allow her to pick him up and place him in it. He would sit there on his haunches like royalty, as the woman wheeled his throne, His Majesty turning his head from side to side to accept the encomiums of passersby. His corkscrew ear, which I later learned was a genetic variant and not a war wound from other felines, would serve as antenna to the ambient sounds of the neighborhood. It was said that he had saved the old woman’s life on numerous occasions when she was distracted while crossing a street. His loud tomcat “mowrll” could be heard even by the hearing impaired.

  This was a rare moment—I actually saw Sal take on a thoughtful look.

  “Berto, that old cat, see … he’s me. Ain’t it the truth? We both gotta make it on our own, don’t we? I gotta feeling my job is gonna be ta beat the shit outta rats.”

  I saw his powerful hands open and close in vice-like clenching.

  I lucked out in eighth grade and got a scholarship to Concepción, the local Catholic high school. Angie, Tomas and Sal continued in the local public school, so I didn’t see as much of them as before. Freshman year saw Angie getting his throat cut one weekend when we did have a chance to hang out together.

  I couldn’t stop the flow of blood. All I could do was hold him, feeling the warmth depart in his agonal death throes.

  I heard later that the kid who had done it was found dead with a broken neck.

  Sophomore year, Tomas was dating and, as it turned out, the girl was considered the chattel of another guy. The three of us—Tomas, the girl, and I—were walking along the bridge escarpment over the river when I heard a shot ring out. Almost in slow motion, I seemed to see the front of his head expand and explode forward as he pitched downward. He was dead before he hit the ground.