[Iris and Lily 01.0 - 03.0] The Complete Series

by Angela Scipioni

  Within the hour, Lily was back in bed, buried under blankets, cupping a mug of hot tea in her hands and writhing in pain. A half-eaten English muffin and a bottle of aspirin sat on the end table.

  “Welcome to New York,” she mumbled, watching news coverage of the storm on TV.

  “They say it’s supposed to let up by lunch time.” Her mother was doing her best to be cheerful, but Lily could hear the little puffs of air. “We’ll still have a few hours to do some sightseeing before we have to head for White Plains.”

  “What channel has the report about when these cramps will let up?”

  “Maybe it will help if you get up and walk around a bit. We’ll find a nice salon, get you that new cut we talked about, then we’ll go see St. Patrick’s, buy ourselves a treat at Macy’s. It’ll be fun!”

  Lily groaned as she grabbed the garbage can from the floor, and threw up half an English muffin into it.

  By midday the storm subsided into gentle flurries. Lily’s cramps refused to follow suit. The streets below were busy with cabs and buses and snow plows, and even a bicycle or two. Pedestrians crammed the sidewalks, all frantically making their way to somewhere. It would take more than an early spring blizzard to slow down New Yorkers.

  Lily dragged herself into the shower and let the hot water run on her lower back, groaning as she struggled to stand upright. She knew from experience that she would have to endure the cramps for a few hours longer, but she couldn’t bear to deprive her mother of showing her around the city.

  Even through the snow and the pain, Lily loved Manhattan. More than the shops and the restaurants and the impressive office buildings, it was the way it felt. There was an energy in the air that lifted her spirits, even if it couldn’t ease her pain. Street vendors offered an array of delights; on one corner you could get a fresh bagel, roasted nuts on the next, a hot dog down the street. Everyone Lily passed seemed doggedly determined about every building they entered, every corner around which they buzzed. Lily was enchanted, despite the homeless blind selling pencils and the stench that rose up from the sewer grates. None of the sights and sounds were familiar, but the experience of them felt natural, comforting even.

  “This looks like a good place for a haircut,” said Lily’s mother, stopping in front of Starz Salon.

  “I don’t know, Mom...”

  “Lily, you are in New York City! You can’t come here and not visit a salon.”

  Distracted by her cramps and the hum of activity around her, Lily agreed. At least it would be an opportunity to sit down for a while. An hour and a half later she found herself looking at her image in a mirror, a sob lodged in her throat, as she managed to say to the stylist, “Yes, it’s great - thank you.”

  Road salt had turned the fluffy white snow into brown slush. Their excursion through the streets of the city brought them past countless plate glass windows, each one reminding Lily of how terribly they had botched up her hair, of how she had wanted to say something when she realized how much they were cutting off, watching her thick brown locks falling into a pile on the floor. But by then it was too late, and she could see her mother behind her in the mirror, glowing with pride at having given Lily this experience. It’ll grow back, Lily told herself. By this time next spring, it will all be grown back.

  “How are the cramps?” her mother asked.

  “I really just wish I could reach in and pull my uterus out,” Lily replied. “I don’t plan on using it anyway.”

  By the time they spun through Macy’s revolving door, Lily’s feet were soaked and freezing, leaving watery footprints as they made their way to the escalator.

  “Let’s go get you a pair of fresh socks,” said her mother. “And maybe a new blouse, for a treat.”

  Lily browsed through the juniors section, reading the price tags on every piece of clothing.

  “Mom, this stuff is expensive.”

  “No, it’s not. Not really. You’re just used to shopping at SaveMart and Two Guys. This is quality stuff. Here - try this on.” She handed Lily a beautiful white blouse, covered in a print of tiny pink rosebuds. It was sheer and light and delicate, with lace around the cuffs.

  “Mom - this is the most beautiful blouse in the whole world.” Lily said, admiring herself in the dressing room mirror.

  “Good. Hand it over.” Lily’s mother stuck her hand through the curtain. Lily reluctantly took the blouse off. Except for the audition clothes Dolores had almost bought her, she couldn’t even remember the last time someone had bought something new to wear, selected just for her. She couldn’t wait to put it on again.

  They allowed two-and-a-half hours to get from the city to the college, but Lily’s relief at having arrived in time was supplanted by panic as they walked around the campus for thirty minutes, searching for the auditorium. The campus map was more confusing than the entire road map of New York State. When they passed the Student Union a second time, Lily broke into a sweat.

  “I don’t think we’re headed in the right direction, Lily.”

  “No kidding, Mom.” Lily snapped. “Why am I the one leading, anyway? You should be reading the map and I should be following you.”

  They arrived at the auditorium five minutes before Lily’s audition appointment. She dashed into the bathroom to pee, check for leaks, and try to make sense out of her hair, which proved futile.

  “Number four hundred and thirty-five,” announced a faceless voice from the seating area. Lily grabbed her audition bag and walked up onto the stage. “Please state your name, and then tell us the name of the song you’re performing for us today.”

  “I’m Lily Capotosti,” stated Lily, in her best stage voice. “And for my musical number I’ll be singing ‘Many a New Day’ from Oklahoma!” The song itself was a bit of stretch for Lily in terms of vocal range, but she had been working with the recording Dolores had made for her at the studio, which had been transposed to take the tune down one whole step, making it possible for Lily to demonstrate the full range of her voice without screeching.

  Just as she reached down into her bag to get the transposed sheet music, the pianist on stage began playing the introduction to the song. Lily looked over in terror. The pianist nodded at her to come in with the vocals, and as Lily scrambled to gain her composure, she realized that the pianist was playing the song in its original key. “If you screw up, screw up big.” That’s what Mr. Howell always used to say, so Lily took a big breath and jumped in, hoping she could get out of her head long enough to forget about the key, forget about the sweat running down her back and dousing her pink rosebuds, forget about the blood that gushed from her each time she hit a high note, forget about the bad haircut and the fact that Dolores was sitting in an urn on cousin Felicia’s mantle.

  Months of rehearsal, days of preparation, hours of hand-wringing anxiety, and in less than fifteen minutes, it was over. Lily could barely remember the song, or the monologues she performed. The experience passed by as though it was someone else standing on stage.

  “Very nice,” said the voice. “Thank you for coming in. We’ll be in touch.”

  The rest of the Friday night crew at Burger King included Cecelia Iacovangelo, a former classmate from Sacred Family, and Danny Harris, who was one year behind Lily and on the Junior Varsity swim team. Working the drive-thru window at night was Lily’s favorite assignment - you got to talk over the headset, and basically work alone, taking orders, making change, pouring drinks, packing food. Lily liked Cecelia and Danny well enough, but she simply didn’t find that she had much in common with them beyond the fact that they all worked together and would slip botched up burger orders to each other instead of throwing them into the garbage like they were supposed to.

  “Welcome to Burger King, may I take your order?” she said into the microphone.

  “Yea, I’ll absolutely take a hamburger, plain - no ketchup, no mustard, nothing - just plain, and an order of onion rings.”

  The car pulled up and the driver rolled down the window, releas
ing a gush of cigarette smoke and disco music into the night air. He gunned the engine of his metallic blue sports car, and then turned down the volume on his eight-track player. He was about Lily’s age, maybe a year or two older. His dark hair was blown dry, and sprayed into a carefully constructed windswept look.

  “Hey, cutie.” He flashed a smile at Lily, his mouth framed by a shadow that was either the result of a lack of hygiene or the inability to grow enough facial hair to constitute an entire moustache.

  “Hi,” Lily replied. Did he just call me cutie? Her heart quickened. She handed him his bag of food and his change, then slid the window closed. He pulled away and Lily opened the window again, watching the tail lights and the word, “Barracuda” as they disappeared into the night. “Nice car,” she said out loud to herself.

  Lily’s job kept her busy and intermittently distracted, but she couldn’t help thinking about the fact that the next day was Saturday, marking two weeks since her audition. The waiting had become excruciating; her decision letter from Purchase would have to arrive soon.

  The drive-thru bell chimed again. “Welcome to Burger King. May I take your order?”

  “Yeah - I’ll absolutely take a chocolate milkshake.”

  Lily smiled as the engine rumbled over the speaker.

  “That’s fifty-nine cents,” said Lily, sliding the window open again.

  “What? You don’t even say ‘hi’ - after all we’ve been through together?”

  “Hi.” Lily extended her palm. “That’s fifty-nine cents, please.”

  He gave Lily two quarters and a dime. She handed him back a penny, which he tossed into the air.

  “It’s only money,” he said. “And there’s a lot more where that came from.”

  Lily laughed.

  “Now there we go,” he said. “A pretty girl like you should be laughing all the time.”

  “Thank you for dining at Burger King,” said Lily coyly, sliding the window closed.

  “Whoa, whoa - wait a minute!” He reached out and stuck his hand through the window, pushing against it, forcing it back open. “I’m Joe. Joe Diotallevi. What’s your name?”

  “Please let go of the window.” She hoped he wouldn’t.

  “Not until you tell me your name.”

  They both kept their hands on the window frame, she pretending to try and force it closed, he half-heartedly trying to pry it open, both perhaps hoping to prolong the contest a bit longer.

  “I promise I won’t bite,” he said. “Unless you want me to. I’m going to keep ordering food until you tell me your name. I just got paid, so this could go on all night. How many orders of French fries can I buy with a hundred and eighty-five bucks?”

  “A lot.” Lily laughed. “Lily. My name is Lily, OK?”

  “Like Mrs. Munster? From The Munsters?” he asked.

  “Yes, exactly like that. Now please let go of the window, so I can get back to work.”

  Two minutes later the drive-thru bell chimed yet again.

  “Welcome to Burger King. May I take your order?”

  “Marry me.” said the voice.

  “Go home,” said Lily into the speaker, laughing. “It’s late and I have to close up. And I’m pretty sure you need to go do the Hustle somewhere.”

  Cory rarely scheduled Lily to close the restaurant two nights in a row, and even though she wasn’t thrilled about working on a Friday night, she was glad for the slightly fatter paycheck she knew she’d get - she sure would need the money for college. Besides, it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go. She swept the floor in the cashier’s area and wiped down the counters before turning out the house lights for the night.

  “Hey Lily,” called Cecelia from the kitchen. “We’re going to check out that new club that just opened across the street. Wanna come?”

  “I can’t get in - they serve alcohol.”

  “It’s your lucky day,” Danny said. “My brother is working the door tonight so no pro-blem-o.”

  Lily’s only other prospect was to go home and try unsuccessfully to fall asleep so tomorrow would arrive faster, and hopefully the waiting would finally be over. Going out for a while might help pass the time.

  “I just need to run home and change. I’ll meet you there in forty-five minutes.”

  When Lily walked out to her car, she caught a glimpse of a blue Barracuda in the parking lot of the pizza place next door. The headlights flashed off and on twice and the faint strains of The Bee Gees singing “More Than a Woman” swirled in the night air.

  31. Iris

  Iris nudged aside the two trophies that presided over the uninhabited room, and set down the potted plant she hugged in her arms; it was a spider plant, a farewell gift from Peter Ponzio, and had traveled with her to Buffalo and back. Iris doted on the plant and the numerous plantlets it had propagated in the asexual confinement of her college dorm, and fancied its fertility was a good omen for their relationship. Brushing crumbs of potting soil from her hands, she walked to the window and tugged on a cord to tip open the venetian blinds. Stripes of late afternoon sunshine slipped through the slats, spotlighting the dust dozing on the painted black dresser and fashioning puffy powder wigs for the heads of the statuettes, one of a ballerina in fifth position relevé, the other of a winged goddess, which attested to the once noteworthy artistic achievements of Iris and Lily Capotosti.

  Six cardboard boxes bearing the logos of laundry detergent brands stood by the door. Iris had departed for Buffalo with only two boxes shortly before Labor Day, and vowed that this rate of accumulation would not be a constant in her future transfers, of which she hoped there would be many. For all her sighing and swallowing, the tightness in her chest and the lumps in her throat persisted as she set about unpacking clothes, text books, bulging binders, dog-eared paperbacks, and a leather-bound edition of The Living Bible, the only relic of her relationship with Rick Rotula. He had sent it to her as a Christmas gift the year they broke up, together with the announcement of his marriage to his ex-girlfriend Alice. She couldn’t very well toss a bible into the garbage bin, so she had torn out the page on which he had written the dedication that made her want to throw up, and toted the fancy Tyndale edition to her weekly youth group meetings on campus. That is, until she stopped attending, after one of the leaders had incensed her by insisting that even the most devout Catholics like Auntie Rosa could not aspire to Eternal Life unless they pronounced, verbatim, the words, “I accept Jesus Christ as my Personal Savior.”

  She left the Bible in the box, together with a tea-stained ceramic mug, an immersion heater, a half-empty box of the blueberry Pop-Tarts and one of the chicken noodle Cup-a-Soups that had filled the gaps left in her tummy by the cheapest meal plan available. Traces of the habits, experiences and knowledge acquired during her first year of college surrounded Iris. So much had happened in the past nine months, yet none of the changes affecting the most intimate spheres of her life could be construed from the hodgepodge of items she had secured to ensure her academic and physical survival. She opened the top drawer of the dresser, and her stomach sank at the sight of its utter emptiness; not one pair of Lily’s underpants remained, not one unmatched sock. She threw into the drawer the bundles of letters and cards of various shapes and sizes she had accrued over recent months, together with packs of color prints and negatives in photo lab envelopes, and slammed it shut. There was no sign of Lily in any of them, either.

  The room in which Iris now stood had seemed so spacious when inhabited by Jasmine, Marguerite and Violet, the butterflies on the gold-speckled wallpaper so exquisitely ethereal. She recalled how she and Lily had listened to their sisters’ conversations through the heating vents, and defied all interdicts by peeking in their dresser drawers when they were out on dates, sometimes being bold enough to even try on their bras, and how excited they had been when they had finally inherited the southerly windows, the closet of left-behind hand-me-downs, the four walls that would protect them and bear silent witness to their fears, tears and
dreams.

  As Iris looked around her, she was dispirited by how unsubstantial and close the walls now appeared; she grieved for the faded butterflies on their peeling, yellowed backdrop, forever entrapped in a dimension from which there was no escape. Perhaps it was because of the butterfly wallpaper, or the legacy of feminine scents and secrets lingering in the air, but none of the now teenage Little Boys coveted this room, and there were no other Capotosti girls in line. It had remained vacant, exactly as Iris and Lily had left it, uncertain of its future.

  Iris was dismayed that she could not recollect where Lily had been, what they may have said to each other the day she went away, or why she had never seen the room in this light before, despite the fact that she had visited often on weekends. That was until recently, when a weariness of nausea-inducing Greyhound buses, an avalanche of assignments, and a battery of final exams to be studied for had conspired to keep her on campus. These, at least, were the reasons she cited to the inner voice pestering her to explain how it could be that she did not notice Lily slipping away.

  Only a few months earlier, Iris had entertained fantasies of her homecoming, of how she and Lily would talk long into the night about her experiences. Iris would give her tips about life as a college freshman, and reassure her that she had the talent to make it as a performer. Iris was sure she would get into Purchase, and even if she didn’t, there were plenty of other good schools that would want her. That place was full of cutthroat New Yorkers, anyway, who at best would be ruthless in their quest to outshine her, and at worst be openly hostile. Lily would confide in her about what had been going on with James in the meantime, and Iris would read her excerpts from Peter’s letters. She would smile when Lily complained about the complaints about her cooking, and Iris would tell her that she had missed the kitchen and would be happy to cook all the dinners, if their father would adapt his mealtime to her summer work schedule. They would reminisce about the high school they had never been fond of, and of their cliquey classmates who had never allowed them access to their social circles. There might be some cautious talk about their mother, some tentative expression of concern, some half-hearted, humorous speculation about her latest escapades with her women’s libber friends. There would be little talk of Dolores; she was gone, and whatever feelings they harbored about her wasted life and tragically premature death were better off left unsaid.