“Get up quickly, Martin,” said Christina with a gleam in her eye. “They’re here.”
Roused out of a deep sleep, Martin managed to dress before the men barged in. He could see Tati Cuda standing by the opposite doorway, his shirt half tucked into his trousers, his suspenders dangling by his side. He shook his white-haired head in frustration and mumbled under his breath.
When the installation crew left, Martin cradled the new telephone in his arms as if it were a newborn child.
“Telephones make people talk. Maybe it’s because you can’t see the person you’re talking to. It’s like they’re not really there. And they’re far away so they can’t hurt you. It’s a very easy way to talk—a telephone.”
He put the phone down gently. He had cleared away a place on his nightstand so that it would be near his grasp. Moving out of his room and down the hall, he could hear Christina’s voice coming from her room. The door was slightly ajar, and he could see her slender figure as she paced back and forth. Her voice was agitated as she made her first call: “But you don’t understand, Arthur. I don’t particularly care.”
Martin could see that she was wiping away tears with the edge of her apron, but she kept her head high for the unseen tormentor.
“That’s right. I wish you all the luck in the world and I hope you’ll write to me sometime and tell me how you’re doing . . . and that’s it . . . that’s all.”
She replaced the phone in its cradle slowly. She turned to the open door and saw that Martin was standing there. Her tears burst forth, and she slammed the door in his face.
A few hours later, Martin was in the butcher shop. His broad smile was a stark contrast to Cuda’s grouchy frown as he dealt with the customers, who seemed to him particularly obnoxious and demanding today.
Martin seemed happier than he had been since he had arrived in town. He was practicing with a little ping-pong ball and some colored handkerchiefs in the corner, as if he were a small dog playing with a toy.
One of the customers, a fairly attractive older woman with blue-gray hair and a light cotton dress walked over to him. She had been a teacher and was still very interested in young people. Being a vivacious woman, she couldn’t stand Cuda’s sourness this morning.
“What’s that, Martin? What are you doing?” she asked pleasantly.
“It’s a trick, see,” he replied, glad to have an audience.
Concealing the Ping-pong ball in his hand, he made the handkerchiefs appear to change color by pulling them through prepared holes in the ball. He made the switch behind the hand that was holding the ball.
“That’s very good,” the woman said with genuine enthusiasm.
A few other customers heard her exclamation and ambled over to the corner.
“That was good,” the ex-teacher said to the others. “I saw that. It was very good.”
“What? What’s he doing?” a few of them asked. “What’s Martin doing?”
Martin, beaming with all the attention, put on his best showman style. “It’s a trick . . . see?”
He performed it again. The women oohed and aahed like small children. Cuda busied himself at the corner, but his face was flushed with anger.
“It’s just a trick,” Martin went on, after he’d sufficiently surprised them. “It isn’t really magic. See the hole in the ball. Watch . . .”
With one eye on the old man, he performed the trick again, this time showing the women the gimmick.
“See . . . see how I do it?”
“Martin . . . you’re spoiling it,” said the teacher. “Don’t tell us how it’s done. Don’t show how you do it. That spoils it!”
“But it isn’t really magic,” Martin said solemnly. The women were puzzled by his sudden serious tone.
They turned toward Cuda, who ushered them out of the store. “It’s the sickness,” he explained, while he shooed them out as if they were a flock of crows. “It’s the sickness.”
Cuda gave Martin a cross look and handed him a shopping bag to deliver.
As Martin strolled down the street, his joyful mood did not leave him. He spoke out loud to himself, mimicking the ladies in the shop.
“You’ll spoil it! You’ll spoil it!” he cried out in high, shrill tones, and laughed to himself. “People think it’s spoiled when you show them what something is all about,” he thought. “People would rather make things up, make up magic.”
Just then the young cyclist from the alley rode by with a blue-jeaned, blond-haired girl on the back of his bike.
“Hey, Martin,” he called out, trying to impress his girl. “Bring home the meat, Martin. You got one there for Mrs. Santini? Watch out, man. She’ll eat you up.”
The couple laughed so hard that they almost fell off the speeding motorcycle. But Martin didn’t care. He liked Mrs. Santini and he liked helping her around the house. He didn’t care what the other boys said—that she was a frustrated housewife who was looking for any young man to help her around the house—and in bed. Martin knew that she liked him for himself.
After his delivery, he went over to Mrs. Santini’s house. She was expecting him and showed him to the livingroom where she needed a door hinge replaced. It was a hot day, and an hour later, when Martin had almost finished fixing the door, she brought him a tall glass full of soda and ice. She had prepared it nicely, with a red maraschino cherry floating on the top.
“Sure you don’t want something in that?” she asked, a slight slur in her voice. She held up a three-quarters empty bottle of whiskey. Martin shook his head.
He didn’t like that stuff. It made him dizzy, like the visions, and he didn’t want to feel funny with a stranger.
Mrs. Santini looked at him with her sad eyes. Her hair was all messy, falling out of the pins that had secured it to her head. Her makeup looked as if it had been fingerpainted on her face by a child. She was wearing tight white slacks and a black sleeveless blouse which was opened halfway down her chest. Martin could see that she wore no bra. She slinked over to an easy chair and melted into it. Martin looked around the room. The furniture was worn and not as nice as the supermarket lady’s. It was furnished in Early American style but the kind that you bought with fake antiquing marks and Liberty Bell fabric. The room was in total disarray. A lamp had fallen over and was never picked up. Yellowing newspapers were spread all over the floor near the fireplace, and the few plants had turned to dust in their pots. Mrs. Santini picked up her drink from the coffee table and added a liberal shot of whiskey to it from the bottle.
She leaned back in the chair, legs opened seductively.
“You don’t mind if I do, right?” she purred, looking at him with her deep brown eyes.
Martin gulped his soda down without stopping for a breath and went back to working on the door hinge. Since he was practically finished, he pretended that he was retightening all the screws. He didn’t like the way she looked at him, as if she were a lioness about to attack.
“Bastard was supposed to take care of that before he had to go out of town. Bastard,” she said into her glass.
Martin worked at the hinge quietly. “People think that they’re the most important things in the world,” he thought to himself. “I don’t know what is the most important thing, but I know it’s not people. Sometimes the things people do are important, but not them themselves. Important things get done. If one person doesn’t do them, the next one will. People should be careful about the things they do. People make mistakes because they won’t really see what things are all about. They make stuff up.”
As Martin retightened the last screw, he felt a cool hand fondling his neck. Mrs. Santini had gotten out of her chair and idly drifted over to Martin as he worked. His whole body tensed at her touch, and he could smell and feel her hot, liquory breath on the back of his neck as she leaned over and kissed him on his temple. Martin recoiled as if he had touched something burning. His still-crouched body slammed against the door, the loud thud breaking the heavy silence in the room. His eyes darte
d wildly, like those of a cornered animal. Even in her drunken stupor, Mrs. Santini was startled by his violent reaction.
“I’m sorry, Martin . . . you’re just . . . so nice . . . so gentle. I just . . . I just want to hug you.”
Martin’s hands automatically came up to his chest in a protective way. He clutched the screwdriver before him like a dagger. He looked up at the woman with questioning eyes. She moved closer, bringing her hand to his hair. But he pulled farther away.
“Oh, Martin,” she cooed softly. “Don’t be so afraid.”
“The door’s finished,” Martin said in a husky voice.
He stood suddenly and tossed the screwdriver into the toolbox, slamming the lid shut with his toe. Then, pushing past the woman, who was sipping her drink calmly, he scampered out of the house like a frightened mouse.
Tears filled the woman’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. She was so ashamed, attacking the poor frightened boy as if she were a common whore. She had noticed his frailty, his pale shaking hands, his doelike eyes, the first day. And she knew that sooner or later she would seduce him. It was a craziness in her, and she was resigned to it. But Charlie was out of town so much, and he didn’t want children (and she couldn’t have them, anyway), so she knew that when he was on the road it was all right for her to fool around ’cause he sure as hell was! But at least when all the screwing around was over, he had a place to come home to. Instead, she fooled around at home and had no place to run to from her guilt and her shame and her loneliness.
• • •
“Father Corelli was in Braddock . . . forty-two . . . no . . . forty-three years when he left,” Tati Cuda was saying to the young priest, Father Howard, as they sat at supper that evening.
Christina was making the rounds pouring coffee, and she noted how the heavy-set, dark-haired priest stuffed food into his mouth sloppily, barely pausing for air. Cuda attacked his food with his typical gusto, and Martin, poor Martin, twirled his food around his fork. “The boy eats like a bird, if he eats at all,” Christina thought.
“There’s, er . . . that’s a long time,” the priest answered. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his cassock.
Cuda sopped up his gravy with his bread and stuffed it all into his perpetually grinding mouth, never missing a beat.
“Yes, a long time,” he agreed, gravy dripping from the corners of his mouth.
Christina appeared at the young priest’s shoulder with the coffee pot. He put his hand over his coffee cup and said, “Er . . . no, thank you. I’ll have a little more wine, please.”
Christina walked over to the sideboard and lifted the heavy crystal wine decanter, which was filled with the deep red Romanian wine. She poured it into a long-stemmed glass for the priest.
“You like this wine,” Cuda pronounced. “Gurinskas made this wine. I haven’t much left.”
“Gurinskas?” said Father Howard, as he watched Christina set the glass down. He raised it immediately to his lips and drank, smacking his lips from the wine’s tartness. “I don’t know Gurinskas. Catholic?”
“A good Catholic, yes, Father Howard,” Cuda sat, belching softly and pushing himself back from the table to signify the end of the meal. He pulled the gravy-stained linen napkin from under his chin, but his beige woolen cardigan sweater still wore the brown stains. “But you won’t know him,” he went on. “He left even before Corelli.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the priest said, also pushing back from the table. “I would have commissioned him to make some wine for the church. I hope it’s not sacrilege to say that the wine at St. Vincent’s is putrid.” He laughed loudly at his own joke, but noticed that no one took it up. Martin’s eyes darted toward him, and Christina merely sat at her place silently, her eyes downcast.
“You were sent here, or you asked to come?” Cuda asked, also oblivious to the priest’s feeble attempt at humor. The old man sloshed some coffee around in his mouth and forced it down with a louder burp.
“Oh, no . . . diocese sent me. When Father Corelli retired.” Father Howard felt a coldness enter the room and felt his happy mood evaporate. He looked around for an open window that might be letting in a draft but found none.
“Corelli was younger than I am,” the old man corrected him. “He asked to leave. He left. Like the rest of them. They think this town is finished.”
“I think you’re wrong,” the young priest insisted, his face flushed from the wine and from annoyance at the old man’s pomposity. “I don’t know about the rest of them, but I think you’re wrong about Father Corelli.”
“I knew him forty-three years. We talked.”
“And you didn’t know he was ill?”
“Ah. His stomach?” Tati Cuda looked thoughtful for a moment. Then a smile spread across his face. “Some of it was my bad meat and the rest was . . .” he pointed a crooked finger at his head as if to say, “all in the mind.”
“Oh, no,” Father Howard said seriously. “It was cancer. He’s very near the end. In fact . . . I haven’t heard. He may even be gone.”
The young priest made the sign of the cross, and then picked up his glass and took another sip of wine. Tati Cuda followed suit, and the smile on his face froze into a grimace as if someone had slapped him.
Martin smiled slyly to himself and pushed his chair away from the table slowly. No one noticed his departure as he hurried up the stairs to his room and shut the door gently. He walked over to the bureau and pulled out a pack of worn playing cards. Then he flipped on the radio, which was already tuned to the telephone talk show. He spread the cards out on the top of his bed, over the plaid comforter that Christina had thoughtfully placed on his bed. Referring to a book of rules next to his elbow, he laid out the cards for a game of solitaire. As he played, he listened to snatches of the radio program. The announcer was reading a commercial in his light-hearted, clipped manner. As his voice garbled on, sprinkled with light giggles and foolish asides, Martin thought, “Most people try to be good. Tati Cuda tries to be a very good man. People just don’t like new things. They don’t like things to be different than they thought they were. You have to just . . . prove it to them. I mean, really prove it . . . somehow.”
A woman on the radio show was crying over the fact that her teenage daughter had been missing for weeks. Martin paused, his card in mid-air. “Don’t worry,” the announcer was saying as cheerily as if he were selling shampoo, “she’ll come home, waving her tail behind her.” He laughed but it fell on the hollow ears of his audience.
“If you’re able to talk about it, then things would be nicer,” Martin continued his thought. “But it takes a long time to think different than you always thought. A real long time. It’s like me with the sexy stuff. It’s taking me a long time to stop being shy. We’re sure . . . made funny. We really are made funny.”
Downstairs in the stuffy sittingroom, Christina served cordials in small silver cups on a hand-painted antique wooden tray which had been her mother’s. As she gave one of the silver cups to Cuda, he indicated that he wanted the entire bottle of liqueur. She passed the tray to Father Howard and set a third glass down by her own chair before leaving the room to get the bottle for her grandfather. The sittingroom was only used on special occasions, which this constituted, and the heavily draped windows, overstuffed chairs, and dim lights gave the room a funereal feeling.
A little clock chimed in the hall as Tati Cuda spoke in hushed tones to the young priest.
“This is a town for old persons, Father Howard. You know the things an old person wants from a priest?”
Father Howard was just enjoying his cordial when Cuda’s question stung as if it were a bee. The old man was really getting to him tonight. Father Howard had thought it might be a pleasant evening of idle chatter, a good meal, some good wine, a pretty granddaughter to look at, but this was more like being cross-examined for murder.
“Oh. This is very sweet,” he said, trying to steer the old man away from his morbid thoughts.
“Chocolate,”
Cuda said, brushing the hairs on his mustache away and cleaning the syrupy liquid off his teeth. “After a big supper . . . chocolate.”
“It’s very sweet,” Father Howard continued, setting his glass down gently. After the heavy meal, the chocolate was more like glue than anything enjoyable.
“An old person needs a priest who thinks the way the old person thinks,” Cuda continued, as if he had never been interrupted. “A priest who believes in the old ways.”
“Yes, that’s why I use the Latin mass here in Braddock,” the young priest said quickly, hoping to appease the old man’s misgivings. “I think the people . . .”
“Do you believe there are demons, Father Howard?” Cuda suddenly demanded, leaning forward in his chair, his bloodshot eyes hounding the younger man.
“Er . . . heh, heh . . . well, I.” He noticed that the old man was dead serious and tried to answer him in his best confessional manner. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe about that.”
The old man leaned back in his dark wine velvet armchair, which seemed to envelop his slight figure. He spread his fingers open on the white lace doilies that protected the armrest and flexed them. Father Howard could see the blue veins in the old man’s hands pulsating.
“You don’t know, Father Howard?” he muttered, his white eyebrows dipping over his hooded eyes. “You see, this is what I mean. This is not what an old person wants to hear from a priest.”
Christina’s heels clacked vigorously on the wooden planks of the hallway and then became muffled by the carpeting in the sittingroom. She placed the liqueur bottle down on the small table next to her grandfather’s chair with uncharacteristic firmness. Without looking up at her, he reached for the bottle and poured himself another glass.
“Father Howard,” Christina said suddenly, giving her grandfather a look of utter disgust. “Can I get you some more cookies?”
“No,” Father Howard said quietly. “No, thank you.”
“Can I get you anything else?” she insisted.
“No . . . really. I’m fine.”
“You see,” Tati Cuda continued, his voice heavy and slurred from his drinking, oblivious to his granddaughter’s attempted sabotage. “If a priest cannot save us from such things, . . . who can, Father Howard?”
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