A Matter of Love in da Bronx

by Paul Argentini

  --There was a Prince and the Princess who lived each in a separate land that was desolate and isolated. So much so, they had no companions of their own age. As they left childhood, and became young adults, they felt the sensations that came to them with a delightful strangeness. Their yearnings became stronger and stronger, but the mystery of the source only became deeper, and more compelling. They found the only moments free from this begirding aloneness was when they were asleep. They discovered that in their dreams they drifted as a mist in the heavens, and when they intermixed, one with the other, there was a harmony that sang with the spheres, from each minute droplet to each minute droplet that brought two halves together. They needed now only to fill each one, atom by atom, with love. They couldn't do this in their own lands, so they looked for another, and came to earth to fulfill the gift of love they'd been given. They do it over and over again, always in different lands. Don't you see why our love is so different, so rare, Mary? You and I are that Prince and Princess.

  Ahhhhhhhhwwwww.... Gaaaawwwwwddddddd!

  CHAPTER 48

  IN VINO VERITAS. Sam filled his father's wine glass, then his mother's, and his own as they gathered for the simple communion of their evening meal. Concetta held the large, round load of Italian bread to her breast slicing off the crust, then holding it out to Germano. The next piece went to Sam. She cut one for herself. His father dug in the sauce, took out the chunk of veal, slicing it expertly into bits. Pasta 'n casa, his favorite, made with love and skill that day by Concetta. The thick, fragrant red tomato sauce had cooked the day through. He passed the grated Romano cheese to his mother. He moved the salt and pepper before Germano, who used both without tasting first. It seemed to Sam a festive occassion although he kept his ear tuned for the ominous deeper note he knew sounded in the distance. It rode on the silence. It rode on his thoughts which paused only briefly to savor the juicy strands accompanied with a bit of meatball, or a thin slice of sausage, or veal. Each bite would burst full of flavor in his mouth. --Mmmmmmmm!

  Germano devoured his first two forkfuls without a sound to quiet the grumblings in his hungry stomach. Concetta wound only a bit of pasta on her fork, touched it to the cheese, and sampled it.

  --Come saporito! If I must say so for myself.

  --Special, Ma. Special. Just like Christmas.

  Germano grunted. He raised his glass, --A la salute!

  Each drank, their passport to the land of long-held secrets.

  Sam juggled the words and phrases wondering which would be the best introduction to his news. He was not searching for the courage to do so, he knew what he was about. Neither did he wish to be periphrastic or mealy-mouthed. His concern was for these people he loved. If the love was mutual, there would be no hurt. --This is a special meal for me, Ma...

  --You said that.

  --...because something very important, and exciting has happened to my life, so there must be some changes.

  --Changes? What changes, Sam. Want some more bread?

  --No, thanks. I'm going to have a home of my own. I'm going to move out.

  Germano stolid. Concetta dropped her fork. --What do you mean, 'move out?'

  --Just that. I'm moving out tomorrow morning. I found a woman I love very much. We want to be together. We'll get married as soon as we can.

  --You'll get married! and what about us? Huh? What happens to your father and me? You leave us to rot here, alone? How do we live?

  --I'll do what I can, Ma. Sol is back. I'll talk to him tomorrow. He's always been good to me when I asked for a raise...

  --He's given you shit all these years for your blood, that fucking kike-mockey bastard sonofabitch!

  --You don't move out! Do you hear! You don't move out!

  --Ma, I want a life of my own! I'm sorry you and Pa feel this way. I don't get another chance for this life, I must have it!

  --And your mother and father are garbage? You can throw out with the swill not you don't need us no more?

  --Come on, Ma. That all you and Pa want from me is my pacheck? Don't you want me to have the life you gave me?

  --Sure! It's you life! But just like that! You sit down, make a pig of yourself with our food and say you going abandon us! Bruta besta! You don't move out!

  --What do you want?

  --Have you girl! You men are beasts and must do the dirty thing! Have her! This putana! But you bring her here! You live here! And you don't abandon us!

  --We want to be alone, Ma...

  --Your mother's right! You have your own bedroom! What more alone you want?

  --It's not what we want, it's not the same.

  --Try, Sam! Try! You would make everybody happy. What you miss in not be alone, you have in sharing our happiness. She would not mind, if she love you; if she a good girl.

  --You would love her.

  --Who is? We know her?

  Sam could not remember ever taking as deep a breath in his entire life. It seemed he inhaled for forty-seven minutes straight before he was able to form the words, and say them. --I'm in love with Mary Dolorosso.

  It was as if the air in the room was wired to detonate with the words.

  Germano slowly lowered his glass to the table.

  Concetta folded her hands on her lap, and stared down at them.

  Sam stared first at one, then the other, for a full three minutes. He almost didn't hear her, she spoke so quietly, her voice tremulous.

  --Sam, Mary Dolorosso is not for you. Do you understand? He shook his head. How could he understand what? Have you...have you... Holy Mary Mother of God!...

  --No, we haven't made love...yet.

  --Jesus, auita me!

  --You better just say what you have to say, Ma. I just hope you're not coming up with something to make me change my mind, because I won't.

  --This is my death. I knew one day I would have to pay! Sam, Mary Dolorosso is not for you. You cannot be together, or the heaven's split open and curse us all forever. Oh! God! Give me the courage to do this! There was a long pause while she took several deep breaths, and twisted and turned the dish towel tight around her hand. We were young. We were in love. We didn't know and we didn't care what happens after, but were were together. God said there was something to come of it. Sam, must know you are the cause of my dying. Your father doesn't know. She jumped to her feet, the chair clattering to the floor. Holding her forehead, the tears filling her eyes, falling from her face. Mary is your half-sister. Rocco and I...I told your father you were his, and got him marry me. But that's not all. Rocco thought your father knew all the time. That was why he tried to kill him, to let him hang out the window all those stories up all night long. Your father's vendetta against him. And Rocco? His vendetta against us was to make us pay all these years. That's some story. Try to eat the pasta and drink the wine now. Try. You will choke on it.

  Germano made a big roll of spaghetti on his fork, and took it all in his mouth. He chewed quickly, took a sip of wine. With his mouth full, he stopped eating long enough to speak without looking up: --Don't let him get away with a thing. Make sure that Jew-bastard gives you a big raise. We need the money.

  Sam tried to vomit, but the sword running from breastbone to back kept everything inside.

  CHAPTER 49

  UNRENITENT AT THE LAST after more than an hour of restraint, Mary broached the subject with her mother as they finished up the dinner dishes. From the moment she walked through the door it bombarded her brain and zapped her nervous system. Though her words came not without due deliberation, she sensed that Lily felt the sharp edge to them because it seemed her mother instinctively and deliberately delayed the completion of the familiar simple clean-up chore. Not that Mary got a feeling of camraderie--which was not rare between them--but this had a special difference, much as two strangers meeting with an emergency loan of a tampon between them. It was a province where women alone came to harbor to share their wisdom of babies, men and the world. --Can you fall in love deeply, truly, more than once?

&nb
sp; --No! Lily responded so quickly it brought Mary up short. She didn't think about it for a split second. And now it was Lily that felt the sharp edge, quite aware the emphatic precipitancy of her reply was revealing unto itself. Several quick glances passed between them, both checking out the terrain. Well, I, you know, I've thought about such things...the soaps, you know?

  --You mean, your first true love...

  ...you never have again. Just one time. That is forever in a life. The first boy you give your heart, you give to him complete and forever. There is no second one.

  --Was Papa your first...love?

  There was a long, heavy pause, Lily's eyebrows dancing. The ubiquitous Code of Women applied. Their truth, all their truths, were told in confidence, never to be revealed. Except perhaps amongst themselves. Never, never slopped to the males. No. Papa was not my first. Eager to trade places, she stopped backing up, and moved forward. It seems, my daughter dear, you are in love?

  --Yes. Wildly, madly, happily in love.

  --And this is your first?

  --Yes.

  --Surprise. I would thought not. And he loves you?

  --Madly. Passionately. Irreversibly. Mama, it is so fantastic! So wonderful!

  --Yes.

  --I have never known anyone's emotions can soar so wide, so high, so intensely.

  --And you've...made love with him?

  --No. Not yet.

  --A surprise.

  --Well, it comes as a surprise... But why?"

  --Why a surprise? Because you sound like a love matured. That happens only after the blossom has been...fertilized.

  --No. Not that, yet. We're waiting for the special moment.

  --To be envied. That is not the way of the usual and ordinary.

  --This is an exceptional love.

  --So I gather. I envy you such a love. He's handsome?

  --Gorgeous.

  --And tall?

  --Like the mountains.

  --And dark?

  --Like the mystery of birth.

  --Don't lose it. Take it. Take of it whatever you can. It would be a pity.

  --I know.

  --Bring him home, this God. Perhaps I would like to phantasize a bit. I can remember how, you know...how to phantasize, I mean.

  --He's not to be shared. He's so glorious.

  --And gifted, no doubt. Still, bring him home. Where did you meet him?

  --In your kitchen. He saw me nude. He liked my patucka, even then, when I was a wee lass.

  --Of whom? Of what? do you speak?

  --I was bareass, my slit to the fore, and he was staring at me forever. I met him just less than a month ago.

  --Patri, et figlie, et spirtus santos!

  --Amen.

  --His name. I don't want to hear his name. I have a chill down my spine, into my heart. I have no idea what you bring into this house, but Carissima mia, don't let your father hear of what we speak!

  --How do you know him?

  --Who said I know him?

  --Your voice. Your attitude. What is it?

  --When you spoke of one's first love...earlier. I couldn't help remembering. Perhaps it's the memory that strikes the chord in my being. Nothing more. There is something about that first, fresh love that leaves a sign, like a blaze in a boulder that forever detours any similar feeling. Like stroking a scar to remember its source, to want back the challenge of daring the Gods. Win or lose, it's playing the game: exciting, involving, declamatory. We may grow to hate the scar through the years because it reminds us we did not succeed where others have; but, not matter what else, it is the glory that comes from fully participating.

  --Sam Scopia.

  --When I was a very young girl I was excited by the great and daring. Those who moved swiftly through throngs, heads higher than a hallucinate. Lily took her seat at the kitchen table, putting on the tiny table lamp signaling to Mary to turn off the overhead. Cigarette?

  --I never knew you did.

  --Whatever else you didn't know could fill a library. Old farts aren't born that way, they just need heat and moisture to ferment.

  --And Papa? What if he comes? She took an unfiltered Lucky from the pack.

  --Damocles be damned. He had his day. He's no longer a threat. Worse has happened. The smoke billowed between them. You father had an accident. You must know the story well enough, he's declaimed it sufficient times to have the words worn in the ceiling of this kitchen. Yes, he hung out there without food or water for thirty-three hours, ninety-seven stories high, existing only on pigeon piss, moth droppings, and protein from his own orgasms. When he came home from the hospital, his life was dedicated to causing anguish to anyone and everyone around him. Before the accident, he would wake me up at three-four in the morning, and mount me like I was some sort of wild ass. He pounded and pummeled my sex with his fingers, his hand, his mouth, his enraged penis one-two hours at a time. Even now, he uses a large, rubber-made penis that has the handle of a sabre with an oval protector that keeps it from penetrating too far--thank the merciful Lord!--and he pounds it into me like he's jerking off. He says it is to keep me from searching elsewhere for satisfaction. When he doesn't do that, he chews me there like a dog, biting my lips, inflaming my clitoris until it is painful and swollen. One time I covered the Gates of Venus with Oil of Artemesia--Wormwood, you know, the bitterest of all herbs used in Pastif--and he could not look at me for months!--God! was that funny!--without puckering! After three months of that brutual treatment, I longed for the soft loving of a smooth and romantic tall Italian. He came along, and I was ready. Your father insisted he could not...have an erection, but I knew, in the bathroom, alone; he would play with his peppino. I would hear him try to hide his gruntings. At the dark of night, I would feel him, and he would be wet, slippery wet, the leakage of his semen. That told me what I suspected, he was lying, he was depriving me of what was to be mine. He was seeking a vendetta for what he suspected. Only my lover and I knew it was true. So, when he was the deepest asleep, I would slip under the covers, and suckle his penis. I got the idea from snakes that suckled milk from unknowing sleeping women. He would get big and hard, and I would every so gently work his organ to the brink of coming...then stop. I would pretend I was asleep when he would wake up. He would grasp his penis, and two shakes! wet all over himself and the bed. I laughed to myself, how will he explain this in the morning. He urinated, he would say, he could not contain himself. I do that to him every chance I'm not too tired to think of it. All this because he suspected I had my first love before I married him, which I did not. He was wrong about that, but right about who it was. I wouldn't have cheated on him, if he were honest with me. Instead, he left me alone and cold for so long, months. When this tall Italian pursued me still in my loneliness, I could not help but succumb. He was so...different, unusual. He was kind, thoughtful, romantic. He did for me, for my heart, for my soul what I thought I would never experience on earth with your father. So, when the moment came, I became his lover willingly. We made love every moment we could, whenever we could. Shamelessly. Indulgingly. Madly. Passionately. To this day we do it, but it is not even a shadow of our past fury. It is merely an act, not even the act. I don't care, I do it because I feel I owe him. From that affair, I had--we had--a child.

  --Me? I'm his daughter? Papa is not...my papa?

  She crushed another cigarette out, slowly carefully, sweeping all the dead ashes in a pile. Lily dropped the butt, stuck her chin out, stared directly into her daughter's eyes. --No. Your father is not Rocco Dolorosso, the feigned cripple, for he walks as good as you or I. Your father's name, I so regret to tell you, is Germano Scopia.

  CHAPTER 50

  THE PHENOMENA of two undisparate, passionate forces unintentionally but interdirectionally colliding to produce emotional tremors that create force fields in the heavens, much as the Northern Lights, has never been photographed, witnessed, or recorded anywhere in the history of the world with the exception of the rendezvous that took place in front of a two-story
brick house on Lurting Avenue in the Bronx that same cool, dusky June evening.

  Sam Scopia and Mary Dolorosso each left their homes almost within seconds of each other, their minds a cyclone of confusion, their faces comminutors of concern, their bedeviled bodies embattled to retain their ability to function.

  Uncaring, each was propelled by a salt-stung blindness. Up sidewalks, down streets, acrossalleys; past homes, in front of stores; just by automobiles, missing busses, skinning cabs; in light, out of darkness, through shadows; a mere process of stepping, and hopping, or walking, then running!

  --WHAT THE FUCK'S HAPPENING IN THIS WORLD? Are we all crazy? If I could be hit by a truck perhaps I'd feel less this agony!

  --Virgin Mary, help me in this moment of greatest need when it is easier for me to tear off my skin than bear this decremental role!

  Whatever, there was a destiny each knew he followed. Of all the directions Sam and Mary would take that night, they knew one for certain: They would never, ever go back into the place they had known as home ever, ever, ever again. Wheresoever they ended this night, it was a clear as a clean-struck lead crystal bell, there would be their doing until the end of their lives.

  Neither one had any idea he was bound for the house on Lurting. In fact, each turned onto Lurting from opposite directions not knowing, nor the least interested in, where they were.

  At first, they saw naught, but sensed each other, as strong as catching the scent of honeysuckle on the dewed, eventide air. Like the metallic estafette of an oarlock across quelled waters. Then, like seeing a mirrored simulacrum.

  Incredulous!

  What was it there before them each?

  Sam?

  Mary?

  No. The phantom facing me is not to be!

  Is it she?

  Is it he?

  A faster step. Another. Another yet. Do hasten. Come quicker. Yes! A trot. Again. Some more! Don't stop! Run! Do run and run and run! Yes! Yes! Arms outstretched, reaching, reaching, reaching for me! Oh! Yes! It is to be! Tears gushing, flying in the wind.