by Tillie
‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ he repeated, straining to keep his voice down, while at the same time he pressed past me to breathe fresh air outside.
It was only then that I appreciated the enormity of Uncle Dave’s burden. Only then that I saw I had always been an enigma to him. I could not connect, and he was too scared to let me.
lxxii
I have said that to give the silk dress an outing I paraded her around the square. That was on the Friday of her arrival, in the afternoon. Sometime the week before, the minute she’d announced she was coming, I told Dave I might need some time off. He was impressed when he learned I expected a visitor from Yale. I hadn’t mentioned it was a girl.
My rooms were without furniture, so Patricia and I had no recourse but to seek our comfort on the bed. That’s a joke. Bed was what we both wanted, and after we had settled there for a few minutes, nuzzling and fondling, I suggested that for the garment’s sake perhaps she should slip off her dress.
As eager as I, she did so at once, carefully draping it, and adding her other things to it, on top of the Olivetti. Then she slid over me to the far side, near the wall, and for the next couple of hours – much like on the night in New Haven – we played. Avid hands, avid mouths, touching and kissing, everything in the slowest slow motion, journeying to the heights, pausing there, then gently tumbling back to the bottom. During one of these summit pauses, speaking into her hair, I told her that later, before we went to sleep that night, there would be more and it would be different.
‘Yes,’ she said under her breath. Then, turning my face to her and looking into my eyes, she added, ‘I’d like that.’
Nothing happier in life than the joy of anticipation. It was then that I sprang up and announced that I must show her around the neighborhood. That was a fib. I wanted the neighborhood to see her silk dress. That’s a second fib. What I wanted was for all North Street and North Square to see on my arm the beautiful girl in the beautiful dress.
On the street, Uncle Dave happened to be leaning in the shop doorway, attempting to relight his pipe. As Patricia passed, he nodded appreciatively and then, in our wake, I heard a warm chuckle and I heard him call out for Johnny. A few steps farther on and I found an excuse to halt outside Blondie’s. Sure enough, in no time Blondie had found an excuse to come out and say something to me. His eyes, however, never strayed from the silk dress.
I took her past Angie’s luncheonette too, and rapped on the window. Angie looked up, smiled, and gave me a thumbs-up sign. Crazy Sarge, I had no idea how he would react. His place had a marble bar and marble tables and old-fashioned large mirrors. The marble was dark green whorls with streaks of black and cream. When Patricia approached the pastry counter to make a choice, he dashed to her and launched into a recital of the names and contents of some ten or twelve different items. I watched him in the mirror, his shock of premature white hair bobbing up and down in pleasure. He insisted on carrying her little plate over to our table, something he never did for anyone. He then looked down at me and announced proudly, ‘It’s on the house.’
Wending our slow way back, I wanted Patricia to have a good look at Paul Revere’s handsome house. For this it was necessary to stand somewhere in the middle of North Square. As we did so, one of the boys who helped out at Dave’s after school suddenly shot around the corner and headed straight for us.
Louie. His family had emigrated from Italy only a few years before. He spoke fluent English but, often unsure which syllable to accent, he had trouble with a whole slew of words. I always called him by his real name, Luigi. It was Luigi who’d told me the little I knew about Louise and Gladys and their Swedish mother.
‘Luigi,’ I said, stepping into his path. ‘My friend’s come all the way from Connecticut. Can you tell her something about Paul Revere’s house?’
I wanted him to give the little speech that the local urchins treated the tourists to, thereby earning themselves a bit of pocket money.
‘Not now,’ he said, ‘Uncle Dave’s waiting for me.’
‘No, he’s not,’ I said, and flipped him a quarter. Luigi eyed Patricia up and down, and I don’t think it was the silk dress he was interested in. He stared at the quarter in his palm, then shot a glance over my shoulder in the direction of Uncle Dave’s.
‘Sure,’ he said. And he launched into his recital.
(I must point out that what he spoke was a single rushed sentence without a pause. The punctuation in what follows is mine.)
‘The home of Paul Revere. Paul Revere was married twice. He had sixteen children, eleven girls and five boys. Right beside the door stands an old hitching post. That’s where Paul Revere tied his horse. The horse kicked the bottom, bit the top, and ran away three times. On the door stands a hundred forty-four hand-made spikes. The last three were knocked off by the British. The windows, which are stained by the sun, came all the way from England. Half moons on the shutters were hand-carved by Paul Revere himself. Paul Revere was a man of many smiths – a goldsmith, a silversmith, a tinsmith, a blacksmith, a coppersmith, and also a dentist. He made the first set of false teeth for General George Washington and also for General Joseph Warren, who lost his life in the Battle of Bunker Hill. That’s why whenever you see a picture of General Washington he never smiles. If he did his wooden white false teeth would fall out. This house, one of the oldest houses in the City of Boston, is maintained by the D.A.R., which means Daughters of the American Revolution. Now if you look on your right you see a playground. Once it used to be the Hotel Rex. There were two kinds of rooms. A forty-cent room and a sixty-cent room. Whenever it rained or snowed they called it the home-made spaghetti. The forty-cent room had rats. The sixty-cent room had rats, a rat trap, and an extra piece of cheese to catch the rats. Thank you for listening.’
When he finished, Patricia laughed and squeezed my hand. She thought he deserved a second quarter. It was then that she remembered she’d left her bag behind.
‘Give him another one,’ she said, ‘and I’ll pay you back when we get home.’
Luigi fielded his coin and tore off. In my head the word home reverberated like a bonanza of Paul Revere’s bells.
lxxiii
That night, the next day, and that next day’s night.
We got back from dinner, it wasn’t late, and we went straight to the bed. Each of us knew and wanted what was coming. Once again the dress landed on the Olivetti, but this time it was cast there in an untidy heap, while some of her other garments never made it to the tabletop at all.
The only light came in from the open door to the other room. Hours earlier I had told her that on this occasion it was going to be different, and so I made it.
I spoke to her. I would not let her shut her eyes but insisted that she hold my gaze, looking straight into mine, even – and especially – when we were kissing. I encouraged her to speak. I asked her questions about what we were doing and made her reply. It was new territory for her and nothing we’d previously done together. Even when I dropped my head down to suck on her breasts I told her she must still keep her eyes open. She did. And when I looked into them again, straddling her, I saw with what fever they burned. She was with me, drinking me in, consuming me, yet at the same time some part of her floated in outer space. Now getting the words out became a struggle for her. ‘And this?’ I said, taking one of her hands and putting it on me. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And this?’ I said, my fingers opening her where it was moist between her legs.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And this?’ I said, taking the hand that was on me and getting it to help me enter her.
No word came, just a gasp of astonishment. I held her eyes in mine. It was the first time I was inside her. Barely moving, I made her tell me where I was.
Barely audible, the two words found her lips.
Slowly, tenderly, I began working my way. My eyes watched hers; hers, looking into mine, told me everything. Yet still I wanted words.
‘How’s this feel?’
I said.
‘Feels like forever,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and you’re inside me.’
‘No,’ she said.
Now she was moving with me. I contradicted her. ‘You’re inside me,’ I said again.
‘No.’
‘Inside me.’ Nothing. ‘Inside me.’
‘Yes. We’re inside each other.’
On and on it went, I have no idea for how long. Half the night at least. At one point, I got her on top of me so that I could study the way her breasts hung and how the light made shadows in the deep hollows of her collarbone, below which her flesh was pale velvet down to the dark nipples. She was exhausted; so was I. But we clung to each other still, our pleasure intertwined.
Then, at her limit’s end, she sweetly said: ‘Let me shut my eyes now. I must sleep. Please.’
lxxiv
The next day.
That morning she let me sleep. She got up, brushed her teeth, then came back to bed. This time, when I woke, there was no rosemary, no note by the pillow. Only Patricia, Patricia, Patricia, propped there looking at me, the most beautiful odalisque of them all.
‘You let me sleep,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t wake you.’
‘You didn’t try.’
‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I was afraid of what you might want.’ Then, her face serious, she took my hand and pushed it down to nestle in her pubic hair. Her grip was firm. ‘Can we wait a while?’ she added. ‘I’m so sore here.’
Her mild voice was a plea for tenderness. She’d never asked for anything before, and I was moved. From the very outset, during that evening in New Haven when we first met, her quiet composure told me that there was one way only to win this girl. Through gentleness. I was not going to feel disappointment now over a minor delay. Many are the paths to a woman’s heart; some are slightly longer than others.
Nothing contented me more than just to touch her. I made her turn to the wall so that I could bury my face in her hair and let my lips play at the back of her neck. My free hand ran the length of her, from her shoulder down to the curve of her waist and below. She knew I was not trying to arouse her, and she liked it.
But there was no way I could keep myself from telling her how lovely she was, how pretty she was, how beautiful. I wanted to mention the launching of a thousand ships and the topless towers of Ilium, but that would have required too much explanation. So many ways to possess a woman.
lxxv
We seemed to have fallen into a talking mood. I grew pensive, and, in another tone, I was off on a different tack.
‘I want to go to Italy,’ I said. ‘I’d like to go for several months, maybe a year. You’ll come with me, won’t you?’ I teased.
‘I’d go in a minute,’ she said. Then, reflecting, a cloud of doubt crossed her brow.
‘Would you really go with me?’
‘With you, yes. If I could.’
‘But there’s a lot stopping you, isn’t there?’
She wouldn’t answer. Instead she made me tell her where I would go in Italy and what I would see.
I told her we’d go to the Piazza della Signoria and all the galleries in Florence. I said we would walk everywhere and see all the Michelangelos and all the Donatellos.
She went very quiet, and I knew she was picturing it, seeing us hand in hand in the Bargello, in the Uffizi.
‘Where else?’ she said, her voice barely audible.
‘Pisa,’ I said. ‘Siena.’
‘Where else?’
‘All the squares of Rome. And the Amalfi coast.’
‘Naples?’
‘Of course Naples. And Herculaneum. And Vesuvius.’
I told her I would make love to her in all those places, and especially in the sun in the hills above Florence.
‘Would we need much money?’
‘To make love?’ I said.
She laughed.
‘What a wonderful dream,’ she said. ‘The two of us in Italy. But I’m hopeless about winding spaghetti on my fork.’
lxxvi
We, or I, had apparently dozed off. ‘You didn’t mention Venice,’ she said.
To myself I thought, nor did I mention the Abruzzi, L’Aquila, the Gran Sasso, my father’s village. This was my real and secret reason for going to Italy – to touch and to taste a past that was never mine. All the rest were glamor places that would have been the same romantic dream for us both. But the Abruzzi was neither romantic nor a dream. It was a private place I was not prepared to share with anyone else.
My mind was on my grandmother, whom I never knew. She had lived in a backward provincial village that was not even her own. The lone Protestant in the area – in Italy they call them evangelisti – she had been an ardent Socialist long before and even under Mussolini. A woman, an individual, of rare character. It moved me that she was hated for teaching neighborhood kids to read the Bible. I wanted to glimpse her house, smell the winey smell of her cellar, talk to the villagers about her, kneel at her grave. My personal code, the stubborn idealism I mentioned earlier, I know came straight from her. So had everything I was attempting to do upstairs of Uncle Dave’s.
I wanted to take in a number of other Abruzzese mountain villages too where my Thompsonville neighbors had come from. Capistrano, Navelli, Civitaritenga.
Patricia shook me out of my revery. ‘You didn’t mention Venice.’
lxxvii
I lay there for some time, not initiating anything, because I knew that when the hour came round she would take the lead. The hour came round.
She said, ‘I don’t know which I want – to be on you or have you on me.’
‘Are you sure you’re ready.’
‘No, but it’s all right.’
‘Then you choose,’ I said.
‘No, you.’
‘We can do both.’
She gave a muted laugh. ‘Not at the same time,’ she said.
I rolled her over and climbed on top. ‘Not at the same time,’ I said.
It began. I knew she needed to find her own way, to let go in her own way. So I was gentle and held back. This time I asked for nothing and told her nothing and from her lips expected to hear nothing. Yet somehow, without having to proclaim it outright, I wanted her to know I was but a means, an instrument, for the fulfillment of her desire and pleasure.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Slowly, slowly.’
She led. I held back. It was she who controlled the rhythm. After a long while, she breathed, ‘Please.’ But by that it wasn’t clear whether she meant slower or faster. I said nothing. Guiding, she began to make it faster. Again she said, ‘Please, please,’ and now I knew she wanted to ride.
And we rode and we rode and we rode.
Then, all at once, she shot me a frantic look and with it made me keep my eyes fixed on hers. Her face strained and reddened, she was holding her breath and concentrating hard. She was trying, trying, trying, lifting her hips and thrusting against me. And then it just ended, she was exhausted, she sank back.
‘I couldn’t,’ she said, her chest heaving. ‘I almost. I almost. It was almost. I knew I was almost.’
She was close to hysteria. Her skin glowed, a rivulet ran down her neck and pooled in the hollow of her collarbone. I had never seen such wild beauty, such an amalgam of wantonness and innocence. But now in her eyes I also saw fear.
Without moving, without withdrawing, I comforted her. Tender kisses on her eyelids, tender kisses at the corners of her mouth. I brushed a damp lock from her forehead. I calmed her, I eased her back down.
lxxviii
That next day’s night. Was something going wrong? When I began adding up her reserve, her sealed lips, the shadow that from time to time crept across her brow and took her away, an intuition told me that we were coming to what Tillie told the tailor.
Yet her bitter frustration of that morning had served to tear down a barrier. In previous conversation she had been mainly spare and guarded. Now, lying just inches apa
rt, she seemed impelled to open up, and this excited her. It excited me too. I thought of it as another way of making love.
But to allow any possible talk I had first to slay physical temptation. I hiked the bedsheet up over us. Even then, with that irresistible face of hers, I had a job to refrain from touching her, from kissing her. Remember, I was young, beauty dazzled me, her looks dazzled me. We were besotted with each other. It began like this, a tentative probe, her words slow, as if she were anxious to pick out the one exact thread among many. As I said, we were inches apart. Her voice at times was a bare whisper.
‘Do you remember my note?’
‘I remember the rosemary,’ I said.
‘I wanted so much to tell you about that night.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘But it was too complicated and I didn’t understand and I couldn’t,’ she said.
‘Tell me now,’ I said.
There was a long, long pause. As she gathered herself, I thought I saw that shadow fall across her brow. I knew her to be a serious girl, for she seldom laughed and never flirted or teased. But now the shadow, ominous, hanging there. I had no idea what to expect. ‘I’d like to,’ she said at last, ‘but I’d have to ask you something first. That night in New Haven, why didn’t you take me? You were burning. Why didn’t you take me?’
There was a sudden tinge of anger in her tone. But I ignored it.
‘I did take you,’ I said evenly.
‘You didn’t,’ she insisted, a quaver in her throat. ‘You didn’t take me, you didn’t enter me, you didn’t put yourself in me. Why? Why didn’t you hurt me.’
Then all at once she caught herself, her hands flew out from under the sheet, and she pressed them against my temples. She was searching my eyes. ‘You didn’t hurt me,’ she said accusingly, and she began to cry.
I took her hands and pressed my lips to her forehead.