Babe. What a ridiculous word for her father to use, Luna though. First of all, it was child-like. And second, it implied an intimacy that Lenny and Loreena did not share. How could two people who rarely saw each other be called intimate?
“What happened then?” Luna asked.
“He keeled over and started twitching, so I called 911.”
That was a lot to absorb. Luna sank into the padded chair across from her mother, who took out her compact and blotted her skin. Loreena never went anywhere without her makeup.
Here are more facts about Luna’s mom:
STATS ON LOREENA
Name: Loreena Risotto Lampanelli. Loreena’s maiden name was a Northern Italian rice dish. Loreena had made overtures through the years that her ancestors created risotto. Loreena snubbed pasta, which she said was popular only “south of Rome, where no one has any sense of palate.”
Ethnic background: Northern Italian, far above where people get mugged “at the bottom of the boot.”
Marital Status: Married to a man who was barely around.
Children: One beleaguered daughter.
Body: Miniscule. But, for a shrimp, she had some incredible projection in her voice.
Hair: Dark brown, worn short with a flip at the bottom.
Occupation: Formerly an opera singer, but quit to have Luna. Through the years, she’d frequently reminded Luna of this sacrifice.
Favorite Activities: Yelling, stacking newspapers and hoarding things she bought in the thrift shop.
Other likes: Anything northern Italian, The New York Times (collecting issues, not actually reading them.)
Dislikes: Too many to list.
Religion: Agnostic.
Favorite writers: Anyone northern Italian.
Favorite dessert: Gelato.
Favorite expression: Anything spoken in Italian (not dialect) or written by a northern Italian writer.
The one constant about Loreena was that there was no constant. Mostly she ranted, but sometimes she took on a little girl voice, filled with questions. For Luna, the child voice had always been worse. Mothers were supposed to have answers.
Loreena snapped her compact shut, stowed it back in her purse and gave Luna the critical eye. “Your shirt is stained.”
Luna looked down. There was a drop of coffee on her purple shirt. Practically microscopic. Leave it to Loreena to point it out.
Having been in this relationship for thirty-eight years, Luna knew what her mom was like. But disapproval never stopped stinging, just like memories didn’t leave.
Luna looked past her mother, to one memory she’d never forget.
Thirty-three years earlier
Woodside, Queens
They lived in the center of a maze of dirty brick apartment buildings.
Luna skipped along the winding asphalt path lined with chain-linked poles. She was in the circus, the chains were her trapeze! She stopped to swing. Mommy kept walking. Luna had to run to catch up. The air was sour with incineration. Still, Luna’s mood was sweet.
At their building, Mommy said, “Stay outside. I’m going to take a nap.” It was her angry voice, but Luna wouldn’t have argued anyway. She wanted to stay in the light.
Luna dashed to the playground. Slide, swings, concrete slabs to climb. Playing out a story in her mind, she nested herself inside a cement cylinder. So busy, she didn’t see the bodies blocking her exit on each side.
Laughing voices. “You’re our prisoner,” said one.
“You can never go home,” said another.
They were older. Girls.
She hadn’t been afraid curled up in that small space before. Now, trapped, she was.
She put her hand on her chest to calm her heart. It was beating so fast. She couldn’t live like this forever!
She leaned back, shivered. The walls were so cold.
Not the slightest bit of light got in between those legs blocking her way.
She was all scrunched up. Her body ached, her head ached too. The hairs on her arms stood up.
She needed to get warm.
She had to get out.
HOW?
She crawled toward one end of the cylinder. Her hand slid along the strange surface, smooth paint but with grit underneath. She felt the coarseness so much more now, pricking her palms.
It seemed forever to go that short distance but finally she was there.
PUSH!
She gave a great big shove at the legs. They kicked. CONK! Her head met concrete. Pounding pain. The taste of salty tears and blood.
Shaken voices prattled at once: She’s hurt! We’re in trouble!
And then the legs ran off.
She was free!
Luna crawled out into the light. Her head ached, blood trickled. She headed down the asphalt path leading to her building, passing all those links she’d played with. They weren’t trapezes at all. They were just heavy, thick chains. She wouldn’t—she couldn’t, ever—swing anymore.
She yanked on the red metal door to her building, stepping inside the dim hall.
She stopped by the elevator, stared at it.
No. She couldn’t be closed in.
She climbed the stairs to her fifth floor apartment, gripping the green metal banister tight with each step.
Up, up, up she climbed. She was exhausted but at least she was moving, at least she was almost there.
She reached her door and knocked.
Dumbfounded and eyeing the blood, Mommy screamed. “What did you do to your new shirt!”
Luna didn’t ask for a hug—Mommy still had her angry voice. It wouldn’t help anyway. Mommy’s skin was always like ice. Luna needed warmth.
She shuffled past the angry voice and into her room. She curled under the covers with Gus, her stuffed walrus. And she told him everything.
THREE
After a while, a nurse appeared and told Loreena she could go back inside. Luna followed her mom down another corridor with a bounty of harvest decorations on borrowed time, past rooms with doors open, curtains drawn around the beds.
Why did she peek inside? Morbid curiosity? Self-punishment? She couldn’t deal with sick people. They made her feel so helpless. And she felt their emotional pain.
She always felt everyone’s pain.
But there was no curtain drawn in Lenny Lampanelli’s room. Her father was the only patient in the room.
Oh god, he looked awful. Like he was in the process of dying. His body writhed as though 1,000 volts of electricity were charging through him. He moaned in a voice that sounded like the ghost of him.
“It’s okay, Lenny,” Loreena said. Her tone was flat and unconvincing—at least to Luna. But Lenny didn’t look like he heard her anyway. He was somewhere in his own orbit of pain.
“I haven’t eaten all day,” Loreena said. This was actually nothing new—she said it all the time.
“Go eat, Mom. I’ll stay here.”
“The food is probably atrocious. I doubt they have risotto.”
“I doubt that, too.”
Loreena sighed. “I’ll just go get some tea.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” Luna said, knowing nothing would.
Loreena left, and Luna was alone with Lenny—or what remained of him.
She stared at her groaning father and tried to remember good things about him—anything to offset the present picture. The problem was that she didn’t have all that much to work with.
STATS ON LENNY
Name: Leonard (Lenny) Lampanelli
Ethnic background: Italian (hopefully from the north, though it had never actually been mentioned) and Russian.
Marital status: Married but rarely there.
Children: One daughter, who’d missed him.
Body: Fairly tall and stocky.
Hair: Sandy brown (Luna had his coloring).
Occupation: Heroin dealer (and addict).
Favorite activities: Sleeping. On the rare occasions they ate together, he was snoring before he finished his
meal.
Other likes: Leaving.
Dislikes: Conflict. Thought the years, whenever Loreena said something vicious he’d serenely respond, “Alright, Babe,” no matter what she’d said. Soon after, he’d be gone.
Religion: Unknown.
Favorite writers: Unknown.
Favorite dessert: Unknown. (Never made it that far.)
Favorite expression: “What a fathead,” which he said about other drivers in the infrequent times when Luna had been in the car with him. He didn’t get upset. It was more of a calm observation.
The other thing Dad said a lot was “Goodbye.”
Luna stood at her father’s bed, touching the plastic handrail and trying to say something. But what? The room was devoid of decorations, with not one turkey or corn stalk in sight. Didn’t stroke victims deserve festivity, too? She thought briefly of requesting a hanging paper candy cane or wreath, but nixed the plan because she didn’t want to approach the mami man. She tried to click on the TV so at least there would be some background noise, but it only displayed an extension to call for rental. The inactivated TV made her feel so sad she had to hold back tears.
She finally gave up on conversation. What was the point in struggling? She doubted he could hear her. All her life she’d wanted to be with him and here he was—and not going anywhere, from the look of things.
Now that she had him, all she wanted to do was leave. Standing here only dredged up the past, and there was nothing good about that.
Thirty years earlier
They lived on Long Island now. No more concrete playground. No more chains. But still, Dad wasn’t there.
Luna was eight, and she could call Dad at his friend’s house and ask him to come and get her. He promised and promised he would but he didn’t say when.
Finally, he said he would take her to the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village.
New York City!
After trick or treating, she sat on her patchwork quilt and waited. She was a witch in pointed black hat with a bristly broom at her side.
She waited, waited, waited for her dad.
Raggedy Ann and Gus watched Luna from the end of the bed but she didn’t want to play. She didn’t want to read her books piled on the floor. She didn’t want to watch TV, even though Batman was on. She didn’t want any candy from her trick-or-treat bag. She just wanted to go.
Dad was late.
He was always late, but now he was really, really late.
Mom said it in her razor sharp voice over and over and over. “He’s late, and he’s probably not going to show.”
Luna’s lamp shined in the corner. Light coming from under, over, through the shade. Looking at the light usually felt good, made her feel warm and glowing inside, but tonight it was too bright. It hurt Luna’s eyes.
Mom was getting louder, sharper; her voice could cut wood, could slice through Luna’s broom. It felt like it was carving through Luna. Mom was angry, behind Luna, moving back and forth, her voice switching sides of the room, pinging against the walls. Luna held onto her broom, circled her hands around the smooth handle. Even though she didn’t know any magic and it was just a piece of wood, still it felt good to hold on to something.
Mom didn’t like that Luna liked Dad. “He’s a bastard,” Mom yelled. “You can’t trust him; he’s not coming. When will you get that you can’t depend on him? He’s no good!”
Luna sat on her patchwork bedspread, staring so much that the colors blurred. She wished Mom’s voice would blur like that, mix the words together so they didn’t make sense, so she wouldn’t have to understand the truth.
It was cold.
This place was always so cold.
Her hat, her broom, her shoulders slumped. Her brown hair swept across her face and covered it like curtains but still there were colors through the spaces in her hair. Blue, red, yellow and green blend, blend, blended through strands; her mom yelled, yelled, yelled that Dad wasn’t coming, and she got it.
She got it.
She was alone.
Her mom was ranting, ranting, ranting. Not talking to her, talking at her.
Loud, loud, LOUD.
Luna was alone.
Her dad wasn’t coming.
She was alone.
Her broom dropped to the floor.
Something inside her fell too.
“I should go,” Luna said when Loreena came back. It was cold in the hospital room. She had goosebumps. “I have to pick up the kids.”
“Then go,” Loreena said. She turned her back on Luna and clicked on the TV. She tsked at the screen displaying the extension, muttered something about thieves being everywhere, and dialed the number. After a short exchange in which she begrudgingly authorized the $4 daily charge, Loreena hung up and changed the channel. Judge Judy was on, and she was letting someone have it.
Luna was used to her mother not saying goodbye. She never got any closure from Loreena. She stood in the doorway, where she’d waited out the TV activation. “‘Bye,” she called. But Loreena just stared at the TV, immersed in Judy’s admonishment. Luna was already forgotten.
Waiting for the elevator, Luna rubbed her arms and tried to shake off her chill.
Ding! It arrived. The doors slid open, and there was Aunt Zelda.
“Oh, child!” Zelda stepped out and wrapped Luna in her arms. And then Luna was warm.
FOUR
The hug had to end, of course. That was the bad thing about hugs. It was like when Luna was little, and Aunt Zelda came and held Luna’s hand through the crib bars. Sooner or later she had to let go.
It was Aunt Zelda who had provided love and companionship in Luna’s young world. And she’d helped Luna discover who she was—by bringing her crayons, a little box of bright colors. Luna held one and she knew. She gripped that crayon, she scribbled purple and she felt it: This is right. And though it would be years before she understood what it truly meant to write, she had peace and purpose in her heart. These things carried her through the dark.
Zelda tried to teach Luna her passion, propping a tiny violin under Luna’s chin practically before the child could speak. As the years passed and Luna balked, Zelda bribed her to play, paying ten cents per music sheet line.
The violin was torture to Luna. She wanted to write.
Every moment she spent struggling over notes, she could be putting words to paper.
That’s how much she knew what she was meant to do, and finally Zelda accepted it. When Luna was nine, her fiddle was retired and Zelda bought Luna a journal. “Far be it from me to fight your passion,” she told Luna. “Write on, Love.”
Here are some things about kooky, wonderful Aunt Zelda:
STATS ON ZELDA
Name: Zelda Lampanelli Belleford Lamar
Ethnic background: The same as her brother Lenny’s, but the similarities pretty much ended there between her and her decade-younger sibling.
Marital status: Twice widowed.
Children: None. Before she was married, Zelda had been something of a free spirit with men. In trouble when abortions were illegal, she had a botched “backroom” procedure. But she couldn’t love Luna any more if Luna were her daughter, rather than her niece.
Body: Tall, fit and slim—she had the build of a migrant worker.
Hair: Dark brown.
Occupation: Musician and visionary. Zelda had converted an old coffee barge into a floating concert hall in Brooklyn. She was pretty famous now, featured in the New York Times and on Good Morning, America.
Other likes: Gardening, the sea, whodunit novels.
Dislikes: Arrogance and cruelty.
Religion: Zelda had been raised by a devout Catholic mother whose life centered around her church. When her mother died, the priest refused to bless the grave because Zelda couldn’t pay him. Zelda had renounced all religion until recently, when she’d become a Zen Buddhist. Her second husband’s ashes were sprinkled outside the Zendo in upstate New York, though he didn’t share her beliefs.
Favorite writers: She enjoyed anything she read, but particularly favored Agatha Christie, which she’d read with Luna during Luna’s teen years.
Favorite dessert: Anything sweet, because during the Depression they barely had sugar. Nor did they have much butter, and now she never turned down a croissant.
Favorite expression: “Opposition breeds opposition.” (Zelda offered many profound observations, but this was her favorite nugget.) And when they parted, Zelda never said, “Good-bye.” Instead, she said, “Tootle-oo, old chum!”
Zelda had a strong, deep laugh. When Luna was a child and Zelda visited, Luna had laughed a lot too. The world had taken a different tone..
But there was nothing to laugh about now.
Zelda asked, “How is Lenny?”
“Not good…”
“Oh my…” Zelda’s walnuty voice cracked. “Let’s sit for a moment. I have to compose myself before I see him.” This was a rarity. Zelda was the one who was always together. She held everything in place—she was the glue! If she comes apart… Luna shuddered. That wouldn’t, couldn’t, happen.
Zelda took one wobbly step towards the lounge area, then another. She lived on her floating barge, and because she came off it so infrequently, she didn’t have “land legs.” Luna took Zelda’s hand to steady her, and Zelda squeezed heartily.
Attached, they inched across the white linoleum floor as though it were wet and they were in danger of slipping. Finally they made it to the chairs. They sat side by side, Zelda gripping Luna’s hand still. Just like old times, except now Luna’s hand was full-grown, and Aunt Zelda’s was wrinkled and bony. Disturbing, how people lost the cushion between their flesh and bones as they aged. It was hard to feel comfortable holding Zelda’s hand now. It made Luna think too much.
A shame it had to be like this. That it took Lenny’s stroke for Zelda to leave her barge. Zelda’s life revolved around that hunk of metal, and even though Luna was glad Zelda had realized her dream, she was jealous of it. Luna wanted her aunt to be the person who used to sit with her, read books with her. But once the barge was born, her aunt was consumed with concerts and fundraising. Now she was here, sitting beside her, holding her hand. Luna wanted desperately to discuss her problems and to ask, How do I find the strength to deal with my life? Zelda would know—she’d mustered so much courage in her years—but of course Lenny dominated this moment. The man who’d never been there was suddenly everywhere, vapor in the air they breathed. And in a way, Luna hated him for that.
Luna Rising Page 3