Gina stepped back into the library, unable to decide what to do. Should she meet Alex anyway? Should she try to lose Nino on the train? Should she call his shot and just confront him? Should she spend the evening in the library and make Nino wait for nothing? What was the right thing to do?
If he wants to follow me, I’ll give him a chase he won’t forget, Gina thought grimly. It came to her, the determination to make him run, run, run in the sunlight that was still hotter than kisses. It came like a fire itself, freeing and fueling her rage. Who was he not to believe what she said? He wouldn’t stand for the truth; he wouldn’t stand for her lying. So let him not stand at all, let him exhaust himself until he couldn’t tell the difference between truths and lies. A war was a war. Once he realized he wasn’t going to win, he would give up.
Gina moved out onto the library steps, walking slowly so that he would be sure to see her. What if he didn’t get up? What if he were only reading the paper? Geared for war, the possibility of a missed fight wasn’t what she wanted. But she could tell now for sure, seeing him gathering himself together, that he was following. She moved toward the station, deliberately crossing the street so that he could climb the long staircase of the El without fear that she would see him. The shaded stairway seemed cool; out on the subway platform the sun shone down on the hot, splintering wood. She loved this platform. From the end, looking over the dome of Saint Demetrios’s Church, she could see the New York skyline, suspended in the shimmering heat.
On the street below were the private houses, the six-story apartments, the little yards overpacked with rosebushes and fig trees—the vestigial village beyond which the city stood like a mirage. Were you thirsty? The city was water. Were you low? It was all height and promise. Were you lonely? There was Alex. She could hardly keep her mind on Nino. That was the trouble with Nino. When he was around, he focused everything. When he was gone, it seemed as though he didn’t exist at all. I’m not, she realized, purposeful enough for a good vendetta. I don’t want revenge, I want out. But there he was, committed to pursuit to the last drop of blood. She looked away, into the rosebushes pinned and pruned on their trellises.
It was the month they call in Sicily the time of the lion sun. There the heat ruled without rivals. Here in Astoria the rose-packed gardens hurled sweetness into the dust-laden air, the smells of cooking bubbled from open kitchen windows into streets pungent with car exhausts, the El rained soot on the street below; all seemed fused into a seething life that was fair match for the ravenous sun. The BMT went crashing around the curve from Hoyt Avenue, its wheels grinding to an ear-splitting stop on the hot rails. Gina got on the train. Peering through the filmy car window she saw Nino limping into the next car. She settled nervously into a seat facing the Manhattan skyline, still visible through the streaked windows as the train screeched on.
There it was. At work, every day, in the city, typing past-due bills, or letters politely requesting payment, the beauty of it receded before the familiar routine of drudge-work. But even the bills she typed sometimes seemed launched into that other world where people lived gracefully, lightly, never paying their dues. Not my lot, she thought wistfully. With Nino your bills were always due. You could meet them on the infinite installment plan. Pay-as-you-go-to-the-grave in regular portions of work, marriage, christenings, funerals. Spellbound you paid and paid. What made it all work for so long? What was the magic? The sense of fear? Just fear of Nino’s rages, the wreckage he made with his words and his cane? It was part of it. You couldn’t shortchange his menacing voice and punishing ways. But it wasn’t that alone that made it seem impossible to default on Nino. He had an air of being right. Nino! she wanted to scream. You can’t collect from me! But his air of certainty made her feel doubtful, confused. How could you set your confusion against all his conviction? And so she felt only a sense of faint dread, a sudden exhaustion that paralyzed the will to cross him. Her weariness came before the fight, making it all seem hopeless before it had begun.
The train plunged into the tunnel that brought not a darkness but only a harsher light. The fluorescent rods, exposed through the broken shields, showed the ragged papers and soot swirling slowly as the train lumbered under the river. The thought of the river overhead, the oily surface stained by chaotically moving tides, pressing its weight year after year against the concrete and steel, never failed to bring the question to mind: When would it give? When would it break, when would the barricade yield passage beneath the surface, finally giving way to the tides? It was a kid’s thought. It should have passed long ago. But it didn’t. In Sicily, near Amerina, there was a lake, Pergusa, where Hades was supposed to have risen to go foraging for a woman. When he kidnapped Persephone, he took her back through the milky water to the underground place, the hell that was his to rule. Her trip through the water—suspended, airless in alien hands—must have been terrifying. It was just a story, a story without a place in a subway car inscribed with graffiti. Yet it stayed in her mind like the image of Nino in the next car.
The train was really speeding now, rocking into the bright blue bulbs that lit the tunnel’s sides. She could see herself moving toward the door that led to his car, forcing it open, feeling the hot wind between the cars, standing before him, screaming hello over the noise. Maybe that would be the best. The train lurched violently to one side, hurling her against the seat. It hadn’t been much of an idea, anyway. Whatever she said, he would refuse to acknowledge; he wouldn’t seem even slightly surprised. That would end the ride, but he’d take it as her capitulation, her recognition that he had found her out.
By now, Nino had read the sports news so many times he remembered it even better than usual, and he usually remembered it all. After the train had passed Bloomingdale’s, his curiosity and suspicion rose. He hadn’t thought she was going shopping, but still, he nodded, fanning himself with the News, you never know. She was, he could see, leaning forward and stretching by the window, arching back in her seat, staring at the lights in the tunnel. When Union Square came and went, he saw her rise.
Eighth Street, he thought. She could catch him on that stop easily, if she hesitated after getting out. He would have to move quickly to avoid getting caught in the door. The absence of a crowd, the midday silence of the station, all gave him pause. He was so easy to spot, a crippled old man. But she moved very quickly, without looking back when she left the station. Heading west, she stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to change. She walked slowly, glancing in store windows. She stopped near University Place, studying the display carefully. He ducked into the doorway of a butcher shop, watching her through a rack of prime rib roasts until she finished windowshopping and went on, turning down University Place. Hobbling quickly, he glanced into the window to see what had made her stop so long. Red lace bras with feathers sprouting from the top, transparent bikini underpants with little red lips embroidered on them, black see-through camisoles, some with cutouts where the nipples would be—Nino clenched his teeth, dug his cane into the sidewalk, and marched on.
She was heading into Washington Square Park. In the heat, only the elegant mansions on the north side seemed to remain intact. Everything else seethed, bubbled. Once, Nino thought, peering at her from behind a tree, this was a potter’s field, just a burying ground for the poor. Now, he thought disgustedly, looking at the addicts, winos, and stoned drifters lying on the grass, it looks as though the bodies have surfaced again. There she was in the middle of it all, buying a soda from a vendor, drinking on a bench in the blistering sun. You could barely see south to Judson Church, the fog of marijuana was so dense. The noise of conga drums, rude and numbing, thudded through the heat. She sipped her diet soda, taking it all in. He edged behind her, moving behind a tree so that even if she turned she couldn’t spot him.
Glancing up, Nino met Garibaldi’s eye. There the statue was, newly whitewashed in its frozen stride. Garibaldi stood balanced on his right foot, his left leg about to move forward; his right hand was poised on the sword
strapped to his left side. Was he taking it out of the sheath, or putting it in? Politics aside, that was the kind of man you could see would use his sword to defend the right things. But the question came back. Was he drawing his sword against some tyrant, or was he putting it away because he had already won? The face, whitewashed of its lines, smoothed by rains and snows, couldn’t tell you much anymore. But the stance was proud, a gentleman’s stance without being showy. There he was, after all these years, a warrior with a paunch, not too proud when he had to leave Italy to help out Meucci, the inventor, in his candle factory in Staten Island. And then even after going back to Italy to lead victorious armies, to keep writing to Meucci as “Dear Boss”!
Nino shook his head. There was a man for you. And people say Italians are lousy fighters, never able to go the distance.
Gina’s hands held the can of soda like a chalice. She had the mentality of a three-year-old, Nino thought, shaking his head. He had taken her here through the park so many times on the way to Aunt Tonetta’s. They had even sat on the bench where she sat now. In those days he didn’t have to hide behind her! He had bought the ice cream pop, the soda, the lemon ice she had held so solemnly. He had sat with her, telling her stories, or rushing her along so they wouldn’t be late. The new playground on the south side, with its fancy swings and fake hills, hadn’t been there.
Rising, turning, Gina glimpsed Nino’s face, darkened with sentiment, still turned toward the statue. Garibaldi again, she thought disgustedly. The whitewashed statue was already flecked and pitted with soot, chips had fallen from the pedestal where skateboards had crashed into it. Yet the sight of him had always made Nino gab. What hypocrisy, a petty tyrant like him talking about a liberator. She stuffed the straw into the soda can with her right fist. Striding toward a garbage basket, she hurled the soda into it through a mass of bees hunting for sugar. She had to walk slowly, she realized, or he would lose her, fall too far behind in the winding streets that he used to take her through on the way to visit relatives whose hearts and mouths were always open. By now, each had had his appointed funeral and gone on.
Nino moved after her as she walked south, ambling across West Third, he only dimly realizing they were on their way past Aunt Tonetta’s on Thompson Street. How he remembered the wine she used to make, thick as chocolate and half as sweet, bubbling in soda glasses a third full of Seven-Up. Past the lemon ice stand, past the old playground, she crossed Houston, pausing by Saint Anthony’s Church. She was moving south. Where was she going? But the question faded as memories hit, as his shirt dampened and ran with sweat in the heat, his neatly knotted tie under the starched collar wet as a marathon runner’s sweatband. No more village now. No hotpants, no serapes. The little boys of six and seven in shorts, squatting to draw circles for games of war on the sidewalk, older boys wrapping tape on a broomstick, kids playing boxball, seemed like new versions of old snapshots of himself. His glasses steamed. His rage faded; he kept on, propelled as much by his past as by her. So many mirrors in so many strange faces. Now she was moving east, backtracking, weaving between Spring Street and Houston.
Suddenly she was gone. On the right an empty lot studded with refuse, wild grass, old bottles. On the left an almost unbroken row of tenements. He knew she hadn’t reached the corner. He covered the block again. There it was, a narrow alley. Jersey Street? Maybe through here. As he went in, it widened to almost six feet, cutting through the center of the block, virtually paved with broken glass. Green beer-bottle glass, brown glass from other beers, and clear long shards lay shining on the cobblestones in patches where the sun knifed through the alley, all gleaming, even in the shadows. He dragged his left foot gingerly, afraid of falling into the shimmering, cutting edges. Halfway through he realized where he was. He was moving toward the old cathedral on Prince and Mott. He could see ahead of him the chin-high wall of rust-colored brick, the sagging wooden door painted shut to the rectory’s back entrance. In the old country the priests could confuse you. There was an old saying: The hand raised in benediction was also the hand that took bread from your mouth. Here in the old days the Irish priests just drenched you with contempt. He grasped the cool, shaded brick wall of the alley. The alley, he remembered, had always been here. Once it had a street sign—Jersey Street? Maybe not. Anyway, it was long gone. He was losing his balance, leaning against the wall as his bad leg, numbed, came to rest. Without going farther, he could picture what was outside. The sagging wooden door would blend into the old brick wall continuing the length of Prince Street, turning the corner at Mott and circling the block, enclosing the old garden cemetery of Saint Patrick’s. He forced himself onward, spotting Gina as she slowly reached the corner, letting her hand drift along the hot brick wall. Her dark hair, brushed back by the hot breeze, her white skirt flaring over curving hips, her bare brown legs, sandaled feet—she looked achingly familiar, one of the girls he would have watched forty years ago, leaning against the hot brick wall with his friends. Teasing, cajoling, from the safety of the gang they would call, entice, never getting a response.
He was never very good at it. He was much too shy for even the most promiscuous to pay any attention to him. Yet, in the end, it had paid off. Meeting Mariana, the baker’s daughter, on the subway, she had trusted him. For days and evenings after that, they met out of the neighborhood, touched in alleys they didn’t know. He could almost feel her soft cotton blouse, smell her rosewatered body, feel the beads of wetness on her arms in the summer heat, in the sun that was hotter than caresses. He grasped the rough brick wall. Mariana that night, that last night when they had gone to Coney Island and stayed, walking under the boardwalk at nightfall. He swallowed painfully. How silky her breasts, her belly had been against the cooling, grainy sand.
This was ridiculous. He forced himself to move against the dizziness, the blinding dizziness of the yellow sun, the rods of light forcing their way between the tenements across the street into his eyes. They were tearing now. Suddenly the air seemed to be thickening. To move was to move against a vapor-wall filled with ghosts, ghost smells, ghost memories rising from the cemetery like the scent of dreams and nightmares. The DelMonte funeral home, still there—a good business, death!—the grocer with his cheeses and salamis—the store that had sold espresso pots and china had given way to dry goods. But nowhere was Gina to be seen.
Nino circled the block, moving toward the main entrance of Saint Patrick’s. How many years since he had been inside! His eyes raked the cemetery. She wasn’t there, browsing among the tombstones or the ill-kept grass. How nice it had once been, with sprinklers going all the time and Father Montale planting herbs to border the path. He had a regular collection: thyme, sweet basil, dill; and even, hidden away from view, so nobody would get the wrong idea, a grape arbor concealed behind a ramshackle fence at the corner.
Nino fell back quickly against the wall as he opened the door. So there she was. She was reading the names of people who had donated stained-glass windows to the church. The yellow light, pouring through the brilliant blue and red glass, lit the interior in an odd, garish way. How dusty it seemed inside. The cream-colored walls and painted spindle fences around the altar somehow looked out of place. There was not enough marble in this country to make a proper show when they built this, Nino thought. He edged back out the door, hiding behind it, waiting for her to leave.
In the chapel in back of the church he had married Laura. He swallowed; his throat felt painfully parched. How different his life might have been if he had married Mariana. He had been young and a great dancer. And she was luscious, sweet, voluptuous. It was the summer. The New York summer sweated sex even out of a dead man. He sighed, looking up when the church door slammed. Gina was striding down the walk leading to Mott Street. He rose, limping after her. In the old days he could have outsprinted her for miles, miles, miles. If he had married Mariana, she wouldn’t be here at all, he mused. Mariana. It was better not to wonder what had happened to her. How could he have married her, after all? She had let h
im have his way with her without being married. If she was willing to do that, she could have done it with someone else while married to him. Once you cross a line, you keep crossing. That was human nature.
Nino limped forward. The air was almost unbreathable. All the exhausts of the city, the basements exhaling roach poisons, the fumes of cars, the light pollen of surviving grasses, the rolling dust and soot flurries, were crashing in his lungs. And look at her, that bitch. His suit jacket too was drenched now, sopping and stuck to his body on the shadeless street. And she, running on, gliding over the sidewalks in bare legs and sandals, her white dress still white.
He began to cough, a slow wracking cough, spewing out the city vapors, the memories that stuck like tar in his throat. She moved down Mott past the pork butcher’s store on Spring Street, where hams and sausages hung from rope over the white porcelain display; on she went past Kenmare Street, past the liquor shop on Broome with a window full of Mondavi reds, Zinfandel in blackish letters on a paper banner. There, she was slowing, finally slowing, standing in front of the Villa Pensa, looking across the street. His tired eyes followed her glance. Ferrara’s. How large it had become. She crossed in the middle of the street, not bothering about the desultory traffic, and strolled under the Pasticceria sign into the store.
Nino waited for the light to change and dragged himself across the street. How flashy Ferrara’s had gotten. The window was full of packaged boxed candies with fancy Ferrara labels; coffee cans in red and green blared the name again. Sleek display cases showed the pastries. Shiny black-lacquer ice cream parlor chairs; yellow formica tables. Where were the little wooden chairs, the chipped Carrara marble tables, the cozy friendliness of the old place with its trays of pastries? The young waiters, each trying to look like Valentino, had waltzed them around when they felt like it. He leaned against the window and felt its coolness. Now there was even air conditioning. He could see her at a table near the door, ordering. Dizziness and exhaustion rolled over him in waves. His good leg was throbbing horribly, pain working itself up from his toes, through his arch, past the ankle ringed with popping blue veins.
The Right Thing to Do Page 8