The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  They all sat quietly, waiting. Willie had the girl and her lover sit together. They were to touch each other, tenderly, wordlessly, while they waited for the take.

  Finally the shooting began. The two young lovers moved carefully, slowly, lovingly, just as he had instructed. They looked into each other’s eyes, they connected with each other first spiritually and then, finally, sexually, in an act so surprisingly tender that Willie could hardly believe it.

  The caliph entered, and the scene moved on.

  After the caliph raped his slave-love, the guard entered the tent. He was carrying the head of the male slave. It was a real head, the porn actor’s last appearance on the screen or anywhere else.

  The girl, at first not quite taking in what she was seeing, stared and then blinked and gasped. She started to rise, but the strong arm of the caliph prevented her. She started to scream, but he blocked her lips with a deep kiss. He plunged his dagger into her throat, and pulled back as the spouting blood covered the girl’s naked body and splashed on his face and shoulders. He put his bloodied hands over his face and sobbed. He looked up, his expression anguished, his voice rasping.

  “I really loved her. I truly loved her. Why did she betray me? Oh, why?”

  The picture ended with a long, loving shot of the dead slave, her body still positioned for love, her arms flung out. And then Willie, focused on her face. The pale green eyes were open, staring in total comprehension, her mouth twisted in horror.

  It was the most artistic, realistic snuff movie ever made, and it became a classic on the circuit.

  Willie Paycek was paid twenty thousand dollars for this movie, which would be the only work in his oeuvre not to bear his name.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ON HIS WEDDING DAY, DANTE D’ANGELO felt as though his life belonged to someone else. It was all too much for a boy from Ryer Avenue.

  His father, Dominick D’Angelo, had arrived in New York City at the turn of the century, a frightened immigrant, fourteen years old, wearing the clothes his widowed mother had made for him before he left Sicily. He had the address of an uncle, five American dollars, and promises he had made to a mother he would never see again.

  He would be an honorable man, always. He would give his word only when he knew he could keep it. He would work hard, every day of his life. He would take no charity, for the bread of charity was made of dust. He would pray for his mother and brothers and sisters. He would send home a picture when he found a wife.

  He would never dishonor any woman, just as he would not permit anyone to dishonor his sisters. He would raise his children to be good Catholics and honorable people.

  He lived near starvation, working at any job that required a strong back. He was not a large man, but he could lift and carry. He never cheated on his hours. He never claimed one penny he had not earned. For seven years he saved every single dollar he could toward his own business. He was a good shoemaker. Although in this country there were shoe stores filled with shoes of all kinds, they were not made to last. Although his shop was called Dominick D’Angelo, Shoemaker, he was really a shoe repairer. He knew which children were hard on the tips and on the heels, so he reinforced those places with small steel crescents that tapped and clattered and delighted the kids and pleased the parents. After all, shoes were expensive and should last longer than from the store to the home.

  On Sundays, after church, after tidying the small apartment at the back of his shop on 181st Street, he walked in the spring air all the way to Fordham Road and then cut down to Bathgate Avenue. Here were the fresh fruit and vegetable stands, the kosher live-chicken markets (the Jews were careful to get the cleanest poultry and meat). Although he rarely bought anything but vegetables and fruit, Dom D’Angelo liked to wander about, just looking. There were any number of clothing shops, discount places where you could buy a slightly off-size coat or pair of pants, an off-color shirt, or socks or underwear that hadn’t been cut exactly right.

  Mothers dragged cranky children in and out of the shops, holding clothes against their bodies, wrapping a sock around a child’s fist for size.

  The men waited outside the shops, smoking, talking about jobs, politics, word from home. Dom edged closer to the men who spoke Italian, listened to their accents, until he felt comfortable. Sounds of home.

  He rarely spoke to anyone. He was too shy.

  But each week he went to the stand in front of the Rucci Family Vegetable and Fruit Company and bought exactly the same thing. Three red apples, two yellow apples, two oranges, three bananas.

  The girl who served him, a plump, bright-eyed girl of fifteen named Angela Rucci, smiled at him, held up her hand, said, “Don’t tell me, let me guess.” She filled a brown paper bag with his order, and Dom D’Angelo walked home to 181st Street in a daze. She was aware of him. She remembered him from week to week. She had noticed him.

  Her family did not approve of him. He had one small shoe-repair shop, period. He had no family here; what kind of life could he offer their youngest sister? Angela was an orphan living with her married brothers, part of a large, growing, affluent family who actually owned not just their shop, but a two-story clapboard house farther down the street. And they were preparing to buy two more houses, so that they would always be close together, as families should be.

  What he had, this twenty-year-old boy, strong in the shoulders, with black hair, clear skin, and good features, was his love. He would never bring dishonor to this girl. He treasured her. He rented a four-room apartment on Ryer Avenue, where they could make a home for themselves and for the children they would have.

  When it was clear that Angela would have no other for her husband, when she threatened to starve or even mutilate herself—“I’ll shave my head. I’ll be so ugly you will have to hide me away forever!”—there was nothing to do but give permission. And offer this boy a place in the family business, so that one day, he too would be able to live in a two-story house of his own on Bathgate Avenue.

  They hadn’t realized that Dom D’Angelo, though quiet and respectful, had a will of his own. He worked for himself. He would never live in a house he could not afford. He would take care of his wife and their children without any help, thank you.

  At times, the Rucci brothers gathered in the crowded living room of one home or another, while the women and girls worked in the kitchen, filling the house with marvelous hints of what was to come for Sunday dinner. They spoke of things that Dom did not understand—of midnight runs, or trucks that “lost their way” in New Jersey; of meat that had to be saved or it would rot in the road when the driver had disappeared. They spoke of bargain prices for refrigerators, radios, clocks. They bragged about the newest appliance the wives had: a washing machine with a strong, rubber-coated wringer, to save red hands the hard task of squeezing water from soaking clothing.

  Whenever they offered Dom D’Angelo any of their treasures, he turned them down. He would shop at Macy’s for what his family needed. And if he couldn’t afford these things, they would do without.

  The Ruccis felt sorry for their youngest sister, but what could they say? Within nine months she was rounded with her first child; then, later, beautiful with her second; then, still later, glowing with her third. She visited her family and invited them to her home, and she seemed happier than any woman they had ever seen. They always felt they could make sure Angela and her kids were okay, without the stiff-necked Dom knowing anything about it. Who could explain why one person loved another?

  The Rucci boys were raised in the family business; some graduated from high school, some went on to college. Others ran the meat markets and various other enterprises. They married, had children, moved to the suburbs.

  None had the golden future that awaited Dom’s oldest son, Dante.

  He had a law degree, a job in the Bronx district attorney’s office, a madonna of a bride who was not only beautiful but a college graduate who spoke many languages. She was an only child with a rich father—a wine merchant, who suppl
ied the Church with altar wine, who knew the score and dealt in real estate from time to time.

  When Lucia-Bianca told Dante that the ceremony would be held in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, he thought she was kidding.

  “Not at the main altar, of course. There are alcoves, lovely, beautiful. An old friend of my father, from his boyhood in Palermo, is an assistant to the cardinal, a monsignor. He’ll marry us. We have approval from my parish priest. It’s all been arranged. Dante, don’t look like that. It’s for my father.”

  Her father, of course, told Dante. “It is for my daughter. She is my only child. I would do whatever in this world I could for her happiness.”

  The wedding dinner-dance reception was held at the Waldorf-Astoria. Dante’s maternal family—uncles, aunts, cousins—was awestruck by the cathedral, impressed by the Waldorf, dazzled by the bride. The bride’s relatives came from Italy; quiet, well-dressed, handsome businessmen and their wives. They even approved of the handsome bridegroom. It was his family they disdained.

  Dante didn’t worry about his aunts and uncles and cousins. They were happy, relaxed; they were themselves, accustomed to rising to an occasion on their own terms. Take them or leave them, here they were, the Ruccis.

  He worried mostly about his father, stiff and uncomfortable in the new dark blue suit, his neck irritated by the starched collar held tight by the good silk tie. The tall, thin man had carefully combed the remaining strands of black-gray hair across his small skull, rubbed his hand over his chin several times to be sure the quickly growing dark beard wasn’t evident, making him look like a bum. Dante knew his father was overwhelmed by the entire event: the cathedral, where the cardinal himself says mass and gives the homily. The Waldorf-Astoria, where once, long ago, he had washed pots and pans for fifteen cents an hour. Now he was a guest at the table of honor. What if he should spill things, forget how to eat properly, what if …?

  Dante wrapped his arms around his father, kissed his cheek, and gently chided him, “Papa, if it weren’t for you, for the kind of man you are, I would be nothing. I would have married some girl right from high school, made a poor life for us, never have gone to law school. It was you who told all of us about working hard, setting goals.”

  The older man shrugged, studied his nails to make sure they were clean. “I’m still a shoemaker, Dante. This family you are marrying into, they are … in the old country, they would be the padrones.”

  “This isn’t the old country, Papa. The only padrones here are people who work, who earn. My sister’s husband, the son of a laborer, owns his own construction business. He employs fifty people. My kid brother is studying to become an engineer. In the old country, we’d all be field laborers. You brought us this chance, Pop. Your courage.” He hugged his father again, pulled back and looked directly into his eyes. “I am proud to be the son of my father. I only hope I will give you back pride in me.”

  Dom D’Angelo wiped a tear from his eye, nodded, whispered. He would try to have a good time. After all, it was his son’s wedding day.

  The surprise, to Dante, was his father-in-law, the austere, bone-thin, bearded, sinister-seeming man he had never seen smile. He sat next to Dom and they drank wine together, and whispered, and finally laughed together. Dante kept a quick eye out: Was this guy patronizing his father? Finally, Aldo gestured Dante away from his friends.

  “We have much in common, your father and I. We were just comparing. Two old widowers, we have confided to each other why we have never remarried. Who could ever compare to the mother of our children? Your father blushes, but his marriage to your mother was truly Romeo and Juliet. As was my marriage to Lucia-Bianca’s mother. Two old widowers with our memories.”

  Santini held a steady gaze with Dante, who nodded slightly, accepting the lie.

  “Ah, but what good memories,” Dante’s father said, smiling. “My Angela was plump, not in the thin way of these American girls. She ate like a woman should eat, with”—he snapped his fingers—“with gusto, yes?”

  Dante had never seen or heard his father like this before. He was totally at ease, sharing memories with this man that he had never shared with his children.

  When it came time for the father of the bride to dance with his daughter, and the mother of the groom with her son, Dante’s sister Angela, beautiful in her third pregnancy, did the honors for him. And then Dom D’Angelo, whose children had never seen him dance, took his new daughter-in-law in his arms and glided gracefully around the floor in a waltz. No one else danced; they all watched, spellbound. The old man, out of his shoe shop, out of his apron, his face clean, his body straight, was beautiful. He danced Lucia-Bianca over to her new husband and, with a courtly bow, presented her.

  “Bella, beautiful girl, my son. You be good to her, she is your treasure.”

  It was the happiest moment of Dante’s life.

  His best man, Charley O’Brien, uncomfortable, like Dante’s cousins, in the rented usher’s suits, took him aside.

  “God, you got it all, Danny. She’s gorgeous. Listen, I have to duck out early. I’m on duty at midnight. All the best, kid.”

  Dante punched him playfully.

  Aldo had reserved a fine room for the young couple at the Plaza Hotel, so that they could slip away from the party and not feel self-conscious. They had reservations to fly to Bermuda the next morning for four days. It was all the time Dante could arrange. And then they would move into a neat brick two-bedroom home on Pelham Parkway, on which Aldo held the mortgage. They would pay a moderate rent, the money going toward purchase of the home, if that was what they eventually wanted.

  That night Lucia-Bianca came out of the dressing room, glowing in heavy satin lounging pajamas. Neither of them had eaten a thing all day, and room service provided an assortment of hot and cold food and a bottle of Dom Perignon that had been preordered by the bride’s father.

  Dante could not take his eyes off his bride. He had seen her in glimpses throughout the day, surrounded by others. She had been hugged and danced with and fussed over, swallowed up by the love and attention of others. His first sight of her in her wedding dress was a complete blur: there, underneath this magnificence, was his wonderful girl, but he couldn’t really see her.

  Now, her dark hair casually finger-combed, freed from the bridal headpiece, her tall body outlined by the wonderfully clinging heavy pink satin, her breasts erect, small, neat, her hips touching the flowing material, her thighs and calves appearing and disappearing as she moved, her bare feet with their neat, pink-polished toenails—all of her—he devoured with his eyes.

  “Just let me look,” he said, ignoring the food.

  She lifted her head, waited for him to meet her eyes.

  “First some champagne,” she said softly. “You pour.”

  She nibbled on shrimps and little hot sandwiches, and sipped the wine. She fed him bits and pieces of food he didn’t even taste; then, finally, she held a small piece of meat between her bared teeth.

  Dante came to her, his mouth on hers. He bit the food from her teeth and chewed, then embraced her, moved with her toward the bed.

  “Let me take off your pajamas. God, but you are beautiful.”

  Then he undressed her and for the first time saw, actually saw, Lucia-Bianca’s perfect body. It was better than he had dreamed it: smooth and strong, with lush pubic hair, firm breasts, flat stomach, rounded hips. His hands moved lightly, then began to grasp, and she matched his passion.

  She had always matched his passion; she lost herself in his kiss. She seemed to devour him, to suck his being into herself, as her hands pulled and worked through the back of his head, his neck, his shoulders. Finally, this time, there would be no holding back, no leaving into the cold empty night with the sickness of desire.

  He spread her legs and started to enter her, but Lucia-Bianca suddenly stiffened.

  “What? It’s okay. I’ll be careful. I won’t hurt you.”

  He heard a deep sob, almost a cry. He looked down at his wife’s di
storted face. She looked terrified.

  “Not that way,” she said. “There are other ways.”

  “Baby, it’s okay. We’re married now. I promise you to be careful. I understand …”

  She slid herself from under him. Her face was frozen. Her voice was harsh.

  “No, you don’t understand. How could you ever understand? There are other ways. I will do things for you … to you … but you mustn’t do that.”

  “Lucia-Bianca, what the hell is this, what are you talking about?”

  She held her arms across her body, and her eyes burned with tears. She suddenly seemed like a total stranger.

  “Dante, my God, do you want to kill me?”

  He turned to Megan Magee. Of all the people he knew—friends, family, colleagues—it was instinctive for Dante to turn to Megan. Not only did he love and trust her, but amazingly now she was completing her psychiatric residency at Bellevue.

  He had told Megan about Lucia-Bianca almost from their first date: how different this girl was, how special his feelings for her, how ready he felt for those feelings, how he felt they were reciprocated. If he saw the sudden stab of pain, of disappointment and loss, he never acknowledged it. Probably never realized it. Megan kept a poker face at times; she could experience her feelings later, in private.

  She had had to admit, grudgingly, at their engagement party, that Dante and Lucia-Bianca were well matched, not just physically—both were tall and slender, graceful, with black hair and dark eyes—but intellectually. What more could she wish for her best friend than such a perfect match. Even if the woman’s name was Lucia-Bianca Santini and not Megan Magee.

  “Dante, I’m not sure of the ethics. I mean, we’re friends. I could recommend a colleague. Right now I’m specializing in damaged kids, traumatized by whatever event brought them here.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you say Lucia-Bianca was, in effect, a damaged child? My God, her mother murdered her baby brother, then killed herself, and Lucia found them. In a way, she deserted her daughter when she was barely three years old. Doesn’t that qualify her as a ‘damaged child’? Even though she’s an adult?”