Mario shrugged. “Broke my wrist one year, had to lay off a long time. How does anybody wind up anywhere?”
Paul mercifully left it at that, but Ina could not let it drop.
“Seems to me there was something else. Didn’t you work with Woods-Wayland one season? Coe Wayland is a friend of my brother’s. Seems—” She frowned, and Tommy felt the small hairs rise along his spine.
“You’re probably thinking about when my grandfather died on the rig,” Mario said. “He had a heart attack in midair and fell out of my uncle Angelo’s hands. He was dead before he hit the net. There was a hell of a lot of talk about it that year.”
“God,” said Paul, “I’d think so. That’s an awful thing! How old was he?” He kept talking, but Ina’s eyes were still narrowed, and Tommy knew she was still trying to trace down an elusive memory. If she had that kind of memory, sooner or later it would surface.
Back in their own trailer very late, they stared at one another in mute dismay.
“Damn Blanding and his bright ideas,” Mario said, pacing restlessly in the cramped space. “Paul’s okay, I think. But Ina’s jealous. Be careful around her, Tom.”
“Why? She seemed nice. I thought it was Paul was the jealous one.”
“Sta bene—just remember, I warned you.”
“If you got anything to say, Mario, say it. Don’t fence.” Mario crushed out his cigarette. “Never mind. You could be right. Let’s get some sleep.”
To Tommy’s surprise, next morning when they turned out for practice—they now usually ran through a pass or two every morning after checking the rigs—Ina appeared and asked if she could join them. To Tommy this seemed reasonable enough, and he couldn’t imagine why Mario was sullen and edgy about it.
Ina was a careful worker and ambitious; nevertheless, practice and polish would do her little good. She had reached a professional level, there was nothing of the amateur about her, but she had hit her final level and it was a low one. Mario acted as catcher during these sessions, and Tommy put down Mario’s resentment to Mario’s dislike of catching (he had never willingly acted as catcher for anyone but Tommy or Liss). It soon seemed natural for Ina to invite them for coffee after practice, and it also seemed natural that Tommy would accept and Mario refuse. Ina was witty and brisk, even her sarcasm amusing. Mario teased him a little about his conquest.
“Heck, it’s a good idea to stay on terms with the boss’s sister. And she makes great coffee. Must use a different kind of lye than you do.”
“She puts chicory in it or something.” Mario made a face.
“I like it that way. I grew up in the South, remember?”
“Lu used to do it sometimes during the war, when coffee was rationed. But none of us would drink it. Suit yourself about Ina; you’re a big boy now, but I still think it’s not smart.”
“Oh, come on, you ought to thank me,” Tommy teased. “Keeps her busy, gives you a chance to try and put the make on Paul.”
Mario’s mouth tightened, and Tommy knew he had trespassed unforgivably. “Shut the hell up, willya?”
A few days later, over coffee in the Reddicks’ trailer, Ina said, “Tommy, the show will be breaking up in a week or two. You and Matt won’t be back next year, will you?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
Ina laid her hand on his arm. “Listen, we make a good team, don’t we? You and I?”
Tommy started to toss back a flippant remark, then realized, incredulous, that the woman was looking up at him intently, her face flushed. Her lips were moist; her flared nostrils disgusted him a little. Gently he picked her hand off his arm.
“Aren’t you sort of leaving Paul out of this?”
She gave him a sudden, hard glance before dropping her lashes and his disgust deepened. If she had made an honest pitch, either way, he would have known how to deal with it. He could handle women who threw themselves at him; good-looking boys in tights got used to being looked at hungrily by older women. And he could have handled some kind of business proposition, however unwelcome, with some attempt at tact. But when they came tangled together like this, he hardly knew whether to be dismayed or amused.
“With someone really good I’d have a chance to get somewhere. Paul’s only fit for this mud-show circuit, so he keeps me stuck here. But our marriage has been washed up for a long time—you know what I mean?”
Sex-starved, too. Tommy abruptly thought about Mario’s guess regarding Paul Reddick. He said helplessly, casting about for words that would neither offend her nor compromise himself, “Well, it would be up to Matt.” And oh, man, he thought, what a hot potato that is to pitch him!
She moved closer to him, almost pressing herself against his arm, almost snuggling against him. “I don’t think your brother likes me. But you do, don’t you?”
Christ! Tommy thought in furious embarrassment, and swiftly remembered a day with Lambeth, years ago. For the first time he had the sympathy for Mario he had been too young, too inexperienced, to feel then.
I gave the girl something else to think about, and now maybe that particular hunk of gossip will curl up and die for good. Easiest lay I ever had.
But even while the thought crossed his mind, he rejected it. He said, gently and neutrally, “Sure, Ina. Only Matt and I both think a lot of Paul. He might get the wrong idea.”
She got the message and backed away, her eyes wide in a fair imitation of righteous indignation. “You fresh little punk! I make you a decent business proposition, and you insult a respectable married woman!”
“Listen, I didn’t mean to insult anybody—”
Abruptly she backed away, snapping her fingers. He saw the memory surface in her eyes.
“Santellis. I knew there was something. You’re the ones the Waylands ran off the lot. Morals charge.”
Tommy was shaking and cold. He said evenly, “There were about four versions of that story got around, Ina. If you or Paul would like to hear ours, you can have it after the show.” He added, “Thanks for the coffee,” and left.
Hell, I shoulda given her what she was asking for! He had to tell Mario, and Mario’s reaction was predictable.
“I told you that jane was poison.”
“You did. And you were absolutely right. Now what the hell do we do? Let her fill Blanding full of crap? His favorite phrase is ‘This here is a clean show.’ He wouldn’t know a grifter if one of them came up and bit him—I don’t think he even knows those guys on the midway are stealing him blind—but something like this—well, you can figure.”
Mario put his chin in his hands. “I hate to do this to Paul, but I figure the best thing to do is jump the show. You shouldn’t be so damn attractive to women!”
“You used to say it was a professional asset.”
“I used to say a lot of goddamn rubbish,” Mario snapped with sudden violence. “I had Ina tagged as a bad case of hot pants before I’d been with the show a week!”
“Look, if I clear out—”
Mario drew a deep breath. “The season’s only got a week, ten days to run anyhow. Go ahead—I’ll pack up while you hitch the trailer.” With that sudden, absurd hilarity, he added, “Kid, getting thrown out of a place like this—hell, now we got no place to go but up!”
CHAPTER 4
“The old place looks just about the same,” Mario commented. Tommy, seeing the sun flash gilt on the windows as they turned in the drive of the Santelli house, remembered when he had sat here before, unable to summon up the courage to go inside. Yet now they were back.
He parked the car behind a large steel-blue Chrysler in the driveway, wondering who in the family had a new car. He set the brake that held the green trailer. They had sold Mario’s battered old car the night they jumped the Blanding show, using Tommy’s to drive home, and to Tommy this, more than verbal pledges and promises, more than any act of love, marked the point of no return, the burned bridges.
“Well,” said Mario, “let’s give them a chance to welcome back the prodigals.” Th
ey went up the steps together and rang the bell. After a minute there was a stir of steps inside and Joe Santelli, sweatered, barefoot, squinting against the sun, was staring at them, incredulous.
“Matt! And—for God’s sake! Tommy?” He reached out and hugged Mario hard, giving Tommy his free hand. “I might have known you two would turn up together someday! Come in, kids, come in. Welcome home!” He slammed the door and shouted, “Lucia! Come see who’s here!”
Lucia appeared at the back of the hall, then ran with awkward haste to fling herself on her son.
“Hello, Lu. The prodigal returns.”
She said in a muffled voice, “Well, it’s about time. Matt, let me look at you!” But when she raised her head, her eyes were dry, her lips curved in the old self-possessed smile. “Thin as a lath, of course. You look like a bum.”
“We drove all night,” Mario apologized. “Didn’t stop to clean up or anything.”
A tall teenager—it must be Clay, Tommy thought; he’s about the right age—and a slender dark-haired girl of eleven or twelve, whom Tommy did not recognize at all, came into the hallway. Lucia clung briefly to Mario’s arm, then released him. Mario put his hands on the dark girl’s shoulders. “Hello, Tessa, remember me?”
She nodded shyly. “Where you been, Uncle Matt?”
“Oh, around.” He kissed her gently on the cheek, and said hello to Clay.
Lucia gave Tommy her hand. “It’s good to have you home,” she said. “Come inside, boys.” And that was that.
The big living room still smelled of smoke and driftwood and good cooking. Tessa said matter-of-factly, “I’d better set a couple more places at the table.” Joe poured them each a glass of wine. There were some new cushions on the sofa, but otherwise the old room was unchanged.
“What’s Angelo doing these days?” Mario asked.
“Stunt work in the movies, what else?” Joe replied.
“Barbara’s in the movies, too,” Clay said.
“Dancing?” Mario looked interested.
Lucia said scornfully, “Johnny and Stella offered her a place in their act. But she’d rather dance! She and another girl have an apartment out on White Knoll Drive—that’s the way young people are now! Personally, I think an unmarried girl ought to be under her family’s roof, but it’s not for me to say!” Her look at Joe was aggrieved, and Tommy knew that the old arguments were still alive.
Tommy asked Clay, “What about you?”
“I’d like to fly, but Dad says I’m too young to start.”
Mario chuckled. “I was on a bar when I was ten.”
“Well,” Joe said, “if you ever stuck around long enough, you could teach Clay. I can’t, and Angelo won’t.”
“But now tell us where you’ve been, Matt,” Lucia demanded. “Didn’t you even see my ad in Billboard, all those years?”
“No. I just sort of bummed around. Worked carnivals, spent a year in Mexico. I was working a small show when Tommy turned up, and we jumped the show and came home.”
“But why—” Lucia broke off at the sound of a car in the drive, and ran to the hallway. They heard her voice, high and excited, calling, “Angelo! Angelo, guess who just turned up!”
Angelo was heavier and softer, and there were lines in his face that had not been there before; otherwise he was very much the old Angelo. He hugged them both by turns. Tommy’s shoulders he held an extra moment, saying, “Kid, I don’t know when I’ve been so glad to see anybody! For God’s sake, kid, what made you walk out like that?”
Tommy said uneasily, “I was a dumb little snot of a kid. Can you let it go at that? It’s all water under the bridge, anyhow.”
Angelo finally nodded. “Okay,” he said, “but how come you and Matt teamed up again? How’d you find him?”
“Pure dumb luck,” Tommy said. It was all he would ever tell them. “I just happened to be driving through the town. He was working a flying act. They took me on for a while, but Mrs. Reddick started making hungry eyes at me and Paul Reddick was too nice a guy for that, so we jumped the show.”
Angelo chuckled. “Woman trouble is sheer hell in a show. That was why I always liked to travel with Terry. If your wife’s right there watching, you’ve got a good excuse to brush off all the dames with hot—” He glanced at Tessa and amended, “With an eye out for adventure.” And Tommy knew that without saying a word other than the truth, he had nevertheless laid a false trail that would last for some time. We jumped the show because of woman trouble. It was the kind of thing Angelo wanted to hear.
After supper, Mario diffidently broached his plan.
“We don’t have to stay here if we’re in the way. But we need a place to work out. We’re thinking of going on the road again this spring, if we can find a catcher.”
“Of course you’ll stay here,” Lucia said promptly.
“Angelo, I don’t suppose I could talk you into coming back and working with the two of us?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Angelo said, smiling.
Clay’s voice was bashful. “Any chance I could work out with you?”
“Well, okay,” Mario said, “but I’m a devil to work with. Just ask Tommy.”
“He seems to have survived,” Clay said, and Tommy laughed.
“Yeah. I survived. Somewhat battered, but I survived.”
“But you’ll work with us, Angelo? Even if we can’t argue you into catching, you’ll help us work out the details of the act?”
Angelo shook his head. “You know how I feel about that. And I was never much of a trainer.”
“Angelo, you taught me the triple!”
“Like I said a hundred times, I never did. I just put up with you while you worked it out for yourself. You’re the trainer; why not teach Tom your big tricks and work a straight two act, you catching? You used to work good together in those duo routines. Hell, the percentages are against you, Matt—at your size, you’re going to end up as a catcher sooner or later.”
An agonized echo resonated in Tommy’s mind and memory: Here’s how much I care. If we ever have to, I’ll quit flying and catch for you.
But Mario only shook his head. “Our old room empty?” he asked Lucia.
“Sure. Or any of the rooms up there. One thing we’re not short of is room.”
The familiar upstairs hall was a little shabbier, but the room with the striped wallpaper looked just as it had looked six years ago. Lucia said, opening the door, “You could move into Papa’s room downstairs, if you wanted to. It’s all torn up, though. Needs some paint, and the plaster mended.”
Mario grinned. “Forget it. Tom and I have been bunking together in that little trailer of mine, and this is the wide open spaces compared to that! No, seriously, Lu, don’t fuss.”
“Suit yourselves. If you really don’t mind doubling up for a couple of days, I’ll find another room later for one of you.” Lucia kissed her son’s cheek, and after a moment kissed Tommy, too.
“It’s good to have you home.”
Mario gave her a hard hug. “Lu, why don’t you come on the road with us? I bet you still could!”
“Go on with you,” she said, laughing, “I’m old and fat, and I like my comforts.”
“Lu, I didn’t want to ask in front of the family, but—how is Liss? Is she all right? Is she happy?”
Lucia’s dark eyes were grave. “Who can say what’s happy? She’s settled. She and David have a nice house outside the city, Davey’s in school, Cleo starts this year. He makes good money, they get along, they don’t throw the dishes. Who knows, maybe she did better with her life than any of us knows about.”
“Gesu! Is that all you can say?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Matt.” Lucia turned to leave the room, but hesitated in the doorway. “Don’t you even want to know? Susan was here, last summer, with Suzy, for a few days. Suzy is beautiful, Matt. She looks just like Liss when Liss was a baby. She and Liss’s Cleo could be twins.”
Mario turned away, his mouth a tight li
ne. “If she looks like Liss it’s only because Susan looks like Liss. Nothing to do with me.”
“Matthew, Gesu e Maria, that is a terrible thing to say!” She burst into a torrent of voluble Italian. Mario frowned.
“Listen, Mother,” he said, and because Tommy had never heard him call Lucia “Mother” before, he felt shocked, although Mario’s voice was perfectly gentle. “It may be terrible, but it happens to be true. Suzy is not my daughter. And if you wonder how I know that, I know it in the only way I could possibly know such a thing.”
Lucia actually blushed. She said something in Italian, but Mario returned tersely, “Yes, and I will say it in plain English. Susan is a tramp, and Suzy is a bastard—is that plain enough for you? I was willing to keep Suzy and she’d never have known I wasn’t her father, and since you say she looks like all the girls in the family, it probably would have worked out all right. But Susan didn’t want it that way, so I gave her her divorce and her kid, period. And if I’d known she would have the nerve to come here, I would have broken her neck first.”
“Matthew Gardner, I will not have that kind of talk under my father’s roof! Marriage is a holy sacrament. In the eyes of God, you and Susan are man and wife forever—”
“Lu, for God’s sake, if you look at it that way, Susan and I were never man and wife at all, then; she divorced her first husband a year before I ever met her! And isn’t it about thirty years too late to start getting sentimental about children?”
“Oh, Matt—” Lucia’s face, still beautiful, crumpled. She spread her hands, and the gesture, so resigned, so beautiful, moved Tommy close to tears. “I only hope, Matt, that your children may be more forgiving than mine ever were. You’ve made me pay for it, all of you, God knows.”
“Lucia, cara Lucia—”
“You called me ‘Mother’ a minute ago. But you had to be angry enough to kill me, first!”
Mario smiled, but he looked savage. “When we were young enough to want to call you that, Lu darling, you taught us to think of ‘Mother’ as a dirty word.” She flinched, and he put his hand on her arm. “You hit a nerve and I hit back, that’s all. Forgive me?”
The Catch Trap Page 57
