She tightened her fingers around his. “Of course. But—figlio—is it going to give you back the kind of mother you should have had, to take away Suzy’s chances of growing up with a good father and a family?”
Mario shook his head wearily. “Hell of a good father I’d make,” he said. “No, of course not, Lu. But nobody gets to start over. Suzy’ll have to take her chances, I guess, the way we all did.”
~o0o~
A few days later Tommy and Mario were downstairs, in the change room, sorting through the boxed wardrobe of the last season of the Flying Santellis. The room smelled dusty and closed, a mixture of mothballs and that indefinable smell of stale sweat and stale cloth. Once, Tommy thought, this had been the heart of the house, the living center; now it was empty, lifeless. The bulletin board was empty and covered with dust, the walls bare. Mario stared at the room morosely.
“I guess the Flying and Reform School has shut up shop for good. We’ll set the flying rig tomorrow—get Joe and Angelo down to help with the wires.”
Tommy nodded. “Better get out the mechanic, too, with all the kids around. Do you really want to take them on, Mario?”
It had happened like this: A year ago, three of Clay’s schoolmates had formed an acrobatic team, and having advanced from skilled tumbling and horizontal-bar routines, they had started looking for someone to teach them trapeze work. Angelo had curtly refused, but a few days ago Clay had mentioned it, and Mario’s reaction had been “Why not?”
Now he said, slowly, “Well, I have to teach Clay anyhow—Papa Tony would have wanted me to. And if I have to have one teenager, I might as well have half a dozen.”
“I don’t suppose the big one would make us a catcher?”
“Not if I’m any judge. Oh, we might keep him in mind, but the thing to do is keep the three of them together, let them build up their own act.” The “big one,” Phil Lasky, was seventeen; the others, Clay’s friends, were Bobby and Carl Meredith, fourteen and fifteen.
“You think Clay’s going to be any good, Mario?”
“Too soon to say. He’s interested, that’s the main thing. But he might lose it, like Barbie did. Now, if she wanted to fly with us, I’d take her in the act; she used to be good enough. But she doesn’t. It looks like the family’s right out of it. You know, I tried to get Tessa up on the ropes the other night—can you believe she was scared to try? Lu said she’d always been afraid of heights, but when she was a little tyke, two, three years old, I was always hauling her down from somewhere. Once she climbed the aerial ladder all by herself. Now she doesn’t even remember.”
“The way Angelo feels, it’s probably just as well.”
“I’m going to have my hands full with those boys, anyhow.”
“They seem to like you already.”
Mario gave him a sharp look. “Still thinking about the Chandler kid?”
“Hell, no!”
“I thought maybe you didn’t trust me with young boys.”
“I’d be a fine one to talk, wouldn’t I?”
“Hey—” Mario tilted his head sideways to listen. “Who’s that on the stairs?”
The door of the practice room opened with a bang, and someone called, “Matt?” Then there was a rush of heels across the once-sacrosanct practice-room floor, the change-room door flew open, and Liss flung herself into Mario’s arms, with such violence that he reeled and took a step backward before he could get his balance.
“Oh, Matt! All these years, I was so scared—I was afraid you were lying dead somewhere. When Lucia called I got in my car and drove straight down here . . . .” She buried her dark head in his shoulder. “All those years, never knowing . . . .”
Mario’s arms tightened around her and he looked over her head, his face drawn and deathly white. Then he took her shoulders in his hands and held her off at arm’s length.
“Take it easy, sweetie, I’m here and I’m okay. Heck, this is a fine thing, bawling all over me! It’s not a funeral!”
She wiped her streaming face. “Matt, how could you? All those years without even a word or a postcard, and then you never even let me know you were back—I didn’t know till Lucia called me yesterday—”
“Sweetie, I—I would have. I guess I just didn’t know what to say to you. Look, I’m here, okay?”
She clung to his hand. “Matt, you look so thin, so gaunt—and your hair’s going gray—”
He twirled one of the curls at her temple around his finger. “Look who’s talking, sweetie. Look, I would have got in touch with you, I just couldn’t—couldn’t talk with you over the phone. How are you, darling? Aren’t you even going to say hello to Tom?”
She clung to his arm, trying to remember her manners. “Hello, Tommy. I heard you were in the Army. You’re all grown up, aren’t you? I didn’t know it was you.” She gave him her hand. It felt very soft and looked well-kept and fine, the nails long, rounded, polished. She seemed taller, then Tommy realized it was only that she was wearing high-heeled shoes; he had never seen her in anything but ballet or flying slippers. She was rounder, full-bodied, the delicate curve of her waist blurred, more womanly, and she had cut her hair short, in a soft feathery bob, the long pigtail gone. The heart-shaped face would always be lovely, the slender hands always graceful—like Lucia’s, Tommy thought—but she had grown soft; in a few years she would be like Lucia, perhaps even heavier. Tommy felt irrationally sad; he would have liked to remember her swallow-grace, her flying long hair and delicate gestures, without the memory of an older Liss to blur them.
“Lucia told me you two are going on the road this summer.”
“If we can find a catcher.”
She smiled shyly, and for a moment there was a flicker of the old lass in her eyes. “Sounds like fun. I’ll never go back, of course, but I like thinking there are still a couple of Santellis flying, somewhere.”
Mario picked up her slender fingers and began playing with them, sliding his own hands around the nails, touching each knuckle in turn. “Do you want to come back, sweetie?”
“Oh, God, Matt, I don’t know,” she said, and Tommy saw her hand stop, go stiff, a small taut claw. “Don’t talk about it.”
“Why not? You still could, you know. I laid off four years, and I’m back. Liss, if you want to—”
Suddenly she looked terrified. “It’s too late, Matt. It was too late when I married David, only I didn’t know it. I tried, but it was too late. I don’t even want to think about it again.”
His face was grim. “It looks like I wasn’t the only one in the family to—to drop right out if sight.”
“It’s different. It’s different for a man. Matt, don’t, please. Maybe I was—was wrong, but it’s done and I’m stuck with it, and I just can’t go through that anymore. Please, Matt. If you love me—”
He picked up her hand again. It was so small it was completely hidden in his own. “Sweetie—” he murmured, and for a minute Tommy thought he would cry. Then he drew a long sigh and let her hand go.
Liss asked, “Have you seen Suzy?”
Mario shook his head. “Lu was on me about that. Don’t you start.”
“She’s working with Starr’s again, Lu told me,” Liss said. “She looks so much younger than I do—she’s kept her figure. Susan, I mean. And Suzy, she’s such a little doll, she looks so much like Cleo Maria. I gave her a lot of Cleo’s things—after all, she’s family.”
“Liss, do you mind not talking about it?”
Her lips curled up, but she wasn’t smiling, not quite. “So that makes two of us. But, Matt, Suzy’s the only other Santelli grandchild. You shouldn’t have let Susan keep Suzy.”
“How the hell could I raise a kid on my own? Would you give your kids to Lucia to raise for you? Well, would you?”
She was silent, and again, for a moment, Tommy saw the old Liss as she twisted one of the short curls around her finger. “I don’t know that they’d be so much worse off. And if I’d seen it six years ago—” She shook her head, violently.
“That hasn’t got anything to do with it. Suzy could live with us. Dave likes kids—he’d be happy if I had half a dozen. And Suzy looks so much like Cleo, she’d fit in just fine. Or—” Liss hesitated, then said, “Stella would just about die to have her. She can’t have any, you know, and they can’t even adopt one, living all over the map the way they do. She’s even tried to get Johnny to settle down somewhere so they can get to adopt a baby.” Her mouth twisted and she added, “Come to think of it. I know of a couple she could have, if I could figure out some way to give them to her. Oh, Christ, I sound like Lu, don’t I? I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”
Mario said into the long, awkward silence, “Where are Johnny and Stella now, sweetie?”
She seemed relieved, too, at the abrupt change of subject. “You mean you didn’t see the big circus spectacular on television? A thing called Circus Days and Nights? Johnny produced it, and Stella was one of the stars. Didn’t you see it, last summer?”
“The only time I ever saw a television set was in a bar. But you can tell us all about it later, sweetie,” he said, standing up and looking at his watch. “Tom and I have to get the rigs set.”
Liss stayed for four days. On the last day, she came down to the practice room and stood beside Tommy, watching Mario with the four boys, Clay and the three boys from Clay’s school that he was teaching.
Observing him from a grownup level, Tommy realized that Mario was a born teacher. He had the rare gift of being familiar and informal, without losing for a moment the essential teacher-pupil relationship. He could laugh with the boys, tease them, make jokes and listen to theirs—and yet. when he snapped his fingers and said, “Okay, kids, time to get some work done,” they instantly settled into serious attention. Tommy had not yet heard any one of them talk back. Liss watched them swinging, one after another, and their first clumsy drops into the net. “I don’t think any of them will be any good, not really. Not even Clay.”
“Oh, well, they get a kick out of it. And it’s good for Mario, to be around them.” Daily, Tommy could see the old Mario emerging from the taut, shattered stranger he had become over the years. He was still tense, too quiet, nervously explosive, but. working with the youngsters, he was more like himself. Liss was watching Mario fasten a mechanic around Bobby Meredith’s waist. “I can see that. Matt ought to have a dozen boys.”
Tommy gave a guilty start, but Liss was watching Mario, with a serene smile. He realized that Liss had meant, he ought to have a dozen sons.
“It’s really sort of tragic, you know, Tommy. He was the best of the Santellis, and he’s going to be the last. He has no children except the baby. Joe’s kids don’t want to fly—Barbie’s quit already, and for Clay it’s just a game. And Johnny won’t have any kids because Stella can’t, after that miscarriage she had. So the Santellis, four generations, reached their height in Matt, and it’s all going to end with him.”
“Well,” said Tommy, “at least they won’t taper out into mediocrity after him. Like that acting family—three terrific stars in one generation, and then their kids were all nobodies.”
Liss touched his hand and said, “I guess you’ll have to be his son. The only one he’ll ever have, looks like.”
That too, thought Tommy, watching Mario on the platform. And everything else he doesn’t have. He’s all the family I’ve got. All the family I’ll ever have.
~o0o~
Tommy came downstairs one afternoon to find Angelo in the practice room.
“Matt’s not home?”
“He’s upstairs, setting a rat trap for Lucia.”
“Tom, I can get you a few days’ work on the lot taking falls, if you want to register for stunt work. Each call pays a hundred dollars.”
“Thanks. We could use the money, Lord knows, with what riggings cost.”
“All right. You’ll have to come down and register with Equity, and join the union.” Angelo sat down on the floor, leaning his back against the wall. “Feel like telling me what all the row was about, years ago? When you walked out?”
Tommy stared at the polished floor. He felt foolish standing over Angelo, so he sat down beside him.
“I got sore because he signed up with Fortunati and couldn’t. I was jealous.”
Angelo shrugged. “Skip it. You always covered for him, didn’t you? I guess I ought to thank you for bringing him home, however it happened. Lucia was beginning to get gray hairs over it. I wonder about it, though, Tom. You two were always such good friends, and suddenly—wham!”
“Skip it, Angelo. I was just a dumb kid.”
“You know.” Angelo said, with heavy-handed kindness, “You could’ve come here. This is your home, too, you know. Papa Tony always meant it that way. You were part of the family, like any of us.”
“He was always so good to me. I’ll never forget him.”
“Was it for Papa’s sake, then—that you hunted him up and brought him home?”
Embarrassed again, Tommy shrugged. “I never worked with anyone but Mario, and I wanted to get back into flying. Unless I wanted to be an Army career man, it’s all I know.”
“And that isn’t so good, either.”
“Well, you quit us and we lived through it.” As on another long-ago occasion, Angelo’s probing, well-meant though it was, aroused exasperation and distress. Dammit, Angelo, quit it! I know what you’re trying to get me to say. You want to know if I broke up with Matt because I found out he was queer; you’d love to hear me say he made a pass at me and I walked out. Only it hadn’t been like that, and he couldn’t ever say that, and it made him angry and faintly sick.
“I feel like we owe you something, Tom.”
“If anybody owes anybody anything, it’s me. I walked out on my contract. Nobody kicked me out. Mario begged me not to go.”
“Just the same, I feel responsible. I let you pal around with him that way.”
Tommy wondered how much longer he could contain himself without exploding. “Like I said, I walked out in a tantrum and was too stubborn to come back.” Vaguely, like a half-remembered toothache, he felt the painful memory of that night: the streets he had walked without seeing them, lost, finally winding up in a coffee shop where Eddie Keno’s had been the only familiar face—he had wanted to run away, and at the end of the night— He cut off the memory, a clean slice, out of sight, over a cliff, forgotten. Angelo stared fixedly at him, but finally his heavy shoulders went up and down in a shrug.
“Okay, kid. If that’s the way you want it.”
“That’s the way it was.”
“I feel guilty about it,” Angelo said. “I was responsible for you. Legally and morally. I never should have left Woods-Wayland without taking you with me.”
“I wouldn’t have gone.”
“You’d have had to. You were under contract to the family, not to the circus, and by then I was your guardian. Don’t you think I know it was Matt got all you kids fired? I’m not saying I believe all that filthy smut Coe Wayland was peddling”—he looked at Tommy sharply—“but it was Matt socked him and got you all in bad.”
“If Matt hadn’t socked him, I would have. Or Johnny. He was drunk. None of us would have gone on with him.”
“Just the same. If I’d stayed with the act, or taken you with me—”
Tommy punched his arm lightly. “Forget it, Angelo.”
“Matt had a rough time, too, kid. I’m not defending him, no way, but when he came up to the house that night, and found you were gone—”
“Angelo, this is all old stuff. Can’t we drop it? We’ve been over it and over it!”
“Okay, okay, kid. I’ll get you some stunt work. Like I say, you’ll have to join the union.”
“Thanks. I can use it.” But he was relieved when Angelo left the practice room.
When Mario came down some time later, he asked, “What did Angelo want, anyhow?”
“Asked if I wanted to make some money doing stunt work. I told him sure.”
�
��I wish to hell you could talk him into coming back and catching for us. He won’t give me the time of day, and he’s always done damn near anything you asked him to.”
Tommy retorted amiably, “Jealous?” before he realized Mario was in no mood for this kind of teasing. “I did mention it, but he’s not interested. Hell, Mario, he’s got the same right not to fly that we do to keep on flying.”
“Yeah, I know.” He stared moodily at the wall. “It’s not that I mind catching for you when we practice. But damn it, it isn’t getting us anywhere, and I want to get back to flying.”
If we ever have to, Lucky, I’ll quit flying and catch for you. If it’s the only way we can stay together.
He had said it then, and meant it: I wouldn’t let you.
He would never have asked it. Not even if it had been willingly offered, a gift of love. And Mario did not even remember the pledge, yet it was being exacted of him. Tommy looked thoughtfully up at the rigging ropes.
“How much do you weigh, Mario? Exactly, that is?”
“Hundred forty, dressed in shorts. Why?”
“Because I weigh almost that much myself, and I’m as big as Angelo. Any reason I can’t catch for you? Papa Tony did, sometimes.”
Mario blinked. “A little guy like you?”
“I’m not that little. You’re tall and skinny and you look big, but you’ve got small bones. My feet are bigger than yours, and my hands. Johnny taught Stella to catch him. And he is bigger than she is.”
Mario shook his head. “I always stuck to what Barney Parrish said. That the catcher had to be big enough to take the weight. Anyway, I thought you hated catching.”
“No more than you do,” Tommy retorted, though it was true, he loved to fly and had had little interest in catching. “I don’t know if I could hold you on the big tricks, but anyway you aren’t doing the triple now. But until we get a regular catcher, I’m going to do my fair share of the catching.”
Mario looked troubled. “Lucky, do you really want to do this?”
The Catch Trap Page 58
