Tony listened, walked into the bedroom, and smiled at the vegetable crate night tables.
Lilly kept jabbering. “I didn’t want to spend any more, and I saw these at the A&P yesterday. The guy said I couldn’t have them ’til he checked with the produce manager. Today he let me have them. I put in applications to about seven million stores, but I guess January isn’t the time to be hired. I went to the Con Edison office, but I’m too young to sign their dumb papers so you’ll have to go. We’ll have to pay a huge deposit. With the phone, too.”
Tony watched his breathless wife bubbling away. “Why are you smiling?” he asked.
“’Cause I’m in love,” Lilly laughed.
They again ate PB&Js. The milk had frozen in the temporary refrigerator, which was their fire escape. Tony took her to the living room.
“Lil, we have to talk. I saw your mother today. She came into the station. I told her we are married. At first she said she’d have it annulled. I told her it was already consummated. She said she was sure it was. Then she got vengeful. Lilly …” He put both arms around her and held her to his chest.
“Lilly, she said that you aren’t her daughter anymore and not to call and never get in touch with any of your sisters or brothers.”
Lilly pulled away and turned her back to him. She started lighting candles. Tony listened to her progression. He heard her stop in the kitchen and start sobbing. He went to her.
“Lil, I’m your family now, but that’s OK. We’re a family.”
Lilly said, “Can you be a mother and a father and brother and sister?”
“Maybe that’s what a husband is …Maybe that’s what a wife is …”
“Tony, are you scared too?” Lilly whispered.
“Yeah, Lil. School starts again next week and then I’m only working part-time again. If you don’t have a job, I’ll have to drop out.”
“I’ll have a job, beside I’ll make a full hundred a week with the band now. I’ve only been making seventy-five because I could never play Thursdays. Now they’ll have to come up to a hundred ’cause I’ll play Thursdays too.”
Tony nodded, “I didn’t think of that. Still the rent here is two seventy-five.”
“We’ll make it. I’ll get a job,” Lilly assured him.
There was a knock on the door.
Tony’s parents and brother came to see the changes.
“This looks different from last week. Whose is all this?” Frank asked.
Tony and Lilly said in unison, “Ours.” Tony gave his parents a tour while Frank helped Lilly take curtains out of packages.
“Look how wrinkled they are. They need ironing,” Lilly said desolately.
Tito and Isabel came to the living room and sat down. Lilly had nothing to offer but peanut butter and bread. She offered but felt foolish. Tito smiled while Isabel looked worried.
Frank teased her. “Everyone in school thinks you’re pregnant, you know. I told them you’re due next week with triplets.” He motioned a belly three feet wide. Lilly burst out laughing. Frank waddled over and sat on the coffee table in front of her. Frank kept talking about school, making Lilly laugh, but then he suddenly turned serious.
“I always thought you’d make a good sister.”
She jumped up and hugged him and went to the kitchen to calm herself. She stood in the doorway and heard her father-in-law say, “I’d like to get you a wedding present. Something special. Your mother and I decided we would spend five hundred dollars. Think of it Tony. Something permanent.”
Tony said, “Pops, that’s really nice. I know we could use a piano for Lilly to play. She’s a musician. We’ll have to get one.”
Lilly walked up to him, “Tony, get something for both of us, for our family.”
“Lillibelle, I have school and basketball. If you only had keyboards in the band, you’d mourn for a piano. You play for hours. It will be tough enough without losing music, too.”
Tito agreed. “We’ll go Saturday,” he said.
Lilly asked, “Where would we put it?”
Tony said, “In the bedroom. We’ll move my dresser to the kitchen. It will be fine.”
Isabel lifted the curtains from the table. “I’ll get these ready. Tony you pick them up tomorrow.”
The visiting della Robbias left early.
“I’ll get a job tomorrow, and visit Hillary, and rehearse, and you can get the lights turned on …then I can cook dinner. Something wonderful. I can make hamburgers and potatoes.”
“It’s going to be a busy day. We’d better go to bed.” Tony led her to the bedroom energetically.
Lilly went to see Hillary the next day and felt an icy coldness. Hillary spoke politely, but impersonally. Lilly stood to leave after a short visit.
“Hillary, are you mad at me?”
Hillary turned her face away.
Lilly implored, “Hillary, tell me.”
Jay came into the room.
Lilly repeated, “Hillary, tell me what I did?”
Jay hesitated, then said, “Lilly, when you were in the hospital, Hillary went to see you every day. She even stayed overnight with you. You never called or came over, the whole time she was housebound with her nose and eyes.”
Lilly sat down and giggled. Hillary stared, shocked by her callousness.
Lilly said, “You don’t know?”
Jay said, “What happened?”
“My mother disowned me. She shipped me off to New Orleans to live with strangers. I ran away. If she caught me, I was going to be put into a foster home. Tony and I eloped. I had been hiding in Tennessee. It all got so crazy. We’ve got an apartment now, but we don’t have electricity, much less a phone.”
Jay said, “You’re married?”
Lilly started giggling again and stuck out her hand. Hillary walked over, examining her gold band.
Lilly hugged her. “Hillary, you are my best friend. I’m so sorry. I was trying to survive. The good news is we don’t have to deal with my mother anymore.”
She became more serious. “Hillary, if I could get rid of the past two months, if I could be struggling with trigonometry and figuring how to deceive my mother so I could sleep with Tony and graduate from high school next year. And sit on the bleachers at lunch and gossip with EO and Frank …I didn’t choose this.”
Hillary said, “You had to drop out of school?”
“Please don’t be mad at me. My sisters are gone. I’m dead to them.”
Jay said, “Oh God. What next?”
“Nothing, hopefully. I’ve got to get a job and learn to be an Italian wife.”
Hillary said imperiously, “You may hug me, but don’t touch my face.”
Lilly stopped by the station on her way home to find out about electricity.
Tony looked up from an engine, “Maybe next Monday.”
“Back to Daitch Shopwell for more bread and candles.”
She walked to Tuckahoe, feeling discouraged. Eileen and Frank were on the stoop.
Eileen hugged her and said, “I can’t believe you’re married. You know everyone thinks your peegee.”
“Didn’t you hear? I am. With triplets. Moe, Larry, and Curly.”
They went into the apartment.
“When are you going to get lights, anyway?”
“Next week,” Lilly groaned, unpacking candles and matches. She added, “We should have our own candle factory.”
Eileen invited her over the following Sunday. “Make sure you’re there by two o’clock.”
“Why? You going to turn into a frog at two-fifteen, EO?” Frank asked. Eileen made a face at him.
Eileen asked, “How’d you find this place? All this furniture is so nice.”
Lilly smiled, “Thanks. There’s so much still to get. You wouldn’t believe all it takes to make a home.”
Frank said, “I think I got you a job.”
“Really? Where?”
“Centuck Deli. I know they’re bastards, but I was there at lunchtime from school. And the Harri
ses were talking about hiring someone. I told them about you. You worked in a deli in the supermarket by the beach, right? You got to see them.”
The Harrises hired her, but not before raking her over the coals . “You’re sixteen and married? When’s your belly going to stick out?”
“I’m not pregnant,” Lilly said quietly. She filled out the forms and then said as an afterthought, “Do you have an insurance plan?”
Mrs. Harris said to her husband, “I knew she was knocked up.”
Lilly said more vehemently, “I’m not pregnant.”
Mr. Harris said, “Got a temper, too. What were you before you were married, Irish?”
“Yes.” Lilly said.
Lilly wanted to walk off her anger before she went to the gas station for a ride to rehearsal, but it was growing dark. Lilly had developed a fear of the dark.
**************************
16. February 1970
The events that had changed their lives caused changes within each Tony and Lilly. Tony’s changes were subtler. He developed a possessiveness about Lilly. He also viewed the world more aggressively. Lilly was afraid to walk the two blocks between the deli and the gas station when the deli closed before the station. She was afraid to be home alone. She was afraid to be left alone during breaks at the bars, so she went outside to watch the band get stoned. Lilly was afraid to give up control, so she would no longer smoke pot with the band. Tony and Lilly had agreed not to have any drugs in their car or apartment.
The break from her family was complete. Her mother had informed her siblings that anyone who kept in touch with Lillian would not be welcome in the O’Dwyer home. Lilly didn’t know of her mother’s threat. She only knew her brothers and sisters had disappeared. She went through a period of mourning, and she felt betrayed to her very core.
Lilly had nothing in common with her former classmates, so after a flurry of curiosity on their part, she lost touch with all but Eileen. EO had always been her soul mate in rebellion. Eileen had given Lilly a bridal shower where there were gifts such as dishtowels, cookbooks, a sewing kit, and an iron. One former classmate bought a baby book, another baby bibs and a bottle. Eileen called them uncouth cunts.
Tony started back to school, and their jumbled lives fell into a rhythm. Adjusting to the calm was as difficult as riding out the storm. Tony was paranoid about money. He was sure there was some ugly, oversized bill looming around the corner. The band got back on its feet and started playing warm-up for major groups in New York, often at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. They also played bars and clubs in New Jersey and Connecticut. Lilly made enough money with the band to more than pay their bills.
Tony’s nineteenth birthday was only four weeks after their marriage. Lilly bought him a stereo. He walked in from school and hit the ceiling. Lilly was cooking soup from a recipe and ignored his upset.
Finally she spoke. “Think of it this way. Now, if we get in hock, they have something to take from us.”
Tony said angrily, “Lilly, you buy something every day.”
“True, true, but a pair of scissors and a toaster and a dishpan are not luxury items. It’s not a fancy stereo. It’s just a turntable and speakers. It was a hundred and fifty dollars. We can add to it later. Darling, we got it so let’s flaunt it.”
He hated being called darling. He growled, “Don’t buy anything tomorrow. I have to get to work. Coming?”
“Wait. Have a piece of birthday cake. It’s a little flat.” Lilly held up a pancake-shaped birthday cake. It tasted worse than it looked, but he nibbled kindly.
She watched him closely, then cut herself a slice. She took a bite. Her face froze as she chewed. She spit it in the garbage.
Tony said, “Does that mean I don’t have to finish this?”
Lilly took it and threw it out.
After work, Tony said, “My mother wants us to stop over for a piece of cake. All right?”
Isabel’s cake was perfect. Lilly ate it through gritted teeth. Tony didn’t know if he should apologize because his mother was a better cook. He thought of suggesting to Lilly to get some recipes, but the black silence that exuded from Lilly made him reconsider.
The soup was burned, far from edible, when they arrived home. There was no liquid left and the apartment smelled. Tony hoped he wouldn’t have to eat any. He sat in the bedroom and read his psychology text. If he had said anything about the soup, she would have thrown it at him.
Lilly spent the better part of an hour trying to wash it off the pot and then sat and stared. She made toast and brought it to him.
“You sure make good toast, Lil.” Tony smiled his trying–to-be-charming smile.
She sat on the bed across from him. “Don’t ask your mother to teach me to cook, or I’ll poison you.”
“I wouldn’t even think it.”
“Good, ’cause wait ’til you see what I’m making tomorrow.” She clucked.
He said lightly, “Can’t wait.”
Tony started calling Lilly “Betty Crack-up” to Frank at work.
***************
17. March 1971
Brighton made austerity cuts including scholarship outlays at the same time tuition and lab fee was raised substantially.
Randy came up with a better job for her: Playing piano in a restaurant bar on the regular pianist’s nights off. Tony, Lilly, and the band members went to a piano bar to see what to expect. Seeing the flashy gown on the pianist, Jay began calling Lilly “tinsel.” Hillary and Lilly tried to decide where to get evening gowns on the cheap. Tony watched the patrons. He also watched the brandy snifter where tips were collected. Tony was full of reservations.
“I won’t be there, and the rest of the band won’t be there. You’re going to have to fend for yourself a lot. You’ll probably hear dirty jokes and a lot of innuendo.”
“Tony, I’ll make so much money, we won’t have to scrape by. I’ll pretend not to listen to the jokes and come home and tell them to you. Don’t worry.”
That night, they were awakened when Frank came in roaring drunk. Tony had given Frank a key “just in case.” Frank walked into the bedroom, sat on the bed, and started singing.
Tony woke up saying, “Frank, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Let’s party. I got some primo pot. Hi, Lil. Wow! Look at that. That’s why you wear tee shirts.”
Lilly pulled the top sheet up. “Frank? Why are you here? When do I wear tee shirts?”
“When we go swimming. That.” Frank touched her shoulder at the round scar. “Wow! Does that go all the way through?”
“Just like the pin,” Tony said.
Frank smiled and lay down. Tony and Lilly looked at each other.
Lilly said, “I feel like the jelly between two slices of bread.”
Frank moved like he was going to crawl under the blankets.
Lilly grabbed the blanket and held it tight to her. “Tony, do something. I’m naked under here.”
“I know. Just a sec,” Tony said and got up to his dresser and threw her a tee shirt.
Frank woke up slightly. “Naked? You two have been married forever. Don’t you get bored?”
“Go to sleep, Frank,” Tony said. Lilly dove under the sheet and came up wearing the tee shirt. Tony found the TV listing and said to Lilly, “Key Largo is on at three. Go make coffee. I’ll roll his dope.”
They watched the movie.
Frank sat up. “Like vanilla ice cream?”
“What? You want vanilla ice cream? Go to sleep,” Tony said.
“No. Isn’t it like having vanilla ice cream every night?” Frank said to Tony. Then to Lilly he added, “You’ve never had any other flavor so you don’t know.”
“Jesus, Frank. You’re really sick, you know that?” Lilly murmured.
Frank was undaunted. “I bid Mary Anne adieu tonight.”
“Is that what his is all about? You two had a fight and broke up?” Lilly asked.
“No fight. She was falling in love,” Frank said,
emphasizing “in love” as though it were dirty. Then he fell back asleep.
The movie finished. Tony dragged his brother to the living room sofa, and then came back and shut the bedroom door.
Lilly said, “Why does he always dump girls like that?”
Tony answered, “He doesn’t want to get tied down. He’s only twenty. He’s too young to get caught.”
Tony rolled over and went to sleep, unaware of what he had said.
Hillary and Lilly hit all the second-hand shops in Manhattan, looking for the best eveningwear.
“You have to give the right image – expensive, inaccessible.” Hillary had it all psyched out. Invariably, the owners of the shops would lead them to prom gowns.
Lilly whispered, “It’s not really ridiculous. I’m only eighteen. It just seems ridiculous. Actually it’s more ridiculous that I’m looking for evening wear.”
After much searching, they found four dresses Hillary deemed correct. Hiding the scars was as difficult as finding her size. Hillary told her prostitutes probably had worn the dresses, and Lilly pushed them away.
Hillary said slowly, “Very, very expensive prostitutes. Get them cleaned and wear them regally.”
Tony’s going to croak when he sees these dresses.”
“You have to present them properly. Make his favorite dinner. Do your hair on your head. Behave in a sophisticated yet seductive way, and then model the gowns. He’ll be putty in your hands, putty with a hard on that is.”
“Hillary, you’re awful,” Lilly laughed. “How does Jay have enough energy for work?”
“Vitamins.”
Lilly had dinner ready and was taking down the pin curls to make tendrils around her chignon when Eileen arrived.
“Sadie, Sadie, married lady,” Eileen said. Lilly led her into the kitchen.
“Eileen, quit with the cracks. I’m making dinner. Come sit down while I make gravy.”
“You can make gravy? You’re such a housewife.”
“How was school?”
“Great. I’m in love.”
“Really? I mean should I teach you gravy in love, or in heavy, serious lust?”
Eileen laughed. “I’m not ready to learn gravy. But he’s pretty cool. His name is Ralph. Dumb name, huh?”
A Yonkers Kinda Girl Page 24
