Once Upon a Time in West Toronto

by Terri Favro

  Ida walks out of the exam room holding her prescription for the Pill and the referral to the specialist. Out in the hallway, she finds a ladies’ room where she tears the referral slip into tiny pieces, empties her bladder over them, and flushes them down the toilet.

  Standing in the sunshine on College Street, Ida is surprised to see that life outside the clinic has continued as if nothing at all unusual was happening. The street musicians and young, vacant-eyed vagrants have carried on with their busking and begging; a flock of monks in saffron robes flutter at the corner of Spadina, handing out flowers and trying to strike up conversations with potential converts. When a young man with a shaved head approaches her, she says a few impenetrable words in Croatian, a language hardly anyone understands, causing him to step out of her path.

  Ida finds a Rexall and goes in to fill the prescription. A pimply-necked pharmacist, his collar too tight for his Adam’s apple, hands her a disc-shaped package while casually glancing at her left hand to check her marital status. When she asks for the foam and condoms the doctor mentioned, he nods briskly and leads her to an aisle full of white and pink packages.

  “The family planning aisle,” he tells Ida with a sweep of his hand. “Any questions at all, just ask the girl to get me.”

  A rack of condoms presents her with a variety of words she doesn’t recognize. Ribbed, lubricated, latex. As Ida examines a box of Sheiks—a name she likes—she overhears two women coming up the aisle.

  “After all this hassle, Jim’ll better not be stuck with wifey tonight,” says one. The other giggles.

  Ida looks up to see two women in crisp blue-and-red uniforms. Flight attendants. Both of them are Mia Farrow look-alikes, their blonde hair smoothed back from perfectly made-up faces. Ida watches them out of the corner of her eye. One woman picks up a clamshell-shaped package with red-tipped fingers.

  “I should get a new diaphragm but I can never remember my size.”

  The other woman shakes her head. “Why don’t you just go on the Pill?”

  The first woman snorts. “I tried it but I bloated up like a pig.” She sighs and shakes her head. “I’ll just get Trojans and foam for now.”

  The woman with the bloating problem is even slimmer than Ida, although the tautness of her A-line skirt suggests she’s wearing a panty girdle under the uniform. Ida doesn’t realize that she’s staring at the flight attendants until one of them looks back at her and smiles.

  “Excuse us for all the sex talk; we’re jet lagged. Just got in from Paris,” she tells Ida with more than a hint of condescension.

  Ida nods briskly, as she grabs one of the packages of spermicide off the shelf. “Excuse me,” she says, pushing past the stewardesses in the narrow aisle. She catches a whiff of a familiar scent on one of them. Jean Patou.

  As she hands her money to the cashier, she can hear one stewardess say something to her friend in a low, amused voice. The two of them break out into giggles. Ida’s face warms. She suspects they’re laughing at her.

  I could be you, she thinks bitterly. I’m the perfect height and weight, I speak four languages, and I’ve been trained by Alitalia. The only thing I don’t have is respectability.

  Feeling like a dowdy old nonna, she pushes through the exit and finds herself back on the street, breathing exhaust fumes.

  With her family planning devices in her purse, Ida decides to walk to Bathurst to catch the southbound bus to Lakeshore. As she heads west, she sees a movie marquee up ahead, its neon letters calling to her: FRIDAY MATINEE 99¢ WESTERN TRIPLE FEATURE!!!! MAGNIFICENT 7 * ONCE UPON A TIME WEST * FISTFUL $$$$

  Ida checks her watch. It’s almost high noon. At the outdoor ticket booth, a bored-looking teenage girl takes Ida’s dollar without lifting her eyes off her magazine.

  Inside, the theatre seats are mostly empty except for a few furtively huddled couples. Ida slides into a middle row. She tries not to notice the mingled smells of piss, weed, popcorn, and stale cigarettes.

  She hears quiet moans from behind her. Turning, she sees a man a few rows back, with his head resting on the top of his seat, another man’s head bobbing over his lap. Ida quickly turns to face the screen again.

  Ida remembers her first movie, Rico taking her by the hand to a schoolroom where a young priest with a love of cinema had set up a projector and managed to obtain a copy of High Noon dubbed into Italian. Ida was only six, far too young for such a violent and morally questionable film. She loved it. Back at Ca’Rosa, she stole Rico’s toy pistols, strapping the holster and six-guns over her dress to play at being Grace Kelly shooting the bad guy. Out on the street, the outfit made Ida an object of ridicule. No matter. None of the children would be caught dead playing with her, no matter how she dressed.

  Even after the Pope closed down Italy’s licensed bordellos, the neighbours always called Ca’Rosa “the whorehouse,” and Ida, “the Dalmatian’s girl”—not even a real Italian, a half-blood, the daughter of a woman from the Croatian city of Zara, occupied by Italy during the War. As for her father—the part of Ida that was truly Italian—well, that half was the most shameful thing about her of all.

  The theme music finally swells up, carrying Ida away from the past. A pizzicato of strings like a glacier-fed stream falling over a cliff builds to a crescendo of French horns, bassoons, and kettledrums stampeding like wild horses. All the epic flourishes of Italian grand opera, but confidently, aggressively American.

  Ida slumps deep into the cracked leather seat so that she’s hidden from view. Not that she needs to worry about anyone seeing her in the middle of the afternoon. Not Marcello, hard at work digging a subway trench. Certainly not Jeanie, who must think Ida is still at the clinic with the doctor winching her open to look inside and predict her future. For a few precious hours, Ida can escape into a world of cowboys and horses and gunfights and vendettas. Good versus evil. Her favourite kind of story.

  She sits through The Magnificent Seven in a comfortable trance. She’s seen this movie several times, but never in English before. The second film, a spaghetti western called Once Upon a Time in the West, is new to her, even though it was made in Italy when Ida was still living there. This film is tougher than the first. Angrier. A woman named Jill, played by Claudia Cardinale—who bears more than a passing resemblance to Zara in her prime, not to mention Ida herself—is threatened with death by a man looking for information. But Jill is not fooled. As she boils water in a kettle on the stove, she turns to him defiantly and dares him to have his way with her. She tells him that no woman ever died from that, and that afterward all she’ll need is a tub of hot water and she’ll be exactly as she was before.

  Ida’s heart pounds. Why doesn’t Jill throw the boiling water in the man’s face? What testadura wrote her lines? A man, for sure. Even as a child at Ca’Rosa, Ida knew that women could die from sex. A drunk or violent customer who was too rough with a girl. A difficult birth when the doctor refused to come. Untreated social disease.

  Can a filthy memory also kill a woman? Ida thinks yes. Hers repeats itself in a dream of that rapist Kowalchuk rising from the dead before her, again and again. Senior gave him the right to have Ida first, in return for money to pay for the marriage broker, the proxy wedding, and Ida’s trip from Italy. Marcello had tried to rescue her: again and again, she dreams of him bursting in too late, the room in flames, Ida’s thighs sticky with shame. In the dream, Kowalchuk laughs while he burns. You can’t kill me, he sneers as his face melts away. When she wakes screaming, Marcello always asks what her nightmare is about and she sobs I don’t remember.

  Ida leaves her seat so quickly that she forgets the Rexall bag. Finding herself empty handed outside the ticket booth, she runs back inside for her things, staining the sleeve of her blouse with furious tears.

  When she finally gets home in the late afternoon, it’s almost time for Jeanie’s story. She goes to the cabin to change; as she does, she examines the nea
t round plastic dispenser she got from the Rexall. She takes out the pill from the slot marked FRI, pours a glass of water, and swallows it, then sits quietly on the bed for a few minutes to see if she bloats up like a pig. She doesn’t. She slips the package back into the Rexall bag with the other things the doctor told her to get, stuffs it under the bed, then goes to join Jeanie and Lily for General Hospital.

  Ida is surprised to see a car with Illinois plates parked in front of the office. She walks in quietly, not wanting to disturb the story, but sees Jeanie standing at the desk, speaking with a man in a cowboy hat, a guitar case in one hand.

  Jeanie looks up from where she’s taking his particulars. “Here’s our chambermaid. She’ll prepare your cabin for you, sir.” The man turns and looks at Ida, raises his eyebrows, and gives her a wide, dimpled smile; he’s a young man, but with the weather beaten skin of someone who spends a great deal of time outdoors. He reminds Ida of a character from her favourite film, Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo. Or in English, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. What was that handsome actor’s name, again? Clint Eastwood.

  Ida goes into the linen room off the office and gathers up towels and bedding. When she comes back out the man is waiting for her, key in hand.

  “Number Ten, Ida,” Jeanie says, getting ready to turn the TV back up. It’s a Friday, the worst possible day to interrupt General Hospital. “If you give us about ten minutes we’ll have you all fixed up.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” says the man, removing his hat. His eyes haven’t left Ida.

  In Number Ten, Ida stretches the washed-to-death sheets over the mattress, folding them neatly at the corners the way Jeanie showed her. When she turns, she sees the man standing at the door, grinning at her. “That looks comfortable. Want to help me test it out?” he asks.

  The man is probably in his late twenties, not as tall as Marcello but just as thickly muscled, a working man, his skin sunburned, the lines around his mouth furrowing every time he smiles. Which he does a lot. Ignoring his question, Ida hands him the thin stack of towels. “If you need anything, go to the front desk.”

  He smiles again. “I like your accent. Spanish?”

  “Italian,” says Ida. “You have one too. You are from America?”

  “Chicago. My name’s Jeff but everyone calls me Cowboy. You?”

  “Ida.”

  “I’ve been in a lot of fleabag motels on my way up here, Ida. You are definitely the best looking chambermaid for five hundred miles.” He sits on the bed and pats the space beside him. “Sure you don’t want to join me?”

  Ida opens her mouth to offer a put-down—she’s had lots of practice putting male guests in their place, Jeanie having explained the concept of all talk, no action to her—but she doesn’t have a chance to say anything before a loud voice says: “Ida! Go OUTSIDE.”

  Marcello, home early from work in a grease-stained coverall, fills the doorway. He reeks strongly of sweat and sewer water. Fine dust from whatever dirty job he was up to today has turned his black hair grey.

  Ida, open-mouthed, turns to look at him, then back at Cowboy, who is staring at Marcello in surprise.

  “Marcello, I…”

  “Just. Go. OUTSIDE,” he repeats.

  “This was a joke, just this man makes,” she says, forgetting her English; she tries switching to Italian, but even then, words fail her. “Marcello, no…”

  “Who’s this guy?” interrupts Cowboy.

  “He is my huza-banda, Marcello,” she stutters.

  “I don’t want to have to say this again, Ida,” says Marcello, who seems somehow to have increased in size since he appeared in the doorway. “Go OUTSIDE, goddamnit!”

  Cowboy gets up from the bed, slowly, holding his empty hands in front of him like an unarmed gunfighter. “Simmer down, man. The girl was just making the bed. I had no idea she was married to you or anyone else. We didn’t get that far.”

  “You didn’t get that far?” Marcello echoes, looking back and forth between Cowboy and Ida.

  Ida realizes that she has finally discovered the key that picks open the lock of Marcello’s anger: sexual jealousy. She can see that he is about to move on Cowboy when a shadow appears behind him in the doorway. It takes a moment for her to register that it’s Lily, carrying her box of Barbies and saints. “Ida, did you feed the weeds to Dreamboat yet?” she chirps.

  Marcello swings around, fists clenched. When the child sees his enraged face, she steps back in fear. Ida runs to put herself between Lily and Marcello. Crouching, she wraps her arms around the girl. That’s when Jeanie appears, nine iron in hand.

  “I don’t want to have to call the cops,” she says, pulling Lily away from Ida, but keeping her eyes on Marcello. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, ma’am,” Cowboy says. He hasn’t moved from beside the bed.

  “Nothing yet,” says Marcello. He seizes Ida’s hand and heads for the cabin, Ida stumbling along in his wake.

  Jeanie shouts: “Dreamboat!”

  Marcello stops dead, still crushing Ida’s hand in his.

  “The cabin walls are thin. If I hear anyone being hurt, I won’t call the cops. I’ll deal with you myself. Compris?” She brandishes the club at him.

  Marcello lets go of Ida’s hand. “I would never hurt Ida.”

  “Just like you’re not hurting her now?” says Jeanie. “Yelling at her, grabbing her—you think that doesn’t hurt?”

  Jeanie leads Lily away by the hand; the little girl’s eyes are huge, watching this big, stinking, dirty, grey-headed man. With the hours he works, she rarely sees Marcello but when she does, he’s funny, or friendly, or tired, or all three at once. From time to time, he sits next to her to look at what she’s reading or to help with her arithmetic. He always seems like such a nice, patient man. This angry, shouting Marcello is new to Lily, to all of them.

  Once inside the cabin, Marcello slams the door and picks up a water glass from beside the bed—the one Ida used to take her first Pill—and hurls it at the wall. Shards explode across the floor, the violence of the sound taking some of the fury out of him. He slumps slightly.

  Ida stands at his back, not afraid anymore. She touches his arm, lightly, but he doesn’t respond. She has the feeling that he hardly realizes she’s there. “This is a big overreaction,” she says, quietly. “Nothing happens with this man. I mean: nothing happened. It’s just the way men talk sometimes. Stupid talk.”

  Marcello turns to look at her, the grey dust on his hair and face making him look years older than twenty-four. “I don’t want you working for Jeanie anymore.”

  “The money is, how you say—handy. And Jeanie gives us the broken rent.”

  “A break on the rent,” Marcello corrects her. He turns to face her and for the first time, Ida notices a thin gash along his hairline, caked with dried blood.

  “What happen to you? There’s a wound on your forehead.”

  Marcello reaches up to touch it, checks his fingers for blood. “Accident at work today. Two guys died. They were right off the boat.”

  Ida reaches up to turn his head, examining the gash. It’s full of dirt. “How?”

  Marcello takes her hand from his cheek and grips it tightly. “Buried alive in the mud, in the sewer we were digging. The tunnel collapsed. We kept digging and digging but it just kept filling back in, crap falling all over us.”

  Ida eases her fingers out of his grip and puts her arms around him; the stink coming off his coveralls is horrible. She pulls down the zipper and eases the filthy material away from his shoulders and chest. It’s so hot, he has nothing on underneath but his briefs. She guides him into a chair, helps him undress, unties the laces of his work boots hardened with mud and cement. She pushes the reeking pile of clothing out the door, followed by the boots. He stands before her naked, welts visible now on his face and neck, a large purple contusion flowering across o
ne side of his chest.

  Ida places one hand against the contusion; she’s not sure what to do about this type of wound. Ice? “Maybe it’s you who needs the new job.”

  He places his battered face on top of her head.

  “Or to do the thing you really want to do. Study at the university,” she suggests.

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  Marcello washes. Ida sweeps up glass. She wads together a handful of toilet paper and soaks it with peroxide. As Marcello holds the pulpy mess against his head, she puts out dinner: a zuppa with a half-decent Calabrese bread and some prosciutto and melone she was able to find on College Street on the way home from the clinic.

  The salad of dandelions leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. Definitely, it is too late in the season for cicoria, she tells herself. She watches Marcello wolf down the greens, unconcerned by the taste. To him, food is food, senses Ida. He takes what he can get. What he is offered, whether it’s a job, a meal, or the comfort of a woman. This thought makes her feel cold inside, as if the speculum has touched a sensitive spot. Is it Ida he loves? Or simply the idea of being the noble lover? And how long will that feeling last, given that his passion for her is the only thing tying him to her? What if he meets another women who excites him more than she does? As Zara always said, men are led by their passions, as if implying that women were different. Ida saw little evidence of that in Zara’s case, who took her to the confessional every Saturday so that she could have a few words with her father. What would possess Zara to stay loyal to a priest, if not passion?

  Marcello glances at her plate. “You not finishing that?”

  Ida shakes her head. Marcello shrugs and dumps the bitter greens onto his plate.