by Terri Favro
They eat in silence. No anger between them now, just a great weariness radiating from Marcello, like heat waves off a carburetor. He doesn’t talk further about the men.
Just as they finish, they hear a knock at the door and trade looks. Jeanie perhaps, coming to double-check on them?
Marcello opens the door to Cowboy, holding his hat. “Think I owe you and your lady an apology. Sometimes I can be kind of an asshole.”
“Yeah, well. Me too,” concedes Marcello, shaking Cowboy’s hand. “Sorry I overreacted.”
“If I had a chick who looked like Ida, I probably would’ve done the same. That your Chevy out back of the cabins? Hell of a paint job.”
“You should see what’s under the hood.”
“Wouldn’t mind having a look.”
The two of them wander over to where the car is parked, between the cabins and the lakeshore. Ida can see their bodies relaxing as they walk together. She closes the door and starts clearing the table. From the window over the bathtub, where Ida washes dishes, she sees Marcello and Cowboy looking at the car, the hood propped open.
By the time she goes outside, Marcello and Cowboy are sitting on the hood of the Chevy, a case of beer between them. The two of them gesture at Ida, waving her over, holding up bottles of Canadian. Come join us!
Ida nods and laughs. Who needs language when you have your hands, and beer?
By nightfall, the two men are deeply in conversation about cars and work and music and Vietnam; Marcello keeps cycling back to Rino and Giorgio, the men who were killed—Why them and not me, man? Cowboy keeps shaking his head and telling him he can’t think like that.
Ida sits listening to the rhythms of their deep voices, laughing at jokes she doesn’t get, hearing vocabulary she doesn’t understand (overhead cams, funny cars, four on the floor, souped up), sipping her warm beer, happy that peace has settled on the Seahorse. Finally, Jeanie comes out carrying a case of Brador.
“You boys like to try some real beer from la belle province?”
“Hey! You must be one of those French-Canadian girls I’ve heard so much about,” says Cowboy. “You as much fun as everyone says?”
“Bien sur,” answers Jeanie.
That’s when it turns into a party. With Lily asleep in Cabin One, behind the office, Jeanie starts to relax. Cowboy gets his guitar and the four of them sing—or three of them, Ida not knowing the words.
“Four Strong Winds.” “This Land Is My Land.” “Has Anyone Here Seen My Old Friend John?” “If I Had A Hammer.” “Blowing in the Wind.”
Finally, Jeanie takes the guitar from Cowboy and accompanies herself on a haunting song in French. “Un Canadien errant.”
“That was great, Jeanie,” says Cowboy. “What’s it about?”
“A French-Canadian, wandering far from home,” she says, taking a sip of Cowboy’s Canadian. “Something I know something about.”
“I guess I’m an American errant,” says Cowboy. “Thanks to the war.”
“You’re a draft dodger?” asks Jeanie.
“War resister. It comes down to the same thing.”
Eventually, the beer is gone. Jeanie is curled up against Cowboy, the guitar in front of them both. She’s playing with his fingers, he’s nuzzling her ear.
“Think it’s time for bed, Ida?” whispers Marcello in Italian.
“Si,” she yawns.
Back in Number Fourteen, Marcello pulls Ida to him, gently. They sit on the narrow bed and he brushes her lips, softly tugging off her blouse and shorts and panties, then placing his lips against the nipple of one breast, then the other. Ida leans back; her breasts are small and sometimes when Marcello does this to her, they begin to ache and swell. It’s a nice feeling.
He reaches down and touches her. Ida catches her breath. She’s starting to feel something happening that she hasn’t felt before, like a fluttering of butterflies.
“I’ll make you forget that draft dodger,” he whispers. “You like this?”
“Ah, si,” she breathes. “Is good.”
Then, unbidden, Dr. Stevenson slips back into her mind, speculum in hand. You have to take a full cycle before it’s effective. Until then…
The spermicidal foam and condoms are still in the Rexall bag under the bed, next to the package of pills. Ida doesn’t want to stop what Marcello is doing to retrieve them. She’s starting to feel a pent-up storm inside her is about to break into thunder and rain, the way it does over the lake sometimes. But before this explosion happens, Marcello stops touching her, pulls her on top of him and enters her quickly. “Oh Ida,” he moans.
Why did he have to stop touching, she wonders. Although it doesn’t hurt anymore, this prodding and pushing does nothing for her. She keeps thinking about stopping him, reaching down to get the Rexall bag, but she keeps not doing it; the thought of the sterile collection of products, the smooth condom packets like vinegar and ketchup in a diner, the clinical-looking bottle of foam, sold by the pharmacist with the chafed, pimply neck. The instructions on the bottle read: Fill the dispenser with foam and empty it into the vagina no more than twenty minutes before intercourse.
Marcello gasps, rocks back and forth, back and forth. Ida looks down on his face in alarm. He’s losing his self-control. Wetness covers her thighs.
“Oh dammit, I’m sorry, Ida. I just couldn’t help it this time.”
“Is all right,” she murmurs, not at all sure it really is, wondering if she reached down and inserted the foam right now, whether it would go in and stop the baby. Then remembers again: the doctor claimed there will never be another baby to stop.
Marcello gathers Ida up, handling her like a tender little package. “You’re so beautiful. I love you so much.”
She thinks back to the pop quiz in the waiting room of the Free Clinic. Question: Is he sincere? Answer: Yes. Five points. Sincerity counts for a lot in Seventeen.
Pressed up against his body, his arms thrown around her like iron bars, Ida tries to sleep, but her mouth is burning. The cicoria, she thinks, the bitter taste still clinging to her teeth. She gets up to pour a glass of water at the bathroom sink and catches sight of her face in the mirror. Her eyes look startled under the fluorescent light, her lips pulled tight as if in disgust.
A salad of weeds. An ox of a husband. For this, I come to Canada.
She remembers herself five years ago in her Alitalia uniform, her short skirt and tight jacket, the elegant pumps and gloves. A lacy little girdle underneath, even though she didn’t need it. If the doctor is right and she can never have children, what would prevent her from going back to the planes? Even Marcello couldn’t stop her.
Back in bed, she stares up at the cobwebby ceiling, lit by moonlight, and thinks about that ugly word the doctor used to describe her insides. Damaged. Another hard-edged English word with too many consonants crashing against one another.
She rolls the word over in her head for a while until it breaks down into harmless syllables. Like husabanda. Ida pushes the word into the knot of things in the back of her mind she chooses not to think about, for now.
She places her hand where Marcello put his and imagines Cowboy above her with his dimpled American smile. She comforts and comforts and comforts herself, until the tension inside her snaps like an elastic band, and she drifts off.
Ida wakes to bright sun and a blistering headache. All that beer. Marcello is still sleeping, his body sprawled across the bed, the sheet on the floor. Ida stands and finds his robe, pulling it on; so huge and smelling like Cello, she finds it comforting. Looking down at him, she can see the bruises, dull purples and yellows, and caked blood from the gash on his head. His poor body, so battered and bruised, like a work horse. That’s what he is really, like all the other men he works with, most of them just off the boat, hanging around on street corners, waiting to be handed a job, no questions asked. A collection of muscles t
o be used again and again until they break or give out. The thought brings on a cold ripple of fear: what if something happens to him? What would happen to her?
She leaves the cabin to search for coffee. Jeanie keeps small packets of Nescafé at the front desk; it’s awful but Ida is desperate. Rubbing her forehead, she lets herself into the office.
Jeanie and Cowboy are already there, sipping from chipped mugs, Cowboy’s arm around her waist.
“Bonjour, Ida. You’re up early,” Jeanie greets her.
“I need une café,” answers Ida.
“Ah, oui. Dreamboat dorme?”
“He’ll sleep for a long time yet, I think,” says Ida.
“Best thing for him,” says Jeanie.
At the back of the office, as Ida pours hot water into a cup and tears open packets of Nescafé and sugar, she hears the sound of a car engine outside. A guest, this early on a Saturday? Peering through a window she sees two men getting out of a white Impala. It takes Ida a moment to recognize Niagara Glen Kowalchuk’s right-hand man, Stan, hoisting his threatening bulk out from behind the steering wheel. Pressed into black leathers, he hasn’t changed at all in five years. From the passenger side, an old man grips the top of the door, pulling himself to his feet. Grey hair, grey skin, a paunch like a pregnant horse: Ida’s husband, Senior.
Her first instinct is to hide. But where? She presses herself up against the shelves of linen, trying to make herself invisible. There’s no time to warn Jeanie and Cowboy not to give her away. Panicking, she looks around the room for a cubby hole or escape route; could she possibly fit under the cupboard that holds the towels? (No.) Or maybe she could pull herself through the window, sprint through the motor court to Number Fourteen, wake Marcello, and jump in the Chevy.
It’s impossible. All she can do is hide in the back room. It’s like waiting for an animal to sniff her out and pounce. Unbidden, an image pops into her mind of Stan and Senior going to Number Fourteen, finding Marcello asleep, and putting a bullet in his head. Or hitting him with a baseball bat. Or pressing down on his face with a pillow. As she knows from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, there are a lot of ways to kill a man in bed.
She was never yours. That’s what Senior will say, just before Marcello dies. Ida is terrified. She feels a warm trickle of urine down her leg.
“Can I help you?” Jeanie’s voice comes briskly through the door of the back room. Stan’s voice drifts back to her; Senior must have brought him along to do the talking, among other things.
“Hope so. We’re looking for someone. Two someones. Girl and guy. Guy’s tall with black, curly hair, looks older than he really is, girl’s a cute little blonde with an accent. There’s money in it if you have information.”
“You two cops?” It’s Cowboy’s voice now, using his Clint Eastwood voice. Not quite friendly. Giving nothing away.
There’s a pause. “You might say I’m a private investigator. This gentleman is the blonde’s husband.”
Ida does something she hasn’t done in years. She starts to pray.
There’s a long pause from the front of the office.
“We don’t have anyone like that,” Jeanie finally says again.
Perhaps sensing something, Stan persists: “Names are Trovato. Marcello and Ida.”
Another pause. “You’d kind of remember a name like that. Spick name?” asks Cowboy.
“Italian,” says Stan. “Might be going under assumed names. I’ll leave my number, just in case. If you meet them, be careful. The guy’s dangerous. He kidnapped my client’s wife. He might even be involved in an old murder case in Niagara. Might be driving a Chevy with a racing stripe and decals. 1959. Cherry red.”
“I’d remember if I’d seen that!” laughs Jeanie.
Ida thinks of the car, parked behind their cabin. Impossible to see it from the office, but what if Stan and Senior stroll around the property?
They don’t. From her vantage point, Ida watches the Impala pull out of the Seahorse parking lot and into the Buena Vista on the other side of Lakeshore.
When she comes out of the back room, Jeanie and Cowboy look at her, faces serious. Ida expects questions. What was that all about? Who are you two, really? Were you kidnapped? Did you kill someone? Instead, Jeanie enfolds Ida in her arms. “Don’t be scared.”
“Get your man up right now,” Cowboy tells her. “Him and me got work to do.”
“I thought the B.C. plates would be enough to throw them off,” says Marcello, yawning as he pulls on his pants.
Cowboy snorts. “Think again brother. But repainting a ‘59 Chevy ain’t easy. Not like your later models. Even if you don’t mind doing a shit job, it’s a bitch. All that chrome, that’s the problem.”
Marcello grunts as he tugs his tee shirt over his head. “No kidding. I painted her myself in the first place. We’ll need a few things from Canadian Tire, and a clean, dry, well-ventilated place.”
“How long?” asks Ida.
“Two days. Minimum,” answers Marcello.
Cowboy and Marcello drive their cars to the barn of a friend of Jeanie’s, out in Oakville. Over the two days that they paint, let dry, and repaint the Chevy, Jeanie helps Ida get organized. The two of them scan the classifieds in the Star for apartments to let and Help Wanted ads.
Lily takes Ida’s departure hard. “Do you and Dreamboat really have to go?”
“There are bad guys looking for us. We need to hide among more people.”
“Why are they looking for you? Did you do something wrong?”
“No. We just fell in love.”
“You mean like Nurse Jessie and Dr. Hardy?”
“Yes. Just like that.”
Lily takes out her box of dolls and saints. “Would you rather be St. Therese or Beach Party Skipper?”
“Beach Party Skipper.”
“Okay. And from now on, this one will be Dreamboat.” Lily shakes St. Sebastian in Ida’s face, a handsome, dark-haired young martyr shot through with arrows.
Cowboy and Marcello paint the Chevy navy blue, as dark a tone as they can manage to cover the glossy red and racing stripe and decals, breaking Marcello’s heart.
The morning they leave, Jeanie comes to their cabin with a camera. “For my scrapbook.”
She takes one of Marcello and Ida in front of the car.
One of the two of them, against the lake.
One of Lily, hoisted on Marcello’s shoulders, Ida’s arm around his waist.
One of Cowboy standing between them, an arm around both of their shoulders.
“Thanks for all your help, brother,” says Marcello, kissing Cowboy, who pulls back in surprise.
Ida kisses Cowboy, too. “Are you staying?”
“For a spell. I’m still trying to talk Jeanie into moving to Montreal with me. She could be out of a job soon. The owner of this dump is talking about putting up an apartment house.”
When they drive out of the parking lot of the Seahorse, heading toward the on-ramp of the elevated expressway, Ida turns to look through the back window of the Chevy. She sees Jeanie, Lily, and Cowboy waving her and Marcello into the invisibility of the inner city.
3. ESCAPE FROM LOVE CANAL
BRAMBOROUGH TOWNSHIP, 1975
BUM BUM’S KNEECAP SINGS a high note as the tips of his crutches dig into gravel. A bag of cake, soft and brown as manure, swings from his wrist, slapping the crutch at every grinding step. He’d like to toss the fucking thing in the ditch, but it’s the only food he’s got.
The sound of barking, sharp as shotgun blasts, carries on the warm night air. The dogs could be miles away but Bum Bum is afraid they’re already on the alert, their super-senses telling them that a skinny, heartbroken seventeen-year-old is limping along the verge of the concession road alone.
He imagines a pack of Shepherd-Lab crosses running at him down the driveway of s
ome farmhouse where everyone is plopped on the sofa in front of All in the Family. They’d never hear the sound of his screams for help over the laugh track. He can almost feel the canine teeth ripping into the tight ball of muscle on the back of his thigh, confusing it with the pain of his real wound, now that the rheumatism pills he stole from Prima have worn off.
“Dogs smell your fear. You’re making them think they’re supposed to bite you,” Rocco told him, that time the two of them biked past the chicken farm.
With a pair of snarling mixed breeds closing in from behind, Bum Bum’s legs spun out of control on a hand-me-down one-speed while Rocco clicked smoothly into tenth gear and disappeared into the distance to his shouts of “Wait up!”
At the sound of a whistle, the mongrels padded grudgingly home, but Bum Bum’s adrenalin kept pumping and pumping until he caught up with Rocco, who seemed to be on the dogs’ side. “It’s their job to run after you, for Chrissake. Just stop being scared and they’ll leave you alone.”
Bum Bum pictured himself bitten to death a million times that day. Now his imagination is slaughtering him all over again. He’d happily sacrifice the cake to save himself but he doubts even a hungry Labrador would go for the Duncan Hines double chocolate fudge layer cake with Dream Whip icing, so sweet it made his teeth ache.
“Mangia, mangia, Pasquale!” urged Prima, sitting across from him at the kitchen table, watching him choke down a slice.
“Isn’t Rocco coming over?” he asked through a full mouth.
Prima pressed her lips into a weathered line the colour of boiled beets. She usually liked nothing better than talking about twenty-year-old Rocco, also known as “God’s Gift.” He was the only one of Prima’s many grandchildren, living in the ornate bungalows clustered around her farmhouse, to make friends with Bum Bum. Rocco’s friendship with him hinted at some previously unsuspected capacity for kindness. The others treated him like a stray cat.
Don’t touch him; he’ll make you sick! You don’t know where he’s been!
Prima fingered the crucifix hanging between her sweatered breasts, a sign she was begging God’s forgiveness for her lie. “Rocco, he busy working on his motorcycle. He no come today.”
