Once Upon a Time in West Toronto

by Terri Favro

  “That was fun, riding your chopper,” Ida says. “I thought you were going to forget to bring me home.”

  “That was the plan. I just didn’t have the stomach for it.”

  Ida stares at him uncertainly, the nape of her neck tingling again. “Plan?”

  Rocco rubs his eyes. “Forget it. Bad joke. I just meant, I liked having you with me, on the back of my bike.”

  “Is that so?” says Ida, one of the couch cushions pressed to her chest.

  “Yeah, it’s so.”

  Ida steps closer to him. “Can I ask you a question? Something personal in nature.”

  Rocco crosses his arms and takes a half-step back. “I got nothing to hide.”

  Ida is not sure what she’s doing, except that somehow she knows it’s the right thing to do. A way to balance things between her and Rocco.

  “Why do you feel shame when you talk about Pasquale?” she asks.

  Rocco visibly tenses. She’s struck a nerve, as Marcello would say. “What makes you think I’m ashamed of something?”

  Because I know shame when I see it, thinks Ida, but says, “When you talk of him, I feel you had some part in his running away. For example, that he shared with you his destination after stealing Prima’s money seems strange. That you search for him now seems like a guilty act.”

  Rocco steps closer to her. “It’s not Bum Bum I feel guilty about. It’s you, Ida. Okay, you asked, so I’ll tell you how this was really supposed to go down. The chopper ride was not supposed to end with me bringing you back to Marcello. I was going to take you all the way home to your real husband in Shipman’s Corners. Senior made a deal with me.”

  Ida’s throat is so dry, she can barely ask, “What sort of deal?”

  Rocco stands looking into the darkness of the room, but not at Ida. “One night, out on the farm, Senior caught me doing something that would’ve pissed off Dad. Bad enough to get me thrown out of the family. Senior said if I found you and brought you back to him, so he could teach you a lesson, he’d keep his mouth shut. In the end, I just couldn’t do it. Forgive me.”

  The couch cushion falls out of Ida’s arms. All this time, watching and waiting for someone outside, when the threat was waiting right here at home. Laughing with Marcello in her living room. Eating her penne. Drinking her grappa.

  “You were going to betray me? Kidnap me?” she finally manages to say.

  He lowers his head like a boy. “Don’t tell Marcello till I’m gone, okay?”

  Ida stares at Rocco in silence. No wonder he reminds her of a fallen angel. “Why would I not wake Marcello and tell him right now?”

  Rocco lifts his chin to her, as if issuing a challenge. Suddenly the room seems very dark and he seems very large. “Because if you do, I’ll tell him what I know about you, Ida. Why you married Senior. Why you came so cheap.”

  Ida steps closer to him. She can see a crown of thorns, tattooed onto his chest. Summoning all her strength, she hauls her hand back and slaps Rocco’s face. His eyes flicker slightly.

  “You should remember who your friends are. I could have taken you back to Bramborough by force and I didn’t,” says Rocco.

  “Go before the sun comes up,” Ida says, and turns her back on Rocco, her neck tingling as she walks up the stairs.

  Behind her his voice rises softly, “Don’t worry. Now we’re all in the same boat. I have to get the hell out of Dodge too.”

  In the bedroom, Ida finds Marcello asleep with his glasses on, textbooks scattered on the comforter. She leans over and removes his glasses, placing the books on the floor. He isn’t supposed to strain his eyes by reading, just yet. She clicks off the lamp and lies in bed, rigid as a statue, staring at car headlights washing across the ceiling.

  A few minutes later, she hears the sound of the front door closing and a motorcycle engine cycling through its gears as it picks up speed. Rocco’s shame has propelled him back into the darkness where he belongs. Ida rolls onto her side, away from Marcello, and lets her tears leak out without making a sound.

  She wakes up the next morning alone. The empty sheets are washed by sunlight. She sits up and rubs her head. The previous evening has a groggy, unreal quality to it. Pulling on her robe, she patters downstairs to a silent house. The remains of breakfast litter the kitchen table. A message jotted on the back of a sheet of paper covered with equations, reads simply: GONE JOGGING. M.

  Ida sighs. Jogging is part of Marcello’s new health regimen, along with quitting smoking. And he does jog—miles, in fact, up to the St. Clair reservoir, around Casa Loma and back—straight to Esposito’s for a post-jog espresso and a cigar.

  Ida starts clearing the kitchen table. As she moves plates and cups to the sink, she notices the letter Lina Agnelli gave her yesterday, reflected in the kettle.

  Ida pulls it out with one hand while she balances two dirty dishes in the other. When she reads the return address, the plates fall to the floor.

  Gripping the envelope, she stands barefoot among the dirty shards, feeling as shattered as the dishes. Picking her way around the splintered mess, she gets a sharp knife out of the drawer and goes into the living room. Carefully, she slits the top of the envelope and eases out two pale blue sheets of airmail paper. It is some time before she can force herself to read the dense, precise handwriting she knows well.

  First, he apologizes for driving her out of Italy.

  Next, he states that it is time to put the past behind them and start anew.

  He says their relationship is too important—“too fundamental” is the literal meaning—to let die. Or worse, to pretend it never happened. Which, of course, was what she had always accused him of doing. Regardless of the consequences, he wants to own up to his responsibility to her. His love for her.

  I never knew how much I treasured you, until were you gone, he writes.

  He knows that he should have said something before Ida flew away to Canada. He should have stopped her from going through with the ridiculous proxy marriage. But if we do not own up to our sins eventually, how will we be forgiven? How will we be redeemed? Can she forgive him after all this time?

  Please write back.

  He offers her all his love and signs his name, Paolo.

  Ida’s father never reveals how he obtained her address or learned her new last name.

  When she finishes reading, she creases the letter neatly, slides it back into the envelope, and sets it in her lap. She has read an expression in books, Crying as though her heart would break (it was always a woman doing the crying and the breaking). It seemed a stupid way to describe sorrow, but she understands it now. For precisely a quarter-hour, Ida cries as if her heart will break. Then she goes upstairs, pulls a suitcase from the bedroom closet, and starts tossing clothes inside. When everything she owns has been stuffed into it, she sits down on the bed. She lies down beside her suitcase and stares at the ceiling.

  What am I doing, running again? What will he do if he gets home and I’m gone? Should I wait and try to explain, then say goodbye? Or just leave?

  Through the Venetian blinds, the morning sun stripes her overflowing suitcase with bars of light. If she leaves now, the years with Marcello will recede behind her as she rides off down the road, disappearing along with her other memories.

  She thinks about the look of concentration on Marcello’s face as he does his schoolwork, the muscles of his arms tensing as he turns a wrench in the Chevy’s failing engine, the cadences of his voice when he tries to make her laugh, the way he strokes her face after they make love, or puts a hand over her eyes when they listen to some new record album, assuming that she will be as transported by the music as he is. If she leaves him, she’ll eventually forget the hours they’ve spent listening to opera, sharing food and wine, arguing about politics while Ida cooks—or he does; lately she’s started to suspect he’s better in the kitchen than she is. And then
there is the absolute, unwavering affection he shows her. She can lean into Marcello’s broad chest and cry, or shout with indignation about some male chauvinist pig on the plane that day, or complain about how fat she feels with her period or how tired she is after a double shift, and he will always wrap her in his arms and say something to make her feel comforted. And there’s that particular combination of smells he has: lemon soap, motor oil, basil, sweat. Sometimes Ida likes to stick her nose into his body and take a deep sniff, causing him to laugh, What the hell are you doing?

  In short: she loves him. But she also loves the possibility that she can be reinvented, that nothing is written or defined for her, that her past is forgotten. Until Paolo’s letter arrived, she didn’t even have to think about where she came from anymore.

  Marcello, on the other hand, wants security. A comfortable, predictable life looking after Ida and creating the large, loving family he craves so much. If only, thinks Ida, there was a way for her to give him all that and breathe the fresh air of changing times too.

  She dumps the contents of her suitcase on the bed and begins to hang up her clothes again.

  By the time Marcello returns from his jog, the kitchen floor is swept, the table tidied, the blue letter hidden in Ida’s lingerie drawer under a stack of flannel nighties. She’s even been next door to have a quick word with Lina Agnelli about what to do if any other misaddressed letters come for her: No need to trouble Cello with them, just pass them over to me.

  When Marcello runs up the steps, stinking of sweat and Cuban tobacco, Ida is sitting on the porch with a library book, her eyes masked by large sunglasses.

  “Did you have a nice run?” she asks, putting down Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

  By way of answer, Marcello leans down to kiss her. Ida takes his hand, leads him to the upstairs bathroom, and turns on the bathtub faucet. As hot water fills the tub, she strips off her jeans, shirt, panties, and bra, and steps into the water. Marcello takes off his clothes, too, and slides in behind her, his long legs surrounding her.

  As the steaming water rises higher and higher around them, Ida unwraps a fresh bar of soap, and hands it back to Marcello who slowly, lovingly, begins to wash both of them clean.

  Later, after they’ve washed, made love, and dressed, she will tell him about Rocco’s treachery.

  The painful letter, she will keep to herself. It contains more words of affection from her father than she’s ever heard outside of a confession box.

  10. HALF-COCKED

  TORONTO, BARRIE AVE., OCTOBER 1975

  BANG. A DOOR SLAMS and Benny opens his eyes to sunlight knifing through the windshield of the Chevy. He knows this car so well, it might as well have been his boyhood bedroom. In fact, it practically was. This car was his refuge on hot summer nights, the year Marcello befriended him, taught him to read, then abandoned him to Prima.

  Now here he is again, sleeping in the Chevy, this time in Vera’s dress. He’s been disguised as a woman ever since showing up at Vera and Marco’s door with Claire’s baby, looking for a place to hide. For weeks, he’s been wearing a long, curly black wig from Vera’s stripper days. A little foundation and lipstick, and Benny makes a very passable woman. Vera tells him he looks like Cher, even with construction boots under his skirt because his feet are too big for any of Vera’s shoes. The important thing is, he doesn’t look like Claire’s boyfriend anymore. The cops have been trying to find Pasquale “Benny” Pesce, a former employee of Gentleman’s Hand Touch Car Wash, the prime suspect in a baby-snatching. Worse, they’ve managed to connect Claire with the missing pregnant teenage girl from Love Canal, New York. Claire’s mother and stepfather have appeared on the news every night, tearily calling for the return of their beloved granddaughter. The Toronto Sun ran a photo of them under a headline blaring BRING BACK OUR BABY! Claire’s mom, a puffy-faced, drugged-looking blonde, held up a Bible. The stepfather, a skinny car salesman with a bad dye job on his blow-dried hair, hid from the camera behind tinted aviator glasses. Benny hates both of them on sight; when they appear on TV, he hugs the baby to his chest, the sour-sweet smell of her newly hatched scalp filling him with a maddening protectiveness.

  “Over my dead body will those two get their hands on you. No way, after what they did to Claire,” Benny tells the baby, flat out. He thinks she understands. Her eyes, black as an oil slick, fasten onto his as she sucks furiously on the nipple of a bottle of formula, the fingers of one hand gripping Benny’s thumb with the determined strength of the Incredible Hulk.

  When a TV reporter asks about the baby’s father, the sleazy stepfather stares at his shoes while Claire’s mom says in her flat, Western New York accent: Well, you know young people these days, they’ve lost their way. Could be any of the boys on the senior basketball team I’m afraid. But even though the baby was conceived in sin, Karl and I will bring her up in the spirit of the Lord.

  Once, Claire’s brother showed up on screen in a wheelchair beside his parents, his thick blond head drooping to his chest. No wonder Claire didn’t think he’d have to go to Vietnam.

  With Vera’s help, Benny’s been looking after Noname in the back room where Marco forges fake IDs. He’s provided Benny with a driver’s licence identifying him as “Holly Golightly.” He’s working on a passport in Benny’s soon-to-be real name—Ben Pisces—which Benny thinks has a certain glamour. It’s the name he plans to go by when he escapes to New York.

  Vera wanted to name the baby, right away—she suggested Charlene—but Benny said it was bad luck to name anything you weren’t going to keep. Like Holly and her nameless cat. It was Marco who suggested “Noname,” pronouncing it No-nah-mee. Which, they all agreed, was a pretty name for a baby girl, even if temporary.

  “Once you give her a real name, I’ll forge her a nice birth certificate as a gift,” volunteers Marco.

  Benny and Vera came up with a way to get baby supplies without attracting attention. While she distracted the sweating, pimply-neck pharmacist in the College Street Rexall with questions about vaginal lubricating creams, Benny loaded up a hockey bag with disposable diapers and Similac. He bottle-feeds the baby while rocking her in an old La-Z-Boy of Marco’s, then puts her down to sleep in a dresser drawer they’ve converted to a bassinette. The baby eats voraciously, shits copiously, and seems healthy, as far as the three of them can tell.

  Today, Vera and Marco are looking after Noname, but it’s clear the arrangement can’t go on much longer. With all the news stories about the missing baby, they’re nervous that the police will knock at the door and hear her cry. Not that Noname cries much—she’s what Vera calls, “a good baby.” Smart, too, thinks Benny, her deep black eyes following him knowingly, everywhere he goes. He’s convinced she can read his mind, as if she’s from Vulcan. He wishes Mr. Spock had fathered Noname instead of that douchebag car salesman.

  The cops have already been to Scott’s house and ruled him out as a suspect, although not before taking him in for questioning. Scott pretty much freaked out when Benny showed up at his house the next day and proposed his plan to give the baby to Monica.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” was the way Scott put it.

  Monica had left Scott when the zoo story came out in the Star—making the plan even better, in Benny’s opinion. He didn’t really want Scott hanging around the baby. Monica was a woman and therefore trustworthy. Once she saw Noname, she’d no doubt fall in love with her, just as Benny had. Better to have Scott out of the picture altogether. But when Benny tried to explain this, setting out his arguments in a logical, Spock-like fashion, Scott freaked out all over again.

  “Get the hell out before I call the cops,” he threatened. This, from a guy out on bail for cruelty to animals. Benny was pretty sure that the cops were the last people he’d call.

  With Monica and Scott and Vera and Marco out of the running as parents, Benny needs a Plan B. He can’t stay in disguise forever. Eventually, the
cops will track him down. Besides, he’s decided that his destiny is to start fresh in New York City. Instead of picking up guys in nightclubs the way Holly Golightly did, Ben Pisces will work the discos, hustling bankers and movie stars. Now he just has to convince Ida and Marcello to agree to raise Noname.

  When Benny realized the woman in the uniform on TV was Ida—and the man trapped under the house, Marcello—it was as if one of the old dead gods had gifted him with the perfect plan, one even better than the Scott-and-Monica plan. But first, Benny wants to make sure that they are still the heroic man and kind woman he remembers them to be. What if Ida has turned into a bitch and Marcello a prick? Benny wants to know what’s under their fingernails before entrusting them with Claire’s baby.

  With Noname in a buggy that Benny quietly stole off a front porch two streets away, he took the subway and streetcar to the neighbourhood known as the Corso Italia. The Toronto Star said that Marcello and Ida lived on Barrie Avenue. Figuring out their house number was a cinch: he just watched the flow of housewives arriving at the door with casseroles and trays of lasagna. For a week, he’d had the place under surveillance but was only spotted once, when Ida saw him hanging around in the parkette. Benny was pretty sure she didn’t recognize him in his dress and wig. As far as he could tell from his walks up and down the street, Marcello and Ida were well-liked by their neighbours and their habits were routine. Peeping through their windows at night, he was happy to see signs of affection between them. Kisses, hugs, lovemaking, the works. And there were a lot of books in the house. All proof that they deserved to be Noname’s parents.

  Benny decided that he would simply walk up to Marcello and Ida’s front door with Noname in his arms and knock, like Ed MacMahon appearing at a sweepstakes winner’s home with a giant cheque. Congratulations, you have been selected! But before he could push the buggy across the street, Rocco roared up on a chopper. That was a bad surprise. What the hell was Marcello doing, hanging around with Rocco? Maybe Marcello wasn’t quite the Mr. Wonderful everyone thought he was.