Once Upon a Time in West Toronto

by Terri Favro

  Benny couldn’t be careless about this baby’s future, the way others had been careless with his and Claire’s. He took Noname home, coming back today before dawn to see what Rocco was up to. Judging by the absence of the chopper in the driveway, the asshole wasn’t there anymore. That was a relief. Maybe Marcello had sent him packing.

  He considers bringing Noname back in a bassinette and leaving her at the door with a note, the way his nonna said they used to do with orphans in the old country, but it was kind of chilly to leave a baby outdoors even for a short time. Yawning, he finally decides to sack out in the old Chevy and think things over. Like Marcello always said: When you go off half-cocked, you’re bound to do something stupid. Words to live by. Benny takes out his set of lock-picks, jimmies the door of the Chevy, and crawls into the back seat to snuggle under an old blanket that smells of mould and mothballs. Before he can make a single intelligent, well-considered decision, he falls asleep.

  He wakes up with a start when the car door bangs. It’s daylight—shit, how long has he been asleep?

  Peering out from under the blanket he can see the back of a head covered in black curly hair—damp, as if freshly washed. It’s Marcello, for sure. He reaches over the seat to toss a baseball bat in back; Benny stifles a groan when it cracks him in the shin. Marcello flicks on the radio, turning it up full blast. He slams open the glove, pulls out a pack of Rothmans, tamps one out, lights up, and sticks the key in the ignition. The car coughs once, twice. The engine reluctantly turns over and Marcello wheels out of the driveway. Fast. He’s muttering to himself. Benny hears the words, Fucking Rocco. No guff, thinks Benny.

  He lies absolutely still, trying not to let the dusty blanket makes him sneeze. Through the window, he sees telephone poles and street signs fly by. Soon, they’re accelerating past the tops of buildings and billboards suspended in the sky. They must be on the Gardiner Expressway. Where the hell is Marcello going, all pissed off?

  When he sees a sign reading QEW WEST NIAGARA, Benny knows. Marcello is driving either to Bramborough or Shipman’s Corners, taking Benny right back to where he started. Driving toward Senior, the one guy Marcello should avoid at all costs. Benny decides he can’t wait any longer. He sits up in the back seat and yells: “STOP!”

  Marcello turns his head, sees him, almost veers into the next lane, curses, and pulls into the breakdown lane.

  “Who the hell are you?” he shouts.

  “It’s me, Benny. I mean, Pasquale.”

  “Why’re you dressed like a woman?”

  “Pull off at the next exit and I’ll tell you.”

  Marcello exits at Lakeshore, pulling into the parking lot of the boarded-up Seahorse. They sit side by side, both in mild shock. When Marcello finally reaches out to him, Benny is at first alarmed—is he going to get socked? But Marcello pulls him into his arms in a bear hug.

  “It’s good to see you, man,” says Marcello. “But what the living hell is going on?”

  For a half hour, they sit smoking and talking below the overhead roar of the Gardiner, getting one another up to speed on the past six years. When Benny explains the circumstances of Noname’s birth, Marcello asks, “Why don’t you just bring her to Children’s Aid? They’ll find a home for her. People are always looking for babies to adopt.”

  “No fucking way,” states Benny. “Number one, the first thing they’ll do is give her to Claire’s family. Those creeps should never, ever have this baby. Number two, if Claire’s parents don’t get the baby, I want to know who does. What if she gets adopted by maniacs? Or ends up in foster homes for the rest of her life?”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” allows Marcello. “So who’s gonna look after her?”

  “You and Ida,” says Benny.

  “Come on,” says Marcello. “Are you serious?”

  Benny nods. “You and Ida. I’m serious.”

  Marcello says nothing for a few minutes. “Ida lost a baby in B.C. Little boy. He was stillborn. Messed her up for a long time.”

  “That’s why she’ll want this one,” encourages Benny. “You should see her, Cello! She’s cute, smart, and healthy as hell. Hardly even cries. You’re not going to find a better baby than this one.”

  “She’s a baby, not a puppy,” says Marcello, lighting a fresh Rothman off the end of the old one. “Anyway, I can’t think about this now. Senior’s waiting to see me. We’re gonna have it out. Once and for all.”

  “He’s waiting for you?” Benny stares at Marcello. “Waiting to kill you, more like. You telling me that you actually talked to him?”

  Marcello nods. “Rocco showed up last night. I thought it was a social call but turns out, Pop sent him to kidnap Ida and take her back. He just won’t give up on her. Enough is enough. We agreed to meet at the Andolinis. Neutral ground.”

  Benny barks out an angry laugh around his cigarette. “The only Andolini who’s on your side is Prima.”

  Marcello clears his throat. “Prima’s dead.”

  Benny thinks about Prima’s five hundred dollars, now pissed away in rent and food and useless vitamins for Claire. He stifles an impulse to make the sign of the cross. “Sorry to hear. But, listen, Cello. Senior doesn’t want Ida back. He wants revenge.”

  “He’s gotta listen to reason some day,” answers Marcello.

  “What’re you planning to say to him with that baseball bat?” asks Benny.

  Marcello shrugs. “Might encourage him to sign the annulment papers.”

  Benny stares at Marcello, scarcely believing how stupid he is for a smart guy. He considers pressing his hands to Marcello’s face in the Vulcan mind meld. Anything to get him to turn around and drive to Robert Street. He decides to try a combination of shame and logic.

  “For about a week, I’ve had your house staked out. Watching you. You’ve already got everything a guy could want. Friends. A home. Work. Shelves full of books. You got Ida, for Christ’s sake, even if she’s legally married to Senior. Big fucking deal. It’s 1975. No one cares about that shit anymore. Nobody’s gonna touch you—not even Senior. He’d be afraid, now that everyone knows what a big hero you are. You should just go home, stop worrying about the fucking annulment, and live your fucking life.”

  Marcello checks his watch with obvious impatience. “You coming or staying?”

  Benny won’t let it go. “Kill your father or be a father. You can only do one with a baseball bat. For the other, I can help you.”

  Marcello takes a deep breath. “I want my own baby. One Ida and I make. Not the spawn of some sleazy car salesman and his holy roller wife. Capisci?”

  This shocks Benny. It’s not the kind of thing Marcello would have said in the old days, when he was saving Benny from parents as awful as Claire’s. Maybe Marcello has turned into a prick, after all. Impatiently, Marcello reaches into the glove and pulls out a pack of matches and a pencil. “Okay, I’m wasting time here, for Chrissakes, what’s the fucking address?”

  “Huh?”

  “Where you’ve got the baby hidden. I’ll finish with Senior and meet you later.”

  “After the bloodshed, you mean? After you’ve beaten your father’s brains in, you’re going to drop by and kiss the baby?”

  Marcello rubs his eyes with thumb and forefinger, as if he’s getting a headache. Good. Benny can see that’s he’s finally getting through to him.

  “What’s Ida think of all this? The part where you kill your father and try to get away with it, I mean.”

  “I didn’t have a chance to tell her. She’s at a women’s rights demo today. A march or protest or something.”

  “You should’ve told her,” says Benny.

  Marcello, hands on hips, spits into the dirt. “Ida doesn’t need to know everything.”

  Benny weighs whether to take a swing at Marcello. He probably has fifty pounds on Benny, but Benny could still do some damage.

 
Don’t go off half-cocked. Work with what you got, Benny tells himself, trying to calm his fury. Marcello may not be good enough to be Noname’s father but he’s the only choice Benny’s got. He grabs the matchbook and pencil from Marcello, scribbles the Robert Street address, and tosses the matchbook at Marcello’s feet. Turning, he heads for Lakeshore Road.

  “Where you going?” calls out Marcello.

  “The fuck away from you,” answers Benny.

  As Benny dips his thumb into the flow of eastbound traffic, he hears the sound of the Chevy engine, coughing its way to the Gardiner on-ramp. A gleaming silver Cadillac slows and pulls to the curb in front of him, a middle-aged guy in a suit peering at Benny through the windshield. When Benny trots up to the passenger side window, the man calls out: “Where you headed, miss?”

  The guy looks safe enough, decides Benny. And if he tries something funny, he could probably take him. You gotta consider these things when you’re hitchhiking as a woman. “Anywhere along Spadina would be great.”

  The man shakes his head. “I can get you close, but Spadina’s closed for that protest march. Bunch of women’s libbers burning their bras. How’s Bathurst?”

  Benny opens the door and slides in. “Close enough, man. Close enough.”

  11. AMBUSH

  TORONTO, HIGH PARK AVE., OCTOBER 1975

  IDA PUTS ASIDE “DOWN WITH” and paints “FREEDOM TO CHOOSE NOW,” pondering the meaning of the words. Jasmine comes outside in a long, faded skirt, her braless breasts bouncing under a tube top. She’s carrying a placard that reads “STOP THE SPADINA EXPRESSWAY NOW!”

  “We can paint over this one and reuse it,” she advises Ida, looking over her shoulder at the sign. “Darling, what’s with this ‘freedom to choose’? You need to be more direct: ‘ABORTION RIGHTS NOW!’ And you and I should talk about passive resistance.”

  Ida picks up a fresh brush and dips into can of white paint. She starts painting over SPADINA. “You already told me, Jasmine: sit down on the ground and go limp because it is hard for the cops to carry a dead weight. I know this but I do not plan to be arrested.”

  Jasmine snorts. “No one plans to, darling. But it happens. Things get out of hand.”

  Ida turns back to finishing her FREEDOM sign, silently disagreeing. This is Toronto. If there’s one place where things don’t get out of hand, this is it. Sometimes it seems like a city full of sweater-clad old nonnas constantly fussing over people’s drinking and gambling and love lives, while at the same time slyly electing this playboy of a prime minister again and again, along with the rest of the country.

  Marcello has absorbed a bit of that Canadian diffidence too, although when she told him of Rocco’s treachery, he became so enraged that he leapt out of their bed, ran downstairs, made a phone call, came back upstairs, dressed, and left the house without speaking to her. When she followed him out to the driveway, and asked him where he was going, he shouted, “I’ll tell you when I’m back.”

  Blowing off steam over Rocco, no doubt. Probably spending the day at Esposito’s.

  “Dinner at seven,” she said, watching him pull out of the driveway like a mad fiend. Ida didn’t even have a chance to remind him she was going to the women’s march.

  On the other hand, why would he care? She’d be back in plenty of time to make the risotto.

  Before the demo, Ida needs to finish her shopping. She walks into Bertinelli’s, list in hand: Asiago cheese, Arborio rice, basil fresh-not-the-dried-stuff.

  Almost hidden in the narrow aisles of the store is Angela So-and-So—so called, because for a long time people didn’t know whether she was married to her brother-in-law Tony Lo Presti or was his housekeeper. Angela is a tiny ghost of a woman, probably in her mid-twenties, who never comes out of the shadows. The story going around is that back in Italy, Angela was forced to marry Tony by proxy after the sudden death of her sister here in Toronto. She was sent to cook and clean for Tony, presumably to sleep with him, and to wipe noses and teach prayers to her niece and nephew. Ida’s heart is always slightly wrenched by the sight of her, a thin, young woman who is already starting to look middle-aged. She’s lived here a year but has never been able to get the hang of English. Ida suspects she doesn’t want to, as if being able to speak the language will trap her here forever.

  Once, looking out the window of the house on a Sunday morning, Ida was shocked to see Angela walking behind her husband, head bowed and shoulders stooped. At first she just thought Angela was trying to catch up with Tony but it became obvious that this was the way they walked together: Tony striding ahead, Angela cowering behind. Tony has a reputation for being a bully; Ida wonders what happened to wife number one.

  Ida walks down the aisle, basket on her arm, and smiles at Angela. “Come stai?” Ida asks her, gently touching her arm. “Stai bene? How are you? Are you well?”

  Angela tugs her thin cardigan around her shoulders and gives a quick, sharp nod, not wanting to look at Ida straight on. That’s when Ida notices dark patches on her pale cheeks, daubed with foundation. Cover Girl medium-light, Ida thinks, the same shade she herself uses to turn her face into a blank canvas for work. No wonder Angela stays in the shadows: that bastard Tony has been hitting her.

  In Italian, Ida whispers, “Angela! Is someone hurting you?”

  Angela looks at Ida now, eyes wide. The woman is clearly terrified. She shakes her head, quickly. “No, signora. I’m just tired.”

  Ida takes her hand. “Mi chiamo Ida. I’m called Ida. If anyone ever hurts you or you need help, you come to me. I’m your sister. You know where I live, yes? Next door to Agnellis.”

  Angela again gives a quick nod. “Grazie, signora, but don’t say you are my sister. You don’t want to be my sister. She’s dead.”

  Ida touches Angela’s hand quickly and goes about her business in the cheese section. She feels fury rising inside her, starting in her belly and overflowing into her chest like warm yeast. She thinks of going to the Lo Presti home to confront Tony but knows what Marcello would say: Mind your business. This is another thing about Canada: passionate emotion expressed in the form of physical and verbal confrontation is frowned upon. You’ve got to keep things bottled up and boiling under the surface. Maybe write a letter to the editor, or say something behind someone’s back. Slapping Mr. Carlyle was one thing—he was an outsider after all, and it was an extreme situation—but slapping Tony Lo Presti would be lunacy. Like all good Canadians, Ida has learned to pick her battles.

  Back at Barrie Avenue, Ida unloads the groceries, does some quick preparation for that night’s meal, changes into her WOMEN’S RIGHTS NOW! T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and waits for Jasmine to pick her up. The plan is to drive to a parking lot near the one of the sweat shops at Spadina and Richmond, gather together with the other women, and march up the street. It should all be over by four o’clock, leaving plenty of time to make the evening meal. Jasmine is bringing the bullhorn and the protest signs; while she waits, Ida touches up her fingernail polish.

  As she spreads a top coat over shell pink lacquer, Ida hears a knock at the door. Checking her watch, she sees that it’s only noon. Jasmine isn’t supposed to be here until one. She opens the door to Angela So-and-So, a shawl hiding her face.

  “Please, signora, you say I could come here for sanctuary,” she says, pulling the shawl back to reveal a large purple bruise spreading over one cheekbone, the eye socket turning black. Her one good eye brims with tears. Ida has the oddest feeling that she’s looking at another version of herself.

  “Come in,” says Ida, but Angela doesn’t move. Ida has to reach out and take her by the arm, gently pulling her inside the alcove. Angela looks around in wonder as though she’s never seen the inside of any Canadian home but her own. It strikes Ida that this could well be true.

  “You’re hurt,” says Ida. “Do you want me to take you to the doctor?” Ida hesitates, then adds, “Or la polizia?”
/>
  Angela’s already huge bruised eyes grow even wider. She shakes her head vigorously. “My husband, he would kill me if I go to the police!”

  “He’s doing a good job of that right now, Angela,” says Ida, at which Angela bursts into tears.

  Ida manages to get Angela to sit down in the living room with a bag of ice on her face. Jasmine will be here in thirty minutes—less than that—but Ida is reluctant to leave Angela alone. What if she gets frightened and goes back to Tony? No. Impossible. The women’s movement is supposed to be there for the oppressed. She’d rather have Angela close by where she can keep an eye on her.

  Ida sits next to Angela, holding her hand. “I want to take you somewhere today. One of my—sisters—is coming to pick me up in a few minutes to go to a protest march for women’s rights. Do you know what that is?”

  Angela’s one good eye rolls to look at Ida. She shakes her head uncomprehendingly. “Women’s rights?” The words make no sense to her. Well, why would they? thinks Ida bitterly.

  “Never mind. You’re staying with me Angela.”

  Angela manages a small smile behind the ice bag. “Thank you, signora.”

  When Jasmine arrives in her old VW bus, Ida goes out to the curb to meet her and explain the situation. Jasmine raises her eyebrows. “Let me have a look at her.”

  Angela is huddled in a chair in the furthest corner of the living room, her shawl over her face, her body pushed down into the chair as if trying to disappear inside it.

  “There, there, darling, let me see what the bastard did to you,” coos Jasmine, reaching out to pull back the shawl, but Angela edges away, and pulls the shawl around her even tighter.

  “She doesn’t understand English,” explains Ida, who gently moves the shawl away from Angela’s face. Jasmine looks at the bruised cheek and eye with clinical interest.

  “I think she should go to the police, then the hospital.”

  “I’ve tried,” says Ida. “She refuses to do either. She says her husband will kill her.”