Once Upon a Time in West Toronto

by Terri Favro

  “The wife,” says Benny.

  In the back room, under a laundry line holding a string of fake IDs for college students from Buffalo, Marcello sits in the La-Z-Boy with Noname in his arms and the phone pressed to his ear. When he sees Ida, he gives a shout of relief, waking the baby, who chirps her displeasure.

  As Ida and Marcello embrace, Benny tosses his wig on Marco’s desk. “Kill anyone today?”

  Marcello shakes his head. “I paid my respects to the Andolinis, visited Prima’s grave, had coffee with Frank, and left. They didn’t know anything about a meeting between me and Senior. He was a no-show.”

  “He just wanted you to go off half-cocked, so Ida’d be alone when Stan came calling,” says Benny. “You got a lot to learn about vendettas, brother.”

  Ida gazes down at Noname, whose oil-slick eyes stare back. She feels a strange sense of recognition, as if gazing into a bottomless pool that mirrors a familiar face.

  “She’s beautiful. She has your eyes,” she tells Benny. “You could be her father.”

  Benny shrugs. “I must’ve given her my looks by sleeping with my arm around Claire every night.”

  “Inherited traits don’t get passed on that way,” says Marcello, as Benny lifts the baby out of his arms to quiet her.

  Ida rolls her eyes. “Marcello goes to university now. He thinks he knows everything.”

  Benny lays out his proposal to Ida and Marcello with the same logical, Spock-like arguments he tried on Scott. Having spent the last two hours bonding with the baby, Marcello needs no convincing. Ida agrees without hesitation. She knows Noname’s possible future by heart and already aches to rewrite it, just as she’s trying to rewrite her own. They’re all outcasts—Benny, Marcello, Ida, and Noname—members of the same pagan tribe of lost children. A family in everything but blood.

  Always practical, Marcello asks: “How do we explain where she came from?”

  Ida and Benny exchange looks over Marcello’s lack of imagination.

  “We say that we adopted her and the papers just came through. Or, she’s a cousin’s child from back in Italy with no one to look after her,” Ida rattles off, waving a hand in the air impatiently. “We think of something, Cello.”

  “But what about papers—birth certificate, medical records, that type of thing?” asks Marcello, still fretting. “We can’t have anyone connecting her with the Love Canal baby.”

  Marco pats Marcello’s shoulder. “Don’t worry Papa. It’s on me. All you gotta do is give her a name.”

  Marcello wants to call her Sophia, after his mother. Benny pushes for Claire—appropriate, but risky. Ida mentions that she’s always liked the name Zara.

  Finally, Marco gets out an old set of craps dice and they play for the naming rights. Benny rolls a four and a two. Ida, a three and a one. Marcello rolls boxcars—a pair of sixes. The baby will be christened Sophia Claire Zara Umbriaco, with Benny, Vera, and Marco as a trinity of godparents.

  “No priests or holy water, please, let’s just baptize her with a friendly drink,” suggests Vera, and everyone agrees. She twists open a bottle of Baby Duck sparkling wine and fills five juice glasses.

  After they toast Sophia’s health, Marco gets out his tools and starts forging the birth certificate. From under the glare of a gooseneck lamp, Marco grins up at Marcello, who watches him work with interest. “Beautiful, eh? With the right papers, this little girl can be anyone she pleases.”

  “How hard is it to forge church documents?” asks Marcello.

  Marco raises his eyebrows with interest. “You mean, like baptismal papers or a marriage certificate?”

  “No, I mean, the document for annulling a marriage,” answers Marcello.

  Marco shrugs. “Piece of cake. Thought you were going to give me something interesting.”

  He slides open a drawer and slips out a printed sheet, placing it on the desk in the front of him with a professional flourish. Marcello recognizes it as the same form he received from the diocese with Senior’s refusal.

  “When can you get me the signature?” asks Marco.

  Marcello silently pulls out his own annulment form—the one with Senior’s signed refusal—from his jacket pocket and places it on the desk.

  Marco looks up in surprise. “You carry this with you everywhere?”

  Marcello grins down at him. “Only when I’m planning to ram it down someone’s throat.”

  12. A BRIEF HISTORY OF LETTERS

  FIVE GOOD YEARS. That’s more than many married couples have, reasons Marcello. He and Ida were married in a small ceremony at St. Lucy’s. Marco’s forged annulment papers fooled both Father Dave and Ed Ceci. Marcello and Ida know the truth—that their marriage is a fraud, at least in a legal sense. But with Sophia to consider, the end justifies the means, as Canadians like to say.

  Frank Andolini makes the peace with Senior, in exchange for Marcello’s presence at business meetings—a strong, silent figure in a suit standing next to Frank, something the Andolinis have needed ever since Rocco’s banishment.

  “Rocco was not the son—not the man—I thought he was,” says Frank mournfully, his hand on Marcello’s shoulder.

  In his first year of teaching, Marcello receives telephone calls in the staff room, several times a month, requesting that he make an appearance in Bramborough to help Frank negotiate the sale of the family farm to developers planning to throw up row upon row of subdivisions. In this way, Marcello keeps Frank happy, who in turn keeps Senior and his attack dog Stan muzzled. And so life goes on in the Umbriaco family in a strangely peaceful way. What Marcello doesn’t know—and won’t know, until much later—is the drama unfolding by mail.

  The second letter appears almost exactly one month to the day after the first. Misaddressed, it arrives at the Agnelli house in an onionskin airmail envelope, blue tinted, addressed to UMBRIACO, Ida.

  The address is always wrong. Confusion about which semi-detached belongs to the Agnellis and which to the Umbriacos means the letters end up in Lou and Lina’s mailbox at 15 Barrie, rather than in Ida and Marcello’s at 17. You might expect the mail carrier to put things to rights, slipping the letters in with the Umbriacos’ hydro and phone bills. But no. Perhaps confused by the airmail envelope and foreign stamp—Lina and Lou receive mail regularly from overseas—the carrier always places the letter firmly in the Agnellis’ mailbox, as he will all the other letters that fly across the ocean addressed to Ida.

  When Angela Lo Presti moves into the vacant flat upstairs—where she will live for several years, learning English and looking after the baby while Ida works and Marcello finishes his degree—the mail situation gets even more complicated, with letters for Angela sometimes jumbled up with the Umbriacos and the Agnellis. When that happens, Angela discreetly passes on the misaddressed letters to Ida without a word.

  At first, Ida hides these new letters with the first one, under the nighties in her dresser drawer. Eventually she bundles them together and slips them behind the old record player in the spare room closet. She still remembers that warm night after the women’s lib meeting, when she and Marcello made love to the records on that player, over and over again. It seems as good a place as any to hide the central fact of her life.

  This is one of several reasons why Marcello didn’t know about the letters for such a long time.

  Years later, when he can’t sleep and finds himself sitting with Ida’s letters spread out before him on his espresso bar at two a.m., he wonders why Lina or Lou or Angela never mentioned them, never handed any of them to him over the back fence: Ecco, Cello, a letter for Ida come to our house by mistake.

  It just never happened.

  The mailing dates of the letters are widely distributed over time (the first, September 22, 1975, the last, July 10, 1982). For Marcello in the year 2000, it is clear that each letter must have passed directly from Lina’s hands to Ida’s. Lina always
brought in the morning mail, Lou always leaving for some distant job site—Mimico, Mississauga, Burlington—long before the postman showed up at their house.

  But it’s odd that in all the conversations Marcello ever had with Lina over the years, about cooking, vegetable gardening, the care of infant skin, the death of three Popes and election of two, and Lou’s heart condition (diagnosed in 1989), Lina never once mentioned Ida’s letters. Neither did Angela, who stayed in touch even after remarrying and moving to Woodbridge. Which makes Marcello believe that it was a deliberate sin of omission.

  There must have been an agreement between the three women to keep the letters a secret among them. Ida’s secrecy, as much as the fact of the letters themselves, makes Marcello shake his head in disbelief almost thirty years later.

  Why didn’t you just show me, Ida, just explain everything to me? It doesn’t seem like such an awful secret that I wouldn’t have understood.

  Ida’s voice always interrupts him. Excuse me, Cello, but you are thinking like a twenty-first century man. Thirty-five years ago, people thought differently. Including you. I kept this secret for your own good.

  For his own good.

  13. TERMINAL VELOCITY

  JULY 11, 1982

  SOPHIA OPENS HER EYES to the poster on the wall opposite her bed: two rows of smiling men in white shorts and blue shirts, arms crossed: the Azzurri, the Italian National Soccer Team. She loves looking at them. Her eyes settle on her hero, the beautiful Paolo Rossi. She adores the footballer almost as much as she does her father. The two of them even look a little bit alike.

  It’s going to be an exciting day. She can feel it.

  The steamy night heat has left her smelling like curdled milk but no one is going to make her take a bath because she won’t be going to church, even though it’s Sunday. Her father took her to Mass last night so that they would have the whole day free for football.

  She slips out of bed and barefoots her way into the kitchen, the soles of her feet slapping the floor. Her father doesn’t like her dirtying her feet. He’s always telling her to put her slippers on. But he’s asleep. It feels good to just do whatever she wants, for a change.

  She climbs up on a kitchen chair, gets down the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Nestle’s Quik, takes a jug of milk out of the fridge, and spreads everything out just-so. She pours milk on her corn flakes and dumps in powdered cocoa straight from the box, mushing everything together into a pleasantly disgusting mess. If her mother saw Sophia do this, she’d kill her. But she’s asleep, too. The morning sun hammers down on the kitchen table through lace curtains, casting a web of light over the cereal bowl in the shape of a goal net: a sign from God, reasons Sophia. Making a man out of her fingers, she kicks in a corn flake and sings softly to herself, “Goal, goal, goal!”

  Today, Sophia and her father will go to the social club and watch the game with everyone else in the neighbourhood. The place will be packed with men but her father will stand out like the sun around which everything else revolves. Sophia chews slowly, dreaming about the day ahead. If the Azzurri beat the Germans (and they will!) this is going to be the best day of her seven-year-old life.

  The alarm clock goes off in a blast of music. Groaning, Marcello slams his fist down on it, then hoists himself to the edge of the mattress. Ida reaches out to absent-mindedly rub his back. “Why do you set the clock when you intend to sleep in? Lie back down.”

  “I need the bathroom.”

  “Go pee and come back. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  In the hallway he can hear Sophia singing to herself at the kitchen table. He pops his head around the corner to where she flips through her FIFA Player Guide.

  “’Morning, sweetheart. What day is this again?” yawns Marcello.

  “World Cup final! When are we going to the club?”

  “In an hour or so. I’m just going to get a little more sleep first.” He runs his fingers through his daughter’s tangled hair. It could use a comb.

  “How can you sleep when the Azzurri are getting ready to play?” shouts Sophia. “Olé, olé, olé, olé!”

  Lying in bed, waiting for Marcello to return, Ida listens to her daughter’s cheers. If the Italian team loses to Germany (which Ida thinks is likely) the girl is going to be crushed, along with the rest of the neighbourhood. Every Azzurri win has sparked spontaneous street parties, shutting down traffic on St. Clair West and College Street. At first the police tried to impose order, but, faced with the vast number of overjoyed revellers, they finally gave up and let the party spill from street to street. Now the authorities simply stand back and allow the Italians to have their fun. This staid Victorian city, Ida senses, is finally learning how to roll down her girdle, sip a glass of wine, and relax a little.

  When Marcello returns to the bedroom, he’s smiling. “I’ve never seen that kid so excited.”

  “Did you tell her not to come in?” asks Ida pointedly, pulling her nightie over he head.

  “She knows.”

  Marcello drops his robe and slips under the sheet, caressing Ida’s belly, letting her direct his hand. Here, and here, and here. Finally she climbs on top of him. As he nears his climax, he groans and turns his face on the pillow.

  Afterwards, Marcello sprawls across the bed, sweaty top sheet on the floor. Maybe this year they should spring for an air conditioner.

  “You’re wearing me out,” he murmurs.

  Ida smiles at him. “My book says lovemaking is very healthful for the man.”

  Marcello rests his hand on her breast. “You want to make love every day, sometimes twice a day. And you’re doing it for my sake?”

  Ida groans and pushes his hand lower. “Of course my darling.”

  Afterwards, Ida dozes. She’s still drowsy when Marcello comes in damp from the shower and says, “I’d better take signorina to Esposito’s or she’ll explode. Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

  Ida yawns. “I come by later. I have things to do. A little shopping.”

  “Shopping on a Sunday? What’s open?”

  “I go to Chinatown to buy cuttlefish from the little grocery.”

  Marcello pulls on his running shoes. “You’ll have to take the bus. The Dart is still in the shop.”

  “I take the Chevy.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. It can’t take much wear and tear anymore.”

  Ida sighs. The nervous old Scotsman is back.

  “This is why you spend every Saturday lying underneath it, hitting it with a wrench and swearing? So it can sit in the driveway?”

  Marcello runs his hand through his hair; at thirty-two, he’s already got a patch of grey above one eye, as though he’s been daubed with paint. “I’m just trying to keep her from falling apart. She’s for looking at, not for driving.”

  Ida snorts. “You are too sentimental, Cello. Always thinking about the past.”

  Marcello pushes Ida’s bangs away from her face. “With the energy crisis, she costs a fortune to fill up and there are no lap belts. I don’t want you riding around in her with Sophia. I’ll get you your cuttlefish at Loblaws tomorrow.”

  “But Cello, I want to make polenta con seppie today. Is just a quick trip, down to Dundas.”

  “No,” insists Marcello. “Obey your husband, for once.”

  Annoyed, Ida rolls away when he tries to kiss her, then shouts after him: “Get that filthy girl to bathe and comb her rat’s nest!”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “And you eat something before you go.”

  “I’ll get Mike to make me some eggs,” Marcello calls back. “Calmati.”

  Ida listens to the sounds of leave-taking, impatient for her husband and daughter to get out of the house. She has more to do than beat cuttlefish until they give up their black ink. The previous week another letter arrived, via the Agnellis: the first one in almost two yea
rs. This time, from Riccardo, her brother. Holding his letter, she feels a stab of guilt and another emotion she tries not to feel: a longing for the past. Live now, she constantly tells herself, but, unlike some others, Rico does not deserve to be forgotten. Ida has decided to write back. With Marcello out of the house for the afternoon, it’s the perfect time to compose a letter.

  She gets out of bed and stands naked in front of her full-length mirror. Even though she’s only in her fourth month, she can already see the darkening areolas of her nipples and the swelling basketball in her lower belly. I don’t look so bad, she observes, then moves her hand to touch where Marcello has just been. All she can think about these days is sex; her pregnancy book says that it’s got something to do with the rush of hormones. She was shocked to discover she could get pregnant at all; apparently, that doctor back in the clinic Jeanie sent her to didn’t know his business as well as he thought he did. A few years after they adopted Sophia, she stopped taking the Pill—what was the point in spending the money if she couldn’t conceive?

  Before she knew it, she’d skipped a period, then another. Her breasts became tender and sore. When she mentioned these symptoms over the phone to Angela, her old friend started laughing. “Wake up—you’re pregnant, Ida! Too bad I don’t live upstairs anymore to help with this one, eh?”

  Ida takes a cool shower, then pulls on a thin rayon dress that the shop lady at the Eaton Centre described as “Yorkville Hippie 1969.” It’s the kind of thing Jasmine used to wear. Perfect for a pregnant woman on a hot summer day, thinks Ida.

  In the spare room closet, she rummages behind Marcello’s old phonograph and pulls the bundle of letters from its hiding place. She’ll re-read the latest one while she eats, then write and mail her response right away. She doesn’t want Marcello to ask who she’s writing to—although she has decided, finally, to tell him everything. He will be surprised by the story and perhaps hurt that she kept these matters a secret all these years, but times have changed. What would have once been considered scandalous is now simply shameful and embarrassing. Besides, it will feel better to get things off her chest, as they say. Another English expression she finds amusing.