by Terri Favro
“And where’s that stairway go?”
“Upstairs bedrooms,” says the woman, almost in a whisper. She’s losing her voice.
“Show me,” repeats Stan. She hesitates. He walks up behind her and gives a little push to the small of her back, making her stumble forward.
“Mum!” says the kid, standing up. He glances at Marcello, who has no idea what to do.
“Sit down,” he finally says to Ethan, who does.
He can hear Stan and the woman walking up the stairs.
“What’s that guy doing with my mother?” asks Ethan, his voice cracking. Marcello can see the tremors of fear in the boy’s body; he’s shaking as though he’s in a cold wind.
If the guy asks you a question, don’t answer.
“Take it easy,” says Marcello, breaking the code of silence again.
“Don’t let him hurt her,” begs the boy. “Those guys’ve been here before. They’re nuts.”
What makes you think I won’t hurt her? Or hurt you? wonders Marcello.
“I won’t let anything happen to her,” Marcello says, unsure of how to make good on this promise. “Look, I’ll go upstairs and check on things. You stay here.”
He has to leave Ethan alone in the kitchen; if he has any sense, the kid will arm himself while Marcello is out of the room, there’s a big butcher’s cleaver, right there in a block on the counter. Marcello considers taking the cleaver upstairs with him, so that Ethan doesn’t attack him when he returns, but what’s the point: there must be lots of potential weapons in this kitchen and he can’t gather them all. He’s sure the kid won’t leave this house without his mother. Anyway, the closest farm is a good five miles away. And if he tries to help his father, he’ll come face to face with Kowalchuck.
On the second floor, Marcello is met by a line of closed doors, and one open one. It’s the master bedroom. When he enters, he sees Stan with his pants down, thrusting forward toward the bed, where he’s pinned the woman between his legs; Marcello can’t see her face, but he can hear her gagging.
“Kowalchuck says for you to go out and start the car,” says Marcello in the calmest, most forceful voice he can muster. “George signed. We can leave.”
“In a minute,” answers Stan.
“Right NOW, Stan, right fucking NOW,” says Marcello in the tone he employs when he catches kids trying to shoplift in the store. “I heard sirens. Want to wait around, find out who they’re for?”
Stan turns to glare at Marcello, then steps away from the bed and tugs up his pants. The woman is left sprawled on the bed, a puddle of pale skin and blonde hair, her face mottled; she starts coughing.
As he leaves the room, he says to Marcello, “Be my guest.”
Marcello stands listening to the sound of Stan going down the stairs, through the hallway, out the front door. The woman is crying and spitting into a tissue from the bedside table. He wants to comfort her, but he’s pretty sure he’s just going to scare her, if he touches her.
“I’m going to take you back downstairs to Ethan,” Marcello says. “Do you want to wash your face?”
She nods and heads out of the room and down the hall, not looking at Marcello. Inside the bathroom, she coughs and runs water, then the toilet flushes; she’s making herself throw up, Marcello suspects. When she comes out, looking damp and exhausted, her lips chafed and raw, Marcello takes her arm but she wrenches it away from him.
“You’re animals,” she tells Marcello fiercely. “I don’t consider you human. I just want you to know that.”
“Okay,” says Marcello. “But I’m trying to help you.”
“Oh, I see, help me” she rasps. “If you want to help, shoot your friends.”
No gun, thinks Marcello. None of us is armed. The only weapon we have is me.
When they reach the kitchen, Marcello sees that Ethan hasn’t left the spot where he left him. The butcher’s cleaver is still in the block.
Why didn’t you try to arm yourself? I gave you your best chance, thinks Marcello in frustration.
Over the panicked up-down of the farmer’s voice in the next room, he can hear the engine of the Impala idling in the yard. Stan must have believed them. He sticks his hand in his pocket and brushes his fingers against the brass knuckles. He could take both Kowalchuck and Stan with them, maybe, then drive off in the Impala with the kid and his mother. He could rescue them, bring them somewhere safe, and then, with a clear conscience, go to the Andolinis, collect Ida and disappear. He’s still imagining this when the kitchen door swings open and Kowalchuck walks in. He grabs the woman by the arm.
“Time to let George have a look at his family.” He glances around the kitchen. “Where’s Stan?”
Marcello, feeling a wave of dizziness, steadies himself against the counter. “In the car.”
“What the fuck for? We’re not finished here.” He looks at Ethan, sitting at the table. “You ain’t done nothing to the kid.”
“I was just supposed to scare him, you said,” says Marcello uneasily.
Kowalchuck glares at Marcello, seething with impatience. Still gripping the woman, he backhands Ethan across the face, knocking him off his chair. The woman screams and twists away, dropping to the floor with her son. Ethan is crying, his nose gushing blood. Marcello’s hand tightens around the brass knuckles in his pocket – he’s got to end this now – when a shout comes from the other room. It’s George’s voice: “For Christ’s sake, stop it, I’ll sign!”
They walk out to the Impala, side by side.
“You have to scare the families,” explains Kowalchuck. “Women and kids bring pressure to bear. So you have to put them under pressure.”
“That was more than pressure. Stan hurt her.”
“Depends what you mean by ‘hurt’,” says Kowalchuck, shrugging.
Marcello feels a wave of nausea.
Marcello sits in the back seat of the Impala as they drive him to his car.
“Except for Junior screwing around, a good night,” says Kowalchuck from behind the wheel. “We scared that guy shitless.”
“Got what you wanted?” asks Stan.
Kowalchuck nods. “Signed right on the dotted line. The developer’s ready to plough under the peach orchard tomorrow. That’s where they’re gonna put the man-made lake.”
Stan laughs. “You’re shittin’ me. Lake Ontario’s right there.”
“Full of dead fish,” points out Kowalchuck. “Man-made lake’s nice, like a swimming pool. It’s going to be a big selling feature once houses go in. People’ll pay through the nose for that kind of shit.” He sighs in contentment. “I can finally get Ma into a good old folks’ home, instead of one of those barns where they leave everyone sitting in their own crap.”
Kowalchuck stops the car on the concession road and waves Marcello out of the back seat. Through the window, he hands him a thick envelope.
“What’s this?”
“Two hunnert. Take it. That farm’s worth a hunnert times more’n the candy store and Ida and your gambling debt put together. Land development, that’s the future, Junior. Everybody wants a little place out in the country. Even though you screwed up, you should have a taste.”
“Keep it,” says Marcello trying to shove back the envelope.
Kowalchuck waves him off. “Give it to the missions.”
Marcello looks around him in the darkness. “Where’s the Chevy?”
Kowalchuck points down the road. “’Bout ten miles west of here, parked on Concession Eleven.”
Marcello leans down to grip the edge of the window. “Are you kidding? It’ll take me all night to walk that far. You said you’d bring me there.”
“Change of plan. We got stuff to do.” With that, Kowalchuck hits the gas. The Impala accelerates down the road until it’s swallowed in darkness. Marcello
bends over and vomits in the ditch. Then he starts walking.
As he learned in grade nine science class: Everything in life is physics!
Every action is matched by an equal and opposite reaction. Marcello liked watching science teachers demonstrate this with a set of swinging metal balls suspended from rods; you set the first ball in motion, which hits the one beside it, which sets that one swinging, and within seconds, they’re all swinging.
Transference of energy.
The thug threatens. The innocents suffer. Not just tonight, not just here, but forever and everywhere.
As he stumbles along the edge of the concession road in darkness, he starts to imagine that boy, Ethan, showing up at the candy store. What would Marcello say to him?
Ethan! Good to see you! How’s your Mom?
She’d be a lot happier if all you guys were dead.
He has to make an Act of Contrition. That woman will never be the same again, or the boy. He has to atone. But what’s he going to do? He can’t give them their farm back or erase their memories of tonight.
Dawn brings out the farm trucks, heading into town to collect that day’s fruit pickers. Limping along the shoulder of the road in a daze, Marcello almost forgets to stick out his thumb. A farmer finally stops to offer him a lift in the back of his pickup. Marcello checks his watch, waiting for his vision to blend the two sets of hands into one. He’s been walking about five hours.
Marcello rests against the wall of the truck bed and turns his face into the wind, the morning coolness soothing him, and says a prayer of thanks. He watches the sun come up over Lake Ontario, grapefruit-pink streaked with gold. Pretty as hell. Somewhere on the road ahead is his getaway car. All he needs to do now is to drive to the Andolinis, get Ida, and leave. Then he can spend the rest of his life being a good man to atone for what he’s just done.
Marcello is both surprised and relieved when he finally catches sight of the back of his car, parked on the verge of the concession road, just like Kowalchuck said. He waves his thanks into the rear-view of the truck and the farmer nods back, pulling over onto the shoulder. Finding the car unlocked, Marcello lifts a hand again to indicate to the farmer that he’s fine now, and the truck drives away, raising a cloud of gravel dust.
It’s only when Marcello climbs behind the steering wheel that he remembers that he doesn’t have the ignition key. He checks in the glove and under the driver’s seat. No key. Jesus.
Putting his head down on the steering wheel, he allows himself to close his eyes for a minute. When he awakes, stiff-necked, the angle of the sun through the windshield tells him he’s been asleep for some time. He checks his watch: it’s eleven o’clock in the morning. At least he feels a little rested. But the pain in his ribs has returned full-force, the painkillers having worn off.
He shakes out a handful of 222s and chews them dry. The chalky taste makes him thirsty. The water in the irrigation ditch beside the car is probably full of chemicals from Hooker and DuPont, but what the hell does he care? Getting out, he crouches to scoop a handful of tepid water into his mouth: it tastes like bitter soap.
Back behind the steering wheel, he takes a few minutes to let the pills kick in and tries to think through this new problem. He’s still got his tools in the glove from repairing the stove: screwdriver, wire-cutters, electrical tape.
He wraps his fingertips in the tape and uses the screwdriver to pop out the ignition. From under the dash, he tugs out three live wires – one red, one blue, one green – and touches them together. The engine grinds, the ignition sends out a shower of sparks and, despite the electrical tape, the tips of Marcello’s fingers sizzle, but in seconds, the starter catches and the engine turns over. Marcello twists the three wires together and braces himself. The car is moving. Houston, we have lift off.
It’s a cloudless day, the air fresh. On the other side of the lake, he can make out the Toronto skyline, the muscular arm of the Gardiner Expressway, even the ominous black slabs of the new bank towers. Somewhere in that tangle of billboards and highrises is the mother house of the Passionist Order of St. John, where his name is written backwards in a book: Travato, Marcello, born in Piacenza, Italy, January 1950. By now, they have surely received the letter from Father Ray, recommending Marcello for early admission so that he can be rushed into a more saintly life.
He averts his eyes from the skyline. His calling to the priesthood is in ashes, crushed with the last cigarette he smoked from the package stuffed in his pocket. Ida is his calling now.
Along the lakeshore road, willow trees drip long fingers into muddy strawberry fields, grape rows roll to the blue horizon, peach trees twist their knotted shoulders toward the sun. Everything is warm and sweet and juicy, like Ida. Signs reading Cherries Raspberries Plums Peaches Apricots call out to him to touch and squeeze and bite before the earth goes back to sleep like a woman whose lover has left her bed.
He turns on the radio and gets the news: NASA Mission Control reports it’s all systems go for the landing of Apollo 11 scheduled for…
Marcello changes stations, trolling the dial until he hears the Beach Boys. The Chevy’s overtaxed engine grinds its way up the steep Niagara Escarpment to the a cappella lyrics of Barbara Ann. Radio blasting, Marcello bullets past no-nonsense cornfields and black blocky beef cattle that already look like Sunday roasts, raising the eyebrows of upright men on tractors.
At last, he pulls into the long driveway leading to a high red brick farmhouse surrounded by a cluster of modern bungalows, like a mother with a brood of children. The Andolini men will be out in the fields but he knows exactly where to find the women.
He parks the car beside the old farmhouse and heads out back to the summer kitchen. Through the screen door, he’s met by a blast of steamy heat: Prima, Gina and some of the little girls are canning peaches, the table before them a sea of Certo bottles and glass jars brimming with sun-yellow fruit. On the stove, pots of water are at a furious boil. Wiping dripping hair from their faces with rubber-gloved hands, the Andolini women stare at him without recognition. Over the last few weeks, he’s become unrecognizable as the Marcello they once knew.
Finally realizing who he is, Prima pulls off her rubber gloves and comes to him, her hands raised to his bruised face. “Carino, what happen to you?”
“You look like hell,” clarifies Gina.
“Where’s Ida?” asks Marcello.
The women trade glances.
“Gone,” says Gina. “The one-armed man came yesterday and took her away.”
Stinky. What the hell is going on?
Marcello allows himself to be a pushed into a chair, Prima already placing a cup of coffee and a cornetto in front of him. He tries to calm himself but his questions run in circles. Why did they let her go with Stinky? (One-arm man say he taking Ida to you.) Where did he say they were going? (He say nothing.) What was he driving? (A Ford, maybe – or Chrysler – beh, all these cars today look the same, not like the old days.) Did Ida seem upset?
“Hard to tell with that one,” mutters Gina.
Prima caresses his face, making him feel like a little kid: “Marcello, listen to me: you have to forget that woman. She is your father’s wife. She bewitch you. She make you forget the most important thing of all, your calling.”
Marcello looks up at the crucifix over the kitchen counter: one hangs in every room of this house. “Nonna, I’m not sure I ever really had one.”
Prima takes both his hands in hers: “You hurt. You all confuse! Stay with us. You don’t have to go home to your father.”
“He’s not my father. Did you know?”
Prima closes her eyes, and nods.
“I’m not even really Marcello Trovato Junior, am I?”
Prima shakes her head. “Your father a stonemason who die under a wall when an earthquake come. Your mother’s family, all dead in a bombing in
the War. She marry Senior to look after you. Then, she die.” He can feel Prima’s hands trembling in his. “Tragedia, tragedia.”
“Who am I, then?” Marcello wants to know.
“Your name is Michaele, like the archangel. Your father’s name, non lo so.”
With his hands gripped by his adoptive grandmother’s, in the deeply comforting warmth of the summer kitchen where he spent so much of his childhood, the buzz of the peach tree cicadas filling the air outside, and the sugary breeze wafting through the door, Marcello pictures himself staying here forever.
He kisses Prima. Then, unclasping the gold chain from around his neck, he pours the tortured man into her hand.
12
July 20, 1969
Marcello drives back to Shipman’s Corners in silence. No music, no news. He pretends that time has stopped and that his life will simply skip forward to a happy ending, that he’ll cruise by a street corner and glimpse Ida in her white blouse and skirt, suitcase beside her, waving a handkerchief to signal him to stop. Cello, I’ve been waiting for you!
No such luck.
Pasquale, he thinks, will know where she is: he always seems to know everything. But for the first time in memory, he’s nowhere to be found.
Damn that kid anyway, he thinks, cruising strangely quiet streets. He checks the foundry and slaughterhouse where the men turn their palms up and shake their heads. Haven’t seen him in a couple days. But one worker knows the address of Pasquale’s parents’ house. Marcello scribbles it in a matchbook and drives to the ramshackle one-story.
An ancient woman in a black dress and headscarf sits in a lawn chair on the front stoop; too old to be Bum Bum’s mother, Marcello can only assume she’s his Nonna.
“Dové Pasquale?” he asks the old woman. She shrugs.
The front door is open; cautiously Marcello walks up the steps of the stoop and peers in. The old Nonna stares at him suspiciously but doesn’t ask what he’s doing.
