by Lamb, Wally
“Now, Mr. Tempesta, I know you Eye-talian men are burdened with too much sex inside you,” the monsignor began—to me, a man who was as chaste as he—more chaste, probably! From my boyhood experiences at the school in Nicosia, I knew all about the wandering hands of pious priests! “And while I understand and accept that it’s a part of your nature,” he continued, “I beg and entreat you to do something about that wild cur of a brother of yours.”
“I have two brothers,” I said. “Which brother do you mean?”
“The fruit peddler,” Flynn answered for him. “That cocky little Romeo down at Hurok’s Market.”
An unfortunate problem had developed, the monsignor explained. A young unmarried Irish girl from a fine parish family had become pregnant by Vincenzo. She hadn’t known any better; Vincenzo had taken advantage of her innocence. And while the girl’s parents had no wish to see their daughter married off to the likes of my brother—they had arranged for her a proper marriage to a recent immigrant from Limerick—they nevertheless wanted to prevent further broken hearts and bastards. In defense of the good family name of Tempesta, the monsignor said, I must meet with Vincenzo and convince him to exert some self-control.
“My assistant, young Father Guglielmo, will be happy to help you at this meeting to give your orders moral weight and to hear, perhaps, your brother’s confession and his recitation of the act of contrition,” the monsignor said. “I would gladly attend the meeting myself, but perhaps it might be more effective if the young hooligan heard the message from one of his own kind.”
One of his own kind—ha! For all of his faults, my brother was, like me, the son of a hero who had taken on a vulcano and received a gold medaglia for his effort! What were that skinny little Father Guglielmo’s credentials beyond his Italian name? Who was that puny little priest to advise Tempestas?
“I’m sure Domenico here can get things under control,” Flynn promised the monsignor. “He’s not like most of the wops I got out on the floor. He keeps his nose clean and does his work.”
Domenico Tempesta does the work of two men, I felt like reminding that rich ipocrita! Earlier that year, Flynn had had his way with Alma, a German girl—one of the spoolers. When she grew big in the belly, she was hurried away to American Woolen’s sister mill in Massachusetts and married off to a sheep shearer. That goddamned monsignor should have announced that from his pulpit one Sunday!
I agreed, however, to honor the priest and the agent’s request. Better to deliver a lecture to my stupid-headed brother Vincenzo—a rap or two on his hard cocuzza—than to lose my job or have to pour all my hard-earned savings into the monsignor’s collection basket. In that respect, at least, the meeting in the boss’s office was a relief.
That skinny priest Father Guglielmo called at the boarding- house the following Sunday afternoon. From the way Signora Siragusa flapped her hands and carried on, you might have thought the Pope himself had rung the bell instead of that scrawny priest. He and I sat Vincenzo down in the signora’s parlor. Vincenzo, who was always the most amiable of young men if not the best behaved, lit us all cigars before we began. When Father Guglielmo took a puff or two, I thought he would die from all the coughing that followed. That one was more nervous than a dog during a thunderstorm!
“Vincenzo,” I said, beginning my oration. “We speak to you today because your behavior brings shame on our deceased father and our beloved mother back in the Old Country. Your boots beneath the bed muddy the name of Tempesta.”
Vincenzo’s face looked at me the same way it had looked when he had crawled at my feet as a baby, back in Giuliana. “My behavior?” Vincenzo said. “My boots? Non capisco un cavalo, Domenico!”* Then, realizing that the language he had just used was not appropriate for a priest to hear, he turned to little Guglielmo. “Scusa, Padre. Scusa.”
“Your boots beneath the beds of women!” I said. But still, Vincenzo looked at me with innocent eyes, as if he had kept his pants on since his arrival in America. I was beginning to lose patience. “Fungol! Fungol!” I shouted.** From behind the kitchen door, I heard the signora gasp. Now it was my turn to apologize to that skinny priest.
Big smile from Vincenzo now, as if his behavior was a source of pride, not shame. But I would wipe that smile off the face of that cocky brother of mine.
“It is time for you to marry and settle down and be done with it,” I said. “Or, if your inclination is to remain a bachelor, to keep in check your male urges.”
Vincenzo answered with chuckles, proverbs, shrugs. “Si hai polvere, spara!* Eh, padre?” he said, addressing the priest.
I struck the arms of Signora Siragusa’s parlor chair with enough force to raise two clouds of dust. “Fire your gunpowder, then, between the legs of one of the signora’s nannygoats who won’t make you a baby!” I shouted.
More gasps from behind the kitchen door. Father Guglielmo blushed visibly and made the sign of the cross.
Vincenzo puffed on his cigar and laughed. “Better tell me then, big brother, which nannygoat is your sweetheart. I do not wish to cuckold you.”
All around the boardinghouse, movement and sound stopped. Snooping ears seemed almost to burst right through the walls.
I explained to the priest—and to all the other eavesdroppers with their big ears to the wall—that what Vincenzo had just implied had been said in jest, ha ha. Then I continued, warning my brother that, as the eldest member of the proud Tempesta family of Giuliana, I was ordering him to model all future behavior after my own. Vincenzo laughed and answered that he much preferred to have virgins than to turn back into one again.
“Saint Agrippina the Virgin Martyr herself is no purer than my brother Domenico,” Vincenzo joked to that pallid priest, poking him. “You’ll probably enjoy a woman’s pleasures before Domenico does, eh, padre?” Father Guglielmo grew paler still and crossed himself again.
I had reached the end of my patience with that hooligan of a brother. Standing, I walked over to Vincenzo and slapped him across the face.
Vincenzo raised his fists. I raised mine. We stood glaring at each other, brother against brother, each of us attempting to sustain fierce expressions. But in Vincenzo’s big eyes I saw him, again, as he had been as a bambino. . . . I saw Mama and Papa, the village square, Mount Etna against the Sicilian sky. I could not keep my fists raised against a brother. Nor could I surrender my pride.
“Bah!” I said, dropping my hands. “As God and this priest are my witnesses, Vincenzo, from this moment forward, we cease to be brothers! You have slandered the family name and now you mock me! I forsake you! I will never speak to you again.” And with that, I left the room, sending all the snoops at the boardinghouse scurrying. . . .
How to tell the sadness that followed?
Alas, my vow of silenzio was not difficult to keep. The following Saturday night, a Three Rivers police sergeant (goddamned mick named O’Meara) got a toothache and went home early. When he lit the lamp and entered his bedroom, first thing he saw was the plunging buttocks of my brother Vincenzo. As the sergeant stood in shock, Vincenzo groaned and rolled over, revealing to the moon and the husband his slimy thing and the smile on the face of O’Meara’s faithless whore of a wife. The policeman drew his service revolver, aimed first at his screaming spouse, and then changed his mind and shot Vincenzo in the groin instead.
There was an investigation by the police department. Ha! Like one dog checking another dog for fleas! The sergeant was exonerated for having put “a greasy guinea” in his place. (That’s what the Chief of Police himself said. I heard it from Golpo Abruzzi who heard it from his brother-in-law.) O’Meara’s wife—that no-good puttana ‘Mericana—flaunted herself for decades afterward, as if horns didn’t poke through the cap of her goddamned murdering policeman of a husband, who was laughed at by every siciliano in town!
My brother Vincenzo, a buon’anima, died from infection nine days following the shooting. My brother Pasquale and Father Guglielmo were present at his bedside at Signora Siragusa’s.
Father Guglielmo gave Vincenzo the Eucharist and extreme unction before the end. This I saw to. This I arranged.
A crowd of sobbing young women, several nationalities, attended my brother’s funeral Mass and burial at St. Mary of Jesus Christ Cemetery. This I was told by Pasquale; I witnessed none of it myself. I paid for, but refused on my honor to attend, the funeral of the brother who had mocked my chastity and spat in the face of family authority. Let saints and women forgive! A Sicilian’s pride—his honor—is everything, figli d’Italia! What does a man have if he trades away his dignity as if it were a gold medallion?
Following Vincenzo’s death, it was my duty to write once again to Mama with the sad news of the death of her youngest son. Two or three weeks later, I myself received a postal card from across the sea, this one from a representative of that illiterate idiot Uncle Nardo: “Mother died 24 June. Malaria.”
With a heavy heart, I responded immediately to Nardo’s news. In the good name of my mother, I demanded that that greedy Pig-Face go to the home of the magistrato and negotiate the return of my father’s gold medaglia to me, the firstborn son of Giacomo and Concettina Tempesta, and the medal’s rightful owner. It was the least that goddamned Nardo could do, I wrote, to atone for all the terrible hardships he had visited on the Tempestas. No answer. I wrote two times more to Nardo, but that figliu d’una mingia ignored each of my attempts to retrieve that which I had been cheated of by the crooked official.
As for my middle and sole remaining brother, Pasquale, he cared little about family honor, justice, or rightful ownership as long as his supper was on the table. Pasquale had always been the simplest of men. . . .
How do I tell the sad, strange fate of my brother Pasquale? No strength left today. Tomorrow, I tell. Not today.
34
Dr. Patel said it was lovely to see me again. She was just starting some tea. Did she remember correctly? Bengal Spice?
“Fine,” I said. “Great. Anything.” I told her I liked the colors she was wearing: red and gold and . . . what would she call that shade of yellow, anyway?
She’d call it saffron, she said.
“Saffron? Yeah? I painted someone’s kitchen that color once. Looks much better on you than it did on those kitchen walls.” She chuckled, thanked me for the compliment, if that was what I had just bestowed.
“You see my brother today?” I asked her.
She had, she said. Yes. Things were about the same.
“I was just thinking on the way down here how weird it is: how before the war began, it was all he could talk about. Then, when they actually started firing Scuds and ‘smart bombs’ at each other, it hardly registered a blip on his radar. Why do you think that is, Doc? Is it more than the medication?”
Dr. Patel said she would be happy to talk with me about my brother, but that perhaps we should arrange to do so at another time. After all, she said, we’d both set aside this hour to talk about me.
The teakettle rumbled. While I waited for her, I grabbed my crutch and gimped across the room. Looked out the window. I hadn’t been up there since October. Now, in the dead of winter, you could see the river through the bare trees.
Dr. Patel asked me about my injuries—my progress with physical therapy.
“Actually, I’m ahead of schedule,” I said. “No one down at the rehab center can believe how far I’ve come along in just three months. They told me they’re going to make me their poster boy.”
“Poster boy? What is ‘poster boy,’ please?” I’d forgotten how it was with her—how much got lost in translation. Why had I even called her? Jump-started this whole therapy thing again? Big Waste of Time and Money, Part II.
I reached down and touched the head of that statue of hers. Shiva. “Oh, by the way, I—thanks for, uh . . . for this guy here’s little brother.” She looked puzzled. “The present you sent over with Lisa Sheffer? When I was in the hospital?”
“Ah, yes,” she said, breaking out in a smile. “You liked my little gift?”
“I did, yeah. I do. I was going to write you a thank-you note about fifty times.”
“Well, now you’ve thanked me in person,” she said. “Which is even better, don’t you think? Have a seat, please.” Placing the tea tray between us, she sat down herself. “Let’s let this steep while we catch up.”
She’d been reviewing my records, she said. Our last session had been on the twenty-second of October. We had never discussed ending our work together, she reminded me. I had seen her three times, canceled two appointments in a row, and then just not called anymore. If our work were to resume, she said, she would expect more of a commitment from me.
“A commitment?” I shifted in my chair. “Geez, you’re not asking me to go steady, are you?”
She didn’t crack a smile. Perhaps, she said, we could meet weekly for four sessions and then decide jointly whether or not we wished to continue the process.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. No problem.” What was she going to do if I didn’t honor my “commitment”? Sic the bloodhounds? Alert the psychology police?
She removed the teapot lid and peered inside. “Not quite ready yet,” she said.
We just sat there, Dr. Patel smiling, watching me lace and unlace my fingers, shift around in my seat. “I’ve . . . I’ve got him up on my bookcase.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your little statue guy. I put him in the room where I read. . . . That’s one thing you get to do when you fall off a roof and put yourself out of commission: catch up on your reading.”
“Is it? I’m envious then. What have you been reading, Dominick?”
“The Bible, for one thing.”
“Yes?” She looked neither pleased nor displeased.
“I . . . well, it was kind of an accident, really. I was trying to poke something else down from the top shelf with one of my crutches. Sho-gun, I think it was. James Clavell. Thought I’d read that one again. But then I knocked this whole stack down on top of me, instead—this little avalanche of books. And there it was. Didn’t even know I still had that damn thing. My mother had given it to me for my confirmation, way back in sixth grade. Thomas and me—we each got one. Mine’s in a little better shape than his.”
She smiled. “Which passages are you reading? The Old Testament or the New?”
“Old.”
“Ah, the ancient stories. And are you finding them illuminating? Was your ‘little avalanche’ fortuitous?”
Was she busting my balls? Getting in a couple of jabs because of those canceled appointments? “I guess . . . I guess I can see why some people find them useful.”
She nodded. “But I’m asking if you’ve found them useful.”
“Me? Personally, you mean? No, not really. I guess I’m more interested in them from a historical perspective. Or, sociological or whatever. . . . Well, in a way, maybe. The Book of Job: I could relate to that one.”
“Job? Yes? Why is that?”
I shrugged, shifted around in my seat for the zillionth time. “I don’t know. Guy’s just minding his own business, trying to do what’s right, and he gets crapped all over. Becomes God’s little test case.”
“Is that how you feel? As if you are ‘God’s little test case’?”
I reminded her that I didn’t believe in God.
“Then perhaps you can clarify for me why you—”
“Fate’s test case, maybe. Schizophrenic brother, dead baby daughter, girlfriend who . . . But, hey, shit happens, right?”
“It does, yes,” she agreed. “Sometimes irrespective of how we are conducting our lives, and sometimes not. What other Old Testament stories have you found relevant?”
I shrugged. “Look, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not like the Bible fell off the bookshelf, struck me upside the head, and now, suddenly, I’m ‘born again’ or something. Gonna go down to the library and cut my hand off for Jesus.”
She waited.
“But, uh . . . well, there’s the obvious one, I guess: Cain and Abel. God
creates the universe, Adam and Eve crank out a couple of kids, and voilà. Sibling rivalry. One brother murders the other brother.”
“Yes? Continue, please.”
“What? I . . . It was just a joke.”
“Yes, I understand your tone. But explain a little further, if you will.”
“I didn’t mean anything deep. Just . . . brother troubles.”
She waited. Wouldn’t look away.
“I just . . . Well, I could understand why the guy was pissed. That’s all.”
“Why who was pissed?”
“Cain.”
“Yes? And why was he pissed?”
“Hey, you’re the one with the anthropology degree. Not me.”
“And you’re the one who mentioned the Old Testament. Correct? Answer my question, please.”
“Hey, Doc, I ever tell you how much I like your accent? ‘Onswer the question, please.’ ‘Why was he peesed?’ “ No smile, nothing. I drummed my fingers against my knees. Let out a sigh. “I don’t know. He just . . . he does his work, makes his offering like everyone else, and . . . and the only sacrifice God notices is his brother’s. It’s just typical.”
“What is?”
“That all the credit goes to Mr.Goody Two-shoes. And what does the other one get? A big lecture about sin ‘crouching at the door.’ Like sin’s the Big Bad Wolf or something. . . . That reminds me. I looked at a couple of those books you recommended. Those myth things, or fable things, or whatever. Remember? You made me a list?”
Yes, she said. She remembered.
“Someone went and got them out of the library for me. My ex-wife, actually. The Three Rivers library didn’t have them, but she got them through interlibrary loan.”
“Dessa’s been helping you then?”
Had she remembered Dessa’s name or looked it up before I got there? “She, uh . . . she brought over a couple of meals, ran a few errands.” I wrapped my arms around my chest. I’d read somewhere that that was an instinct left over from caveman days: protect your heart. “Everyone’s been pitching in. Even Ray.”
