The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin'

by Lamb, Wally

  Ignazia turned to Prosperine. “Ah, so this is your long-lost innamorato, eh?” she laughed.

  “Bah!” the other one answered, puffing away on her pipe.

  “Never mind your ‘bah,’” Nunzio scolded. “Make us espresso. Quick, before I turn you out of this house!”

  The Monkey slumped into the kitchen; the two brothers’ faces regained their false smiles. They began to ask questions about my casa di due appartamenti and to repeat each of my answers to their half-sister. Ignazia tapped her shoe and sang a little song to herself instead of listening. “I’ll help in the kitchen,” she said.

  I watched her rise and walk from the room. Bad as it was for bargaining, I could do nothing but stare at her exiting figure and then at the doorway through which she had passed.

  “Ignazia’s job at the shoe factory has exposed her to many bad influences,” Rocco whispered after she had left the room. “She has gotten the foolish notion, for example, that, like ‘Mericani, Italian women should marry for love. Ha ha ha ha.”

  “You like what you see, eh, Domenico?” Nunzio noted from across the room. “If she becomes your wife, she’ll soon forget all of these ‘Mericana ways. You’ll make her siciliana again!

  For my part, I could do nothing but swallow and stare—finger her photograph in my hand and anticipate her reentrance from the kitchen.

  The door banged open again a minute later. Ignazia was holding a heel of bread in one hand, a chicken leg in the other. “Oh, no!” she shouted, shaking her head violently. “Oh, no, no, no, no!”

  “Scusa?” one of the brothers said.

  “She just told me in the kitchen what you three old men have up your sleeves,” the girl said. “I’ve told you over and over. I’m going to marry Padraic McGannon and that’s who I am going to marry!”

  “That lazy Irishman with no job?” Rocco shouted. “That redheaded mama’s boy whose mouth still smells of breast milk?”

  I had first laid eyes on Ignazia only moments before, but hearing her profess her intentions to marry another man sank my heart and made me want to find that goddamned Irishman and strangle him! Such was Ignazia’s power over me.

  “Where would you and that lazy good-for-nothing live?” Nunzio wanted to know.

  Ignazia put her hands against her fleshy hips. “With his mother,” she said.

  “On what?”

  “On something old men know nothing about, that’s what. L’amore! Passione!”

  Nunzio shook his head at the folly of it and Rocco made the sign of the cross. In the past few minutes, I had learned much about passione and amore. It was as if Mount Etna’s hot lava now boiled within me where, before, my blood had been cool. Ignazia robbed the room of air. This I knew above all else: that she would be the wife of no one but Domenico Onofrio Tempesta!

  “Scusa, young lady, scusa,” I stood and began. “Your brothers and I have a long-standing agreement—one which will provide richly for you, if I should consent to make you my wife.” Here, I drew a deep breath and expanded my chest for her to see, wholly, the man she was getting.

  “If you consent?” she laughed. “If you consent? Who wants to be your wife, old man? Go marry some gray-haired old nonna!” She bit savagely into that chicken leg of hers, ripping meat from the bone, and chewing ravenously as she glared at me.

  The passione with which Ignazia rejected the idea of marrying me only made me desire her more. This impudent girl would be my wife, whether she liked it or not!

  “Young lady,” I said, attempting reason. “Your brothers’ honor is at stake here. I paid good money for a train ride from Connecticut to meet my sposa futura. Trust me when I say that agreements between Sicilian men—which you needn’t bother your pretty head about—are binding!”

  “How much?”

  “Eh?”

  “How much did you pay for your train ride?” she asked me.

  I told her I had paid a dollar, fifty cents.

  Brazenly, she produced a small change purse from a secret place beneath her skirts. She opened it and counted coins. “Here’s your precious money, then,” she shouted, flinging a handful of coins at my feet. Terrible behavior, and yet, it made me want her more—made me want to spank her for her impertinence, to ravage her, to tame her with my ardore! The girl made me short of breath—made me think crazy thoughts. I stood there, drunk with her, and suddenly knew my dead brother Vincenzo better than I had ever known him before.

  “I am marrying Padraic McGannon and that’s who I’m marrying!” she declared again, then stormed from the room.

  “That one has a hellcat’s disposition,” I said to the brothers, “but I suppose she will do. I’ll take her off your hands for a dowry of seven hundred dollars.”

  “Seven hundred!” Rocco shouted. “What do you think—that we two are as rich as you? This girl is a jewel—a diamond waiting to be polished. Once she is cured of this love-foolishness over that redheaded mick—”

  The mention of that boy again was like a scream in my ear. “Five hundred and fifty, then. That is my final offer. The money, after all, will be used to furnish the appartamento where your half-sister will live like a queen. When you two visit, you yourselves will sleep on feather beds her dowry will have purchased.”

  “That’s all very fine, Tempesta,” Nunzio said, “but my brother and I are working men, not sultans. We haven’t that kind of fortune to hand over to you. Two hundred, and the other one goes to live with you, too.” Of those two snakes, Nunzio was the worst.

  “Other one? What other one?” I said, though I knew very well who they meant.

  “That one,” Nunzio said, pointing to the Monkey-Face who had just entered the room with our coffee.

  “Out of the question!” I said. “I would not think of robbing you of your housekeeper.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Tempesta,” Rocco advised. “She cooks and helps Ignazia clean your big house, she midwifes the babies when they come along, and then, when the time is right, you marry her off to some widower in need of a clean house. As for us, finding a servant in this city is as easy as opening the door and shouting for one.”

  “Out of the question!” I repeated. “If you could not find this one a husband in all of New York, how can I hope to get rid of her in Connecticut? Four hundred. The other one stays here.”

  Nunzio shrugged and sighed. “Then I guess Ignazia becomes the wife of that redheaded Irishman after all and you, Signore Domenico, lose a precious prize because of your greed. I pity you and weep for your stupidity.”

  In the other room, the beautiful hotheaded girl was pacing the floor and arguing with herself. The door banged open. She threatened to cut out her heart if any of us stood between her and the Irishman. The door banged shut again.

  “Three hundred seventy-five,” I told Nunzio. “For the one girl alone.”

  “Three hundred,” Nunzio said. “And you take Prosperine.”

  “Three hundred fifty and the other one stays here with you,” I said. “That is my final offer.”

  Rocco opened his mouth to agree to my terms, but that goddamned Nunzio clamped his fat, hairy knuckles on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed. “As the eldest of the family, Signore Domenico, I am afraid I have to refuse on my half-sister Ignazia’s behalf.” He walked to the front door and held it open. “Arrivederci.”

  I stood stammering at their stoop, staring blankly at the brothers. Could this be happening? Was I about to lose that hot-blooded creature who had stirred my ardore like the awakened lava of Mount Etna? So be it, then! I would not be cheated out of a dowry that would furnish my home. And I was goddamned if I would be stuck with that skinny hag of a monkey besides.

  The door flew open once more. Ignazia’s cheeks were flushed with emotion and the little groove of skin above her pouting lip held a small bead of sweat. “You heard him, old man,” she shouted. “Arrivederci! Go!”

  I moaned quietly, longing suddenly and illogically to step back inside and lick the clear, shimmering drop of nect
ar out of that little groove of hers, to taste her salt. I ached to undo her clothes and claim her. Such was the spell Ignazia had cast.

  “Arrivederci,” Nunzio Iaccoi repeated. He closed the door and slid the bolt. There I stood on that sidewalk in Brooklyn, more alone than I had ever been before.

  8 August 1949

  On the long train ride home from New York, I whimpered for what I wanted, mumbling arguments to myself and to the Iaccois that made other passengers look away and change their seats. What did I care? I closed my burning eyes and saw her face, her figura. I sat there with my coat on my lap, a goat with a frozen cazzu like my brother Vincenzo. I would have that wench! Somehow, I would have her!

  Strangest of all on that strange, strange day was my behavior when the train pulled into the New London station. It was five in the afternoon. I was due at work in another four hours. “Scusa,” I said, grabbing the conductor by his jacket sleeve. “Scusa, signore, but when does the next train leave here for New York?”

  He checked his watch. “Hour, fifteen minutes,” he said.

  On a scrap of paper I wrote a note to Flynn at the mill: “Emergency of family. Back tomorrow. Tempesta.” I gave a man headed for Three Rivers a whole dollar to make sure it got there. That’s how crazy that girl had made me! A whole silver dollar, pressed against the palm of a stranger!

  I paced back and forth inside the station, outside the station, around the station. I was no longer simply Domenico Tempesta—I was both myself and a crazy man! “What’s the matter with you, eh?” I shouted inside my own head. “They could fire you for not showing up at work! You could lose your big house!”

  “Let me lose it then!” the other part of me shouted back. “Let them fire their best worker and be damned!”

  “But that hellcat’s not worth it!”

  “Shut up! I will have her, whether she’s worth it or not!”

  “You want her more than you want all that you’ve worked for? More than your dreams?”

  “Si, more than my dreams!”

  Such was the argument that raged in my head, worse by far than the worst headache. When the train rolled into the station, I found myself reluctant to get on it. She will bring you sorrow, I warned myself. But when the wheels started inching toward New York, toward my Ignazia, I boarded that train in a panic, found an empty seat, and collapsed into it. My head swam with fear and despair—and with relief. What was happening to me? What was happening?

  Halfway there, I got up out of my seat, opened the door, and stood outside, letting the air rush around me. The wind took my hat and I barely noticed! I stared at the speeding ground below. Jumping headfirst might be better than this love-craziness, I told myself. But if I jumped, I would never see her again, never have that girl. I would lose her to that redheaded mick whose throat I would gladly slit if I knew what he looked like.

  It was Ignazia herself who answered their front door. Her eye was blackened, her face swollen on one side.

  “What? You again?” she shouted. “Look what I got because of you! Go away!” She spat on the stoop where I stood.

  Then Nunzio was behind her, smiling like a fox with a mouthful of feathers. “Signore Domenico,” he said. “What a surprise!”

  “I’ll pay you,” I told him, still staring at Ignazia. “I’ll give you four hundred for her.”

  “No!” she screamed. “I’ll take poison! I’ll cut out my heart!”

  Now Rocco appeared in the doorway, too. “Five hundred,” Nunzio said coolly, as if every day a suitor appeared at his door, offering to reverse the dowry process. “And you take the other one.”

  “I’ll jump from the bridge!” Ignazia bellowed. “I’ll cut out my liver!”

  “Five hundred,” I repeated, as if in a trance. “And I take the other one.”

  Nunzio Iaccoi shook my hand and pulled me inside. Rocco uncorked the wine for celebration. Both brothers’ heads snapped back as they drained their glasses in single gulps, then poured some more. As for myself, nausea prevented me from doing more than wetting my lips on behalf of my good fortune. Ignazia continued screaming and wailing from the side room. Prosperine smoked in the doorway and glared.

  9 August 1949

  Ignazia and I were married in Brooklyn on 12 May 1916, civil ceremony. Prosperine and my cousin Vitaglio witnessed. On the train ride back to Connecticut, there were not three seats together. Ignazia wanted to sit with Prosperine, not me.

  From my seat across the aisle and down, I could see all of Monkey-Face but only the blue velvet wedding hat of my new wife. Ignazia’s hat was decorated with red strawberries that shook with the motion of the train. She would love me once she saw my home, I told myself. She would love me.

  As for the other one, I would get her work at the mill. If I was stuck with her, she would at least bring money into my house.

  We arrived home after dark at 66-through-68 Hollyhock Avenue. I told Ignazia to wait at the doorway, then hurried from room to room, lighting the lamps. Then I took her hand and led her through the house, the other one trailing after us like a dark shadow.

  When we had gotten to the last room upstairs, I took my new wife to the window and showed her the backyard garden—my little bit of Sicily. There was a full moon that night, I remember; everything shone to its full advantage. “This is your new home, Ignazia,” I said. “How do you like it?”

  Her shrug pierced my heart.

  From a drawer, I took the embroidered sheets Signora Siragusa had sent over for a wedding present. “Use these,” I said. At last, I would enjoy the flesh of her who had tangled up my dreams and turned my sensible nature to porridge. At last, I would have opportunity to relieve this passione that had gripped me and made me crazy.

  She and Prosperine dressed the bed while I waited outside in my backyard garden, smoking and watching the fireflies. Through the open window, I could see them up there—the homely one combing out the other’s long hair. I could hear them, too—Ignazia’s sobs and Prosperine’s consoling mumbles.

  In our bed, I held her face and kissed her. “In time, this life with me will make you happy,” I said. She turned away. Tears dropped from her eyes onto my hands.

  While I did my business, I watched her downturned mouth, her eyes that gazed at the ceiling like statue’s eyes. Afterwards, I examined the embroidered sheets.

  She had not bled. “Vergine?” I asked.

  Fear flashed in her eyes. “Si, vergine,” she said. “Don’t hit! Don’t hit!”

  Her love with the redhead had been pure, she told me. Some women didn’t bleed the first time, that was all. If I had doubts, I should send her back to Brooklyn.

  She looked so beautiful. In her dark eyes, I thought I saw the truth. I beat her anyway, to teach her a lesson in case she was lying. I could not risk the dishonor of having a treacherous wife.

  The next day, when I woke for my shift and went to the kitchen, Ignazia was not there. Prosperine was peeling potatoes for my supper. “Where is she, eh?” I asked. “A man wants his wife to cook his meals. Not a monkey.”

  Prosperine dropped the potato but held the knife and walked over to me. “If you raise your hand to her again, Tempesta,” she whispered, “I’ll cut off your balls while you sleep.”

  My first thought was to strike that scrawny monkey, but she held the point of her knife no more than a potato’s length away from me, down there. She looked and sounded crazy enough to carry out her threat. What, after all, did I know about this witch-cousin of those goddamned Iaccoi brothers, except that they had bargained desperately to be rid of her?

  I turned and laughed to cover my fear. “If you ever dare raise a knife to me, you skinny bitch, you’ll get the worst end of it!”

  She raised the knife higher, as high as my heart. “That’s what a dead man once thought, too,” she said. She spat on the floor.

  “I mean what I say. Stay out of my business. I’ll break your arm if I have to.”

  “I mean what I say, too,” she answered. “Hurt her again
and I’ll make you a woman!”

  * * *

  When I returned to work that week, everyone congratulated me on my marriage and shook my hand until it was ready to fall off. Twice I fell asleep on my shift, once at the desk and once while standing against the wall as I supervised the wool-dyeing. From Flynn, my boss, I shut up and took the teasing about the passione of newlyweds, but not from those workers beneath me. When Drinkwater, that goddamned Indian, joked that my new wife kept me from getting sleep anywhere but on the job, I sent him home and docked him half a night’s pay. I sent home two giddy spinning girls, too. After that, they shut up their faces about what went on in my home!

  The truth was that I could not sleep from thinking what that crazy mingia Prosperine might do. Finally, I solved the problem when I began the practice of pulling the heavy oak bureau in front of the bedroom door before retiring each morning. “I have to get in there to clean!” Ignazia protested. “To put away laundry! To wash the floor!”

  “Do your work when I’m not here,” I told her.

  “When you’re not here, I sleep! It’s nighttime.”

  “Change your habits then.”

  Only with the protection of that heavy bureau could I manage to get some rest, though still I slept poorly and with much interruption. Once I dreamed I saw Prosperine leaping from the maple tree into the open bedroom window, that goddamned peeling knife of hers clenched between her teeth. Bluejays flew behind her, hundreds of them. They flew inside, pecking at me and fluttering, circling around and around the bedroom. . . . Was this to be the lot in life of a man so speciale that he had once seen the Virgin’s tears? Was I to be boss-dyer at work and a monkey’s quarry inside my own casa di due appartamenti—the house I had built with my own two hands?

  11 August 1949

  One afternoon in the fall, I met Signora Siragusa on the street. “Domenico, you naughty fellow,” she chuckled. “I saw your little wife at Hurok’s Market yesterday. Already she’s got a little belly, eh? What’s the matter with you that you couldn’t wait?”