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

  “The things people said don’t make your brother—”

  “Even that goddamned monsignor accused him of it—that so-called man of God! Never mind cement—I should have thrown a rock at the head of that son of a bitch! If Pasquale is in Hell, then that priest must be in a worse place.”

  “Domenico!” Father Guglielmo said. “I remind you again that the late monsignor’s sins and his salvation are between God and him. Your brother’s, too. To wish damnation on one and assign damnation to the other is to presume yourself capable of doing God’s work for Him. Humble yourself, man! Pray for humility. If you seek absolution, you must put yourself in a state of grace.”

  “I seek answers to my two questions,” I reminded him. “My question about Pasquale and my question about the dead boy.”

  “Ask me your questions, then. Ask them directly.”

  “Did I damn my brother to Hell by throwing the cement?”

  “You did not, no, because you have no power to do so. Only God has the power to damn or save sinners. What is your other question?”

  “The child who died at birth when the girl was born? The boy born to my wife and me . . .” Here I had to stop.

  “What a day of conflict that must have been for you and Ignazia,” Guglielmo finally said. “Death and life—joy and sadness—together.”

  “No joy,” I said. “What joy is there in holding your dead son and watching your wife bear the fruit of her sins with another man? Where’s the joy in learning your wife is another man’s puttana?”

  “Such harsh words,” Guglielmo said. “Such serious accusations. To call your wife first a murderer and now a whore . . .”

  “That’s my business,” I reminded him. “My question is not about Ignazia. It is about the boy who died.”

  “Ask it, then, Domenico.”

  I told him the story of that terrible night: how Prosperine had come to get me at the mill and how I had refused to leave to fetch the dottore. Told how I had discovered the boy in the pantry while Ignazia was birthing the girl—how I, who had first ordered a priest off my property and forsaken the church, had then baptized my dead son with dirty dishwater and cooking oil. Later that day, I said, I had called God a monster.

  “What is the question you wish to ask, Domenico?”

  “I fear . . .” I whispered, “I fear that I have damned my son’s soul forever with sacrilegious baptism. That is the worry that robs me of sleep, even when exhaustion is deep inside my bones. Have I banished my own flesh and blood from Heaven by baptizing him with dishwater in my godless house?”

  Father Guglielmo leaned closer to the screen. His lips brushed against it as he whispered. “In what you did, you were acting as God’s agent, just as I act here today as His agent in the pardoning of your sins. The condition of your soul at the time you performed the baptism was not at issue. Do you see the distinction between serving God and assuming you can take over His work for Him?”

  I said nothing.

  “Let me answer your question directly,” he said. “You did not damn your son’s soul. Your action delivered the child from limbo and placed him into the arms of Jesus Christ, his Savior, Who will keep him safe for all eternity. The boy’s baptism was valid.”

  At these words, my breath caught and I leaned my head against the wall of the confessional.

  He asked me if I had ever told Ignazia about the baptism I had performed in the pantry that morning.

  “I told no one,” I said. “Until now. Until here.”

  “You must go home and let your wife know the child was baptized. It will comfort her to hear that her son is with God—that her dead child is safe with Jesus. Then you must bring the boy’s sister to—”

  I began to weep. I couldn’t help it, could not have stopped, even if the whole church had suddenly filled up with people watching me. The sobbing and bellowing that came out of me that late afternoon must have nearly shaken the holy statues off their pedestals. I had no pride that day, only shame.

  Father Guglielmo left the confession box and stood holding open the curtain for me. “Come out,” he said.

  He led me to a nearby pew where I sat and wailed into my own hands and into my coat sleeve, into my handkerchief, into Guglielmo’s handkerchief. The padre sat and waited, his hand clamped onto my shoulder.

  When I could speak again, I broke for good from Sicily—smashed omertà into a million pieces and let out my life. Fast and crazy I talked, with no order, no sense. “Slow down,” he kept telling me, but I could not slow down. My arms flew, my fists drummed against the wooden pew. I shouted one minute, whispered the next. I told him how the Weeping Vergine had revealed herself to me as a child and how my father had yanked me from my religious studies so that I could clean up my brother Vincenzo’s dirty business. “That’s what set me on a path of sin!” I shouted. “And now that young boy from Giuliana whom the Holy Mother once visited is a man who visits the whorehouse on Bickel Road.” I told how I had beaten Ignazia on our wedding night and how that goddamned magistrato in Giuliana had beaten me out of my father’s gold medaglia. I described the screams of my brother’s monkey when I threw it over the bridge and my mother’s screams on the day my brothers and I left her behind in Sicily. Was it a sin, I asked the priest, to have wanted a better life? Bad enough I had to carry two brothers on my back to America, but a mother, too? A mother who then turned around and took to her bed the very same man who had slandered me and sent my father to ruin? I told Guglielmo that the thought of suicide had tempted me during my journey to la ‘Merica and that my wife and her friend had murdered a stained-glass artiste back in the Old Country. I retold the Monkey’s crazy story about the witch Ciccolina and her blasphemous black art—the making of two rabbits from one. Was it not a sin, I asked him, to harbor murdering women? I told how that goddamned Prosperine had threatened to cut off my balls if I didn’t keep my hands off my wife. My own wife, whom I had married in good faith and given a home like a palace! My own wife!

  For an hour—maybe more, I don’t know—I confessed my sins and listed the sins that others had committed against me. It shot out of me like a poison—like the molten rock that rumbles and groans and spills out of Etna! Over and over, I was interrupted by Guglielmo’s questions as he puzzled to keep straight names and locations and to remind me over and over that absolution required me to confess my own trespasses, not to dwell on the trespasses of others.

  By the time I stopped, my voice was hoarse from tears and talking. Afternoon had become evening and a fatigue stronger than I had ever felt before had crept inside my bones. The church was quiet and still, I remember, except for the seeping of steam from the radiators, the flickering red lights from the votive candles at the side altar. I remember I was struck by that stillness.

  Guglielmo spoke.

  The key to peace within my soul, he said, was to cast aside my bitterness and resentment. “In His last hour, while Jesus was dying on the cross, He looked to Heaven and said, ‘Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.’ You must imitate Jesus each day, Domenico, forgiving all those you feel have wronged you. You must pardon the late monsignor his anger, your brother Vincenzo his lust, the ice man his mockery, the magistrato his coveting of your father’s medal. You must even forgive your housekeeper her threats and murderous recipes. . . . But most of all, Domenico, you must forgive your wife.”

  “Forgive that woman whose life is a lie?” I protested. “She told me she was vergine! She helped kill a husband! I can’t even trust the food she cooks!”

  “Dwell on her good qualities, Domenico, not her sins,” he said. “Forgive her and she will show you the kindness she saves in her heart and has not yet spent. And if you look into your own heart, you will find your love for the daughter you and she created. If you will allow the girl to be baptized, then—”

  “I have already buried the child Ignazia and I created,” I reminded him. “She made the girl from her whoring with a no-good Irish redhead. There was no blood on the wedd
ing sheets! She carried mine and the other one’s child in her belly together! That’s probably why my son died. Too crowded in there!”

  Father Guglielmo sighed. “Your wife is not an alley cat, Domenico,” he said. “It is not possible that two children sharing the womb could have different fathers.”

  “The girl has the other one’s red hair and is labbro leporino!” I reminded him. “God has marked the child twice because of her mother’s sins!”

  “Domenico, each child on the face of this earth is perfection—the living proof of God’s love.” Guglielmo said the baby’s harelip proved only that we were not meant to fully understand the wisdom of God’s choices and that the child’s red hair proved only that Ignazia or I had had a redheaded ancestor. “Or, perhaps,” he said, “God is testing your faith. Put aside your doubts, my friend, and embrace this child. She is yours. Love the daughter with whom Jesus has blessed you as you love the son He has recalled to Heaven. Allow me to baptize the girl, Domenico—to cleanse her of original sin. Accept God’s will and your home will fill with the blessings of the Holy Spirit.”

  I told him I could never love that daughter who was not my daughter, although in fairness to myself, I provided well for her and her mother. “They live in a house that has food on the table, don’t they? And heat in wintertime? And indoor plumbing?”

  “They live in a house where forgiveness is withheld,” he answered back.

  “On a cold day in January, it’s better to be warm than to be forgiven.”

  “And best to be both,” he said back. “Domenico, you must listen to me. Forgiveness is the rich loam from which love can grow. And it is love, not grudge-tending, that will make your home a godly place.” He asked me if I wished to be relieved of my sorrow or if I wanted to continue to bear it.

  I told him I wanted peace in my home and in my heart and to sleep when I was tired.

  “Then bring your wife and daughter to Mass tomorrow morning,” Guglielmo said. “Receive the Eucharist. And the following Sunday morning, bring Ignazia and the child and her sponsors to the sacristy so that I might make your daughter a child of God like her brother in Heaven. On that day, invite me to dinner at your home. I will come and bless your house ‘from peak to foundation,’ and thank God for whatever food your women put on the table in front of me. I will eat whatever they have prepared, invite you to share it with me, and thank God for the bounty He has provided.”

  My penance, he said, was twofold. First, I must pray the rosary each day for a month, beginning that very day. When I recited the Lord’s Prayer, I was to reflect on the words “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” When I prayed the Hail Mary, I was to dwell on the phrase “blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” I was to remember that the Holy Mother lived in all women—in Ignazia and Prosperine and in the Bickel Road whores, too, each and every one of them, God save their souls.

  The second part of my penance was an unusual one, Guglielmo said—one which would oblige me to use my good mind, my gift for language, and the early religious education which God had bestowed upon me. I was to record with paper and pen everything I had spoken about that afternoon. “You must write down the story of your life,” Guglielmo said. “Not in the jumbled way it has come out of you this afternoon, but in an orderly fashion. Begin at the beginning, put the middle in the middle, and discuss your present life at the end. Leave omertà and come to God. Write down your memories, Domenico, and as you do so, reflect on the Lord’s wish that you forgive those who have sinned against you as He forgives all sinners. In this way, you will untie the knots of anger and pride that bind you and make you suffer. You will imitate Jesus and begin to find humility.”

  I told him my English was not so good—that I could read it better than I could write it down. Guglielmo told me that God understood all languages, not just English. I could write my reflection in the language of the Mother Country if I wished—either the scholarly Italian I had learned at school in Rome or the Sicilian dialect I had spoken as a child. What was important, Guglielmo said, was not how I wrote it but that I completed my penance in good faith.

  I protested that I was a busy man—I worked ten hours a day, maintained a home, and made sure those crooked builders he’d hired weren’t robbing him blind. I asked him how many other confessors that day had been given not one but two forms of penance.

  “Never mind about other sinners,” he reminded me. “Their penance is their business and your penance is yours. Pray the rosary with humility and find time each day to contemplate and reflect in writing. And when you have finished your history, your meditation, let me read the thoughts you have put down. I will work with you, Domenico. Reflection will help you to prevent further transgression. The peace you long for will come to you and your home. You will sleep peacefully at night and when your time comes, you will sleep in eternal peace. God gives you the free will to do as I say or not to do it. The decision is yours. Now, it is late. Let me hear you make a good Act of Contrition.”

  I could not remember how to begin.

  “O, my God, I am heartily sorry . . .” Guglielmo coaxed.

  “O, my God, I am heartily sorry . . .” I repeated. Stopped.

  “For having offended Thee.”

  “For having offended Thee.”

  “And I detest all my sins because . . .”

  “Because . . .”

  “Because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, but most of all . . .”

  “But most of all . . . but most of all . . . because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and . . . and I forget the rest.”

  “And to amend my life.”

  “And to amend my life.”

  “Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  When I got home from the church that night, I walked into the kitchen. The baby was sleeping by the stove in her cradle. Ignazia and Prosperine were at the table, eating their supper. Minestrone, it was—I still remember. Minestrone and bread still warm from the oven. Real bread—not that American cotton I had been buying downtown. The soup had fogged up the kitchen windows.

  I sat down with the two of them. “Get me a little of that stuff,” I told Prosperine. “It smells pretty good.”

  She looked at Ignazia and Ignazia looked back at her. Then Ignazia’s chin shook a little bit—she was holding back her tears. It was she who got up and got the soup. And the three of us sat there and ate. Soup and bread. It was the first meal I’d eaten at my house since the night Prosperine had drunk my wine and told her crazy story. It was good soup, too—just right. My wife, may she rest in peace, could always take a little of this, a little of that, and make good zuppa.

  15 August 1949

  The child was baptized Concettina Pasqualina, in honor of Mama and my brother Pasquale. Tusia and his wife were gombare and madrina. Just as he promised, Father Guglielmo came after the christening and blessed my house. He went from room to room (even the bathroom at the top of the stairs), mumbling his prayers in Latin and sprinkling holy water from the small vessel he had brought. He blessed the cellar last of all, stood right on the spot where Pasquale had landed and lifted the monsignor’s curse. Then he came back upstairs to the dining room table and ate what Ignazia, Prosperine, and Signora Tusia had cooked—antipasto, pisci, cavatelli, vitella with roasted potatoes. Nothing but the best and plenty of it. I had bought the veal from Hurok myself. “He’s busy in the back,” his son had told me. “I can help you, Mr. Tempesta.” But I made him get the old man. “Give me the best veal in the store,” I told Hurok. “The stuff you sell to the big shots.” He told me the best would cost me more. I told him to worry about the meat and let me worry about the price. It was good veal, I remember. You could cut through it like butter. And it should have been tender, too. Madonna! That thieving Jew charged me thirty-five cents a pound!

  I opened a savings account for Concettina at the Dime Bank of Three Riv
ers (twenty-five dollars) and let Ignazia order a child’s buggy from Sears and Roebuck’s book. There were two of them on the same page—one cheaper, the other better built but overpriced. “Which should I get?” Ignazia asked.

  “Get the sturdy one,” I said. “What do you think? That I want the thing falling apart on the street with the girl in it? Use your head for once!”

  That carrozza from Sears and Roebuck helped take away some of Ignazia’s shyness around the ‘Mericana women on Hollyhock Avenue. Concettina had red hair and a homely lip, but she was blessed with a sweet and shy disposizione that sometimes reminded me of my brother Pasquale. Neighborhood ladies would stop for a little visit with the child and talk about their own children with Ignazia. These little visits led to cups of tea in other women’s parlors and walks into town for shopping. Ignazia reported every little conversation to me. This one said this! That one told her that! I allowed and encouraged these exchanges. It gave Ignazia practice in speaking English and got her away from the influence of that other one. The more comfortable my wife became with decent women, the more she would free herself from that crazy friend of hers who smoked a pipe and was beneath her.

  She and Prosperine still shared the back bedroom together, but now Ignazia began to let the other one know who was the woman of the house and who was the servant. One morning, when I got home from work, I walked in the front door and heard Ignazia and Prosperine in the middle of an argument. I followed their voices through the house to the back bedroom. “What’s the matter?” I asked my wife.

  “Nothing’s the matter,” she said, glaring at Prosperine. “I only wish that some people knew their place, that’s all. When I give her money and tell her to walk to the market and buy a pound of cheese, I mean now, not when she feels like it.”

  I grabbed Prosperine by the arm and walked her over to Ignazia. The two of them looked away from each other. “This is my wife and the padrona of this house,” I reminded the Monkey. “We give you a place to sleep at night because you do what she says to do in the daytime. If she tells you ‘Go and get me some cheese,’ then go and get it. If she says ‘Lick the dirt off my shoes,’ then lick it. Or else you might find yourself sleeping outside in the cold. Understand?”