by Peter Wild
Mrs Sforza saw where I was looking and said: ‘They’re crisp to bite into, not like those mushy yellow things you get in the supermarket. Of course, with these teeth…’
‘I’ll bring one over when they’re ripe,’ Mr Sforza said. ‘You don’t pick them. You wait for them to fall because that’s when they have the most taste. But sometimes I help them fall. You give them a tap and see if they drop. This bunch doesn’t have far to go.’
He got a long bamboo pole that had been leaning against the house, walked over to the pear tree and prodded through the scrawny branches. With the tip of the pole he nudged one of the pears, gently bumping its stem so as not to bruise the fruit or break off the thin twiggy branch it hung from. On the third poke the pear suddenly dropped past his cheek and landed on the ground with a thud.
‘Here,’ he said. He picked up the pear and brought it over. ‘Try that.’
I bit into it and he smiled in anticipation.
‘Good, huh?’
‘Delicious,’ I said. It really was.
‘What did I tell you?’
They both observed me as I ate the pear. Mrs Sforza had her head tilted back and leaned to one side, her bushy white eyebrows floating high up on her forehead as she enjoyed my pleasure, gazing at me with a fond look. I had to smile at the way she was looking, and when she saw me smile, her mouth spread into a grin.
I told them I had to think about going, that I had to catch a bus to New York to pick up some darkroom supplies for the assignment I had been given.
‘You don’t have to go yet,’ Mr Sforza said.
‘I’ll be back. This isn’t exactly my last visit,’ I said. ‘About that suicide–when was that?’
‘Let’s see, that must have been around the end of the sixties. I think it was 1968 or ’69. You weren’t even born yet. Sit down.’
‘I was born in 1970.’
‘Listen, sit down. Yeah, your brother Pete–may his soul rest in peace–was around in those days but you weren’t born yet. Your mother and father were practically newlyweds. Pete was about three months old when your father tried to commit suicide.’
‘The Pulaski Skyway,’ I said. I tried to visualise the scene of my father leaning over the railing a couple of hundred feet above the river.
‘Right over the Hackensack river–not the Passaic, the Hackensack. Take a look as you go by some time and you’ll see where your father got stopped by the cops. Listen, stay put for a while. We’re not finished here yet.’
‘Jersey City cops,’ Mrs Sforza said.
‘Jersey City cops, Hoboken cops, Newark cops–cops are cops,’ Mr Sforza said.
‘Cops are cops, all right,’ she said. ‘Listen, we have cheesecake for dessert.’ Mrs Sforza bounced her eyebrows up and down like Groucho: the smiling siren enticing me. ‘From Hansen’s. Made this morning. Still warm.’
‘That’s right. You can’t go yet,’ Mr Sforza said. ‘We have this cheesecake we have to eat.’
‘Well, Hansen’s,’ I said. ‘Can’t refuse that. But then I have to go, really.’
‘Sure. We don’t want to keep you,’ Mr Sforza said, ‘but you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.’
Mrs Sforza served a thin creamy wedge so quiveringly tall on the serving spoon it was structurally unsound. As she handed the plate across the table, the wedge fluffed over on its side. Nobody made cheesecakes as deep and as light and as fluffy as Hansen’s. She served her husband and herself smaller slices, laying theirs flat.
‘We’re pigging out,’ she said. ‘Retirement’s living.’
She had worked for years as a seamstress in a Jersey City dress factory and, after seven years of retirement, still couldn’t get over the luxury of doing nothing.
‘Mm–really good,’ Mr Sforza said, swallowing a mouthful. ‘That Hansen’s–really good stuff. With a cheesecake like this, it’s all in the ingredients you use and the way you prepare them.’
‘How is that different from the rest of cooking?’ his wife asked.
He laughed. ‘Ah, she’s too smart for me. What are you going to New York for?’
‘I need chemicals and paper. And film is cheaper when you buy a whole lot all at once.’
‘It must be a fascinating field to be able to do photography. What is this, a wedding assignment?’
I said the phone call that had delayed me was about a freelance job for a series the Journal was doing on the changing suburbs.
‘I gotta hand it to you Castellanos–all that talent. Our two boys, one’s a building contractor and the other one runs a gas station.’
‘Two gas stations now,’ Mrs Sforza said.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I wish I knew how to build a house. There’s some repairs I need to have done.’
‘No, I don’t mean that. They’re both honest and they’re both good family men.’
‘Well?’ Mrs Sforza said. ‘Isn’t that what counts?’
‘Sure, I’m not saying that–no complaints, except that one’s in Ohio and one’s in Indiana. And when you want to see your grandchildren…But they’re fine boys. Here, take some more cheesecake.’
‘Yeah, that’s true,’ Mrs Sforza said. ‘One’s in Ohio and one’s in Indiana. You have to drive all the way across Pennsylvania to get to Ohio. Jesus.’
As Mrs Sforza served me another piece of cake, only just slightly smaller than the first, I watched a blue jay glide silently across the yard to a soft landing at the top of the pear tree. As the jay looked over at us the small branch it had landed on dipped and swayed under the impact.
‘Beat it!’ Mr Sforza yelled. He flailed his arms. The jay took off soundlessly. ‘They’re very loud birds,’ he explained. ‘Once they start jabbering and squawking…I know they’re only communicating with each other, but still.’
‘Yeah,’ Mrs Sforza said. ‘Noisy bastards.’
I said, ‘Well, I really better be going. If I can move after this meal.’
‘We don’t want to keep you. We know you have to go. You sure you’re OK health-wise? Eating properly?’ Mr Sforza said.
‘You’re not keeping me–yes, I’m fine.’
‘Because we’re like parents to you. Remember that.’
‘Campobass’ people,’ Mrs Sforza said to me, ‘they have this thing about health. They have to keep asking you if you’re healthy.’
Feeling full hadn’t spoiled my pleasure in putting away the second piece but now I felt heavy. As I cleaned off the plate I saw, over Mr Sforza’s shoulder, an old man appear in a backyard two houses down. He was with a little girl of about five or six, probably his granddaughter. She was leading him by the hand and exaggeratedly taking giant steps and chanting. It was obvious the grandfather was enjoying being with her. He trailed her loose-jointedly, playing the clown–or maybe he was pretending to be drunk. Maybe he was.
‘Ya-ya,’ he said to her.
‘Ya-ya,’ she mimicked back, laughing.
‘Ya-ya.’
‘Ya-ya,’ she said joyfully.
‘Ya-ya.’
‘YA-YA,’ she screamed happily, and began dragging him back inside, doing giant steps in a zigzag line as she pulled him. The yard was silent again.
‘Ben Hanford,’ Mrs Sforza said quietly, ‘Ida’s father. Haven’t seen him in months.’
‘Retired fifteen years now,’ Mr Sforza said. ‘Way back he used to work for the old Lehigh, I think, or the Lackawanna. Bad diabetes.’
‘Why don’t you go over and ask him how his health is?’
‘He was named in some kind of bookkeeping scandal–I forget. But he’s a good man. He was crazy about his wife, poor thing. And you can tell he really loves his daughter and granddaughter.’
I was crazy about my wife too, I was thinking. I tried not to think about her.
‘I like that story about my father,’ I said to Mr Sforza.
‘I knew you would,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Can you imagine those cops thinking he’d jump in the river?’
‘Listen, not to be imp
olite,’ Mrs Sforza said to her husband as she got up from the table, ‘but before you take us all out to the Pulaski Skyway again, I have some house cleaning to do.’
‘This is Sunday.’
‘I forgot to do it yesterday, what can I tell you? See you, Michael,’ she said. She waved goodbye and disappeared into the kitchen.
Mr Sforza and I had started to say goodbye when we heard a vacuum cleaner whining from an upstairs window.
‘Don’t mind her,’ Mr Sforza said. ‘Sunday. It’s senility, I think. But it could be the new false teeth. They’re killing her, you know.’
The vacuuming stopped abruptly. Mrs Sforza’s head stuck out of a second-floor window. ‘Michael,’ she called down to me, ‘I don’t want you to think I’m rude leaving like that, OK?’ She waved again.
‘You weren’t rude, Mrs Sforza,’ I said, waving back.
She flashed her teeth and stood at the window looking down at us. I could see why he loved her–his OK wife.
‘How are you these days?’ I said to Mr Sforza.
‘No point complaining. My father always used to say that people from Campobass’ can take whatever happens in life. Like your father–well, he wasn’t from Campobass’ but he had a cousin there. Anyway, he almost went bankrupt once, back in the seventies, but he sprang back. You couldn’t keep him down. Did he ever tell you about the Arizona land deal?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe next time I’ll tell you about the Arizona land deal. Not even bankruptcy could stop your father.’
‘It sounds like not even suicide could stop him,’ I said.
Mr Sforza laughed at the joke and yelled up: ‘Hey, Clara, did you hear that? Not even suicide could stop his father.’
Mrs Sforza looked at her husband, then looked at me and tapped her temple.
‘Aaah,’ her husband said. ‘She gets that way. I tell everybody it’s her false teeth but I’m beginning to think it’s maybe her senility coming on.’
She heard that. ‘At least I’ve got the false teeth. What’s your excuse?’
‘Ciao,’ I said to them and left.
‘Ciao.’
I first crossed over to my house to pick up my chequebook. A few minutes later, as I headed for the bus stop to catch the bus that would take me to the Port Authority, I could hear Mr Sforza clattering dishes and slamming pans into the sink as the vacuum cleaner whined away upstairs. Through the open kitchen door Mr Sforza saw me cut through the alley behind the houses.
‘Don’t forget next time,’ he shouted, coming to the door. ‘I’ll tell you that story.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll tell you the bankruptcy story,’ he yelled.
The vacuuming stopped and Mrs Sforza’s head appeared at the window.
‘What?’ she asked.
Mr Sforza stepped outside the door and looked up. ‘Nothing. I said I love you.’ He had a big smile.
Mrs Sforza flashed her teeth at him and saw me at the back fence. She waved goodbye again and pointed at her husband and tapped her temple.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ I heard Mr Sforza say. I could tell he was beaming. ‘You love me too.’
‘Ha!’ she said and went on with her vacuuming.
Sunday comes and Sunday goes, I thought. The bus stop was only a block away and as I walked I could still hear the vacuuming–a pleasant sound.
contributors
Hiag Akmakjian is a photographer, a New Yorker, and author of a novel, 30,000 Mornings, and a book of translations from the Japanese: Snow Falling from a Bamboo Leaf: The Art of Haiku. He lives in Wales.
Christopher Coake is the author of the story collection We’re in Trouble (Harcourt, 2005). He lives in Reno with his wife and two dogs, and teaches creative writing at the University of Nevada.
Fictioneer and journalist Katherine Dunn is probably most familiar for her third novel, Geek Love.
Mary Gaitskill is the author of the novels Two Girls, Fat and Thin and Veronica, as well as the story collections Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To. Her story ‘Secretary’ was the basis for the feature film of the same name.
Rebecca Godfrey is the author of the novel The Torn Skirt and the true crime book Under the Bridge. She lives in New York.
Laird Hunt is the author of three novels, The Impossibly; Indiana, Indiana and The Exquisite.
Shelley Jackson is the author of Half Life, The Melancholy of Anatomy, hypertexts including the classic Patchwork Girl, two children’s books, and Skin, a story published in tattoos on 2,095 volunteers, one word at a time. She is co-founder of the Interstitial Library and headmistress of the Shelley Jackson Vocational School for Ghost Speakers and Hearing-Mouth Children. She lives in Brooklyn and at www.ineradicablestain.com.
J. Robert Lennon is the author of six novels, including Happyland, serialised in 2006 in Harper’s magazine and the forthcoming Castle. He lives in central New York State.
Samuel Ligon is the author of the novel Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins), and the editor of Willow Springs. His stories have appeared in Post Road, StoryQuarterly, Other Voices, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane.
Emily Maguire is the author of two novels: Taming the Beast and The Gospel According to Luke. Her essays on sex, religion and literature have appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Observer.
Tom McCarthy is the author of two novels, Remainder and Men in Space, and a non-fiction book, Tintin and the Secret of Literature. He is also General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS).
Scott Mebus is author of The Big Happy and The Booty Nomad, a musician, screenwriter, scorer and TV producer.
Eileen Myles’ latest collection of poems, Sorry, Tree, will be out from wave books this spring. She’s been living both in southern CA and NY since 2002, teaching at UCSD. Each week this year she’ll be blogging on art at http://openfordesign.msn.com.
Catherine O’Flynn was born in Birmingham, England in 1970. She has variously been a child detective, a mystery customer, a victim of squirrels and a music enthusiast. Her first novel, What Was Lost, was published in 2007.
Lee Ranaldo is a visual artist, writer and member of Sonic Youth, who continues to record new music and tour the world on a regular basis. His visual art and sound works have been shown at galleries and museums around the world. His latest collection of poems is Hello from The American Desert, in which Internet spam is enlisted as a springboard for poetry. Maelstrom from Drift, a new solo CD, is forthcoming in summer 2008.
Emily Carter Roiphe is the award-winning author of Glory Goes and Gets Some available in the UK from Serpent’s Tail. She is attempting another book and, in the meantime, enjoys her work as a freelance cultural critic (who doesn’t?). She lives in Minneapolis with her life partner and two dogs, all three of them strays.
Kevin Sampsell lives in Portland, Oregon, and runs the micro-press Future Tense Books. His fiction and essays have appeared in a wide variety of journals and newspapers throughout the US. His books include Beautiful Blemish and Creamy Bullets.
Steven Sherrill paints, writes, parents, teaches and struggles with his banjo in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Matt Thorne is the author of six novels: Tourist (1998), Eight Minutes Idle (1999, winner of an Encore Prize), Dreaming of Strangers (2000), Pictures of You (2001), Child Star (2003) and Cherry (2005, long-listed for the Booker Prize.) He also co-edited the anthologies All Hail the New Puritans (2000) and Croatian Nights (2005), and has written three books for children.
Rachel Trezise was born in South Wales in 1978. Her first novel, In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl, was an Orange Futures Prize winner. Her collection of short stories, Fresh Apples, won the EDS Dylan Thomas Prize. She is also author of the memoir/rockumentary Dial M for Merthyr: On Tour with Midasuno. She is currently working on her second novel.
Jess Walter’s four novels include The Zero, which was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award, and Citizen Vince, 2005 Edgar Award winner
for best novel.
Peter Wild is the co-author of Before the Rain and the editor of Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall and The Flash. Read more at www.peterwild.com.
acknowledgements
The editor would like to thank Sonic Youth, Pete Ayrton, John Williams, Rebecca Gray, Matt Thorne, Niamh Murray, Ruthie Petrie, Richard Thomas, David Gaffney, Sarah Hymas, Emily Carter Roiphe, Moshe Levy, Tom McCarthy, Tony O’Neill, Ben Myers, Nathan Tyree, Arthur Nersesian, Carlton Mellick III, Mitch Cullin, Paul Di Fillippo, Ewan Morrison, Catherine O’Flynn, Pru Rowlandson, Gary Ramsay and (as ever) Louisa, Harriet, Samuel & Martha.
about the editor
PETER WILD is the coauthor of Before the Rain and the editor of Perverted by Language: Fiction Inspired by the Fall and The Flash. His fiction has appeared in numerous journals, e-zines, anthologies, and magazines, including Dogmatika, 3:AM Magazine, NOÖ Journal, SNReview, Word Riot, Straight from the Fridge, Thieves Jargon, Pindeldyboz, Pen Pusher, Scarecrow, The Beat, Litro, and Dreams That Money Can Buy. He lives in Manchester with his wife and three children.
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Credits
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover photograph by Michael Northrup
