by Ed Falco
“You mean you’re not living here?” Eileen said. She faced him, her hands on her hips. “How come I see you every time I turn around, morning and night? Except of course when I’m in the shop, workin’ like a slave to keep food on the table. Then, God knows where you are and what you’re doing.”
“Nothin’ much,” Cork said. “Not recently anyway.” He looked away from Eileen and then down at his own hand, where it lay on the table.
“Bobby,” Eileen asked, “is there something the matter?” She pulled up a seat and placed her hand over his.
For a while the only sound was the simmer of coffee heating up in the pot, and then Cork said, “I was thinking, what if I moved back in and went to work with you in the bakery?” Cork knew this was something that Eileen dearly wanted, that she had pushed for since long before he’d finished high school, but he posed the question as if it were a new idea, a possibility that had just occurred to him.
“Are you serious?” Eileen asked, and she yanked her hand away from him, as if something about the question had frightened her.
“I am,” Cork said. “I have some money saved. I could help out.”
Eileen got up to attend the coffee, which had just started perking. “You’re serious,” she said, as if she was having trouble believing him. “What brought this on?”
Cork didn’t answer. He went and stood behind her at the stove. “So is it all right, then?” he asked. “I could move my things in tomorrow and take the back room. I don’t have much.”
“You’re done with all the other stuff?” she said—and it came out both as a question and a demand.
“Done with it,” Cork said. “So can I move back in?”
“Sure,” Eileen said, hunched over the coffeepot, keeping her back to her brother. She dragged her arm over her eyes and said, “Ah, Lord,” because she was obviously crying and gave up on trying to hide it.
“Quit it,” Cork said, and he put his hands on her shoulders.
“Quit it yourself,” she said. She turned and wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest.
“Come on, quit it,” Cork said again, but gently, and he held Eileen in his arms and let her cry.
20.
Sonny walked beside Sandra past the bakeries and delicatessens of Arthur Avenue. On the street, cars and trucks zipped around peddlers’ carts as kids in knickers and short-sleeved shirts ran along the sidewalk and through traffic fearlessly, the summery spring day drawing children and adults alike outdoors. Sonny had parked his car in front of Sandra’s building and walked with her to Coluccio’s butcher shop, and now they were walking back, a string of sausage wrapped in heavy white paper and tied with cord dangling from Sonny’s fingertips. Sandra wore a floppy green hat with a white band over dark hair that came down to her shoulders. The hat was new and too fancy for her plain white dress, but Sonny had complimented her a dozen times already in their short walk to pick up sausage for her grandmother. “You know who you look like?” he said with a big smile as he turned to walk backward in front of her. “You look like Kay Francis in Trouble in Paradise.”
“I do not,” Sandra said. She shoved him, the flat of her hand hitting his shoulder.
“Only much prettier,” Sonny added. “Kay Francis can’t hold a candle to you.”
Sandra crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head as she appraised Sonny’s looks. He had on gray pin-striped slacks, a dark shirt, and a black and gray striped tie. “Nobody else looks like you,” she said, and then, blushing, added, “You’re better-looking than all those guys in the movies.”
Sonny threw back his head and laughed, and then turned around again to walk beside her. On the corner in front of them, an organ grinder was setting up to play, and already a throng of kids surrounded him. A stout, short man in a bowler hat with a bright-red bandanna around his neck, the organ grinder looked like he was newly landed in America, with his thick mustache and wings of gray hair flying out from under his hat band. His organ was old and battered, held together with tattered belts. Prancing atop it on a blue pad and ringing a tiny silver bell was a small monkey dressed in pants and a leathery jacket, a bright, thin chain looped from its neck to the organ grinder’s wrist. “Do you want to stop a minute?” Sonny asked.
Sandra shook her head and looked at her feet.
“You’re worried about your grandmother,” Sonny said. “Listen,” he added, and then hesitated as a great cloud of sparrows swooped low and came together over the rooftops before soaring up the avenue. “Listen,” he repeated, and suddenly his voice caught a little as if he were nervous. “Johnny and Nino are playing at a fancy supper club tonight. I’d like to take you out to eat there, and then afterward we could go dancing. What if I could get your grandmother to let you go?”
“You know she won’t.”
“What if I could convince her?”
“That’d be the day,” Sandra said. “And anyway,” she added, “I don’t have the proper clothes. You’d be ashamed of me.”
“That couldn’t be,” Sonny said, “but anyway, I already considered this.”
“Considered what?” Sandra asked. They turned the corner off Arthur Avenue and onto her block.
“That you’d need some fancy clothes.”
Sandra looked at Sonny with confusion.
“Hey,” Sonny said. “Look at that.” He hurried past Sandra and onto the street, where a bright-blue convertible Cord with its long hood and white-walled tires was already attracting a crowd.
“Fancy car,” Sandra said, coming up alongside him.
“It’s got front-wheel drive,” Sonny said.
“Uh-huh,” Sandra answered, clearly having no idea what Sonny was talking about.
“Do you think you’d like to have a car like this?” Sonny asked.
“You’re funny today,” Sandra said, and she tugged him by the arm back onto the sidewalk.
Sonny said, “I don’t mean to be funny, Sandra.” They were near her building now, where his Packard was parked on the street. “I think we should have dinner together tonight where Johnny and Nino are playing, and then go out dancing after.”
Mrs. Columbo, leaning out her window, yelled down to Sandra, “Eh! What took you so long?”
Sonny waved to Mrs. Columbo, handed the sausage to Sandra, and then leaned through the open passenger window of his car and pulled out a bulky brown paper package tied up with white string.
“What’s this?” Sandra asked.
“A fancy dress and shoes and other stuff, for you.” He handed her the package.
Sandra looked up to her grandmother, who was peering down at her and Sonny with her hands on her chin.
“Open it,” Sonny said.
Sandra took a seat on her stoop. She placed the package in her lap, untied the string, and peeled open the brown paper only enough to see the shimmering silk fabric of an evening gown before she slapped it closed and looked up to her grandmother.
“Sandra!” Mrs. Columbo called, looking worried, “you come up here right now!”
“We’re coming,” Sandra called back. To Sonny she whispered, “Have you gone mad, Santino?” She stood and handed him back the package. “It looks so expensive,” she said. “Grandma will faint if she sees it.”
“I don’t think so,” Sonny said.
“You don’t think so?”
“Come on.” Sonny put his hand on Sandra’s back and directed her up the stairs.
At the door, Sandra said again worriedly, “It looks so expensive, Sonny.”
Sonny said, “I get a good salary now.”
“Working in a garage?” She opened the door and waited for Sonny to answer before stepping into the dim foyer.
“I don’t work in a garage anymore,” Sonny said. “I’m working for my father now. I’m in sales. I go to all the stores and I convince them that Genco Pura is the only olive oil they need to stock.”
“How do you do that?” Sandra stepped into the building and held the door open f
or Sonny.
“I make them offers any reasonable man would accept,” Sonny said, and he joined her, closing the door behind him.
“And you earn enough money now,” Sandra whispered in the quiet of the building, “to afford a dress like this?”
“Come on,” Sonny said, and he started for the stairs. “I’m going to show you what a great salesman I am. I’m going to convince your grandmother to let me take you out dancing tonight.”
First Sandra looked stunned, and then she laughed. “Okay,” she said. “You’ll have to be the best salesman in the world.”
At the foot of the stairs, Sonny stopped. “Tell me one thing,” he said. “Do you love me, Sandra?”
Sandra, without hesitating, said, “Yes, I do.”
Sonny pulled her close and kissed her.
From the top of the stairwell, Mrs. Columbo’s voice came tumbling down the steps. “How long does it take to walk up a few flights of stairs?” she yelled. “Eh! Sandra!”
“We’re coming, Grandma,” Sandra called back, and she started up the stairs hand in hand with Sonny.
Giuseppe Mariposa gazed out the curved corner window of an apartment on the top floor of a building on Twenty-Fifth Street in Manhattan. In the late afternoon light he saw his own reflection and beyond it, at the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, the towering triangle of the Flatiron Building. Against a dark sky, the white limestone surface of the Flatiron’s topmost floors looked like an arrow soaring over the traffic and the trolleys and the Fifth Avenue double-deckers bustling through Madison Square. The day’s weather had been erratic, with quick, powerful thunderstorms flashing through the city, leaving behind bright sunshine and glistening streets. Now it was cloudy again, an edgy, electric cloudiness that promised another storm. Behind Giuseppe, a spacious five-bedroom apartment was bare, a maze of rooms with bright hardwood floors and freshly painted white walls through which the Rosatos and the Barzinis and Frankie Pentangeli and a few of their boys wandered around, looking things over, the noise of their conversations and the creak of their footsteps bouncing through the hallways and the empty rooms.
At the sight of Frankie’s reflection in the window, Giuseppe spun around. “Frankie?” he said. “Where the hell’s the goddamned furniture? This is no good if we got to hole up here. What are you thinking?”
Frankie squinted at Giuseppe, as if he couldn’t quite see him clearly. “What?” he said. Emilio Barzini appeared in the doorway, his boy Tits at his side. Tits was a good-looking kid, not yet twenty-one, but pudgy, with a big circle of a face and a flabby chest that got him his nickname. He dressed in the same three-piece suits as Emilio, whom he’d been working for in one capacity or another since he was twelve, but the same suits that looked crisp and snappy on Emilio looked baggy and rumpled on Tits. Awkward as the kid looked, he was serious and smart, and Emilio kept him close. “Hey, Giuseppe,” Frankie said, when Mariposa stared at him and said nothing, his hands on his hips, “you said, ‘Find a place, rent the top floor.’ That’s what I did.”
“What did you think I’d rent a place like this for, Frankie?”
“How do I know, Joe? You didn’t say anything about holing up here. Are you telling me we’re going to war?”
“Did I say we’re going to war?”
“Eh, Joe,” Frankie said. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and stood his ground. “Don’t treat me like a stronz’.”
Before Giuseppe could speak, Emilio took a few steps into the room. “Frankie,” he said, “don’t go getting your feelings hurt.” He moved between Frankie and Giuseppe, who were squared off, facing each other. “Sometimes, the fewer people know things, the better. That’s all. Right, Joe?”
When Mariposa nodded, Frankie said, “Fine.” To Emilio he said, “Hey, I don’t need to know everything.” To Giuseppe he said, “You want me to fix the place up like we’re going to war, get food, get some furniture in here, bring in some mattresses, do all that? Just tell me. I’ll have my boys take care of it.” He paused and added, “But be reasonable. You got to tell me. I can’t read minds.”
Giuseppe looked first to Tits and Emilio and then to Frankie. All the other rooms had gone quiet, and he imagined the Rosatos and the rest of the boys listening. When he turned to Frankie, he said, “Have your boys fix up the place like we might be going to war.”
“Sure,” Frankie said, his voice shooting up high. “I’ll get on it right away.”
“Good,” Giuseppe answered. “Get it done today. I want the mattresses at least and some food in here by tonight.” He turned back to the corner window, where the sky had grown darker, turning the glass into a mirror. Behind him he watched Frankie leave the room. He saw the perfunctory nod he gave to Emilio, and he saw the way Tits turned his head away, as if afraid to meet Frankie’s eyes. In the other rooms, the conversation resumed, and then Emilio and Tits walked off down the hallway, leaving him alone as the rain started, the white arrow of the Flatiron Building hovering in a gray sky.
Mrs. Columbo sipped from her cup of black coffee and watched Sonny warily as he finished off another of her sugar cookies and chattered about those two boys from the neighborhood, Johnny Fontane and Nino Valenti, going on about how Johnny was a great singer and Nino could play the mandolin like an angel. Occasionally she nodded or grunted, but mostly she seemed alternatingly bored and suspicious as she sipped her coffee and looked out the rain-streaked kitchen window of her apartment, which was small and cramped and full of the sugary-sweet smell of baking cookies. Sandra, who held a glass of water in both hands across the kitchen table from Sonny, hadn’t spoken a dozen words in the past half hour while Sonny talked to her grandmother, who now and then slipped in a few sentences of her own.
“Mrs. Columbo,” Sonny said, and then paused as he placed his cup down on the table and crossed his arms over his chest, announcing that he was about to say something of significance. “How come you don’t trust a good Italian boy like me?”
“What?” Mrs. Columbo appeared to be taken aback by the abrupt shift in conversation. She looked to the bowl of twist cookies in the center of the table as if something about her baking might be the cause of Sonny’s question.
“I would like to take your granddaughter out to dinner tonight where Johnny and Nino are performing. Sandra feels that this is out of the question, that you would never allow me to take her out to dinner—and so I ask, respectfully, why is it you don’t trust a good Italian boy like me, someone whose family you know and count among your friends?”
“Ah!” Mrs. Columbo slapped her cup down, sloshing a wave of coffee over the brim and onto the table. She looked as though she was more than willing to have this discussion with Sonny. “You ask me why I don’t trust a good Italian boy like you?” She waved a single outstretched finger at Sonny’s nose. “Because I know all about men, Santino Corleone! I know what men want,” she said, spitting out the words and leaning over the table, “especially young men, but, eh, all of you. You’re all the same—and Sandra and me, we have no good family man to protect us!”
“Mrs. Columbo…” Sonny cocked his head, suggesting that he took her point and understood her concern. He reached for one of the delicious twists of golden dough in the center of the table. “All I want,” he said, placing the cookie on a plate next to his cup, his voice eminently reasonable, “is to take Sandra out to a supper club, so she can hear Johnny and Nino. They’re local boys! You know them. It’s a very fancy place, Mrs. Columbo.”
“Why do you want to go out to dinner?” Mrs. Columbo asked. “Our house is not good enough for you? You get better food here than some fancy restaurant—and it doesn’t cost you your hard-earned money!”
“That I don’t argue,” Sonny said. “No restaurant can equal your cooking.”
“So?” Mrs. Columbo turned to look at Sandra for the first time, as if she had just remembered she was at the table and she wanted her support. “Why does he want to spend his money at some restaurant?” she asked Sandra.
Sa
ndra looked to Sonny.
“Listen, Mrs. Columbo…” Sonny’s face paled as he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small package that he kept hidden in his closed fist. “This is for your Sandra,” he said, opening his hand, revealing a small black box. “I planned on surprising her with it tonight at dinner, but since we can’t have that dinner until we have your approval…” He moved the box closer to Mrs. Columbo without looking at Sandra, who had covered her mouth with her hands.
“What is this foolishness?” Mrs. Columbo snatched the box out of Sonny’s hand and opened it to reveal a diamond ring.
“This is our engagement ring.” Sonny looked across the table at Sandra. “Sandra and me are getting married,” he said. When Sandra nodded eagerly at him, a smile blossomed on his face and he added, dramatically, looking at Mrs. Columbo, “But only if you let me take her out to hear Johnny and Nino, where I can propose the question to her properly!”
“If this is trickery,” Mrs. Columbo said, waving her finger again, “I’ll go to your father!”
Sonny put his hand over his heart. “When I marry your Sandrinella,” he said, getting up from his seat, “you’ll have a man in your family to protect you.” He grasped Mrs. Columbo by the shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.
Mrs. Columbo raised a hand to Sonny’s chin and held him still while she looked into his eyes. Then she said, as if angry, “Eh! She’s the one you should be kissing!” and pointed his face at Sandra. “Have her home before ten o’clock,” she said on her way out of the room, “or I’ll go to your father!” She turned before she left the room and raised a finger as if she might have one more thing to say, but instead she only nodded and left Sonny and Sandra alone.
Ettore Barzini followed Giuseppe as he inspected the roof, holding an umbrella over his head, while Tits did the same for Emilio. The rest of the boys were still downstairs, in the empty apartment, where someone had brought in sandwiches and a case of Coca-Cola. Giuseppe walked to the edge of the roof and looked down over the ledge to the street. Crowds of pedestrians hurried along the avenue, hidden under the multicolored circles of their umbrellas. The rain was light but steady, and an occasional pale flash of distant lightning showed through the clouds, followed by a low rumble of thunder. Giuseppe pointed to the black loops of a fire-escape ladder. To Emilio he said, “Have your boys loosen the bolts, make sure no one can climb up from the street.”
