by John Fante
I wept and pounded the table and the wine danced and spilled and the bees snarled. I tore my hair. I fell on my knees and clung to my father. “Come with me. Papa! You need care. You mustn’t die in this wretched place.”
His vague glance found me.
“Go home, kid. See what your mother wants.”
I got up in shame and disgust and sat on the bench, sobbing. I had this talent for crying. It had brought me many rewards through my life, and some trouble too. When your weaknesses are your strengths, you cry. For crying disconcerts people, they don’t know how to handle it; they are expecting violence and suddenly it vanishes in a pool of tears. I cried at my first communion. My tears broke Harriet down and she finally married me. Without tears I could never have seduced a woman, and with them I never failed. It has laid waste the hearts of women who disliked me, and who wanted to kill me afterward for succumbing. I cried through melancholy passages of my own writing. The older I got, the more I wept.
Now Zarlingo was affected, reaching across the table to press my hand. “Take it easy, son,” he soothed. “Wipe your eyes, have a drink. Don’t worry about your father. He’s strong as an ox.”
I wiped my face and blew my nose. I forced down the wine. From the highway below came the wail of a siren, drawing closer, louder. I walked out to the driveway and saw a white ambulance streaking a trail of dust as it raced up Angelo’s private road. As it slowed I saw two white-clad attendants in the cab. Dr. Maselli was with them. They leaped to the ground.
“Where is he?” the doctor asked.
He followed me into the arbor and moved to my father’s side. Lifting the drooped head, he peeled back an eyelid. Removing a hypodermic from his kit, he filled it with a milky substance from a vial and injected it into my father’s arm. Angelo and the other brothers gathered around, watching. They moved aside as the attendants came up with a stretcher. They carefully eased my father upon the stretcher and lifted him off the ground. As they carried him toward the ambulance each of his friends murmured farewell.
“Ciao, Nicola, Buono fortuna.”
“Addio, amico mio.”
“Corragio, Nick.”
“Corragioso, Nicola.”
My father lay motionless, eyes closed. Even the hot sun failed to disturb his eyelids. Now Angelo came to his side with a straw-wrapped bottle of Chianti and placed it lengthwise beneath his arm. It brought a frown from Dr. Maselli. The stretcher was lifted into the ambulance and the door closed. As the white car drove away my father’s friends watched it churning dust toward the highway.
“He’s gonna be all right,” Zarlingo said.
“Sure he is,” Cavallaro agreed. “He’ll outlive us all.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Benedetti.
I got into the rented car and followed the ambulance.
For half an hour I waited on a bench in a hall outside the emergency room of the Auburn Hospital. When Dr. Maselli emerged, coatless, the look of death was upon him.
“He’s gone.”
“How, Doc? Why?”
“Cerebral hemorrhage. Swift, painless. A man couldn’t ask for a better way to die.”
As I turned to leave he asked, “Do you want me to tell your mother?”
“I’ll tell her.”
Down the hall in the pay station I telephoned Stella. She choked at the news and began to cry. We cried together for a long time, in each other’s arms over the telephone.
I said, “Will you tell Mama?”
“Oh, God!” she sobbed. “Oh, God.”
I hung up and walked out to the car in the parking lot. The waning day refused to cool and I was numb and unequal to the drive home to the agony of my mother and the empty space in the world now that my father was gone. Remembering the saloons along Chop Suey Street I thought of getting smashed, of losing myself in the semidarkness with those lonely old men peeling off their last days in one of those places.
As I started the car a nurse came down the hospital steps into the parking lot. It was Miss Quinlan. She was walking straight toward me carrying a white sweater, moving smoothly on low shoes, erect and clean and handsome, the sun behind her, piercing the space between her thighs. I stepped from the car and stood in her path. She paused and smiled.
“I’m sorry about your father,” she said.
My eyes filled. I took her hands.
“Oh, Miss Quinlan, help me! I don’t know what to do, where to go. What shall I do, Miss Quinlan? I’m lost. I’m wretched!”
She put her arm around me.
“There, there, Mr. Molise. I know how you must feel, I know. It takes time, my dear man. You must be strong, for your father’s sake.”
All my life was tumbling around me, and I seized upon her with my hands and with my grief. “Oh, please, Miss Quinlan. Fuck me, please, please. Save me, fuck me!”
She freed herself and looked straight into my eyes, startled, hesitant.
“You ask me to do that?”
“Oh, yes, Miss Quinlan! I love you, I adore you! Have pity on me.”
She took a backward step and studied me.
“Well…it’s possible, I guess.”
“Please, dear, wonderful, beautiful Miss Quinlan!”
“I have to go to the supermarket first.”
“May I come with you? I’ll push your shopping cart.”
“If you like,” she smiled.
I smothered her hands with kisses and tears. I tried to fall on my knees but she held me up. “Don’t do that, Mr. Molise. Stand up, please.”
“Oh, thank you, angel. Thank you, thank you!”
We got in my car and drove to the market, my tears drying fast, Miss Quinlan at my side with her pretty nurse’s hat over her blond Nordic braids, her knees like pomegranates under her hose, tight together, prim, so ladylike.
How delicious she looked, walking down the market aisles, selecting purchases, dropping them into the shopping cart. I insisted on buying her a bottle of Scotch and a coconut cake and thick lamb chops, and when we went through the checkout stand I paid for the whole damn thing, just to hear her gasp with gratitude and call me crazy. We got to my car again and I opened the door for her, and her magnificent derriere floated past my eyes like the grace of God, like the Holy Ghost. My old man would have loved it; he would have pinched it for sure.
We drove to her apartment, which was above a garage two blocks from the hospital. I carried the groceries while she unlocked the door. That apartment! It was like entering a hospital emergency room. All white it was, white tile along the sink, a white Formica top to the bar separating the kitchen and the living room, and still more white covering the stainless steel tubular chairs and divan. The sharp odor of Lysol cut across the atmosphere. Everything was closeted, hidden—dishes, pots and pans. Even the toaster on the bar was concealed under something plastic. At Miss Quinlan’s instructions I put the sacks of groceries in the kitchen sink.
“You can undress here,” she said crisply. “Put your clothes on the sofa.”
She disappeared into the bedroom and locked the door. I pulled off my clothes and laid them out on the divan, neatly, in keeping with the austerity of the place.
As I finished, Miss Quinlan came from the bedroom. She was naked and not nearly as attractive as she had been in her nursing costume. Whereas I had conceived her a woman with spacious breasts, they were really almost nonexistent, sorry little dabs of flesh not much larger than a man’s. Then I saw the flesh marks of falsies, which didn’t disturb her in the least.
“Are we all undressed?” she said cheerfully, but with a professional intonation.
“Okay,” I answered, standing up, hiding my precious loins with two hands.
She smiled.
“My goodness, aren’t we modest.” She gestured toward the bathroom. “This way, please.”
I followed her into the bathroom, taking note of her drooping buttocks without the trimness her uniform created. The cleavage wasn’t fetching either. Both buttocks just hung there lazily
, carelessly, and I began to feel that Miss Quinlan was at least sixty.
I stood by as she filled the washbasin and stirred up a solution of soapsuds. None of this invigorated my sword, or, as my father called it, my spada. In fact, it began a sullen regression, and when Miss Quinlan grasped it there was little to seize, and she shook it and called it a shy and naughty boy.
“Prophylaxis!” she exclaimed, scooping soapsuds upon it. “That’s the name of the game. Prophylaxis!”
The spada began to respond as she manipulated it with both hands. “The dear boy,” she crooned. “He’s such an angel.” She handed me a towel, and as I dried myself Miss Quinlan made a soap and water solution, poured it into a douche bag, hung the bag on a hook, sat on the toilet, and plunged the douche nozzle between her thighs.
She toweled herself off, seized my spada, and marched me into the bedroom. By now I was without passion but overwhelmed with curiosity. Where would it all end? Miss Quinlan was a fiend but she was fun too, her flabby old buttocks bouncing as she pulled back the bedspread, kneaded the pillows, and nodded approvingly at the bed of love. On swift bare feet she dashed into the kitchen and returned with a jar of honey I had seen her purchase at the market.
“Jasmine honey!” she exclaimed, unscrewing the lid from the jar. “Taste!” She flecked a bit of it on her index finger and held it out. I opened my mouth to partake of it, but it wasn’t for me at all, it was for my spada, a tiny dab with which to get acquainted, smack on the tip. With sudden and enormous energy the spada came forth, head aflame, and looked around, ready to fight. I felt a moment of shame. What a ghastly way to honor my poor father. But I was caught up in it, I had asked Miss Quinlan for it, and there was no reason to stop now, in spite of my father, my wife, and my two sons.
Seating herself on the edge of the bed. Miss Quinlan spread a thin layer of jasmine honey over my spada, from the scabbard to the tip. The golden gleam of it delighted her and with a murmur of desire she partook of the delicacy. The dear Miss Quinlan! She took everything—I felt it all going away and out of me, my sword, my glands, my heart, my lungs and my brains, a banquet for a rather elderly queen—and as the sorcery subsided she lay back on the bed, panting desperately, and I sat pooped in a chair. She had taken everything, and I had nothing to give in return.
And as she remained motionless, her arm covering her eyes, I moved to the bathroom and cleansed my sword with warm water and a washcloth. I saw her lying in the same position as I pulled on my clothes. My eyes scanned the apartment for a last look around. A cold, sterile place, but with a terrible beauty, the beauty of loneliness and two strangers sharing an intimacy, the beauty one felt but did not see. Unforgettable.
I started for the bedroom to say good-bye, but in the doorway I saw something that made me hesitate. Miss Quinlan lay as before, her arm shielding her eyes. But her hair had moved. That lovely pile of Nordic blondness wasn’t real after all. It had slipped to the side, over her ear, revealing a white, bald skull. It humbled me. Had I stayed longer I would have burst into tears. How good she was!
“Thank you, Miss Quinlan,” I said.
“You’re welcome, I’m sure.” It was a tired whisper.
She did not move.
“My father thanks you too.”
“He was a dear man. I’m so glad I could help.”
“Good-bye, Miss Quinlan.”
“Good-bye.”
29
THE DAY BEFORE the funeral Harriet arrived from Redondo Beach with our sons, and I was at the airport to meet them. She kissed me and stepped back to search my eyes for intimations of infidelity. She must have seen the death of my father in my tired gaze, and the strain of my grief, but I knew she didn’t find anything of Miss Quinlan reflected there, for she gave me a trusting smile and kissed me again.
I had not seen my sons in a month. They had been in Ensenada on what they jestingly referred to as a fishing trip, having driven down there with two women in the van.
Dominic was twenty-four and Phillip two years younger. Their stubbled faces darkened by the Mexican sun, their hair down below their necks, they were dressed in denim jackets and pants, their feet in thonged sandals. They looked like rock freaks, not mourning grandsons of an old man gone from their lives.
Walking across the parking lot I said, “I hope you brought some decent clothes.”
They looked at me in that cynical, aloof way of theirs, and Dominic said, “Don’t worry about it, Dad.”
“I don’t want you at the funeral in those outfits.”
“Yeah. We know.”
“How about haircuts?”
“No way.”
They tossed their grips into the luggage compartment and got into the back seat of the rented car. Harriet slid in beside me, and as I moved the car out I turned to her.
“Have they registered for the new term?”
“They said so,” she answered doubtfully.
I looked over my shoulder at them.
“How about it, Phil. Did you register?” He was in Business Administration.
“Yes, Dad. All taken care of.”
“How about you, Dominic?”
“I did not register,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I took a job.”
“What kind of a job?”
“I’m a checker in a supermarket.”
“What the hell for? What about your degree?”
“I make seven dollars an hour. You know any marine biologists earning that kind of money?”
“Any jerk can check groceries. You need that degree.”
“You didn’t get yours,” he said.
Harriet and I looked at one another in the usual bewilderment. We could not deal with them. They were spoiled rotten, those two, arrogant and sure of themselves. It wasn’t their intelligence, it was their smug cleverness, their icy ability to verbalize. They never fumbled or groped for answers. They were omniscient and trigger-happy.
For a while we drove in silence. They lit small Mexican cigars and offered us the pack; Harriet took one but I declined.
“How old was Grandpa?” Phillip asked.
“In a few months he would have been seventy-seven.”
“The old cock,” Dominic smiled. “He did all right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what I mean. You’ve told us a hundred stories about Grandpa.”
“I liked him,” Phillip said. “He used to take us to that old Italian saloon when we were little and show us off.”
“The Café Roma,” Dominic remembered. “He loved that vino.”
“And brandy,” Phillip said. “First thing in the morning, brandy in his coffee.”
“He had style,” Dominic said.
We moved east on the freeway, the traffic light and swift. Clouds were piling up to the north and I wondered about rain at tomorrow’s funeral.
“Dad,” Phillip said. “I have a question.”
“Fire away.”
“Are you a diabetic?”
I had thought much of it since my father’s death, worried about it, discussed it with Dr. Maselli. Would it hit me someday? It was a possibility.
“No. I’m not a diabetic.”
“How about Dominic and me? It’s inherited, isn’t it? It’s genetic.”
“The potential is there. Not the disease.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Diet. Avoid sugar, and chances are it’ll skip right over you.”
“Chances are it won’t, too.”
“What are you asking for—a written guarantee? It’s not a bad disease, You can live with it. Your grandfather proved that.”
“You’re dreaming,” Phillip said. “There’s no cure for diabetes.”
“No cure, but there’s control, with insulin. Besides, you haven’t got it, so what the fuck are you talking about?”
That chilled him and he was quiet, but Dominic came on: “Dad, would you have had children if you’d known there was dia
betes in your genes?”
I knew they were working their way to that question, and now that it was asked I found it hard to deal with.
“How should I know?” I said.
“No,” Harriet said. “I wouldn’t have had children.”
Touché! The statement slammed the lid on a Pandora’s box of silent speculation as the four of us pondered the nonexistence of Dominic and Phillip. Then the two began to laugh.
We drove to my mother’s house and found it a place of doom and dirge, the cars of mourners parked on both sides of the street, my father’s old friends slouched about the front porch drinking wine from Mama’s treasured crystal glasses, vexed and uncomfortable from the wails of their wives inside. Italians loved their living, but sometimes they loved their dead even more, specially like these womenfolk gathered in every room of the house, swarming about my black-draped mother like dark ants around their queen, sobbing, rattling their rosaries, rolling their necks, embracing the distraught widow, pumping grief into her and intoxicated by the grief she pumped back.
I didn’t blame Phillip and Dominic for not entering the house, and while they stayed in the car Harriet and I pushed our way up the porch and into Mama’s bedroom where Harriet squirmed through the throng of sobbing women to my mother’s side. She kissed Mama and came away with a sticky smear of tears across her cheek.
We could not remain there. Retreating to the kitchen, we saw the table heavy with salami, cheese, wine and fruit, preparations for hours of grief-venting, too much to endure, too absurd.
Slipping out the back way, we darted behind Mrs. Credenza’s hedge next door and hurried along it to the street and the car. As I set the gears I heard Virgil’s voice from the porch, frantically calling my name and running toward us.
“Have you seen Mario?” he asked.
“No.”
“The son of a bitch. He was supposed to bring the pizza.”
I steered the car into the street and drove over to my mother-in-law’s house. As Harriet and the boys got out I caught a glimpse of Hilda Dietrich peering from behind the curtained front door, and when I drove off she stepped out to greet them with open arms.
