Across the Table

by Linda Cardillo

  I got up and held my back straight the whole way down that highly polished corridor. But instead of turning for home, I went in the opposite direction toward the waterfront. Some of the piers weren’t the best place for a woman to walk, even in broad daylight, but there was a short stretch near Lewis Wharf where I could sit on a stone wall and see and smell the ocean. It was where I went when I needed to collect my thoughts.

  I hated the way I felt just then. Small. A failure as a mother. Oh, I’d have my words with Al Jr. when he got home from school, especially about the older boys he was supposedly spending time with. The neighborhood was changing, not that there hadn’t always been tough guys hanging out on the corners. But it wasn’t what I intended for my own kids.

  I felt as if my hold on Al Jr. was slipping, loosening far sooner than I knew a mother ought to let go. It wasn’t just that Al and I had gone to Florida for a couple of weeks. I was being pulled in too many directions—the kids, the restaurant, the strain between Al and me since Havana—and I wasn’t giving enough attention to any of them.

  I was falling apart. I felt like I had a piece missing, something important that the people I loved needed from me and that I couldn’t give. That I didn’t have. Which was why Al had gone looking for it elsewhere in Havana, and Al Jr. had tried to find it by seeking out boys he thought were big shots in the neighborhood.

  The wind off the harbor and my tears stung my cheeks. I felt frozen to the stone wall, unable to move, not knowing how I was going to fill this empty space inside me. But the afternoon was wearing on. Soon enough, Mike and Al Jr. would be home from school and Toni would wake from her nap. Mama and Al were already in the kitchen prepping for the evening meal. They were all expecting me.

  But I didn’t move. It scared me that I wasn’t picking myself up and getting on with what I recognized as my responsibilities. I didn’t think a conversation with a nun—even a Reverend Mother—could push me over the edge like this. But I knew it wasn’t just the judgment that I was a poor mother.

  I knew I’d bottled up my anger and kept my mouth shut about Havana because to all outward appearances nothing had happened there. I had grown up watching women of my mother’s generation look the other way when their husbands had an amante—a mistress—on the side, as long as he put food on the table and kept up the appearance of a marriage. I just had never understood the cost.

  Al had slipped back into our Boston routines without a hitch. But he’d never said to me, “I swear, Rose, I wasn’t with another woman.” Because I’d never asked him. What I realized now, sitting on this cold rock and shivering as the sun set behind me, was that I needed to ask him. I wouldn’t be able to let go of the doubts that were eating away at my insides. And if he said yes, I needed to know why he’d been unfaithful.

  Sometimes it’s hard to look at yourself and face the truth. I really wanted to bury in some remote corner of my heart whatever Al had done in Havana. But no matter how many layers I tried to muffle it with, I could still feel it—like the pounding of the telltale heart in Poe’s story. Well, I wasn’t going to let this make me crazy.

  Wrapping my coat tightly around me, I stood. The street-lights had come on. My feet were frozen, but I got the circulation back in them as I started walking. About halfway down Atlantic Avenue I saw a figure coming toward me. It was Al. I could see the white edges of his chef’s jacket flapping beneath the hem of his old navy peacoat.

  “Rose! Rose! Where the hell have you been all afternoon? I called Cookie and Patsy. Nobody had seen you. When it got dark, I thought maybe you had an accident! I couldn’t stay in the restaurant not knowing where you were. I was pacing like a madman. First, I was furious with you for not showing up or even calling, then I was just worried. The kids are upset. What happened to you?”

  “I got lost, Al. In my thoughts. I was upset after meeting with Reverend Mother about Al Jr. and we need to talk about that, but later. I went down to the water to think.”

  “How long does it take to think?”

  I could sense Al’s frustration and anger. Maybe this wasn’t the best time and place to have this conversation, but I’d spent the last month finding too many reasons not to have it at all.

  “Long enough to consider not coming home at all.”

  “What are you talking about, Rose? What did the nun say that would make you not come home? What did Al Jr. do?

  “It’s not Al Jr. But what happened at my meeting made me ask myself how I was living my life, and the answer is that I’ve been avoiding the truth.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve been hiding my anger. From you. From myself.”

  “Anger about what?”

  I took a deep breath. “Havana.”

  I thought he’d start again about babysitting his cousin in the casino. But he didn’t.

  “What do you want to know, Rose?”

  “I want to know if you had an affair in Havana.”

  The cold moisture that had been blowing in off the harbor all afternoon was turning to an icy rain. But the discomfort I saw in Al’s face had nothing to do with the weather.

  “I don’t want to hurt you with my answer.”

  “You’ll hurt me more if you lie.”

  “Her name was Estella. I spent one night with her. That’s all. I swear to God. I’m sorry, Rose.”

  I felt a different kind of chill than what I’d been sitting through all afternoon on the pier. It spread from inside me, filling my belly with such pain that I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk. Was this really better than the gnawing doubt?

  “Why, Al?” I could barely say the words. “Am I not enough anymore?”

  “It’s nothing you did or didn’t do. I was a jerk. Caught up in the high-rolling, anything-goes atmosphere of the casino. Telling myself that after all I went through in the war, all the struggle to recover from my wounds, all the work to make the business a success, I deserved it. It was…like I was outside my life, and that whatever I did wouldn’t touch you or the kids. But after that I could tell something was wrong between us. You may think I don’t notice but, Rose, I know—maybe sometimes even before you do—when something’s bothering you. That’s why I came looking for you tonight, when I realized you weren’t with anybody and hadn’t told us where you were. I knew I had to find you. I knew I didn’t want to lose you. What I did was stupid and selfish.”

  I didn’t want to lose him, either. But the pain of his betrayal was too fresh. The knowledge I had now had ended my doubts. I certainly didn’t have to wonder anymore. But what I knew didn’t give me any comfort. It didn’t show me what to do next.

  “I have no idea what to say to you right now, Al. I can’t even think, I hurt so much. Let’s just go home. If the kids are upset I need to be there.”

  We trudged silently. When we started to cross Hanover Street he took my elbow protectively and I flinched.

  I had never felt so alone, not even when he was overseas.

  When we got back to Salem Street, Al headed to the kitchen door of the restaurant and I went straight upstairs. Papa was with the kids. I could see from the dishes in the sink that they’d eaten macaroni.

  Al Jr. was in the bedroom he shared with Mike and didn’t come out. He knew I’d gone to see Reverend Mother and had probably put two and two together. Toni was lying on the couch fingering her blanket next to Papa, whose idea of babysitting is to read Il Progresso. He figures that as long as he’s in the apartment, the kids can find him if they need him. Mike was sitting at the kitchen table with newspapers spread out, gluing together a model of a navy destroyer.

  When I came in, Papa put the newspaper down. “Dove eri tu?”

  His English is passable, but if he doesn’t want the kids to know what he’s talking about, he uses Italian.

  “I had things to take care of. Important things. Thank you for watching the kids.”

  He shrugged, folded the paper and got up to leave.

  “They need their mother,” he mumbled
.

  Toni scrambled into my arms. “Where were you, Mommy? I woked up and you weren’t there.”

  “I had a meeting, baby. But I’m home now. Let’s go have a bath.”

  I stuck my head in the kitchen. “Mike, do you have any homework?”

  He looked up sheepishly from his model.

  “Just some arithmetic. I have to memorize the nine times table.”

  “Come and sit by the bathroom door while I give Toni her bath and go over them with me.”

  It was eight o’clock before I got Toni to bed and Mike had recited his multiplication table often enough to have it stick. I let him go back to his model and then went in to talk to Al Jr. Al was still downstairs in the restaurant but at that moment I didn’t want him with me.

  Those first couple of years of Al Jr.’s life, when we only had each other, we grew close. I could read in his face, without his saying anything, if something was wrong.

  The lights were out and he was in bed. Now, this was a kid who thought he was too old for a regular bedtime, a kid who considered himself beyond the rules I set for his little brother and sister.

  I flicked on the light and sat on the edge of his bed. “I know you’re not asleep, A.J. Sit up, because I need to talk to you.”

  He turned his back to me and pulled the covers over his head. I had no patience for this tonight.

  “Sit up right now, young man. Unless you want to have this conversation with the back of my hand.”

  That got him upright.

  “Reverend Mother tells me you’re being disrespectful at school and acting like those smart alecks down on Prince Street who do nothing but hang out on corners and smoke cigarettes. Is this true?”

  It seemed to me I was asking for a lot of truth from the men in my life that day.

  “They gave me a quarter for running errands for them.”

  “What kind of errands?”

  “I got their cigarettes.”

  Oh, my God. Fireworks were going off in my brain. “You didn’t steal those cigarettes, did you?”

  “No! They gave me the cash and I ran down to the news store to get them.”

  “So, you’re their errand boy, and for that privilege they let you hang around with them?”

  “I’m the only one they talk to. The other guys in my class are such babies. I’m not a baby anymore.”

  He was going to be twelve in six months. Now, in my book, that’s not a baby, but it’s not a man, either. He was all arms and legs, not even peach fuzz over his lip.

  “No, you’re not a baby. You’re a boy. Who ought to know better than to answer back or treat a teacher without respect. No matter what those morons on the corner do or say. Did it ever occur to you that the reason they’re hanging out is because they have nothing in their heads? No dreams to strive for. No respect for themselves, let alone their teachers or parents. I don’t want you running any more errands for them. If you’re looking for more work and more quarters, I’ve got plenty for you to do downstairs. And I want nothing but ‘Yes, Sister’ from you at school. I never want to be called into Reverend Mother’s office again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  I hoped that would be the end of it. He had two more years to get through at St. John’s, and I didn’t need more of Reverend Mother’s withering judgment or, God forbid, Al Jr. getting into trouble outside school with mischief that crossed the line into petty crime.

  I was exhausted. I yelled at Mike to clean up the mess on the kitchen table and get to bed. I couldn’t even give him a hug when I saw the tears well up in his eyes. What had he done wrong? It was his brother who’d gotten into trouble and his mother who’d been gone all afternoon.

  I left the dirty dishes in the sink and went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Too many pieces of my life were falling apart. I’d always felt rock-solid, been the one to make decisions and carry them out. For the first time, I didn’t know what to do.

  I couldn’t stay in bed tossing and turning alone. Maybe it would’ve been worse if Al had been there, maybe not. I wasn’t sure I could stand having him beside me, knowing he’d shared a bed with the Cuban. But I wasn’t sure if I could stand never having him in my bed again, either.

  I got up, put on my robe and slippers and went to the kitchen to heat myself some milk and a little brandy. I washed the dishes, figuring I’d only have a hardened crust of tomatoes to deal with in the morning if I left them.

  The next morning was St. Joseph’s Day. I’d forgotten. A day to invite people in off the street to a feast at the St. Joseph Table. A couple of years ago we’d begun to invite the neighborhood charitable societies for a free lunch in the restaurant.

  Usually I spent the day before St. Joseph’s baking cream puffs. I hurried out to the back landing off the kitchen where we keep our extra refrigerator. Inside it were the eggs and fresh ricotta I’d had delivered in the morning, which meant Mama hadn’t gone ahead and made the puffs when I didn’t come back this afternoon.

  I lugged everything out of the refrigerator, rolled up my sleeves and put on my apron. I have to admit, furiously beating the eggs into the flour to make the cream puff dough was a lot better use of my agita than struggling to fall asleep.

  By the time Al came upstairs from the restaurant I had three racks cooling on the kitchen table, another two dozen puffs in the oven and I was whipping sugar into the ricotta for the filling.

  He didn’t say anything. I could feel the muscles of my back stiffen, and my fingers clenched the whisk in my hand. But I kept my hand moving. I heard a sigh that sounded like relief to me. That I hadn’t packed my bags—or his. That I was standing in my nightgown in the kitchen with a smudge of flour on my cheek, doing what I always did on the day before the feast of St. Joseph.

  He went to the drawer and pulled out a knife and a pastry bag and started slitting the cooling puff shells. I finished preparing the ricotta cream and removed the last of the shells from the oven. He filled the pastry bag with the ricotta and began piping it into the puffs.

  After that, I placed them on trays, wrapped them and set them in the refrigerator.

  Neither of us had said a word.

  Al was filling the sink with soapy water as I closed the refrigerator door on the last tray of cream puffs. He washed; I dried.

  When we had nothing left to do in the kitchen, the thread that had been holding us together snapped. In the kitchen, we’d done what we’d always done; we hadn’t had to make any choices or ask any questions.

  But now, faced with moving from kitchen to bedroom, one question loomed over us.

  It was Al who broke the silence.

  “Do you want me to sleep on the couch?” he asked, standing in front of the linen closet.

  Did I want him out of our bed? No. But the way I saw it, he’d taken himself out of it by his own action.

  “Yes,” I said. I handed him bedding from the closet. I went into our bedroom and shut the door. No night I’d spent without him during the war was lonelier or harder than that night.

  In the morning, despite how late we’d been up making the cream puffs, he was awake before the kids and had put away the sheets. He had a pot of coffee going and was reading the Globe in the kitchen when the boys stumbled to the table. Like the night before, we slipped into a wordless routine. He poured milk into cereal bowls I filled with Rice Krispies. I signed school papers while he made sure the boys put on their hats and mittens.

  We lived like this for a week, speaking to each other only the bare essentials, sleeping separately, working side by side without even an accidental brushing of hands. We both had darkening circles under our eyes. I was barely eating.

  Mama, who never misses anything, commented on what was hanging on my clothesline the morning I did the laundry.

  “You got too many sheets this week. You got company? Or is somebody in your house acting like a stranger?”

  I didn’t want to listen to her simplistic advice about not going to bed angry, and I definitely did
n’t want to discuss why Al was sleeping on the couch.

  “It’s nothing, Ma. Al’s back was bothering him so he tried sleeping on a different bed.”

  That week was when the gift arrived. Oh, I’m not talking about anything lavish. I didn’t feel as if he was trying to buy his way back into my bed. But one afternoon after I’d put Toni down for a nap I walked into the bedroom and found a single stem of Chaconia in a vase. It was the flower that grew all around our bungalow in Trinidad. I don’t know how he’d managed to find one in Boston, in March. Propped up against the vase was a snapshot of me in a sundress leaning against our porch railing with one of the deep crimson flowers tucked behind my ear. I was smiling.

  You know, it caught me off guard. The memory of that time in our lives—before the war, before Al’s injuries, before this tearing us apart.

  I took the flower out of the vase, put it in my hair and went downstairs to the restaurant. When Al saw me, I watched the light come back into his eyes.

  After we closed the restaurant that night and Al came upstairs, he retrieved the sheets for the couch as usual. But I put them back in the closet.

  He stood in the bedroom doorway.

  “Do you forgive me, Rose?”

  I looked at him and saw the pain and longing in his face. I also saw the man who’d had fought to get back on his feet after the war, the man who was the father of my beautiful children, who adored those children and who worked sixteen hours a day to make sure they had what they needed.

  And I saw a man I knew loved me.

  He’d made a mistake. But I wasn’t going to force him—or all of us—to pay for it the rest of his life. I’d seen marriages like that. The North End is like a small town; everybody knows everybody else’s business. I knew women filled with bitterness. They had the things their husbands provided but they didn’t have love. They never let go of whatever pain had been inflicted on them thirty years ago. I didn’t want to be one of those women.

  “I forgive you, Al.”

  And I took him back into our bed.

  It wasn’t like our wedding night, or the night after the war when he was finally whole again. But it was new. I don’t know how to explain it. We were like strangers and old lovers at the same time. We had added new layers over the core of knowledge we had about each other. My layer was something I’d learned about myself; I understood the price of honesty in a marriage and knew I was willing to pay it. Al’s layer was taking responsibility for what he did.