by Tony Romano
“I was thinking,” Victoria said in the coolness of the tunnel. She held her purse to her chest and thought of the Negro girl in Arkansas. She spoke louder than she needed to, wanting to hear her voice carom off the mortared walls. “This is our last year.”
Darlene chewed her gum. “Yeah, our last year.”
“What are they going to do to us? Kick us out?”
They came out of the tunnel and moved quickly down Paulina Street, then turned left on Ohio. “I figure I can handle three four days a week,” Victoria said. “But that’s about all.”
Darlene’s breaths were short. She reached into her purse for a couple of Lucky Strikes. “Slow down, will ya,” she said.
Victoria heard the familiar exasperation in her friend’s voice, and they both slowed and glanced at each other and rolled their eyes. It was a look between friends that said, We’ve covered this ground before. Something had changed between them lately, and they weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Although Victoria had always been the more manic of the two in many ways, it should have been Darlene stealing newspapers and plotting to cut out of school. And Victoria should have been the one to worry and balk before finally agreeing to go along. They both counted on that. At least they used to.
Darlene tapped out a cigarette and held it out for Victoria. “Now what?” she said.
“We’re out. That’s what,” Victoria said. “No mother-fricking shorthand drills today.”
St. Columbkille offered the typical three-year high-school-equivalency program for girls that prepared them with typing and shorthand and taught them the necessary domestic skills they needed for their future as Catholic wives and mothers. In religion class, where they sat next to each other in the back, Victoria and Darlene had already begun the school year exchanging notes questioning the nuns’ authority in such matters. “What does she know about husbands?” Darlene wrote about Sister Francine. “How does she please her man?” Victoria destroyed the note and returned a clean one that said, “Missionary style. Of course.”
Victoria wasn’t going to be stupid about the note passing, but who cared if Sister Francine found the note? They could kick her out and not let her graduate until next year and Mama would scream and Zia Lupa would join in. Or they wouldn’t let her graduate at all and she’d go directly into the workforce without a diploma and Mama would scream and Zia Lupa would join in. Victoria might welcome the screams. Even Lupa’s.
Darlene suggested they take the bus to the beach, but they both glanced at their school uniforms and decided against it. Victoria turned north at the next intersection, then turned east down Erie.
“Ah, I get it. Walk by the club maybe?” Darlene said.
“Maybe.”
“I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“You and Eddie.”
“What’s there to get?”
A car drove by, and Darlene cupped her cigarette inside her palm, away from the street. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d be interested in, that’s all.”
“He’s cute.”
“He’s okay and everything.” Darlene pushed out her gum into the silver wrapper she’d saved and tucked it in her purse. “You know that truck guy, the one with the tomatoes and strawberries and stuff? You know how he kind of looks at us, kind of creepy like?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he reminds me of Eddie.”
“Get out.”
“No, he does.”
Victoria hadn’t made the connection before, but Darlene was right. Pencil on a mustache and put a crushed red beret on Eddie, and they’d be blood relatives. Because of the way the truck driver looked at her, Victoria had imagined once climbing up on that truck and jostling through the crates of grapes and cherries to find a dark place at the back where the smell of dirt on the watermelon would mingle with the man’s scent. She imagined those burned, leathery arms wrapped around her and the man’s hot breaths and her gasping.
But that thought came before. The thoughts that came before, the vivid ones like this one that slammed into her present thoughts, caused a tight rippling in her chest. They took her back to a before when a little boy in a second-story apartment on Superior Street took up his own small space in this world and breathed his own pocket of air. She had to shake loose the icy shiver that ran up the small of her back.
“Maybe you’re right,” Victoria said.
“Maybe you and Eddie will get married and sell cucumbers off the back of a truck, huh?”
“Maybe.” Victoria dragged on her cigarette. They walked awhile in silence. “Everything looks so…”
“So what?”
“Dingy.”
“Dingy?”
“Yeah, you know.” It was about as far as Victoria was willing to go to let Darlene know how she’d been feeling lately. And Darlene, who’d understood everything before, seemed unable to pick up on the subtle cues her friend provided. Darlene was under the mistaken impression that the two friends could simply return to the way things used to be.
“See that house over there?” Victoria said. “The one with the bicycle tire? Eddie says there’s a family of Gypsies who live there. One of the Gypsy girls tried to pick up his great uncle. He’s seventy-eight. Eddie says that’s what they do. They find someone with dough and marry him. And then—” She lowered her voice as they neared the house, feeling the thrill of what she was going to say next. “Then they poison the guy, mix it in with his food. After a few weeks he can’t even get out of bed.”
Darlene stuck another stick of spearmint in her mouth. “No shit,” she said. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
“You’re sick,” Victoria said, and laughed, but felt disappointed that Darlene had missed the gravity of the story.
They smoked and drank 7-Ups the rest of the morning. In the afternoon they walked along Chicago Avenue and strolled the aisles of Goldblatt’s and Woolworth’s. The next day they cut school again but wore cutoffs under their skirts so they could stroll along the beach at Olive Park and sit on the stones at the pier.
“We should probably visit Sister Francine tomorrow, don’t you think?” Darlene said. She looked out to where Lake Michigan seemed to touch the sky.
“Did they call your house yesterday?”
“No.”
“They’ll call today.”
“You think?”
Victoria shot her an annoyed glance. “Do you think, do you think? Yeah, I think.” Victoria took in the sweeping sky and the breaks in the tide and thought about the Arkansas girl who was probably not in school today either. There wasn’t a single story about her in today’s paper. In a couple of weeks everyone would forget about her.
“What’ll you tell your mom?” Darlene asked. She held out a cigarette for Victoria.
“It’s a mistake. That’s all. One big mistake.”
“What are they gonna do to us, right?” Darlene asked.
“Right. What’re they gonna do?”
Victoria leaned over with her cigarette to get a light. At the end of the cigarette she saw the lighter’s spark and the small flame, the plume of smoke rising, and beyond that, her friend’s worried eyes. Victoria drew in a deep, searing drag on the cigarette and realized with a clarity that sent a pang of grief through her that Darlene understood everything. The worry in her eyes wasn’t about her own punishment from Sister Francine. And she wasn’t at the beach because she needed to be there. Darlene was there for Victoria. Because Victoria needed her there. There was even a note of apology in those eyes. They were saying, I wish I could do more. They were saying, I don’t know what else to do.
“Thanks,” Victoria said. “Thanks for the light.” She leaned back against the rocks. “You think Sister Francine smokes?” she asked.
No one used the word curse, not even Zia Lupa, but that’s what they all believed had befallen them. That’s what the older ones believed at least. Angela Rosa and Agostino, Vince and Zia Lupa. Santo didn’t know what to believe. A curse s
eemed to him about as plausible an explanation as any. Someone fucked up, maybe they all fucked up, and now God was having His turn. Santo was willing to admit his part in the grand scheme. He wasn’t exactly living the saint’s life. But if that’s the way things worked in this world, if life was going to be a sonuvabitch, then he was going to be a sonuvabitch back. He didn’t know what this would mean for him—the line was a version of one of Uncle Vince’s—but it lifted Santo’s spirits to make the sentiment his own.
Santo did feel like a sonuvabitch for allowing Eddie Milano to see his sister and for borrowing his copper-colored ’52 DeSoto with the white top, Eddie’s aunt’s really, and for driving to the corner of Grand and Halsted to find the trolley bus that picked up a woman ten years too old for him, a married woman at that. He knew that Illinois Bell was on South Halsted, eight or nine miles down, but Sylvia Gomez would never believe he just happened to be driving by the very place she worked at precisely three o’clock as the day workers spilled into the streets. Instead, he would park southbound on Halsted until he saw a bus approaching, circle around to Grand, and by the time he returned to the corner, pulling up to her stop, she would be waiting there with a punched transfer crimped in her hand. She wasn’t on the first bus, so he turned on Halsted again, sat back, and waited.
Summer hadn’t materialized the way he’d hoped, of course. He spent most of his time working at Mio Fratello. After the funeral, his father sat him down in one of the booths that had held mourners just days before and slapped down four twenties, fanned out on the table. He gazed at his son, as if this would be a pivotal moment in both their lives. “You make eighteen soon,” he said. “You need pay.” He slid the money toward Santo. Then with a suddenness that startled Santo, he pushed himself from the booth. He looked at the floor and scratched the back of his head. “Ogni venerdi. Va bene?” Santo wondered if this salary was a new idea or brought on by what had happened to their family. “Every Friday’s fine, Papa. Are you sure…” But his father walked away. Santo was never told what he’d need to do to earn his salary. He was never even given a schedule of hours. Though he saw some advantage in this, he felt he needed something more definite in his life. He sat in the booth, staring at the twenties, wondering what his father had planned to say to him.
Uncle Vince began treating him like a partner, showing him the three books he kept for the business. One book was for the IRS, Vince told him with a wink, another was for a potential buyer, and the third included the actual take and expenses of each day. The two doctored books were cheap, ringed notebooks from Goldblatt’s. But the one with the real numbers had gold embroidery embossed on its rigid black cover, brought over from the old country no doubt, and the edges were dyed a pale crimson with gold stipples. Inside, the gridded pages were tinted mint green, and Santo knew the paper was soft by the way it absorbed the ink. That first day Santo was about to suggest using a pencil, but he liked the sound of the pen scratching along the paper and kept quiet. Soon Santo began to enjoy the afternoon ritual of retrieving the three books from three far corners of Vince’s apartment and standing over his uncle’s shoulder as he recorded and juggled and converted his numbers with a single-mindedness that was inspiring. Uncle Vince always complained that America had no history, that everything was new in America, and Santo assumed this handing down of the books was Vince’s meager attempt at preservation. His ancestors across the ocean had the Colosseum; Santo would have this black book.
Regardless, Santo appreciated the small attentions his uncle paid. Uncles were good for that. They didn’t carry the baggage of fathers, who had to keep their distance for reasons unknown to Santo. Uncles were allowed to wink and push a cigarette at you now and then, and they taught you to drive and lent you their car and winked again as they pointed to the backseat. They didn’t tell you to be careful, they didn’t warn you about taking care of the leather seats, they just handed over the keys. Santo decided he’d be more like an uncle than a father to his own son one day.
Another bus approached, and Santo was remarkably calm. He waited for the Halsted bus to pass him this time before he drove around. It would be better if she waited a few minutes. He circled around and spotted her from a block away and slowed down to catch the light. He’d planned on staring straight ahead for a while at the light before casually glancing over at the stop, nodding, then waving her toward the car. But this seemed to him like something his father would do, so he pulled up, leaned over, and pushed open the passenger door. There were two other women and a whiskered man at the stop, and they all shifted their gaze to the car. They stooped forward to peer inside, hope in some of their eyes, wariness in others. A wave of recognition hit Sylvia, and she took a step forward.
“I’m going your way,” Santo said, which sounded to him like the dumbest thing anyone could say. But she got in. One bare leg after another. She pulled on the hem of her citrine-green dress until it covered her knees. They pulled away from the curb, and the would-be passengers looked on with envy.
“What a nice surprise. How are you, Santo? How’s your family?”
“About as good as anyone can expect, I guess.”
She touched his arm and told him how sorry she was about his brother and expressed a string of condolences. They talked about the car and her work and then settled into a strained silence.
After a while she turned to him. “Hula Hoops,” she said, smiling.
Santo knew exactly what she meant but feigned confusion.
“Hula Hoops,” she said again. “That’s what I couldn’t remember the name of. At the feast.”
“Hula Hoops.”
“It’s a stupid name. That’s why I couldn’t remember it.”
Santo wondered if others had these moments when your head suddenly swims at the recollection of an instant. Your thoughts reel and you’re there for a second or two, in that other life, the sensory trace so palpable you can smell it, a whiff as potent as a sharpened pencil. And then the feeling passes and gives way to a kind of sadness that you can never adequately explain. For an instant Santo was there. At the feast. When life was bigger. He glanced out his window and sighed.
“My brother, Alfredo, has one,” Santo told her. “But it got smashed in one spot and it doesn’t really go around good anymore.”
“You’ll have to buy him another. Now that you’re working.”
“How did you know I was working?”
She’d been clutching her purse and now dropped it to her feet. She covered her mouth as she cleared her throat. No lipstick. Little if any makeup. A hint of weariness in her work-shift eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. School’s over. I just assumed, I guess. Your father said you could run the place.”
“My father? When?”
“Out back. When we used to sit and have wine.” She pushed her dark hair behind one shoulder. “I don’t see him out there anymore.”
Santo wanted to ask if that disappointed her. Not seeing the bastard out there. He wanted to tell her about the other bastard, his half brother. If he were alone in the car he’d start thinking about poor Mama and get crazy with rage, a rage targeted mainly at his father, but he’d been directing it toward his mother lately, too. For being so naive. For overlooking, as even Santo had, all the chances Papa had to cheat. During his morning walks, when he didn’t come home for lunch, when Vince left him alone all day on Wednesdays, when he had to meet with the accountant from Abruzzi who ran a travel agency and did their taxes. Papa’s cheating had never bothered Santo much before because he’d never considered the particulars. But now that was all he could think about.
He shot her a sidelong glance. “I wasn’t just driving by,” he said.
“Oh?” She reached around with her right hand, kneading the cold flesh at the back of her elbow. Until then, she’d never betrayed any signs of awkwardness, and Santo didn’t know what to make of it. He should have never borrowed the car, he thought. Uncle Vince should have never taken him for his license. He tapped the steering wheel and reached to his pock
et for a cigarette but recalled he had none. He hoped maybe she hadn’t heard him or misunderstood.
“I was trying to think,” she said. “I was trying to think what I was doing when I was eighteen. I can’t remember. Eighteen was just like seventeen and just like sixteen. The only thing that sticks in my head is my cousin’s wedding and how I wanted to get married myself. And then a little later my wish came true. But it wasn’t how I expected. Not better or worse. Just different. I never had your eighteen, though, driving around in a car with the window open. I wouldn’t mind trying it again, being eighteen again. But not in Cuba. Where I had to help my aunt most days. It seemed like we were always setting the table. Clearing the china. But you can’t go back, I guess. I can’t be eighteen.”
She sidled over next to him and put her hand above his knee. He glanced at the speedometer, trying to keep it steady.
Leaning into him, she said softly, “I can’t be eighteen again. I can be a lot of things but not eighteen.” She sank back in the seat, gazing out the windshield, still close to him. She placed her hands back in her lap. After a while she reached over to rub the back of his neck. She turned to him. “Not for long anyway.”
After they drove down her alley and Santo let her out at her gate and parked on a side street and walked back to her cellar door, after they collapsed on the twin mattress in the darkened laundry room of Sylvia Gomez’s apartment, after, Santo cried. A single tear at first crawling down his face in jagged spurts that he wiped away with a finger. And then the other eye, the tear Sylvia Gomez would notice and brush away herself. It’s okay, she told him, and pulled him into her. It’s okay. And then the real tears, tears that this woman seemed to understand better than he did. She stroked his hair, and he ran a hand along the small of her back, soothed by her reassurances, mildly aroused again even in the midst of his tears.
These tears were for his baby brother, who filled his dreams at night. And for his mother, who sat on her bed for hours at a time gazing at the creases of light behind the window shade. And for Papa, too, who looked lost lately in his pacing. He didn’t want to admit that the tears were for himself, too. I can be a lot of things but not eighteen. Not for long anyway. He knew all this sweetness wouldn’t last beyond the afternoon. He knew already that he would one day come to view this episode as an act of pity. Poor Santo. He lost his brother and needs something, some loving. He wasn’t sure whether he really believed this, but the thought got him to stop crying finally. And then he felt something like remorse over what he’d led her to. This was nothing more than a onetime favor he’d silently begged out of her. A cheap afternoon lay. So he’d cried for her, too. For the whole fucking messed-up world he lived in.
