They saw her garden of herbs from their fire escape windows and they smelled her cooking that wasn’t food, and they talked among themselves, but they were always polite because she was Amadeo Pavese’s wife and he was a padrone and they were always frightened of what they couldn’t understand. It was a trait that went back hundreds of years, the way they shouted when all they meant to do was talk.
Nicky pinched his mother’s cheek. “You do too have the power,” he said. “You’re the strega.” And he kissed her on the mouth the way she loved but pretended that she didn’t.
Over pastrami at Katz’s Deli, Judy told Jumbo that it was set for Sunday. They ate at Ratner’s once a week and at Katz’s every Thursday. Jumbo wanted to show Judy how much he loved her. How better than loving her food? Besides, he believed that if he married her, he would spend the rest of his life eating pastrami and blintzes, and he wanted to practice.
When Jumbo told Antoinette he wouldn’t be home for dinner Sunday, she didn’t blink an eye. Antoinette was no dope. She knew her son. Who else had seen him every day of his life, except for those three weeks when he had gone to live with that scifo Nicky, and Amadeo Pavese’s son Salvatore. She told the girls later that day when they all congregated for afternoon coffee and cake, before they trudged upstairs and down to their own apartments, that she knew something was up with their brother.
“You worried, Ma?” Rosina said.
“Of course I’m worried. How many times can I save his life?”
“Well,” Albina said, “he’s not gambling. He hasn’t got a pot to piss in and there’s no one on the East or West Sides who’ll lend him a dime.”
Filomena sighed. She dunked her almond biscotti in her coffee cup. “It must be a girl.”
“Whatta you talking about?” Antoinette turned purple. “How could he have a girl? Someone would see, no? Someone would tell me? Everybody knows everything in this neighborhood. They don’t miss a trick.”
“Hey, Ma, wake up. It’s a big world out there,” Angelina told her.
“You mean, a girl that’s not from here? Somebody we don’t know?”
“Unlikely,” Raffaella said. “I don’t think Jumbo has universal appeal.”
Antoinette smacked her shoulder. Raffaella spilled her coffee and wiped it up without a word. “Any girl in her right mind would kill for a man like your brother.”
“C’mon, Ma,” Rosina said. “We love Jumbo, but he’s no Cary Grant.”
“Oh, please . . . Cary Grant, Cary Grant. Why? Your husband looks like Cary Grant? Who cares about Cary Grant, anyway? He’s a riccone. I read it in the newspaper, him and that one that wears the tights, the pirate.”
“Errol Flynn?”
“Yeah, him.” Antoinette cleared the table around them, pushing at their hands and elbows. “Go home now. I gotta make supper,” and she piled the dishes and cups and saucers onto the ones from breakfast that were still in the sink.
Judy wanted to take the train but Jumbo borrowed Luca Benvenuto’s car, which cost him a day’s pay, and they set off early in the afternoon. He had gotten Luca to leave the car on Varick Street and Jumbo had gotten dressed in the back room of the bar. He wore a suit and tie and he had wet his hair and pomaded it until the teeth marks of the comb were as clear as furrows in a plowed field. Judy was waiting downstairs for him on Seventy-third Street and he noticed that she was very nicely dressed with a scarf around her hair and gloves and a pocketbook made of alligator that he had never seen her carry before.
They drove with the radio on and the windows open. Judy smoked cigarettes and blew the smoke out the window. Jumbo was sweating. He could feel the wet creeping through his shirt and suit jacket and hoped it was all in his imagination. He would have to leave his jacket on. He hoped they wouldn’t stay too long.
The house was bigger than he had expected. He actually hadn’t expected anything. To him, a house was a house, but this place looked like something out of the movies, nothing like his uncle’s house in New Jersey where his family went for Fourth of July. There was a Cadillac and a Mustang convertible parked in the driveway of the three-car garage. Judy said they sold her car when she moved to the city. The Mustang was her mother’s. Jumbo was impressed that Mrs. Bernstein had her own car. He was impressed that she could drive it. Antoinette didn’t even take the bus. She only went somewhere if she got picked up and dropped off door to door and even then only for weddings, a trip to the cemetery after a funeral, and those Fourth of July parties in New Jersey.
Judy rang the doorbell and Jumbo wondered how come she didn’t have the key. The door opened in a split second. They had been standing there, Mr. and Mrs. Bernstein. He saw right away that Judy favored her father, the nose and the hair and the height. Mrs. Bernstein—“Oh, please dear, call me Sylvia”—was tall and slim in pale green silk pants and a printed silk top that was a Pucci knockoff. It seemed like a classy getup to Jumbo.
Mrs. Bernstein, or Sylvia, as she insisted he call her, didn’t remotely remind him of anybody’s mother. He suddenly felt bad for Judy. He thought about how she wouldn’t be able to help loving Antoinette. He felt better about the whole thing now, seeing how poor Judy had grown up. This big house but a mother who walked around in silk pants on a Sunday afternoon. How could she possibly cook anything?
Judy kissed her father and mother on the cheek and followed them into the living room. Jumbo went to sit on the couch but the Bernsteins just kept walking, through the dining room, and the den, and the kitchen, out to the patio by the pool.
“Did you children bring suits?” Sylvia asked. The smile on her face looked pained. It seemed to Jumbo like her mouth was paralyzed.
“Swimsuits,” Mr. Bernstein, or Harvey, as he insisted Jumbo call him, explained. “The pool’s heated. You could go for a dip.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mother,” Judy said.
“I’d love to go for a swim,” Jumbo said. He was a wonderful swimmer, and a wonderful dancer, the myth of all fat men, light on his delicate feet always shod in the best of shoes. He turned to his beloved. “Gee, honey, you shoulda told me there was a pool.”
Sylvia cringed just slightly at the word honey but her smile stayed put and she got up to serve iced tea in tall glasses with little paper umbrellas. “Just like a nightclub,” Jumbo said to her when she handed him a glass.
Sylvia hated him. She had hated him on sight. She hated him with every breath, every pore. She could see the circle of sweat forming under the arms of his jacket. It was hot in the yard. She would have suggested he take off his jacket but the sight of a sweaty fat man in shirtsleeves was more than she could bear at this moment. Sylvia Bernstein hated fat. She tolerated a slight potbelly in Harvey, who only really enjoyed his food at lunchtime on Grand Street, away from Sylvia. He had the genes, she told him, to be a balloon and he had passed them on to Judy. Sylvia had mercilessly kept them in check as best she could but she couldn’t be everywhere. She looked her daughter over carefully. She had definitely put on weight since the last time she saw her. Sylvia wasn’t surprised, seeing the company she was keeping.
Come help me in the kitchen, darling,” she said to Judy. “Let the men chat.”
Judy didn’t have to ask but she did. “What do you think?” she said when they were alone.
“About what, dearest?”
“Jumbo. What do you think? Isn’t it sweet how he got all dressed up to meet you? I told him it was casual but he wore a suit and tie anyway.”
“He seems like a nice boy.”
“He’s not a boy, Mother. He’s a grown man and I’m going to marry him.”
Sylvia panicked; her smile cracked. “But Judy, who is he? You don’t know anything about him. He could be the Boston Strangler.”
“They caught the Boston Strangler.”
“Well, I still think you should be careful, that’s all. You waited this long.”
Jumbo came through the kitchen, Harvey behind him. “Your father’s got a bathing suit for me, honey. I’m gonna go for a
swim before we eat. Otherwise I gotta wait an hour. I don’t wanna get a cramp and drown in your pool, Sylvia.”
Sylvia thought that was a great idea, Jumbo drowning, but she retrieved her smile, weaker than before. With her lips pressed together, no teeth, she glared at Harvey, who excused himself and disappeared. Sylvia kept arranging the plates on a tray along with the little sandwiches she had had catered in town, cucumbers and watercress, the crusts carefully cut off and the bagels and Nova and cream cheese and blintzes and pickles Harvey had brought from the city for their lunch with their daughter’s fiancé. She asked Judy to set the table outside, explaining that she had to run upstairs for a minute. She found Harvey in the bathroom. She could set the clock by his digestion. She knew where he’d be.
“He’s a nice boy, Sylvia,” Harvey said to her through the door. “He looks like he’s going to enjoy your lunch.”
“Be honest for once, Harvey. He’s an aberration and we don’t even have to go beyond his physical appearance.”
“He is a big boy.”
“He’s a fat boy, a big fat boy. Do you know one of my friends that has a fat son-in-law? How will I take him to the club?”
“Listen, he’s a hard worker. Judy says he works two shifts at the bar. There’s always room for a boy like that. Let’s face it, Sylvia. She’s our only daughter. If this is the man to make her happy, we can help out a little.”
Sylvia bit a fingernail. She sat at the edge of the bed, carefully smoothing her knockoff Pucci top under her buttocks so it wouldn’t be wrinkled when she stood up. “You know, Elaine Himmelfarb’s daughter married a Hare Krishna. She had to sit cross-legged on the floor in an orange robe at their wedding. And Harriet’s daughter married some mountain man she met in Wyoming when she was conducting AA meetings on an Indian reservation.” Sylvia heard the toilet flush and then the water running. Harvey opened the bathroom door. “So tell me,” she said, “where you found swimming trunks for an elephant?”
They went downstairs together. Sylvia was feeling better. In the end, it was Judy’s life. Sylvia had her own. They could set certain conditions: a rabbi for the wedding, the children raised Jewish. At least the holidays wouldn’t conflict. It wasn’t like they were the first parents to put up with this sort of thing. When Sylvia started to think, she had to admit that it was definitely a trend. Inappropriate matches. She was sure it had to do with all this education. You never knew who your children would meet today when they went out into the world.
Jumbo was sitting at the table with Judy. They were waiting, he said, for the Bernsteins to come down. Sylvia softened. She loved good manners. Jumbo made sure Sylvia was served first. Judy thought he was even charming Sylvia a little bit. He relaxed and slathered cream cheese on half his bagel, piled it high with Nova Scotia, and added the top. He pressed it down carefully and bit in.
This wasn’t so bad, Jumbo decided. He imagined every other Sunday by the pool, maybe a spin in the Mustang. All he had to do was win over Antoinette and he was set. He could tell Judy’s parents liked him. He looked around. They were doing pretty good and she was an only child. He would have married her with nothing but hey, money didn’t hurt. He imagined the satin and lace busta at their wedding stuffed with envelopes. He might even be able to square it with Fat Eddie Fingers and get the hell out of Benvenuto’s. Jumbo reached for a bialy and covered it with butter.
“You didn’t have your swim?” Sylvia said. Jumbo was wearing his shirt and the bathing trunks Harvey had given him. Sylvia recognized them as the extra-large pair Harvey had ordered for a window display when he added a line of swimwear.
“Nah, I decided to wait, but look at this, the suit fits perfect.” Jumbo snapped the waistband to show Sylvia.
Harvey smiled. “I told him he could have them,” he said to Sylvia, “or,” and here he winked and touched Judy’s arm, “maybe just leave them here for when he comes over.”
Sylvia smiled, too. “They fit nicely . . . Alfso,” she said. “That is your real name, Judy’s told us?”
“Sylvia, you can call me whatever you want, just don’t call me late for dinner.”
Judy slapped Jumbo’s arm. “Stop teasing,” she said. Sylvia teeheed a little bit. Harvey guffawed. Jumbo stood up and pushed back his chair. He walked to the edge of the pool and began to unbutton his shirt. The Bernsteins sat watching him. He turned to face them. “You save me if I get a cramp, okay, Jude?” he said to Judy.
Sylvia looked up at him, shading her eyes with her hand. Her smile tightened until her mouth was a slit the size of a paper clip as Jumbo pushed the shirt off his shoulders, exposing his mammoth chest, smooth and hairless and unmarked as a baby’s bottom, except for two words tattooed in inch-high blue letters over each one of his nipples. The right read SWEET and the left, SOUR.
Sylvia’s eyes rolled to the back of her head. She pitched forward and before they could catch her, she fell with a splash into the pool.
It’s a fucking mess,” Jumbo told Nicky when he came to see him at Benvenuto’s to find out how it went.
“Whatta you mean?”
“I went out there to Long Island to meet her parents. She insisted.”
“And?”
“Marrone, Nicky, they got money. You had to see this house. Swimming pool, the mother all dressed up like Paddy’s pig. I mean, you know she wasn’t sweating over no hot stove. I’m a little, you know, kinda thrown for a loop with all this. Judy coulda told me something, given me a clue.”
“So?”
“So, wait. We’re by the pool and they were nice, you know? Judy’s old lady was a little snooty but I know how to treat old broads. Forgive me for calling Judy’s mother a broad, but she wasn’t my idea of a mother. I would never call your mother a broad even though she hates me.”
“Go ahead, Jumbo. I’m getting the picture here.”
“Okay, so, they’re liking me even. ‘Call me Sylvia,’ the mother says. The father gives me a bathing suit so I can go for a swim.”
“He had a bathing suit for you?”
“Yeah, he’s in the business. He had this suit, fit perfect, was even a little big if you can believe it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, so it’s all going good until I take off my shirt. Those fucking tattoos, Nicky. I forgot about the fucking tattoos. Sylvia takes one look at my tits and goes down like a redwood. Boom! She passes out, rolls in the friggin’ pool. Stop laughing, Nicky. This is serious.”
“So what happened?”
“What happened, what could happen? We got her up and Harvey got her upstairs and dried her off and put her in bed. He said it was food poisoning. He blamed the cream cheese but I know it was those fucking tattoos. Am I nuts? Who gets tattoos like that? It just wasn’t a good start, you know? It wasn’t a good introduction.”
“Well, forget the mother. What did Judy say?”
“She says don’t worry. But now she wants to meet my mother. She ain’t taking no for an answer.”
“Well, Jesus, Jumbo, she’s right.”
“But my mother don’t know nothing yet.”
“Well, you better say something.”
“I thought you and Salvatore was gonna help me.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“I don’t know. Voodoo? Maybe Salvatore can get Magdalena to do something?”
“What about my mother?” Nicky laughed.
“Give me a break, Nicky. I’m looking for love here, not destruction. I’m cursed. I really am cursed.”
“Sally said he’d be down tonight. His wife’s up in Connecticut with her family and he’s got to do work so he’s in town. We could have dinner.”
“Good idea. Three heads are better than two.“
They met, Jumbo and Salvatore and Nicky. They started at the Kettle of Fish on Bleecker Street, where Pauly Rizzo worked behind the bar and bought them all a drink. They walked over to the Ninth Circle and listened to the folk music and Jimmy Burp, who worked behind that bar, bought them a drink and on aro
und the Village and then uptown where the neighborhood boys had fanned out to work the nightclubs and bars. Jumbo knew all of them, from Domnick in Max’s Kansas City on up to Pauly in the Copa. By 2 A.M., they were back downtown at the Page 3, to watch men in gowns sing torch songs on the stage.
The last stop was a place that didn’t have a name, deep down on Broadway where they checked you out through a peephole before they opened the door and the men wore dresses and the women wore pin-striped suits and they all wore makeup as garish as a drunk’s imagination.
Nicky woke up the next morning and couldn’t remember how he’d gotten home. It made him so nervous that he left his apartment to come back down to the neighborhood and sit in the last pew in St. Anthony’s Church on Sullivan Street before he went to his mother, who made him drink hot water and lemon juice and said terrible things about his ex-wife Gina.
Jumbo slept the sleep of the dead. His mother beat egg and milk into a soup dish, dipped a loaf of Wonder bread, slice by slice, into the mixture, and fried the slices one by one in a pan of butter. She stacked the pieces neatly into a pile just the way Jumbo liked his French toast, soft and wet in the middle, dripping with butter and syrup. Antoinette could smell the alcohol coming through Jumbo’s pores when she went into the narrow bedroom to wake him up but it only made her sigh. Every once in a while Antoinette expected her boy to let off a little steam. As long as he ended up in his bed and her kitchen she could forgive him anything.
Out on Long Island Judy’s mother hoped her daughter’s affection for “the Italian from the city” (Sylvia had buried her Bronx roots long ago) would end with time. It wasn’t about money, she told Harvey. It was about class. Jumbo had none.
Harvey rubbed Sylvia’s freckled shoulders. They were spotted with black and brown dots from her bathing beauty days at Raven Hall in Coney Island, “the world’s largest saltwater pool,” where Sylvia would stretch out next to old women from Eastern Europe who sunned naked in the rooftop solarium, their bodies brown all over except for two narrow half moons at the backs of their thighs that their sagging asses had hidden from the sun.
The Black Madonna Page 19
