Today was still too chilly for the old ladies, and the neighbors on the other side didn’t have anything interesting in their backyard, at least nothing she could see without her glasses, so Iris took stock of her own yard. There were a couple of boys’ bicycles propped against the side of the garage, while the one she had been learning on, which had a banged up fender and a flat front tire, slouched dejectedly next to the rabbit hutch, waiting to be fixed by her father. The rabbits belonged to her sister Jasmine. Jasmine loved animals of every kind, and her father loved making Jasmine happy. Probably because she was so sweet and pretty with her curly hair and dimples and was the first girl to be born, after Alexander and John. Jasmine was even nice to Iris, the way she stopped by her bunk bed to tuck her in and stuff, even when no one asked her to. After a while, the original hutch their father had built for the half-dozen rabbits Jasmine had started out with wasn’t big enough, so her father built another hutch next to the garage, but Iris heard him yelling the other day that those gosh darn rabbits kept having baby bunnies and now even that hutch wasn’t enough. Iris wondered if he would build another house for their family, too, if her mother had more babies.
A cool wind came up, chilling Iris and reminding her she was all the way on the top rung of the Jungle Gym. Feeling a little jittery, she climbed down cautiously, thinking it would be safer to go pet the rabbits instead, even though she couldn’t hold them, but would have to be content with sticking her fingers through the mesh. She was not allowed to pick up the rabbits unless Jasmine or her parents were there, since she had gotten into big Trouble one time when she opened the door, and the rabbits started jumping right out, and Jasmine’s French poodle started yelping and chasing them all over the place.
As Iris approached the hutch, she heard a noise coming from the garage. The garage door was closed, and she didn’t see anyone around, which was pretty strange for a Saturday afternoon. Iris crept closer, then stood on her tiptoes, hoping to peek in the side window. Though she stretched her toes and her legs and her neck as much as she could, the tip of her nose barely made it to the window frame. She dragged over a rusty lawn chair and climbed up on the seat, grasping the window frame to steady herself. Pressing her face against the glass, she squinted her eyes and tried to focus on what she saw.
The man bent over the work table was definitely her father, that she could see, even if his back was turned to the window. He spent hours in the garage, that was where he kept all his tools and hardware, all lined up in perfect order, hanging from hooks above his bench, and all kinds of screws and bolts and nails inside stacks of cigar boxes, even though he did not smoke cigars, just cigarettes and of course he also drank coffee and sometimes dropped the butts in the used cup which for a minute almost made her lose her balance and want to puke as she was reminded of Dr. Julius and that sickening smell that came from his breath, even though her father did not have that breath, nothing like it; it was the coffee cup with floating cigarette butts that smelled so foul. Dr. Julius couldn’t even give her a pair of glasses that worked, but her father knew how to fix just about anything, even people. During the day, his job was to attach brand new arms and legs to veterans and teach them how to use them. He said if a man gave an arm or leg to his country, Jeepers Cripes, they deserved to have a replacement. Her father was a nurse, too, but not the same kind as Auntie Rosa.
Whenever anyone got hurt (which was mostly her brothers) he was the one who rushed to the rescue faster than you could believe. He scooped his patient up in his arms and set him or her on the kitchen table. If they were crying, he knew how to make them stop by asking questions about where it hurt and how it hurt instead of yelling. Then he sent her mother to the medicine cabinet for disinfectants and ointments and gauze and bandages. The liquid in some of the bottles burned when he poured it on you, even though he always said it wouldn’t. “You were lucky this time,” he would say. “You don’t need stitches. I think what we really need here is a nice Band-Aid.” At the mention of a Band-Aid, which was always a great trophy to show off, because Band-Aids were not just handed out to everyone, his patient would nod his or her head, and that was usually the end of it. It wasn’t always as easy as that, though.
One time Alexander clobbered his thumb with a hammer, and a huge purple bubble swelled up under his nail. Alexander was already too old to blubber like a baby, but he couldn’t stop hopping around the kitchen screaming. Her father took one look at the thumb, and hurried out the door, returning a few minutes later with his drill. He sat Alexander down at the table, hand flat in front of him. Louis screeched with excitement and clapped his hands at the sight of the power tool, while his twin Henry just stared silently, with the same sort of expectant smile he wore when he was in line for an ice cream cone. Iris and Lily stood off to a side, hugging the legs of their mother, who cupped a hand over her mouth.
“Everyone quiet now, or leave!” her father had ordered, revving up the drill. A hush fell, then the silence was broken by the whine of the drill as it hovered over Alexander’s hand. Before anyone could chicken out, her father drilled a hole in the nail, and a geyser of blood spurt into the air and Alexander dropped his head to the table in relief. Everyone cheered at the heroic show of bravery of father and son and the boys laughed at the sight of the blood trickling down the door of the Frigidaire and the cabinets all the way across the room.
Iris saw more than a trickle of something red there in the garage, it was more like a little stream, dripping from the work table and into a rusty bucket. She wiped off the glass that was all fogged up from her breath, then pressed her face against it again, squinting her eyes to see, while trying not to fall off the chair that wobbled beneath her feet. Iris saw her father turn, then raise a hand holding some sort of knife, a big one, then lower it down, a lot faster and harder than that day he cured Alexander with the drill. She saw something fall to the floor, bounce once, roll away, then come to a stop just below the window. At first, Iris thought she was seeing things, but even after she blinked real hard and pushed her face into the glass until her nose was flat and her forehead hurt, it still looked like a pair of bunny ears pointed at her from a furry head. Iris opened her mouth to yell for him to stop, but her throat was blocked so tight no words could make it past. She raised her hand to bang on the window, but lost her balance and toppled from the chair. She scrambled to her feet in a panic, tripped as she ran to the house, and burst through the back door into the kitchen, where she found her mother humming as she worked at the sink.
“Moommmmy!!” Iris cried, throwing her arms around her mother’s legs, burying her head between the folds of her house dress and apron, seeking comfort between her warm thighs.
“What is it, honey? What’s the matter?” her mother said as she set down her knife and wiped her hands on her apron.
“It’s… it’s …” Iris sobbed, her eyes darting from her mother’s face to the sink, which Iris was just tall enough to see into without having to climb up on a chair. And what she saw was the bloodied blade of the knife her mother had been using.
“What’s that?” Iris asked, pointing to the chunks of raw meat on a cutting board.
“We’re trying something new for dinner, honey,” her mother said. “Wait till you taste how good it is!”
That meat sure didn’t look like the kind her mother usually put in Spanish rice or Sloppy Joes. Iris knew what it was, she had seen it all. She didn’t care what it tasted like, and didn’t plan on finding out. There was no way she would eat Jasmine’s rabbits, and there was no way she could keep on living in that house! She bolted from the kitchen, tore up the stairs and burst into her bedroom. Lily was sitting cross-legged on her bottom bunk, looking at the pictures in the Sears catalogue. She looked up at Iris.
“Hey, Iris. Whatsa matter?” she asked, the smile vanishing from her face when she saw her tears. When a sister cried, you always asked why, and tried to figure out a way to make her stop.
Iris sniffed the snot back up her nose, but didn’t an
swer. She was too upset to talk about what she had seen, even to Lily. She reached under the bed and pulled out the little blue valise Auntie Rosa had surprised her with on her last birthday, for her to use when she went on overnight stays at her house. Iris had fallen in love with the valise immediately, though she was a teeny weeny sorry at first because she had been counting on the new nightie, but when she opened it, and found that Auntie Rosa had hidden one inside, her disappointment gave way to delight. Iris had learned to like disappointments for that very reason, for that way they had of multiplying every unexpected good thing that happened. By then, Iris was all quivery with joy, and filled with wonder about where she might travel one day besides Auntie Rosa’s, but when she saw Lily staring at the valise with a blank look on her face, a chord of sadness vibrated deep inside her.
Iris brushed away the dust mice slumbering on the valise and flipped the locks open, then stomped over to the dresser she shared with Lily. She pulled open the underwear drawer, found it empty, and slammed it shut again. She opened her last resort drawer, grabbed a handful of ragged underclothes, then took her now not-so-new nightie from under her pillow, threw everything into the valise, and snapped it shut. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she paused to look at the design in the lower left-hand corner of the little valise, which always made her feel better. Sometimes she pulled the valise out just to stare at it, even when she wasn’t going anywhere (which was most of the time), but only when Lily wasn’t around. She adored that sketch of a woman and a man, smiling and holding hands by something that looked like the world’s tallest Jungle Gym. Auntie Rosa said it was called the Eiffel Tower and that it was in Paris, which was in France, and that France was not too far from Italy, where Grandma and Grandpa Capotosti had come from. But it was very far from Rugby Road.
Paris! That was where she would go. She opened her last resort drawer again and took out her glasses. Even if they didn’t work, she might need them to get to Paris. She looked around the room one last time, fresh tears welling in her eyes. “Whatsa matter, Iris?” Lily asked again, her eyes glued to the valise. Iris just shook her head and hugged Lily, then hurried down the stairs and out the front door, trying not think of the little sister she was leaving alone in her room with the Sears catalogue, or the mother she was leaving in the kitchen with the dead rabbit parts, or the father she was leaving in the garage with bloodied hands. She ran down the street as fast as her legs would carry her.
4. Lily
The air was cool and dank, steeped in must. There was something about the way the basement smelled and felt that both attracted and repelled Lily. The rough concrete floor was mottled from the incontinence of the rusted washing machine, the air heavy with the story of life that transpired there. The stark odors of chlorine bleach, sweat, urine, and sour milk emanating from the laundry basket, the earthy smells of hand degreaser, WD-40, and sawdust – all testament to a life and a culture built on dedication to hard work and its inherent suffering.
Going into the basement wasn’t like going into the kitchen or the living room. Each time Lily was forced to go down, to grab a pair of snow pants off a hook, or retrieve still dirty socks from the laundry pile (which were better than no socks, after all), she did so with an acute awareness that she was not just going into a different room, but that she was going into a different part of herself. Going into the basement required that she become different, as well. Braver. Older, somehow.
Lily sat in the tiny basement bathroom, which was little more than an old white toilet situated in an alcove that may have originally been intended as a fruit cellar, or maybe a dungeon. The space was separated from the machines that kept life going in the house – the washing machine, the furnace, the sump pump – by a tattered sheet hung from a bent curtain rod that Lily’s father had mounted across the doorway. With the sheet pushed aside, Lily watched her mother move with precision and grace as she went through the motions of laundering dirty clothes, a constant and continual chore at the Capotosti household. Reaching, stooping, turning, and humming, she was like one of those ballerinas on TV.
First, the clothes would go into the tub of water, where a giant mixer arm would lurch and grind, rocking the entire machine back and forth, beating the dirt out of those soiled clothes the way the Holy Ghost beats sins out of your soul.
Once the machine stopped, Lily’s mother took a dark blue T-shirt, and fed one end of it between two large white rubber rollers, which she put into motion by cranking an aluminum handle on the side. The rollers grabbed the shirt, and squeezed all the excess water out of it, depositing it into the stationary tub. And that was the beginning of a new pile of wet but clean clothes – ready to be hung out on the line. Lily peeled her urine-soaked tights, underpants, and skirt from her skin, and added them to the never-ending pile of childhood that camped at the bottom of the basement stairs.
“It looks like you had a little accident there,” said her mother.
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” said Lily. “I didn’t mean to. I just couldn’t hold it.” No need to tell her about the incident at school, about interrupting Miss Swift’s class, or about being forgotten in the cloakroom.
“That’s OK,” said her mother. “It happens.” She leaned down, gently took Lily’s chin between her thumb and index finger, tilted Lily’s face upwards and kissed the tip of her nose. Lily felt the frustrations of the day melt away, safe in the knowledge that her mother still loved her no matter what - even when she did wet her pants, and even if she had lost her balance and stepped on a crack on the way to school that morning.
“Now,” she continued, patting Lily’s bare bottom. “Go on upstairs and get some pants on, and then send the rest of your dirty things down the chute.”
The laundry chute ran up the center of the house, making a stop on each floor – in the kitchen, and then again in the hallway upstairs where the bedrooms were. The chute was marked by a small wooden door with a round knob. It looked just like a regular door, but made for a teeny tiny person – someone smaller even than Lily. If you opened the chute door, stuck your head inside and looked down, you could see the pile of clothes in the basement. Lily peered down the chute as her mother grabbed a few things, placed them into the washer, and then moved out of view. Lily was often tempted to climb inside the laundry chute, to see what it would be like to plummet down and land in the basement, her fall cushioned by plaid skirts and white blouses, black trousers and blue jeans, countless towels and strange underpants with a pocket in front.
The laundry chute often taunted Lily with its silent, lingering call for daring and disaster. The closed, dark space could be a place to escape, or hide. But what if no one noticed her there, atop that sweat-soaked, urine-soaked, tear-soaked pile? What if her mother reached out, thinking she was grabbing a towel or a tablecloth and then took Lily and fed her through the wringer? Her mother would be so upset when she discovered she had sent her youngest daughter through the laundry rollers. She would probably just stand there, overcome with sadness just like the Virgin Mother in that statue where she is holding Jesus in her lap. She looked so sad, and Jesus was there, wearing only his underpants, and Lily wondered what Jesus was like when he was little, and where he went to kindergarten. Did he ever interrupt the entire class or wet his pants, or get forgotten in the cloakroom? If they made a statue about Lily, her mother could hold her, except Lily would be almost completely flat, from being sent through the wringer and all. Her mother would be wearing her special blue dress with the white polka dots, and maybe even her pearl necklace. And there would be tears rolling down her face, and her eyes would be turned toward Heaven, as if to say, “Our Father, why didn’t I pay better attention? Why didn’t I notice Lily there? Now she is gone and I will never be able to kiss her little nose again, or pat her naked bottom.” Lily slammed the laundry chute door closed again and tried to block the image from her mind.
And then there was the milk door – Lily’s favorite place to play. The milk door was located next to the side entry of the hous
e and was discernible from the laundry chute because it was painted white, but also because if you opened it, you would see another door that led to the outside. Every morning, Roy from Lipman’s Dairy drove his big white milk truck up the driveway. He hopped out, clad in his white pants and white cap. His white shirt had “Roy” embroidered on the left breast pocket. He would open the back doors of his truck, reach inside, and pull out two small rectangular aluminum crates that had handles like Easter baskets. Each crate held six glass bottles of milk. Roy was always whistling, and Lily figured it was because he was so happy – after all, he had milk all the time, every day, no matter what.
Roy would open the outside milk door, put the baskets inside, and close the door again. All the Capotosti children knew the sound of that little door opening and closing. On cue, Lily’s mother or one of the Big Kids would retrieve the baskets, and place the bottles into the Frigidaire. At the end of the day, Lily’s mother would place the baskets with the empty bottles back into the milk box so Roy could get them again the next morning. Roy went to each house in the entire neighborhood, left milk in each box, and then disappeared. The only time anyone ever even saw Roy up close was if Lily’s mother forgot to leave money in the baskets for him on Friday. Then he would come back later and knock on the door.
“Why hello, there, half-pint!” Roy said to Lily when she answered the door one Friday afternoon.
“Hi, Roy!” Lily greeted him with the exuberance usually reserved for Santa Claus sightings or for when Uncle Alfred brought over maple walnut ice cream. Lily didn’t really like maple walnut, but any kind of ice cream was better than no ice cream at all.
[Iris and Lily 01.0 - 03.0] The Complete Series Page 5
