Falcone glared at him. “You know how I feel about that crap,” he said. Then he recognized O’Shaughnessy’s expression and began laughing. “You’re just egging me on, you Irish son of a bitch,” he said.
“Not me,” his partner said. “I like being one of the only two honest cops in New York. Anyway, bring Tommy around some night. I’d like to see him. I remember him when.”
“He’s different now. Quieter. He’s always got his nose in a book.”
“He got shot up, for Christ’s sake, to help the bloody goddamn Brits keep their goddamn empire,” O’Shaughnessy said. “That’d change anybody.” He took a deep breath, as if telling himself to change the subject and not mount his usual anti-British soapbox. “And what about this other kid? What’s his name? Daniel or something?”
“Danilo. My sister’s boy, and he calls himself Nilo now. He’s doing okay. He and Tommy get along like brothers. I found him a little job, and he’s after Justina to teach him how to read.”
“To read, huh?” O’Shaughnessy laughed. “If he’s like every other Sicilian I know, he’s after her for more than reading lessons.”
Falcone nodded. “That had occurred to me. And I wouldn’t put it past him. Truth is, Tim, he’s my family and all, but I don’t like that kid. There’s just something about him that sticks in my throat.”
“Like what?”
“Like I don’t know. He tries too hard, sort of. He’s blood … but … I don’t know. He always seems agreeable enough, but if you watch him and he doesn’t know you’re watching, he’s always looking around, as if he’s casing the place, trying to figure out where you hide your money. I’ve taken to locking my cash away in my bureau drawer.”
“Hey, what do you want?” O’Shaughnessy said. “He’s Italian.”
“Go to hell, you big Irish moose.”
* * *
JUSTINA FALCONE CLIMBED OUT of the claw-foot bathtub and quickly wrapped a large gray towel around her body. High up on the wall above the tub was a little window that was cracked near the top, letting in a constant stream of cold air that dropped to the floor and chilled the legs. Her father always promised to fix it, but he never seemed to get around to it. The truth was he hated doing any kind of maintenance work.
She vowed that one day she would be so rich that she would not ever have to worry about things like cracked windows.
She shivered slightly and found the sensation so pleasurable that she tried to make herself shiver again but could not. Justina crossed the floor and stood in front of the washbasin. There was a mirror-doored medicine cabinet above it and a small kerosene heater below. She felt the warmth from the heater and extended her foot toward it, reveling in the luxury of the heated air.
She realized that she was lucky. In fact, her whole family was lucky, and she crossed herself quickly and thanked Jesus for their blessings. Outside on this January day in 1920, it was cold—bitterly cold—but it was snug and warm here in the apartment while many of her friends lived in drafty cold-water flats and tried to keep warm by burning coal in the kitchen stove.
The Falcones’ luck had not come, she knew, because they had much money. While her father was a police sergeant, he did not really make all that much. But just because he was a policeman, the building’s owner had given them the best apartment in the building and charged them the going rent for a smaller apartment.
It was not because the landlord was a nice man. God, he was a greasy thing who always looked at Justina with lustful eyes. No, the landlord did it because he knew that having a policeman in his building would help prevent it from being damaged by vandals and would also help keep out the rougher tenants—the “gees,” as the kids called gangsters. Her father had not wanted to accept the bargain rent—he wondered about its propriety—but Justina’s mother had finally prevailed on him by explaining that he was providing a security service to the landlord and that he should be compensated for it.
Justina looked in the mirror at herself but could not see because of the steam that had condensed there from her hot bath. She hesitated a moment, then peeled the towel from around her body and wiped the mirror clear. She dropped the towel on the floor, studied herself, and decided, for perhaps the one hundredth time that week, that she was beautiful.
She thought with satisfaction that the Falcones might not be rich now, but she would be rich because she was beautiful, and in America, beautiful women always became rich
Her appreciation of her own beauty was not misguided vanity. It was just a simple fact, like the fact that she had black hair and dark green eyes. And not only did she have a good face, she thought, but she had a magnificent body. She turned this way and that, posing for herself in the mirror. She had a body like some of those old statues in the museum. Even better than the statues, she thought. Longer in the leg, slender in the hips and belly. Men liked that in a woman.
She watched herself closely as she ran her hands caressingly up her long legs, across her belly, and then stopped at her breasts, cradling each one in a cupped hand.
She loved to touch herself. She had never let anyone else touch her, but she had often thought about it. Justina had looked at boys and wished they would take her in their arms and crush her to them and run their rough hands all over her, touching her everywhere, even there, in front.
Without thinking, she let one hand travel down her belly and brush through her dark tangle and touch there. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror and thought of getting back into the still-warm bathwater and doing it again. She had only found out about how to do it at Christmastime, and she had not told anyone else about it yet, not any of the girls at Holy Mother Academy, where she went to high school—(they all called the school “Mama’s”)—and not even her best friend, Sofia Mangini.
Sofia was beautiful, too, Justina thought. Probably the most beautiful girl in her class except for Justina. Maybe Sofia had an even nicer face. But not as nice a body, she decided.
Justina had paid close attention to the other girls when they had to take showers. Sofia was not as tall as Tina, and her breasts, though beautifully shaped, were not quite so ripe. Still, they were beautiful, and she thought about her friend and about having boys’ hands, many boys’ hands, touching her, touching them both. She cupped her breasts again. She could feel her breath growing deeper and sharper. The room was getting warmer and she could see a flush coming into her cheeks and at the base of her throat. She fought hard to keep from making any sound.
There was a knock on the door.
“Hey, Tina,” a voice called out.
Justina let out a little startled whoop and grabbed desperately for her towel, dropped it, and then grabbed her robe from a hook and tied it around her.
“Just a moment, please,” she called back to her cousin, Nilo. He was very handsome, almost pretty, Nilo was, and if she had to pick someone to be the first to touch her, she might have picked him, even if he was a relative and only a little older than she and her fantasies generally revolved around older men. She had been fascinated by his looks the first night they met and had even flirted with him a little. But that was in the past. The sad fact was that Nilo was poor, an immigrant with no prospects, and she would marry only someone who could afford her.
She quickly pulled open the door and saw him standing there, blocking her way. He smiled at her with his beautiful smile.
Everything about him is beautiful, she thought.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” she said. “I was daydreaming. Have you been home long?”
“Long enough.”
“Oh.” Justina blushed and pulled her robe more tightly around her.
“Where is everybody?” Nilo asked.
Justina stepped through the door and unconsciously backed away from her cousin.
“It’s Wednesday night,” she said. “Mama’s at Novena, and Papa’s working on something down at the station. He won’t be home till later.”
“We’re the only ones here?”
“Yes
,” she said, almost stammering on the word. She remembered her daydreams of just a few minutes before and blushed. But Nilo did not seem to notice.
“What about Tommy?” Nilo asked.
“He’s over at the college, getting registered or whatever it is he has to do. I don’t know when he’ll be home.”
Nilo nodded and said, “I won some money today at work. Would you like to go to Mangini’s for supper with me?”
Mangini’s was the restaurant owned by Sofia’s father. It was directly across Crosby Street from the Falcones’ building.
“I’d better not,” Justina said. “Mama left supper for us, and I have homework to do. And I want to practice my singing.”
Nilo shrugged and suddenly looked downhearted, like a badly disappointed small boy. “After supper, will you give me more lessons?”
Justina smiled. “After supper, I promise. We will practice our reading and our English.”
* * *
WHEN THEY HAD EATEN, Nilo sat and watched as Justina washed and put away the dishes, then got out a small pile of books she had borrowed from the school library. They moved onto the living room couch, and she handed the books to him one by one to examine.
“What are these? Is this a joke?” he demanded, and tossed the books onto the floor.
When Justina laughed, Nilo’s face clouded over. “I have to read,” he snapped. “I have to be able to learn so many things. I will not grow old, still a fool, locked in a prison of stupidity. And you bring me children’s books.”
“They are what you need,” she said, even as she gathered the books up from the floor.
“You say I am not a man?” he asked softly. She noticed that his eyes were smoldering and his lower lip was trembling with barely suppressed anger. A shiver caught her body. Part of it was fear, part something else that she could not identify. She forced herself to smile again.
“I am sure you are a man,” she said lightly. “In every way but reading. In reading, you are as a child, so these children’s books are the way for you to begin.”
Nilo slid closer to her on the sofa. “I am in no way a child,” he said coldly. “I am a man who knows men, who knows women. I was home and I heard you making those sounds in the bathroom. I have heard those sounds many time but never by a woman alone. Always with someone. Always with me. So I look through the keyhole. Shall I tell you what I see?”
Justina’s face flushed. She was unable to reply.
“I will tell you what I see,” Nilo said. “I see one who was once a girl who is now a woman. I will make you a bargain, do you a favor. You treat me as a man. Teach me to read as a man. I will teach you to be a woman.”
He reached over and pulled her close. His lips were on hers. Justina squirmed slightly, trying to move away, but before she could she felt his strong rough workman’s hand move under her skirt.
A key rattled in the apartment door and Justina pulled herself free, managing to stand up just as her brother Tommy came into the parlor.
“Hi, Tina. Hey, Nilo. How’s everything going? I was thinking of you today. It’s colder than a witch’s heinie out there.” Without waiting for an answer, he crossed the living room to his bedroom, which he had once shared with Mario and now shared with Nilo. “I hope Mama left something for me to eat.”
Justina nodded and quickly went into the kitchen to heat Tommy’s meal, aware all the time of Nilo’s eyes following her.
When Tommy came out of the bedroom, he perched on the back of the sofa where Nilo sat.
“So, country cousin, how was the ditchdigging business today?” he asked. “You still happy Papa got you that job?”
Nilo shrugged. “It was very cold. The ground is so hard we do only emergency work. We work hard and fast. It helps to keep us warm.”
Tommy smiled. “In this cold weather, that is the safest way of keeping warm. If you understand what I mean.” To make his point clear, he glanced toward Tina in the kitchen, then cuffed Nilo lightly on the chin. Nilo did not answer. Tommy walked out into the kitchen to eat his supper. He was laughing and Nilo cursed softly under his breath.
Someday, no one will be present to rescue her, he thought. Then she will learn who is man and who child.
* * *
SOFIA MANGINI LAY in her darkened room, reading a book by the light of an electric sign outside her window, advertising her family’s restaurant on the floor below her room. It was a book of poems by a girl poet not much older than herself who, right at this moment, Sofia knew, was living and working less than half a mile away.
She read the lines:
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
She set the book down beside her on the bed, making no attempt to fight back the tears, not knowing whether it was the beauty of the words or something else entirely that had made her weep. After a while, she pulled a little notebook from its hiding place beneath her mattress and tried to write something. She used to be able to write lots of things, but lately the words just would not come. She did not know why. Perhaps she was changing. Perhaps she was coming to the end of her dreams.
Once, she had dreamed of many things. Of being a poet. Or an adventuress. Or a nun. She had often dreamed of running away from home and living in Greenwich Village and leading a life of dissipation, but now that Justina’s brother Mario was the assistant pastor at Our Lady of Mount Carmel right in the Village, that did not seem like such a good idea.
Thinking of the Falcones made her feel bad again. Tina had everything. She had a father and mother who loved each other and who loved her. She had a nice apartment. She had two brothers—and now even a new cousin—to protect her. Sofia had none of those things.
It was nobody’s fault, she told herself, and most certainly not hers. It was not her fault that after she was born the doctor had told her mother that she could never again have babies. It was not Sofia’s fault that her mother kept trying and the pain and disappointments of the miscarriages and the stillborns kept mounting until her mother shut herself off from everybody and everything, going into perpetual mourning and becoming a small dumpy figure in black who did nothing other than sit at the cash register at the family restaurant, counting and recounting the money, with no time for her husband and not much more for her only daughter. Sometimes she caught her mother staring at her, and the look on the old woman’s face was clearly one of accusation, as if Sofia had somehow been responsible for her mother’s problems and her father’s behavior.
Mr. Mangini’s behavior—and everyone in the neighborhood knew about it—involved finding solace in other women’s arms. Everyone pitied Mrs. Mangini for her husband’s faithlessness, but they would have pitied her even more if they knew that Mangini would make his conquests and then regularly gloat about them to his wife.
And none of it was her fault, Sofia told herself, just as she bore no blame because her father—in order to put out of his mind his great sins and the nagging and carping of his wife—would drink himself into a near stupor almost every night and then beat his wife and terrorize his daughter.
Sofia got up and crossed to the window and looked out. It was not late yet, not even midnight. She stared across the street to the building where Tina lived. Lights were still on, making the apartment seem as warm and as hospitable as it usually was. Sofia wished she lived there. Then she would be able to see Tommy, Tina, all the Falcones, all the time. Even the new cousin, Nilo.
Tina often talked about who she would someday marry: how he would be both handsome and rich and absolutely devoted to her, and how they would stay in bed all the time, making babies.
Sofia had no such thoughts. It had always been a kind of joke between her and Tina that one day Sofia would marry Tommy, but she never dreamed of him in the way that Tina dreamed of her phantom lover. Perhaps she did not even love him, she thought. It might be that she loved the Falcone family and the warmth they all showed for each other. In her dreams, she always saw the family together, always
saw Tina. But in her fantasies, she saw women poets, declaiming their verse in tantalizing little rhymes.
She tried often to make Tommy the subject of her dreams. He was kind and gentle and handsome and brave. Especially brave. He had been a big hero in the war, horribly wounded, and had suffered greatly. Tina said that he had all sorts of scars all over his body and, swearing her to secrecy, that Tommy’s pain was so great that the army had made him a morphine addict to survive. Sofia tried to picture herself taking care of him whenever the pain came back—as Tina said it sometimes did, leaving him moaning in his sleep. But those dreams did not come easily.
She also tried to imagine herself with Nilo, the new Sicilian cousin, but that image was also hard to call up. Nilo was just too handsome; what would he want with her? And there was a hard edge to him, hidden but close to the surface, that she found distasteful. She had gone with Nilo to a carnival one night, along with Tommy and Justina, and Nilo had spent the evening clumsily brushing against Sofia’s breasts, and she had spent the night pulling away from him. No, she thought, he would not be a good husband; he would not be like Tommy Falcone. Nilo was a pig. And maybe all men were.
She watched the Falcones’ windows until the lights went off, and then she went back to bed. She was almost asleep when she heard the apartment door open and close. She was sorry now that she had stayed awake so late. Now she would have to listen to the inevitable arguing of her parents, followed by the inevitable screaming and shouting and then the beating. Sofia closed her eyes tightly and tried to make herself drop immediately off to sleep, but it did not work and moments later her father began shouting at her mother in Italian.
That was a bad sign. When he cursed in English, he seemed to put so much energy into picking the words that he did not have much left for the actual beating.
Sofia tried, but she could not really blame her father. No man should have to be married to a woman like her mother, a woman with no love in her heart, only greed for money, money, and more money, a woman who was hollow, a woman incapable of affection. But he should not beat her. Perhaps if Sofia asked him?
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