An Italian Wife

by Ann Hood

  “Now you,” she said.

  Carmine nodded, then stood and unbuttoned his shirt, tossing it onto the grass. When he pulled off his T-shirt, Anna put her hand to her mouth in something like disgust.

  “You have so much hair,” she said. She studied him like she was a scientist instead of his lover. “I had no idea,” she said. Then she looked up at him. “Are all men this way?”

  “I think so,” he said, suddenly embarrassed by the curly hair that blanketed his chest and stomach and shoulders. What would she say when she saw the rest of him?

  She nodded slowly as if considering this.

  Carmine took off his shoes and socks, then his pants, not pausing as she had to fold and place them carefully. He was only thinking of what he was about to have. The Garden of Eden. At last, he took off his own knickers and stood before her. He was proud of his dick, hard and full, ready.

  Her mouth opened slightly as she stared openly at it. “It’s so ugly,” she said finally. He thought she might cry. Or change her mind. So he quickly took her hands and brought her down to the ground with him.

  “You don’t have to look at it,” he whispered.

  This seemed to make her feel better. Unsure of what to do next, Carmine pinched her nipples the way Angelo told him Anna liked for him to do.

  “Ouch!” Anna said. “Don’t do that.”

  Angelo had described the Garden of Eden as wet, so wet that his fingers moved in and out of it with a great slippery ease. But Carmine was having trouble entering Anna. He poked gently at the dry, tight hole he’d found between her legs.

  “I don’t like this,” she whispered, and he glanced at her face for the first time and wondered how long she had been crying.

  Surely if he didn’t get in there fast she was going to change her mind. Anna was whimpering now, murmuring, “This is terrible, I hate this, I hate you,” but Carmine kept pushing until something seemed to let go, and that wonderful wetness that Angelo had promised him was waiting there, flooded over him.

  Truly, this was the most wonderful thing Carmine had ever felt. The warmth, the wetness, the flesh beneath him. He could, if he lay right on top of her, feel her hard nipples reaching up toward him. She was sobbing and he wished she would stop, but he didn’t say anything. He was too overwhelmed with this feeling. He heard her voice as if from far away telling him to hurry or to stop, please. But she was vanishing. It was just him and this place. Then he heard his own groaning and he pulled himself out of her just in time. The smell of rust and water and dirt filled him, and slowly he remembered she was there. He leaned over and kissed her softly on her mouth, tasting her tears.

  “You have to really love someone to do that,” she said, her voice quivering.

  “What if I have a baby?” she said. She was shaking now, her voice high and shrill.

  “No,” he told her. “That’s why I came outside of you. The seeds have to go inside for a baby. After we get married,” he said, his voice proud, “I’ll come inside and we’ll have babies.”

  Still, Anna couldn’t stop crying. The sky had turned completely dark, and there were no stars in it tonight.

  As they dressed and walked back toward home, both of their legs trembling, Carmine wondered how he could leave now that he had this, and go to Coney Island. If he stayed, he could do this once, twice, even more every day. If he stayed, they could get married soon—next month! Sooner!—and he would be able to sleep with her every night, going to the Garden of Eden over and over. Nothing else mattered when he was in there. The mill, the noise, the darkness. Everything disappeared.

  He was surprised to see people moving about in ordinary ways when they reached town. Men sat outside the barber shop, playing cards and drinking wine. On front porches, women fanned themselves, cleaned green beans, shelled peas, drank strong coffee. The sounds of children playing rang through the streets. A dog barked. Carmine saw all of these things, heard these sounds as if for the first time. He had never felt so alive. He squeezed Anna’s hand and was pleased when she squeezed his back.

  “Let’s tell my parents we’re engaged,” she said. “Let’s tell everyone.”

  “Now?” he said, surprised.

  She looked at him, her eyes hard. “Now,” she said.

  Carmine said, “Of course, of course.” Inside, he could expect hugs and slaps on the back, shots of anisette and the beginnings of plans.

  He watched Anna run up the cement stairs to her house. “Come on,” she called to him over her shoulder.

  He followed her up the stairs, through the front door. Tomorrow, he would go to Coney Island.

  ...

  IF HE DID everything just right, then he earned Eva Peretsky.

  “I’m here,” he would whisper, and her face would appear in front of him in his small, dark room. He would hold on to his penis firmly but not move yet. First, he would spend the night with Eva.

  “I can see that,” she’d say. He loved her voice. It was husky, like Greta Garbo’s, and her Russian accent made sharp cuts in the air between them. She said all of her w’s like v’s. You vill like this, she’d say. I vant you, she’d whisper.

  “Eva,” he’d whisper into the dark.

  Sometimes, he got this far only to lose everything and almost frantically pull at himself until he came. Then he’d have the whole night to wipe Angelo’s brains and skull off his face. He’d have the whole night to pick his way out of that trench and step over body parts: arms still in jacket sleeves, boots with jagged legs protruding from them, and the stench of blood and dead people everywhere. His doctor told him to breathe in this particular pattern. To breathe and say, “Hoo, hoo, hoo,” in short hard exhales when his memories got too powerful. But once he stepped out of that trench, he couldn’t find his way home, no matter how he breathed or what he did.

  That was why he had to keep Eva with him as long as possible.

  “Eva,” he’d whisper.

  And when he had done everything just right, she climbed into bed beside him, and held him in her arms, and whispered, “I am right here.”

  THE AIR ON CONEY ISLAND smelled of fried food, salt, summer. When Carmine stepped from the train onto the boardwalk, that smell almost knocked him over. It made him whoop. People stopped to stare at him, a man dressed in black pants, a black shirt, and a black fedora, in this beautiful warm sunshine. A man who gazed at the ocean and whooped, loud. He didn’t care if they stared at him. He was there to make his fortune.

  By the end of the day, he had met a Greek named Steve, who rented him a cart to set up on the boardwalk, where he could sell hot dogs. These weren’t ordinary hot dogs. These were Coney Islanders. Smaller than a regular hot dog, served in a steamed bun, and topped with a sauce made of ground hamburger meat and spices. Everyone who visited Coney Island had to try a Coney Islander.

  And Carmine began to think, as he stood the next day in the bright sunshine, selling hot dogs from his red-and-white striped cart, that everyone came to Coney Island. Women in fancy cotton summer dresses, holding parasols, walked past him. Children in short pants, rolling big hoops down the boardwalk, begged for a hot dog, and parents always agreed. Men in striped bathing suits, with enormous black mustaches, came still wet from the water and ate two or three at a time. Even the freaks came out of their tent to buy Coney Islanders.

  By the end of the week, Carmine had more money than he had made in a month at the mill. He sent a telegraph to Angelo: MONEY FALLS FROM THE SKY HERE. STOP. ENOUGH FOR BOTH OF US. STOP. BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY AWAITS YOU. STOP. He sent one to Anna: I MISS YOU. STOP. I LOVE YOU. STOP. HOPE WEDDING PLANS ARE COMING ALONG FINE. STOP. None of what he wrote to Anna was true. He didn’t miss her. In fact, he never even thought of her the entire month, except to think of what they had done by the river the night before he left. That he missed. That he loved. And if marrying her was how to keep getting it, he would keep his promise and return.

  At night, in the bars along the boardwalk, Carmine sat and listened to the men talking about the w
ar. In no time, they predicted, we would be sending troops to Europe. We had to stop the Germans, or pretty soon we’d all be eating sauerkraut and wearing lederhosen. Carmine listened and drank his whiskey. “What do you think, wop?” they asked him. Carmine said, “I think Coney Island is heaven,” he’d say, and he’d order another whiskey and listen to the waves pounding the shore.

  HE MET EVA PERETSKY on the fifth of August. She bought three hot dogs from him. Then came back for three more. Still later, she came back again. Her hair was blond and straight and her light-blue eyes were slanted like a cat’s. She had sharp, high cheekbones, long legs, big hands that looked like they had known hard work.

  “Vat does a girl do to get the hot dog man to notice her?” she asked him that third time. He liked the way she said “Vat.”

  “I mean,” she said, “I cannot eat any more hot dogs today.” She smiled at him. Her lips were long and pink. Carmine thought about what it would be like to kiss them.

  “Can you eat a steak?” Carmine said.

  She tilted her head back to better study him in the sunlight. “Yes,” she said.

  “Meet me here at eight and I’ll buy you the biggest steak you’ve ever seen.”

  She laughed and told him he had better be there at eight. She was very, very hungry for steak.

  This was fate. Carmine knew it. The fifth of August happened to be his birthday, and on the very day he turned eighteen, a beautiful blond woman fell right into his life. He had known that Coney Island held everything he could want. Opportunity. Ocean. Sunshine. And now this.

  At eight fifteen, Eva came walking up the boardwalk. She wore a pale-blue dress that showed off her slender hips and long legs. Her breasts seemed to be fighting the fabric that held them in, pressing against it and tugging the buttons there slightly apart. She wore high heels. And red lipstick. And a silver bracelet hugged her wrist. When she came up beside him, Carmine smelled her perfume—a cloying, heavy scent.

  They walked across the street and down two blocks to the best steakhouse in Coney Island. Eva slipped her arm into his comfortably, chattering the whole way there. She was a widow, she told him. Her husband had been killed three years ago in the war. She had come here alone, with no money, and they almost sent her back because she had pneumonia and lice and malnutrition. But she had convinced them to let her in, and she had been in Coney Island ever since. She was twenty-one years old, she said. “But I feel much older,” she added, averting her eyes.

  Outside the restaurant, he took her by the arms and turned her so that she was facing him. He liked that she was tall and he could look at her, eye to eye.

  “It’s my birthday,” Carmine told her. “Tonight we celebrate. We order the biggest steaks they have and we drink French wine—”

  She was laughing now, and her cheeks were pink with excitement. “And we have the dessert at the end?” she said.

  “Yes! The dessert at the end,” Carmine said.

  Already, stars were popping out in the sky. When the restaurant door opened, sounds of people having fun shot through the air. Carmine pulled Eva toward him and kissed her right on the lips, quickly, boldly.

  But she didn’t act surprised. She said, “Tonight we celebrate because the war is coming and men are dying and it is your birthday.” Then she reached up and kissed him, soft and long on the mouth.

  She tasted like lipstick and onions, an intoxicating combination. Carmine prodded her mouth open and slipped his tongue inside and Eva responded with her tongue, teasing.

  “I watch you, Hot Dog Man,” she whispered. “Every day for month of July. I watch you selling your hot dogs. So handsome. So strong. You are from where? Africa?”

  He laughed, keeping his mouth on hers. “Italy,” he said.

  “So exotic,” she said.

  Then she straightened her dress and smoothed her hair. She took his arm again, and together they walked inside.

  AFTER THE STEAK DINNERS and the bottle of French wine, and another bottle of French wine, and the desserts, and dancing together slow and close, after she ordered shots of vodka for them and he ordered two small glasses of anisette—“Too sweet!” she said, wrinkling her nose—they stumbled back out into the street, drunk and laughing.

  “Ah!” she said. “It is ten forty-five and in one hour your birthday will be over and we will not be able to celebrate anymore.”

  Carmine threw his arm around her shoulders and held her close to his side. “One hour and fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “I have a bottle of vodka in my flat. We will toast your birthday,” she said.

  They walked past other couples arm in arm, past men kissing women against the sides of houses. The air here smelled different, like cabbage and spices he could not name. Russian filled the air, a language like none he had ever heard before. Italian, Carmine thought, sounded beautiful. Like a song. This sounded like people clearing phlegm from their throats. Down an alley, up a staircase to the second-floor apartment, both of them tripping and stumbling and laughing at their drunkenness.

  Eva had trouble unlocking the door, so Carmine took the keys from her and managed to open it. The apartment was small, just one shabby room with a few pieces of furniture, and then a second room behind it with a bed and a pole with clothes hanging from it. This was where Eva led him, pushing him gently down onto the bed.

  “I get vodka,” she said.

  She disappeared into the front room, and he heard her bang into something and curse. Carmine lay back against the pillows, which were surprisingly plump and soft. He liked the way his head sunk into them, reminding him of the fluffy clouds that he liked to watch float over the sea from the boardwalk. He told her this when she came back with the bottle of vodka.

  “Goose down,” she said, leaning back against the pillows beside him. She opened the bottle and took a drink directly from it, then passed it to him.

  “Now you have just one hour,” she said. “Then,” she rubbed her hands together, “done.”

  Carmine took a big swallow of the vodka, and then lifted his head from the pillows to better look at her.

  “You will kiss me now more, yes?” she said.

  He laughed. “Yes,” he said.

  Until tonight, he had known only Anna, with her crying and his pushing at her. But this was different. They kissed for a very long time, slowly removing their clothes. First he reached under her dress and unfastened her garters, rolling down her stockings, slipping them off, pausing to explore her long, broad feet and toes. Then she unbuttoned his shirt, and her fingers traced his ribs and his nipples, and she nuzzled her face into his hairy chest. For a very long time, they kissed and touched, both of them wearing just their underclothes. She paused to take a drink of vodka, and when he went to kiss her again, she emptied it from her mouth to his.

  When her bra came off, he poured vodka on her nipples and sucked them dry. Her breathing, fast and shallow, made him even more exited. Soon they were both naked, and licking places on each other that Carmine had never known two people could examine so intimately. But he couldn’t stop exploring her. And her tongue on him made him groan so loudly that she laughed and put one of the fluffy pillows over his mouth.

  She surprised him again when he moved to finally climb on top of her and she pushed him back down, mounting him instead. She easily slipped his penis inside of her, and began to rock back and forth in a steady rhythm, moaning.

  “Here I am,” she said.

  Carmine didn’t know what she meant, but then she threw her head back, her rocking increasing and her moans growing louder. “Here I am,” she said again.

  He felt her whole body shudder and her nipples beneath his fingers grow hard.

  Laughing, she brought her face close to his. “I come,” she said. “Yes?”

  Carmine bit his lip. She came? A girl could come?

  “Now you have turn,” she said, and she rolled off of him and got on all fours, sticking her ass in the air.

  Carmine kneeled behind her, his hand
s reaching for the Garden of Eden. So wet, so hot, he lingered there, rubbing her. Her breathing was changing again. “Yes,” she said. “Here I am.” His fingers kept rubbing her and soon she shuddered again, pressing his hand to her wetness.

  “Italians good men, yes?” she whispered. “I come again with my Italian man.”

  Confused, Carmine finally slid back into her. He couldn’t believe how each position felt so different, each one better than the last one. She moved with him, and he thought of Anna’s resistance. But then he forgot Anna altogether. He pressed his mouth to her ear. “Here I am,” he whispered.

  “TELL ME,” Eva said to him when he could finally conjure her.

  “My friend Angelo,” he began. And she whispered, “Tell me everything, my Italian.”

  She was the only one who understood. Maybe because her own husband had died in the war. Maybe because of what they had done with each other. But if he did everything exactly right, and she appeared in his small room, and he lay perfectly still, he could tell her everything and she would listen. And then she would release his hand from his penis, and she would begin to kiss him, and slowly, slowly, they would make love together, pleasing each other until, finally, he could sleep.

  HE DIDN’T HAVE to work for the next two days. So Carmine stayed there with her. Unlike Anna, she couldn’t get enough. “Are you ready again?” she would ask him. “Have you ever tried this before?”

  Carmine knew he would not go back to Anna. He would sell his hot dogs on the boardwalk of Coney Island. He would buy Eva steak dinners and vodka. He would make her frittatas and ravioli. He would find things she had never done before. They would do them together. He would stay in this room on the second floor and he would let that war be fought without him. Carmine had come to Coney Island for opportunity, and her name was Eva Peretsky.