An Italian Wife

by Ann Hood

  Vincent looks up at everyone and announces, “I guess this confirms it. She’s knocked-up again.”

  Immediately, everyone’s worry turns to squeals of happiness.

  Connie watches their faces transform. Now they are smiling and their frowns are disappearing. Even her mother is smiling at her, stroking her cheek. She looks at Vincent, smug and proud, trying to decide whether he should be happy or not.

  “What’s knocked-up, Mama?” Davy says in a breathy voice. “You mean knocked down? Like, you got knocked down to the floor?”

  Connie opens her mouth to answer him, but instead of words what comes out is a loud, painful cry that sounds like the cry their cocker spaniel Ziti made when he got hit by a car last fall. Even after Connie is lifted to the green couch and covered in a hand-crocheted afghan; even after Connie’s mouth is long closed, she still hears her own awful cry, echoing.

  FOR THE PREVIOUS five Christmases, since Connie married Vincent Palazzo, she stayed home in their small white Cape in Middletown, Connecticut. She did not make seven fishes on Christmas Eve; she made a rib roast and roasted potatoes and string beans amandine. On Christmas morning she served Vincent and Davy French toast and maple bacon. Her family did not eat in the kitchen, they ate in the dining room on the china she bought piece by piece with S & H Green Stamps that she dutifully pasted into a book, filling one after another so that she could get the matching gravy boat and teacups and salad plates—all creamy white with a border of tiny off-white raised flowers. All perfect.

  When Connie first met Vincent, she believed he was a man who was going places. By that time, everyone considered Connie a spinster. Twenty-five, without even a prospect of a husband. Twenty-five and a virgin. The only men who asked her out were older, widowers or bachelors with odd habits.

  Then Vincent walked into the office where Connie worked in the secretarial pool with his case of Royal typewriters and Connie felt something she had never felt before. An almost unpleasant tug in her groin. It made her squirm in her seat. Vincent—dark-olive skin and green eyes that bulged like a bullfrog’s; stiff, shoe-polish-black hair that she would learn only after they were married was a toupee that sat on a mannequin head at night; short, just her height, and round like a barrel—Vincent sat across from her waiting to see the procurer of office supplies and Connie squirmed. She wished she’d curled her hair, freshened her lipstick, worn the sweater with the pearl buttons that looked so flattering.

  He smiled at her, showing a row of white teeth as small as baby’s teeth.

  “How do you like that Remington?” he said, his voice smooth and silky, a voice you wanted to touch.

  Connie cleared her throat. “My what?” she asked.

  He pointed his chin in the direction of her typewriter. “The Remington,” he said.

  She realized her fingers, which had been busily typing when he appeared, had sunk into the keys like melted wax.

  “It’s a fine typewriter,” she managed to say. Then she blurted, “I graduated from Katherine Gibbs, top in my class.”

  Vincent nodded approvingly. “Very impressive,” he said. “Did you learn on a Remington?”

  That tug in her groin. It was all she could focus on. An image of the rows of girls—Katie Gibbs girls—in their business-smart clothes, fingers sailing across the keys: the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

  “I’m a Royal man,” Vincent said, leaning closer to her.

  She caught a whiff of cologne, strong and spicy.

  “Yes,” Connie said, putting her hands in her lap as if that might subdue the tugging. She noticed his hat resting on one of his knees, black with a small red feather in the ribbon.

  “Just got promoted to manager at the factory over in Connecticut,” he said proudly.

  His boasting, his confidence, only made the tug stronger. She found herself leaning toward him too.

  He winked at her. “I’m on my way,” he said, pointing his forefinger upward.

  Every cell in her body was shouting, Take me with you! She wished he could read her mind.

  The procurer’s door opened. He beckoned Vincent Palazzo in.

  Connie watched Vincent Palazzo walk away without looking back. She thought she might cry when the procurer closed his office door. Taking deep breaths, she went into the ladies’ room, grateful to find it empty. Inside a stall, she leaned with her back against the door, wondering what would become of her. She imagined a life with her mother, the two of them crocheting at night, sipping an apricot brandy before bed. She imagined never feeling that tug again, that elusive something that her sister Angie seemed to feel all the time. Angie, who came home with smeared lipstick and a bruised mouth, smelling briny. Younger than Connie by seven years, she’d already broken off three engagements.

  Connie knew she should wash her face, apply powder and lipstick, comb her hair. But instead, almost cautiously, she lifted her skirt and rubbed herself, lightly, over her girdle. That tugging, that yearning, would not go away. When she closed her eyes, the image of Vincent Palazzo filled her mind and she could almost smell his cologne again. She rubbed a bit harder, surprised at the way her hips lifted toward her hand. Damn girdle, Connie thought, gripped unexpectedly by the desire to push her hand against her flesh. For an instant, she thought she had urinated on herself. She was wet, and breathing in short gasps.

  Somehow she managed to squeeze one hand down her girdle, her fingers reaching, reaching, and then rubbing and rubbing, her eyes closed so that she could picture Vincent Palazzo, and then her breath quickening until something happened, something like falling off a rooftop. Something Connie had never felt before, or even considered feeling.

  On wobbly legs she managed to get back to her desk.

  Vincent Palazzo stood there, twirling his hat on one finger and whistling “Sentimental Journey.”

  “There you are!” he said. “I almost gave up hope.”

  Connie tried to smile. Could he tell what she had been doing by the way she looked? She would have to go to confession, right after work, she decided. Surely she had broken a commandment. But which one?

  “You like Chinese?” he was saying.

  She nodded.

  “I like the chicken wings at the Ming Garden. And the chow mein. You like chow mein?”

  Vincent Palazzo was asking her out, Connie realized. On a date.

  She stood straighter. “Yes, Mr. Palazzo, I do like chow mein. And pork fried rice.”

  He grinned. “Good then. I’ll see you Friday at six.”

  He walked off, whistling “Sentimental Journey” again.

  I am going to marry that man, Connie thought as she watched his bowlegged strut. I am going to marry that man and move to Connecticut and never ever come back here again.

  She smiled, sat at her desk, lifted her fingers above the typewriter keys, and typed.

  “THE BACCALA,” CONNIE’S MOTHER SAYS, “needs to be soaked three times.” She holds up her thumb and the two fingers beside it. “For the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  Davy nods solemnly.

  Even though one of the many changes Connie has made in her life includes not going to church, Davy holds a fascination for religion, and Jesus in particular. Vincent does the obligatory Catholic duties: Palm Sunday, Easter Mass, and—until this year—midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. But enough of the kids at the St. Alphonsus kindergarten practice their faith that Davy has gleaned some of the details.

  “Is the Holy Spirit related to the Holy Ghost?” he asks his grandmother as she begins to flour the smelts.

  “They’re all God,” she answers.

  Davy looks confused but doesn’t pursue it.

  Connie, thick tongued and fuzzy headed, joins them at the table. Silently, she counts the fish spread out there in various stages of preparation. Baccala, smelts, snail salad, octopus, marinated eel, anchovies.

  “Six,” she says, after she’s counted again. “There’s only six.”

  “I’ve got shrimps in the icebox,” he
r mother says primly.

  Connie supposes that her mother will never forgive her for moving away and not coming home to visit. Until now. To her mother, it is probably too late. But to Connie, she has come only out of desperation. The flush of joy over a new grandchild has already faded as her mother remembers the disrespect Connie has shown her.

  “Why do we need six fishes?” Davy asks. He has put his hand over his nose and mouth to block out the strong fish smell.

  His grandmother shakes her head sadly. “This one, he knows nothing.”

  “We eat seven fishes on Christmas Eve,” Connie explains. “One for . . .” She hesitates. “I almost said one for each apostle, but that’s wrong.”

  For the first time since she’s arrived, her mother looks right at Connie, her face so full of disappointment and disapproval that Connie has to catch her breath.

  “So,” her mother says evenly, “you follow a man to some fancy job and buy some fancy house and pretend you’re American, and you actually turn into an American?”

  “Ma, I am American,” Connie says. She can feel Davy’s eyes on her. “Italian-American,” she adds.

  Her mother takes hold of the rubbery white octopus and splays it on the table, slicing it with quick knife strokes.

  The slap of the octopus against the enamel cuts through the silence.

  “You know Vincent lost that job, Ma,” Connie says quietly.

  “Daddy is unemployed,” Davy says with pride.

  Connie’s mother hesitates, the knife in midair.

  “I thought he got a job with—”

  “That didn’t work out either,” Connie says.

  “And this is the time you decide to get pregnant?” her mother says. “Is that what they taught you at that fancy secretarial school I paid for? I used to have to borrow from the other kids’ lunch money for your bus fare to Providence.”

  “I didn’t decide,” Connie mumbles.

  She wants to tell her mother that this is why she has not come home. Her own disappointment with her life is big enough for all of them. She wants to tell her how sometimes, when she watches Vincent feed his fat bullfrog face, she prays that he will choke. How when she finds him asleep on the sofa late in the afternoon, she watches to see if he is still breathing, and is always angry when his chest rises and falls in perfect rhythm.

  “Mommy works for Dr. DiMarco,” Davy says through his fingers.

  Her mother’s head snaps to attention.

  “You work? I’m glad your grandmother is spending Christmas with Sister Chiara this year. What would she think?”

  “In the doctor’s office,” Connie says, trying to sound casual. “A few days a week while Davy’s at school.”

  “Vincent stays home, and you work?”

  Connie’s glance flits to Davy, and then back to her mother. But her mother doesn’t take the hint.

  “What kind of wife . . . what kind of mother . . . works?” her mother says.

  “Dr. DiMarco looks like Montgomery Clift,” Davy says.

  She frowns, but doesn’t look away. Connie can feel her cheeks turn red.

  Connie picks up the bowl of smelts that still need to be fried and takes them over to the stove, where a pot of hot oil waits. Through the window, she can see her husband drinking homemade wine with Angie’s husband, Pat, and Gloria’s husband, Rocky. The men have cigars clenched in their fingers and Vincent is holding court, talking and gesturing, happy to have an audience. She wonders what he is bragging about. His woody? Her pregnancy? The car they can’t afford payments on?

  She drops a handful of smelts into the bubbling oil. It splatters, burning her hands and arms.

  “Montgomery Clift is a famous actor,” Davy is saying. “Mommy’s favorite actor, right, Mommy?”

  The smelts sizzle. Connie fights back nausea as their acrid smell fills her nostrils.

  Behind her, her mother slaps the octopus down hard, slicing it into small pieces.

  “Mama G,” Davy says, oblivious to the tension that fills the kitchen, “why are there seven fishes?”

  “For the Holy Blessed Sacraments,” his grandmother tells him. “Your mother should remember that.”

  THREE MORNINGS A WEEK, after Connie drops Davy off at kindergarten, she drives across town to Dr. DiMarco’s office. He has given her what he calls Mother’s hours, working just while Davy is in school. She wears a white uniform that shows off her small waist, unbuttoned just enough so that if Dr. DiMarco wanted to, he could glimpse the white lace of her bra, the swell of her breasts. Connie hopes he is sneaking looks at them, at her. He is movie-star handsome, with thick, dark hair and a high forehead, thick black eyebrows above piercing black eyes.

  The diplomas that hang behind her in the office are from Williams College and Yale Medical School. Fancy schools. Connie imagines Williams College, which she knows absolutely nothing about, as a beautiful place with brick ivy-covered buildings and smart, handsome men debating great ideas on brick-lined paths. She imagines pink dogwoods in bloom, and bright azalea bushes, and a clock tower that chimes on the hour. Davy will go there, Connie has decided. Davy will go to Williams College just like Dr. DiMarco.

  Sometimes, Connie spends the ride from Davy’s school to Dr. DiMarco’s office planning how she will seduce him. Maybe she will call him into one of the examining rooms on the pretense of something in a patient’s file and when he enters she will slowly unbutton the buttons on her uniform and take his hands and place them on her breasts. Or perhaps she should offer to cover for Bea, who works on Tuesday nights when the office stays open till eight. After all the patients were gone, Connie and Dr. DiMarco would be left alone in the office. It would be dark out, and just the two of them would be there with the hum of the fluorescent lights and the smell of ammonia and cough syrup.

  So far, Connie has not executed any of her plans. Dr. DiMarco’s wife, Becky, Doris Day–blond and cute, calls several times a day just to say, Love ya. Every time Connie has to take one of Becky’s calls, her chest fills with such jealousy that she can’t breathe. How did Becky get so lucky? How did Becky get born into a family with a dentist father and a mother who bred golden retrievers? How did she get to go to Mount Holyoke, an all-girls college that is maybe even more beautiful than Williams? Connie hates Becky, hates her turned-up nose and tanned cheeks and the tennis skirt she seems to have on every time she stops by the office.

  One day Connie went so far as to call Dr. DiMarco into an examining room under false pretenses. She held a manila file in her hands. She’d unbuttoned her buttons one lower than usual.

  Dr. DiMarco did not seem to notice the extra button.

  Connie glanced down at the file to see who it belonged to.

  “The Pattersons,” she said. “They’re ninety days late with their bill.”

  He frowned. “Gee, that doesn’t sound like Peggy, does it?”

  Connie shook her head. Her throat had gone dry from being so close to Dr. DiMarco and she couldn’t speak.

  “Let me think. She brought Billy in for tonsillitis—”

  “Whooping cough,” Connie managed.

  Dr. DiMarco nodded. “And Peggy had—”

  “Gallstones. Or you thought she might have gallstones but the X-ray showed her gallbladder was clear,” Connie said. She had so much to give him, so much information, so much of herself. Surely he must see that?

  Dr. DiMarco smiled at her. “What would I do without you, Connie?” he said.

  “Fall apart,” she said, shifting so that he could definitely see the white lace of her bra, surprising herself with her boldness.

  This was flirting, wasn’t it? Connie thought. No one had ever really flirted with her before. But this must be it, the smiles, the joking, the double entendres.

  “I’m sure it was just an oversight,” Dr. DiMarco said. “Thanks, Connie, for being so efficient.”

  Then he was gone. Just like that.

  Connie felt her heart tumbling around beneath her ribs. She waited until she heard his deep
voice greeting Pamela Sylvestri and her three kids, waited until she heard the door of that examining room close. Then she went and locked the door of the room she was in.

  Alone in the room, with the colorful posters of the digestive system and respiratory system on the wall, Connie unbuttoned her uniform the rest of the way. She kicked off the white rubber-soled shoes and rolled down her girdle. Then she climbed up on the examining table, spread her legs, and closed her eyes, her own hands running up the warm length of her body, lightly pinching her nipples, imagining that it was Dr. DiMarco touching her, imagining him reaching his hands between her legs like she was doing to herself now, imagining he was whispering to her, What would I do without you, Connie?

  This was her shame. She was a sinner. Three days a week, in Dr. DiMarco’s office, she found herself doing this. In the bathroom. In an examining room. Once even in her car in the parking lot. Touching herself like this, so often, so desperately, was a sin. And wanting it to be Dr. DiMarco broke the tenth commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house; nor his wife, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s. Worse, she would break the seventh commandment readily: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

  When she got home on the nights she worked, as she made pork chops with mashed potatoes and peas with pearl onions and Davy practiced writing his letters, his careful a’s over and over on the yellow papers with the wide blue dotted lines, and Vincent came up behind her whispering, Little V wants a date, Connie thought about those stolen moments, that tug, that yearning that took over her body. She thought about Dr. DiMarco and how life with him would be, how different everything would be.