A moment later Mrs. Grey came to the door.
“When?” Mrs. Tonelli demanded.
“Georgie can wash his hands,” Mrs. Grey said and returned to the kitchen.
Brother! Whose mammy did she think she was? But he did wash his hands.
All through dinner his mind was charging itself like a battery. Still he managed to make himself pretty good company, by his own calculation. Mrs. Tonelli asked him if he would like to carve. He wasn’t sure she meant it, but he wasn’t going to do anything in front of her that he couldn’t do well. “No, ma’am,” he said earnestly. “I mean, I’d like to, but first I’d like to watch you for a few times.”
She grunted satisfaction with his answer and tipped the garlic buds out of their pockets in the lamb with the edge of the knife. The easy way she slithered the knife through the meat made Georgie shiver. Lamb on Saturday night; what could they have on Sunday to top that? Breast of guinea hen under glass? His mother used to say that when he’d ask her what was for dinner. But he giggled at the merging of two thoughts in his mind.
Mrs. Tonelli looked at him. “Well?”
“I was just wondering how you’d carve one of Mayor Covello’s birds,” George said.
“I would like better to carve Mayor Covello,” she said, and with a remarkably flexible snap of her wrist, she severed the crisp tail of the lamb and dropped it with disdain on the plate.
Georgie wanted to howl with laughter, but he didn’t want to spoil the surprise he was planning for the old lady. He merely grinned appreciatively.
He was out of the house by eight o’clock. At eight-ten he picked up Mike Pekarik and headed for Daley’s. Not until he had them both together and Daley’s father had gone out for his usual Saturday night game did Georgie open up on his plans for the evening. “We’re the Mafia, see? We take care of what’s wrong in our own town. We clean it up.” He was stretching even his interpretation of the Mafia. Nor did he realize that in this instance, neither of his two co-workers had much claim on an Italian brotherhood.
Pekarik said, “What d’you mean, clean it up? You gone crazy or something?”
“I mean we’re going to organize a gambling raid tonight.”
Both his companions looked at him, stunned. Daley got up and turned on another light. If he could see Rocco’s face better he might have some chance of understanding him. But all that happened was that he saw his own living room better, the streaks on the wall, the cracked linoleum, his father’s work shoes sitting where he had taken them off. He kicked them under the sofa.
“Let’s go down to the joint,” he said, meaning the Crazy Cat.
“I’m serious,” Georgie said. He took the piece he had torn from the afternoon paper from his pocket. “Did you see this? They’re going to be sending federal agents or somebody like that in here. I mean it. This guy Bassett is the D.A.’s stake-out …” He wasn’t sure that was the right word, but it felt right.
Daley pointed to the column in the paper that was partly torn, next to the gambling story, the account of the murder at the Graham plant. “Did you see that?”
“So what?” Georgie said. “It was an act of God, him getting killed. I mean, it was an accident, but an act of God. There ain’t nobody in this town who doesn’t think old MacAndrews didn’t have it coming to him. He was a one-man Gestapo.”
Daley grinned a little at Rocco’s saying that and the way he was setting himself up: the Mafia. He took a package of cigarets from his pocket and shook one out. “Okay, let’s hear what you got in mind.”
“Gimme one of them, huh?” Georgie said. He hadn’t been smoking in front of the old lady. He lit his own and Daley’s cigarets with fingers slightly a-tremble with excitement. “The way I figure it, we’ll line up about ten other guys from around the joint, and we’ll move in all at the same time, you know, simultaneous—just about midnight—on maybe four of the big games at once.” He stuck the cigaret between his lips and smacked one hand into the palm of the other. “We’ll just smash in, grab the money, and turn over the tables. They won’t know what hit ’em, or who hit ’em—I’ll get to that in a minute. And with this thing in the papers they’ll be seated anyway. Man, we’ll clean the whole damn town out in fifteen minutes. It’s a natural.”
Pekarik said, “My old man’d wallop hell out of me.”
“No, sir,” Georgie said, “not if you give the money to your old lady, he won’t. And that’s what we’re gonna do. Every cent we get goes to the women. We ain’t doing this for personal gain. We’re doing it for the good of our families. It’s patriotic. We ain’t going to wait for no strangers to come in here and make a haul and get all the newspaper headlines. Daley, you see it, don’t you, man?”
Daley took a long pull at his cigaret and watched the ember crawl up toward his fingers. He was catching fire himself. “Moontown, too?”
“Why not?” Georgie said. “They’re our responsibility.”
“Going to do them in blackface?”
“No, sir. Democratic. I know a couple of guys over there who’d give anything to be in on a deal like this. I’ll get them organized. Don’t worry.”
“Just see they work Moontown, huh, not moving up the hill with us, you understand?”
“What do you think I am? NAACP or something?”
Daley put out his cigaret in a broken cup. “Keep talking, Georgie. Maybe you got something.”
“Got a pencil and paper?”
Georgie drew a crude map of the town and marked on it three places where he knew there would be a game in full swing by midnight. Daley added two more that Georgie hadn’t known about. Georgie marked an X at the top of the bill, just down from the football field.
“What’s that?” Daley said.
“That’s Covello’s chicken coop. The last thing I’m going to do tonight, turn loose every goddam hen and cock in the place.”
Daley laughed. “You’ll wake up the whole damn county.”
“Man, that’s just what I got in mind.”
Pekarik moistened his lips. “We gonna wear the stockings again? I think I’d like to. I might funk out if I was to meet my old man face to face.”
“Sure, we’re going to wear them,” Georgie said. “Nobody’s going to recognize anybody. It’s going to be fast and tough, and there’s got to be so many of us we’ll just swarm over ’em. That way they can’t put the finger on anybody special afterwards. And by then we’ll have the women on our side. Man, it’s going to be as neat as if the cops was doing it—only no arrests, none of that jazz.”
Pekarik said, “My old lady likes her cut out of what pa wins.”
“And when he don’t win?”
Pekarik shrugged. “That’s his problem.”
“She’ll like it better this way,” Georgie said. “Or do you want out?”
“Who said I wanted out?”
Daley leaned forward, unbuttoned his hip pocket and drew out a nylon stocking. He stretched it out and then let go, springing it like a snake.
Pekarik jumped. Daley laughed at him and put the stocking back in his pocket and rebuttoned it.
“I threw mine away,” Pekarik said.
“Me, too,” said Georgie. “I’ll get us a couple some place. You don’t mind if there’s a run in yours, do you?”
Pekarik minced across the room mockingly. “I don’t, sweetie, if you can’t afford to buy me new ones,” he said in a high falsetto.
“Any weapons this time, Rocco?” Daley said.
Georgie thought about it for a moment. “We ought to have something to scare the guts out of them. I mean something to show we mean business, but something we won’t have to use. I mean, after all …”
Daley cut him off.” Broken bottles,” he said easily.” The necks of bottles.”
“Yeah,” Georgie said, trying to keep the awe out of his voice. He turned it into a compliment to Daley. “Man, you’re all right. You’re real loose.”
Daley said, “I’m glad you remembered that, Rocco. It was a good t
hing for you last night that I was.”
“Did I say it wasn’t? What’s eating you, Daley?”
“Nothing. I just want you to know I’m not your stooge, Georgie. We’re in this together, but just remember you’re in deeper than Mike or me.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll call the whole thing off,” George said, suddenly edgy under the cold, sharp eye of Daley.
“No, this is swell,” Daley said. “It’s a hell of a good cover-up for last night, and there ain’t no calling off last night, is there?”
“Brother,” Georgie said, “you’re taking the whole fun out of tonight. I mean, this was an important thing we were going to do.”
“We’re going to do it,” Daley said. “Just call your signals, Georgie. I’m ready when you are.”
13
JOHANNA HELPED MRS. GREY clear the dinner table and do the dishes. Mrs. Grey didn’t really want her help; she liked to do things her own way, but she didn’t want to hurt the girl’s feelings. She was off Sundays, and she explained to Johanna what she had left for dinner, how long she was to leave the casserole in the oven, and how to prepare the sauce for the dessert.
At a few minutes after eight the phone rang. Mrs. Tonelli answered it in the living room. The little silver handbell tinkled.
“That means it’s for you, Miss Jo,” Mrs. Grey said. “Nobody’s going to call me at this hour—I hope.”
Johanna picked up the extension phone although she too would have preferred it not to be for her. It was Martin Scully. After all, he said, it was Saturday night.
“How are you, Martin?”
At that point she heard the loud click as Mrs. Tonelli hung up.
“Do you want to see me, Jo?”
“I can’t tonight. I’m going up to church—and afterwards, I’ve promised Mrs. Tonelli … she isn’t feeling very well.” Johanna was not good at lying.
Mrs. Grey clattered the dishes in the sink.
Martin said, “She’s never going to feel very well as long as she can get you to stay with her.” Jo could have asked him to come up. It was his own grandmother’s house. But he was not going to suggest it. “I’ll see you then, Jo … around.”
“Martin, tomorrow afternoon, maybe? Couldn’t you come to dinner? I’m sure your grandmother would like it.”
“I’m sure she would, too. Okay, Jo. I’ll see you.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’m not counting on tomorrow these days. One day at a time, that’s enough for me. So long, Jo.” He hung up.
Johanna put the receiver gently in its cradle.
“You go along, Miss Johanna,” Mrs. Grey said. “I got lots of time before the next bus. And there’s plenty enough in that casserole if Mr. Scully comes tomorrow.”
“I don’t think he’s coming,” Jo said.
“He’ll come. Men always do when they get hungry.”
Johanna set out a few minutes later on the longest walk of her life. She had committed herself to herself, telling Martin that she was going to church, something she had been trying to do all day without success till then. But supposing Father de Gasso wasn’t hearing confessions? Only Father Walsh. The older priest was not always there on Saturday night. In the afternoon he was sure to be hearing them: that was when the old people generally went, the very old people who told their sins in Italian, no matter what the language in which they had been committed. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last confession … I confess to Almighty God and to you, Father, that I have sinned …” How ever she was to go on from there, Jo did not know. She began to pray to the Virgin Mary, always her refuge—the gentle, the pure, the understanding—above all, the pure. She held fast to one image, then another, of the Mother of God: with the Child, the Flight into Egypt, at the foot of the Cross, with Magdalene at the tomb.
There was a smell in the church vestibule of the autumn dampness, of old cloth, and musty paper, and then the soft, warm smell of burning candles. Cigaret smoke mingled, too, clinging to the men who had taken a last deep drag before tossing the stub end away as they entered the church.
Johanna touched the stone bottom of the holy water font before dampening her fingers. It needed to be refilled. She blessed herself, and went to Father de Gasso’s side of the church. Both priests were hearing. She must not think now, she told herself, or she would find an excuse to escape. Or she would just simply leave, fleeing the moment of confrontation to an agony of ever greater guilt. But suppose she could not bring herself, within the confessional, to tell the sin? Supposing Father de Gasso did not help her? Supposing she made a bad confession? Would it not be better not to go at all? To put off until she had found the words, the exact words … And was she truly sorry? He would ask that. And God knows what else he would ask in God’s name. Why did God ask? God knew. More than she knew surely. “I loved Martin Scully until …” But that had nothing to do with it. That was not part of the sin. Martin: I’ve hurt him. That was part of the sin. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph … Mother Mary, help me to make a good confession. What other sins? What was a lie, a bit of gossip, anger with her brother? How many times? What matter?
She left her pew and took her place in line, and one by one the people before her told so quickly such little sins that they were in and out of the confessional almost like birds from a nest.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …” She forgot even to mention how long it had been since her last confession. And somehow she whispered out the story; she would not remember the words ever in which she told of having been in a priest’s arms. She could see the reflection of the streetlight on the old priest’s white head as it was bent close to the screen. She heard him, even above the pounding of her own heartbeat, as he drew in a long, deep breath.
He said, “Have you made a date to meet this priest again?”
“Oh, no, Father.” She was shocked at that suggestion.
“Did he ask you to meet him again?”
“No, Father, no.”
“And you’re truly sorry that it happened?”
“I am, Father. I don’t mean it wasn’t my fault, but I am sorry.”
“Then put it out of your mind, child, as though it never happened, and so that you won’t ever be tempted again. You’ll do that?”
“Yes, Father.”
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
“Two weeks, Father.”
She could see the head nod slightly. “For your penance say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. Offer them up to the Holy Ghost for yourself and for the priest, and pray to the Holy Virgin, who is the mother of purity, that she will intercede for you with her Blessed Son. Now make a good act of contrition.”
All the voices of Christmas and Easter combined, all the glorias in excelsis, the hosannas and hallelujahs were as nothing to the joyous thanksgiving Johanna sang in her heart. And when she went out from the church a few minutes later and met Father Walsh on the steps, she said, “Good evening, Father,” and felt not a flicker of interruption to the serenity within her.
She walked to the village before going up the hill, and stood a moment on the street across from Martin’s rooms. The lights were on, and once she saw his shadow pass in front of the drawn shade. That was all she asked. A gang of boys stormed out of the parking lot and into the Crazy Cat, noisy, jostling one another, and she thought how frightening they could be, any gang of them, moving together. Her brother was with them; in that wild orange sweater he shone in the night like a harvest moon. The din of music and adolescent voices rose and fell from the luncheonette with the opening and closing of the door. There were always moments of stillness in the village when the machinery of the Graham plant was off; otherwise the hum persisted like a ringing in the listener’s ears. That night it was silent. Jo heard the monotone, statical voice on the police radio from within the station. A child began to cry, a forlorn crying that seemed to have been only suspended by a silence while she listened, for it was now persisting, a lonely c
hild, perhaps comforting itself between lamentations with a rag of a doll. There was a clatter of beer cans into the garbage bucket somewhere down the street. A woman’s loud, nagging voice shrilled after a husband, Jo supposed, for it was muffled mid-sentence by the banging of a door. She saw a man come out and walk determinedly down the street, clapping his hat on his head. A window was thrust open above him. “And you don’t need to come back, even if you win, you stinking son of a bitch!”
The man answered with a two-word obscenity.
Somebody outside the Green Dog Tavern shouted encouragement to the man. Other windows opened. “Give him hell, Lizzie,” a male voice urged the wife on.
Johanna went up the back way, following the tracks, so that she would not have to pass along the main village street. Joy was more quickly spent than tears, she thought, remembering the sudden rages of her mother with her father when he was alive, the cruel jibes at him because he made so little money and because he never went anywhere like other men. She remembered then, her father’s records in the basement, and how he played them softly while he worked. A Woman Is a Sometime Thing: that was what made her think of it. He had loved Negro music. Georgie had used the record player. But it was gone now, too, as were all the records, Georgie’s and her father’s. Ashes to ashes, if records burned. Most things did.
Mrs. Tonelli had napped in her chair in Johanna’s absence. She was alert and impatient for the girl’s return. The “male calf” she did not expect till midnight. She had thought of odd chores for Johanna to do: more kindling for the fireplace, her jewel box—she wanted to show Johanna several pieces she had worn in her youth and to tell her of the occasions. She planned a hint or two of her intentions for their future disposition: she always gave jewelry to the brides of her family.
“Who was at church?” she demanded of Johanna.
It was a few seconds before Johanna could remember anyone she had seen—except Father de Gasso and Father Walsh. Then she remembered having seen Mr. and Mrs. Gerosa.
“Both of them? Hmph,” the old woman said, “I think it’s foolish, running to confession all the time. I like to save mine up for when Father Walsh comes so that I can make it worth his while.” She laughed dryly. “I think he believes me a wicked old woman. I am always remembering something I might have forgotten to tell—years ago. He accuses me of making up. And I tell him the only thing I am making up is lost time. I like to see him blush. He is a very handsome man, don’t you think?”
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