“Your uncle probably forgot his keys.”
The doorbell clattered again. “Coming,” she called, shuffling off to answer it.
Rocco stared at a framed map of Sicily on the wall. He had emigrated from Sicily when he was twenty, from the ragged town of Racalmuto. He had married his wife in Hamilton; his entire family now lived there or in Buffalo, except for a few distant cousins. He’d been back twice to his hometown but had found it stressful, too hot, too unfamiliar somehow. He didn’t mind the seasons of Canada: even the long winters had their good points. Winona suited him just fine. He had endured the unspeakable poverty and corruption of the miseria in postwar Sicily, and the memory of it rankled. He had prospered in Canada, had raised five sons, had forged steel, and lacked for nothing. As far as he was concerned, Winona was God’s country.
“Look who’s here,” said his aunt.
“Hi, Pa,” said a familiar voice.
Rocco jerked his head around. His son Carlo, hand extended, stood there grinning like an idiot. He had on a burgundy costume that reminded Rocco of bellhops. All he needed to complete the ensemble was a little cap with a strap. Rocco blinked, automatically shook his son’s hand. What was he doing here?
Carlo was an ambulance attendant. He’d bought a little townhouse in Stoney Creek, but Rocco saw him more than ever these days, and he had mixed feelings about that. He needs a woman, he thought. Or a hobby. Too much time on his hands. “No work today?”
“I’ve taken a few days off, Pa. Are you going to the cemetery?”
“I’ve got my black suit on, don’t I?” he snapped, glancing at Carlo’s tasseled black shoes. He didn’t know what to make of this Carlo, his fair-haired middle son: he was a stranger. On the other hand, Aunt Carmela looked delighted to see him.
He presented a string-tied white box. “Canoli from Valentino’s.”
“How nice,” said the aunt. “Will you have one, Rocco? More coffee?”
“No, thank you, Zia. I have to run.”
“When are you and Ma going?” Carlo asked.
His tone annoyed Rocco, affected, perhaps insincere.
“One o’clock.”
“I can’t come at one. I’m going to Nonna’s house to mow her lawn.”
Rocco stared at Carlo. “Well, ciao, Zia, and . . .” he didn’t complete the sentence, but nodded and departed.
At Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, Domenica fussed around Johnny’s grave site, picking off grass and bits of debris. She had brought a bouquet of yellow tulips and retied the crimson ribbon before setting them down by the headstone. She had on a pale blue dress and a white beaded sweater. Her eyes were dry, her movements happy and light. She didn’t cry any more. She had cried herself out that first year.
Rocco felt lucky; the woman’s heart was infinite, her loyalty and warmth, her concern immeasurable. Domenica’s sons worshipped her. Mother’s Day at their house was like a festival. Flowers, ribbons, cards, balloons, the boys spared no expense or novelty to make her feel special. On Father’s Day they’d give Rocco lottery tickets or shaving supplies, as if he needed their gifts. But as he watched his wife kneel, eyes shut, hands folded to her breast, he knew she deserved nothing less. He gave the two of them some privacy; he lit a cigarette, and moved away between the headstones. He glanced over the names—he didn’t want to know them. He popped a mint and screened his eyes. The sun blazed. He took off his jacket and loosened his tie. It’s enough to know the names of your own, he thought. It’s more than enough.
They left the cemetery and drove to their son Tony’s house in Parkdale. Tony and his wife Barb had invited them over for a late lunch. Rocco was quiet throughout the meal, Domenica morose. They left Barb’s cabbage rolls uneaten; usually they couldn’t get enough of them. Tony, the second oldest, was a brooder, but there was something almost smug about him. He’s content with who he is, Rocco thought. He’s pleased with himself. Tony had the hooded eyes of Pepe, and Rocco’s father and uncles. He had taken Johnny’s death quite hard but hadn’t dwelt on it and hadn’t visited the cemetery in two years. But what was one supposed to do? Rocco already felt bad for chewing out Marco. Besides, he would never discuss these matters with Tony in Barb’s presence.
Tony’s bright blond son Julio injected some joy into the proceedings. Rocco thought the child all his mother, which could not have been a bad thing, Tony being so serious. He engaged Julio in a little game of peekaboo. When Rocco covered his face with his hands, Julio pointed and cried, “No, no, no!” When he uncovered his face, the child squealed with delight. If only everything were so easy.
They finished the meal with watery espresso and pastries.
Barb said, “Johnny used to love canoli.”
Domenica forced a small smile and Rocco nodded. Barb reddened, concerned she had said the wrong thing, but Domenica reassured her, touching her wrist and saying, “Johnny was crazy about canoli.”
When they got home, Domenica went straight to bed for a nap. Rocco got out of his suit and put on a pair of loose-fitting pants and an old work shirt. He poured himself a brandy and took a seat on the front porch. The air had a pleasant bite to it. He sipped the brandy and swirled it around his mouth before swallowing. A bubble of warmth burst in his chest. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. He could hear the breeze swishing through the silver maples on the other side of the road. An empty lot sat there, abandoned by a man who had bought it in the ’70s but never built on it. Rocco didn’t know why, though rumor had it that his wife had died, or divorced him.
Moments later Ugo appeared in his pearl-grey Buick, accompanied by a lanky adolescent whom Rocco recognized as the grandson, Luca. He forgot which of Ugo’s four daughters was the mother. What a Lurch he was turning into.
Ugo got out of the car, but Luca stayed put. “Rocco,” he said, approaching, “we’ve come to take that Malibu off your hands.”
Rocco reacted with surprise. He hadn’t expected him to collect it so soon.
“He got his licence this morning,” Ugo said, jerking his thumb at Luca who looked on with his mouth agape. “I’m going to drive the Malibu back to my place and he’ll drive the Buick. I’ll get it certified tomorrow. Okay?”
Rocco started to say something, but stopped.
“Well?” Ugo said.
“Okay,” Rocco said, suddenly bored by the whole thing. He had bought the Malibu for Johnny years ago. The kid needed a car, but what did that matter? Johnny had never liked it, not partial to the four doors and the dull brown exterior. He’d give Ugo the keys and be done with it.
Carlo pulled up in his dark red Saturn and tooted his horn twice. A startled Ugo swung his head around and cursed him in Sicilian. Carlo cried out apologies. Ugo turned to Rocco shaking his head. Rocco shrugged—what could he say? He wanted to weep and burst out laughing at the same time. Carlo waved to him. He sighed and nodded to his son, who had on sunglasses and was grinning. He was something that kid. They were all something.
Coop
“What do you plan to do with yourself?” I asked, staring at the youth’s gap-toothed grin. “You turn eighteen tomorrow.”
“I plan to party tomorrow.”
“If you get busted you’ll do adult time.”
“I can do it.”
He could do it all right. Ever since he was a toddler he’d been in and out of foster homes and group homes and hospitals and detention centres and high-risk youth facilities. I had no answers for him. I told him to sign a form.
“What is this?”
“A release of information statement.”
“Why?”
“Just sign it, Coop.”
He inscribed the spot with a childish scrawl.
“Happy now?”
“I’m not happy, Coop.”
“What do you mean, you’re not happy?”
“My wife left me last night.”
“That sucks.”
“It does. She left me for another man.”
“I’d smoke the motherfucker.”
“I know,” I said. I put away all the paperwork, shut the filing cabinet and escorted the youth to the foyer.
“This is where we part company, Coop.”
“It’s been real.”
“When you go back in, get them to fix those fucking teeth of yours. I hear they’ve got a great dental plan in adult prison.”
“Yeah, right on. Maybe we can talk about it when you go in. I’ll get them to give you the cell beside mine.”
“Very funny, Coop. Very funny.”
“Later, boss.” He stalked off through the doors and out into the harsh sunlight.
The Dog Went Out and Sat in the Snow
A clear sky promised less grey that day, reason to crack open a bottle of champagne perhaps, and somewhere in Niagara Falls this might have been going on. Niagara Falls was all about what bubbled and foamed. I felt somewhat tingly, my skull, my skin, my heart, but kept my ebullience in check. February had just begun. We weren’t out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. A blizzard could strike at any moment and bury our optimism. Still, caught up in the dazzle, I found myself fighting back a smile. When was the last time the sun appeared? Maybe in November. I drank coffee by the living room window, watching people trundle back and forth across the frame, their faces all lit up. There were so many of them and yet I knew none of them. Maybe they were doing a loop, bit players recur in the movies. Watch the crowd scenes closely. Some change hats or coats. But here they never doubled their roles. In itself surprising. You’d grant at least one redirect to the source, to the home place, mission complete, reward or refreshment awaiting. But not insofar as I could see, though at times my eyes glazed over and the faces blurred together and I could not distinguish one from the other.
I heard a sound in the bedroom and wondered if the wife was waking up at last. The woman could sleep. I wished I could sleep like that, but I’ve never been good at it. Even as a child I had trouble sleeping, fearing the dark, fearing the strangeness of dreams.
I listened for another sound from the bedroom but only heard myself breathing.
The cream in my coffee congealed soon enough. The house was cold, but I wouldn’t turn up the heat just yet. A big red sweater with a charcoal moosehead, black sweatpants, white tube socks: these kept me warm enough. The dog scratched at the side door. I let him in. He looked at me and yawned. I pulled his ear, he ducked his head, good boy. Stark contrast to yesterday’s reaction, snapping at my hand. Lucky he misjudged. Had he bit, well. His was the good life. What did he want for? Not food or exercise, not toys or cuddles. The wife provided most of this. But I contributed to his life and his well-being in my way, walking him around the block, but not so often now. I hated walking now. At two hundred kilograms I was bursting at the seams and growing by the day. Bad food and my gluttony! More than anything I dreaded getting so big they’d have to bury me in a piano case. That would take the cake. Going out like that, mammoth, monstrous. Had I eaten more vegetables, more roughage, and so forth, things may have gone differently. But it was too late. I accepted that. I envied the dog in many ways.
Eventually the wife emerged from the bedroom in a loose red robe. She was shrinking.
“You’re even smaller today,” I told her.
“Thanks,” she said.
“But it’s something we should discuss,” I said, and I meant it.
She dismissed me with a wave of her small blue hand. What was I to do? The woman had an iron will and a quick temper. I knew better than to push her. I could see her tiny feet under the robe, thrashing like hairless, emaciated mice. The dog howled like a wolf and the wife responded in kind. They howled for several minutes. I never joined them when they did this. It was their thing.
“Pick your poison,” she said later, in the kitchen. Rashers of burnt bacon and sausages beside runny eggs. The dog simpered under the table, waiting for whatever fell his way. I chose sausages that squirted when I stabbed them with my fork. The wife crunched a bacon bit and mopped up slithery yellow yolk with a crumb of toast. The sausage smelled too porky for my liking but I ate it anyway. The wife would have taken offense otherwise, turned beet red and opened up on me. She had a mouth when she lost her temper. I knew she didn’t mean all those things she said, but they stuck in my skin.
“Is it good?” she asked.
“Delicious,” I said.
I excused myself and hustled to the bathroom. I tried to bring it up quietly but my system betrayed me with horrible gargling sounds and something akin to barking. My stomach squeezed and heaved. It all came up in the same order I’d swallowed it. I returned to the table ready to give it another go.
“Are you in a funk?” the wife asked me, dwarfed by her high-back chair, her voice a trill. When I failed to reply she leaned forward and said, “Tell me what’s the matter.”
But what was I to say? Your shrinkage horrifies me? But when did it begin? I found it hard to recollect. Things sneak up on you. Day by day you notice nothing changing—but, in increments large and small, everything changes. I thought about the weight I had put on and how suddenly, one day, it occurred to me that I was obese. Not just plump or fat, but morbidly obese. The dog emerged, baring his teeth, one blackened by a cavity, a visit to the dentist imminent if the dog lived. I would do that for him, if he lived. He studied my wife. Unsure of his intentions, I banged the table with my fist. He glared at me.
“Bad dog!” I shouted.
“He doesn’t know any better.”
“On the contrary,” I said. “On the contrary.” I tossed him a sausage and he snatched it out of the air like an acrobat; he could do that for food but not for sticks or frisbees. His will matched that of the wife. He would not cur to me, not this dog, and despite the rancour it sometimes stirred in me, I found that admirable. He gulped down the sausage without chewing and sat there licking his chops, waiting for more, then looking almost puzzled. He tried his puppy face. The puppy face worked for years to solicit whatever he wanted, but it had lost its efficacy. With no more sausage forthcoming he dropped the act. Moments later he scratched the door to get out.
“You know better than to feed him sausage,” the wife cried from the folds of her red robe. “It repeats on him.”
I had to be delicate with her, my pinkies extended. She looked as fragile as a china doll; the slightest force might fracture her. No, I kept silent while she chewed on a crumb of bread, chewed and chewed. My heart ached for her at that moment. We had been through so much together, so many ups and downs, so much joy and sorrow. Fill yourself up, I thought, do it, honey. Eat until you’re bursting. And she gave it hell. But she was getting small, smaller, smaller, exponentially diminishing. Her tiny jaws worked. Her little peep eyes blinked and blinked. Her pinhole nostrils glistened. Such effort she put into it, a simple act like eating. She tried so hard. What a fighter, fierce in her way, but so delicate, such a flower. She tired, poor thing. She told me she needed a nap and excused herself, dragging the robe behind her like a parachute.
Sunlight poured like corn syrup through the east-facing window, and once again I found myself smiling and fighting off the smile. I had no reason to be smiling. But I truly felt that somehow things would sort themselves out, that the presence of the sun alone guaranteed a positive outcome, as it often does. Maybe all I had to do was go back to bed and fall asleep and when I awoke the queer dream that this was would be over, the wife would be normal again, and life would be better than ever. But as I said, I was never much of a sleeper. I rapped my knuckles on the tabletop. Then I bit the base of my thumb. I pinched the fat of my left upper arm. This was no dream. I returned to the food. My egg had congealed on the plate and I refused to touch the fleshy sausages, but I ate bread and drank more coffee and soon felt that I could get through the next few hours without fainting.
I went out with the dog. He sat on a pile of snow. Red tongue flopping, he fixed his gaze on something in the tree. “What are you looking at?” I asked him. Maybe a squirrel perched in the snow-covered branches mocked him, and he’d
have none of that, not from a squirrel, but I saw nothing. The dog often reacted to things not there, or things invisible to me. “What’s that, boy? What is it?” But he reveals nothing. Not pleasant to imagine he could sense things I could not. Not pleasant to observe him staring at the tree in that fashion, trembling, no, not trembling, like I in my massive body trembled, studying something there that I was not privileged or sensitive enough to see. Maybe that was my problem, my inability to see things right before my eyes. They had to sock me in the nose for me to see them, to acknowledge they were there. This came as a grim self-revelation. This told me I was not just a gluttonous man, an oaf, a lout, a sloth, an unmotivated lay-about, but I was selfish as well, so self-absorbed I couldn’t see the trees for the forest.
The dog suddenly lost interest and led me to the snow pile near the shed where he had puked up the sausage. His eyes drooped on cue. Good dog, that’s right. Bad sausage. So what are we gonna do about it, dog? Puke it up, move on. Everything should be that simple. Go through your progressions, make a throw. Don’t hang in the pocket too long and take a sack. Chuck it away if nothing is there. You’ll live to see the next play. I threw my hands in the air as if I had just scored a touchdown. Yes! I am the champion! I am the champion of the world! These gymnastics tired me. But what a fine day it was. To have all these thoughts. To be alive, thinking and witnessing the wide world around me. The dog snuffled the snow, rooting out a grey vole and then watching as it shot across the ice-crusted path and under the neighbour’s privacy fence. The dog looked at me. And if he had shoulders, the dog would have shrugged and then gone on with his business. It was what it was. Still, I felt too tense to appreciate the pale blue sky and the light scudding clouds and the sparkle of icicles melting from the eaves of the bungalow. The cold air nipped my hands and ears, and loud and mournful barking from down the street made me go inside sooner than I wanted, and then I had no choice but to deal with the vanishing wife.
Black Rabbit and Other Stories Page 16
