Love Finds Its Pocket

by Mary Scarpelli

  Kat’s confession of trepidation brought forth a rush of roiling laughter in Gene, whereas Marcella’s response was chilly and offended. Still, Marcella counseled her on how best to win their hearts as she assured her that while her parents were not entirely comfortable with Toni’s lesbianism, they were not a couple of gun toting, red-necked bible-belters so she had nothing to worry about – the night would end with her life and limbs, intact.

  Kat had agreed, although she wasn’t quite certain about the source of her initial reluctance, to allow Toni’s brother, Giovanni, to pick her up from the Staten Island side of the ferry terminal. She relented after seeing Toni blanch, her eye’s widened in unparalleled fear at Kat’s suggestion that she would simply hop on the subway, take a bus or hail a taxi to wend her way through that heretofore virgin territory known in name only as the distant, not worth the effort to travel to, fifth borough. Kat prided herself in being a relatively sophisticated New Yorker, and although she boasted knowledge of the intricacies of the Manhattan landscape in all her glorious incarnations, had a working familiarity of Brooklyn as she was a Brownstone history buff and a passing interest in Queens but only when Toni lived there, her interest in the Bronx being limited to the botanical gardens and Yankee Stadium whereas she was quite content to limit her knowledge of Staten Island to whatever story NY1 thought to be newsworthy, refusing to apologize for her snobbery.

  Setting foot on dry land after jumping off of the ferry and looking around, stunned, at the desolation and filth that surrounded her, made her decision to have avoided that borough as long as she had, more than justified. The chill she felt coursing up her spine had little to do with the weather as the 70 or so degrees should have been sufficient to keep her teeth from chattering. She looked around just in time to see a decidedly handsome, male version of Toni strut over to her, motorcycle helmet being offered to her with one hand while the other found its way around her waist to give her a hearty hug accompanied by a rather uncomfortably lengthy kiss on both cheeks. She thought she felt tongue but wasn’t quite certain. Benefit-of-the-doubt number one was given despite her gut’s admonishments to the contrary.

  “You must be Kat – Toni described you real good, like exactly like you look, you know what I’m sayin’?

  “Nice,” he added as he made another visual inspection of her.

  Giovanni, with his full-lipped smile and slightly smarmily grazing eyes, made a full pass at Kat’s extraordinary entirety, lingering a few seconds longer than socially appropriate, smiled one more time while nodding his head in the affirmative, placed an arm around her waist and practically carried Kat over to his cobalt blue low-riding Harley.

  The bike was a monstrosity of metal and machinery – an accident waiting to happen, thought Kat. She felt her insides lessening their resolve to remain solid, intact, and within the confines of her body. A sickening feeling was encroaching upon her normally steely, nonplussed demeanor. She politely asked Giovanni exactly how long he’d had his motorcycle license and how far it was to the house and nearly turned on her heels when he responded with, “I got it a couple ‘a years ago” and “no worries, we’re only a couple ‘a miles away - like the south end of the island, you know what I mean?”

  “Ah, come on. Don’t look so worried, beautiful lady! I’ll get us there just fine. You just hang on tight, to my belt loops or you can just put your arms around my waist and hold on tight, you know what I’m sayin’? I won’t let nothin’ bad happen to you, I promise.” He then kissed her cheek again, straddled the bike and enjoined her to put on her helmet and do the same.

  “Just hold on real tight and we’ll be there before you know what hit you.

  “Nah, nothin’s gonna literally hit you! You worry too much. Come on. Hop on!” Giovanni smiled again as he patted the section of seat directly behind him.

  Not a believer in a higher power, Kat nonetheless held her hands together in a prayer-like gesture, squeezed her eyes tightly shut and prayed for a safe journey. The helmet was a fairly snug fit but she was less concerned about her hair getting mussed, grateful as she was that at least her skull wouldn’t get cracked open when she slid, ass first, off of the bike, hitting the pavement with a sickening thud followed by several acrobatic rolls into the nearest ditch, if, of course, she didn’t first get run-over by an oncoming vehicle. Giovanni apologized for not having a ‘sissy bar’ on his seat, citing the lack of masculinity in having that unnecessarily girly safety feature appended to the back of his manly-man muscle machine. He explained that since he didn’t have a steady girlfriend, he wasn’t about to ruin the aesthetic of his hog by installing the bar – although she’s quite certain she misheard him; he couldn’t possibly have used the word ‘aesthetic’.

  Once again, Kat felt her resolve loosening, this time with the stark realization that very little would be protecting her from a slow, painful, certain death if she were to lose her grip on Toni’s muscular, albeit considerably slight frame of a brother, one little pothole causing her to slip irretrievably off of the smooth leather seat and onto the road, smashed under the wheels of whatever vehicle happened to be in hot pursuit of their own destination, speeding along on those poorly maintained, overly used outer borough roads.

  Giovanni seemed confident and since neither he nor any of his other passengers had met with an untimely death from a road accident and he didn’t seem to be maimed in any perceptible way gave Kat hope that he actually knew how to handle that monstrous bike – large, low and incredibly loud, and would deliver her, safely and in one piece, to the Mangiarmi household, into Toni’s open and loving arms.

  Kat chose to ignore Giovanni’s longer-than-proper-decorum-allows stare at her ass and breasts followed by a quick readjustment of his boys, as his striking resemblance to Toni gave her a false sense of familiarity with him. Another thing he had in common with his sister, aside from his eyes, nose, cheekbones, jaw line, lips and physique, was his taste in women.

  He had been struggling with himself about how he wouldn’t do to Toni with Kat as he had with Monica, shameless as he had been about conveying to her how beautiful he thought she was and how he could show her what she’d been missing without having the touch, feel or scent of a man by her side – the real thing and not, love her though he professed, a fake dick that his sister must be using.

  Neither hands nor synthetic materials could possibly compare to the real thing, he implored, and he had more than enough junk to make her scream with pleasure and forget all about his sister. Monica’s slackened jaw obviously hadn’t been enough to clue him in that he’d been terribly inappropriate with his comments, never said within earshot of anyone except Monica, which prompted her, on the second and last such occasion, to slap him hard before threatening to tell his father if he dared say even one more word to her – hello and goodbye included.

  The Mangiarmi’s: The Early Years

  Toni’s family resided at the northern tip of the predominately Italian section of Staten Island’s south shore neighborhood of Eltingville. Both of her parents were born in Italy. Their respective families immigrated to America, with Antonia’s arriving first, settling in Brooklyn during the early fifties. Although Italian was the primary language spoken in each of their childhood homes, they were both exposed to a distinctive version of Americana that only living in an ethnic New York neighborhood could provide. Their neighbors were all of a similar ethnicity. The neighborhood children embraced the idea of being American, so insisted on wearing jeans, hanging out with their friends at the local malt shop and employing the grammatically indefensible regional vernacular with abandon.

  Both families, like so many before them, had selected the Italian enclave of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in which to reside - like attracting like. They were able to transition away from their homeland, less painfully, by first immersing themselves in the familiar – neighbors speaking the same language, patronizing the Italian-owned food markets, butchers, hardware stores, and chatting away at the cafes while enjoying the best espress
o and pastries that the five boroughs had to offer. The lack of immediately accessible green space in which to grow vegetables sufficient to feed their growing families was problematic for all but that was a small price to pay for the opportunity to provide a better future for their children.

  Massimo took great pleasure in recounting to his children the story of when he first laid eyes on a sixteen year old Antonia in the hallways of the New Utrecht Training School, affectionately referred to by its acronym of, N.U.T.S.

  “Mutual love at first sight,” was how he remembered it. His (mis)recollection of that fateful day would always be met by Antonia’s patient silence. It wouldn’t be until after graduation that she would even entertain the idea of dating him as his reputation as a ladies’ man preceded him and she refused to have the entire school think she was ‘that kind of girl’. And anyway, Antonia would never share his affections with other girls, nor was she willing to play second fiddle.

  From their first serious conversation forward, her intensity increasingly shook him to his core. He’d never before encountered anyone quite like her so woo her he did until she finally relented and agreed to go steady with him. She didn’t know it at the time, but Massimo had already secured her affections, once-removed, through her parents, who thought he was an excellent match for their strong-headed daughter whose stony gaze, one that could turn a man into a whimpering puppy, might find her one day as an old maid, stewing away in her unrecognized greatness. She would never admit to being so deeply attracted to him, hoping against the obvious that he was actually the type of man that preferred one woman of quality versus the many whose heads were filled with silly notions of life and love.

  Their conversations were seamless and abundant - the touch of his hand holding hers so perfectly natural. And when she finally relented and allowed him to kiss her, the sweetest, longest, most passionate kiss either had ever experienced, her first romantic kiss, their fate was sealed. They married at nineteen, Marcella being the product of their joyous honeymoon, as they were happily holed-up over a period of five days in a suite overlooking Niagara Falls. They left the room only once to sightsee and enjoy the grandeur of the Horseshoe Falls. Antonia thought their unabashed passion would be too obvious if they returned home without having secured any souvenirs. Although she was a married woman, she was young, conservative, private and uncomfortable flaunting their sexual explosions to either set of parents.

  The young couple moved into the house of Massimo’s parents, the occupants of which soon ballooned from three to ten. Massimo was an only child so wanted badly to have as many children as his wife would allow. By the eighth year of their marriage, the ten family members were crammed into three bedrooms with only two bathrooms that Toni had nicknamed the Doom Bowls, oftentimes finding the restroom at the neighborhood diner to be a preferable alternative to the aftermath of her brothers’ and grandparents’ remnants, none of whom had even the vaguest notion of the purpose behind the courtesy flush. The boys had been stuffed into a makeshift bedroom in the musty, partially finished basement. It was dank and not terribly well-ventilated so they spent as little time as possible down in their dungeon. Their horrific accommodations coupled with their tender ages, the youngest two of the four children, made them excited for the prospect of change.

  Massimo believed it to be a step-up in the world to move to a less-crowded Staten Island, a borough in which he had gained familiarity by travelling to it every day across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge for work, and buy a fully detached house in which his entire extended family could live comfortably, both sets of parents and all. It was a terrible disappointment when Antonia’s parents decided they’d had enough of sharing a bedroom with their in-laws and rather than continue their cohabitation to any extent whatsoever, allowed their yearning for the simplicity and quiet of the old country to drive their decision to de-emigrate back to sunny Calabria, where the olive and fig trees grew aplenty, and they could cultivate as many foods as the land would allow. They spoke endlessly about how their homeland would once again satisfy their need to live a more agrarian lifestyle, gracing their palates with a variety of home grown vegetables and the most succulent fruit imaginable.

  They blamed America for the loss of their first-born daughter, Sophia, who succumbed to an unidentified infection, for reasons the family was unable to understand or accept. Their adopted country had let them down in the most hurtful way imaginable. She died in a hospital in which the doctor’s and hospital’s explanation for her death was a calculated statement of: “sometimes these things happen”, a comment that was both incomprehensible and utterly unforgivable in their estimation – that the family’s accusation of medical incompetence was the impetus underpinning the hospital’s seemingly callous dismissal of her death, their desire to avoid a wrongful death lawsuit, was yet another knife through their collective hearts. They believed that Antonia was in good hands under the reign of Massimo, a man they couldn’t have designed as a better match for their obstinate daughter had they created him from goo. He understood her, had unending patience with her and managed to make her laugh and love the extent to which neither of her parents thought possible. They were on a plane heading home not long after the birth of Massimo Jr., eight years after the marriage of their daughter.

  Antonia keenly felt the loss of her parents but at the same time was happy for the extra room as their cramped quarters were about to become untenable – especially so as she intended to bear at least one more child. As it was, after the birth of Massimo Jr., Marcella made a barely veiled threat that if her parents were to have yet another baby, she and Toni were prepared to pitch a tent and sleep in the backyard where they would also eat their meals, just like any other animal. She held onto unwarranted guilt that her grandparent’s decision to relocate back to Italy was her fault, believing they must have overheard her angry complaints so packed their bags and hauled ass back to the country from which they initially fled for cause. She envisioned them living in squalor because of her. It wasn’t until their family vacation to Italy two years hence, when they stayed at the home of her grandparents, that her guilt melted away. She learned that time coupled with an improved economy saw their beloved homeland transform into a much better environment in which to retire in comfort and with relative style.

  Securing financing for a home mortgage was more difficult than Massimo imagined it should have been. Twelve years of marriage had passed, and the kids had already grown very comfortable in their over-crowded Brooklyn neighborhood by the time Massimo amassed enough money for a twenty percent down payment – sufficient only for a fixer-upper, albeit sporting a large footprint. However, that did nothing to dissuade him from realizing his American Dream of purchasing a massive house, replete with figurines of saints adorning a well-manicured front lawn and a large, above-ground pool replete with a three-quarter attached deck in the backyard. He looked forward to carving out space for a barbeque grill as he was already planning to cook outside whenever the weather permitted. Toni and Marcella balked mightily at the prospect of being pulled from the neighborhood they loved, the schools in which they were comfortable and the friends they adored, who most certainly would not be crossing the Verrazano to visit them.

  “They have schools over there! You’ll make new friends. We need a bigger house already, and we can’t afford a house in Brooklyn!

  “Not one more word from either of you!” their father warned.

  The veins protruding from his thick, angry neck stopped them dead as he was known to have a short fuse when he felt passionately about a topic and no one wanted his/her cheek to be the recipient of his meaty palm. Massimo drove his brood out to see the house, knowing that once they saw it, they too would understand his motivation to relocate. The entire family was immediately awed by the grandeur of the house, comparing it as they did to the tiny space and tightly packed series of row houses to which they had become accustomed, but wondered aloud what they would do with all of that space.

  When their fath
er advised the boys that they’d be on the upper level of the house, a soon to be blown-out, angle-ceiling attic space, smallish accommodations to be sure, but sporting two rooms and four windows on its flanks - albeit without benefit of air conditioning, they became completely ecstatic, begging their sisters to abandon their complaints as they offered to help their father paint, lay carpet, effect repairs or just clean up the place, whatever he wanted, happy as they were to have a semi private bedroom with an attached bonus room that they planned to transform into an arcade. Massimo found their offers most adorable given their young age and lack of honed physical dexterity. He looked forward to teaching his sons everything he knew about construction, one pound of hammer on nail at a time. That the boys’ game room would soon be off limits to their sisters’ prying eyes and converted to a black-lighted, pot infused fuck-fest of a den was nary a thought in their innocent little minds.

  Strengthened by the knowledge that his entire family was on board with his dream, before even signing the contract and securing a loan, Massimo dove head-first into devising his remodeling plans, excited as he was to teach his children valuable lessons about self-sufficiency and working hard to achieve ones goals. Those next few years of continuous weekend renovations transformed the boys, who initially were barely strong enough to hammer a nail, into brawny, competent craftsmen by providing them with a trove of knowledge about carpentry, plumbing, masonry, tile work and electrical configurations that became the foundation for their love of the renovation process and the construction company they later founded. Massimo and his father did the lion’s share of the heavy lifting, at times doubling the amount of time it would normally have taken to accomplish a task in order to demonstrate to the boys the proper way in which to measure, cut, install, and use the tools while keeping their digits intact.