Vincenzo puffed on his cigar and laughed. “Better tell me then, big brother, which nannygoat is your sweetheart. I do not wish to cuckold you.”
All around the boardinghouse, movement and sound stopped. Snooping ears seemed almost to burst right through the walls.
I explained to the priest—and to all the other eavesdroppers with their big ears to the wall—that what Vincenzo had just implied had been said in jest, ha ha. Then I continued, warning my brother that, as the eldest member of the proud Tempesta family of Giuliana, I was ordering him to model all future behavior after my own. Vincenzo laughed and answered that he much preferred to have virgins than to turn back into one again.
“Saint Agrippina the Virgin Martyr herself is no purer than my brother Domenico,” Vincenzo joked to that pallid priest, poking him. “You’ll probably enjoy a woman’s pleasures before Domenico does, eh, padre?” Father Guglielmo grew paler still and crossed himself again.
I had reached the end of my patience with that hooligan of a brother. Standing, I walked over to Vincenzo and slapped him across the face.
Vincenzo raised his fists. I raised mine. We stood glaring at each other, brother against brother, each of us attempting to sustain fierce expressions. But in Vincenzo’s big eyes I saw him, again, as he had been as a bambino. . . . I saw Mama and Papa, the village square, Mount Etna against the Sicilian sky. I could not keep my fists raised against a brother. Nor could I surrender my pride.
“Bah!” I said, dropping my hands. “As God and this priest are my witnesses, Vincenzo, from this moment forward, we cease to be brothers! You have slandered the family name and now you mock me! I forsake you! I will never speak to you again.” And with that, I left the room, sending all the snoops at the boardinghouse scurrying. . . .
How to tell the sadness that followed?
Alas, my vow of silenzio was not difficult to keep. The following Saturday night, a Three Rivers police sergeant (goddamned mick named O’Meara) got a toothache and went home early. When he lit the lamp and entered his bedroom, first thing he saw was the plunging buttocks of my brother Vincenzo. As the sergeant stood in shock, Vincenzo groaned and rolled over, revealing to the moon and the husband his slimy thing and the smile on the face of O’Meara’s faithless whore of a wife. The policeman drew his service revolver, aimed first at his screaming spouse, and then changed his mind and shot Vincenzo in the groin instead.
There was an investigation by the police department. Ha! Like one dog checking another dog for fleas! The sergeant was exonerated for having put “a greasy guinea” in his place. (That’s what the Chief of Police himself said. I heard it from Golpo Abruzzi who heard it from his brother-in-law.) O’Meara’s wife—that no-good puttana ‘Mericana—flaunted herself for decades afterward, as if horns didn’t poke through the cap of her goddamned murdering policeman of a husband, who was laughed at by every siciliano in town!
My brother Vincenzo, a buon’anima, died from infection nine days following the shooting. My brother Pasquale and Father Guglielmo were present at his bedside at Signora Siragusa’s. Father Guglielmo gave Vincenzo the Eucharist and extreme unction before the end. This I saw to. This I arranged.
A crowd of sobbing young women, several nationalities, attended my brother’s funeral Mass and burial at St. Mary of Jesus Christ Cemetery. This I was told by Pasquale; I witnessed none of it myself. I paid for, but refused on my honor to attend, the funeral of the brother who had mocked my chastity and spat in the face of family authority. Let saints and women forgive! A Sicilian’s pride—his honor—is everything, figli d’Italia! What does a man have if he trades away his dignity as if it were a gold medallion?
Following Vincenzo’s death, it was my duty to write once again to Mama with the sad news of the death of her youngest son. Two or three weeks later, I myself received a postal card from across the sea, this one from a representative of that illiterate idiot Uncle Nardo: “Mother died 24 June. Malaria.”
With a heavy heart, I responded immediately to Nardo’s news. In the good name of my mother, I demanded that that greedy Pig-Face go to the home of the magistrato and negotiate the return of my father’s gold medaglia to me, the firstborn son of Giacomo and Concettina Tempesta, and the medal’s rightful owner. It was the least that goddamned Nardo could do, I wrote, to atone for all the terrible hardships he had visited on the Tempestas. No answer. I wrote two times more to Nardo, but that figliu d’una mingia ignored each of my attempts to retrieve that which I had been cheated of by the crooked official.
As for my middle and sole remaining brother, Pasquale, he cared little about family honor, justice, or rightful ownership as long as his supper was on the table. Pasquale had always been the simplest of men. . . .
How do I tell the sad, strange fate of my brother Pasquale? No strength left today. Tomorrow, I tell. Not today.
34
Dr. Patel said it was lovely to see me again. She was just starting some tea. Did she remember correctly? Bengal Spice?
“Fine,” I said. “Great. Anything.” I told her I liked the colors she was wearing: red and gold and . . . what would she call that shade of yellow, anyway?
She’d call it saffron, she said.
“Saffron? Yeah? I painted someone’s kitchen that color once. Looks much better on you than it did on those kitchen walls.” She chuckled, thanked me for the compliment, if that was what I had just bestowed.
“You see my brother today?” I asked her.
She had, she said. Yes. Things were about the same.
“I was just thinking on the way down here how weird it is: how before the war began, it was all he could talk about. Then, when they actually started firing Scuds and ‘smart bombs’ at each other, it hardly registered a blip on his radar. Why do you think that is, Doc? Is it more than the medication?”
Dr. Patel said she would be happy to talk with me about my brother, but that perhaps we should arrange to do so at another time. After all, she said, we’d both set aside this hour to talk about me.
The teakettle rumbled. While I waited for her, I grabbed my crutch and gimped across the room. Looked out the window. I hadn’t been up there since October. Now, in the dead of winter, you could see the river through the bare trees.
Dr. Patel asked me about my injuries—my progress with physical therapy.
“Actually, I’m ahead of schedule,” I said. “No one down at the rehab center can believe how far I’ve come along in just three months. They told me they’re going to make me their poster boy.”
“Poster boy? What is ‘poster boy,’ please?” I’d forgotten how it was with her—how much got lost in translation. Why had I even called her? Jump-started this whole therapy thing again? Big Waste of Time and Money, Part II.
I reached down and touched the head of that statue of hers. Shiva. “Oh, by the way, I—thanks for, uh . . . for this guy here’s little brother.” She looked puzzled. “The present you sent over with Lisa Sheffer? When I was in the hospital?”
“Ah, yes,” she said, breaking out in a smile. “You liked my little gift?”
“I did, yeah. I do. I was going to write you a thank-you note about fifty times.”
“Well, now you’ve thanked me in person,” she said. “Which is even better, don’t you think? Have a seat, please.” Placing the tea tray between us, she sat down herself. “Let’s let this steep while we catch up.”
She’d been reviewing my records, she said. Our last session had been on the twenty-second of October. We had never discussed ending our work together, she reminded me. I had seen her three times, canceled two appointments in a row, and then just not called anymore. If our work were to resume, she said, she would expect more of a commitment from me.
“A commitment?” I shifted in my chair. “Geez, you’re not asking me to go steady, are you?”
She didn’t crack a smile. Perhaps, she said, we could meet weekly for four sessions and then decide jointly whether or not we wished to continue the process.
“
Yeah,” I said. “Sure. No problem.” What was she going to do if I didn’t honor my “commitment”? Sic the bloodhounds? Alert the psychology police?
She removed the teapot lid and peered inside. “Not quite ready yet,” she said.
We just sat there, Dr. Patel smiling, watching me lace and unlace my fingers, shift around in my seat. “I’ve . . . I’ve got him up on my bookcase.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your little statue guy. I put him in the room where I read. . . . That’s one thing you get to do when you fall off a roof and put yourself out of commission: catch up on your reading.”
“Is it? I’m envious then. What have you been reading, Dominick?”
“The Bible, for one thing.”
“Yes?” She looked neither pleased nor displeased.
“I . . . well, it was kind of an accident, really. I was trying to poke something else down from the top shelf with one of my crutches. Sho-gun, I think it was. James Clavell. Thought I’d read that one again. But then I knocked this whole stack down on top of me, instead—this little avalanche of books. And there it was. Didn’t even know I still had that damn thing. My mother had given it to me for my confirmation, way back in sixth grade. Thomas and me—we each got one. Mine’s in a little better shape than his.”
She smiled. “Which passages are you reading? The Old Testament or the New?”
“Old.”
“Ah, the ancient stories. And are you finding them illuminating? Was your ‘little avalanche’ fortuitous?”
Was she busting my balls? Getting in a couple of jabs because of those canceled appointments? “I guess . . . I guess I can see why some people find them useful.”
She nodded. “But I’m asking if you’ve found them useful.”
“Me? Personally, you mean? No, not really. I guess I’m more interested in them from a historical perspective. Or, sociological or whatever. . . . Well, in a way, maybe. The Book of Job: I could relate to that one.”
“Job? Yes? Why is that?”
I shrugged, shifted around in my seat for the zillionth time. “I don’t know. Guy’s just minding his own business, trying to do what’s right, and he gets crapped all over. Becomes God’s little test case.”
“Is that how you feel? As if you are ‘God’s little test case’?”
I reminded her that I didn’t believe in God.
“Then perhaps you can clarify for me why you—”
“Fate’s test case, maybe. Schizophrenic brother, dead baby daughter, girlfriend who . . . But, hey, shit happens, right?”
“It does, yes,” she agreed. “Sometimes irrespective of how we are conducting our lives, and sometimes not. What other Old Testament stories have you found relevant?”
I shrugged. “Look, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not like the Bible fell off the bookshelf, struck me upside the head, and now, suddenly, I’m ‘born again’ or something. Gonna go down to the library and cut my hand off for Jesus.”
She waited.
“But, uh . . . well, there’s the obvious one, I guess: Cain and Abel. God creates the universe, Adam and Eve crank out a couple of kids, and voilà. Sibling rivalry. One brother murders the other brother.”
“Yes? Continue, please.”
“What? I . . . It was just a joke.”
“Yes, I understand your tone. But explain a little further, if you will.”
“I didn’t mean anything deep. Just . . . brother troubles.”
She waited. Wouldn’t look away.
“I just . . . Well, I could understand why the guy was pissed. That’s all.”
“Why who was pissed?”
“Cain.”
“Yes? And why was he pissed?”
“Hey, you’re the one with the anthropology degree. Not me.”
“And you’re the one who mentioned the Old Testament. Correct? Answer my question, please.”
“Hey, Doc, I ever tell you how much I like your accent? ‘Onswer the question, please.’ ‘Why was he peesed?’ “ No smile, nothing. I drummed my fingers against my knees. Let out a sigh. “I don’t know. He just . . . he does his work, makes his offering like everyone else, and . . . and the only sacrifice God notices is his brother’s. It’s just typical.”
“What is?”
“That all the credit goes to Mr.Goody Two-shoes. And what does the other one get? A big lecture about sin ‘crouching at the door.’ Like sin’s the Big Bad Wolf or something. . . . That reminds me. I looked at a couple of those books you recommended. Those myth things, or fable things, or whatever. Remember? You made me a list?”
Yes, she said. She remembered.
“Someone went and got them out of the library for me. My ex-wife, actually. The Three Rivers library didn’t have them, but she got them through interlibrary loan.”
“Dessa’s been helping you then?”
Had she remembered Dessa’s name or looked it up before I got there? “She, uh . . . she brought over a couple of meals, ran a few errands.” I wrapped my arms around my chest. I’d read somewhere that that was an instinct left over from caveman days: protect your heart. “Everyone’s been pitching in. Even Ray.”
“Your stepfather? Yes?”
“Well, he, uh . . . he’s had more time on his hands. Got laid off in December. Happy holidays from the big guys down at Electric Boat. He gives that company almost forty years of his life and then, just before his pension maxes out, they hand him his walking papers. They keep promising they’re going to call the old guys back, but they won’t.”
Dr. Patel nodded sympathetically.
“So anyway, he’s had more time lately. Drove me back and forth to the doctor’s the first couple of months, down to physical therapy. I even had him doing my grocery shopping for a while there. Before I started driving again. Kind of funny, isn’t it?”
“What is funny, Dominick?”
“Well, if you’d told me a year ago that Ray Birdsey was going to be my chauffeur, my personal errand boy . . .” I stood up. Walked back over to the window.
“I find your terminology interesting,” Dr. Patel said.
I turned and faced her. “What do you mean?”
“Your comment just now about Ray. By helping you during your time of need, has he been serving as your ‘personal errand boy’ or as your father? Despite his past failures, I mean. Despite biology. Fathers do that, yes? Come to their sons’ aid in times of need?”
She checked the tea again, pronounced it ready. You had to watch Doc Patel—had to put up your dukes even before the tea was poured. In a couple of months, I’d kind of forgotten how to play D with her.
“Tell me,” she said. “Which of the books that I recommended did you read?”
“Oh, well, I didn’t . . . I just kind of skimmed them. That Hero with a Thousand Faces thing and . . . what’s that one by the guy you studied with in Chicago?”
“Dr. Bettelheim?”
“Yeah. That Freud-meets-Little-Red-Riding-Hood thing of his.”
She laughed. “Otherwise known as The Uses of Enchantment. And did you discover any?”
“Any . . . ?”
“Uses for enchantment?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Cinderella’s lost slipper’s really about castration anxiety; the beanstalk Jack’s climbing up is really his Oedipus complex. It was kind of interesting, I guess, but . . .”
“But what?” She was watching me with mischievous eyes. Had I actually committed to four more sessions, or had we just talked about it?
“I guess . . . I think maybe we ought to just let fairy tales be fairy tales, you know? Instead of turning them into these deep, dark . . . performing all these psychological autopsies on them. You know?” I sat there, not looking at her, picking away at a loose thread on my sweatshirt.
Dr. Patel told me she used to tease Dr. Bettelheim about that same thing. “I would say, ‘Be careful, Bruno, or the magical little imps nestled in these ancient tales will become frightened and retreat back to the forest of antiquity
.’ But, of course, I could say that to him because I had such high regard for his work. It freed me to play the imp myself, you see.”
I shrugged, sipped some tea. “Yeah, well, you and me probably read that book of his on two entirely different levels. . . . It was interesting, though. Thanks.”
She asked no further questions, made no observation. Just watched me sit there, unraveling the end of my sweatshirt sleeve.
“You, uh . . . you know what I started reading this morning? Speaking of autopsies? This thing my grandfather wrote. My mother’s father.”
“Yes? Your grandfather was an author, Dominick?”
“Huh? Oh, no. . . . This was just some private thing. His personal history, or whatever. We never knew him, Thomas and me—he died before we were even born. But, he, uh . . . he dictated this whole big long thing—his life story—how he came over here from Italy, etcetera, etcetera. Well, dictated part of it, I guess, and wrote the rest of it. Rented one of those Dictaphone things, hired a stenographer. This Italian guy who’d come over after the war. He’d worked in the courts or something.”
Angelo Nardi, I thought: my chief suspect in the case of the missing father. Not that I was going to get into my theory with Doc Patel.
“He, uh . . . he died right after he finished it, I guess. According to my mother. He was up in the backyard, reading it over, and when Ma went outside to check on him, he was just sitting there, his mouth gaping open—dead, from a stroke. She said the manuscript pages were blowing all over the yard. . . . Life’s a bitch, right? Works all summer long on that thing and then just keels over.”
“What you’re reading is a transcription of your grandfather’s oral history, then?”
“Yeah, partly. Oral and written. I remember my mother said he fired the stenographer about halfway through. Wrote the rest himself. It was all in Italian; I had it translated. . . . It’s part oral history, part written, and about seventy-five percent bullshit.”
She asked me what I meant by that.
“Oh. I don’t know. . . . He had a pretty good idea of himself.”