Lucia Santa looked at him for a long moment before she said, “Help me up.” Gingerly she swung her legs over the side of the bed and he tried to help her stand. As she began to straighten her back, she gave a muted shout of pain and slumped to a dead weight on his arms. He let her down gently to the bed. There was no question of a fake.
“Well, then, you have to rest, Signora,” Dr. Barbato said. “But this should pass. Not altogether, you will always have trouble, but I’ll soon have you at the stove again.”
Lucia Santa smiled at his little joke. “Many thanks,” she said.
WHEN DR. BARBATO left the Corbo house he took the fresh air on Tenth Avenue and pondered the world and humanity. He felt something resembling awe. With mock humor he recounted the misfortunes of this family. The husband in the cuckoo house, the daughter with that big white worm eating away behind those gorgeous tits (and don’t forget the first husband killed in that accident), the son with a dismal marriage to a poverty-stricken immature girl. Now the woman, burdened with half-grown children, become crippled herself. Lying there on that great beautiful ass and that heavy marblelike body, and having the nerve to get angry at his remarks.
He looked down the row of tenements, the windows burning little square fires against the wintry sky. Feeling sick, he muttered without knowing what he meant, “What the hell are they trying to do?” The cold wind came across the railroad yards from the Hudson and set his blood racing. He felt angry, challenged, that this had been permitted to happen in his sight, as if his face had been slapped, as if he were being dared to interfere in some cosmological bullying. His blood churned. This was too much. Too much. All right, he thought, let’s see what you can do. His blood now turned hot, so that despite the snapping cold, he had to loosen the collar of his coat and the wool scarf that his mother had knitted for him.
For the next two months Dr. Barbato, out of pure rage, practiced the art of healing. He visited Lucia Santa every second day, gave her injections, gave her heat treatments and chatted over old times with her for at least twenty minutes as he gave her massages. She was getting better, but still she could not rise from her bed. Dr. Barbato talked about Octavia, how she would be coming home from the sanitarium, and how distressed the daughter would be to find her mother so ill. A few days before Octavia was to come home he gave Lucia Santa shots of vitamins and stimulants, and the night before her return he found the mother sitting in the kitchen ironing clothes on the kitchen table, her children sitting around her, fetching water at her commands, and folding up the clothes for her. “Well, well, good, very good,” Dr. Barbato said cheerfully. “A sure sign of health if one can work, eh Signora?”
Lucia Santa smiled at him. It was a smile that acknowledged her debt and denied his wit. If there was work, people would get up from a deathbed to work, they both knew. As Dr. Barbato prepared to give her an injection she murmured in Italian, “Ah, Doctor, how am I going to pay you?” For once he was not angry. With a comforting smile he said, “Just invite me to your daughter’s wedding.” Implying that there were joys in living, that rewards must follow suffering, good fortune follow bad; that all would be well, the daughter would recover, the children grow, time pass.
CHAPTER 12
OCTAVIA HAD BEEN away for six months. In that time Lucia Santa had never visited her daughter; it had been impossible. The trip was too long, her duties at home too great, and she did not trust Larry and his battered car. To leave the children alone was not even considered.
The day Octavia returned, Larry and Vinnie went to meet her at Grand Central Station. The rest of the family waited in the apartment, the children dressed in their Sunday clothes, Lucia Santa in her finest black dress. Zia Louche scurried around the kitchen replenishing boiling water, stirring tomato sauce.
Gino watched out the front window. At last he flew to the kitchen yelling, “Ma, here they come.”
Lucia Santa wiped away the tears that sprang to her eyes. Zia Louche started throwing the ravioli into the pot of boiling water. The door of the apartment was open and the children went to the stairhead, leaned over the banister and listened to the tread of feet coming up the stairs.
When Octavia appeared, they almost did not recognize her. They had been prepared for someone pale, invalid-like, someone they could tenderly minister to; crushed, risen from the dead. They saw an American girl, full blown. Octavia no longer even had her usual sallow skin. Her cheeks were rosy red, her hair waved in a permanent, American style. She was wearing a skirt and sweater with a belted jacket over it. But most of all, what made them feel like strangers was her voice, her speech, and her manner of greeting them.
She smiled sweetly, her teeth showing between her controlled lips. She let out a cry that was delightful yet subdued, hugged Sal and Aileen, and said to each of them, “Oh, darling, darling, how I missed you.” Then she went to Lucia Santa and kissed her on the cheek instead of on the mouth and said with a pretty, coquettish air, “Oh, I’m so glad to be home.”
Larry and Vincenzo came up over the stairwell, each carrying a suitcase and looking a little embarrassed.
Octavia gave Gino a peck on the cheek and said, “My, you’re getting handsome.” Gino backed away. Everyone stared. What had happened to her?
The only ones delighted with this new personality were the two small children, Sal and Aileen. They would not leave her side, they devoured her sweetness with their eyes and ears and bodies, stood trembling with pleasure as she ran her fingers through their hair and hugged them over and over, repeating in a most charming way, “Oh, how big you’ve grown.”
Lucia Santa made Octavia sit down at once. She paid no attention to these new airs. She wanted her daughter to rest from the climb up the four flights of stairs. Zia Louche, already serving dinner, said to Octavia, “Ah, thank God you’re back, young woman, your mother needs you.” She bustled back to the stove before Octavia could answer.
The meal was the most uncomfortable one ever eaten in the Angeluzzi-Corbo household. The conversation was a polite exchange of information among strangers. Gino and Vinnie did not fight at the table. Sal and Eileen were absolute angels, never quarreling over who got the biggest meatballs. Louisa came up with the baby and kissed Octavia gingerly behind the ear so as not to get any infection. She sat down next to Larry, holding the baby away from Octavia. Octavia cooed over the baby but did not touch him. Larry ate, made excuses, and then left to go to work on the four-to-midnight shift. He hurried away.
When Octavia made a motion to start clearing the table, everyone rose in horror. Even Gino leaped to his feet and grabbed dishes to take to the sink. Lucia Santa cried out, “What are you trying to do, get sick again?” So Octavia sat, with little Sal and Aileen resting against her legs and looking up adoringly at her.
Only the mother sensed the sadness behind Octavia’s smiles and gay talk. For sitting in the apartment again, seeing the rooms crammed with beds and clothes closets and strewn with the belongings of children, had made Octavia feel a wave of despair. As the afternoon wore on into evening, she watched her mother perform all the remembered, endless chores—the dish washing; the ironing of fresh clothes; lighting the kerosene stove in the kitchen and the coal stove in the front room; with twilight, the putting on of the gaslight that caged the room with shadows; and finally, preparing the children for bed. Octavia thought of what she would be doing at the sanitarium now, this minute. They would be in the garden taking a walk, she and her girl friend. They would be in their rooms waiting for dinner and gossiping about the romances going on. They would all be eating together and afterward playing bridge in the game room. Octavia felt nostalgic for the life she had left, the only life she had known devoted to the care of one’s self, health and pleasure, without worry and responsibility. She felt awkward in her own home, and her family seemed strangers to her. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she never noticed how stiffly her mother moved about the house.
At bedtime, when Gino and Vinnie were undressing by the folding bed in t
he front room, Gino whispered to Vinnie, “She didn’t curse one time the whole day.”
Vinnie said, “I guess you can’t curse in the hospital and she forgot.”
Gino said, “I hope so. It sounds lousy when a girl curses, especially your own sister.”
SO NOW THEY were alone in the kitchen, Octavia and Lucia Santa. They sat at the great round table with its yellow oilcloth cover. The coffee cups glared white before them. The ironing waited for Lucia Santa in a corner of the room. A pot of water hissed on the kerosene stove. From down the hallway of bedrooms came the soft sighing breath of the sleeping children. In the pale yellow light of the kitchen they faced each other, and the mother told of the troubles of the past six months. How disobedient Gino had been, and even Vinnie and the small ones. How Larry and his wife, Louisa, had not helped as much as they should, and how she herself had been ill but had never had anything put in the letters to Octavia that would distress her.
It was a long recital and Octavia only interrupted to say at intervals, “Ma, why didn’t you write me, why didn’t you tell me?” The mother replied, “I wanted you to get well.”
There was no gesture of affection between them. Octavia said gently, “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll be back to work next week. And I’ll see that the kids do all right in school and help in the house.” She felt a surge of strength and confidence and pride in her mother’s need of her. In that moment all her strangeness fell away. She was home. When Lucia Santa began to iron, Octavia went to her room and got a book to read to keep her mother company.
When Octavia had been home a week, she and the welfare investigator finally met. Octavia had been sweet; happy to be home, she did not show her old bossiness, and never cursed or screamed.
She bustled into the apartment about four in the afternoon and was surprised to see Mr. La Fortezza, his feet on a chair, sipping his light coffee and eating his ham sandwich. Mr. La Fortezza took a good look at her boldly handsome face and put aside his delicacies. He rose to his feet like a gentleman. “This is my daughter,” Lucia Santa said, “Octavia. My eldest.”
Mr. La Fortezza, abandoning his Italian manner, said in a friendly American voice, briskly, casually, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Octavia. Your mother and I have had some good long talks. We’re old friends.”
Octavia nodded coldly and her great dark eyes made the gesture one of dislike, a dislike she had not meant to betray.
Lucia Santa, anxious at this discourtesy, said, “Come have some coffee and talk to the young man.” To Mr. La Fortezza she added, “This is the smart one, she reads books all the time.”
“Yes, do have some coffee,” Mr. La Fortezza said. “I would enjoy talking to you, Octavia.”
Octavia was so offended she nearly cursed. The condescending use of her first name, his familiarity, made her spit, but into her handkerchief, as befitted a newly recovered lung patient. They watched her with sympathetic understanding. So she sat and listened to her mother toady to the welfare investigator.
Now he had read novels, Mr. La Fortezza had, in which the poor working girl had only to be smiled at and condescended to by a young man of the higher classes and the lucky female would fall flat on her back, legs waving in the air like a dog. Understand, not because of the money, but the recognition of nobility. Alas, Mr. La Fortezza did not have that flashing air, that smiling blondness, that slim American debonair charm, or the million dollars (always the million dollars), which of course meant nothing to heroines. And so La Fortezza became more and more animated, loquacious, and as charming as his two dark circled owl eyes would permit. Octavia looked at him more and more coldly. Gino and Vincent came into the house and, seeing their sister’s face, lounged around the room, happily expectant.
La Fortezza spoke now of literature. “Ah, Zola, he knew how to write about the poor. A great artist, you know. A Frenchman.”
Octavia said quietly, “I know.” But La Fortezza went on. “I would like to see him alive today to write about how the poor must live on the few pennies the welfare gives. What a farce. Now there is a man whose books your daughter should read, Signora Corbo. That would be an education in itself. And it would make you understand yourself Octavia, and your environment.”
Octavia, itching to spit in his eye, nodded quietly.
La Fortezza was gratified, as was the mother. With solemn eyes he said, “Why, you are an intelligent girl. Would you like to see a play with me sometime? I ask you in front of your mother to show my respect. I’m old-fashioned myself as your mother can tell you. Signora, isn’t it true?”
Lucia Santa smiled and nodded. She had visions of her daughter marrying a lawyer with a good city job. For mothers, even in books, do not set their sights so high as heroines. She said benignly, “He’s a good Italian boy.”
La Fortezza went on. “We’ve had many long talks together, your mother and I, and we understand each other. I’m sure she would not object to our having a friendly date. The city gets us the theater tickets cut-rate. It will be a new experience for you instead of the movies.”
Octavia had been to the theater with her girl friends many times. The dressmaking shops got cut-rate tickets, too. Octavia had read the same novels and always had a supreme contempt for the heroines, those generous, witless maidens who exposed themselves to shame while serving pleasure to men who flaunted their wealth as bait. But that this stupid starving guinea college kid thought he could screw her. Her eyes began to flash and she spat out shrilly in answer to his invitation, “You can go shit in your hat, you lousy bastard.” Gino, in a corner with Vinnie, said, “Ooh-oh, there she goes.” Lucia Santa, like an innocent sitting on a lit powder keg and only now seeing the sputtering fuse, looked around dazedly as if wondering where to run. A surge of blood coursed through Mr. La Fortezza’s face, even his owl eyes turned red. He was petrified.
For there is nothing more blood-curdling than a young Italian shrew. Octavia’s voice in a high, strong, soprano note berated him. “You take eight dollars a month from my poor mother, who has four little kids to feed and a sick daughter. You bleed a family with all our trouble and you have the nerve to ask me out? You are a lousy son-of-a-bitch, a lousy, creepy sneak. My kid brothers and sister do without candy and movies so my mother can pay you off, and I’m supposed to go out with you?” Her voice was shrill and incredulous. “You’re old-fashioned, all right. Only a real guinea bastard from Italy with that respectful Signora horseshit would pull something like that. But I finished high school, I read Zola, and I have gone to the theater, so find some greenhorn girl off the boat you can impress and try to screw her. Because I know you for what you are: a four-flusher full of shit.”
“Octavia, Octavia, stop,” Lucia Santa shouted in horror. She turned to the young man to explain. “She is ill, she has a fever.” But Mr. La Fortezza was flying through the door and down the stairs. He had left his brown parcel behind him. His face as he fled was the face of a man caught redhanded in the most shameful of sins and it was a face they never saw again. Two weeks later there was a new investigator, an American old man, who cut their relief down but told them the money in trust was not counted by welfare as assets of the family, since the magistrate could release the money only in some dire need for a particular child, and one child’s money could not be used for the other two children or for the mother.
But the final scene with Mr. La Fortezza was one that Gino and Vincent never forgot. They shook their heads at the girl’s terrible cursing. They resolved with all their hearts that they would never marry a girl like their sister. But at least now it ended that atmosphere, that special treatment accorded to the sick, the strain of politeness toward a member of the family who returned from the hospital or from a long voyage. There was no question. This was the Octavia of old. She was well again. Even the mother could not remain angry at her daughter’s behavior, though she never understood her indignation with Mr. La Fortezza. After all, everyone must pay to stay alive.
CHAPTER 13
THE DAY THE le
tter came from Ravenswood, Octavia did not read it to her mother until all the children were in bed. It was a very short, official communication saying that the father could be released to his family on a trial basis if his wife would sign papers. It made plain that he would need constant care and supervision. With the letter came a questionnaire to be filled out. It asked the ages of the children, the income of the whole family and of each of its members. With it all, the letter made clear that the father was still an invalid, even though he was fit to be released.
Lucia Santa sipped her coffee nervously. “But he is not really well, then, they just want to test him,” she said.
Octavia wanted to be absolutely fair. “He is all right. He just can’t work or do anything. He has to be taken care of like a sick person. Maybe after a while he can go back to work again. Do you want him back?” she asked. She cast her eyes downward and blushed, for she was thinking shameful things of her own mother.
Lucia Santa watched her daughter’s blush with interest. “Why would I not?” she asked. “He is the father of three of my children. He earned our bread for ten years. If I owned a donkey or a horse who had worked so hard, I would treat him kindly when he was sick or in his old age. Why should I not want my husband back?”
“I won’t make any trouble,” Octavia said.
“There will be trouble enough,” Lucia Santa said. “Who can tell, he may do the children harm. And who can live those years over again? We would all have to suffer, risk our lives to give him another chance. No, it’s too much, too much.”
Octavia said nothing. They sat together for hours, or what seemed like hours, Octavia holding pen and ink bottle and writing paper ready to send an answer to the sanitarium.