“You’re going out with him again?” I asked my mother. “But he’s, he’s—”
“Not another word from you, young lady,” she snapped. “I haven’t forgotten your little performance when he came over for dinner.”
While I’m considering whether or not I should just run away to Alaska because at least it’s cool there, a car pulls up.
“Hey, Princess,” Uncle Dominic calls through the open window.
I run to the car.
“Hi!” I say, leaning in.
“You busy?”
“Not unless you count sitting around doing nothing,” I say.
“What do you say to going to the beach?” he asks.
My face falls. “I can’t. I got in trouble.”
“I heard,” he says.
I look down at the ground, and then my head snaps up when I hear him say, “Maybe I can talk to your grandmother.”
“Really? You would do that for me?”
He bites his lip and nods.
I wait on the porch while he’s inside talking to Me-me. I’ll never know what he told her; all I know is that a few minutes later she comes out to the porch.
“Be home by dinner and don’t spoil your appetite,” she says.
I can’t believe my ears. “Really?”
Me-me’s face turns serious. “If your mother finds out about this . . .”
I hug her soft waist and say the words that got me into this fix to begin with.
“She’ll never know.”
The beach is already crowded by the time we get there, but we find a good spot just the same. Uncle Dominic’s made a real effort to be normal, and I know it’s for me. He’s not wearing slippers, just regular shoes and bathing trunks.
I don’t know if it’s because we’re out of the neighborhood, but he seems like a different man, happier. He runs straight out into the ocean, diving beneath a big wave and popping up on the other side. We bob in the waves with the rest of the kids and parents on vacation. Some of the fathers look sort of stunned, like they can’t believe they’re in the ocean, their toes brushing the sand, and not in some factory or office somewhere.
“Watch out for the sharks,” Uncle Dominic says, baring his teeth. He has a chip in his front tooth.
We swim until we’re tired, and then we go and lie on the beach to dry off. Uncle Dominic buys us a bag of peanuts from the man walking around. Some young ladies have put their blankets next to ours. They’re pretty, and they’re looking at Uncle Dominic like he’s saltwater taffy.
I don’t usually think of Uncle Dominic as the eligible-bachelor type, but here on the beach, out of the back room of the store, I see what they see: he’s got a real sweet smile. He seems like a normal fella at the beach, but it’s just like a pool of water in the desert: a mirage.
I hear the young ladies invite him to have a drink with them up on the boardwalk.
“Some other time,” he says. “I have a date with my niece here.”
“Your niece, how sweet,” the young ladies coo.
We change into our clothes and head to the boardwalk.
“How about those rides?” he asks with a grin, and I grin right back at him.
We go to the bumper cars first, my favorite. Then there’s the Ferris wheel, the teacups, the Tilt-A-Whirl, and the whip. Afterward we sit on a bench on the boardwalk and eat hot dogs with sauerkraut and wash them down with fresh-squeezed orangeade, the coldest, most delicious drink in the whole world. Uncle Dominic buys me a coconut patty to eat on the ride home and it melts in my mouth.
We’ve got the windows rolled down and Bing Crosby’s singing “A Perfect Day” on the radio. As we drive down my street, I look over at Uncle Dominic. For a moment I imagine that he is my father and it’s just the two of us, coming home after a day at the beach. Something any regular kid would do.
We pull up in front of my house. My mother’s car isn’t there yet.
“It was a perfect day, huh, Princess?” he asks, and pulls out his handkerchief, swiping a smear of mustard off my cheek.
I watch his car drive away and can’t help but think Bing and my uncle Dominic were both right.
It was a pretty perfect day.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
So This Is Heaven
Me and Frankie are in the basement of Nonny’s house.
Frankie’s got his heart set on finding Grandpa Falucci’s treasure, and he’s got a new theory about where it’s buried.
“What if Uncle Sally had it all wrong? What if Grandpa put it ‘underground’ and not ‘in the ground’? What if it’s in the basement?” Frankie says.
So now Frankie’s been sneaking down here every chance he gets, which isn’t very often because Nonny’s almost always cooking. But this morning Frankie volunteered us to do the laundry so Uncle Paulie could take Nonny and Aunt Gina to Uncle Nunzio’s factory to get new coats. Uncle Dominic’s napping in his car, so the coast is clear.
Frankie’s across the room, teetering on top of a shaky-looking ladder, studying a brick near the ceiling while I feed wet clothes through the wringer.
“Looks sort of loose,” he says, but I’m not really listening to him; I have too much on my mind.
This morning I had a fight with Me-me. We were sitting at the breakfast table eating watery scrambled eggs when she told me that Mr. Mulligan was coming over for dinner tonight.
“Again?” I asked.
“He’s a nice man,” she said.
“He’s boring.”
“Young lady,” Me-me said, her tone sharp.
“What do we need him for, anyway?” I asked.
“You need a man in your life,” she said.
“I have Uncle Dominic and Uncle Paulie and Uncle Ralphie and—”
“Your mother needs a husband,” she said flatly. “She’s been alone for a long time. You think it’s been easy for her?”
“But why him?” I demanded. “I don’t want him for my father.”
“He’s not going to be if you keep this up,” she said under her breath.
Across the room, Frankie gives a low whistle. “This brick is a different color than the other ones, like it was replaced or something.”
“I could use some help, you know,” I say loudly. “I’m the only one doing any laundry here.”
“Aw, knock it off already,” he says. “We find the loot, and you can hire someone to do the wash.”
“But isn’t it stealing?” I ask.
Frankie turns on me with a scowl. “It’s not stealing if nobody knows about it. Besides, you think Grandpa would want all this money just going to waste here?”
“I guess not,” I say.
As I feed a wet slip into the wringer, I start thinking about what’s going to happen if my mother marries Mr. Mulligan. What then? Will I have to call him Daddy?
I can already tell Mother is getting different. I lost the lucky bean somewhere in the house and was up late last night looking for it, and she didn’t even help me look!
“You want me to have bad luck?” I asked her.
“That’s all just superstitious nonsense anyway, Penny,” she said.
Frankie’s yelp of excitement startles me.
“Holy smoke!” he shouts. “Penny! Look!”
I turn as Frankie pulls a cigar box from a hole high in the wall. A waterfall of loose dirt and old cement rains down on his head. He opens it and gasps, teetering on the ladder. The box goes flying into the air, and bills start fluttering out like butterflies set free. It must be a million bucks, there’s so much money everywhere, and I’m thinking that this is a miracle or something when I feel a tug on my fingers.
My right arm’s yanked, and when I look back, I see it being pulled through the wringer. I try to scream, but all that comes out is a wheeze like Scarlett O’Hara used to make when you stepped on her tail. I can’t believe what I’m seeing, ’cause I can’t. I mean, that mangled thing caught in the wringer can’t be part of me, ’cause if it was, wouldn’t I be feeling some pain
or something. And that’s when it hits me, the pain, like a shot, and I yell, I yell, “Frankie! Frankie! Frankie!” and he comes running over, his face white as snow. He just stands there staring in disbelief.
My right arm has been pulled through the wringer all the way up to my armpit and it’s stuck, but the wringer’s still going, grinding down on my arm, like Uncle Dominic making ground beef.
“Make it stop!” I scream.
Frankie jumps to life and pulls the plug out of the wall, and I feel a jolt as it stops.
For a moment we both just stare at my arm stuck in the wringer, and when I meet Frankie’s eyes, he’s got the same look he had that morning he showed up in my backyard, and I know it’s bad, it’s terrible, it’s horrible, it’s the end.
All at once the pain washes over me, and I start to scream, my voice loud—I never knew I had a voice this loud—and I’m screaming, “Get it out! Get it out!” and Frankie’s saying, “It’ll be okay! It’ll be okay!” but I just scream and scream and he’s running upstairs, shouting for Uncle Dominic.
Then I’m all alone in the basement, money littering the floor, and everything slows down so that my whole life, my whole world, is reduced to this moment, this wringer, this arm that used to be an arm that I can’t imagine will ever hold a lucky bean or a baseball or an ice cream cone or anything at all, ever again.
Frankie comes running back with Uncle Dominic and they get my arm out of the wringer, but by the time they do, I’m done with screaming, I’m all screamed out, and all I can do is moan low in my throat. When Uncle Dominic picks me up to carry me upstairs, the sudden jolting makes me throw up the scrambled eggs from breakfast, and then everything goes black for a moment.
I blink my eyes open, and Uncle Dominic is leaning over me and I’m laying across the front seat of his car, the wheels rumbling beneath my head, my arm wrapped in what looks like the white lacy tablecloth from the dining room table, and then I realize that all the red on it is my blood.
“Hang on, Princess. We’re almost at the hospital,” Uncle Dominic says urgently.
But his face changes, and it’s not Uncle Dominic anymore; the face looking down at me is younger, the jaw thinner, the eyes darker.
“My Penny,” my father says, leaning down, touching my forehead, his hand soft as an angel’s. “Cocca di papà.”
And that’s when I know I’m dying.
The best thing about dying, I decide, is that I’m finally going to get to see my father. He’ll be waiting for me, I’ll have a ticker-tape parade, and there’ll be butter pecan ice cream. I can already see Scarlett O’Hara yipping around, trying to bite my ankles and tinkling all over the clouds. We’ll go for a nice long swim in the big pool and maybe take in a movie. Then we’ll go see a Dodgers game.
But when I open my eyes, there’s no ice cream or ticker tape, just a terrible numb feeling on the right side of my body and the sound of yelling, like someone’s having a boxing match. I half expect to see some fella selling peanuts and taking bets.
Except the voice doing the shouting is my mother’s.
“You were supposed to watch her!” she’s shouting. “You were supposed to watch her!”
I hear Uncle Nunzio’s voice, the same steady voice he uses when he talks to his customers.
“Ellie,” he says, “it was an accident. It’s not Dominic’s fault—”
“Don’t you talk to me about accidents!” she shrieks wildly. “He killed Freddy and now he’s almost killed my daughter!”
“Ellie, don’t,” Uncle Paulie pleads. “Please don’t.”
I open my eyes to see the room crowded with people—it seems like everyone’s here. There’s Frankie and Uncle Paulie and Aunt Gina and Uncle Nunzio and Aunt Rosa and Me-me and Pop-pop and Nonny. In the middle of the room my mother and Uncle Dominic are standing across from each other like boxers in a ring.
“Ellie,” Uncle Dominic says in a choked voice.
But it’s too much for my mother somehow, and she takes two steps until she’s standing in front of him, and she slaps him, slaps him so hard, I’m sure they hear it in New York City.
The whole room gasps, and Mother raises her hand again.
Uncle Dominic blanches, like he’s been sucker punched, but he doesn’t say anything; he just stands there, waiting for the next blow to fall. He looks terrible. His shirt is stained under the armpits, and my blood’s on it too, and I can’t take it, I can’t take seeing that horrible look in his eyes, like he wishes he was dead and my mother is his executioner. My two favorite people standing there, hating each other.
“Stop,” I say. It comes out as a croak.
My mother whirls around, her face white, and she is at my side in two steps, her hand on my forehead, saying, “My baby, my baby.”
Behind her I see Uncle Dominic’s eyes close, and then Uncle Nunzio starts shooing everyone out.
“Leave them be,” Uncle Nunzio says.
When it’s only me and Mother and Me-me and Pop-pop, the doctor comes in.
“I’m Dr. Goldstein,” he says.
Dr. Goldstein kind of looks like Gregory Peck, except that he’s wearing a white coat and a stethoscope. He’s got those movie-star good looks: the greased-back hair, the sparkly smile. He looks too handsome to be a doctor, and the first words out of my mouth are “You’re a doctor?”
He laughs a pleasant laugh. “My mother likes to think I am.”
I can’t help but smile back at him, but it’s an effort, because my whole body feels leaden and fuzzy.
“Are you in any pain?” he asks.
“I can’t feel anything,” I tell him, and that’s when I notice that my right arm is wrapped in thick bandages and sitting on a pillow propped at a funny angle.
He nods. “Can you wiggle your fingers?”
I look at my hand and see something that looks like fingers sticking out from the bandages, but when I try to make them move, they just lie there.
“What’s wrong with it?” I ask.
I’m expecting him to say that everything will be fine, but instead he shakes his head and says, “These wringer injuries are difficult. Your arm was badly hurt.”
My mother moans as if it’s her arm they’re talking about.
“What’s gonna happen to it?” I whisper.
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” he says.
“Tell me,” I say. “You gotta tell me.”
“Listen to the doctor, Penny,” Me-me says, trying to sound stern, but her voice is shaking. “We’ll wait and see.”
“Please,” I beg.
Dr. Goldstein studies my face and says, “The nerves at your shoulder have been damaged.” He pauses. “We hope they’ll heal.”
“What if they don’t?” I ask.
“It’s early yet,” he says.
“What if they don’t heal? What if they don’t?” I demand, my voice rising.
“Then your arm may not work again,” the doctor says gently. “I’m terribly sorry.”
My mother starts crying, crying so hard that the nurse comes over and makes her sit down, and Me-me has her hand over her mouth, and there are tears running down her papery cheeks, and even Pop-pop, who always has something to say, opens his mouth but nothing comes out; he’s like a fish gasping for air.
And me?
I close my eyes, and the whole world disappears.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dumb and Unlucky
Spending my summer vacation at the hospital is starting to be a bad habit. One of the nurses who was here last summer when I was in with my burned back remembered me.
“Try going to the beach next year,” she suggested.
Ha-ha. A regular comedian.
I’m in the pediatric ward with the rest of the kids. Most of them can be divided into two categories: dumb or just plain unlucky.
The dumb kids include a boy who was baiting a dog and the dog decided he didn’t like it and bit off half the kid’s ear and took a good chunk out of one of his arms. Another
knucklehead boy got burned by a camp stove when he was camping with the Boy Scouts, which just goes to show you that the Boy Scouts don’t know as much as they’re always saying. The dumbest boy is the one who’s allergic to poison ivy but figured that burning it with some dried leaves in his backyard didn’t count. His eyes are all swollen and he’s covered from head to toe with oozing blisters. It’s so bad that he even has blisters in his mouth. I’ve never seen anything like it. He looks like he should be in a monster movie. The Poison Ivy Boy!
The unlucky kid is a little girl who the nurses hover over. She has blood cancer, and the nurses whisper that she’s dying.
And then there’s me. Dumb and unlucky.
The hospital’s just like a regular neighborhood, and after a while I know all the nurses and doctors, and even the orderlies. I prefer the nurses to the doctors; they spend time with you and talk to you and feed you and change your sheets and help you go to the bathroom, which, believe me, is pretty hard to do with just one arm when you can’t leave the bed. I’m right-handed and now I can’t do anything. It’s the little things I miss most, like trying to brush my teeth or cut my own food, or even comb my stupid-looking hair. I never knew how important an arm was until now.
My Gregory Peck doctor is pretty nice, and our family doctor, Dr. Lathrop, checks on me every few days, but I don’t like most of the other doctors. No wonder my mother quit being a nurse. A whole pack of doctors comes by every morning, and they wake me up and poke and prod me and talk about me like I’m not even there. They’ll say, “The patient has reported that she has no sensation below the brachial plexus,” and then they start talking all this medical mumbo jumbo. One morning I was so fed up that I interrupted them and said in a loud voice, “The patient has to go to the bathroom right now!” That got them out of here fast.