Kiss Carlo

  Uncle Dom emerged with a set of keys that he tossed to his nephew. “We’re taking a lightly used 1946 Chrysler. This one’s used less miles than old number four, if you can believe it, and it’s got a posh interior. Lou Caruso is very particular. You’ll be riding in style, Nicky.” Dom took the basket and led Nicky to the spot where the newest addition to the Palazzini fleet was parked.

  The mustard-yellow cab gleamed in the sun. Nicky peered inside. Uncle Dom wasn’t kidding. Black leather seats, pin-tucked, with flat turquoise leather buttons and a shiny licorice trim, looked fashionable and chic, almost too upscale for a Philly cab. Nicky flipped the hood on his way to the driver’s seat. The engine was an orchestra of tubes, wires, bolts, and boxes in mint condition.

  “How is she under the hat?” Dom asked as Nicky climbed into the new used cab and turned the key over. Uncle Dom climbed into the passenger seat.

  “What a stunner.” Nicky grinned.

  “And she’s all yours. Say hello to the new number four.” Uncle Dom pushed his seat back.

  “Almost makes me happy to be a hack, Uncle Dom.” Nicky turned the key. The engine purred like Eartha Kitt holding a blue note as Dom and his nephew headed for home.

  * * *

  Nicky waited for Peachy on the sidewalk outside of Wanamaker’s. He took the final drag off his cigarette when he saw her coming through the revolving doors. She smiled at him through the spinning glass.

  She kissed him. “Where’s number four?”

  “Uncle Dom traded it in.”

  “It was practically new.”

  “Yeah. But he had his reasons.”

  “You better watch him. You know he’s getting to that age where their arteries harden and they go stunod and make stupid decisions. I’m not going to let that happen to you.”

  “It might be too late.”

  “What are your symptoms?”

  “All kinds of them.”

  “Well, keep them under wraps until after the wedding. I don’t need any aggravation. Ma wants us to go and see the priest this Sunday because the banns of marriage in the church bulletin lock in our date in the church calendar, and it’s already packed—we are penciled in, of course, but we need to get it in ink—or, as my mother prefers, in blood. A lot of people get married at the end of a decade.”

  “I didn’t know that. Why?”

  “It’s a hard deadline. A girl says, Look, you either marry me by the end of 1949 or there will be no us in 1950.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “I think so. Nothing worth doing in life ever gets done without a deadline.”

  Nicky took a turn to the parking lot of the King of Peace Church.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “Let’s go sit in the garden.”

  “But it’s not my parish. Or yours.”

  “But it’s quiet.”

  “Can’t we ride around and listen to WFIL? It’s Mellow Night. They got the Cloone. You love the Cloone.”

  “I’m not in the mood for music. And I haven’t seen you since you came to the play.”

  “I’ve been so busy planning the wedding. The details. My mother has so much to do. Samples everywhere. Cocktail napkins with our initials. Matchbooks! Our names and the date in silver—oh, Nicky, and you’ll love this. When you open the matchbook, Ma put a surprise in there. There’s a quote printed in there: ‘Strike one for love.’ How cute is that? Ma’s doing all accoutrements in shades of blue. Tablecloths. Charger plates. I didn’t know that ‘ocean wave’ was a color, did you?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither. I’ve heard of seafoam, but not ocean wave. It’s a deeper blue.”

  “I did not know that.”

  “You’re wearing a morning suit, by the way. The gray will look so good with your blue eyes. My mother says I cut a picture of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor out of Life magazine when I was in high school—this was before I knew they were Nazi sympathizers. Anyway, he wore a morning suit to everything, even the beach. He wasn’t a looker like you, and let’s face it, she had a face like an old hammer, but together, they were sartorially splendid.”

  Nicky pulled into the parking lot of the church.

  “What is going on, Nick? A church setting? Something is up with you, or something is going down. It’s either good news or bad news. You’re either giving me a piece of jewelry, or you’ve got a brain tumor.”

  “It’s neither.” He opened the car door, helped Peachy out of the car, took her by the hand, and walked her to a bench.

  “Thank you, Jesus.” Peachy leaned back on the bench. She held her hands to the sky. Then she turned and looked up at the statue of Mary. “And you, Blessed Lady. Back me up here. I don’t need any bad news.”

  “Peachy, we shouldn’t get married.”

  Peachy turned to him. She placed her hands on his face and turned it toward hers. “What?”

  “I’ve thought about this and prayed about this, and we shouldn’t get married.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re not right for each other.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Take away all the details of planning the wedding, and what have we got?”

  “Each other?”

  “We don’t think about each other.”

  “When I’m picking swatches, I’m thinking about you. When I’m choosing which hors d’oeuvres to pass during the cocktail hour, I’m thinking about you. When I’m thinking should my dress have a round collar or a sweetheart neckline, I’m thinking, ‘What would Nicky like?’ When I’m choosing flatware at Wanamaker’s for the registry, I’m thinking about you eating breakfast every day for the rest of your life and what fork would you like to eat your eggs with. I’m always thinking about you.”

  “I didn’t come to this decision overnight.”

  “You’ve been carrying this around like a hump on your back?”

  “No. Things happened, and I came to a place of understanding.”

  “Speak English.”

  “I’m trying. It became clear at the theater.”

  Peachy’s legs went akimbo, and she slid down low on the bench. “You are breaking up with me over that stupid play?”

  “Partly. It didn’t help that you hate the thing I love to do. But I hated myself more for not telling you. I didn’t share something that was important to me for three years. That’s almost half our engagement. I worked there all that time, and I didn’t tell you.”

  “And I told you I didn’t care. My dad keeps girlie magazines under his mattress. My mother acts like she doesn’t see them when she flips it. Everybody has secrets.”

  “Not me. Not anymore. It was wrong of me not to tell you. I kept it a secret because I knew it would make you unhappy or angry or I believed you would judge it. And when I told you, you were all three of those things.”

  “Can you blame me? What if I had a wooden leg, and on our wedding night I came out of the bathroom in my nightie and snapped the leg off and said, ‘Hey Nick, oops. Forgot to tell you. I have a wooden leg.’ ”

  “This is different.”

  “How? You chose not to share something with me for three years, and then you want to break up with me because I had a reaction to something I didn’t see coming. That’s not fair. But I don’t even care about that. You blindsided me. But I got over it. I’m resilient. You took a part in the same play without asking me, and I didn’t make a fuss. Instead I brought my parents and we toasted you with champagne.”

  “Your father told me he hoped I got it out of my system.”

  “Well, did you?”

  “No.”

  “So for the rest of your life, you want to drive a cab all day and be in plays at night?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just sure I don’t want to be married.”

  Peachy made fists with her hands, closed her eyes, and inhaled. “You are cutting a twenty-eight-year-old”—she said deliberately—“a thirty-four-year-old woman loose in 1949?”

 
“Thirty-four?” Nicky gulped. He had never questioned Peachy’s age. Her family had moved to Philly right before the war. He had no idea she was older than he. It’s so hard to tell the age of an extremely thin person.

  “You’re not the only one with a secret. That’s right. I’m thirty-four, on my way to crashing into thirty-five, which is the death of everything when you’re a girl. You might as well murder me by bludgeoning. Go ahead. Find a shovel and beat me into the ground like a nail until all that’s left is my hat. I’m an old maid—worse, an old maid who waited for her soldier boy to return—and he comes back all right, he returns without a scratch, and he still waits three years to marry me and then decides right before the cake is baked that he has changed his mind? At least if you died overseas, I would’ve mourned you already. Three years later, I’d be myself again.”

  “I would hope so.”

  “Every girl that waited through the war is married except me!”

  “We shouldn’t marry each other just because everybody else is taken.”

  “Why not? You think there’s a better choice out there? Open your eyes! I’m an exotic! What is wrong in that thick head of yours? You got goldfish up there? Is your brain an attic room of dry rot? An empty space with a For Rent sign? You break it off with me, and I have to live with the sight of you forever in South Philly like the sign over the zoo? I see you driving around in a cab, and I wave at what? Not my husband? Who? The man I went with for seven long years and then nothing?”

  Peachy slid off the bench and dropped to the ground with a thud like a sack of flour.

  “What will happen to me? I’ve run out the clock. How could you do this to me? You’ve thrown me away like an old tire. I’m like a knife without the blade. A machine whose purpose has been lost. Please just kill me, because I cannot face my parents. This will kill my mother! And shortly thereafter my father! They’ll probably choose to go together! They’ll drive off the Delaware Water Gap in the Ford Fairlane and burst into flames.”

  “You don’t love me, Peachy,” Nicky said calmly.

  “How can you say that? What have I been doing all this time other than loving you? I make you happy.”

  “But what about you? What do I do for you?”

  “You love me back. You’re my man. You dance with me at everybody else’s weddings. I don’t know. What does a woman get from a man?”

  “Think. You don’t love me. If you loved me, you would want me to be happy.”

  “Is this about my job? About the fact that I have an office job and went to college?”

  “I’m proud of your accomplishments.”

  “I didn’t even tell you I got made assistant manager at Wanamaker’s because I thought it would make you feel bad. My mother said to bury my promotion like a milk bone, because it would scare you off. Well, she was wrong about that. Something else scared you off.”

  “It’s not your career at Wanamaker’s, Peachy. It’s about happiness. Personal fulfillment. See, if you loved me, you’d want me to do the things that bring me joy, and in turn, I would want to share those things with you, and those things would make you happy too.”

  Peachy got up off the ground, dusted off her wool work skirt, and stood in front of her fiancé. “Nicholas Castone. You live in your aunt’s basement, and you drive a cab. I am your joy. Me. I love you, and my intent was to make you a home and give you children and, God help me, keep my figure in the process. I was going to quit my job when we got married, after we saved a cushion, not because I hate my job but because I wanted to take the burden off of you. What more can one woman do for one man? You tell me.”

  “She could support his dreams.”

  “Ugh. What dreams?”

  “Borelli’s.”

  “That bunch of nut bags? We’re back to them again?”

  “They’re my respite.”

  “They’re outcasts of society. The men are fruity and the women are loose.”

  “They’re my friends.”

  “God, Nicky.”

  “I understand them, and they understand me.”

  “What’s to understand? You’re a very simple person.”

  “They don’t think so.”

  “Oh, now they’re a pack of intellectuals. Great thinkers in wigs . . . and . . . and leotards!”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “I went to college! New York State Business College. You didn’t even go to college—where do you get these crazy ideas?”

  Nicky was losing patience. “You can keep the ring.”

  “Do you think I was in this for the ring? I’d need more than a ring for a seven-year commitment, I’d require a diamond mine and Mr. De Beers himself bringing me breakfast in bed for the rest of my life in exchange for the time I’ve put in. I don’t care about the ring. I wanted the life. You were it for me, the only one.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true. Who would want me now? I’m a relic. I’m like some ancient talisman the nuns found in an old monastery and hung in the sacristy to pray to on Holy Days of Obligation. I might as well be made of rusted tin and hanging on the wall by a thumbtack with a piece of my sleeve in a glass box as proof I lived.”

  “You’re still young and as lovely as you ever were.”

  “One hundred and fifteen pounds. Not since the Crusades has a female DePino been this thin. I can still fit into my fourth-grade Catholic school uniform. And you don’t want me.”

  “It’s not about want. You’re a very desirable woman.”

  Peachy began to pace, as if the answer to her dilemma could be found on the ground, like the paper footsteps of the Learn the Lindy sequence in the Arthur Murray dance kit. She clapped her hands together. “It’s because I didn’t do the thing.”

  “You did enough.”

  “No, I held back. Donna Bonnani told me to do the deed, and I thought to hold out for the wedding night—give you the fireworks display after the nuptial mass. Something special. But Donna was right. She told me to submit.”

  “I didn’t want you to submit.” Using the word submit made Nicky feel sick.

  “Oh, don’t tell me, you’re fruity like the theater people?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think—that’s something you know, Nicky. People know what they are. They know what they like.”

  Peachy was desperate. She climbed onto Nicky’s lap and coiled herself around him like a garden hose. She placed her hands on his chest, traced the vein in his neck with her tongue, found his mouth, and kissed him, engaging her lips, tongue, and jaw like she was breaking down a tough piece of saltwater taffy.

  The situation with Peachy’s tongue became so moist that when Nicky closed his eyes, he thought he was in a car wash. “Peachy. Stop. Come on. The religious statues.”

  “Now you feel shame?” She wiped her mouth on her hand and removed the slash of coral lipstick from Nicky’s mouth. “Am I repulsive?”

  “No.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s not right.”

  “You have enlightenment after I compromised my moral code for you?”

  “You cannot guilt me into staying.”

  “I will guilt you into staying for the rest of your life. Think about what you’re doing. We have to look at our years, accumulated like a Christmas Club at the First National Bank. I’ve got interest earned in this thing, and so do you. You can’t throw that away. Besides, you made me happy. Don’t I make you happy?”

  “Peachy, no person can make another person happy. The person has to make him- or herself happy.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Could be.”

  “That’s what I’ll tell my parents. I’ll tell them you lost your mind—an undetected mass clogged your cerebellum, or you stood too close to a tank in Germany and you’re having flashbacks, or you’re a selfish bastard who got tired of me and dropped me for some mysterious reason.”

  “I will always regret my timing.”
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  “Seriously? That’s what you regret? Your timing?”

  “I should have told you sooner.”

  “Who is she?”

  “There’s no one else.”

  “It will come out. Just tell me.”

  “It’s not about another woman, it’s about a man. Me. I was content, and it’s not enough.”

  “Do you know how many poor slobs in this world hope for contentment? It’s the goal—not the enemy!”

  “I want to take a risk with my life—I want to do something that scares me.”

  “A German putting a machine gun in your face didn’t scare you?”

  “Not that kind of fear. The kind that you get when you take a chance.”

  “On what?”

  “On me. On my life.”

  “Nicky, you sound like somebody who drinks.”

  “I understand why you would feel that way. It isn’t rational.”

  “You can’t wake up someday and snap your fingers and have a good wife and a nice family. You’ll be like creepy Mr. Freggo who lives in the bus station. You’ll be old and all alone, picking fleas out of your shorts.”

  “I don’t think I want what you want.”

  “Who doesn’t want a home and a family? It’s un-American. It’s inhuman. It’s lonely!”

  “It might be, and it probably is, but I can live with that.”

  “My mother warned me that an orphan has no ties. Who throws away the future like this?”

  “Somebody whose future has already been written. Somebody who could predict everything that would happen between this moment and a spot on his lung at age seventy-eight.”

  “Did you go see a witch?”

  “I’m just guessing, Peachy. I’m not living, I’m just in line. I do what I’m told. I’ve always done what I’m told. I joined the army, put on a uniform, and followed my cousins. When I got back, I put on another uniform, and I followed them from the house on Montrose right across the street into the garage. I’m a hack because they’re hacks. I’ve done what is expected of me because it made everyone around me happy. I thought that’s what happiness was—making sure everyone else is happy. Now all my cousins are married—”

  “Which is normal!” Peachy shrieked.

  “Yes, it’s normal, but I said, how long will I follow them? How long do I do exactly as they do? Do I follow my cousins all the way to Holy Cross Cemetery?”