“How blind we are! How stupid!”
“Why?”
“My father!”
“Wonderful!”
She hurried downstairs and we grabbed one another. She loved Papa too, and he adored her.
“He’ll do it for nothing. We’ll save thousands.”
But she grew wistful, serious.
“Promise me something.”
“Certainly.”
“That you’ll never treat our child the way your father treated you.”
“He was a good father, rough but good.”
“Once he beat your bare flesh with a trowel. Your sister Stella told me.”
“I had it coming. I sold his concrete mixer and bought a bicycle.”
“You don’t beat children any more. It’s been disproved. You deny them some privilege.”
“He denied me the bicycle. Besides, it was the only concrete mixer he had.”
“Have you read Wolf Child and Human Child, by Gesell?”
I hadn’t.
“Every father should read it. It’s basic.”
“I’ll read it on my way up North.”
TWO
MY MAMA AND PAPA lived in San Juan, in the Sacramento Valley, a dozen miles down the road from the state capitol. They were in halcyon retirement now, drawing state pensions, floating through the most placid passage of their lives. They lived in a four-room redwood cottage, with a capacious fig tree shading the back yard. A dozen hens clucked in the chicken yard, loft fowl, glutted by fallen figs and luscious Tokays from vines menacing the back fence. These hens debouched massive eggs whose warmth Mama loved against her palms in ironic nostalgia, for there was once a time in the life of this mother when children outnumbered the eggs.
On a barrel under the fig tree slept Papa’s four cats, glistening Egyptian deities, sleek from beef hearts, calves’ brains and milk. These four cats had replaced four children who had grown up to leave the Valley and marry and acquire enfeebled eyes and partial dentures because in that earlier time work was scarce and Papa never earned enough to feed his children regularly on beef hearts, calves’ brains and milk.
They lived in serene loneliness, my Papa and Mama, reading the Sacramento Bee and listening to the radio, gathering eggs and raking the big green fig leaves, two people in their late sixties, eager for the postman who no longer terrified them with bills and too seldom arrived with letters from the children who were gone.
It wasn’t necessary for Stella to write. She and her husband lived on a farm outside San Juan and came twice a week with baskets of zucchini, tomatoes, peaches, oranges and butter.
Stella brought her little girls, and on hot afternoons Papa sat with them under the fig tree, sneaking them sips of iced wine, telling them stories, and wondering why in the name of Our Lady of Mount Carmel he had no grandsons. For Papa was sixty-seven, and though he admired the non-Italian girls his sons had married, he also suspected them of trickery in the matter of procreation, of not knowing how to work at it.
Once a week Joe Muto came down the road in his Ford truck to deliver two gallons of claret at fifty cents a gallon. He liked bringing his four grandsons, little boys with black eyes and Muto faces, and Papa scowled at them because they were not his.
Life without grandsons was not life at all. Sitting under the fig tree, Papa tilted the claret jug from his shoulder, lapped the cool wine and brooded. In the late afternoon the mailman drove by, and Mama would be at the gate near the box, waiting, pretending to pull weeds here and there. If there was no mail, she pulled another weed or two, peered nervously down the road toward Sacramento, and came back to the house, wincing on arthritic feet. Day after day Papa watched this happen. Finally his patience would break.
“Bring pen and ink!”
Dutifully Mama would come from the house with a tablet and writing materials, set them on the barrel under the fig tree, and settle herself to take another letter from Papa to her three sons: one in Seattle, another in Susan-ville, and the third in the South. They were letters she never sent, a gesture of appeasement, because Papa derived much satisfaction from the dictation, it soothed his nerves as he paced back and forth through the hissing leaves, now and then stopping to take thoughtful gulps of claret.
“Send it to all of them. Write it plain. Put it down just like I tell you. Don’t change a word.”
She would dip the pen, her knees against the barrel, as she sat uncomfortably on an apple box.
Dear Sons:
Your mother is fine. I’m fine too. We don’t need you boys any more. So have a good time, laugh and play, and forget all about your father. But not your mother. Don’t worry about your father. It’s your mother. Your father worked hard to buy you shoes and put you through school. He don’t regret nothing. He don’t need anything. So have a good time, boys, laugh and play, but think about your mother some time. Write her a letter. Don’t write to your father because he don’t need it, but your mother’s getting old now, boys. You know how they get when they get old. So have a good time while you’re young. Laugh and play and think about your mother some time. Makes no difference about your father. He never did need your help. But your mother gets lonesome. Have a good time. Laugh and play.
Yours truly,
Nick Fante
And when Mama was finished, he would sip from the jug, smack his lips, and add: “Send it air mail.”
I reached San Juan at noon, flying up from Burbank and taking the bus out of Sacramento. The folks lived at the edge of town, where the city pavement ended and the last street light was a hundred feet away. Walking down the road past the old board fence, I could see Papa under the fig tree. His drawing board was spread over the barrel; on it were pencils, rulers, a T square. The cats slept in the swing, piled in hot furry confusion.
Hearing the whine of the gate, Papa turned, his phlegmatic eyes squinting for range through waves of gossamer heat. It was my first visit in six months. Except for his vision, he was superb. He had thick bricky hands and a sun-baked neck, handsome as sewer pipe. I was within fifty feet of him before he recognized me. I dropped my overnight bag and put out my hand.
“Hello, Papa.”
He had the hands of Beelzebub, horny and calloused, the gnarled oft-broken fingers of a bricklayer. He looked down at the grip.
“What you got in there?”
“Shirts and things.”
He inspected me carefully.
“New suit?”
“Fairly new.”
“How much?”
I told him.
“Too much.”
Emotion was piling up inside him. He was very glad I had come home, but he tried not to show it, his chin trembling.
“Smell the peppers? Mama’s frying peppers.”
From the back porch it came, a river of ambrosial redolence, fresh green peppers sizzling in golden olive oil, charmed with the fragrance of garlic and the balm of rosemary, all of it mingled with the scent of magnolias and the deep green richness of vineyards in the back country.
“Smells good. How you feel, Papa?”
He was shrinking. Every year he receded a little, or so it seemed. Neither of us were tall men, but now in his late years he gave me the sense of being taller than he was. The yard was smaller too, and I was surprised at the fig tree. It was not nearly as big as I imagined.
“The baby. How’s the little bambino?”
“Six weeks more or less.”
“And Miss Joyce?” He worshipped her. He could not bring himself to call her simply by her name.
“She’s fine.”
“She carry him high?” He touched the chest. “Or low?” His hand dropped to his stomach.
“High. Way up, Papa.”
“Good. Little boy, that means.”
“I don’t know.”
“How you mean, don’t know?”
“You can’t be sure of these things.”
“You can, if you do the right thing.”
He frowned, looked straight into my e
yes.
“You been eating plenty eggs, like I told you?”
“I don’t like eggs, Papa.”
He sighed and shook his head.
“Remember what I told you? Eat plenty eggs. Three, four, every day. Otherwise, it’s a girl.” He made a face as he added: ‘You want a girl?”
“I’d like a boy, Papa. But you have to take what you get.
It worried him. Back and forth he paced through the fig leaves. “That’s no way to talk. That’s no good.”
“But Papa…”
He whirled around.
“Don’t but me. Don’t Papa me! I told you, and I told you, all of you: Jim, Tony, you. I said: eggs. Plenty eggs. Look at them. Jim: nothing. Married two years. Tony: nothing. Married three years. And you. What you got? Nothing.” He moved close to me, his face near mine, his claret breath bursting at me. “Remember what I said about oysters? You got money now. You can afford oysters.”
I remembered a post card dictated to Mama and sent to Joyce and me on our honeymoon at Lake Tahoe. The card said I should eat oysters twice a week to induce fertility and the conception of male children. But I had not followed the advice because I didn’t like oysters. I had no personal animosity toward oysters. I simply didn’t like their taste.
“I don’t care for oysters, Papa.”
It staggered him. With a limp neck and open jaws, he flung himself into the swing and wiped his forehead. The cats wakened, yawning with sharp pink tongues.
“Holy Mother of Heaven! So this is the end of the Fante line.”
“I think it’s a boy, Papa.”
“You think!” He cursed me, a scathing coruscation of firecracker Italian. He spat at my feet, sneering at my gabardine and my sport moccasins. He took the stub of a Toscanelli cigar from his shirt and jammed it into his teeth. He lit up, flung the match away.
“You think! Who asked you to think? I told you: oysters. Eggs. I been through it. I give you advice from experience. What you been eating—candy, ice cream? Writer! Bah! You stink like the plague.”
This was my Papa for sure. He had not shrunk, after all. And the fig tree was as big as ever.
“Go see your Mama.” There was sarcasm in his voice. “Go tell her what a fine big boy she’s got.”
Greeting Mama was always the most difficult task of a homecoming. My Mama was the fainting type, specially if we had been away more than three months. Inside three months there was some control over the situation. Then she only teetered dangerously and appeared about to fall over, giving us time to catch her before the collapse. An absence of a month entailed no problem at all. She merely wept for a few moments before the usual barrage of questions.
But this was a six-month interval and experience had taught me not to burst in on her. The technique was to enter on tiptoe, put your arms around her from behind, quietly announce yourself, and wait for her knees to buckle. Otherwise she would gasp, “Oh, thank God!” and go plummeting to the floor like a stone. Once on the floor she had a trick of sagging in every joint like a mass of quicksilver, and it was impossible to lift her. After futile pawing and grunting on the part of the returned son she got to her feet by her own power and immediately started cooking big dinners. Mama loved fainting. She did it with great artistry. All she needed was a cue.
Mama loved dying, too. Once or twice a year, and specially at Christmas time, the telegrams would come, announcing that Mama was dying again. But we could not risk the possibility that for once it was true. From all over the Far West we would rush to San Juan to be at her bedside. For a couple of hours she would die, making a clatter of saucers in her throat, showing only the whites of her eyes, calling us by name as she entered the valley of shadows. Suddenly she would feel much better, crawl out of her death bed, and cook up a huge ravioli dinner.
She was at the stove, her back to me, as I entered the kitchen and moved quietly toward her. Midway, she sensed my presence, turning slowly, a spatula in her hand. A kind of nausea seemed to grip her, a disembodiment, the elevator zooming down out of control, the dizzy moment before the plunge from a great height; her eyes rolled, the blood fled from her quick white face, the strength left her fingers and the spatula hit the floor.
“Johnny! Oh, thank God!”
I rushed forward and she fell into my arms, her hair the color of white clouds at my shoulder, her hands around my neck. But she did not lose consciousness. She seemed to be having a heart attack. I knew this from the quick rasping gasps, the quivering of her small frame. Carefully I led her to a chair at the kitchen table. She lay back, her mouth open, smiling bravely, her left arm helpless at her side, and you could see that she was trying to lift the arm and was without strength.
“Water. Water…please.”
I brought her a glass and put it to her lips. She sipped wearily, too far gone, too drained, only seconds from the other shore.
“My arm…no feelings…my chest…pain…my boy…the baby…I won’t live to see…”
She collapsed face down on the checkered red and white oilcloth. I was reasonably sure she was all right, but when I gently turned her face and saw the gray purple of her cheeks I felt that I was wrong this time, and I yelled for Papa.
“Get a doctor! Hurry.”
It restored her strength. Slowly she raised her head.
“I’m better. It was only a little attack.”
It was my turn to weaken, relieved, suddenly exhausted. I threw myself into a chair and tried to unravel my fingers as I groped for a smoke. Papa entered.
“What’s going on?”
My Mama smiled bravely. She was so pleased to see me distraught. She could not doubt my love now. She felt quite strong again.
“It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”
She was very happy. She purred. She rose and came around to where I sat and took my head in her arms and stroked my hair.
“He’s tired from his trip. Get him a glass of wine.”
We understood, Papa and I. There was a rumble of curses in his throat, scarcely audible, as he opened the icebox and removed a decanter of wine. He took a glass from the cupboard and filled it. Mama smiled, watching. He glanced at her angrily.
“You cut that out.”
The great green eyes of my Mama opened their widest.
“Me?”
“You cut out that stuff.”
I drank the wine. It was very fine wine, out of the warm soil of those very plains, chilled delicately by ice. Mama was glad to have me in her kitchen. I could see her spine straighten, her shoulders rising. She took the glass from my hand and drained it. Then she looked at me carefully.
“Such a pretty shirt. I’ll wash and iron it before you leave.”
We ate the peppers with goat’s cheese, salted apples, bread and wine. Mama’s tongue whirred incessantly, a trapped moth free at last. Normally Papa would have quieted her down, but the son was home and this was cause for relaxing the rules. In a little while her chatter would suddenly exasperate him, and she would slip back to her cocoon of respectful silence. We ate while Mama talked and walked around the kitchen, filling the room with thought fragments. An electric fan purred on the icebox, turning left and right and back again. It seemed to be following Mama around the room, like a face staring in blank astonishment.
Mama said:
The winter had been cold and wet. Stella’s children were beautiful. There were moths in the clothes closet. She had dreamed of her dead sister Katie. The price of chicken feed was too high. My brother Jim ate dirt as a baby. Sometimes she had shooting pains in her legs. It was bad luck to wash diapers in the moonlight. When you lose something, pray to St. Anthony. The cats were killing blackbirds. Bacon should not be kept on ice. She was afraid of snakes. The roof leaked. There was a new postman. Her mother died of gangrene poisoning. Ice was bad for the stomach. Pregnant women shouldn’t look at frogs or lizards. Love was more important than money. She was lonesome.
Her hands rested on my shoulders.
“If you would write just o
nce a week…”
For half an hour she had talked constantly. It was a soothing drone we identified but ignored. Papa and I finished the peppers. He filled my glass.
Then Mama said, “You planted the seeds for your baby in this house. Right in this house. It was the eighth of August, last year, during that night.”
It was her first statement that sank home. I stopped eating and looked at her. Then I remembered. Joyce and I had indeed been in San Juan last August. We had slept on the studio couch in Mama’s parlor. I remembered the night very well. It was a squeaky studio couch and we decided not to try anything. There had been no conception that night. Mama was all wrong about that.
“No, she’s not,” Papa said.
“What makes you so sure?”
Mama smiled. “Because I sprinkled salt in your bed.”
Papa grinned.
“That’s right. Salt in the bed. I gave the order.”
It was very annoying. They were quite smug, taking credit for everything. I told them I didn’t remember salt in the bed. This amused Mama.
“Of course not. I put it under the sheets.”
Papa chuckled.
“So now you’re gonna have a baby.”
“Salt,” I said. “What poppycock!”
“Cock nothing,” Papa said. “How do you suppose you was born?”
“The usual way.”
“Wrong again. Salt in the bed. I put it there myself.”
I pushed my glass forward, to be filled again.
“Superstition. Ignorance.”
He refused to fill my glass.
“Don’t call me ignorance. I’m your Papa.”
“I didn’t say you were ignorant.”
“I want respect for your Papa. This is your Papa’s house. Here, I’m the boss.”
He was red-faced with quick indignation, filling the glass with trembling fingers, spilling some of the wine. It was bad luck to spill wine. You warded off the ill fortune by making the sign of the cross through the spilled liquor. This Mama did.