“It all worked out then,” Carmela said.
Val nodded. “I know that,” she said. “But I need to know how.”
“Just like Charley and that dress,” Carmela said. “All right. Louie’s being Mr. Sympathy, and I’m eating it up. And then like he’s just had this thought, he says to me have I thought about giving the baby up for adoption? So I say no. I guess I scream it, and it’s a miracle the baby doesn’t wake up and start screaming the way she always did. I mean foster care is bad enough, but at least you can get the kids back when you can afford them, sort of like a pawnshop. Adoption, the kid’s gone forever. I’m never doing that to any of my own. Which I tell him, in no uncertain terms. And Louie’s nodding again, like he’s really listening, but then he says what if the baby goes to a home so wonderful, so perfect, it’s got to be the best thing that ever happened to her. And I still say no, not one of mine, I could never do that to one of mine. And Louie’s looking at me really intently now, and he says what if the baby’s brought up by family, not by strangers you have no control over, but by blood. So I ask him what blood. I’m still not sure just what’s going on, but all of a sudden, I’m beginning to worry the baby’s going to start screaming, and Louie’ll leave.”
“I screamed that much?” Val asked.
“All the time,” Carmela replied. “You only stopped screaming when you’d want to give me one of those funny looks of yours. And I started thinking about that then, about what a funny baby you were, and you never seemed to warm up to me the way all my other babies had, and how you wouldn’t nurse unless I practically forced you. And Louie’s offering me blood. So I figure I’d better hear him out. And he says his son Ricky, fine boy, in business for himself, construction, strictly legitimate, married for years to a lovely girl, Barbara Salvati, but they can’t have kids, and they’ve been to all the doctors, and it’s breaking their hearts. And here I am with six healthy children, the youngest an angel, and all Barbara wants is just one baby to call her own, and Charley is part Castaladi after all, so even though I don’t know Rick and Barbara, it isn’t like I’d be handing the baby over to a stranger. And I start getting mad.”
“Why?” Val asked, half-convinced herself that Carmela should give the baby away on the spot.
“I’m not going to sell no baby of mine for a bag of groceries and a little sympathy,” Carmela declared. “Not with five others to feed and a mortgage to pay. And I tell him that. I tell Louie Castaladi, who owns all of Jersey and half of New York, that no matter how fine his son Ricky might be, and no matter how sad Barbara is, my children do not come cheap. And Louie agrees. He snaps his fingers and his bodyguard shows up with a briefcase, which Louie opens. He takes out an envelope, hands it over to me, and inside is ten thousand dollars. And suddenly I’m scared, because I’ve never seen that kind of money before in my life, and it’ll buy a lot of bacon and eggs for the kids.”
“You sold me?” Val asked.
“I did what I had to,” Carmela said. “I thought about the other five kids, the ones I really knew, and what ten thousand could do for them. Keep them out of foster care for one thing. But I still had some pride. I am a Rinaldi, after all, so I said to Louie ten thousand was nice, but I needed a lot more than that, and he says how much, and I realize I have him. He’ll give me anything so his son’s wife can have a baby for her own. And I say I’m giving up my own baby, the last child I could ever have with Charley, and how do I know she’ll be all right? Louie says he’s giving me his word and isn’t that enough, and I say usually yes, but in this case he should understand I need more. So Louie asks how about if we stay in touch. He’ll make sure Rick understands and he’ll send me pictures so I can see you growing up, and I can let him know if the baby’s brothers and sisters ever need for anything. Which I take to be a pretty generous offer. It’s like you’d be supporting them, which was more than I could do, or Charley Junior, him being only twelve. And I’m thinking I’d better say yes fast before the baby starts squalling, so I shake Louie’s hand and he snaps his fingers again, and there’s the bodyguard with everything you need to move a baby. And Louie himself goes upstairs, and takes the baby out of her crib, and tells me I’ll never be sorry, and I’m crying, and the other kids are up now, asking what’s going on, but the baby keeps sleeping, which I regard as a sign from God that I’m doing the right thing, and Louie and the bodyguard leave the house and leave Buffalo, and that’s the last I see of you until an hour ago today. Except for pictures. So now you know everything, just the way you wanted, and I hope you’re satisfied because these haven’t been easy memories for me, and it’s a story I don’t want to have to tell again.”
Val nodded. She was too stunned to cry, and then she felt like a fool for being so startled. Of course money had changed hands. That was how Rick Castaladi did things, on a cash basis.
Carmela Primo looked at her daughter. “You turned out real pretty,” she said. “You look more like Vince than any of the others. I guess now you want to see some pictures? I pulled them out when I heard you were coming. I didn’t tell the boys, or Marcie for that matter, about you. Most of them think you died anyway.”
“Yes,” Val said. “Pictures would be nice.”
Carmela opened up a shoe-box. “I keep meaning to buy a nice album, put the pictures in,” she said. “Here’s Marcie when she graduated high school. And this one is of Charley Junior and Donny playing football. Vince took that picture. I got him a camera one year, and he took some pictures then. Here’s Marcie again, at her tenth birthday. Oh, and here’s Vince. I guess he gave up the camera long enough for someone to take a picture of him. See, he really does look like you.”
Val handled the picture gingerly. It was slightly out of focus, but even so she could see a boy who looked enough like her to be her brother. “What’s he like?” she asked. “Vince, I mean.”
Carmela shrugged. “He’s been in a little trouble,” she said. “All the boys have. But I think he’s straightening himself out. Here’s Charley Junior on his wedding day. He and Jennifer have two kids, a boy and a girl.”
“I’m an aunt?” Val asked.
Carmela laughed. “I guess so,” she said. “Donny’s wife Diane’s expecting too. The baby’s due in March. If you want, you could come up for the baptism.”
“I don’t know,” Val said. “I guess it’ll depend on what’s happening at school.”
Carmela leafed through the pictures. “Here’s the one I’ve been looking for,” she said. “That was a proud moment for me, when one of mine actually graduated college. She was already a member of the order, that’s why she’s not wearing a cap and gown. But it’s her college graduation picture all right.”
She handed the picture over to Val. This one was in focus. Standing proud and tall, clutching her diploma, was Sister Gina Marie.
Chapter 12
Val timed it so she arrived at school right before the bell rang on Monday. She wasn’t prepared to talk to Kit or Michelle, and had avoided their phone calls the day before by telling Connie to say she had a headache. She’d used the same lie fairly effectively with her father. It didn’t matter whether any of them believed her. It was simply a signal of her need to be left alone.
Kit was absent again, and Michelle, with a sensitivity Val had never credited her with, kept away as well. Val knew Terry must have described at least part of Saturday to her, the flight to Buffalo, the teary flight back. She wasn’t sure how much of her conversation with Carmela Terry had overhead, and how much of that Terry would tell her daughter. She didn’t much care, right then, just as long as she wasn’t plagued by questions.
The morning took forever. Val’s teachers, unaware that her entire life had turned and overturned and overturned again in the course of a week, persisted in treating her as though she were a student. Val tried to marshal her talent for concentration, but her mind kept drifting back to a hundred different images. Carmela’s hideous living room. Shannon O’Roarke. Kit in her robe and pajamas. The demolished kitch
en. Her father’s face when she told him that she knew. Her mother lying in bed, listening to Val’s school stories. Sister Gina Marie’s photograph.
Twice she was called on, and twice she didn’t know the answer, or even what the question had been, and twice she was reprimanded. It didn’t seem to matter. Nothing mattered anymore, at least not schoolwork.
Eventually it was lunchtime, and Val knew what she had to do. She walked to Sister Gina Marie’s classroom, and found her sitting at her desk, grading papers.
“May I come in?” Val asked from the doorway.
Sister Gina Marie looked up and smiled at her. “I’ve been expecting you,” she said. “Come on in, and close the door behind you if you want.”
“Thank you,” Val said. She walked to the front of the class and sat at the desk Kit used. Kit was small and always sat in the first row.
Sister Gina Marie pushed the papers away. “Sometimes I skip lunch to catch up with my paperwork,” she said. “No matter how I try to schedule myself, I always seem to be behind.”
Val nodded, although her father had brought her up to respect deadlines and always meet them.
“Mama called me,” Sister Gina Marie said. “First on Friday, and then Saturday evening. So I have some idea of what went on.”
“That’s good,” Val said. “Because I’m hopelessly confused.”
Sister Gina Marie laughed. “You have had a week of it,” she said. “It’ll take you a while to adjust.”
“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to adjust to,” Val said. “I talked to a couple of people last week about being adopted, and they both grew up knowing they were adopted, and they’ve never met their natural parents. In one week, not only did I find out, but I met her. My mother I mean, and now I have brothers and sisters, and a family history, no, not just one family history, at least two, the Primos and the Castaladis, not to mention all those sickly Salvatis and classy Rinaldis, and I used to know exactly who I was and what I was supposed to do and who I was supposed to become, and now I don’t know anything.” Val pounded the desk with her fist. “You know something? It really isn’t fair.”
Sister Gina Marie smiled. “It isn’t all bad,” she said. “Sometimes it’s good to get shaken up. It makes all the pieces fit together in a different pattern.”
“Like what?” Val asked. “I had a father who loved me. Well, I still do, but he isn’t my father anymore. Not biologically at least. I’m a distant cousin. We share just enough blood for him to take me into his house. He loves me, I know he loves me, but he brought me up to believe I had to be obedient. Obedient and respectful. I should obey him and Mama and the sisters and the priests and Bruno and Connie and my aunts and uncles, and now I don’t want to obey any of them, starting with Daddy. He doesn’t obey the law, so why should I obey him?”
“Do you know he doesn’t obey the law?” Sister Gina Marie asked. “Or are you just assuming that because you’re so angry?”
“That’s one of the things I’m angry about,” Val said. “All these years of pretending Rick Castaladi is a respectable businessman. I don’t think he kills people, but there are other ways of breaking the law. And I don’t see why I have to accept that just because he gave me a home and love and rules to live by. I hate his rules. I hate him.”
“Is there anyone you don’t hate right now?” Sister Gina Marie asked.
Val shook her head. “I hate the whole rotten stinking world,” she replied.
“Good,” Sister Gina Marie said. “Because that won’t last. Sooner or later, you’ll start liking someone again, and then someone else, and before you know it, you’ll forget about hating the whole rotten stinking world.”
“How would you know?” Val asked. “You’re a nun. You’re not allowed to hate.”
“I wasn’t always a nun,” Sister Gina Marie replied. “There was a long time when I hated the world too.”
“When?” Val asked.
Sister Gina Marie gazed out the window. The weather had turned warm, and the sunlight poured in. “When Poppa died,” she replied. “I hated the world for a long time after that.”
“I didn’t hate the world when my mother died,” Val said. “I was more relieved than anything else.”
“Different kinds of death,” Sister Gina Marie said. “Poppa left the house right after breakfast one morning, and was dead before lunchtime. They called us at school to tell us. Charley Junior and Donny went to Holy Cross, and I went to St. Elizabeth’s, so we were told separately. Vince was in kindergarten that year, but they didn’t tell him. He came home to find out. I remember because Mama was crying, she was just hysterical, and Vince didn’t know what was going on, so I had to tell him, and that made me even angrier. I was the second oldest in the family, but I was the oldest girl, and that meant I had a lot of the child-rearing responsibilities. Mama couldn’t handle us all, even when Poppa was alive. So I had to tell Vince that Poppa had died and gone to heaven, which I had my doubts about, and he was crying, and then Marcie, who didn’t understand what was going on, started crying too, and that got the baby going, and it felt like I was the only one who wasn’t crying, so I was the one who had to wipe the tears and pull everyone together. I hated Mama so much that moment. I hated her more later, but I wouldn’t have believed that if you’d told me. I wouldn’t have believed there could be more hate than what I felt just then.”
“Your mother said I cried a lot,” Val said. “My mother. I don’t even have a vocabulary for all these people.”
“Why don’t you call her Carmela?” Sister Gina Marie suggested. “It won’t bother me.”
“Thank you,” Val said. “What do I call you?”
“I like Sister,” Sister Gina Marie replied. “It has so many meanings.”
Val smiled.
“You cried all the time,” Sister Gina Marie declared. “I suppose you were just colicky at first, and then you sensed all the tension. That day when Poppa died, the funny thing was, neither Charley Junior or I really knew what it meant. Donny was the one who figured it all out. Donny’s very smart, maybe the smartest of all of us. He was only eight, but he grabbed Charley and me and explained just what was going on. That Poppa was accused of setting the shooting up, but had gotten it in the crossfire anyway. That the name of Primo was mud. He actually said that, and I knew he was right, and it left me feeling ashamed to be a Primo, which was why I’ve never used it, at least not in the classroom. Charley got all cocky and defensive about it, so he’s Charley Primo Junior to anyone and everyone. He could drop the Junior at this point, Poppa’s been dead for sixteen years now, but he won’t. We all dealt with the dishonor different ways.”
“It must have been horrible,” Val said.
“It was worse than you can imagine,” Sister Gina Marie replied. “No one came to the funeral. Poppa came from a large family, and so did Mama, and it was as though we’d never existed. Even the priest was in a hurry to get us out of there. Mama was screaming and carrying on. She has a real operatic streak, and I can’t blame her for being upset, losing her husband when she was so young, and having six kids to raise, but she didn’t think about what she was doing to the little ones. Vince has never been the same. He was such an outgoing little boy, really sweet, and after the funeral, he became withdrawn, then surly. Marcie, who was born stubborn, became an absolute mule. Donny wet his bed every night for weeks, which Mama regarded as an act of disobedience, so she’d smack him for it, and wish Poppa were alive to give him a real whipping. You can imagine what that did to Donny.”
“No,” Val said. “I can’t.”
“Nothing good,” Sister Gina Marie said. “Meanwhile, Charley Junior is getting into fights every day at school, and within a week of Poppa’s death, Mama’s realizing she has no money. Nothing. They were never ones for saving anyway, and with six kids there were a lot of expenses. They were still paying off the medical bills from the baby. Mama had some friends left, and they’d come over and talk about what was to become of us. Mama had never had
a job in her life. She hadn’t even graduated high school. Charley Junior and I were too young to work.” Sister Gina Marie took a deep breath. “She was only a couple of years older than I am,” she said. “I forget that sometimes, because she always seemed so old to me. But she wasn’t even thirty, and her life was over. When I get angry at her, and I still do, I have to remember that.”
“She mentioned to me that she thought about putting some of you in foster care,” Val said. “That she didn’t want to.”
Sister Gina Marie laughed. “I’m not sure about that didn’t want to part,” she said. “Every day she threatened a different one of us with it. Except me. She knew she needed me. The problem was picking and choosing. Charley Junior was getting into all those fights, but he was her first born, and he carried Poppa’s name. Donny was a real possibility, but in a lot of ways Mama depended on him, because he was so smart, and he could figure out the angles. Vince was Mama’s favorite, so she really didn’t want to part with him. That left Marcie and the baby. Marcie was two, and Mama suspected if she put her or the baby in foster care, there’d be a lot of pressure put on her to relinquish rights, let the girls be adopted. In addition, Marcie was my favorite, and Mama knew there’d be real trouble with me if Marcie was boarded out. And I was the one changing the diapers and washing the sheets and making a jar of peanut butter last for two weeks. So she wasn’t about to alienate me.”
“No wonder you were so angry,” Val said.
Sister Gina Marie laughed. “It got worse,” she said. “Because right around the time we were reaching bottom, Mama started getting phone calls from representatives of Louie Castaladi. Mama thought we kids didn’t know about them, but of course we did. Donny had a real gift for eavesdropping and putting two and two together. And Mama was looking at the baby differently, with less resentment and anger. She used to pick the baby up and shake her to make her stop crying, and she stopped doing that. She caught Vince once teasing the baby, and she slapped him really hard. She never hit Vince. And then one night a limo drove up, and there was Louie Castaladi himself, and Mama ran to me and said ‘give the baby some wine, she’s got to stay asleep,’ so I did. Two hours later, you were out of there, still sleeping. I bet you had an awful hangover when you woke up.”