“If you had millionaires’ money, what would you buy?”
“A new pope. New bishops. New Fathers.”
“I would buy a house. With an extra room for my sewing. With a front porch and a garden.”
“And I’d buy black Sambuca. Because it goes through the roof of my mouth, and then curls back. It’s like licorice.”
“More like anise, really.”
“So we’re really agreeing. Because licorice comes from seeds of the anise plant.”
“No. From the licorice plant.”
“You don’t ever want to agree with me. It’s an attitude that has nothing to do with facts.”
“Get the encyclopedia.”
“What do I get if I’m right?”
“If you’re right…I’ll tell you about the worst lover I’ve ever had.” Floria covers her mouth. “Forget I said that. Have another drink. Then you’ll forget for sure.”
“And here I thought you went into marriage pure as communion wine.”
“Wine is wine.”
Leonora hauls her chair to the cupboards, steps on it, and tugs the encyclopedia from her stack of cookbooks above the cupboards. “Licorice…” She flips pages. “Lic…lic…lic—”
“Get down before you break something.”
“Only if you tell me about your worst lover.”
“You first.”
“Who says I had a worst…” She teeters. Balances herself. “Worse than what?”
“Worse than other lovers.”
“Oh.”
“Every woman has at least one.”
“How many have you had?”
“Get down from there or I won’t tell you about Leopardman.”
Leonora climbs from her chair and drags it back to the table. “Yes?”
But Floria is stalling. She is tilting the coffee can, is shaking it till she has a pile of coffee on the plastic tablecloth, is pushing a crater in the middle as if she were about to add yeast to flour.
“Leopardman?”
“Leopardman.” Floria dabs her fingers against her tongue. Follows with black Sambuca. Traces the purple-and-gold lettering on the bottle, its round body, its neck that’s as long as its body.
Leonora loves seeing Floria like this, funny and a bit wicked. And without any trace of that sadness. “Let me guess. Leopardman swung from chandeliers.”
“If only…He came dressed the part. Skimpy underpants in leopard pattern. Like those flimsy scarves at the five and ten.”
“Your mother gave me a blouse in that pattern, and I had to write one of those wretched thank-you letters she insists on, even though I hated the blouse.”
“You wore it every time Mama came over.”
“Only when your mother came over.”
“At least you weren’t coached in writing thank-you letters until you married Victor. I had to do it from the time I knew how to write, and I had to mention how each present was used. Like, ‘Dear Aunt Camilla, I’m writing this letter with the beautiful pen you brought me from Spain for my ninth birthday….’ Or: ‘Dear Mrs. Cohen, Today I’m wearing the yellow cardigan you knitted for me. It’s so fluffy….’ Victor and I had to include a drawing of each present with our thank-you notes. Photos if available.”
“Photos? Let me tell you about photos. Four days after Anthony was born, your mother came over with manicotti and a camera, made me dress Anthony in every damn outfit people had given him, and propped him up between the sofa pillows—four days old he was, Floria, four days—while she took snapshots of him. A different outfit in each. Strip the baby, click the camera, strip the baby, while I had birth blood down my thighs, and when Anthony got cranky, she allowed him half an hour for a nap, then woke him up and went at it again.”
“Strip the baby, take a photo…. I got one of those photos. ‘Dear Floria, Thank you so much for the darling cotton outfit with the lemon-yellow duck appliqué. As you see in this photo, it’s one of Anthony’s favorites….’”
“That sappy? Jesus Christ, your mother stood right over me while I wrote those notes. ‘Dear Mrs. Bennett, Thank you so much for the darling white jacket you knitted for Anthony. As you see in this photo, it’s one of his favorites….’”
“Strip the baby, take a photo, strip the baby. Mama was so pissed at you.”
“At me? I wrote those damn thank-you letters.”
“But you didn’t write her a thank-you letter.”
“Because I thanked her in person.”
“Doesn’t count. You also signed notes to others with your name and Anthony’s on the first line, but Victor’s underneath.”
“So?”
“Mama said it showed where you thought Victor’s place was in your family.”
“Your mother—” Leonora slaps both palms on the table, into the shadow of the fan as it hunts itself on the clear plastic that covers the flowered tablecloth. She feels snared in the Amedeos’ family patterns, in that tight circle of everyone getting together to celebrate every piddling occasion or to repeat the same tiresome gossip. “I want to get an annulment from your mother. Now here’s a relationship that deserves an annulment. A relationship that was never right. At least that’s Victor’s prerequisite for an annulment.”
Maybe getting rid of Victor is her chance to get rid of his entire family. She can get away from anyone. She proved that to herself when she got away from her father by wishing him dead.
If only it had been all bad.
Then she could put her father behind her altogether. But when Anthony was two, she took him to Rockaway, let him taste his first cotton candy, rode the carousel with him. When she walked with him to the edge of the water, a man on a horse rode toward them. In the shelter of his arms sat a girl of five or six, singing in the smooth light of the sun. And what Leonora wished that moment was that she, too, could remember a summer afternoon when she felt her father’s arms protective around her, the swaying of the horse beneath them—father, child—or any other memory, good, before the others started. She, a girl of five or six, singing within the circle of his arms, singing in the smooth light of this acquitting sun.
It could have happened.
And as she turned to watch the horse pass, she was struck by sudden bliss, remembering. It did happen. The bliss of being little and riding—not on a horse—but on my father’s thin shoulders beneath a red umbrella. He is rushing to catch the streetcar while I’m singing to myself, my hair against the fabric of the umbrella as street lamps from above light up my red-red world….
It’s a moment of pure bliss, a moment to sustain Leonora for the rest of her life if she’ll make a pact with herself to forget the fear of her father, to forget his fists falling on her. Fifty-four days of fists without warning. Fists without reason. Fists that could kill you if fifty-four days were to turn into fifty-four weeks. Or fifty-four months.
“His appendix,” Leonora’s mother explained when he died.
It had to be a sudden death. Of course. A death he couldn’t prevent. His appendix bursting inside him. That. Rather than shooting himself in the parking lot of Sing Sing.
“Have some more Sambuca and listen to me,” Floria says. “Please. Mama is that way with everyone. Loves you one moment. Picks on you the next. And believe me, she’s been easier on you than on me and Victor.”
“I’ll make sure to send her a proper thank-you note for that.” Leonora tilts the clear bottle, gingerly pours for both of them. Only a finger’s width of liquid is left beneath the blue label with its picture of the Colosseum.
“Think how you call her Riptide. Think about it. A riptide will sweep you out, ignore your screams, determine the direction you’re being swept. The one thing you can do is wait her out. Let her take you along and relax, and then use the first chance to swim out of the current.”
“Very good.”
“It’s something she taught me…about swimming.”
“I’ll never force Anthony to write thank-you letters.”
“On some level, Mama a
dmires your spunk.”
“Because it gives her more to grind down?”
“I thought you wanted to hear about Leopardman.”
“Why did you only bring two bottles?”
“Slow down.”
“Is that what you had to tell Leopardman?”
“Don’t I wish…. No, he was all costume and gymnastics. I could never get past feeling embarrassed for him. I mean, he didn’t quite swing from chandeliers—”
“Why not?”
“—and he didn’t pound his chest, and he didn’t jump up and down on all fours…but I always felt he was at a costume party, and that any minute he’d realize how foolish he looked.”
“So—did you do it with him?”
“Sure. It was just not…very exciting. He worked at a Horn & Hardart’s Automat, stocking food behind the little glass doors. Whenever I went downtown for a show, I used to go there for the creamed spinach that Mama likes.”
“Their petits fours are the best. Even just looking at them through the cellophane in the lid of the box…”
“Have you tried their rice pudding? So soft, and those raisins…”
“Too runny. Now stop distracting me with food talk.”
“Tapioca?”
“Fish eyes.”
“Leopardman was older than I was, but I’d had two boyfriends before and knew it could feel better.”
“You did it with them, too?”
“And then I went to confession.”
Leonora stares at her. “I’m envious.” She feels aglow, as if someone had bathed her in licorice. Inside and out. It’s floating throughout her head. Glowing. Coating her toes and the backs of her knees. “I had a worst lover, too.” She is thinking fast, trying to outdo Floria’s Leopardman, but truth is she never had a lover before Victor, had only kissed one boy in school, Stevie, that’s all they did, that one kiss, and she never strayed from Victor during their marriage—he was the one to do that, son of a bitch. Her only other experience is with James. Except James does not belong in the worst-lover category. And he’s very much part of her present. Of today. “My worst lover…only perfected himself in that one area—in bed.”
“And that made him your worst lover?”
“Because as soon as he starts talking…I mean, he talks so big that I feel…embarrassed for him. He’ll say things like: ‘I work in transportation,’ when he really just drives a cab. Or he’ll say: ‘I’m breeding dogs,’ when all he has is one lousy cocker spaniel. An expert in everything and in nothing.” Just thinking about James makes Leonora feel wide open, delicious and swollen.
“You look how I feel in the dentist’s chair.”
“That awful?”
“Depends.”
“Victor says you’ve always been weird about dentists.”
“So, what else have you found out about me?”
“Lots and lots. That you enjoy having your teeth drilled. And I keep finding out more.”
“That Hudak boy in your building—”
“That you kept your girdle on the first time you slept with Malcolm.”
“Malcolm told you that?”
“Victor, who heard it from Riptide, who—”
“I don’t even want to start guessing where my mother heard it.”
“Why wouldn’t you fuck Malcolm after you’d fucked others?”
“Just because I fucked before doesn’t mean I have to fuck on demand.”
“This is the first time I’ve ever heard you say ‘fuck.’”
“You say it often enough for both of us. Oh, fuck it—now you’re the one distracting me. That Hudak boy…didn’t he have a cocker spaniel?”
Leonora makes her face go indifferent.
Floria is smiling to herself, making patterns with coffee on the tablecloth, following the vines and flowers on the fabric beneath the clear plastic. She licks two of her fingers, washes the coffee dust away with a sip of Sambuca. “You aren’t doing it with that boy. Tell me you’re not. You are, Leonora. Right? I know that boy has driven a cab. That he used to have a cocker spaniel. You are doing it with that boy?”
“He is not a boy.”
“Christ, Leonora.” Broad laughs rise from Floria’s belly like bubbles from the bottom of an aquarium. “You’re getting yourself some baby pudding.”
“He’s twenty-one. And a lot harder than pudding.”
“Then why are you so uppity about Victor?”
“Because at least I waited till the marriage was over.”
“I’m not so sure it’s over. Victor would come home in a minute if you let him.”
“You got that one wrong.”
“He talks to me, Leonora. He’s my brother.”
“So let your brother talk. And you can listen. I’ve done all the listening I’m going to do. I don’t want your brother telling me how he had a dream about Elaine, or how Elaine likes to fuck in the middle of the day on some stupid rug.”
“He says you didn’t care when you found about him and her. That you didn’t cry or anything.”
“He wants that, too? Watch me cry as a good-bye present to him?”
“I told him you were hurting. That you just couldn’t show it.”
“I chose not to show it. And I really don’t want to talk about him, Floria.”
“As long as you understand he’ll come back to you in a—”
“Whatever would I do with him?”
Floria looks at her, steadily.
“Did he send you here with those bottles?”
“I told you I stole the bottles. But I know my brother. He and that…woman, they’re no match.”
“Well, I don’t want him.”
“Want…You want to hear about the one man I wanted.”
“In addition to the men you had?”
“I met him just once—on my wedding day. He was Malcolm’s best man.”
“Julian.”
“You remember him.”
“Julian Thompson. I danced with him.”
Floria’s eyes sharpen.
“He was a sensational dancer.” Leonora arches her back. “Not half as handsome as Malcolm. But what a dancer. He builds furniture, right? Mostly I remember him because Victor got jealous. It was only our second date. So…Julian Thompson…Did you do it with him, too?”
“Of course not. It was my wedding day.”
“Well…how about the day after?”
“That’s enough.”
“Or you could have waited a week or two.”
“I’m not a slut.”
“Of course not. I’m sorry. Will you still tell me about Julian Thompson?”
Floria hesitates.
“I’m sorry I teased you like this.”
“All right…Malcolm rented a room in Hartford from Julian’s parents for a while. You know…after he left England, when he lived all over the place.”
Leonora nods.
“He stayed in Hartford for almost a year. Became friends with Julian. Years later, he invited him to our wedding. To be the best man and to drive the limo. Typical Malcolm—renting a stretch limo without a driver—grandiose and cheap. It was snowing when Julian drove me to St. Nicholas of Tolentine, and when we arrived, he opened my door and reached for my hands. I tell you, a jolt ran up my arms, down my entire body and through my legs into the earth—something that’s never happened with Malcolm, and I knew I was about to make a huge mistake, marrying Malcolm. Julian was looking at me with such regret, such tenderness, that I was sure he felt the same. But here I stood, shaking all over—supposed to walk up the church steps in this wedding gown I’d sewn, walk down the aisle on Papa’s arm toward the altar, where Malcolm waited in a suit he’d borrowed from a neighbor—and what else could I do?”
“Run the other way?”
“It never occurred to me that I could.” Floria draws her lower lip between her teeth. “Maybe now.” She nods. “Maybe now I would.”
“What happened to Julian?”
“I haven’t seen him since.
He married the following January, and we couldn’t afford to go to his wedding. But we used to exchange Christmas cards, sometimes photos, their son, Mick, our girls—” Floria pulls her head into her shoulders as if she’d been struck.
Our girls.
Quickly, Leonora covers the back of Floria’s hand with her palm.
“It’s always there.” Floria turns her hand beneath Leonora’s, palm to palm. “Except sometimes I forget and hear myself say ‘the twins’ or ‘the girls.’”
“There are no words to tell you how terribly sorry I am,” Leonora whispers. “Every day. Every hour.”
“Every day…every hour…” Floria curls her fingers upward, laces them through Leonora’s. Her nails are perfect ovals without polish. “Do you know how often I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in your kitchen with her? Or if I’d come back a few seconds sooner?”
“I keep doing the same thing. See myself screaming at Bianca to get away from that window.”
“Screaming at her to take off that cape. Slamming the window shut. And it all becomes so real that I feel the cold air on my arms…see the snow.”
“I am so sorry….” Though Leonora has waited for Floria to mention that day, has imagined this, it doesn’t restore what she hoped for, that quirky, dependable closeness. “So very sorry.” Lowering her head, Leonora presses her lips against the knot of fingers between them, tightens her fingers. And still Floria feels unreachable. Unforgiving.
Ever since Bianca’s death, Leonora has been afraid that her father’s violence may live on in her son, confused because it’s a violence that doesn’t fit her son. But, then, it didn’t fit the father from before the violence started, the father who carries me beneath the red umbrella, the father who takes me to Far Rockaway, to his favorite restaurant, which is no wider than a hallway. Fried chicken and home fries and creamed corn. As I finish eating, a tall black man comes in, bends across my plate, looks closely at the chicken bones and skin. “What have you been eating, girl? Was it splendid and tasty?” I tell him yes, tell him it was splendid and tasty, and he’s laughing along with my father. “I’ll have the same,” he tells the waiter. And my father winks at me and says, “Excellent choice.”