The accordion was too heavy for the twins, too stiff without the motion of my uncle’s body curving into it, without his fingers leaping across the keys.
“If you set it on the side,” I suggested, “it’ll be like a piano. Then one of you can press the black and white keys, and the other can push the buttons.”
“That accordion is all your papa may ever be able to give you.” Uncle Malcolm’s fingers were wiggling, trying to fly out of the casts, to circle and dip as they usually did when he talked.
All he had taught the twins were two beginnings, not even the full songs—“I’m Chiquita Banana” and “Flight of the Bumble-bee”—and they’d play those over and over, singing along. To this day I can’t bear accordion music. I’ll leave restaurants if a strolling accordionist approaches my table. And I hate family gatherings if Belinda—now a music teacher—is coaxed into playing her father’s accordion.
As our car passed the Bronx Zoo, I wished I could touch the green gate. Kevin had told me the gate felt warmer in winter. “Warmer than pavement and rocks. Because it’s made of copper. And copper is warm and stays red beneath the green.” Across from the zoo, the black spikes of the Botanical Garden fence filed past us, a thousand warriors with a thousand lances, and as I turned for one more glance at the zoo gate, I decided to draw a picture of it, not green, but red with smoke all around it.
“I must have been crazy to recommend Malcolm for that job,” my father said. “Crazy to believe him when he said he was ready to start over.”
“Not crazy,” my mother said. “Generous.”
“Crazy crazy crazy…” With each “crazy” his right palm slapped the steering wheel.
“Generous. You got him the job because you’re generous by nature. And with those broken arms, he couldn’t go back to roofing for a while. Besides, he comes across as polite, because with that accent he sounds like a butler from the movies. People misjudge him.”
“He sells from an empty pushcart. A scungilli, that’s what he is. A bottom feeder.”
“Also very handsome.”
“Malcolm Edmunds? Handsome?”
“Quite gorgeous, actually. He’ll get another job roofing.”
“Because he’s gorgeous?” Smoke curled from my father’s nostrils.
“Because roofing is the only thing he’s good at. Agile and daring…that’s why he always finds someone to hire him after he gets fired.”
“It’s not the only thing he’s good at,” I said. “He can whistle whole songs without stopping for air.”
“And where would we all be without that talent?” my father asked.
“Too generous,” my mother murmured and stroked the band of neck above my father’s brown collar.
I could feel their quarrel yield to tenderness. It often was like that between them; that’s why I believed nothing really bad could ever happen in my family.
He leaned into her palm. “Your hands are cold.”
“So…want me to stop then?”
“Don’t you dare.”
As she tilted her head toward him, I saw where her left eyebrow, black near the bridge of her nose, changed abruptly to white. It had been two colors since birth, and my father liked to say that what saved my mother from being too perfect was that left eyebrow. With her black hair and pale skin, the contrast was startling, making her only more beautiful.
“I’ll get someone to check out the car heater,” he said as we passed the marquee of the Globe Theater.
“Can we afford it?”
“Soon.” When her fingers kept moving across the back of his neck, he turned his face to kiss the inside of her wrist, the shadow of his beard blue below his jaw, and I felt a sudden and wild joy.
“So then,” she said, “will you marry me, Victor?”
I loved it when he replied, “But I already did, mia cara, remember?” Once again, he kissed her wrist.
My mother laughed. “I’ve been thinking about the twins’ names. Ever since Floria met Malcolm, she’s been mumbling ‘bastard’ all day long. Picking names for them that start with B gave her a way to cover that up. BaBelinda. BaBianca.”
“Not in front of the boy, Leonora.”
But already I was trying out my cousins’ names: “BaBelinda…BaBianca…Ba—”
“Anthony,” my father said sternly. His hands covered the entire top of the steering wheel—wider than Uncle Malcolm’s hands with their long wrists and fingers that could fix a bicycle tire or shuffle a deck of cards faster than my father could. Until that night outside Papa John’s Diner, of course. He wasn’t a real uncle, I reminded myself. Only a married-in uncle. Because of Aunt Floria.
Black curls pulled back in a shiny bun, she opened the door of their first-floor apartment on Boston Road, looking as if she were in mourning with her black stockings and her black dress buttoned high on her neck. “Please, wipe your feet, darling,” she said and took my cheeks between her palms. Her face hung above me, large and pale and beautiful. On one side of her mouth was a freckle, and as she kissed me on the lips, her folds of skirt released the memory of mothballs and lavender.
I kissed her right back, glad her face was all of one color. No sticky lipstick or creme. No raccoon eyeshadow like my Ossining Grandma’s. I loved how Aunt Floria’s scent changed with the seasons and also kept bugs away at the same time. Moths never dared live near her. And come summer, she would once again give off the sweet-sour scent of the citronella oil that she dabbed on handkerchiefs and bedsheets to discourage mosquitoes.
Beneath the gold-framed paintings of Pope Pius XII and Cardinal Spellman stood my cousins, round-faced and sturdy like their mother, wearing their patent-leather slippers and brown school uniforms. Still, I could tell them apart, because Belinda had gluey nostrils, while Bianca wore her Superman cape.
Aunt Floria lifted the towel from the eggplant rissoles. “You are an artist with food, Victor. I’ll warm everything up right now.”
In the kitchen, the dressmaker’s dummy was wearing a half-finished wedding gown, so stiff it could have danced by itself. Cartons—some full, some empty—covered all surfaces that were not taken up by Aunt Floria’s sewing business.
“You’re moving?” My mother sounded alarmed, and I figured it was because Aunt Floria moved so often that my mother wrote each address in pencil, since she’d only have to erase it.
“The girls and I can’t stay here. Not with Malcolm Elsewhere. Please, blow your nose, Belinda.” Aunt Floria folded a piece of red velvet and two red velvet dresses with plaid collars and cuffs pinned to them. She sewed all the twins’ clothes, dressed them alike. “We’re five weeks late on the rent,” she said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” my father asked.
“You know I don’t like to burden you, Victor.”
My mother rolled her eyes and walked to the window. Her back to Aunt Floria, she stared into the air shaft, arms crossed in front of her coat, elbows jagged beneath her sleeves. Rain smeared the glass, turning the living room mop-water gray.
I poked at my aunt’s bolts of lace. She had customers from Manhattan and Brooklyn, even Staten Island, who came to the Bronx for their wedding and bridesmaids gowns.
“Better not touch that lace, Anthony,” she said. “I have something better for you.”
“Lemon wafers?”
“Too much sugar.” My mother turned toward us. “It’ll only make him skutchier.”
“Nice corduroy pants, Anthony,” my aunt said. “Where’d you get them?”
“Macy’s.”
“Turn around. Who did the hemming?”
“The old man with the sewing machine in the window of Koss’.”
My father touched his lips where they disappeared into his beard, signaling me to stay quiet—whatever the Amedeo family talks about…—but that made me think even more of the old man who kept his long face bent over his sewing machine. My mother took our dry cleaning to Koss. Also clothes to be taken in, let out, or shortened, and the owner who stood behind the cou
nter passed them to the old man who never talked.
“I would have hemmed them for free, Leonora,” my aunt said.
“I didn’t want to inconvenience you.”
But I’d heard my mother say that, because of my aunt’s situation, any favor you accepted obligated you tenfold. That’s why I wasn’t allowed to tell her when we took alterations to Koss’, where steam from the pressing machine smelled of wool and yeast and starch.
“Girls,” Aunt Floria told the twins, “why don’t you go and play with your cousin?”
Bianca and Belinda—one year and one day older and heavier than I—took me into their bedroom, where we played the tickle game on the floor. You won if you didn’t flinch while your toes or nipples got tweaked, or while you got tickled behind your knees or between your legs. In the months since we’d invented the game, we’d become bold. Stoical. I tickled Belinda, who then tickled Bianca, who tickled me.
When Belinda got both of us to laugh, she yelled, “I win.”
“Nice girls don’t play tickle games.”
“Do so.” Belinda crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.
“Sister Lucille says,” I lied.
“Sister Lucille doesn’t know.”
“She knows.” What I didn’t tell the twins was that Sister Lucille said boys’ hands did the work of the devil. Whenever Sister spotted a boy with his hands in his pockets, she’d smack his palms with her wooden ruler—one smack for each wound of Christ. If Sister found out about the tickle game…Sixty smacks. At least sixty smacks with her ruler. Sister Lucille also said waiting for chocolate was excellent training for waiting for heaven. Since Advent-calendar chocolate was the best chocolate in the world, Sister Lucille had told the class, “By not letting yourself have everything you want right away, you save up ten times that much in heaven.”
Belinda pointed at my legs. “Sister Lucille says you got skinny legs.”
“He does not have skinny legs,” Bianca defended me.
“Skinny legs,” Belinda hollered. “And it’s my turn to play with him.”
“No, mine.”
“Mine. Anthony, tell Bianca you’re my brother.”
“No, he is my brother.”
I watched them closely, trying to figure out whom to favor this time.
“Mine.”
“No. Mine.”
Often, they clung to me like that, fighting to impress me, to be my favorite, till I said I liked one of them better. Then they’d fight each other. Over me. I didn’t like that adoration, but it was better than having both of them clobber me. To distract them, I pulled Frogman from my pocket. “Look. He can swim.” I showed them the baking soda inside his leg. “If we put him into your tub—”
“But we have a rabbit in the tub.”
“A new rabbit. A boy rabbit.” Belinda gripped my hand. “You want to see? Papa bought him for me.”
“Papa won the rabbit,” Bianca corrected her. “My rabbit.”
“Never mind her.” Belinda pulled me toward the bathroom, where a rabbit crouched in the tub, eyes pink and scared.
“Don’t touch him.” Bianca was right behind us. “He’s my pet.”
But I was already stroking the white pelt between his ears, whispering, “Hey there, rabbit, hey—”
“He’ll eat your finger.”
“Does not,” Belinda said as I snatched my arm away.
Bianca clicked her shoe against the side of the tub.
“Stop that. It annoys Ralph.”
“His name is Malcolm.”
“You cannot give Papa’s name to a rabbit. You have to call him Ralph.”
“Malcolm.”
“Ralph.” Belinda clutched the fur behind the rabbit’s neck and heaved him into her arms. “Ralph likes to read comic books with me. You want to read comic books, Ralph?”
Prior to the rabbit, two painted turtles had lived in the twins’ bathtub. My mother said they couldn’t grow like regular turtles because their shells were painted with enamel. Bianca’s turtle was pink and named Vanessa-Marlene; while Belinda’s was green and named Bob. Their house was a turtle dish made of plastic, the size of a dinner plate, with curved sides. Inside, you poured gravel and snapped in a palm tree with six leaves. A ramp for the turtles led to that tree. The twins would have turtle races on the sidewalk and prod Bob and Vanessa-Marlene with twigs. If the turtles didn’t budge, they’d lift them by their shells—the size of walnut shells, only flatter—and jiggle them hard to get their legs moving; but the turtles would pull in their claws and heads, hiding inside their glossy shells.
Before Uncle Malcolm bought the turtles, six baby chicks used to live in the tub. That’s how you had to buy them at the pet shop, my uncle had said—“six chicks in a box”—and he asked my mother if we wanted to split the cost. But she didn’t want to share our bathtub with filthy chickens. “I don’t know how your sister can live like that,” she’d told my father. I loved those chicks and tried to hold them whenever we visited. Though I was careful with them, they’d squirm in my palms, peck at my fingers. Aunt Floria fed them baby food, and the chicks would walk through the pablum and drag it all over the tub. Before anyone could take a bath, Aunt Floria would catch the chicks, set them into a carton, and scrub their pablum footprints from the cracked porcelain. Because they were so messy, they didn’t stay long enough to get names. Uncle Malcolm gave them to the milkman, who had a farm in New Jersey. “They’ll be so much happier in the country,” he’d said. New Jersey was “the country,” green and mysterious, with lots of trees and chickens and cows.
Of all the pets who’d lived in the twins’ tub so far, my favorite was Ralph, and as I touched the velvet-soft pads beneath his paws, I swore to myself I’d never let Uncle Malcolm take Ralph to New Jersey. “I want to hold Ralph,” I said.
“No,” Belinda said.
“Why not?”
“Because you got skinny legs.”
“And you are BaBelinda,” I yelled. “BaBelinda with ugly boogers inside her head.”
She reached into the tub, threw a fistful of brown pellets at me, and chased me from the bathroom, the rabbit bouncing in her arms; we ran up and down the dim hallway, dodging four suitcases, their bulging sides secured with rope.
“BaBelinda…BaBelinda…”
“Suuu-per-mannnn…”
As Bianca galloped past me, trailed by the cape Aunt Floria had patched together from various colors of bridesmaids’ gowns, I was glad Riptide wasn’t allowed to take my cousins to the pool. Aunt Floria was afraid they’d catch polio, even though we’d been vaccinated. At my school, the doctor with the syringe stood at one end of the cafeteria, and the lollipop nurse at the other. The only thing worse than polio vaccination was the screaming of sirens during air-raid drills, when we had to hide under our desks or got marched into a hallway without windows. “Just a drill,” Sister would say.
“Skinny legs…”
“Ugly-booger BaBelinda…”
“Eggplant time,” Aunt Floria called. “Time to eat.”
“Suuu-per-mannnn…Suuu—”
“Girls. Anthony—” Aunt Floria stepped into our path. “Please? Do you have to be that noisy? You put that rabbit back in the tub. Now.”
In the kitchen, the warmth of the oven was releasing the smells of my father’s food: garlic and Parmesan cheese and tomato sauce. He was stacking wrapped plates in a carton I recognized from previous moves.
“I want to eat honeymoon salad,” Belinda said.
“A house full of children for Christmas, Anthony…” My father gave me a warning glance. “Won’t that be nice?”
My tongue felt sour. “But where do they sleep?”
My mother’s cheeks looked pinched as she nested small pots inside big pots.
Carefully, my aunt asked, “Are you getting hungry, Leonora?”
“Not particularly.”
“I just have to fix the dressing.”
“I want to eat honeymoon salad,” Belinda said again.
&nb
sp; “What’s that?” my father asked.
“Lettuce alone with nothing on. Get it?”
He shook his head.
“Let. Us. Alone. With. Nothing. On. Get it? Honeymoon?”
“I get it.”
“That girl—” Aunt Floria turned to my father, who was winding string around her metal breadbox. “She makes me laugh.”
“She’s funny, all right. She got that from you.”
“I don’t always remember that part of myself.” Aunt Floria set a few lettuce leaves aside for Belinda before she sprinkled oil and vinegar and Parmesan over the rest.
“You used to sew up the ends of my pajama pants,” my father said. “Loosen the doorknob so it came off in my hand. Top my strawberry pudding with Dad’s shaving cream.”
“I did all that.” Aunt Floria sounded pleased.
“Funny and mischievous…That’s what you liked about Malcolm when you met him. The prankster in him.”
“Childish and spoiled…The son of rich parents who’s still waiting for them to come after him and force their money on him. My guess is his parents coaxed him into running away so that they’d be free of him. Their gain, my loss. He doesn’t even care that I have to get Belinda to the doctor and talk about her surgery.”
“I don’t want my sinuses cut,” Belinda cried.
“We’re just getting your sinuses X-rayed.”
“I can help with that,” my father said.
“You’ve already done more than anyone else, Victor.”
“Listen to your sister, Victor,” my mother said. “She should know.”
“I know.” Aunt Floria’s mouth twitched, and then the rest of her words tumbled out as if they were one: “And-I-hope-for-your-sake-that-you’ll-never-have-to-depend-on-family-to—”
“I’m so sorry,” my mother said.
“And you don’t let me reciprocate…not even hem one lousy pair of pants.”
“I really am sorry.” My mother set down the malted-milk machine she was wrapping into newspaper and cupped Aunt Floria’s face between her hands. “We’ll get you through this.” Gently, she stroked my aunt’s face. Up to her temples. Down to her jaw.
Aunt Floria closed her eyes.