But what of Rosa?
I love you, Rosa. She had a way about her. She was poor too, a coal miner’s daughter, but they flocked around her and listened to her talk, and it didn’t matter, and he envied her and was proud of her, wondering if those who listened ever considered that he was an Italian too, like Rosa Pinelli.
Speak to me, Rosa. Look this way just once, over here Rosa, where I am watching.
He had to get her a Christmas present, and he walked the streets and peered into windows and bought her jewels and gowns. You’re welcome, Rosa. And here is a ring I bought you. Let me put it on your finger. There. Oh, it’s nothing, Rosa. I was walking along Pearl Street, and I came to Cherry’s Jewelry Shop, and I went in and bought it. Expensive? Naaaw. Three hundred, is all. I got plenty of money, Rosa. Haven’t you heard about my father? We’re rich. My father’s uncle in Italy. He left us everything. We come from fine people back there. We didn’t know about it, but come to find out, we were second cousins of the Duke of Abruzzi. Distantly related to the King of Italy. It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve always loved you, Rosa, and just because I come from royal blood never will make any difference.
Strange times. One night he got home earlier than usual. He found the house empty, the back door wide open. He called his mother but got no answer. Then he noticed that both stoves had gone out. He searched every room in the house. His mother’s coat and hat were in the bedroom. Then where could she be?
He walked into the back yard and called her.
‘Ma! Oh, Ma! Where are you?’
He returned to the house and built a fire in the front room. Where could she be without her hat and coat in this weather? God damn his father! He shook his fist at his father’s hat hanging in the kitchen. God damn you, why don’t you come home! Look what you’re doing to Mamma! Darkness came suddenly and he was frightened. Somewhere in that cold house he could smell his mother, in every room, but she was not there. He went to the back door and yelled again.
‘Ma! Oh, Ma! Where are you?’
The fire went out. There was no more coal or wood. He was glad. It gave him an excuse to leave the house and fetch more fuel. He seized a coal bucket and started down the path.
In the coal shed he found her, his mother, seated in the darkness in the corner, seated on a mortar board. He jumped when he saw her, it was so dark and her face so white, numb with cold, seated in her thin dress, staring at his face and not speaking, like a dead woman, his mother frozen in the corner. She sat away from the meager pile of coal in the part of the shed where Bandini kept his mason’s tools, his cement and sacks of lime. He rubbed his eyes to free them from the blinding light of snow, the coal bucket dropped at his side as he squinted and watched her form gradually assume clarity, his mother sitting on a mortar board in the darkness of the coal shed. Was she crazy? And what was that she held in her hand?
‘Mamma!’ he demanded. ‘What’re you doing in here?’
No answer, but her hand opened and he saw what it was: a trowel, a mason’s trowel, his father’s. The clamor and protest of his body and mind took hold of him. His mother in the darkness of the coal shed with his father’s trowel. It was an intrusion upon the intimacy of a scene that belonged to him alone. His mother had no right in this place. It was as though she had discovered him there, committing a boy-sin, that place, identically where he had sat those times; and she was there, angering him with his memories and he hated it, she there, holding his father’s trowel. What good did that do? Why did she have to go around reminding herself of him, fooling with his clothes, touching his chair? Oh, he had seen her plenty of times – looking at his empty place at the table; and now, here she was, holding his trowel in the coal shed, freezing to death and not caring, like a dead woman. In his anger he kicked the coal bucket and began to cry.
‘Mamma!’ he demanded. ‘What’re you doing! Why are you out here? You’ll die out here, Mamma! You’ll freeze!’
She arose and staggered toward the door with white hands stretched ahead of her, the face stamped with cold, the blood gone from it as she walked past him and into the semi-darkness of the evening. How long she had been there he did not know, possibly an hour, possibly more, but he knew she must be half dead with cold. She walked in a daze, staring here and there as if she had never known that place before.
He filled the coal bucket. The shed smelled tartly of lime and cement. Over one rafter hung a pair of Bandini’s overalls. He grabbed at them and ripped the overalls in two. It was all right to go around with Effie Hildegarde, he liked that all right, but why should his mother suffer so much, making him suffer? He hated his mother too; she was a fool, killing herself on purpose, not caring about the rest of them, him and August and Federico. They were all fools. The only person with any sense in the whole family was himself.
Maria was in bed when he got back to the house. Fully clothed she lay shivering beneath the covers. He looked at her and made grimaces of impatience. Well, it was her own fault: why did she want to go out like that? Yet he felt he should be sympathetic.
‘You all right, Mamma?’
‘Leave me alone,’ her trembling mouth said. ‘Just leave me alone, Arturo.’
‘Want the hot water bottle?’
She did not reply. Her eyes glanced at him out of their corners, quickly, in exasperation. It was a look he took for hatred, as if she wanted him out of her sight forever, as though he had something to do with the whole thing. He whistled in surprise: gosh, his mother was a strange woman; she was taking this too seriously.
He left the bedroom on tiptoe, not afraid of her but of what his presence might do to her. After August and Federico got home, she arose and cooked dinner: poached eggs, toast, fried potatoes, and an apple apiece. She did not touch the food herself. After dinner they found her at the same place, the front window, staring at the white street, her rosary clicking against the rocker.
Strange times. It was an evening of only living and breathing. They sat around the stove and waited for something to happen. Federico crawled to her chair and placed his hand on her knee. Still in prayer, she shook her head like one hypnotized. It was her way of telling Federico not to interrupt her, or to touch her, to leave her alone.
The next morning she was her old self, tender and smiling through breakfast. The eggs had been prepared ‘Mamma’s way,’ a special treat, the yolks filmed by the whites. And would you look at her! Hair combed tightly, her eyes big and bright. When Federico dumped his third spoonful of sugar into his coffee cup, she remonstrated with mock sternness. ‘Not that way, Federico! Let me show you.’
She emptied the cup into the sink.
‘If you want a sweet cup of coffee, I’ll give it to you.’ She placed the sugar bowl instead of the coffee cup on Federico’s saucer. The bowl was half full of sugar. She filled it the rest of the way with coffee. Even August laughed, though he had to admit there might be a sin in it – wastefulness.
Federico tasted it suspiciously.
‘Swell,’ he said. ‘Only there’s no room for the cream.’
She laughed, clutching her throat, and they were glad to see her happy, but she kept on laughing, pushing her chair away and bending over with laughter. It wasn’t that funny; it couldn’t be. They watched her miserably, her laughter not ending even though their blank faces stared at her. They saw her eyes fill with tears, her face swelling to purple. She got up, one hand over her mouth, and staggered to the sink. She drank a glass of water until it sputtered in her throat and she could not go on, and finally she staggered into the bedroom and lay on the bed, where she laughed.
Now she was quiet again.
They arose from the table and looked in at her on the bed. She was rigid, her eyes like buttons in a doll, a funnel of vapors pouring from her panting mouth and into the cold air.
‘You kids go to school,’ Arturo said. ‘I’m staying home.’
After they were gone, he went to the bedside.
‘Can I get you something, Ma?’
‘G
o away, Arturo. Leave me alone.’
‘Should I call Dr Hastings?’
‘No. Leave me alone. Go away. Go to school. You’ll be late.’
‘Should I try to find Papa?’
‘Don’t you dare.’
Suddenly that seemed the right thing to do.
‘I’m going to,’ he said. ‘That’s just what I’m going to do.’ He hurried for his coat.
‘Arturo!’
She was out of bed like a cat. When he turned around in the clothes closet, one of his arms inside a sweater, he gasped to see her beside him so quickly. ‘Don’t you go to your father! You hear me – don’t you dare!’ She bent so close to his face that hot spittle from her lips sprinkled it. He backed away to the corner and turned his back, afraid of her, afraid to even look at her. With strength that amazed him she took him by the shoulder and swung him around.
‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you? He’s with that woman.’
‘What woman?’ He jerked himself away and fussed with his sweater. She tore his hands loose and took him by the shoulders, her finger-nails pinching the flesh.
‘Arturo, look at me! You saw him, didn’t you?’
‘No.’
But he smiled; not because he wished to torment her, but because he believed he had succeeded in the lie. Too quickly he smiled. Her mouth closed and her face softened in defeat. She smiled weakly, hating to know yet vaguely pleased that he had tried to shield her from the news.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘You don’t see anything, you’re talking crazy.’
‘When did you see him, Arturo?’
‘I tell you I didn’t.’
She straightened herself and drew back her shoulders.
‘Go to school, Arturo. I’m all right here. I don’t need anybody.’
Even so, he remained home, wandering about the house, keeping the stoves fueled, now and then looking into her room, where she lay as always, her glazed eyes studying the ceiling, her beads rattling. She did not urge him to school again, and he felt he was of some use, that she was comforted with his presence. After a while he pulled a copy of Horror Crimes from his hiding place under the floor and sat reading in the kitchen, his feet on a block of wood in the oven.
Always he had wanted his mother to be pretty, to be beautiful. Now it obsessed him, the thought filtering beyond the pages of Horror Crimes and shaping itself into the misery of the woman lying on the bed. He put the magazine away and sat biting his lip. Sixteen years ago his mother had been beautiful, for he had seen her picture. Oh that picture! Many times, coming home from school and finding his mother weary and worried and not beautiful, he had gone to the trunk and taken it out – a picture of a large-eyed girl in a wide hat, smiling with so many small teeth, a beauty of a girl standing under the apple tree in Grandma Toscana’s backyard. Oh Mamma, to kiss you then! Oh Mamma, why did you change?
Suddenly he wanted to look at that picture again. He did the pulp and opened the door of the empty room off the kitchen, where his mother’s trunk was kept stored. He locked the door from the inside. Huh, and why did he do that? He unlocked it. The room was like an icebox. He crossed to the window where the trunk stood. Then he returned and locked the door again. Vaguely he felt he should not be doing this, yet why not: couldn’t he even look at a picture of his mother without a sense of evil degrading him? Well, suppose it wasn’t his mother, really: it used to be, so what was the difference?
Beneath layers of linen and curtains that his mother was saving until ‘we get a better house,’ beneath ribbons and baby clothes once worn by himself and his brothers, he found the picture. Ah, man! He held it up and stared at the wonder of that lovely face: here was the mother he had always dreamed about, this girl, no more than twenty, whose eyes he knew resembled his own. Not that weary woman in the other part of the house, she with the thin tortured face, the long bony hands. To have known her then, to have remembered everything from the beginning, to have felt the cradle of that beautiful womb, to have lived remembering from the beginning, and yet he remembered nothing of that time, and always she had been as she was now, weary and with that wistfulness of pain, the great eyes those of someone else, the mouth softer as if from much crying. He traced with his finger the line of her face, kissing it, sighing and murmuring of a past he had never known.
As he put the picture away, his eye fell upon something in one corner of the trunk. It was a tiny jewel box of purple velvet. He had never seen it before. Its presence surprised him, for he had gone through the trunk many times. The little purple box opened when he pressed the spring lock. Inside it, nestling in a silk couch was a black cameo on a gold chain. The dim writing on a card under the silk told him what it was. ‘For Maria, married one year today. Svevo.’
His mind worked fast as he shoved the little box into his pocket and locked the trunk. Rosa, Merry Christmas. A little gift. I bought it, Rosa. I’ve been saving up for it a long time. For you, Rosa. Merry Christmas.
He was waiting for Rosa next morning at eight o’clock, standing at the water fountain in the hall. It was the last day of classes before Christmas vacation. He knew Rosa always got to school early. Usually he barely made the last bell, running the final two blocks to school. He was sure the nuns who passed regarded him suspiciously, despite their kindly smiles and greetings for a Merry Christmas. In his right coat pocket he felt the snug importance of his gift for Rosa.
By eight fifteen the kids began to arrive: girls, of course, but no Rosa. He watched the electric clock on the wall. Eight thirty, and still no Rosa. He frowned with displeasure: a whole half hour spent in school, and for what? For nothing. Sister Celia, her glass eye brighter than the other, swooped downstairs from the convent quarters. Seeing him there on one foot, Arturo who was usually late, she glanced at the watch on her wrist.
‘Good heavens! Is my watch stopped?’
She checked with the electric clock on the wall.
‘Didn’t you go home last night, Arturo?’
‘Sure, Sister Celia.’
‘You mean you deliberately arrived a half hour early this morning?’
‘I came to study. Behind in my algebra.’
She smiled her doubt. ‘With Christmas vacation beginning tomorrow?’
‘That’s right.’
But he knew it didn’t make sense.
‘Merry Christmas, Arturo.’
‘Ditto, Sister Celia.’
Twenty to nine, and no Rosa. Everyone seemed to stare at him, even his brothers, who gaped as though he was in the wrong school, the wrong town.
‘Look who’s here!’
‘Beat it, punk.’ He bent over to drink some ice water.
At ten of nine she opened the big front door. There she was, red hat, camel’s hair coat, zipper overshoes, her face, her whole body lighted up with the cold flame of the winter morning. Nearer and nearer she came, her arms draped lovingly around a great bundle of books. She nodded this way and that to friends, her smile like a melody in that hall: Rosa, president of the Holy Name Girls, everybody’s sweetheart coming nearer and nearer in little galoshes that flapped with joy, as though they loved her too.
He tightened the grip around the jewel box. A sudden gusher of blood thundered through his throat. The vivacious sweep of her eyes centered for a fleeting moment upon his tortured ecstatic face, his mouth open, his eyes bulging as he swallowed down his excitement.
He was speechless.
‘Rosa … I … here’s …’
Her gaze went past him. The frown became a smile as a classmate rushed up and swept her away. They walked into the cloak room, chattering excitedly. His chest sank. Nuts. He bent over and gulped ice water. Nuts. He spat the water out, hating it, his whole mouth aching. Nuts.
He spent the morning writing notes to Rosa, and tearing them up. Sister Celia had the class read Van Dyke’s The Other Wise Man. He sat there bored, his mind attuned to the healthier writings found in the pulps.
But when it was Rosa’s t
urn to read he listened as she enunciated with a kind of reverence. Only then did the Van Dyke trash have significance. He knew it was a sin, but he had absolutely no respect for the story of the birth of the infant Jesus, the flight into Egypt, and the narrative of the child in the manger. But this line of thought was a sin.
During the noon hour, he stalked after her; but she was never alone, always with friends. Once she looked over the shoulders of a girl as a group of them stood in a circle and saw him, as if with a prescience of being followed. He gave up, then, ashamed, and pretended to swagger down the hall. The bell rang and afternoon class began. While Sister Celia talked mysteriously of the Virgin Birth, he wrote more notes to Rosa, tearing them up and writing others. Now he realized he was unequal to the task of presenting the gift to her in person. Someone else would have to do that. The note that satisfied him was:
Dear Rosa:
Here is a Merry Xmas
from
Guess Who
It hurt him when he realized that she would not accept the gift if she recognized the handwriting. With clumsy patience he rewrote it with his left hand, scrawling it in a wild, awkward script. But who would deliver the gift? He studied the faces of classmates around him. None of them, he realized, could possibly keep a secret. He solved the matter by raising two fingers. With the saccharine benevolence of the Christmas season, Sister Celia nodded her permission for him to leave the room. He tiptoed down the side aisle toward the cloak room.
He recognized Rosa’s coat at once, for he was familiar with it, having touched and smelled it on similar occasions. He slipped the note inside the box and dropped the box inside the coat pocket. He embraced the coat, inhaling the fragrance. In the side pocket he found a tiny pair of kid gloves. They were well worn, the little fingers showing holes.