When the World Was Young Read online

  Uncle Vince finally stirred and shuffled to the door.

  “Come in come in, Santucci. But not so loud, hey.”

  Although it was June, Vince, claiming always to be cold, wore a flannel, long-sleeved nightshirt, boxer shorts, and slippers. He was the lone Peccatori to stand nearly six feet tall yet seemed much shorter because of his hunched shoulders and severe limp from a degenerative hip that he swore he’d let a doctor look at soon.

  He rubbed his eyes and settled into his overstuffed couch, the flattened cushions outlining his usual position. “What is the news, hey?”

  Santo gazed over his shoulder out the porch window, wondering if he could spot Sylvia Gomez’s house. “Did you order the JB?” he muttered.

  Vince ran a hand through his tangled thatch of black hair and yawned. “JB…AB. You think bar will close if we no have? I patroni, the old men, they drink most anything.”

  Santo sat across from his uncle in a hard-backed chair and leaned his head against the plaster wall. He didn’t much care about the JB. Uncle Vince belonged to a different time, a bygone age, and Santo enjoyed being there, listening to him spin his grand view of the world. “Careful with the three Cs, hey,” Vince liked to tell him. “The three Cs—the Coin, the Car, the Cunt—they ruin everything. Kill you.” Santo gazed at his uncle’s ruddy complexion and wondered if cognac would ever be added to the list.

  Vince pulled out a smashed pack of Pall Malls from his shirt pocket, picked out two cigarettes with his fingertips, and flipped one to Santo, who lit both with his book of Mio Fratello matches. They leaned back and blew smoke over their shoulders, as if doing the other a favor. A light breeze curled the ivory curtain at the only open living-room window in the apartment, and pale light fell in misshapen squares on the gray carpet.

  “This is primo, hey?”

  “Primo, Zio.”

  “Hey. Santo.” He cocked his head and considered his cigarette. “Vittoria, she no smoke, hey?”

  Santo put up his hands and shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that, Uncle Vinny.”

  Santo’s younger sister, Victoria, had been stealing cigarettes from her father for a year before Agostino caught on. He wanted to forbid her from smoking, but he knew she was strong-willed and would only smoke more. So he never said a word, other than to let on that he knew the cigarettes were missing.

  “So tonight. Zia Lupa, hey?” Vince said. “She come back?”

  “She come back.”

  Aunt Lupa had won a monthlong trip to South America through a raffle at her church.

  “I should marry that Lupa, hey. She take good care of me. She lucky.”

  “Then you’d be my uncle twice. Double uncle.”

  “One time is enough. No?” He puffed on his Pall Mall. “But your mama. She help. Yeh, yeh, Angela Rosa she talk to Lupa. Make arrange. You know how sister, they talk, hey?”

  Vince carried on the same conversation regarding every unmarried woman he knew, as well as a few married ones. He acknowledged that life was hard and he was weak and constantly looked for ways to even the scale some, always with a grin.

  “Find someone to watch the store,” Santo told him. “Everyone’ll be at the feast anyway. Come to dinner tonight. Lupa can sit on your lap.”

  Vince feigned a look of terror and sank down in the couch as if he were being crushed. “No no, the store. I must keep the store.”

  There had been a few serious attempts to find a wife for Vince—a trip to Italy was even arranged, the same way his brother, Agostino, had met his wife, Angela Rosa—but he always retreated. Now he had Carmel, whom he visited once a week, he had his cleaning woman who took care of the apartment, what little needed to be done, and he had his bar. He saw enough of his nephews and niece and didn’t pine for children of his own. Why complicate his life now with marriage?

  “What about Mrs. Gomez?” Santo asked.

  Vince fanned his hand as if it were ablaze. “Elegante.”

  “What if you met someone like her? Would you marry her?”

  “Too young.”

  Santo couldn’t hide his smile. “And too married?”

  Vince shrugged, indicating this wasn’t such a big concern, and scratched his prickly chin. “Ehh.”

  “How old do you think she is?”

  Vince, amid putting his feet on the coffee table and his hands behind his head, suddenly stopped. He remained frozen for a moment. “Santucci! Mio Santo.” He put his feet down and stood up, suddenly alert. “So, Mrs. Gomez, hey?” He smiled and turned. Making his way to the bathroom, he laughed heartily, shaking his head and muttering, “Just like his papa.”

  Victoria Peccatori, sixteen, with sweater sets that hugged her too snugly and ruby lipstick that shined too brightly, hated her aunt Lupa. And bulky Zia Lupa, her dresses stiff and seam-tight, her chalky pink rouge caked thick and punctuated with carnival-red dots on each cheek, didn’t hide her disdain for Victoria. “Miserabile,” Lupa would lament to her sister, Angela Rosa. “Quella li ucciderà,” she’d add, which meant, roughly, “That daughter will be your end,” though Victoria didn’t need a precise translation. The fierce eyes and the biting tongue were enough.

  On the night of her return from South America, Zia Lupa greeted her niece with the obligatory kiss on each cheek, which Victoria promptly wiped away. Lupa took her by the shoulders. “How big,” she said, the only English she would attempt all night. She pushed past Victoria, her pungent perfume trailing her, patted Santo’s chin, offered quick hugs to Anthony and Alfredo, and marched straight to Benito on the floor, who was drooling over a hard biscuit. She picked him up, smothered him with wet kisses, burying him in her substantial bosom, Benito squealing with delight at first but then twisting away. “Caro, Benito. Bello.” She wouldn’t loosen her grasp until she sat down minutes later.

  Victoria noted with satisfaction the great pocket of air her aunt produced when she settled onto the plastic-covered couch cushion. Victoria enjoyed watching her try to push away the thick clear plastic from her legs, noting how the plastic left blotchy pink patches. Victoria sauntered past the living-room window of the apartment to catch a glimpse of her shoulders. How big, she thought. She tried to convince herself that she needn’t worry. Fortunately, her waist was still slight and her legs slender. And her thick hair softened her shoulders some. She gazed beyond her reflection toward Zia Lupa, then back at herself, and even in that slanted light she found the resemblance uncanny. Zia Lupa had turned bronze in the South American sun, and Victoria had to admit she looked vibrant, like some Amazon.

  Victoria couldn’t help identifying with her barren aunt—which is why she hated her. They had the same Tamburi shoulders, square and solid, that Victoria feared would thicken with age. They were both doggedly stubborn and not easily pleased. Victoria prayed that the lines at the corners of her eyes would not converge and harden like her aunt’s.

  She crossed the living room and put her arms out to Benito to rescue him from all that perfume, but Zia Lupa turned and waved her away. Annoyed, Victoria slipped off to her room at the far end of the apartment and pored through her latest copy of True Confessions. She would lie on the bed and wait until they called her for supper so she would spend as little time as possible with her aunt. That’s what she liked about their apartment. They lived on the second floor of a three-story brownstone. The main passageways from living room to dining room to kitchen, though narrow, seemed to go on forever. If she kept out of these main rooms, privacy was never a problem.

  She hoped that Zia Lupa, after her long trip, would insist on going home after dinner instead of joining them at the feast. Each year St. Columbkille celebrated La Festa di Madonna, a three-night feast stretching across four blocks of West Ohio Street that marked the beginning of summer. Victoria planned to spend the first hour pushing Benito in his buggy, raising him high over her head at the shrine of the Virgin Mary, passing him around to all her friends, who would smear lipstick over his blush cheeks. Taking care of Benito made her feel older,
filled her with purpose in a family where she felt increasingly detached. What difference should it make to them how late she stayed out or what car she hopped into or how much lipstick she brushed onto her lips? She tried to impress upon them, even her younger brothers, Anthony and Alfredo, who at thirteen and twelve had become surrogate fathers, that she could take care of herself. Besides, whatever illicit activities she might do could just as easily happen before ten o’clock as after. When she tried to explain this, they’d all shake their heads, Anthony and Alfredo doing their utmost to appear stern.

  After watching Benito tonight, she’d slip off behind Jimmy’s beef stand, one of the vendors at the feast, where she and Darlene would drag down the same cigarette that Jimmy’s nephew, Stick, would supply. Darlene and Stick had been going steady for a year now, but Victoria got the feeling lately he was interested more in her than in Darlene. She still hadn’t decided what to do about this, which unsettled her. Which got her thinking about what it means to do the right thing. She doubted there was such a thing. She’d heard a story on the radio about a mother who’d been arrested for killing her son by holding his head underwater. The mother said she wanted to teach the boy not to be afraid of water. What kind of God would allow this? Victoria wondered. And if God didn’t exist, how would that mother ever be punished? She prayed then, for justice, for hell with all its lapping flames, doubt spreading through her like ragweed.

  Her brother Santo knocked on the casing around her door, though the door was open. She knew better than to close it, and Santo knew not to barge through.

  “Hey, Vick. Dinner.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “What,” he said.

  Zia Lupa’s shrill litany pierced through the passageways like an air-raid siren.

  “Oh. That.” He picked at a crack in the paint around the doorjamb.

  “If she says one word about my sleeves or the slit in my skirt or—”

  “Ah, forget it. C’mon.”

  “Yeah, right. She doesn’t give you any crap. That’s why, forget it. What? Does she expect me to wear one of those old-lady black shifts?”

  “No, really,” he said. “Forget it. What’s she gonna say?”

  “Aw, cripes. She’s gonna say my sleeves are too short. ‘Cover those shoulders.’ That’s what she’s gonna say, Einstein.”

  Santo looked out the window, knowing if he stepped near it he could see the pulsing neon arrow outside Vince’s apartment and the roof of Mio Fratello. The smell of night was coming on, and the bar would be crowded soon. He heard what he would say next and told himself not to, but the words kept forming, and just thinking about them made them into a thing he couldn’t contain.

  “Maybe you should, you know, cover your shoulders,” he said.

  Her eyes became fiery slits. “What’s it to you? Father number two.” She whisked past him. “Where’s Father number three? And four? Jesus H. Christ.” She took long strides, hoping to hike up her worsted skirt to highlight the slit. “Four fathers I got. Christ.”

  Victoria didn’t utter a word through dinner.

  As usual, Agostino insisted that Zia Lupa sit at his place, at the end of the long dining-room table. She filled that spot, weighed it down like ship cargo, everything—the chairs, the crystal water glasses, the rose-tinted bottles of Chianti—tilting toward her, it seemed. Agostino sat next to Lupa so he could pour her wine and fill her water glass. Lupa directed most of her remarks to her sister, Angela Rosa, at the other end of the table. Victoria studied the seldom-used table leaf before her, its gray flecks darker than the rest. Anthony and Alfredo sat across from her, conspiring. Next to her, Santo slurped down minestrone soup. She nudged closer to Benito’s high chair on her right and spread small portions of food across his tray.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see them reaching, a tangle of arms, as if they’d never eaten before. Reaching, shouting, signaling. She wanted to do her own shouting, tell them to slow down, that there was enough here for the whole neighborhood. Chicken cacciatore. Garlic chicken baked with sliced lemons. Fresh gnocchi and meatballs that she’d rolled and fried. Baccala, codfish to Americans, with red vodka sauce. Potato wedges with golden-crusted edges. Buttered asparagus. Steamed broccoli. Tossed salad she’d rinsed and sprinkled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Homemade bread she’d kneaded and sliced. Water. Wine. Soda for the boys.

  To no one’s surprise, Zia Lupa did most of the talking during supper. She had been to the university, the only woman in her village, the only woman in her province to do so, and spoke precise Italian, unlike the Neapolitano dialect the Peccatori children were used to hearing. Victoria was able to make out about half of what she said, which was half more than she cared to hear.

  Lupa told them about the shrines she visited in Peru with Father Emil and Sister Ernestine and the rest of their small entourage of parishioners from her parish in Berwyn. “The Peruvians are fine people. They welcomed us into their houses with heads bowed like we were dignitaries. When we broke it to them we were vacationing and not on missions, this put them at ease and we all had a great laugh. But look at me, I must have gained fifteen pounds. They use lard for everything. They would put lard in cereal if they could. And everything is eggs. Eggs for breakfast, eggs for dinner. Agostino, be nice to Lupa and pass me that small piece of steak. I need meat. And the dirty stink from those kitchens nearly suffocated me. Peruvians, pff, such dirty people. One night a deaf boy and his brother came into St. Basilica, a fifteen-hundred-year-old stone church we were visiting just outside Lima. A colossal Virgin Mary is painted on one of the walls and every spring she weeps. Not when we were there, of course, but the smaller boy, the deaf boy, as old as Anthony or Alfredo maybe, he knelt down and prayed, then spoke to his brother with his hands. My throat was scratchy. I wanted to cry. The older one, tall and thin and dark like my shoe, went around with a cup for pesos, and no one could resist. Later, when we were strolling through the village, I saw the deaf boy and his brother handing the cup to a woman, their mother maybe. The deaf one—the younger one I should say, stupid me—was not using his hands. Do you hear what I’m saying? He spoke. With his dirty mouth the deaf boy spoke. If they had been laughing, mocking us, and hadn’t appeared so desperate, I would have marched up to them and knocked the cup right out of their filthy hands. Such a poor people. Full of disease. I never want to go back there again. Not if you give me—”

  Zia Lupa began coughing, a hacking, crouplike cough that went on for some time. Her sister, Angela Rosa, racked her solidly on the back and offered water. Victoria understood enough of Zia Lupa’s story to offer rebuttal but thought better of it. Sarcasm wasn’t so effective when someone was choking. Maybe there is a God, she thought, who caused people to choke on their own words.

  After Zia Lupa wiped her eyes and settled back in her chair, breathing evenly through her mouth, she looked spent. Agostino raised his glass and offered a toast to Zia Lupa’s safe return. Victoria thought he meant her safe return from choking, but everyone, even Anthony and Alfredo, had a glass raised and seemed to know what he meant from the start. “Salute,” Agostino said. When Benito raised his cup, they all broke out in laughter.

  Victoria blushed with shame. She alone had hesitated in raising her glass. Sometimes meanness so dark streaked through her that she couldn’t explain it. Where did it come from? Certainly not her father. More than anything, Agostino was starry-eyed, always looking slightly beyond the current crisis to some minor reprieve—a glass of wine, a plate of pasta, the morning sun. Victoria was getting to an age where she understood that much of her father’s composure was probably anchored in his manhood, that much of it was show. Still, she’d seen him distracted with worry only once, after Mama had broken three bones in her pubic region after delivering Benito. This was when the lines around her father’s eyes had begun to fan out in tight folds, as if they’d been sculpted there. He would stroke his chin in that contemplative way of his and put Santo in charge, then trek the fourteen miles to visi
t Angela Rosa and the baby at Loyola Medical.

  It would have been easy for Victoria to blame her mother for her own meanness, but Angela Rosa was like every other mother Victoria knew, strict with her sons, stricter with her daughter. In Victoria’s estimation, her mother had married too young and resented the narrowing of choices in her life, though Mama would never admit as much, not even to herself. But how could she not harbor resentment? She’d been plucked from her home, brought to America, and made pregnant. Just thinking about the ten-day trip across the ocean and the twenty-four-hour train ride from New York to Chicago made Victoria’s stomach turn. She vowed never to be led about like that, like a woman-child. And whatever bitterness resided in Victoria would remain within her, not directed at a daughter.

  After her grueling labor with Benito, Angela Rosa had softened some. Victoria gave her that. Her injury, it seemed, had crippled not only her body, but also her fury. Her words became more deliberate. She had to look at you then. She couldn’t race from one end of the kitchen to the other, wiping a face along the way, picking up an onion skin off the linoleum tile, all the while cursing about the pants Victoria better not be wearing outside this apartment. And the words became more precise as well, meted out in quiet sternness. The effect was startling to Victoria—Angela Rosa’s calmness held more power than her ranting. Victoria welcomed the reprieve and hoped her mother would notice this irony herself. But as Angela Rosa’s strength gradually returned, her voice became increasingly louder, more shrill, her movements more flurried, and Victoria felt ensnared once again.

  Victoria gazed at her mother at one end of the table, then at Zia Lupa slumped at the other. She tried to imagine them as girls, one chasing the other down a dirt field, kicking a ball, pulling each other’s hair. But the images seemed all wrong. Preposterous. Zia Lupa was an aunt but not a sister. She had no past. Even the stories of Zia Lupa chaperoning Angela Rosa and her new husband, Agostino, on their voyage across the Atlantic seemed difficult to imagine. Lupa returned to her village after a month, only to find her own prospective suitor gone. Angela Rosa convinced her sister to rejoin her in America, where husbands grew like figs on trees. Lupa, skeptical, reluctantly agreed, but year after year found no man suitable.