Black Rabbit and Other Stories (3 page)

Mike shook his head and felt his ears reddening. Sometimes he hated that woman, hated her sharp senses, hated her righteousness. He retched inwardly, containing his bile. That's what life was—at least for a man—containment. If you were not a rich man, you were measured by containment. A rich man could shave off his moustache and suffer no one to bother him about it, and perhaps silence anyone who did bother him about it.

Mike's eyes grew heavy and in short order he dozed off. He dreamed he was eating fruit with Joe Garzo and Domenic Carbone, both of them toothless, muttering things to him that he didn't understand. What? he kept asking. What?

He felt a pinch again, and this time he almost fell out of his chair. Jesus Christ!

“You disgust me,” hissed Mufalda. “Come on, get up. Get your carcass up. It's time to go. Unless you want to sleep with Joe.”

“Okay, already.”

“Never mind okay. Never mind.”

And on the way out of the funeral parlour, and on the whole way home Mufalda didn't let him forget his indiscretions. He didn't bother defending himself. If he was guilty, so be it, let her rail. He simply thought of other things, like the mule he used to have back in Sicily. The mule was stubborn; the mule was rude. But Mike liked the mule because it refused to be anything but itself. That mule spoke volumes with its eyes, with its brays. Thinking about little scenes like this made the nagging nothing.

At home Mike found a slab of leftover lasagna in the refrigerator. Glutinous and so cold it made his teeth ache, he still ate it with gusto. Mufalda entered the kitchen grimacing.

“You didn't even heat it up?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

Mike didn't answer. Mufalda snorted and exited the kitchen. He finished eating and retreated to the bathroom where he applied dye to his hair, restoring the dark lustre he so fancied. One of the reasons he had shaved his moustache: it had become difficult to coordinate the hues. I'm a simple man, he thought. I'm not a complicated man. I don't need complications in my life, not now.

The next morning he went downstairs to the kitchen, loaded up the espresso pot, and put some milk on the stove to make cafe latte.

He stared out the window: it was a sunny day, the birds out in force, the trees greening. It was nice, a happy scene. But not more than a minute passed before his chin trembled and his eyes moistened and, despite his efforts to stop himself, he found himself weeping. Mufalda entered the kitchen and seeing the milk sputtering from the pot started shouting at Mike. He regained his composure and tuned her out.

Mike took Francesca's son Norbert to the park one morning. He was a four-year-old with blubbery arms and legs and a rather sullen disposition. He lacked the spark of Mike's other grandchildren, dragging his thick legs around and kicking up sods.

“What are you doing?” Mike barked.

“Nonna . . .”

“Never mind Nonna. Behave.”

The boy looked at him with large brown eyes positioned close. The cheeks dew-lapped over the jaws, the upper lip was elongated, almost unnatural.

Mike started.

He decided right then to grow back the moustache. He should never have shaved it off. What a can of worms its absence had opened. It wasn't fair.

Mike visited Grace that afternoon, hoping to avoid Lillo, who was supposed to be at the physical therapist. But after only an hour at Grace's, Mike's espresso half-finished, the big slug showed up limping and whining. Mike gnashed his teeth. It wasn't fair.

“My back, my leg.”

“What happened?” Grace asked.

“At the therapy—”

“You injured yourself?”

“I did, I really did this time. I'm fucked, Gracie, I'm fucked.”

“You want to go to the hospital?”

“They can't do anything for me!” he shouted.

“Honey, I was just saying.”

“Well don't! Hey, Mike, what brings you here?”

“Just visiting my daughter and grandkids.”

“More and less than what you bargained for, haha.”

“The kids will be home soon, Daddy,” Grace said.

“Good, that's good,” Mike said.

Lillo hobbled to the refrigerator and opened it. He took out a stick of
sopressatta
salami and began gnawing.

The kids came at last and Mike spent time with them while Grace cooked a meal and Lillo took a nap on the chesterfield. That fat bastard, thought Mike. Could a man get luckier?

“Daddy's got a boo boo,” said Pina, the littlest one. She had warm blue eyes like her mother.

Her sister Antoinette, the dark one, said, “Daddy always has a boo boo.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Daddy's a big boo boo.”

The children chuckled.

Grace whipped up a fabulous
pasta a la carbonara
. She made a kilogram of pasta for them and yet at meal's end Mike was still hungry. Why? Simple. Lillo ate about half of it himself. Mike tried to load up on bread and apples afterwards, but it was no use.

“What do you mean, you're hungry?” Mufalda harped later, when she saw him rooting around in the refrigerator. “Grace called and said you guys demolished a kilo of pasta.”

“Lillo,” he said, barely able to tongue the name out. “Lillo, the pig that he is, was in form today, yes. He was in form. He could have been filmed. Genius.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Genius.”

Mufalda shook her head. “Eat, eat all you want. Don't let me get in your way.”

“Don't you worry about it.”

“I won't.”

“No you won't.”

His wife looked like the ugliest woman in the world at that moment. And no doubt he looked like the ugliest man in the world to her, judging from the expression of revulsion that made her so ugly. Mike lost his appetite and sat at the kitchen window for a time, gazing out, content in his way. So long as you didn't think too much you could float through it like a turtle in a tub.

“Mike? Are you okay?” Mufalda asked.

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.”

She huffed, turned around, and marched out of the kitchen.

xsI'm fine, thought Mike. We're all fine.

But what were these tears? Staring at the trees made him cry. Staring at the blue sky made him cry. The birds. That's all.

Life is odd, Mike thought the next morning as he washed up. One day you cry. One day you laugh. You have kids. They have kids. You die. They mourn, then they die. But that's okay. If that's what it is, so be it. Why kick and scream? Why be afraid like Domenic when no matter what, you wind up like Joe? And why give yourself headaches
by dwelling on things too deeply? It's easy to blubber and bow. But here we are. It's not as if we have many alternatives. He didn't want to think about it beyond that; maybe it was too painful. No, not painful: unnecessary.

He put coffee and milk on and stared out at the trees. He stared at the trees a long time. The milk boiled over.

Mufalda entered the kitchen. She didn't say anything. She cleaned up the mess and said nothing while Mike continued staring at the trees.

Mike went to visit his mother the following morning. She was in coruscating form. Today she targeted Mufalda with her vituperations. Mufalda hadn't visited in weeks. What was the problem? Was she avoiding her for some reason? Nice thing, a daughter-in-law avoiding her mother-in-law. There's no more religion, people are pigs.

“Ma—she's been . . . her cousin Joe died. You know that.”

“Joe? And I'm next. Joe didn't die alone. He didn't die like a dog. One day you'll come, son, and you'll smell the stench of rotting flesh and that stench will belong to my maggoty corpse. And then what will Mufalda say?”

“Ma, you're being ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? This morning I had blood in my stools. Black blood. You know what that means, don't you? Black blood?”

Mike bristled. “I'll take you to the doctor.”

“Doctor? What will the doctor do? He'll put a glove on and stick it up my ass and then tell me I've got a few months to live. Nice job. You should have been a doctor, Mikey, heh.”

His mother's eyes gleamed like onyx pebbles. Who was this woman? he wondered. I don't know her. Why am I trying so hard? I can't win. And then it seemed so amusing to him, the entrapment, the hopelessness, and he started laughing. He covered his mouth. His shoulders shook. You couldn't alter the variables by much in the final analysis. And it was funny, a grand joke, the grandest conceit.

“Why are you laughing?”

Mike regained his composure, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.

“Idiot,” said his mother. “I gave birth to an idiot. Go home, Mike. You're boring me.”

“How about I make us a coffee first?”

“You think I need you to make me a coffee?”

“Fine,” he said. “Fine. I'll go home.”

He left his mother there, her mouth open and her eyes closed and her hands balled into small grey fists. He walked home with a nice chopping stride, swinging his arms. Before he reached his front door he felt a pain in his chest. He put his hand over his heart. Maybe he was being called up, maybe the ticker was ready to conk out. But maybe it was just stress: visiting his mother stressed him right out. He mounted the porch stairs, wishing she would just die already.

But no, once inside he hated himself for thinking of her death. She had suffered plenty in her life, and perhaps had every right to be the way she was. He hadn't been the most dutiful son. And if she were to die, wouldn't he miss her, even at her cruelest? Yes, he would miss her. Nothing could ever change the fact that she was his mother, that he had sprung from her loins. That's everything I am, he thought. Something that fell out of her, something she voided.

He sat by the kitchen window and stared at the trees.

He was lucky. He was lucky to have the house around him, and the trees outside, green against the blue of the sky.

Mufalda quietly entered the kitchen. She put on a pot of coffee.

Then she put her hand on Mike's shoulder. He turned to her. He was surprised at how soft and gentle she looked. She smiled. How rare for her to smile these days. His chin trembled. His eyes welled with tears. He didn't want to weep. He fought it; but then Mufalda's eyes moistened and she hugged him around the shoulders. Mike couldn't help himself. The tears fell. They held each other for a time. Then the coffee came up and Mufalda broke from Mike to pour it into the two cups she had positioned on the counter.

“This is crazy,” the girl says. She sits at the kitchen table in a pink tank top smoking a cigarette. A white plastic bowl full of red pistachios rests in the middle of the table. I'm tempted to take one, but I resist, I'm feeling a little bloated. Behind the girl hangs a copper plate with horses hammered onto it, muscular, masculine figures. Sunlight knifes off the doubled haunches, the hooves. Several silver bracelets tinkle as the girl taps the cigarette over a glass ashtray the same blue as her large eyes. She tilts her head to the right. “I told you,” she says, “Eddie won't be back for a while. Trust me on this.”

A ginger cat enters the kitchen and freezes, glaring at me with yellowy eyes. What is it, cat? Ducking smoke, I look at the girl. Since I quit smoking it bothers my sinuses. But everyone smokes in my circles, everyone. It comes with the turf. We don't choose our calling. It chooses us. I studied philosophy in university. But it wasn't my calling. My black leather jacket makes menacing sounds as I stir in my chair and flex my biceps and chest muscles, but the girl seems unaffected by my posturing. What is her story, I wonder, and how did she come to be here for my arrival? No one alerted me to her existence. She looks young, though not undeveloped. The cat thumps its ginger head against my shin and with some force. I used to have a cat. Sheila. My mother didn't like Sheila. I shake my leg and the cat recoils. Sunlight pours in through a window facing a spacious backyard. It's very warm in the kitchen. Sweat trickles down my spine. I endure it.

“What's the matter?” asks the girl. “You're making faces.”

I wave my hand.

“You are,” she says, “you're making faces. Tell me why? Do you have a stomach-ache or something? Hey, are you going to freak out? You're not an epileptic, are you? My cousin Rudy is an epileptic and, when he goes off, first he makes faces and then he starts foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. Ever seen a rabid dog? I saw one at my Uncle Harry's farm. Bingo. Bingo was a big black lab. Nice pooch. Got bit by a raccoon or something. Should have seen him. Uncle Harry had to shoot him in the head. That's not you, is it? You're not going to foam at the mouth, are you? Are you going to hurt me? Because if you're going to hurt me I'll start screaming, swear to God. I haven't screamed up till now but I will.”

I tell the girl to relax. I'm not like that. I have no beef with her. This is between Eddie and me. Actually between Eddie and my contractors. Just business, in other words. I'm a little warm. “Mind if I have a glass of water?” I ask her.

“Help yourself,” she says, drawing on her cigarette with voluptuous zeal.

I quit smoking a year ago and watching her suck on that filter with her eyes half-shut and her lips pursed like two wet cherries makes me want to ask her for a drag. But I stay strong. I owe it to myself. Smoking would have killed me before my enemies did, the way it was going. Two packs a day. I never did other drugs, except for a little blow and maybe a popper or two when partying with friends, and I never drank much, a Scotch now and then or vino with the pasta, you know, that's it. But with the smokes I was a fiend. My uncles said I smoked like a Turk, whatever that meant. They tried to call me the Turk for a time but that name belonged to Tony the Turk Celestino, my second-cousin, God rest his soul, who passed a few years ago. I didn't want a nickname like the Turk so that was part of the way I reinforced myself to quit for good. I didn't want it. I didn't want to be called the Turk. I quit smoking and so far so good.