The Evening News (19 page)

“The incurable disease threat worked, huh Vicky?”

She smiles, then runs her hands through her blonde hair, stretching out again on the sofa.

“I've got problems, Vicky.”

“Nick. Let's put them to bed.”

Anne cries into the phone. Nick looks up, exhales, stands. The telephone cord is tied into knots.

“Stop crying,” he says. “Pull yourself together.”

“You've got to help me, Nick.”

“Is it money?”

“David can pay for it.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I don't know, I just want to talk. I'm so confused.”

“Anne, we talked about all of this last winter when you decided you wanted to marry him. So why don't you call
him
up and cry on
his
goddamn shoulder? O.K., Anne? Leave me goddamn alone.”

“Nick, I want you to understand something.”

He is yelling. “Oh, I understand something. It's his baby, you're sure about that, or at least you think you're sure, or anyway you're going to marry him this spring as soon as you graduate and he gets his commission, and you call me first to tell me you need a goddamn abortion. Sure, Anne, I understand.”

“Nick—”

“You made me break my TV set.”

The field is dark, empty.

There are hits, Nick thinks, and there are outs. The altar versus the airplane. As a pitcher Nick knows he should prefer the latter—you need twenty-seven every game to earn the complete win. Got to get them when you can, in whatever way you can. He puts his hand inside his jacket pocket, takes out the long-distance telephone number.

Nick squats behind the plate, flashing the series of signs.
But if there is a kid, he thinks, the kid would be retired before he even came up to the plate. Killed before he was born. If you're a full-blown person then. If you're not, then it's no matter. You're hamburger. But if you are fully alive—

The visitors' dugout changes to Mary's side altar. Nick shivers and shakes. Anne would walk there at the end of the ceremony, then kneel and leave a bouquet of flowers. They could try to make the best of it. They could try.

“Hell,” Nick says, “it wouldn't be the first time I've pitched with a man already on base.” He stands, jogs to first. Relieved, he taps the bag with his toe and wind-sprints to second. Nick imagines the ball bounding past the outfielder and quickly tries for third. The coach's arms are windmilling, and Nick makes his cut and barrels toward home, his arms and legs pumping, his pulse pounding in his ears. He lowers his shoulders, he raises his arms and slides, his foot hooks home plate. Safe! The crowd is on its feet.

He stand and brushes the dirt off his pants. “I'm a father!” he shouts to the empty stands.

Then Nick walks to the bullpen, pulling up the zipper on his jacket. He rests on the bench, closes his eyes for a moment. Sleeps.

“Good morning,” Bev says. “So this is outside of Treno's?”

Nick squints in the bright early sunshine.

“We looked all over for you last night, Nick. Then this morning Anne said, ‘Let's try the field, maybe Nick is at the field.'”

“Where is she?” Nick asks, sitting up.

Bev points to her car. Nick smiles and runs.

“Anne.” He pulls open the car door. “Listen, I've got great news.”

“So do I,” Anne says. “Last night I started my period.”

Nick rubs his forehead, then looks around his apartment for a cigarette. He sees a pack lying on top of the empty console of
his television. Inside where the tubes were he keeps a stringy philodendron along with his cap and ball and glove.

“So now you know everything,” he says.

Vicky smiles and motions for a cigarette.

“I work downtown at the Art Institute,” she says. “Did I tell you that, Nick? I'll have to wake up early in the morning.”

“I kind of like you, Vicky.”

“Maybe I'll be back tomorrow night.”

Nick and Vicky are in bed, and Nick is thinking about meteors. He falls through the sky and screams. He sees the earth below and drops over it, looking for Fort Gordon, Georgia, for Urbana-Champaign. Nick shifts into third, pushes the accelerator to the floor. He pulls back, drops the banana peel on the marble steps. He burns and flames like the meteor, dropping gently down again.

Nick is yelling from the pitcher's mound for somebody, for anybody, to please track down the ball. Nick is crying into an empty phone in a suddenly lonely basement apartment. Then hs is standing and running and knocking over his refrigerator. Nick kicks Bev's car door, he feels like throwing up, he doesn't know whether to rejoice or put his fist through the windshield. Nick plots trajectories, frequents fruit markets, never honks his horn. He packs his broken TV and moves to Chicago, driving a rented van up old Highway 45 and listening to the Cubs on the radio. He goes out each morning for the newspaper, he reads the sports and then the obituaries, he speeds faster down the asphalt road, he loses his footing on the slippery peel, in a whoosh he spills through the brown and green treetops.

Vicky is smiling. Vicky is warm. Vicky isn't yawning.

“You didn't cry,” Nick whispers.

“Why should I cry?” She pulls up the sheet.

“Because you should, Vicky. Because I need to know these things. I need to know everything.”

“Nick, do you work tomorrow night?”

“I work every night. But I'll quit tending bar this spring. Then I'll try out for semi-pro ball.” He laughs. “At least it will keep me in shape, ducking all the line drives and running back to the locker room.”

Vicky smiles. Nick stares at his hands.

“I'll come by tomorrow after work, Nick.”

Nick is still living the middle.

“You know,” he says, “we all should have died that day.”

“But you didn't,” Vicky says. “Nick? Nick, you didn't.”

He gets out of bed, walks to the kitchen, stares at the refrigerator. Then he goes over to his TV and puts on his cap and glove. Naked except for his cap and glove, he walks back to the bedroom and rocks in the doorway.

“I talked her out of the abortion, but she married him anyway.” He looks in his glove and sighs. “I found that out from Bev. She said he took a bus up from Georgia and sort of surprised her. I had a shutout going that afternoon against Michigan State, but it was called on account of rain.”

“Nick, come back to bed.”

“He married her right in the middle of finals week. She must have been just starting her sixth month then. The day outside the Student Union was the last time I saw her. I never found out if it was a boy or a girl.”

“Nick, you look stupid.”

“Lady, I'm a ballplayer.”

“You still look stupid.”

“This is how ballplayers look.”

“Let's sleep on it, Nick. You didn't die.”

He takes off his cap, puts down his glove. He slips under the covers. Vicky is warm alongside him. He puts his arms behind his head and stares up at the ceiling. Morning light begins to fill the room.

“I didn't die?” he says.

“Nick, you definitely didn't die. Take my word.” Vicky snuggles next to him, then kisses him on the cheek.

“I'm not dead?” Nick says.

“No,” Vicky sighs.

He pictures Anne walking away from the Union, her arms full of books, her womb round and heavy. “Probably not,” Nick finally says. In his mind Nick nods to Anne, then waves.

She has seen it all change.

Follow her now as she slowly walks down Loomis toward Taylor, her heavy black purse dangling at her side. Though it is the middle of summer she wears her black overcoat. The air conditioning is too cold inside the stores, she thinks. But the woman is not sure she is outside today to do her shopping. It is afternoon, and on summer afternoons she walks to escape the stifling heat of her tiny apartment, the thick drapes drawn shut to shade her two rooms from the sun, the air flat and silent, except for the ticking of her clock. Walking is good for her blood, she believes. Like eating the cloves of
aglio.

She hesitates, the taste of
aglio
on her tongue. Perhaps she is outside this afternoon to shop. She cannot decide. The children of the old neighborhood call out to her as she passes them.
Na-na!
The sound used to call in goats from feeding. Or, sometimes, to tease. Or is it
Nonna,
grandmother, that they call? It makes no difference, the woman thinks. The thin-ribbed city dogs sniff the hem of her long black dress, wagging their dark tails against her legs. Birds fly above her head.

Around her is the bustle of the street corner, the steady rumble and jounce of cars and delivery trucks, the sharply honking horns, the long screeching hiss of a braking CTA bus. The young men from the Taylor Street Social and Athletic Club
seem to ignore her as she passes. They lean against streetlight poles and parking meters in the afternoon sun. One chews a cigar; another, a toothpick. One walks in front of her, then turns to the gutter and spits. The woman looks into their faces but she does not recognize any of them, though she knows they are the sons of the sons of the neighborhood men she and her Vincenzo once knew. Grandsons of
compari.
Do they speak the old language? she wonders. Like a young girl, she is too shy to ask them.

One boy wears a
cornicela
and a thin cross around his neck. The gold sparkles in the light. Nonna squints. Well, at least they are still Catholics, she thinks, and her lips move as she says to herself
They are still Catholics,
and her hand begins to form the sign of the Cross. Then she remembers she is out on the street, so she stops herself. Some things are better done privately. The boy's muscled arms are dark, tanned, folded gracefully over his sleeveless T-shirt. The boy has a strong chin. Nonna smiles and wets her lips in anticipation of greeting him, but his eyes stare past her, vacantly, at the rutted potholes and assorted litter lying next to the curb in the street.

She looks at what he stares at. He grunts to himself and joins his friends. On the shaded side of Loomis is the new store, a bookstore. The letters above the front window read
T SWANKS
. Could the
T
stand for Tonio? she wonders. She crosses the street. Then it should properly be an
A.
For Antonio. Anthony. Named for any one of the holy Antonios, maybe even the gentle Francescano from Padova. Nonna always preferred the Francescano but never told anyone. He had helped her to find many lost things. She believes that if she were to speak her preference aloud she would give offense to all the others, and what does she know of them—Heaven is full of marvelous saints. Her lips whisper Padova.

The sound is light. Nonna enjoys it and smiles. She pictures Padova on the worn, tired boot. Vincenzo called Italy that. Nonna remembers that Padova sits far up in the north, west of
Venezia. She looks down at her black shoes. Italia. She was from the south, from Napoli, and Vincenzo, her husband, may he rest, came from the town of Altofonte, near Palermo, in Sicilia. The good strong second son of
contadini.

A placard in the bookstore window reads
FREE TEA OR COFFEE—BROWSERS WELCOME
. Nonna is tempted to enter. She draws together the flaps of her black overcoat. She could look at a map of Italia if the store had one, and then maybe she could ask Mr. Swanks for which of the Antonios was he named. And what part of the boot his family came from, and does he still speak the old language. She does not realize that T Swanks might not be the name of the store's proprietor. She assumes that, like many, Swanks is an Italian who has shortened his name.

Beneath the sign in the window is a chess set. Its pieces are made of ivory. The woman stares at the tiny white horse. It resembles bone. She remembers the evening she and Vincenzo were out walking in the fields and came across a skeleton. That was in New Jersey, where they had met, before they came to Chicago. She thought the skeleton was a young child's—she flailed her arms and screamed—but then Vincenzo held her hands and assured her it was only an animal. Eh, a dog or a lamb, he had said, his thin face smiling. Digging with his shoe, Vincenzo then uncovered the carcass. It indeed had looked like a dog or a lamb. That was a night she would never forget, the woman thinks. And that smell.
Dio!
It had made her young husband turn away and vomit. But Nonna is certain now that what she saw in that field that dusky autumn evening had been a child, a newborn
bambino,
clothed only by a damp blanket of leaves. The Devil had made it look like a dog! New Jersey was never the same after that. She made Vincenzo quit his good job at the foundry. They had to go away from that terrible place. Nonna openly makes the sign of the Cross.

She knows what she has seen. And she knows what kind of
woman did it. Not a Catholic, she thinks, for that would have been the very worst of sins. It had been someone without religious training. Maybe a Mexican. But there hadn't been any Mexicans in New Jersey. Nonna is puzzled again. And all Mexicans are Catholics, she thinks. Each Sunday now the church is full of them. They sit to the one side, the Virgin's side, in the back pews. Afterward they all go to their Mexican grocery store. And what do they buy? Nonna had wondered about that all during Mass one bright morning, and then from church she had followed them. The Mexicans came out of their strange store talking their quick Mexican and carrying bananas and bags of little flat breads. Great bunches of long bananas. So green—

Maybe Mexicans don't know how to bake with yeast. Nonna realizes her lips are moving again, so she covers her mouth with her hand. If that is true, she thinks, then maybe she should go inside Mr. Antonio Swanks's new bookstore and see if he has a book on how to use yeast. Then she could bring it to the Mexicans. It might make them happy. When they kneel in the rear pews, the Mexicans never look happy. Nonna shifts her weight from foot to foot, staring at the little white horse.