The Fortunate Pilgrim (24 page)

As the festivities went on above them, Angelina and Gino tried to find her coat among the heaped-up garments in Larry’s apartment. Lucia Santa’s fears were groundless. Angelina was not the reckless girl she appeared, and Gino was still too innocent to take advantage of her weakness. Before he walked her to the subway, she gave him a long kiss, the warmth of her heavy mouth coated with a layer of lipstick. Her body pressed against his so fleetingly that Gino could only use it in his dreams.

YES, THE WEDDING
was a success, one of the best on the Avenue, a credit to the family of Angeluzzi-Corbo, and a feather in the cap of Lucia Santa. Who did not rest on her glory, but invited the family of Piero Santini for Sunday dinner so that Gino could perhaps show Caterina the sights of the city she had missed from living up there in the distant woods of Tuckahoe.

SUCH A MAN
as Piero Santini does not amass four trucks and contracts to haul city garbage by being sensitive to humiliation. The Santinis came to dinner the very next Sunday.

Lucia Santa outdid herself. On Sunday morning she broke a wooden spoon over Gino’s head, parting enough skin to let in common sense, and convincing him it was wise not to go out in the street to play stickball. She then made sauce fit for a king of Naples and rolled out wide macaroni from homemade dough. For the green salad she opened the bottle of almost sacred oil sent from Italy by her poor peasant sister—oil impossible to buy, first blood of the olive.

Gino, in his new gray suit from the long shore, Caterina in her red silk dress, were trapped side by side. Vincenzo, the favorite of old ladies, amused the enormous Signora Santini by telling her fortune with cards. Salvatore and Lena cleared the table and washed the dishes, industrious and grimly efficient as elves. Finally Gino, as coached by his mother, asked Caterina if she would like to go to the movies, and she, always dutiful, looked toward her father for permission.

For Piero Santini the moment was terrible. It was like those few times he let his trucks be used to haul whisky and did not see them for days at a time, did not know where they were, what was happening to them. He suffered now almost as much. But it could not be helped; this was America. He nodded assent, but said, “Don’t be back too late, eh, tomorrow is work.”

Lucia Santa beamed as the young couple left. Victorious, she cracked walnuts and fed the working Salvatore and Lena greasy, knotty morsels. She filled Piero Santini’s wineglass, placed a platter of iced cream puffs next to the elbow of Signora Santini. Larry and his wife, Louisa, came up to join them for a coffee that was steaming black and oily with anisette. Piero Santini and Lucia Santa exchanged sly, satisfied glances, gossiped with the newborn familiarity of those about to become relatives. But not an hour had passed when there was the clatter of heels on the stairway, and in came Caterina, alone, wild-eyed, with a tear-stained face, to seat herself at the table without a word.

Consternation. Santini swore, Lucia Santa clasped her hands in prayer. What had happened? Had that
animale
of a Gino raped her in the streets, or in the movie house itself? Had he brought her up to the roof? What! In God’s name! At first, Caterina did not answer but finally she whispered that she had left Gino in the movies; he was watching a picture she did not want to see. Nothing had happened.

Who believed her? No one. Gone was the cozy friendliness, the good cheer. Air and speech turned cold. But what in the sacred name of Jesus Christ could possibly have happened? Ah, the clever young, what evils they perpetrated, no matter how unfavorable the circumstances. But no coaxing of Caterina would make her reveal the mystery, and finally, bewildered, the Santinis took their leave.

The family of Angeluzzi-Corbo—Lucia Santa, Vinnie, Larry and Louisa, the stern-faced Sal and Lena—waited, grouped around the table like judges, for the appearance of the criminal. At last Gino, hungry as a wolf from his four hours in the movies, leaped up the stairs, dashed through the door, and almost skidded to a halt when the force of all those accusing eyes struck him.

Lucia Santa rose but wavered; she was raging, yet helpless. Of what was he guilty? She began on safe ground. “
Animale, bestia,
what did you do to that poor girl in the movies?”

Gino, wide-eyed with surprise, said, “Nothing.”

His innocence was so plain that Lucia Santa assumed he was crazy, that he did not know right from wrong.

She controlled herself. She asked patiently, quietly, “Why did Caterina leave you there alone?”

Gino shrugged. “She said she was going to the ladies’ room. She took her coat. When she didn’t come back I figured she didn’t like me, so I figured the hell with it, and I saw the movie. Ma, if she didn’t like me, what’s the sense of you and her father making her go with me? She acted funny all the time—wouldn’t even talk.”

Larry shook his head pityingly at the whole affair. He said to his mother jokingly, “See, Ma, if it was me, we would have a truck in the family by now.” Louisa sniffed and Vinnie said to Gino kindly, “You dope, she’s supposed to be stuck on you.”

Now to most of the family it was a joke. But Lucia Santa, the only one who saw to the core of the matter, became truly angry. She seriously considered opening up Gino’s head a little more with the
Tackeril,
for surely he was as mad as his father.

How like an idiot saint he had said the girl didn’t likehim; without a flicker of rancor, not a bit of hurt masculine pride. What was Caterina, then, to this proud son of hers? Shit? The daughter of a wealthy man who could assure his future and his bread; comely, with strong legs and breasts, far above this wastrel, this good-for-nothing, this fodder for the electric chair; and he didn’t care? It was beneath his notice, if you please, that a jewel of an Italian girl didn’t like him. Who did he think he was, the king of Italy? What a fool if he could not see how the eyes of poor Caterina devoured him. Oh, but he was hopeless, hopeless, his father all over again, and on the road to some terrible misfortune. She grabbed the
Tackeril
to beat him, unjustly, for her pleasure and the alleviation of her bile, but her son, Gino, with the instinct of true criminals who flee even when innocent, whirled and flew down the stairs. So was shattered another dream for Lucia Santa, and foolish and comical though it was, it planted the first seed of hatred in her breast.

CHAPTER
17

F
OR SEVEN YEARS
Frank Corbo had left his family in peace. Now he was to trouble them again. Far out on Long Island, in the Pilgrim State Hospital for the Insane, he decided to make his final escape. And so one dark night he hid in his caged bed and secretly sent his brain spinning against the bones of his skull. Slowly, divinely, he called up the great wave of cerebral blood that hurled his body onto the tiled floor of the ward and freed forever that tiny spark that was the remainder of his soul.

WHEN THE TELEGRAM
came, Lucia Santa was drinking her mid-morning coffee with the formidable Teresina Coccalitti. And that terrible woman, to show her great friendship, revealed one of her secrets. She could read English. This astounded Lucia Santa more than the news in the telegram. How armed this woman was against the world. And how coolly she now regarded Lucia Santa. There could be no false grief before those cunning eyes.

It is most terrible to know that another human being who has put his life in trust to you can no longer move you to pity for his fate. To herself Lucia Santa was completely honest: Frank Corbo’s death brought a sense of relief, a freedom from hidden, nagging fear that someday she must again condemn him to his cage. She dreaded him; she feared for her children; she begrudged the sacrifices his living would demand.

Go further. Trust in the forgiveness of God: the death of her husband lifted a terrible burden from her spirit. On her rare visits, seeing him caged behind barred windows, her faith in life drained away, she had lost her strength for days afterward.

Lucia Santa felt no grief; only an enormous relief from tension. The man who fathered three of her children had died gradually in her heart during those years he was hidden away in the asylum. She could not keep before her eyes his living flesh.

Now Teresina Coccalitti showed the iron mind that was the legend of Tenth Avenue. She put Lucia Santa on the right path. Why bring her husband’s body all the way to New York, pay an undertaker, make a big fuss, remind everyone that her husband died insane? Why not take the whole family out to the hospital and have the funeral there? Frank Corbo had no family in this country to take offense or to pay their respects. Hundreds of dollars would be saved, gossip cut off.

A queen could not have reasoned more coldly.

Lucia Santa prepared a huge supper, too heavy really for the warm summer weather, and the Angeluzzi-Corbo family ate together that night. No one was grief-stricken by the death of the father. Lucia Santa was shocked when Gino took the news very coolly, looking into her eyes and shrugging. Salvatore and Aileen could not be expected to remember him, but Gino was eleven when his father was sent away.

As they ate, they made plans. Larry had already called the hospital long distance and arranged for the funeral to be held at noon and for a headstone to be put up in the hospital cemetery. He had borrowed his chief’s limousine—Mr. di Lucca had insisted—to drive them all up there. They would start at seven sharp in the morning; it would be a long drive. They would be home by evening. Only one day of work would be missed. Octavia and her husband would sleep in Lucia Santa’s house, in Octavia’s old room. Lena could sleep again with her mother this one night. It was comfortably arranged.

Gino ate hurriedly and then put on a clean shirt and trousers. As he went out the door, Lucia Santa called after him anxiously, “Gino, be home early tonight. We leave at seven in the morning.”

“O.K., Ma,” he said and ran down the steps.

Larry was annoyed. “Doesn’t he know he should stay home tonight?” he asked his mother.

Lucia Santa shrugged. “Every night he goes to his Hudson Guild. He is the duke of his club of snotnoses.”

Larry said righteously, “That’s no way to show respect for his father. I go past the Guild when it’s dark, and him and his friends are loving up the girls. You shouldn’t let him do that tonight.”

There was a shout of laughter from Octavia. Larry being moral always made her giggle. “You should talk,” she said. “Remember the stuff you pulled when you were that age?”

Larry grinned, gave his wife a swift glance. She was busy with the infant. “Aw, come on, Sis,” he began, and then, as if nothing had happened, the family history and adventures began to be retold as Sal and Lena cleared away the table. Norman Bergeron opened a book of poetry. Vinnie leaned his sallow face on his hand and listened intently. Lucia Santa brought out bowls of walnuts, a jug of wine, and bottles of cream soda. Teresina Coccalitti dropped in, and with her as a new audience they told all the old stories about Frank Corbo. Octavia began with the familiar line, “When he called Vinnie an angel I knew he was crazy. . . .” They would go on until bedtime.

The next morning Lucia Santa found that Gino had not come home that night to sleep. He often stayed away during the hot summer months, bumming around with his friends, doing God knows what. But on this day of all days, when he might make them late for the funeral? She was truly angry.

Everyone finished breakfast, and still Gino did not come. His good suit was laid out on his bed with a fresh white shirt and a tie. Lucia Santa sent Vinnie and Larry out to look for him. They cruised in their car past the Hudson Guild Settlement House on 27th Street and then went to the candy store on Ninth Avenue, where the boys sometimes gambled all night at cards. The bleary-eyed owner said yes, Gino had been there until just an hour ago and had left with some friends to see the morning show at the Paramount movie house or the Capitol or the Roxy, he wasn’t sure which.

When they returned and told Lucia Santa the news, she seemed dazed. All she said was, “Well, then, he can’t come.”

As they were all getting into the car, Teresina Coccalitti came around the corner of 31st Street to wish them a good voyage. In her usual black, with her dark sallow face and raven hair, she looked like a snip of the night that had refused to disappear. Now that there was an empty place in the car, Lucia Santa asked her to come along. Teresina was honored—a day in the country would be a real treat. She did not hesitate for a moment but pushed in and took Vinnie’s seat next to the window. And so it was that she could tell the whole story to her friends on Tenth Avenue of how the Angeluzzi-Corbo family drove out to Long Island to bury Frank Corbo, how his eldest son disappeared and did not look upon his natural father’s face before it disappeared into the earth. And how only Lucia Santa wept—but tears so full of gall that they could only have sprung from a well of anger, not grief. “There will be a day of reckoning,” the Coccalitti woman said, shaking her black hawk’s head. “He is a serpent in the heart of his mother.”