The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (166 page)

“I didn’t want my grandfather,” I said. “I wanted my
father.
As far as my father was concerned, she never even gave me a
name.
”

“Granted, Dominick. But one must accept what one is offered, no? It would be an ungracious thing to say to a gift-giver, ‘No, no, I do not want this thing. I want another thing.’ And my goodness, to have at your disposal this communiqué from the past—well,
I
see it as a rare opportunity, Dominick. Potentially, at any rate. After all, how many of our grandfathers rented a Dictaphone, hired a stenographer, and spent afternoons recalling, for their grandsons’ sake—”

“It
wasn’t
for my sake. Our sake. I don’t think he had any idea she was pregnant.”

As she understood it, Dr. Patel said, Domenico had wanted to leave something of himself for posterity. Whether or not he knew, before he died, of Thomas’s and my existence, we were, in fact, just that: his descendants, his link to the future. My reading his story allowed him to achieve his goal, she said. Perhaps if I kept reading it, Domenico might, likewise, help
me
to achieve
mine.

We had gone over our allotted time, she said. We had to stop. “But come here first.” She took me by the arm and led me back to the window.

“It is all connected, Dominick,” she said. “Life is not a series of isolated ponds and puddles; life is this river you see below, before you. It flows from the past through the present on its way to the future. That is
not
something I have always understood; it is something I have come to a gradual understanding of, through my work as both an anthropologist and a psychologist.”

I looked out, again, at the rushing water.

“Life is a river,” she repeated. “Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother’s womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past—connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially.” She folded her hands together as if praying to what we saw below. “So, that is
my
opinion, my friend. Should you throw your ancestry into the woodstove? Of course not. Should you keep reading it, even if it takes away your sleep?
Yes,
by all means.
Read
your grandfather’s story, Dominick. Jump into the river. And if it upsets you, come in and tell me why.”

On the way out of her office, I got a quick glimpse of her next appointment: big, burly guy—work boots, hooded sweatshirt. We gave each other a jerky half-nod for a hello. Another “tough guy” in therapy, I thought. A fellow member of the walking wounded.

The traffic on the way home was a bitch. I was antsy. Kept punching my way through the radio stations. “Night Moves” . . . “I Shot the Sheriff” . . . “The Boys Are Back in Town.” If you cranked up the volume loud enough, it took over your whole head. You didn’t have to
think. But when I got back home, pulled into the driveway, and cut the engine, the silence came back, and with it, unexpectedly, the morning my mother died. . . .

It was just me and her in that hospital room when I’d made that promise—the same one she’d asked me to make my whole life. Ray and I had been up with her all night—just sitting there, watching her suffer, because there was nothing else we could do. “She could go any time,” they kept saying: the doctors, nurses, the woman from hospice. The only catch was, she kept outlasting their predictions. Couple of days and nights, it had dragged on. We were all pretty whipped by then. . . .

The sun was just coming up, I remember. She’d been thrashing around for an hour or more, moaning, trying to yank off her oxygen mask. Then, right about when it was getting light out, she quieted down. Stopped fighting.

Ray had stepped out for a couple minutes—to make a phone call about work. And I leaned over toward her, started stroking her forehead. And she looked right at me—she was conscious at that point, I
know
it
. . . .
And I told her I loved her. Told her thanks for everything she’d done for us—all the sacrifices she had made. And then I said it: the one thing I know she’d been waiting to hear: “I’ll take care of him for you, Ma. I’ll make sure he’s safe. You can go now.”

And she
did
—just like that. By the time Ray got back, she was unconscious. Died sometime in the next hour. . . . Soon as she heard that her “little bunny rabbit” was going to be safe, she could let go.

I love you, Ma. I
hate
you. . . .

There was something Dr. Patel hadn’t figured out yet. Something I was just starting to figure out myself: how much I hated my mother for putting me on guard duty my whole life. For making me their sentry. . . .

“Playing nice” they used to call it—whatever it was they’d do up there. Dress-up: was that all it was? Thomas clomping around in her high heels, twirling around in her dresses. . . . She had no friends. She was lonely. . . .

Go downstairs now, Dominick. I made you a special snack. Thomas and I are just going to “play nice.”

And so I’d sit down there, eating my pudding or potato chips, staring at that television that, later on, would explode. Set the living room on fire.

On guard. Watching out for Ray. . . .

This wouldn’t be any fun for you, Dominick. This is the kind of fun only your brother likes. . . . Let me know right away if Ray comes. If Ray ever found out about “playing nice,” he’d get mad at all three of us. Madder than he’s ever been before. . . .

It’s not that she didn’t love me, Doc. She
did
love me. I knew that. She just always loved him more. Loved the exact thing about Thomas that Ray hated. Nailed him for . . . Her “sweetheart.” Her “little cuddly bunny rabbit.” . . .

I’ll take care of him for you, Ma. I’ll keep him safe. You can go now.

As if promising her would finally put me in first place, even for a minute—for one fucking minute before she died. . . . All my life, I had come in second. Number two in a two-man race. Even now I was, with her gone four years and him locked away at Hatch. Number two in our never-ending two-man struggle.

And it
hurt
. It
hurt,
Ma—being the lookout, the spider monkey—the one you never invited onto your lap. . . .

It
hurt,
Ma. It goddamned
hurt. . . .

5 August 1949

I left
Signora
Siragusa’s boardinghouse and took residence of my vitrified brick
casa di due appartamenti
on 1 April 1916. I had been the first Italian at American Woolen and Textile Company to rise to the position of boss dyer. Now I became the first of my countrymen to own his own home in Three Rivers—a home I had built with my own two hands! I welcomed Salvatore Tusia, the barber, and his wife and children to the left-side apartment and received my first monthly rent, eleven dollars and fifty cents, paid to me in cash. I had wanted twelve a month, but Tusia brought me down in exchange for a haircut whenever I needed one and a daily shave. I made Tusia cut my hair every Friday, to make sure I got my money’s worth.

I wrote to my Brooklyn cousins to say I would honor them with a two-day visit at Easter. Notify the Iaccoi brothers next door, I told them. The trip would allow me to meet, at long last, my bride-to-be, Prosperine. At this time, the Iaccois and I would establish a wedding date and finalize the dowry price. In fairness to myself, I would attach to the asking price the cost of my train ticket to and from New York and a new three-piece suit, which I would wear for the trip and also on my wedding day.

At my cousins’ table that Easter Sunday, I raised my glass and made a memorable speech about the Old Country and the Tempesta family. I spoke a eulogy to Papa and Mama and made tribute to my two departed brothers. My words brought tears to the eyes of all present, except for Lena and Vitaglio’s youngest brat, who was allowed to rummage beneath the dining room table, tickling ankles and pulling at the stockings of the adults. Shameful, disrespectful behavior! When that little mosquito snapped my garter in the middle of my remarks, I reached under the table and gave him what he deserved. The crying, head-bumping, and wine-spilling that followed ruined the rest of my speech. “Well,” Lena smiled, “let’s make the best of it and eat, then, before the macaroni gets any colder.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “if you and Vitaglio cannot rule your young ones any better than this, then why don’t we ignore the dead and eat?”

That evening, I excused myself, rose from the table, and went next door to my meeting with the Iaccoi brothers. Finally, I would feast my eyes on my Sicilian bride.

Fluttering like two pigeons, Rocco and Nunzio Iaccoi met me in the foyer and told me repeatedly what a great honor it was to receive into their home a man who had made himself such a success. They took me to their parlor and offered me the largest of the stuffed chairs, lit me a cigar, and carried the standing ashtray across the room for my convenience. When they were sure I was comfortable, they called to their cousin Prosperine, who was waiting in the kitchen. “Uncap the
anisetta,
cousin,” they sang out. “Bring three glasses.”

There was a long wait and then, in the kitchen, the sound of things dropping, glass breaking. “
Scusi,
” Nunzio Iaccoi said, smiling so broadly that it looked like he had a pain.

Rocco laughed and shrugged, shrugged and laughed. “In almost two years of living here, this is the first time that dear, sweet girl has broken anything,” he said. “My hotheaded half-sister, Ignazia,
she throws things against the wall during temper fits, and is clumsy as well, but little Prosperine is as graceful and sure-handed as any young girl I’ve seen.”

That goddamned plumber wasn’t fooling me. The girl’s obvious clumsiness is a bargaining tool for me, I thought. Something to drive up the dowry price a bit.

Nunzio returned to the parlor. “The problem was nothing, ha ha,” he said. “If only all our problems could be swept away with a broom, eh, Domenico? Ha ha ha.” The brothers’ laughter and sighs did little to conceal their nervousness.

When Prosperine emerged from the kitchen, I attempted to rise, but each of the Iaccois held me down with a hand on my shoulders. “Sit, sit,” Rocco said. “No need to get up. Rest yourself.”

At first, I could not look at her face but saw, instead, her tiny size. She was no taller than a girl of twelve. No bigger than Mama! My eyes dropped to the floor.

I looked up from her high-buttoned shoes to her black dress with its small waist. She’d pinned a cluster of artificial flowers there. My eyes rose past the
anisetta
in their little glasses, which she held on a small tray before her. My glance moved from her flat bosom to a cameo pinned to the high neck of her dress. When I arrived at her
faccia
, my jaw dropped.

“
Signore
Domenico Tempesta,” Nunzio said. “May I present Prosperine Tucci, your
sposa futura
!”

“When hell freezes over!” I shouted. Elbowing past the brothers, I made my way to their front door!

The thing that had made me drop all sense of propriety was the face of Prosperine. For one thing, she was far from the young girl those lying plumbers had promised me. That skinny hag was probably thirty if she was a day! Worse—far worse—her homely, scrawny face bore a shocking resemblance to Filippa, that goddamned drowned monkey that had bewitched my poor brother Pasquale!

* * *

That night, I twisted and turned on my cousins’ lumpy divan as if I was back aboard the SS
Napolitano
! Had my brother Pasquale sent this skinny bitch up from the
mundo suttomari
as revenge because I had drowned his “little queen”? Had my brother Vincenzo sent her to mock, once again, my chastity? Or had Mama sent a monkey for me to marry because I had forsaken her to seek my fortune in America?

“
Meglio celibe che mal sposato!
”
*
I whispered to myself. Better to die without sons than to have to make them with
that
!

Somewhere in the middle of that long night in Brooklyn, a church bell rang three times. Mama, Pasquale, Vincenzo: maybe all three of them had conspired and sent this monkey-woman to me! But a gift sent is not the same as a gift accepted. I decided I would wait until daylight, board the earliest train possible, go back to my big house in Three Rivers, Connecticut, and live my life as a bachelor.