The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (167 page)

6 August 1949

The Iaccois and their monkey-cousin were already in Lena and Vitaglio’s kitchen when I awoke the next morning. It was the brothers’ angry voices that roused me from my pitiful sleep. “Ha! So here’s the man whose promises mean nothing!” Rocco said as I entered the kitchen.

“Please,” Lena told the Iaccois. “Let my poor cousin eat his breakfast in peace. Shouting is bad for
digestione
.” She placed before me
frittata
, sausage and potatoes, coffee, Easter bread. Here was a woman who knew how to take care of men!

I took a sip of coffee, a mouthful of egg. I made those two goddamned plumbers wait. “A promise collapses when it is made to deceitful men,” I finally said.

How dare I accuse them of deceit, Nunzio shouted. It was I, not they, who had initiated discussion about a wife—
two
wives, not
one, he reminded me.

“So what do you think? That I climbed up on that roof and pushed my poor brother off? What do you two fools expect me to do? Marry
two
women and live the life of a
bigamo
?”

“Marrying one of them will do!” Rocco said. “The one you
promised
to marry. The one who has spent two years waiting for her home to be completed and now has spent the night sobbing into her pillow because you have so grievously wronged her!”

“Eat, Domenico,” Lena insisted. “Eat your breakfast while it’s hot and then have your argument.”

As I chewed and swallowed, swallowed and chewed, I took small glimpses of Prosperine. She was seated on a chair by the window. In the morning light, she looked twenty-five, perhaps, not thirty, but she was even uglier than she had been the night before. Today she wore peasant clothes and a kerchief on that shrunken head of hers. She was smoking a pipe!

“You have falsely represented this creature,” I told the brothers. “Look at her over there, smoking like a man!
She
is not beautiful!
She
is not young!”

Nunzio stuttered and resorted to proverbs. “
Gadina vecchia fa bonu brodo,
”
*
he insisted. And I answered him with a proverb of my own: “
Cucinala come vuoi, ma sempre cocuzza e!
”
**

“This woman is as pure as the Blessed Virgin,” Rocco argued.

“If this one is
vergine
,” I said, “it is due to lack of opportunity. No meat on her bones! No
tette
! This one would have shriveled the
cazzu
of my brother Vincenzo!” In reaction to my vulgarity, uttered in the heat of battle, my cousin Lena gave a scream and lifted her apron over her face. Not Prosperine, though. That one was as hard as nails!

“Beware, Tempesta,” Nunzio Iaccoi warned. “In America, there are courts of law that make sure a man keeps his word. We have saved every letter and telegram you sent.”

“Don’t try to scare me, plumber!” I shouted back. “What judge with eyes in his head would sentence me to a life with that one?
She belongs at the end of an organ-grinder’s leash, not in the marriage bed of a man of property!”

Of course, I was a proper man and a gentleman and never would have spoken that way in the hag’s presence if those two brothers hadn’t pushed me to it, but now the damage was done. My eyes followed the others’ eyes to Prosperine and a shiver passed through me. Without blinking or turning away, she puffed on her pipe and glared at me with the black look of
il mal occhio
itself. As I have said before, a modern man such as Domenico Tempesta leaves superstition to foolish old women. But at that moment in my cousin Lena’s kitchen, I longed to clutch a
gobbo
, a red chili, a pig’s tooth—anything to ward off that monkey-woman’s evil eye!

My sweet cousin Lena, in an effort to end the impasse before fisticuffs broke out in her kitchen, poured coffee, passed
biscotti
and Easter bread to the Iaccois, and reminded us all that there had been, since the beginning of our negotiations, not one but
two
bridal candidates living under the Iaccois’ roof. “
Scusa, Signorina
Prosperine,” she said, addressing the other one without looking at her. “
Scusa
me a million times for saying so, but Domenico has changed his mind.”

Prosperine took the pipe from her mouth and spat out the open window. “Bah!” she said, then clamped the pipe again between her teeth.

Lena turned to me and took my hand. “Domenico, before you begin your long trip home, wouldn’t you at least like to meet the Iaccois’ pretty sister, Ignazia?”

“Let them marry off their women to other fools!” I said back. “I’m done with Iaccoi business!”

At this, Rocco raised his fists, but Nunzio pushed them back down again. “
Aspetta un momento!
” he said, then whispered to Rocco, who ran out the kitchen door. The rest of us waited and waited for . . . for who knew what? As for my stomach, it felt like I had swallowed the anchor of the SS
Napolitano
instead of my cousin’s eggs and bread and coffee!

Ten minutes later, Rocco burst back through the doorway. He had in his hands Ignazia’s immigration papers and a daguerreotype of the girl. The papers established that she had been born in 1898 and thus was truly eighteen years of age. The photograph verified that she was as beautiful as the other one was homely—a girl well suited to be the wife of a property owner. A girl with some meat on her bones.

I was persuaded to return after lunch to the Iaccois’ front parlor and wait for Ignazia’s arrival back from her friend’s home. As I waited, I stared at the picture of the girl, and fell under its spell. Her flowing hair and full lips stirred me. Her dark eyes looked directly at my eyes. Her full face whispered the promise of a
figura
as plump and lovely as Venus’s.

I fell in love with that picture and fell more in love still with the flesh-and-blood girl who walked defiantly through her brothers’ front door an hour later than she was expected.

“Where have you been?” her brother asked.

“I’ve been where I’ve been!” she answered boldly.

She was wearing a woolen coat dyed as red as blood. Such a striking
vermiglio
had never emerged from the vats at American Woolen and Textile, I tell you! And such a woman had never lived in the tiny village of Giuliana or in Three Rivers, Connecticut. Her hair, black and wild, ended where her buttocks began. Her wide hips were built to bracket a husband and to push forth children into the world. She had cast her spell upon me even before her coat was off! At long last, I was in love!

“Domenico Tempesta, it is my great pleasure to present to you my half-sister, Ignazia,” Rocco said.

This is the one, I told myself. This is the woman I have waited for. Here before me, scowling, stands my very own wife!

But the girl gave me barely a glance. Turning to Prosperine, she asked if she had fed the company all the
braciola
from the Easter meal the day before. She was as hungry as an
elefante,
she said, and patted her belly.

“Please, Ignazia, worry later about your stomach,” Nunzio said. “Sit and visit. Show a little respect for a man of property and a factory boss!”

Ignazia turned to Prosperine. “Ah, so this is your long-lost
innamorato,
eh?” she laughed.

“Bah!” the other one answered, puffing away on her pipe.

“Never mind your ‘bah,’” Nunzio scolded. “Make us espresso. Quick, before I turn you out of this house!”

The Monkey slumped into the kitchen; the two brothers’ faces regained their false smiles. They began to ask questions about my
casa di due appartamenti
and to repeat each of my answers to their half-sister. Ignazia tapped her shoe and sang a little song to herself instead of listening. “I’ll help in the kitchen,” she said.

I watched her rise and walk from the room. Bad as it was for bargaining, I could do nothing but stare at her exiting figure and then at the doorway through which she had passed.

“Ignazia’s job at the shoe factory has exposed her to many bad influences,” Rocco whispered after she had left the room. “She has gotten the foolish notion, for example, that, like
‘Mericani
, Italian women should marry for love. Ha ha ha ha.”

“You like what you see, eh, Domenico?” Nunzio noted from across the room. “If she becomes
your
wife, she’ll soon forget all of these
‘Mericana
ways. You’ll make her
siciliana
again!

For my part, I could do nothing but swallow and stare—finger her photograph in my hand and anticipate her reentrance from the kitchen.

The door banged open again a minute later. Ignazia was holding a heel of bread in one hand, a chicken leg in the other. “Oh, no!” she shouted, shaking her head violently. “Oh, no, no, no, no!”

“
Scusa?
” one of the brothers said.

“She just told me in the kitchen what you three old men have up your sleeves,” the girl said. “I’ve told you over and over. I’m going to marry Padraic McGannon and that’s who I am going to marry!”

“That lazy Irishman with no job?” Rocco shouted. “That redheaded mama’s boy whose mouth still smells of breast milk?”

I had first laid eyes on Ignazia only moments before, but hearing her profess her intentions to marry another man sank my heart and made me want to find that goddamned Irishman and strangle him! Such was Ignazia’s power over me.

“Where would you and that lazy good-for-nothing live?” Nunzio wanted to know.

Ignazia put her hands against her fleshy hips. “With his mother,” she said.

“On what?”

“On something old men know nothing about, that’s what.
L’amore! Passione!
”

Nunzio shook his head at the folly of it and Rocco made the sign of the cross. In the past few minutes, I had learned much about
passione
and
amore.
It was as if Mount Etna’s hot lava now boiled within me where, before, my blood had been cool. Ignazia robbed the room of air. This I knew above all else: that she would be the wife of no one but Domenico Onofrio Tempesta!

“
Scusa
, young lady,
scusa,
” I stood and began. “Your brothers and I have a long-standing agreement—one which will provide richly for you,
if
I should consent to make you my wife.” Here, I drew a deep breath and expanded my chest for her to see, wholly, the man she was getting.

“If
you
consent?” she laughed. “If
you
consent? Who wants to be
your
wife, old man? Go marry some gray-haired old
nonna!
” She bit savagely into that chicken leg of hers, ripping meat from the bone, and chewing ravenously as she glared at me.

The
passione
with which Ignazia rejected the idea of marrying me only made me desire her more. This impudent girl would be my wife, whether she liked it or not!

“Young lady,” I said, attempting reason. “Your brothers’ honor is at stake here. I paid good money for a train ride from Connecticut to meet my
sposa futura.
Trust me when I say that agreements
between Sicilian men—which you needn’t bother your pretty head about—are binding!”

“How much?”

“Eh?”

“How much did you pay for your train ride?” she asked me.

I told her I had paid a dollar, fifty cents.

Brazenly, she produced a small change purse from a secret place beneath her skirts. She opened it and counted coins. “Here’s your precious money, then,” she shouted, flinging a handful of coins at my feet. Terrible behavior, and yet, it made me want her more—made me want to spank her for her impertinence, to ravage her, to tame her with my
ardore
! The girl made me short of breath—made me think crazy thoughts. I stood there, drunk with her, and suddenly knew my dead brother Vincenzo better than I had ever known him before.

“I am marrying Padraic McGannon and that’s who I’m marrying!” she declared again, then stormed from the room.

“That one has a hellcat’s disposition,” I said to the brothers, “but I suppose she will do. I’ll take her off your hands for a dowry of seven hundred dollars.”

“Seven hundred!” Rocco shouted. “What do you think—that we two are as rich as you? This girl is a jewel—a diamond waiting to be polished. Once she is cured of this love-foolishness over that redheaded mick—”

The mention of that boy again was like a scream in my ear. “Five hundred and fifty, then. That is my final offer. The money, after all, will be used to furnish the
appartamento
where your half-sister will live like a queen. When you two visit, you yourselves will sleep on feather beds her dowry will have purchased.”

“That’s all very fine, Tempesta,” Nunzio said, “but my brother and I are working men, not sultans. We haven’t that kind of fortune to hand over to you. Two hundred, and the other one goes to live with you, too.” Of those two snakes, Nunzio was the worst.

“Other one? What other one?” I said, though I knew very well
who they meant.

“
That
one,” Nunzio said, pointing to the Monkey-Face who had just entered the room with our coffee.

“Out of the question!” I said. “I would not think of robbing you of your housekeeper.”

“Don’t be foolish, Tempesta,” Rocco advised. “She cooks and helps Ignazia clean your big house, she midwifes the babies when they come along, and then, when the time is right, you marry her off to some widower in need of a clean house. As for us, finding a servant in this city is as easy as opening the door and shouting for one.”

“Out of the question!” I repeated. “If you could not find this one a husband in all of New York, how can I hope to get rid of her in Connecticut? Four hundred. The other one stays here.”

Nunzio shrugged and sighed. “Then I guess Ignazia becomes the wife of that redheaded Irishman after all and you,
Signore
Domenico, lose a precious prize because of your greed. I pity you and weep for your stupidity.”

In the other room, the beautiful hotheaded girl was pacing the floor and arguing with herself. The door banged open. She threatened to cut out her heart if any of us stood between her and the Irishman. The door banged shut again.

“Three hundred seventy-five,” I told Nunzio. “For the one girl alone.”