A Matter of Love in da Bronx (56 page)

Germano made a big roll of spaghetti on his fork, and took it all in his mouth. He chewed quickly, took a sip of wine. With his mouth full, he stopped eating long enough to speak without looking up: --Don't let him get away with a thing. Make sure that Jew-bastard gives you a big raise. We need the money.

Sam tried to vomit, but the sword running from breastbone to back kept everything inside.

UNRENITENT AT THE LAST after more than an hour of restraint, Mary broached the subject with her mother as they finished up the dinner dishes. From the moment she walked through the door it bombarded her brain and zapped her nervous system. Though her words came not without due deliberation, she sensed that Lily felt the sharp edge to them because it seemed her mother instinctively and deliberately delayed the completion of the familiar simple clean-up chore. Not that Mary got a feeling of camraderie--which was not rare between them--but this had a special difference, much as two strangers meeting with an emergency loan of a tampon between them. It was a province where women alone came to harbor to share their wisdom of babies, men and the world. --Can you fall in love deeply, truly, more than once?

--No! Lily responded so quickly it brought Mary up short. She didn't think about it for a split second. And now it was Lily that felt the sharp edge, quite aware the emphatic precipitancy of her reply was revealing unto itself. Several quick glances passed between them, both checking out the terrain. Well, I, you know, I've thought about such things...the soaps, you know?

--You mean, your first true love...

...you never have again. Just one time. That is forever in a life. The first boy you give your heart, you give to him complete and forever. There is no second one.

--Was Papa your first...love?

There was a long, heavy pause, Lily's eyebrows dancing. The ubiquitous Code of Women applied. Their truth, all their truths, were told in confidence, never to be revealed. Except perhaps amongst themselves. Never, never slopped to the males. No. Papa was not my first. Eager to trade places, she stopped backing up, and moved forward. It seems, my daughter dear, you are in love?

--Yes. Wildly, madly, happily in love.

--And this is your first?

--Yes.

--Surprise. I would thought not. And he loves you?

--Madly. Passionately. Irreversibly. Mama, it is so fantastic! So wonderful!

--Yes.

--I have never known anyone's emotions can soar so wide, so high, so intensely.

--And you've...made love with him?

--No. Not yet.

--A surprise.

--Well, it comes as a surprise... But why?"

--Why a surprise? Because you sound like a love matured. That happens only after the blossom has been...fertilized.

--No. Not that, yet. We're waiting for the special moment.

--To be envied. That is not the way of the usual and ordinary.

--This is an exceptional love.

--So I gather. I envy you such a love. He's handsome?

--Gorgeous.

--And tall?

--Like the mountains.

--And dark?

--Like the mystery of birth.

--Don't lose it. Take it. Take of it whatever you can. It would be a pity.

--I know.

--Bring him home, this God. Perhaps I would like to phantasize a bit. I can remember how, you know...how to phantasize, I mean.

--He's not to be shared. He's so glorious.

--And gifted, no doubt. Still, bring him home. Where did you meet him?

--In your kitchen. He saw me nude. He liked my patucka, even then, when I was a wee lass.

--Of whom? Of what? do you speak?

--I was bareass, my slit to the fore, and he was staring at me forever. I met him just less than a month ago.

--
Patri, et figlie, et spirtus santos!

--Amen.

--His name. I don't want to hear his name. I have a chill down my spine, into my heart. I have no idea what you bring into this house, but
Carissima mia,
don't let your father hear of what we speak!

--How do you know him?

--Who said I know him?

--Your voice. Your attitude. What is it?

--When you spoke of one's first love...earlier. I couldn't help remembering. Perhaps it's the memory that strikes the chord in my being. Nothing more. There is something about that first, fresh love that leaves a sign, like a blaze in a boulder that forever detours any similar feeling. Like stroking a scar to remember its source, to want back the challenge of daring the Gods. Win or lose, it's playing the game: exciting, involving, declamatory. We may grow to hate the scar through the years because it reminds us we did not succeed where others have; but, not matter what else, it is the glory that comes from fully participating.

--Sam Scopia.

--When I was a very young girl I was excited by the great and daring. Those who moved swiftly through throngs, heads higher than a hallucinate. Lily took her seat at the kitchen table, putting on the tiny table lamp signaling to Mary to turn off the overhead. Cigarette?

--I never knew you did.

--Whatever else you didn't know could fill a library. Old farts aren't born that way, they just need heat and moisture to ferment.

--And Papa? What if he comes? She took an unfiltered Lucky from the pack.

--Damocles be damned. He had his day. He's no longer a threat. Worse has happened. The smoke billowed between them. You father had an accident. You must know the story well enough, he's declaimed it sufficient times to have the words worn in the ceiling of this kitchen. Yes, he hung out there without food or water for thirty-three hours, ninety-seven stories high, existing only on pigeon piss, moth droppings, and protein from his own orgasms. When he came home from the hospital, his life was dedicated to causing anguish to anyone and everyone around him. Before the accident, he would wake me up at three-four in the morning, and mount me like I was some sort of wild ass. He pounded and pummeled my sex with his fingers, his hand, his mouth, his enraged penis one-two hours at a time. Even now, he uses a large, rubber-made penis that has the handle of a sabre with an oval protector that keeps it from penetrating too far--thank the merciful Lord!--and he pounds it into me like he's jerking off. He says it is to keep me from searching elsewhere for satisfaction. When he doesn't do that, he chews me there like a dog, biting my lips, inflaming my clitoris until it is painful and swollen. One time I covered the Gates of Venus with Oil of Artemesia--Wormwood, you know, the bitterest of all herbs used in Pastif--and he could not look at me for months!--God! was that funny!--without puckering! After three months of that brutual treatment, I longed for the soft loving of a smooth and romantic tall Italian. He came along, and I was ready. Your father insisted he could not...have an erection, but I knew, in the bathroom, alone; he would play with his
peppino.
I would hear him try to hide his gruntings. At the dark of night, I would feel him, and he would be wet, slippery wet, the leakage of his semen. That told me what I suspected, he was lying, he was depriving me of what was to be mine. He was seeking a vendetta for what he suspected. Only my lover and I knew it was true. So, when he was the deepest asleep, I would slip under the covers, and suckle his penis. I got the idea from snakes that suckled milk from unknowing sleeping women. He would get big and hard, and I would every so gently work his organ to the brink of coming...then stop. I would pretend I was asleep when he would wake up. He would grasp his penis, and two shakes! wet all over himself and the bed. I laughed to myself, how will he explain this in the morning. He urinated, he would say, he could not contain himself. I do that to him every chance I'm not too tired to think of it. All this because he suspected I had my first love before I married him, which I did not. He was wrong about that, but right about who it was. I wouldn't have cheated on him, if he were honest with me. Instead, he left me alone and cold for so long, months. When this tall Italian pursued me still in my loneliness, I could not help but succumb. He was so...different, unusual. He was kind, thoughtful, romantic. He did for me, for my heart, for my soul what I thought I would never experience on earth with your father. So, when the moment came, I became his lover willingly. We made love every moment we could, whenever we could. Shamelessly. Indulgingly. Madly. Passionately. To this day we do it, but it is not even a shadow of our past fury. It is merely an act, not even the act. I don't care, I do it because I feel I owe him. From that affair, I had--we had--a child.

--Me? I'm his daughter? Papa is not...my papa?

She crushed another cigarette out, slowly carefully, sweeping all the dead ashes in a pile. Lily dropped the butt, stuck her chin out, stared directly into her daughter's eyes. --No. Your father is not Rocco Dolorosso, the feigned cripple, for he walks as good as you or I. Your father's name, I so regret to tell you, is Germano Scopia.

THE PHENOMENA of two undisparate, passionate forces unintentionally but interdirectionally colliding to produce emotional tremors that create force fields in the heavens, much as the Northern Lights, has never been photographed, witnessed, or recorded anywhere in the history of the world with the exception of the rendezvous that took place in front of a two-story brick house on Lurting Avenue in the Bronx that same cool, dusky June evening.

Sam Scopia and Mary Dolorosso each left their homes almost within seconds of each other, their minds a cyclone of confusion, their faces comminutors of concern, their bedeviled bodies embattled to retain their ability to function.

Uncaring, each was propelled by a salt-stung blindness. Up sidewalks, down streets, acrossalleys; past homes, in front of stores; just by automobiles, missing busses, skinning cabs; in light, out of darkness, through shadows; a mere process of stepping, and hopping, or walking, then running!

--WHAT THE FUCK'S HAPPENING IN THIS WORLD? Are we all crazy? If I could be hit by a truck perhaps I'd feel less this agony!

--Virgin Mary, help me in this moment of greatest need when it is easier for me to tear off my skin than bear this decremental role!

Whatever, there was a destiny each knew he followed. Of all the directions Sam and Mary would take that night, they knew one for certain: They would never, ever go back into the place they had known as home ever, ever, ever again. Wheresoever they ended this night, it was a clear as a clean-struck lead crystal bell, there would be their doing until the end of their lives.

Neither one had any idea he was bound for the house on Lurting. In fact, each turned onto Lurting from opposite directions not knowing, nor the least interested in, where they were.

At first, they saw naught, but sensed each other, as strong as catching the scent of honeysuckle on the dewed, eventide air. Like the metallic estafette of an oarlock across quelled waters. Then, like seeing a mirrored simulacrum.

Incredulous!

What was it there before them each?

Sam?

Mary?

No. The phantom facing me is not to be!

Is it she?

Is it he?

A faster step. Another. Another yet. Do hasten. Come quicker. Yes! A trot. Again. Some more! Don't stop! Run! Do run and run and run! Yes! Yes! Arms outstretched, reaching, reaching, reaching for me! Oh! Yes! It is to be! Tears gushing, flying in the wind.

These two souls did fearlessly fly in the face of all law toward each other.

Yes! Oh! God! Yes! It was she!

Oh! Virgin Mary! Thank you, t'is he!

Oh! God!

Oh! Lord!

--Mary! It's you! My darling!

--My love! Sam! How can this be!

--Let me hold you!

--No, stop! We can't!

Each, their chests pumping savagely up and down to catch their breath, arms by their sides, eyes filled with a flaming heat reflecting the inferno of their love, their confused emotions, the broiling air about them, their passionate desires like two heavenly bodies hurtling toward one another just about to smash together then at the last possible moment of moments held apart by a gossamer scrim. Wretched cruel lot cast to them.

--My God! My God! I know! I hold you not, but my mind clutches you still! They told you?

--Yes. She repeated what Lily told her. And you?

--Yes. He repeated what Concetta told him.

--What monsters are these?

--No. Not monsters. Lovers, such as we...might have been!

--Sam, I'm sorry. I can't stop crying. I don't know what to do. I love you so much. I don't care! Whatever they said, I love you just as much. I don't feel it to be bad! I really don't care what they said. All I know is I need you and want you so badly. I would find life unendurable without having you!

--To be brought this close! Arrrrghhhh! If we had just that one moment together, it would be worth the eternity in Hell!

--But don't you see, that's why we were kept apart all this time? God himself knew only He could save us. And all the while I thought it was because our love was unique, special! That it was ours to be!

--I'd rather I'd been condemned.

--And what? Do you think I'm made of ice? Is it some inferior glace that gilds my body? What shall we do?

--We can move to Hawaii.

--What?

-- If we were there, we could make love, guiltlessly, enjoining the fantastic, deep and beautiful love of two harmonics in one.

--Oh! Sam! We're not in Hawaii! We're in the Bronx! Where is there a haven for our love this side of eternity short of insanity?

He looked up to the heavens, just awakening. --There is no place. No place at all. He stepped to the street, crunched himself to sit on the curb, his head heavily in his hands. She came by his side.

--At least we know our love was come by legitimately!

They both laughed at the irony. It was a love less desperate than theirs that decreed their dimension.

--You know, I understand now why there was such an attraction between us. Why I felt ours was a love that was destined to be; and to be a love of loves in the whole and entire universe. Mary, you are my darling and I love you as no one else in this world ever will.