Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (16 page)

A group of young men closed around Henryk. I didn’t see him for the rest of the evening.

Yolanda wanted me
to come by the Reillys’ flat early on Sunday morning; she wouldn’t be going to mass. Children spilled down the steps of their apartment building. Bunches of boys shot marbles; girls played jacks on the landings. Small children raced up and down the halls. Voices poured through flimsy walls: laughing, talking, shouting. Furniture scraped over wooden floors as beds were shoved aside or dismantled for the day. Babies cried
.

No sound at all came from the Reillys’ flat. I knocked softly. Nothing. At last a neatly dressed woman with a face as still as clay opened the door. She studied me somberly, saying nothing. Yolanda stood behind her, ready with hat and gloves, strangely shrunken despite her bulging belly. She too said nothing.

“Good morning, Mrs. Reilly. I’m Lucia D’Angelo.” When the woman didn’t move, I added: “Yolanda’s friend. We’re going walking this morning.”

Was she deaf as well? No, her head tilted slightly, considering me. “You speak pretty good English,” she conceded, “for an Italian.” I nodded, unsure how to answer this. A pale man at a spotless table watched us, immobile. Words dried in my throat.

Toneless as a sleepwalker, Yolanda announced: “We’ll be leaving now, ma’am. You needn’t wait lunch for me.”

“You’re not going to
mass
?”

“No, ma’am, not today.” Yolanda eased her belly past the folds of her mother-in-law’s dress. Infected by the Reillys’ silence, we didn’t speak all the way down the stairs and into the next block. Then, like a clogged pipe bursting open, Yolanda gushed out her troubles: “See how they hate me? If I sit in a chair, it’s like I’m wearing it out. If the floors creak when I walk, she looks up. If the baby next door cries, she complains. What happens when a real baby’s
inside
their flat? I don’t think she’d talk to her husband even if he wasn’t deaf. He just looks at me and grunts. What does
that
mean?”

“Yolanda, they’re quiet people.”

“No! They’re people who hate Italians. And Catholics. The longest ‘talk’ we ever had was when they asked if I believe the Blessed Virgin Mary is greater than Our Lord. Does the priest
really
drink blood at Holy Communion? Do I want the pope to rule America?” Her voice rose. “They think I made Charlie marry me. And he can’t come on weekends like we planned. He works twelve-hour shifts every day so we can buy a house. If we all have to live with Charlie’s parents . . . Lucia, I can’t think about it.”

“Do you want to go home?”

“Yes! I want the noise, the fights, the twins yelling, people
talking
to me, even if they’re angry. But I can’t even if they’d let me. My uncle just came over from Calabria. He’s got my bed. And I shamed the family, remember?”

How to answer this avalanche of laments? “At least you like your work.”

Yolanda blinked at the effort to recall that happy corner of her life. “Yes,
work
is wonderful. I made a hat with Brazilian blackbird feathers, and Mrs. Halle loved it so much she got more of those feathers for me. If I could, I’d be there now,” she said fiercely. “When I go ‘home,’ the table’s set for two. Then she
slowly
gets up, sets out another plate, and pulls out another chair as if she’s surprised
again
that I’m living there.” Yolanda stopped walking. Her voice rose. “No Italian would treat a guest that way. And the food! Everything’s boiled to death: potatoes, cabbage, beans, stew meat, potatoes, cabbage, more beans. No salt, no garlic, no herbs. No wine ever. I asked if I could cook, and she said, ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’ Is she afraid of eating something good?”

We were close to the Western Reserve campus now; fine stone buildings cut into the blue sky. American students hurried by. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the Reillys, Yolanda. Maybe they don’t talk, so you don’t talk, so they don’t know you. If they did, they’d love you like Charlie does, like I do.”

She hugged her belly. “I’m being punished because our baby was conceived in sin.”

“So was I. So were lots of people. You’re married now, that’s what’s important. Charlie loves you and you’ll be together soon. When there’s a beautiful little baby, you’ll see, his parents will fall in love with both of you.” Her path was so straight, I thought: make hats, mother her coming child, and tolerate these silent people until she could move away.

“I don’t know where Charlie learned how to
talk,
let alone how to love somebody. What’s
wrong
with them?” Yolanda’s voice rose again and cracked. Passing students looked at us sharply, as if to say: “We speak English here and we speak
softly
.”

“They’re blond,” Mamma had said, when long ago we passed the campus by mistake. Was I here again by mistake in this land of square-shouldered, light-haired people? My hair was heavy and dark, rolling with waves; my cheap wool dress hung stiffly; my boots slapped the brick pathways. Their clothes swished and their fine shoes tread softly. Yolanda’s discomfort had weakened my resolve. “Let’s go home,” I said, taking her arm and turning her quickly around.

“I can’t go back to the Reillys’,” Yolanda declared. “I can’t breathe there.”

“Then come live with me.”

“How? It’s impossible.”

“We’ll find a way.”

At the boardinghouse I convinced Roseanne to let Yolanda take Mamma’s place in my room. Roseanne finally conceded, on the condition that Yolanda paid her share of room and board.

“But you’ll have to let me keep the light on late to study,” I warned my friend.

“You can read all night if you want. Just talk to me sometimes.” We got her small bundle of clothes from the Reillys, who received without comment the news that she’d be leaving. “You see?” Yolanda demanded. “They’re so strange. Suppose Charlie turns out like them?”

“He won’t.”

“I hope you’re right.” After dinner, Yolanda stretched out on my bed and watched me study, then closed her eyes and fell asleep. For the next months we lived companionably together as I finished eleventh grade, then scribed and worked for the Millers in the summertime when Mamma’s money home wavered. By mid-July we had to wedge a cot into the room to leave my bed for Yolanda’s bulging girth.

At last, in September, I could see Mamma. I left on a Friday, hurrying to the station before dawn to catch the first train for Chicago. The flat green miles sped away as I memorized sonnets for English class. “Any two you like, one from Shakespeare, one from Milton,” our teacher had said. “Just learn them so they’re yours and no one and nothing can take them away.” I pored over the lines until we passed into the great stain of Chicago, cupping its lake. Then I closed my book and waited.

By good fortune Mamma saw me first on the platform. How could I have recognized the stately woman in a crimson walking suit bursting with lace at the bust; a wide-brimmed, black-plumed hat; kid gloves; and a massive pompadour? Men drew back as she came toward me, leaving an awed channel between us. “I know,” she said after we’d kissed. “I look different. People are supposed to recognize me on the street and be excited. Are
you
excited?” she demanded of a gawking, red-faced young man. “Then come to the show tonight.” She pulled two tickets from a velvet purse. “You can hear the Naples Nightingale.” I was speechless. Was this my mother, hawking herself with such aplomb? And where were these hovering men for all the years when I saw that she was beautiful and all they saw was a house servant?

“They’d be panting after you too if you dressed like this,” she said, sweeping me toward the great sunny mouth of the station. No, it wasn’t just the lace and nipped waist. Her walk was different: straight shoulders, high hips, and a forward tilt of bulging bust. If she took off her gloves, would I recognize her hands at least, rough and red from years of bleach and soapy water?

“Look at this!” Mamma declared, drawing out a hatpin as long as my forearm. She waved the pin at one of the hovering men, who jumped back. “Who needs knives with a weapon like this? And look how strong it is.” When she jabbed a wrought-iron girder, the hatpin barely bent. “Should have had one of these at Stingler’s,” she muttered. I gripped her arm as she shoved the long pin through her hat and hair.
Come back, Mamma. Stop being so different and strange.

We went to the Hotel Burnham, an opulent palace for businessmen. “That one maybe owns slaughterhouses,” Mamma said, pointing out a stocky gentleman in a top hat. “And those at the table could have railroads and banks and shipping companies. This is where I’d stay if my act came
after
the intermission. See? It’s finer than the villa.” She paraded me around the lobby, past the velvet-papered walls, carved ceilings, elevator cages in metal as delicate as lace, porters, busboys, waiters, and doormen in blazing white gloves gliding soundlessly over thick carpets. How many gloves would each man have, and what an army of laundresses must be working for them? “Enrico Caruso stayed here,” she announced, “and Jenny Lind, the great Swedish Nightingale. Arturo Toscanini will sleep in the Burnham if he ever comes to Chicago.” Her face darkened. “Maybe he’d tell Mr. Keith what I did.”

I wished then and a thousand times after that Maestro Arturo Toscanini had never come to Naples. Years later a great doctor would insist that my mother’s anxious fear of the maestro sprang from a deep hurt in her childhood, probably connected to her father. Perhaps so, but at that moment she seemed to be conjuring the maestro himself; his swooping black eyebrows were like the wings of a hawk seeking her out for destruction.

At least she was easily distracted. Passing the hotel’s grand piano led her to speak of Jimmy the piano man, with whom she shared a language beyond words. Under his prodding, her voice was stronger now, her range, repertoire, and performances more assured. “Still, I’m always afraid onstage,” she whispered. “Suppose the words don’t come? Suppose the notes are flat, or people hiss or throw things? We have to go,” she announced, peering at a lady’s watch dangling from her belt. She never owned a watch before or cared much for time. So many small things declared:
Your mother has changed.
Was I changed too from living without her? She didn’t say. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed.

We hurried to the Haymarket Theater. “Look,” said Mamma, pointing to the playbill with a gloved finger: “Teresa D’Angelo, The Naples Nightingale.” Of course she’d be on the playbill, but to see her name in print, there on the street of a great city, nailed me speechless to the pavement until she pulled me away. “Come, I have to get dressed.” We passed through the stage door. With every step she became even less Mamma and more an act in Mr. Keith’s troupe, a tightly woven family that knew nothing of me. Strangers greeted her warmly, women in feathers, acrobats, a ventriloquist with his dummy, clowns, and a spindly memory master. Only Lydia, the girl with trained dogs, passed silently. “Those nasty dogs make more than I do,” Mamma whispered. “Wait here. I always get dressed alone.”

Alone? We had slept, dressed, and bathed together all my life. I knew every freckle on her back. I knew when her monthly flow began and ended and her six strands of gray hair. The dressing room door clicked closed. I pressed my back against the wall, away from a buffeting flow of performers. It was there that Mario found me, announcing himself with a funny rag-doll dance.

“Teresa has her ways,” he said kindly. Yes, and every way was new to me. As I followed him through a maze of scaffolds, ropes, props, and players to my seat, he revealed that she spoke earnestly to herself in dialect before each show. She vomited after each performance, setting a bucket offstage for this purpose. In each new city she found her way to a nearby river, canal, or lake. “I followed her once,” said Mario. “She stands there a long time, and if she thinks nobody’s around, she sings.”

“What does she sing?”

“Always the same: ‘Santa Lucia.’ ” Joy shot through me. “She talks about you and how well you do in school.”

“Really?”
Really?

“Of course. But”—and now he lowered his voice—“she’s playing cards too much with the acrobats. They cheat. Mr. Keith doesn’t mind a friendly game, but if he catches you gambling, there’s a fine. He says gamblers lose their edge onstage. I warned Teresa, and she said it’s not my business. Perhaps she’ll listen to you.” I doubted that.

Mario pulled me into a niche between potted palms. “And here’s an odd thing. Memnon the memory master always goes on before her. He says she showed him a picture from an Italian newspaper.”

I sighed. “A handsome man with dark eyes and eyebrows like a hawk’s wings?”

“That’s what Memnon says. She always wants to know if this guy’s in the audience. Memnon keeps telling her he doesn’t do faces. He remembers cards, numbers, things like that. She got angry once and nearly wouldn’t go on, screaming that he’d
have
to remember this face once he saw it. Mr. Keith fined her for ‘backstage disruption.’ So what’s up? Did Hawkeye do her wrong?”

The jostling crowd had turned us face-to-face. Mario put his stubby hand on my arm. “I see. Long story, none of my business. Well, nobody gets into vaudeville without a long story. But, listen, Lucia”—he stepped closer and lowered his voice—“to
stay
in Mr. Keith’s troupe, she can’t let her story be a backstage disruption. She has to keep her grip. Well, enjoy the show. I have to put on my face.” Mario slipped away. His own act came after the intermission, where Mamma longed to be.

Acts floated by. Lydia and her dogs, tap dancers, a hypnotist and a mime, acrobats and a tightrope walker, a joke-telling juggler and President Theodore Roosevelt impersonator whose story of big-game hunting laced with political jokes had the audience howling. Finally Memnon came on, flawlessly memorizing strings of numbers, dates, and random objects shouted out from the audience. Mamma would be next. “Breathe, Lucia,” she would have said. A piano flourish and the master of ceremonies demanded applause for “the Naples Nightingale, direct from Europe.” I clapped so loudly the woman next to me leaned over and asked: “Have you seen her before? Is she good?”