The Family Corleone (16 page)

Donnie was quiet, looking past Sean at the daylight coming in through the frosted window as if he saw something terribly sad there. When he turned finally to meet Sean’s gaze, he did so with a question. “Didn’t I take care of you all?” he asked. When Sean didn’t answer, he added, “She went and took up with the very same
dago bastard who put us out of business. You think that was an accident, Sean? You think she didn’t know what she was doing?” Donnie shook his head, answering his own question. “No,” he said. “She’s dead to me now.” He looked at Willie, and Willie said “Aye,” agreeing with him.

“
Aye
,” Sean said, mocking Willie. To Donnie he said, “One less sister, that’s what your Irish pride got you.”

Donnie checked his wristwatch and then glanced up the stairs toward the roof. Outside, another train roared by and the hallway was filled with the ruckus of it. “All right,” he said to Sean when the train passed. “Go on.” He cuffed the back of Sean’s neck. “Your heart’s not in this. I shouldn’t have dragged you along.”

“Are you serious?” Willie asked Donnie.

“I am,” Donnie said, and he shoved Sean up the stairs. “Go on,” he said. “We’ll meet you back home.”

Sean looked at Willie, and when Willie nodded, he ran up the stairs and disappeared out onto the roof.

When he was gone, Willie said, “What the hell are you doing, Donnie? The kid’s never gonna grow up you keep treatin’ him like a baby.”

“I’m not treatin’ him like a baby,” Donnie said. He tapped a couple of cigarettes loose from his pack and offered one to Willie.

Willie took it and lit up. He watched Donnie, waiting for more.

“I was more worried about the kid puttin’ a bullet in me by accident than I was about Luca doing it on purpose.” He walked over to Luca’s doorway. “I’ll be standing about here,” he said, and he pointed to the stairs, where Sean would have been. “You see what I’m sayin’?”

“Chances are good he’d never take the heater out of his pocket,” Willie said.

“Chances are even better if he’s not here,” Donnie said. “Finish your cigarette,” he added, “and then let’s get in our places.”

Willie asked, “You think this will make things even worse with Kelly?”

“Kelly don’t give a damn about us, Willie. You know that’s the gospel truth. And I don’t give a damn about her. At least not right now,
I don’t. She’s too screwed up for us to be worryin’ about. Between the drinkin’ and takin’ pills and who the hell knows what else… When she straightens out—
if
she straightens out—she’ll be thankin’ us for savin’ her from a life with this wop son of a bitch. Jesus,” he added. “Can you imagine havin’ Luca Brasi as a brother-in-law?”

“Lord save us,” Willie said.

“We’re gonna save us,” Donnie said, and he stubbed out his cigarette and kicked it into a corner. “Come on.” He pointed up the stairs and watched as Willie disappeared into the darkness. “It shouldn’t be too long,” he said, and he took his place in the shadows.

Sandra hadn’t said a dozen words during the entire hour-long course of the meal, which left Sonny to chatter on, holding forth about his family, his plans in life, his ambitions, and anything else that came to mind as Mrs. Columbo served him multiple helpings of chicken cacciatore. They were in the apartment of one of Mrs. Columbo’s cousins, in the old neighborhood, where they were staying for a few days while the landlord did some work on their Arthur Avenue apartment. The meal was served on a small round table covered with while linen and situated next to a tall window that looked out over Eleventh Avenue and one of the rickety pedestrian bridges that crossed the railroad tracks. When he was a kid, Sonny loved to sit on that bridge with his feet dangling in the air as the steam engines passed beneath him. He considered telling Sandra the story of his first heartbreak, when he sat on that very bridge with beautiful nine-year-old Diana Ciaffone and professed his love for her as the world disappeared in a cloud of steam and the clatter and roar of a passing train. He could still feel Diana’s silence and see the way she had avoided his gaze while the train passed and before the world reemerged as the steam dissipated. She had gotten up then without a word and walked away. He smiled as he remembered this at the dinner table and Sandra said, “What is it, Santino?”

Sonny, startled by the sound of Sandra’s voice, pointed to the railroad bridge and said, “I was just remembering how I liked to sit on that bridge when I was little and watch the trains.”

From the kitchen, Mrs. Columbo said, “Eh! The trains! Always the trains! May God grant me peace from them!”

Sandra met Sonny’s eyes and smiled at her grandmother’s habitual grumbling. The smile seemed to excuse Mrs. Columbo, saying
It’s just the way she is, my grandmother
.

Mrs. Columbo came in from the kitchen carrying a dish of sautéed potatoes, which she placed in front of Sonny. “My Sandra made these,” she said.

Sonny pushed his chair back from the table and folded his hands over his belly. He had just consumed three servings of chicken and a big side dish of linguine in marinara sauce, plus assorted vegetables, including a whole stuffed artichoke. “Mrs. Columbo,” he said, “I don’t say this very often, but I swear to you, I can’t eat another bite!”

“
Mangia!
” Mrs. Columbo said fiercely, and pushed the plate of potatoes closer to him as she dropped down into her seat. “Sandra made these just for you!” She was dressed all in black, as was usual for her, though her husband had died a dozen years ago.

Sandra said to her grandmother, “
Non forzare
—”

Sonny said, “Nobody has to force me to eat!” He dug into the potatoes and made a big deal about how delicious they were, while Sandra and her grandmother beamed at him as if nothing in the world could give them more pleasure than watching him eat. When he finished off the serving he raised his hands and said, “
Non piú! Grazie!
” and laughed. “If I eat another bite,” he added, “I’m gonna explode.”

“Okay,” Mrs. Columbo said, and she pointed into the tiny living room off the kitchen, where the only furnishings were a sofa against the wall, a coffee table, and a stuffed chair. An oil painting of Christ’s face contorted with suffering hung over the sofa, next to another oil of the Virgin Mary with her upraised eyes full of a profound mixture of grief and hope. “Go sit,” she said. “I’ll bring the espresso.”

Sonny took Mrs. Columbo’s hand as he stood up from the table. “The meal was magnificent,” he said, touching his fingers to his lips and opening his hand in a kiss. “
Grazie mille!
”

Mrs. Columbo looked at Sonny suspiciously and repeated herself. “Go sit,” she said, “I’ll bring the espresso.”

In the living room, Sandra took a seat on the sofa. The navy blue dress she wore came down to just below her knees. She ran her hands along the fabric, smoothing it over her legs.

Sonny, in the middle of the room, watched Sandra, uncertain whether to take a seat beside her or to sit across from her on the stuffed chair. Sandra offered him a shy smile but otherwise gave him no signal. He looked behind him, into the kitchen, where Mrs. Columbo was out of sight at the stove. He calculated quickly that he might have a minute or two alone with Sandra and so sat down alongside her on the couch. When he did so, her smile blossomed. With that as encouragement, he took her hand in his and held it while he gazed at her. He kept his eyes on her eyes and away from her breasts, but he knew already that they were full and heavy under the straining buttons of her plain white blouse. He liked the darkness of her skin and her eyes and her hair, which was so black it almost appeared blue in the last of the daylight coming through the living room window. He knew she was only sixteen, but everything about her was womanly. He thought about kissing her and wondered if she would let him. He squeezed her hand, and when she squeezed his in return he glanced into the kitchen to be sure Mrs. Columbo was still out of sight, and then leaned across the space between them, kissed her on her cheek, and leaned back to get a good look at her and gauge her reaction.

Sandra craned her neck and stood up a little so that she could better see into the kitchen. When she was apparently satisfied that her grandmother wouldn’t interrupt them, she put one hand on the back of Sonny’s neck and the other on the back of his head, pushing her fingers up into his hair, and she kissed him on the lips, a full, wet, delicious kiss. When her tongue touched his lips, his body reacted, every part of him tingling and rising.

Sandra moved away from Sonny and straightened out her dress again. She stared blankly in front of her and then glanced once at Sonny before she went back to looking straight ahead. Sonny slid
closer to her and put his arms around her, wanting another kiss like the last one, but she put her hands flat against his chest and held him off, and then Mrs. Columbo’s voice came booming in from the kitchen. “Eh!” she shouted. “How come I don’t hear any talking in there?” By the time she peeked in from the kitchen a second later, Sonny and Sandra were seated on opposite ends of the sofa, smiling back at her. She grunted, disappeared again into the kitchen, and returned a moment later with a large silver tray on which she carried a decanter of espresso, two dainty cups, one for her and one for Sonny, and three cannolis.

Sonny eyed the cannolis greedily, and then he found himself chattering away again as Mrs. Columbo poured the espresso. He enjoyed talking about himself, about how he hoped to make something important of himself in time, and how he wished to work with his father eventually, and how big his father’s business was, the Genco Pura Olive Oil business, how every store in the city carried their olive oil, and maybe one day they’d go nationwide. Sandra listened with rapt attention, hanging on his every word, while Mrs. Columbo nodded approvingly. Sonny had no problem talking and eating. He sipped his espresso and talked. He took a bite of his cannoli, savored it a second, and then went on talking. And every once in a while he risked a glance at Sandra, even with Mrs. Columbo hovering.

Luca sat at the dinner table across from his mother and held his head in his hands. A moment earlier he had been eating and thinking his own thoughts and ignoring her as she went on and on about one thing or another, but then she started getting into her suicide spiel and he felt one of his headaches coming on. Sometimes he got headaches so bad he was himself tempted to put a bullet in his brain just to make the throbbing stop.

“Don’t think I won’t do it,” his mother said, and Luca massaged his temples. He had aspirin in the bathroom medicine cabinet here, and stronger stuff in his apartment on Third.

“Don’t think I won’t,” his mother repeated. “I’ve got it all planned out. You don’t know what it’s like or you wouldn’t do this to your
own mother, always having to worry one of the neighbors will knock on the door and tell me my son’s dead, or he’s going to jail. You don’t know what it’s like, every day like that.” She blotted tears from her eyes with the corner of a white paper napkin. “I’d be better off dead.”

“Ma,” Luca said. “Will you lay off it, please?”

“I can’t lay off it,” his mother said. She tossed her knife and fork down to the table and pushed her plate away. They were eating pasta and meatballs for supper. She’d made a mess of the meal because she’d heard rumors from a neighbor that some big-shot gangster was going to murder her son, and she kept imagining him like James Cagney in that movie where he’s dragged through the streets and shot up and then they bring him home to his mother looking like a mummy in his bandages and leave him at the door for her to find, and she kept thinking of Luca like that and so she overcooked the spaghetti and burned the sauce and now the ruined meal sat in front of them like an omen of worse things to come, and she kept thinking she’d rather kill herself than live to see her son murdered like that or sent to jail. “I can’t lay off it,” she repeated, and then she was sobbing. “You don’t know,” she said.

Luca said, “What don’t I know?” It seemed to him that his mother had turned into an old woman. He could remember days when she wore nice clothes and put on makeup. She had been beautiful once. He’d seen the old pictures. She had bright eyes and in one picture she wore a long pink dress and carried a matching parasol as she smiled at her husband, at Luca’s father, who was a big guy too, like Luca, tall and powerfully built. She’d married young, still in her teens, and she’d had Luca before she turned twenty-one. Now she was sixty, which was old, but not ancient, and that’s how she looked to him now, ancient, all skin and bones, the outline of her skull shockingly visible under her papery, wrinkled face; her gray hair stringy and thinning with a bald spot on the top of her head. She wore drab, dark clothes, a crone dressed in rags. She was his mother, but still, he found it hard to look at her. “What don’t I know?” he asked again.

“Luca,” she said, pleading.

“Ma,” he said. “What is it? How many times have I told you? I’m gonna be fine. You don’t have to worry.”

“Luca,” she said again. “I blame myself, Luca. I blame myself.”

“Ma,” Luca said. “Don’t start. Please. Can we please eat our meal?” He put his fork down and rubbed his temple. “Please,” he said. “I’ve got a splittin’ headache.”

“You don’t know how I suffer,” his mother said, and she wiped tears from her face with her napkin. “I know you blame yourself for that night, all these years,” she said, “because—”

Luca pushed his plate of spaghetti across the table into his mother’s plate. When she jumped back, he grasped the table in his hands and he looked like he might pitch the whole thing over into her lap. Instead, he folded his hands in front of him. “Are you starting on that again?” he said. “How many times do we have to go over this, Ma? How many goddamn times?”

“We don’t have to talk about it, Luca,” she said, and then the tears were flowing down her cheeks. She sobbed and buried her head in her hands.

“For Christ’s sake…” Luca reached across the table to touch his mother’s arm. “My father was a drunk and a loudmouth, and now he’s burnin’ in hell.” He opened his hands as if to say
What’s to talk about?