Sweet Life (16 page)

“I stood and faced them all. ‘Idiots. The
capitano
knows you help get food to the partisans. If not for me, you would have been shot a long time ago.’

“Oh that Leonardo, with his red face and
Papà’
s eyes. He chased me out and threatened to kill me if I came back. And I didn’t go back. All my life people believed my family wouldn’t have me.” The cane struck the floor three times. “No. No.
No.
I would not have them.”

Voices in the room faltered. The television droned on.

The young man examined his shoes. At last he raised his head. “And Helmer Wolfmann?”

“When they heard the Allies were coming, the army pulled out. I knew he had a wife in Germany.
Sì
, I knew. Yet I thought he would take me with him. Ah, such a naive girl. But the night before he left, he did give me a wonderful gift.

“Next day, I stood at the window and watched while his driver circled the marble nymph twice. He didn’t look up or wave, and then they were gone. Minutes later I heard the gunfire. The shots that killed my Helmer.

“For every German killed, ten civilians shot. The entire town forced to watch in the
piazza
. Afterward, everyone blamed me, but what could I have done? Leonardo got his wish and Helmer was dead. But it was only Helmer who could’ve saved Leonardo.

“Gina, too, blamed me after she came home with the Sicilian. I forget his name. Lazy like all Sicilians, but not lazy in bed, gave her seven children. Fell from a bridge and broke his neck. Then she married the butcher’s son, a man with a spine curved like a dog’s. No one wanted me. Not even the cripples.”

Vittorio watched the man on the bench rise and, with faltering steps, pass from sight.

“The bell. You heard it that time.”

People stood. There was a general shuffle toward the door. When Anna hauled herself to her feet, he didn’t offer to help. She stood behind him, leaning on her cane. “There is your personal story. Except for the part where I worked like a slave to raise your mother, sent her to school in Switzerland, far from people who said
bastarda
behind her back and Nazi whore behind mine.

“And where is she after all my sacrifices? Lives far away, leaves me alone in this place. Won’t speak of me, so my grandson tracks me down?”

“My parents won’t tell me much. I wanted to meet you before – Well.”

“
Sì
, I’m getting old. Caught me in time, didn’t you? My only grandchild. They kept us apart for twenty-five years.”

“
Mamma
says you disowned her.”

“
She
said that? Or was it that Jew who stole her from me?”

And inside Anna’s stomach, the hunger hardened and rose, its uneven edges pressing against her heart. She raised a hand to pull back her words, but she didn’t have the strength to raise her arm, hadn’t had the strength for a long time.

The
Illusion
of Grace

What
You Should Know

Here you are, safely sleeping,
your hand resting on the sheet as though to keep the pink rabbits from flight. Even at sixteen, Cindy, you prefer bunnies.

All these years of watching, keeping you safe from whatever dangers lurk beyond the walls of our home, and it didn’t occur to me to warn you about yourself. But it certainly should have. I’ve come too close to being the father failure, the non-protector. No one could call me anything but lucky.

Here’s your laptop, green light steady. No point in wasting power, but if I turn the thing off, you’ll go at me in the morning, accuse me of snooping. Could be you have a desktop
folder entitled “Ten Reasons Why I Hate My Life” and another
one called “Why My Dad’s an Asshole.”

Not too likely you’d stop at ten. Even when you’re not upset, Cindy, you tend to gush. You hate it when I kid you about it. There have been times I tuned you out. But look at me now: thinking before I talk, then speaking like someone reading from a teleprompter.

Of course, I’m a bad father. A bad father is someone who leaves out the important details, recounts only the good. I had a notion that by describing my upbringing on the farm as idyllic, I protected you. Sure there was fun in living with my cousins, Debbie and Sonja. We played on the haystacks, chased the calves, took turns riding the horse. Uncle Al and Aunt Julie nearly succeeded in making me feel like I was one of their own. It wasn’t until I announced my plan to put myself through the university that I saw their relief because, after thirteen years of being responsible for me, they were finally
done.

I know you’re proud of my awards, Cindy, that I make good money designing homes for the wealthy. Your mother is the next best thing to a soulmate. She’s intelligent and kind and, until now, we’ve gotten along in a decent fashion. Two people comfortable skirting intimate topics, keeping disclosures tucked away behind drawn-out silences.

She claims she noticed something was off about your behaviour, said you seemed glummer and more self-deprecating than usual. I do remember her bringing it up one morning, but it was only a few words while she dressed or did her hair. And I said something flip about the moodiness of teenagers in general and girls in particular. By the time I was on the stairs and headed to the office, I’d forgotten all about it.

Your mother holds this lack of attention against me, claims I block out whatever I don’t want to hear. She said what actually happened was that we sat together in the bedroom and had a ten-minute conversation about you. Forgive me, but I don’t buy this version. I suspect your mother needs to blame me more than she does herself.

Because that’s what parents do when their child attempts suicide. Blame themselves and each other.

“Teenage suicide has become epidemic,” the psychiatrist at the hospital told us. As though, Cindy, you were nothing more than a statistic, which, I suppose, you became in his notes, under the heading
Attempted.

“What do you suppose she talks about?”

It could be your mother asking or it could be me, while we wait during one of your sessions with Mrs. Lance. We’re immensely relieved you are talking to someone and that she’s an expert in juvenile depression. Those times we wait, I amble about the room like a man with wooden feet. Your mother and I avert our eyes whenever we’re near each other, afraid of seeing our own fear.

My thoughts creep me out. I imagine you lying stiff in the morgue, a tag on your toe. Or in a coffin surrounded by flower arrangements, your hard cheeks crudely rouged, stuffed toy in your hands. How could I bear it?

If such a gesture wouldn’t wake you, I’d stroke your hair. You have your entire life ahead of you. Why would you want to end it? Haven’t your mother and I made a point of assuring you of our love every single day?

Oh, Cindy, you tell us nothing. All your answers belong to Mrs. Lance.

Yet I doubt she will ever get to something you should’ve considered before helping yourself to your mother’s sleeping pills.
What happens to the people death leaves behind?

That’s the part I deliberately left out of my childhood reminisces. I look at you sleeping and an urgency bursts inside my throat to tell you what I should’ve told you long ago.

~

July 5, 1974. There I was: a preschooler squashed between my grandmother’s weeping and my mother’s
Sit down, Calvin, why the hell won’t you.

And there he was. My tall father, creamed and shoved into a can with a lid when I knew there was no way he could fit. Of course Uncle Al had told me cremated, but I heard creamed.

I cranked my neck to see who else was in the church, maybe some decent-looking kid I could tag along with afterward, away from Debbie and Sonja. Eight at the time, they were three years older than me and liked to tease. Before the funeral, I’d noticed them watching me with interest, the boy whose father had just died, and I didn’t like the attention.

Uncle Al read the eulogy, which was peppered with frequent nose blowing. He’d come up with a great description of my father as a wonderful family man, hardworking and gone too soon, but it was a pack of lies. Fact was, if my father had lived another five years, he would’ve left a gulch of debt so deep, my mother wouldn’t ever have climbed out.

As it was, she lost the house and the Monte Carlo, the car in which I expected my father to arrive at any moment. No one could convince me he wasn’t coming back, wasn’t hiding low somewhere as he’d done several times before while he waited for the all-clear. One thing I could count on from my unreliable father was his love.

I didn’t worry he wouldn’t find my mother and me in our new place, a fourth-floor apartment in an old neighbourhood, and I didn’t mind not having my own room. My toy box fit under the coffee table and I saw the advantage of sleeping on the couch in the same room as the television. Off the living room was the door to the balcony, which, for me, made up for not having a yard. There, I could play with the fire truck Uncle Al had given me the day of the funeral and listen for the sound of the Monte Carlo.

While my mother made sporadic dips into the packing boxes, taking out whatever we needed at any particular moment, I hung out in the halls. I operated the elevator from the lobby to the sixth floor. “Yes sir, fifth floor. Going up,” I’d say, smacking the black button with the palm of my hand, pulling in dimes or nickels from amused riders.

The building’s superintendent told me to call him Super Rick. A chain-smoking sleazebag, he took advantage of my awe for the set of keys on his hip by forcing me to listen to his philosophies and gripes, those odd details which, dropped into a bag and shaken, had produced a shiftless redneck like him. He hated foreigners and brown people, Quebecers and Prime Minister Trudeau. Super Rick let me sit with him on the stairs and watch while he ate Chinese takeout with his fingers. He gabbed about who’d done him wrong, licked his fingers when done eating and refused to give me the fortune cookie.

He’d strike up conversations with anyone who passed, and then give me his impressions. Without fail, each man was an arsewipe. Women fell into one of three categories: dear old girl, flake or babe, and it was the latter he trailed to their doors or to the elevator, tried to engage in his version of serious conversation. Yet, next to getting my dad back, the thing I craved most was to be like Super Rick, with a storeroom full of tools and a set of keys allowing me access to the entire building.

Super Rick gave me free rein to run the elevator, pick up litter from the hallways and stack whatever literature showed up under the mailboxes. Because he was “sick and tired of butts left behind by dirty slobs, especially those good-for-nothing teenage hoodlums,” emptying the ashtray in the lobby became my responsibility. Payback was the occasional wrapped candy, though he once lost his mind long enough to fork over half an O’Henry bar.

There were other boys in the building, but I resented anyone who had his father at home. Mine would show up anytime, but until then, I preferred playing alone or tagging along with Super Rick.

In the meantime, no matter who called and asked to come over, my mother put them off, claiming she was worn out or had a headache. Soon she stopped being polite, dragged up her rude voice, the one she saved for relatives on my father’s side, especially my grandmother.

What bothered me most was her refusal to buy cookies. She told me, “If you want something sweet, put jam on a cracker.” She gave up on cooking, would heat a tin of soup for lunch or supper. A couple of times she managed sandwiches. After a few days of doing little else than smoking and staring at the TV, she went to bed and stayed there, occasionally emerging for a glass of water or a trip to the bathroom.

Her withdrawal from everything, including me, wasn’t new. It was common for her to sleep for days and ignore my father’s exasperated begging or his yelling until, without any discernable reason, she’d get up. Afterward, nothing would be mentioned about her behaviour. At least, not in my hearing.

My mother wasn’t an easy person. I remember she often lost her temper, and even her good moods could slide off into ragged irritation. It was my father who would tell knock-knock jokes and swing me around in impromptu dances that turned into manic free-for-alls. His favourite expression was, “Who gives a shit, really?” to which my mother would answer, “Obviously not you.”

And now I waited for her to get out of bed like she had all the other times.

Any five-year-old would’ve been thrilled with the freedom. No more baths or shampoos or reminders to change my clothes. I combed my hair when I remembered to do it and forgot about washing my face. I spent a lot of time on the balcony dropping things between the iron rails: paper, spit, Lego and crackers. Once, I hit a bald man with Lego and it obviously hurt, because he grabbed at his head, looked up and yelled, “You little bugger.”

I practiced the swear word for the remainder of the day, repeating it loudly outside my mother’s bedroom door, expecting her to charge out and lay into me:
Listen, mister, you cut it out or else.
That evening I invited myself onto the bed and tickled her neck. She told me to go away, she had a headache. And I guess I did go away, because I remember falling asleep on the couch with the TV on, and then waking next morning wearing my clothes from the day before.